I'd pulled up the three live webcams I could find streaming in town. None of them pointed at Worthington Hardware Co., unfortunately, nor did I think I was likely to randomly spot an obvious evil wizard coming for us, but it was something to do while Katrin finished warding the hell out of the hidden corner of an old Coca-Cola bottling plant we'd found ourselves in.

While all of us had been injured by bits of shrapnel, only three people had for sure left enough blood behind to be usable for scrying - Matlyn and Zoey, who had both been shot, and Grunkle, who had been blasted by magic. Grunkle already had an anti-scrying charm, since he was a wanted criminal, and the others were covered by Katrin and Errod, who donated theirs. I kept my own on me, since I was a known person of interest for Coelestis.

The problem was that those charms weren't foolproof, and we had to assume Greg was very powerful and also not working alone. We hadn't had any way of quickly getting a vehicle in the middle of the night, which was why we were now fortifying a building that looked like it was going to give us tetanus. "We should have gone further into a neighborhood," I said, "if they can see mana they're going to spot us. Shit. I should have thought about this more, with nothing magic anywhere else we're going to stick out like a sore thumb."

"It's fine," Katrin said, still working on finishing up the wards, "Runes are very efficient, and I've set up a mana collector so any excess mana will stay in the room. They're not going to be able to sense it from a distance, even just out on the street. If they were close enough, they'd be in the room with us."

"Okay, okay. So... now that we've caught our breath... what the fuck happened? I don't expect the others to jump into combat, but between you and Errod... how did that guy manage to shoot two people and get away? I didn't even consider the possibility that he'd have any hope of hurting you guys. Not for a second."

Errod scowled, and I was about to get defensive when I realized he wasn't mad at my question - he was mad at himself. "It shouldn't have happened," he said. "We underestimated him. I should have thought about the fact that Coelestis is collecting magic items."

"It was an entropic mana effect," Katrin said, "a powerful one. It destroyed my shields completely, and then he immediately shot the two most vulnerable people just to distract us."

An entropic mana effect... hmm. "Well, possible good news. It might not be that he was ready for you, or that they carry magic items around normally. He might have just still had it in his pocket from the other day - he was investigating the spot in the subway, where we had our little accident with the Common Local Understanding. We left mana crystals all over the walls; I assume they would have dissolved on their own, but if this guy was looking into it and was worried there was some powerful source of mana..."

Katrin nodded. "He might have had something specifically designed to wipe mana away. That makes sense. Still, we need to assume they'll have other tricks."

Fair enough. "So he temporarily crashes your shield and leaves you flat-footed, shoots Zoey and Matlyn rather than the people that look ready to fight, and then bolts for the door and just... runs faster than Errod while you're busy patching up the injured people?"

"He didn't get away from me," Errod said, "but he so quickly found a crowd of people that I didn't know what to do. I couldn't grab him and drag him back, I couldn't attack him... he started speaking to someone on a phone, and turned back to look at me and smiled. If I'd been closer I could have tried to take the phone away, maybe..."

"No, I get it. If you'd murdered some guy in the middle of a busy street you'd be fucked, and then what? Well, if we see that guy again we take him out before he can do anything." It might have been better if he'd just killed the guy and run, but there were too many variables for him to have taken the chance. "For now... Zoey, get online and find people selling vehicles for cash. We'll need a van or something, I guess. Katrin, you can cover it in wards, and then we'll get on the road."

Zoey gave me a thumbs-up. I'd already told her that I'd seen the other Zoey being interrogated, and that they'd for sure wiped her memories, but I hadn't mentioned Matlyn and the others being destroyed by void. Matlyn already knew the other version of herself had died on the Grand alignment, I didn't really see the point in getting specific with it.

She was playing chess with Errod, a little travel version they'd grabbed somewhere, and she paused to look over at me. "We're going to... Arizona? To drop off Zee and... what, kill this 'Greg' person?"

She sounded more casual about murder than I would have expected, given her bubbly personality, but then again she'd had no issue with our other plans. "Yeah, that's the long and short of it. Which means right now, it's time for me to try and recover the last few memories I'm missing. I don't want to have any blind spots."

