I am sitting with my sister on a train. We’re in a spacious cabin with a table situated between us. We each take up one side of the cabin’s benches, various bags and belongings cluttering the area.

“Ian?” she says, looking out the window. She turns toward me. “Hello?”

I shake my head. “Sorry, what?”

I haven’t seen Germaine in years. I’m older than her now, I realize with a start. Mentally, at least. Germaine is–was–only two years older than me.

She positively glows with vitality, to both my eyes and my decemantic senses. But why is she here, and in such good spirits?

“‘I’m so proud of you,’ is what I said, you dummy.” She snorts at my uncomprehending expression.

“Why?”

She smiles. “Mother’s proud of you too, you know, even if she won’t say it out loud.”

“...You can believe that if you want,” I reply.

“She told me,” Germaine sniffs indignantly. “She would never say it to you out loud, but she said it.”

“Why would she say that?”

Germaine’s eyes grow soft. She turns toward the window again, raising one leg onto the seat. “At one of those parties she so-often attends, someone commented on your graduating.” She sighs. “I was at the party, too, for the record. ‘Spying’ for Mother, you know.”

I knew.

“They said that she must be proud, having a son graduating at the top of his class. You should have heard this person–her voice was so sarcastic and cruel, Ian. It was really unbearable.”

I understand immediately. Whoever the person was must be familiar enough with Mother to know her eternal shame: that despite inheriting the bloodline of their father, neither of her children had an ounce of practitioner potential.

Germaine continues. “But Mother only smiled.” Germaine’s voice turned warm, and she faced back towards me. “She said that anyone would be proud to have a child at the top of the class.”

I blink. “Is that it?”

Germaine sighed once more. “Yep.”

I snort. “It’s not really the same as saying she’s proud of me, you know.”

She gives me a look and crosses her arms. “You weren’t there, Ian. But she meant it. You know how I know?”

“How?”

She walked her fingers across the table, then makes a flicking gesture. “I just do, alright?”

I laugh for a solid few seconds.

“Hey,” she says. “It wasn’t that funny.”

“I’ve missed you, Germaine.”

She smiles. “I know. I’m just too cool, right?”

“Right.”

There’s silence for a moment.

“What’s our stop again?” I ask, fishing for information.

“It’s the last stop,” she states. “Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“It’s literally the name of where we’re going.”

I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”

Germaine takes out a pencil and begins to work in a notebook. I take in a deep breath and begin to think about where the train could be headed. I extend my senses out, trying to see if I can detect any insects nearby. Unfortunately, this train has vermin filters at its apertures, a protective measure against transferring invasive species between provinces. That means that, at the very least, we’re going somewhere far off. Not so far as to require a transport array, but far.

The conductor suddenly shouts a destination, his voice magnified throughout the train’s length. “Approaching Brin City, Approaching Brin City!”

“Brin City?” I mutter under my breath in surprise. Brin is quite far from home, almost on the opposite edge of the world. Close to Godora and the SPU, actually.

“Ugh, we still have a few more hours to go.”

“How many hours until we arrive, you think?” I ask innocuously.

“To Menocht? Oh, maybe three.”

I nod.

Menocht!?

“Germaine...remind me again why we took the train all the way here.”

Fixated on her notebook, she replies, “Transport array was too expensive. Besides, I found a discount on high-speed train tickets. This kind of train uses a new kind of hoverail. It glosses along almost twice as fast, so stop complaining.”

“And...why are we going all the way to Menocht, though? Why not somewhere closer?”

Germaine finally looks up from her notebook, placing her pencil down on the desk. “Well, you’re sure full of questions today. Did you lose your memory or something?”

“...No.”

“It’s only three more hours, Ian. We’re almost there.”

Germaine resumes her work. I peer over, looking at the beginnings of a sketch.

“Hey, why are you sketching me?” I ask. It’s a stylized representation, but I can pick myself out easily, if only because she’s drawing me in my current position nestled between a cherry red suitcase and a dark green jacket.

