“I’ve had warmer welcomes, but I suppose this beats the plasma showers that awaited me on Zyvkvyp.”

Calburn smiled amiably at the armoured dwarves who stood guard outside his cramped, dusty cell. Shifting uncomfortably, they averted their gaze.

“Where are we?” asked Saskia, who sat opposite her father, wearing her human skin. “This a dream, isn’t it? It has to be a dream.”

Ruhildi pressed her hand against the stone walls. She looked more…alive than Saskia was used to seeing her these days. “Methinks ’tis Spindle.”

“Quiet, both of you,” said Calburn. “You’re spoiling the ambience.” He stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it about. “Wake up, little symbiote,” he murmured. “It’s time to earn your keep.” Something green and glistening clung to the tip of his finger. It wiggled about, before withdrawing back into his ear.

Saskia stared at him in fascinated revulsion. “What the hell is that?”

“You have your way of speaking foreign tongues,” he said. “I have mine.”

The guards stepped aside to make way for a dwarf in a toga, carrying a copper wand at his side. He spoke in a bored voice, close to a monotone. “You stand accused of trespass and blasphemy, stranger. I will give you this one chance to explain how and why you gained entry into the Solemnity of Stone, afore—”

“What is this…Solemnity of Stone you speak of?” asked Calburn.

“The chamber where you were caught. ’Tis our most sacred—”

“Oh, you mean the humping chamber!”

One of the guards snickered. The stoneshaper glared at him, and his laughter abruptly choked off.

The next moment, the stoneshaper had his wand out, and aimed at Calburn. The floor began to tremble beneath his feet.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” said Calburn. “It looks…tasty. How about you hand it over.” His voice was soft, but there was a peculiar quality about it that set her teeth on edge.

The stoneshaper blinked in confusion. He hesitated for a brief moment, then pushed the wand between the bars of the cell.

Snatching up the wand, Calburn inspected the arlium at its tip. “An essence source? I can use that…” The crystal shard became a liquid, flowing into his skin. “Ah yeah, that’s the stuff!”

“What did you… What are you?” The stoneshaper stared at him; face pale; legs trembling.

“Well that was creepy,” said Saskia. “What was that? Some kind of Jedi mind trick? Don’t you feel even a little bit bad about taking away his free will like that?”

Calburn frowned. “Free will is an illusion. Especially for flatlanders.”

“With an attitude like that, you must be so much fun at parties,” said Saskia.

“Oh I really am,” said Calburn. “Though I rarely let them remember I was there.”

Behind him, the guards glanced between the two of them, eyes full of uncertainty.

“How about you let me out of the cell,” said Calburn.

The guards took on the same bewildered, slightly vacant expression as the stoneshaper. One of them fumbled at the lock. The cell door swung open.

“Very good.” Calburn stepped out of the cell, and motioned to the two guards. “Now how about you lock yourselves inside.”

A moment later, the guards stood on the other side of the bars, while Saskia and Ruhildi stood outside, without seeming to have crossed the intervening distance.

Her father turned to the stoneshaper. “You asked me what I am? I’m the centre of your existence, for as long as I choose to reside on this world. Call me Calburn. What’s your name, vassal?”

Eyes still clouded in confusion, the stoneshaper answered after a moment’s hesitation. “I am Poggendoobler, Proctor of the Shaper Guild.”

Calburn barked out a laugh. “Alright, Poggen—mind if I call you Pog? We’ve a world to upend. So let’s get started, shall we?”

The world seemed to ripple and flex. Then they were standing in a long, dark chamber with mouldy walls. At the far end of the room, Calburn lay face-down on a stone table, clad only in a loincloth. His arms and legs were chained. Pog stood over him with a dagger in hand, sweating profusely.

“Is this entirely necessary, master?” asked the stoneshaper.

“Yes, Pog. It is necessary. There is only one way to unlock the second tier. And that is through pain. So how about you peel away the skin of my back with that dagger? Slowly—ever so slowly. If I start bleeding too profusely, use the bandages in the corner.”

Sighing, the dwarf began to slice into her father’s back—tearing off one agonising strip after another.

“Don’t worry, Pog,” gasped Calburn. “Soon, you’ll get your turn under the knife…”

“Ugh, do we have to watch this?” said Saskia. “I’m really not into torture porn.”