This was easier said than done, of course, since it was difficult to concentrate on my memory palace while I was on Earth. With the added separation between my domain and my body, I could feel more than ever that I had multiple types of memories; short term was, so far as I could tell, still in my physical body. Long term was in my mind, and then there was archived memory in my memory palace.

I wasn't sure how much my mind could directly hold, but I could imagine if I managed to live for hundreds of years at some point the majority of my life would feel like the old Earth memories I'd recovered - there for me to reference, but not right at my fingertips. If that happened, and I came back to Earth, I'd have to plan ahead of time what memories to refresh so I'd be able to recall them easily without ducking into my memory palace. I could see why Sentortzi had all of his shit organized into shelves and stuff.

I managed to find the memory where Greg was about to kill me, and if for sure ended abruptly. In other cases, this had been because I'd gone to another plane and my memory recovery had been done in an Earth-centric way, leaving those memories disjointed. In this case... it was more likely that I was just knocked out so thoroughly that my brain stopped forming any kind of memory for a bit. Hell, for all I knew I was in some sort of coma.

That made it surprisingly hard to find where the memory picked back up. I decided to start with my physical location; assuming I didn't get moved somewhere while unconscious, I'd be in Universal Servicing Systems. I had a lot of memories there, but I could focus on the mental image of me being in trouble, of Greg being there, of... I don't know, general bad vibes.

I fell out of the memory palace twice, for some reason, probably just because I was distracted. I also found a bunch of random memories of being in Universal Servicing Systems that I wasn't looking for, mostly me digging through desks or pretending to take phone calls. "Carl, baby," I said, "you know I love you like a son, but if you don't get those sales figures up I'm going to have to send you down to the production line. I know, I know, but corporate has been very clear; you either move the product, or you are the product. Listen, just stop telling the customers that it's made of people. They get squeamish. No, Carl. It's not false advertising, it's selective advertising. Just focus on the great value, and conveniently leave out where we source our meat from."

I had to admit, I was a weird fucking kid. Especially when I'd been left all alone for too long.

Finally, early in the morning, I stumbled on what I was looking for. The memory was fuzzy, starting with nothing but darkness and a ringing sound. I opened my eyes, and I was on the floor of Universal Servicing Systems. I recognized the old carpet tiles, and - as my vision cleared enough to see them - the cubicles all around me. I sat up, disoriented and still hearing nothing but a sharp ringing sound. I was covered in blood, and as I tried to wipe it away and look for a wound more rose up - it was coming from my skin, like sweat.

There was a strange popping sensation, and the ringing was replaced by muffled sounds. Someone was groaning. I scooted behind a cubicle and got to my feet, then limped along one of the aisles until I was far from where I'd been laying. I rose up, peeking over a filing cabinet, and saw Greg swaying with a hand to his head. He was bleeding too, all along the side of his face and down one arm. That arm also looked twisted, somehow, and almost skeletal. He was breathing hard, eyes unfocused.

I looked down at the leg that had been making me limp, and saw a terrible welt around my ankle. I reached into my shoe, wincing, and pulled a half-melted bracelet out. The "reflection bracelet" that I'd stolen from Greg's vault. It hadn't fully protected me, clearly, but it had kept me from dying and it had turned the rest of the attack back on Greg before failing. In the memory I didn't seem to know what it was, staring at it in confusion before putting it down on the desk next to me. I reached for weapons - my hand hesitated near some scissors, then moved to a glass paperweight. I could tell what I was thinking; Greg was hurt, if I was ever going to be able to rush him and bash his head in now was the time.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Except time was already up. He chugged something out of a small metal vial and straightened, and then as he began scanning the room there was a flash of something behind him. Without turning to look, he addressed whoever was standing in the shadows. "You're here, good. I'm afraid I need to officially designate Calliope Smith as an enemy of Coelestis. Fucking Sahrger trickery made my spell backfire; I'm not certain how it bypassed my wards, but she seems to excel at that given the way she snuck into my vault."