“Maybe I’m not sketching you. Ever think of that?”

I scoff. “What are you, five?”

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head slowly. “I’m drawing you because I want to. Good enough?”

I snort and give her a crooked smile. “Guess I can’t complain.”

“Finally. Just...read on your glosspad, or look out the window if you’re bored.”

Instead, I look at her from the side, fixing my eyes on the edge of the window. A part of me wants to cry, seeing Germaine after so long. There’s a kernel of tension in my stomach that’s been churning ever since I found myself on the train with her, the kind of tension that demands release.

It’s not that I never thought I’d see her again, but...I genuinely missed Germaine. I missed her in a different way than Mother. My whole life seems–or seemed, I suppose–to orbit around Mother. It was always her metric of success that I needed to care about, and it was always her that I disappointed. For me, missing Mother is more like missing the feeling of pain. Pain hurts, but it anchors you, it reminds you who you are, and that you can feel. Better to feel pain than nothing at all, moorelessly adrift.

Missing Germaine is like missing the sun.

After you’ve lived without the sun for a while, you get used to it, think you don’t need it. The dark becomes a friend. But when the sun returns...you realize everything you told yourself was a lie. You need the sun after all.

“Germaine,” I begin suddenly. “Germaine.”

“What?”

“I’m a practitioner.”

She pauses, looking up, pencil in hand. “What?”

“I’m a practitioner.”

“I heard you the first time. What?”

“Don’t you mean, ‘when?’”

“...”

I lean back in my seat. “I’m serious, you know.”

“Ian I–since when?”

“Since now,” I reply sadly. “Since just a moment ago.”

I can tell that Germaine is getting both confused and worried, her eyebrows furrowing together. I consider telling her that we’re in a simulated loop outright, but...doing so seems futile.

“Germaine, I really can’t explain, alright? It’s too complicated.”

She looks at me with a stunned expression. “Too...complicated?”

Y’jeni, I’ve already misspoke. I’m doomed unless I tell her everything.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll tell you. We have three hours, I guess...”

“Prove it,” she interjects, as though coming out of a trance. She grabs my arm and gives me an intense stare. “Show me.”

I open my mouth, then close it. “What should I do?” I ask helplessly, my voice low. I feel like I’m about to show something illicit. Isn’t it easier to just keep my mouth shut?

Maybe around Mother, I think to myself. But...I want to tell Germaine.

But what to show her?

I think back to when I first sat in Jasmine’s school therapist office. I convinced her by levitating myself. I could try that again. But a feeling comes over me, and I want to try something else.

Germaine is wearing leather boots. Animal skin is one of the few materials that, even when cured and processed, retains enough of its original structure and energy to be controlled, albeit with great difficulty. What remains of its energy is akin to a dying coal, but with the right amount of finesse and control, it is possible to control it.

As Germaine’s right boot slowly drifts into the air, she recoils and falls back onto the bench, eyes wide. Her boot is still elevated, and she looks at it, like it’s some kind of foreign object. She worms her foot out and sits cross-legged.

“Ok then.”

“So...?” I begin, trailing off.

“What kind of affinity lets you do that?” she asks, still staring at the boot. I let the leather drop down onto the seat. “It didn’t look like wind elementalism."

I direct my gaze on the rugged ocean-side scenery outside the window. “Death.”

I see her smile falter out of the corner of my eye. “Death...affinity?” She pauses. “That’s...that’s great!” she exclaims.

I raise an eyebrow and turn back to meet her gaze. “Really?”

“They make a lot of money,” she replies. “More than a glossprogger.”

I nod.

“Also,” she continues, her forehead lining with thought. “It’s one of the least dangerous affinities.” She smiles. “Decemancers usually work in factories or in closed rooms as security specialists. Now, if you were an elementalist...”