Calburn raised an eyebrow. “Our pain wasn’t without purpose. We needed it to—”

“Become necrourgists. I know. Ruhildi already told me how it works. I don’t need to see it.”

“Oh very well,” grumbled Calburn. The chain binding his wrist shattered, and he waved the scene away with a casual gesture.

Now they were hovering in the air, looking down upon a fortress city wedged against the trunk of Arbor Mundi, at the northernmost edge of what appeared to be Ciendil. An army of druids and beastmasters and armoured warriors swarmed up lines of writhing vines, tearing into the dwarven defenders atop the walls.

“The first siege of Climber’s Gate,” said Ruhildi.

“Doesn’t look like it’s going too well for the dwarrows,” said Saskia.

“’Twere but the beginning.” Ruhildi pointed down at the corpses, piled high on both sides of the walls. The dead were beginning to stir—and rise.

Caught between the dwarves and their own fallen comrades, the elves inside the city soon joined the army of the dead. Those who survived the initial onslaught outside the walls fled into the trees. Through the silent rows of standing corpses stepped five dwarves, with Calburn at their head, and Pog trailing just a few steps behind.

A dwarven commander shouted at his crossbowmen to lower their weapons as the five approached.

“Who are you, who hold sway over the dead?” he called out to them.

“They call me the Archurgist,” said Calburn. “These are my loyal and talented associates. We seek to bring an end to this silly little war.”

Without warning, she was falling. Her stomach leapt into her throat. The feeling dissipated, and she found herself standing on the steps of an ornately decorated palace. Dwarves in togas and robes and mail tunics walked up and down the stairs, and across a wide paved area below.

“Pentus,” said Ruhildi.

“Really?” said Saskia. “How can you tell? The skyline doesn’t look the same.”

“I don’t ken how I ken. I just ken.”

Several of the pedestrians cried out and pointed off into the distance. All eyes turned to follow their gaze. In the sky flew the unmistakeable silhouette and blue glow of the bone dragon.

It touched down in front of the palace, before an excited crowd, and a hastily assembled honour guard. A dwarf in fancy ceremonial armour stepped up to the dragon, and waited as the ribs slid open, and Calburn stepped out, flanked by a pair of mer women.

“Archurgist Calburn,” said the waiting dwarf. “It is so good to finally meet the Conqueror of Ciendil.”

“My king,” said Calburn, dropping into a deep, respectful bow.

“He’s the king my father got into a feud with, isn’t he?” said Saskia.

“Aye,” said Ruhildi. “King Dunmod. Calburn killed him and hung his head from the walls, if the stories are true.”

Calburn shot them a dirty look. “Spoilers. Also, that’s not what really happened. Yeesh, why am I even bothering to show you this?”

“Good question,” said Saskia. “Why are we here, exactly?”

“Just shut up and enjoy the show,” said Calburn.

She glared at him. “You gonna mind trick me into shutting up?”

Calburn shook his head. “That would be quite impossible. Now shush. These are my memories, and what happened happened. You’re just along for the ride.”

King Dunmod led Calburn into the palace, where they sat together on silken chairs in a sumptuous living room. “We have much to discuss,” said the king. “But before we do, let’s get straight to the matter of your reward. You shall be granted the title of Duke, a sizeable estate in Lokir, and a monthly stipend of fifteen thousand denarii.”

“That’s very generous, my king,” said Calburn.

“You have earned it,” said King Dunmod. “More than earned it. Gods, I’d offer you my daughter’s hand, if I had a daughter. Instead, all I have is that snivelling little—” He coughed.

Calburn didn’t quite manage to conceal an eye-roll. “I do have one request, if you would but hear me out.”

“Speak.”

“Put me in charge of Pentus’s foundry and arlium mining operations.”

King Dunmod shifted in his seat, clearly caught off-guard by the request. “Why would you want that?”

“On Ciendil, I identified certain…inefficiencies in the way we extract this world’s most valuable resource. And there are ways to utilise it that would revolutionise…well, nearly all aspects of life. Imagine carriages that could carry passengers from one end of Ulugmir to the other in less than a day. Ships that could sail the void between branches. Machines that could plough the soil and plant crops in a fraction of the time it takes a farmer today. Machines that could make other machines. And all of these wonders could be used by everyone, not just those blessed by magic.”