The figure stepped out into the room, and... it was someone wearing one of those suits of armor we'd just seen in the New York office. "She's in the building?" they asked, deep voice identical to the bodyguard we'd seen wearing the same helmet. It was either the same guy, or the mask changed his voice along with hiding the wearer's face. I'd have to test the one we'd stolen later to be sure.

In the memory I'd ducked down again, and was slowly moving further away towards one of the exits. "I think she's in the room," Greg said, "listening to us right now. Start there, with that blood smear. I know you find the idea of killing children distasteful, so just capture her and give her to me. That's an order, if it wasn't clear."

The masked man pulled a matte black katana from its sheath and stalked the aisles, while I peeked around corners at him whenever I thought I could get away with it. I wanted to know where he was and where he was headed, but the man was moving quickly and erratically, making it very hard to avoid his path. He stopped right by where I'd been a minute before, and picked up the melted bracelet. Suddenly, his head snapped to the side so he was looking right at me. My first impulse was to duck behind the desk, but I resisted; it was too late to hide, so it was better to watch and see what he'd do. Would he charge at me? Stalk slowly towards me like some unkillable movie villain? Call out to Greg?

He raised a finger to his mouth in a "shhh" gesture, then tucked the melted bracelet into a pocket. "She's not here," he said, "she must have escaped before you recovered."

The man walked back over to Greg, who was wiping blood away with a tissue. "Can I trust you to track her down?" Greg asked. "We have to assume she knows everything."

The masked man nodded. "It's not a matter of trust, you made sure of that."

Greg scoffed as he grabbed another tissue. "Are your oaths chafing, little brother? Too bad. I know you've tried to find ways to resist, little inefficiencies and engineered mistakes. This is not something we can afford to do halfway. I'll be sending all of the one-fifty level agents after her, with all three fifty-level agents supervising. If you want to negotiate regarding how I deal with her, you'll want to bring her to me first. Are we clear."

The man nodded. "Crystal. But I do think you should consider the arrangement; having a backup for the prisoner could be -"

"We've had this discussion," Greg said, cutting him off, "and you know my position. Now go."

The masked man nodded again, and then sighed and took the bloody tissue from Greg. "For the love of... hold out your hands."

He tossed the used tissue and pulled out three fresh ones, as Greg held his bloody hands out. The masked man looked like he was about to clean Greg's hands, but instead that katana flashed through the air and both of Greg's hands flew away from his wrists. In an instant, the man had Greg by the throat and had dropped his sword so he could shove his other hand into Greg's mouth. "No spells," he said, and something began to glow inside Greg's mouth. He removed his hands and shoved a metal vial into Greg's mouth as blood gushed from his wrists - Greg tried to avoid it, but ended up swallowing what present me knew had to be a healing potion; the bleeding stopped, but of course a potion wouldn't grow your hands back.

Greg gasped and slumped against a desk, bone white and clearly on the verge of passing out. "Who... who are you? What did you do with... with..."

"Who am I? I'm someone who is very angry, Greg. Someone not bound by your oaths. Call me Jake Ross, because I'm ready to kill an evil wizard. No, better yet. Call me 'sir', because you're about to make me the CEO of Coelestis Acquisitions. And you, Greg, are going to be in charge of the prisoner."

Greg narrowed his eyes, as if trying to see through the helmet. "This shouldn't be possible. It's you, isn't it? How?"

"I'm afraid you've violated an important agreement, Greg. We're going to have to re-write the oaths, from the ground up - and you don't have a very favorable bargaining position. In fact, unless I'm mistaken, the core oath that's still in place stipulates there would be two people in the agreement, one of which acts as jailer at any given time. You don't have to be either one of those, do you? I don't see any reason I can't offer that position to Calliope."

Greg looked simultaneously terrified and furious. "You can't! She doesn't meet the criteria!"

"You know she meets some of them already, and Poicelria's Golem works its magic so impressively... there are a few she hasn't satisfied, maybe, but I don't think your addition even took, frankly - even if it did I can take her to Virginia and check that box off."

Spit flew from Greg's mouth as he snarled at the man. "Ridiculous! She's not even in the chain of... no. No. What did you do? You couldn't! Not with the oath in place... but you must have, to have broken it. To have made me break it."