I understand Germaine’s perspective immediately: Most with Death affinity could never participate in the kinds of duels I saw at Sylvestri’s party. Most are like Professor Durning’s students, barely able to condense energy into a low-grade gem, or struggling to manipulate even the most fresh and intact of corpses. With practice, such people can master a small niche, using their affinity to do monotonous, but profitable, tasks. The most common such professions, as Germaine mentioned, are those who work in slaughterhouses or those who keep an eye on all vital signatures within a guarded area. If talented, the latter might even use thralled insects to keep an area under watch.

Contrastingly, an elementalist of even low affinity would be expected to work as a guard, soldier, or duelist. It’s actually the high-affinity elementalists that leave these more-dangerous professions behind. Those people serve as deterrents against conflict, usually waiting calmly on standby to be sent out, often even occupying political seats. For instance, even though he’s a wind elementalist, the Crowned Prime spends his days in the well-defended walls of Ichormai.

“Germaine,” I butt in. “You’re talking about decemancers of low affinity.” I give her a cool smile. “What of those with high affinity?” I see her jovial expression freeze onto her face. And I tell her the truth: “My affinity is over 90%, Germaine. What about someone like me?”

She chuckles lightly. “Come on, Ian. Over 90%? People don’t just develop 90% affinity overnight, you know. Now seriously, what’s your affinity?”

“You caught me,” I say, holding up my hands. “It’s over...99%.”

Now she laughs boisterously. “Not going to tell me? Fine.”

I sigh. “Germaine...I need to tell you a story.”

And so I tell her about the loop.

—

“And you think you’re still stuck in a loop now?” Germaine says as we walk through the train station. The two of us have our hands full with suitcases and miscellaneous bags. “But there’s no way to prove it.”

“Yes.”

“...Unless you’re like Euryphel, and you have End affinity,” Germained sighs. “I wish I had End affinity. It’d be cool to see threads of fate everywhere.” She grunts as she hauls two stacked bags over a bump. “Wow.”

“Do you believe me?” I ask.

“Well,” she starts, giving me a look. “You’re a practitioner now, so something must’ve happened. Your explanation of being stuck in a...what did Euryphel call it?”

“A dilation loop.”

“Yeah, that. It seems plausible, though I’m not fond of the idea that I’m not real, if you know what I mean.”

“You’re real to me,” I reply unhelpfully.

“Mhm. Man, really 99% affinity?”

I nod.

“But...what about when you leave the dilation loop? Are you still going to keep that affinity then?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, if none of this is real...why is your decemancy real? It could be all in your head.”

“I see what you mean. But what would be the point of whoever sent me here, sending me here...if I came out without any kind of power?”

Germaine pauses. “You said that this entire thing might just be a big experiment, and you a single trial. What if it fails?”

What if it fails? What if, when I wake up, this was all for nothing?

“I’ll deal with whatever happens when it happens,” I mutter in response. “There’s no use speculating when all I’m doing is guessing. Where are we going, Germaine?”

“It’s a place called Hotel Denochs.”

I nod. “I know how to get there.” It’s a fairly nice hotel that overlooks the water. I’ve been there a few times since it’s close to the docks. To be fair, since it’s adjacent to a defensive artillery station, the hotel was often a casualty of conflict.

We arrive at the hotel a few minutes later, the two of us sweating from lugging heavy bags in the city’s afternoon heat. Thankfully, the building is almost as close to the train station as it is to the docks.

“I believe you,” Germaine says as we deposit the bags in our shared room. She walks over to the room’s sole window, a wide, glass pane with a view of the city’s right-most pier. “I can tell that you’ve spent a lot of time in this place.” I come over and join her. In the reflection of the window, I can see that her lip is trembling.

“I appreciate your faith in me,” I murmur.

“You’ve changed a lot, you know?” she says, her voice constricted. “What’s happened to you...” she opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again, as though trying to find the right words. “It’s nothing less than torture. Stranding you here without any directions, without any idea why...not pulling you out when it was clear that you were struggling. I’d kill those bastards if I could.”

I mull over her words, then think of Euryphel’s perspective. “I shouldn’t be thankful at all, if I wake up a practitioner?”