“If true, it sounds like a source of great upheaval,” said the king. “With great upheaval comes great discontent. With discontent, rebellion. Why would I agree to this?”

“A little short-term instability is a small price to pay for utopia,” said Calburn.

“I will be dead before any such utopia could be realised, even if everything you say were possible. The Empire owes you a great debt, but you ask too much.”

Calburn looked him straight in the eye. “How about you consider my proposal.”

King Dunmod’s eyes narrowed. “I have considered it. My answer is still no.”

Now it was Calburn’s turn to look surprised. “How about you…scratch your head?”

The king’s expression turned to a full-on glare. “What game are you playing, fool!?”

“Uh oh,” said Saskia. “Looks like you’ve found someone immune to your mind trick.”

Calburn looked at her with a resigned expression. “It happens sometimes. There are ways to train your mind to resist suggestion—exactly the sort of training people in positions of power often receive. Still, Dunmod was uncommonly stubborn, even for a king. I had no choice but to…”

The scene shifted again. Now they were standing in a large bedroom. Calburn stood over the bed, where a dwarven couple lay, snoring softly.

“How about you open your eyes without moving another muscle or making a sound,” said Calburn.

The snores ceased. Their eyes shot open.

“Good,” said Calburn. “Do not be alarmed. I’m not here to hurt you. Ibinold of the Forger’s Guild, there is something I need you to do for me…”

Saskia listened as her father gave detailed instructions on a new project he wanted the dwarf to undertake in secret. Afterward, he compelled the couple to forget he was ever there, and go back to sleep.

“This is so messed up,” she breathed. There was something incredibly unsettling about Calburn’s manipulations. It made her feel dirty just to be related to him. Even if his goal was to improve the lives of those around him, as he claimed, he had no compunctions against making these people his puppets. That was Abellion’s tactic. And given how it had all turned out, no-one could argue now that the ends justified the means.

Another disorienting transition, and they were attending the unveiling of Ibinold’s latest invention: the arlium engine. The dwarf used it to drive a miniature locomotive across a small stretch of track.

In the next scene, Calburn stood on a rooftop, gazing down at a crowd of dwarves rioting against the king’s guards. He smiled, and turned away, and descended a staircase into a well-kept library (the kind with books, not keystones).

As he stepped around a bookcase, three figures leapt at him from the shadows.

Calburn stepped backward just in time to avoid a blade to the face. Ducking behind the bookcase, he called out, “How about you turn those swords against each other.”

The meaty sound of blades sliding into flesh ensued. When he rounded the corner a second time, two fresh corpses awaited him, bleeding out across the floor. A moment later, they rose up off the floor and stared at him with unblinking eyes.

“How about you clean that up,” he told them, pointing at the blood spattered across the floor and shelves, and the bloody gashes on their bodies. The corpses hurried to obey.

“Wait…you can mind trick dead people?” said Saskia.

“My mentaplex operates below conscious thought,” said Calburn. “The undead don’t think, per se, but they still have a…what would you call it? Lizard brain? Not really the best word for it, because there are some smart lizards on this world, and the undead can still plod along after their brains have rotted away. But you get the idea.”

“’Tis certainly easier than the way I command the dead,” said Ruhildi.

On the other side of the library, Calburn turned to face an alcove in the wall. “How about you show yourself, and answer all questions I have to ask.”

A dwarf woman stepped out of the alcove. Saskia did a double-take, because she was a spitting image of Freygi; slim and clad in form-fitting leather, with all manner of blades strapped to her body.

“Who sent you to kill me?” he asked.

The assassin visibly struggled against the compulsion, but her words spilled out all the same. “The Nightblades Guild.”

“And who took out that contract?”

“We were not given that information. Only the target.”

“Oh well,” said Calburn. “Looks like it’s time to pay a visit to the Nightblades Guild.”

Then they were standing in a darkened hall. On a nearby wall hung a banner with crossed swords and a bloody palm.

“You can skip this part,” said Saskia. “We already know it was King Dunmod who sent them.”