The man shrugged. "I didn't make you do anything, Greg. You could have left her alone, and everything would have continued on the way you liked it. You've been out-maneuvered, by yourself. You're done, finally. I'm going to dismantle Coelestis, completely this time, and then you get to carry the prisoner until you finally fucking die."

Greg started laughing. It began as a chuckle, and then turned into wild cackling before finally petering out. "Ridiculous, that you think you can talk to me this way. You want to play the hero? Don't forget who I am. I was the hero of the story before you came along, boy. Summoned by the good queen, tasked with righting an ancient wrong. But I saw through it. I found a way to win the game. I engineered all of this, and was kind enough to invite you into the inner circle. The Grand Alignment is nearly here, and with it the end of the prisoner's schemes. Less than four years, and it would have been over - instead, you want to try and take my place one more time. As in Brinkmar, so on Earth.

"Fine. Risk everything, abandon your duties, throw my corpse onto the pile of all those who came before us. All those heads in jars, or Adam's tomb under the palace. Play right into the prisoner's schemes. What happened to the death of fate? What happened to strangling her with her own chains? You so quickly throw our greater purpose away, to be used as a pawn. You can complain about my methods all you want, but they're necessary. You want to dissolve Coelestis Acquisitions? Fine. What do you do with all of the agents? You're against oaths, against memory wipes. So what do you do, with these people that know about magic?

"And what about Calliope? You want to keep her alive right now, because you have a soft spot for bystanders. But thanks to you she's a possible vector for the prisoner, and I doubt her life is worth the lives of everyone else on the thirty-six planes. Sooner or later you'll see that I'm right. You'll use the oaths and memory manipulations you so railed against because they're needed, and you'll kill that girl to save everyone else because you know that there are things more important than a single person. You'll kill her, just like you're destined to kill me, and then you'll be all alone with the prisoner and your regrets."

The man shrugged again. "You said it yourself. I only really need to hold out for less than four years."

Greg smiled. "Fine. So be it. But there's one thing you've forgotten. I'm the one that taught you that anti-magic sequence."

The glowing thing in Greg's mouth winked out, and he raised his stumps towards the mystery man. A blast of black energy, as big around as a person, shot out and erased everything in its path. I dropped down behind the desk, but that just meant I was facing where the blast had been pointing - and it had left a huge circular hole in the wall of the building. At first I assumed the mystery man would have to have been obliterated, but then he launched himself from behind a desk. I didn't see what happened next, because I was running for the exit. Behind me, cubicles tumbled through the air as magic was launched back and forth.

I made it to the door, but as I stumbled down the stairwell - still covered in blood, and starting to feel like maybe I should be worried about where it had all come from and what my insides looked like - the whole building shook. Dust was cascading down as cracks spread through the concrete, and there was a deep groaning coming from somewhere. Something tugged at me, and I reached into my pocket... and pulled out the planar lodestone for Nusos. That hadn't been there before, why had it appeared now? I was almost out, I could see the door - and then a wall tipped towards me and everything went black.

If Greg had won, he would have killed me - that was clear. But if the other man had won, wouldn't Greg be dead? Wasn't it Greg that wiped my memories? I'd gone to his desk at the self-storage place for sure, when I was getting my fake birthday milkshake. The waiter... he'd looked a lot like Greg, and had talked like Greg. But then again, I couldn't be certain. The whole place had been altered, including his face. But wait, he had to be alive - the video of Zoey getting interrogated had included Greg.

But there were other indications things hadn't gone the way he wanted, like the state of Coelestis; it hadn't been shut down, but so far as I could tell it had been downsized pretty drastically around that time - and then again after the Grand Alignment. That seemed like it was more in line with what the mystery guy was saying he wanted. I would have needed to know more about what Coelestis was actually doing to be sure. I'd need to know what the "prisoner" was, and who the masked man was, and what Greg meant when he talked about being a hero - about being summoned by the queen.

There was no way Greg was any kind of hero, but it kinda sounded like he was saying he was Jake Ross.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.