Her expression morphs into a grimace. “Being a practitioner won’t make you happy. In your case, it’s more likely to get you killed. Am I wrong?”

I shake my head. “You’re not wrong.”

“So why be thankful!?” she snarls, finally turning toward me. She grabs my shoulders. “It’s not okay!”

“But Mother...”

Germaine lets out a strangled sound. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this is somehow her doing. Y’jeni, that woman...”

I pull Germaine into a hug. “Germaine. It’s alright. I’m happy, okay?” I stroke her back. “When I get out of here, I’ll keep out of trouble, okay?”

She begins to sob. “You’re such an idiot.” She breathes shakily. “You can’t keep out of trouble if you have a 99% affinity.”

“Just what am I supposed to do?” I ask quietly. I never thought Germaine would have a meltdown over this. I thought she’d be...happy, perhaps even relieved.

“I don’t know,” she says after a moment. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

We remain there for a time, me gently stroking her back, her arms wrapped around my shoulders. Eventually, we each take a seat on the bed.

“I never told you why we came to Menocht, did I?” Germaine says, changing the topic. “It’s for one of father’s cousins.”

I narrow my eyes. “So an aunt or uncle, once removed? Who?”

“His name is Marcus Adricaius. He decided to host a family reunion to celebrate the marriage of his daughter, Festina Adricaius, to Beirut Helvelium. For some reason that meant inviting us.”

“Mother?”

She shakes her head. “Not invited.”

“Really?”

“Really. She’s been disowned by the family, after all.”

“Why us?” I ask. “And when and where is this reunion happening?”

Germaine takes out her glossY and pulls up a carefully-designed invitation. “Look for yourself.”

Germaine and Ignatius,

It is my pleasure to invite you both to the wedding of my daughter, Festina, to Beirut Helvelium. It has been years since I have seen the two of you, and would be pleased to pay for your travel to Menocht Bay to attend the ceremony. I believe that it is time for you to reunite with the better half of your family.

Fondly,

Uncle Marcus

After Germaine’s RSVP is another message:

ITINERARY

Thursday

Arrival, check-in at Hotel Denochs between 2:00pm and 5:00pm Proceed to dinner and festivities at Sunset Winery, taking a shuttle from hotel at 5:00pm, or arranging other means of transportation Shuttles will be running at 10:00pm and 12:00am back to the hotel.

Friday

Brunch at the Glass Palace at noon Rehearsal dinner in Bridoc Yacht Club at 6:00pm for immediate family Festivities and entertainment at the estate of Zebede Dunai, 1283 Grand Vista, from 8:00pm until 2:00am

Saturday

Wedding ceremony in Gosophal Orchard at 3:00pm Reception immediately following at Bridoc Yacht Club, transportation shuttles provided at wedding Shuttles will run between 10:00pm and 2:00am on the hour to return to the hotel

Sunday

Departure, with check-out by noon

I shake my head. What a schedule.

“Any idea how many people are coming to this thing?”

“All I know is what’s in this invitation.”

I look at the time on the glossY. “It’s almost 4:00 pm now. Other relatives should have already arrived at the hotel.”

“Probably.”

“What do you think is the purpose of this layer, Germaine?” I ask, leaning back onto the bed. “A family reunion doubling as a wedding...seeing you...it’s odd.”

“Sounds like something unexpected will happen. What are you planning to do, huh? Are you coming to the reunion as a decemancer?”

I close my eyes. “How about you choose.”

“You know, this is the family that cast us off for the past fifteen years, ever since Father started having difficulties. I could really care less about them, except that they offered us a free trip to Menocht.”

“...”

“I know that they’ve looked down on us. They made it even more difficult for Mother.” She lays down next to me. “If they had just given her some help, treated her like part of the family...maybe she would be different.”

“Maybe.”

“I kind of want to get back at them...” Germaine says, voice small. “But we’re here for a wedding, not a competition.”

I nod. “Got it.”