Calburn blinked at her. “You don’t want to see the part where I marched right into—”

“No.”

Calburn scowled. “You are no fun at all.”

The Nightblades Guild Hall dissolved away, and in its place was another dark room. King Dunmod stood there with his guards, as a man and a woman stepped furtively through the door and closed it behind them. The woman, she recognised as the assassin whom Calburn had mind tricked.

“It is done,” said the man.

A look of relief spread across the king’s face. “There were no witnesses?”

“None. We lost two of our finest assassins, though. Hrungilda here was the lone survivor. It was she who completed the deed.”

King Dunmod eyed the woman up and down. “Come closer, lass.”

Hrungilda stepped forward, stopping barely a metre away. The guards tensed, and gripped the pommels of their blades.

“You have done the Empire a great service, lass,” said the king. “You have but to name your reward, and you shall have it.”

She stood there for a moment; lips parted; chest heaving. Then she undid the top button of her tunic and leaned forward. “There is one thing I desire, my king.”

Dunmod’s smile broadened. “Yes?”

“Your death.” Hrungilda drew a stiletto from between her breasts and stabbed him in the eye.

The guards shouted and drew swords, and moments later, the assassin and her boss lay dead beside the king.

Saskia rolled her eyes. “Oh please.”

“What?” said Calburn.

“This is like a bad movie. She seriously paused to say, ‘Your death,’ before stabbing him? Thereby alerting him of her intentions? Why not just stab him? And he let a known assassin near him, just because she had boobs?”

“Never underestimate the power of a fair pair of tits, Sashki,” said Ruhildi.

Calburn grinned at her. “What she said.”

Saskia shook her head sceptically. This just reeked of over-dramatised cow dung.

Calburn let out a sigh. “Okay, I admit, I wasn’t actually there when this particular episode played out. I was on the far side of town, working on my alibi. So I may have embellished things a little. Anyway, the important thing is Dunmod was dead. And it was time to choose his successor…”

“Which was you, obviously,” said Saskia.

The scene transition seemed to falter for a moment, before shifting to another rooftop.

“Yeah, okay, we’ll skip that one too, then,” said Calburn. “The gist of it was that Dunmod’s son was declared unfit for rule, and it was unanimously decided that I was the most suitable replacement.”

“And your powers of suggestion had nothing to do with that decision,” said Saskia.

“Why of course they did,” said Calburn, unashamedly. “It was the right choice, either way. Under my benevolent rule, the Empire flourished. And within a couple of decades, we got this…”

Spreading his arms theatrically, he stepped aside, granting her an unobstructed view of the city spread out below.

It did indeed look somewhat…utopic, at least compared to other cities on Arbor Mundi. Gleaming skyscrapers rose from snow-dappled streets, bright with trees and gardens. A train zipped away from the city walls, toward the shore of a distant lake. Windmills spun atop nearby hills. Two skyships flitted overhead, carried on wings far too small for aerodynamics alone to hold them aloft—all but confirming her theory that they used molten arlium for lift.

One thing bothered her, however.

“It’s looking a lot frostier than before,” she said. “Is it winter now?”

Calburn frowned. “Well…no. Highfall, actually.” Before she could reply, he said, “Anyway, it all went swimmingly until…”

Next moment, she stood an immense underground cavern, not unlike Wilbergond, with a column of white-hot arlium pouring up from the floor and into the ceiling. But something strange was happening. A thin stream of arlium split off from the main column, stretched through the air, and into…Calburn’s hand!?

The ground shuddered beneath them.

“Whoops!” said Calburn. “You weren’t meant to see this yet. As I was saying, we were doing great until they came knocking at our gates…”

Another abrupt transition, and they were standing in a street thick with snow. There were dwarves running every which way. The ground was shaking here, too, and she could hear a series of distant booms.

“What the hell was that?” she said. “Are you one of those metamagicians we’re trying to find? Wait…you can’t be. You’re a necrourgist. Unless it was a power you brought with you, like the Jedi mind trick thing…” She trailed off, as another possibility occurred to her. “Or is it something all of our kind can do? The arlium absorption… The wild magic… That’s it, isn’t it?”

At that moment, the top of one of the nearby buildings exploded in a shower of steel and masonry. Calburn sprinted away, with Saskia and Ruhildi close at his heels. A boulder smashed down onto the street beside them, flattening several dwarves.

She followed Calburn up a staircase onto city walls piled high with snow. A dwarven archer shuffled past, covered in ice, and sporting a vicious gash on his head. When she took in his glassy eyes and lurching movement, she stumbled backward.

He was a corpse. And not the only one. Undead dwarves and trolls and even a few elves prowled the walls and guarded the gates, standing alongside a much smaller—and dwindling—contingent of living dwarves, and towering metal golems, half again as big as the ones they’d unearthed in Torpend. She watched as Calburn raised several more of the recently deceased to join in the city’s defence.

Beyond the walls, a great army gathered. Elves and skarakh and trolls, and all manner of beasts and war machines, stretching out across the hills as far as the eye could see. The sheer scale of it made the battles in the Underneath look like minor skirmishes. And every one of the invaders was bent on the annihilation of the Ulugmiri Empire.

The Empire would not go quietly.

All along the walls, cannons let loose their deadly missiles. The front lines of the invading force vanished behind a thunderous cavalcade of explosions.

One more fade to black, and they were back in the tower of the Great Library. Calburn, blue in the face and gasping for breath, pressed his hand against a keystone and waited as it shrunk down to the size of his fist. Removing the black cube from its slot, he staggered away. He made it only a few steps before he slumped to the floor, convulsed, and lay still, with the keystone still gripped tightly between his fingers.

Then the corpse sprang to his feet and turned to face her. Saskia let out an embarrassing squeak.

“And so I died,” said zombie-Calburn. “It was all very tragic. There wasn’t even anyone left to give me a decent funeral.”

“It feels like you just skipped a lot of important stuff, there,” said Saskia. “Who won the battle, for one?”

“It was more of a draw,” said Calburn. “On account of everyone on both sides being dead.”

“What, really? How?”

“You must know by now, Abellion is entirely too willing to sacrifice his own minions if that is what it takes to crush his enemies. Well…that is what it took. The destruction of an entire branch. Or as it became known in your time, the Desecration of Ulugmir.”

“Which he blamed you for.”

The corpse nodded. “Indeed.”

“So you never tried to take Abellion’s place?” she asked. “Storm his lair and usurp his throne?”

“God no. Pun not intended. Just being a king was tiresome enough. Being the god of an entire world? No thank you.”

“Why did you wait until now to show me all of this?” she asked. “Where have you been? I needed your advice back on Ciendil.”

“I was…away. On Earth, if you must know.”

She stared at him. “Earth? Weren’t you already on Earth?”

“The other Calburn is on Earth. As I’ve told you before, I’m not him. I’m just an echo of who he was, long ago. I hitched a ride through the between when you did your thing…” He made undulating motions with his arms. “…at Spindle. Then, after your next dives into the between—on Earth and at Fireflower Isle—I came back.”

“But that was weeks ago.”

“Indeed it was. But as you have already surmised, I can only contact you in certain places where the signal sustaining my echo is amplified. The Great Library is one such place.”

“What about the Night’s Dream?”

“That was Sarthea’s site, not mine. Its power is not available to me.”

Ruhildi frowned. “Sashki isn’t in the Great Library, though. I am.”

“She is with you, as you are with her.” Calburn turned from Ruhildi to Saskia. “The bond you have forged with your vassal is really quite remarkable. I wouldn’t have been so quick to glue a flatlander’s consciousness to my undermind, but it will be fascinating to learn what you can do with her.”

Saskia’s breath caught in her throat. “That’s what I did? I just didn’t want my friend to die.”

“Ignorance can have interesting results. Perhaps that’s why my Earth counterpart kept you in the dark.”

“Did you contact him? Is that why you were on Earth?”

Calburn glanced at his gaunt, pale wrist. “Oh, look at the time. It seems we’ll have to cut this meeting short. Pity.”

The walls began to shimmer.

“Wait!” shouted Saskia. “I need to know how to manipulate arlium like you and Sarthea did, so I can seal the rifts on Ciendil.”

The shimmering ceased. “Ah yes. That. I’m surprised you haven’t already figured it out on your own. The answers are right there in the keystones you already have.”

“I thought that power came from another worldseed.”

“And it didn’t occur to you that you’ve been manipulating arlium this entire time, whenever you absorb it?”

“Sure, it’s obvious now. I just assumed—”

“Well that was silly of you.” He grinned at her. “But I suppose it won’t hurt if I give you some pointers, here, where there’s an infinite supply of dream-arlium for you to play with.”

Then they were back in the vast cavern with the stream of molten arlium flowing into the ceiling. This time they were standing considerably closer than before, but the heat didn’t burn them.

“It won’t be this easy in the waking world,” said Calburn. “But for now we’ll ignore the obvious peril of coming this close to the inferno. Now I want you to focus on the flow you see before you. Imagine yourself passing your hand through a waterfall. Feel the patter against your skin…”

Visualisation was only the first step. Then came the drawing of essence toward her, like sucking a drink through a long straw. Arlium was the substrate through which essence naturally flowed, and arlium didn’t want to let go of its essence. So when she tugged the latter in just the right way, the former came along for the ride. The straw, or channel through which she pulled it, was intangible and shaped by her will alone. She could widen the channel, but that would reduce the suction pressure. It was a tradeoff whose balance would shift as her power increased.

Saskia soon had a stream of arlium splitting off from the main flow, just as she’d seen her father do. The slender line of light writhed in the air as it shot toward her…

And sprayed white-hot arlium in her face.

“Good,” said Calburn. “Had this stuff been real, it would have seared through your skull and cooked your brain. But we can’t expect perfection on the first try. Now it’s about time you learned to master its temperature…”

Arlium temperature, Calburn explained, was directly related to the volume of essence flowing through it. A lot of essence produced a lot of heat. Less essence, and it cooled and solidified. So this time, the trick was to siphon essence out of the arlium. There was one obvious limitation to this approach, however.

“Won’t I just be transferring heat into myself, then? How is that an improvement?”

Calburn grinned at her. “Ah, so you’re not a complete idiot, after all. Indeed, if you absorb essence too quickly, you will…explode.”

“I don’t wanna explode,” she said.

“Don’t worry, Jayne. You’d have to try really hard to suck in enough of the stuff to damage yourself. This body of yours is incredibly tough, and it doesn’t need to store essence. It’s more of a…conduit. Once the essence passes into the between, your undermind can take it. In fact, she’ll gobble it up like a zombie feasting on delicious, tender, juicy brains. Just don’t try to freeze a mountain-sized volume of arlium in less than a second, and you should be fine.”

He recognised her movie reference? Weird. Although he had told her he was, in some sense, a part of her, with access to her memories.

“Wait…” she said, as another thought occurred to her. “If absorbing essence heats me up, why do I also heat up when I release essence out into the world?”

“What causes your body to heat up is the essence flowing through it. In or out—it doesn’t matter. All that matters is how much is flowing.”

“And the wild magic thing that set my vassals’ spells on fire? That’s just raw essence heating them up, too?”

“Not quite. Did you know your so-called wild magic can do more than simply burn things? No? Well, I’ll let you discover for yourself what it can do, out in the real world. It’s much more fun that way.”

“Fun? I could have gotten someone killed last time!”

“That’s what makes it fun!”

Yeah, she’d been right about him all along. He was a real donkhole. Still, if he could help her save Ciendil, he was a useful donkhole.

It took only a little tweak to the way she channelled essence to switch from directing the flow of arlium, to cooling it. Combining the two methods created a stream of arlium that turned solid just before it reached her outstretched hand, and flowed into it without barbecuing her.

Then, to her astonishment, she saw that Ruhildi had three tendrils of arlium coiling at her fingertips.

Calburn laughed at her expression. “You seem to have been outdone by your own vassal.”

“Trust me, I’m used to it,” said Saskia. “But how is this possible…?”

“It isn’t,” said Calburn. “Not out in the waking world. This dream is somewhat malleable.”

“I can absorb arlium as Sashki can,” said Ruhildi. “Why not do this, too?”

“Your body is, in a sense, an extension of hers,” said Calburn. “Your mind, though linked, is still your own. It is her mind that can perform what you might call metamagic, not yours.”

A look of relief crossed Ruhildi’s face. “I didn’t ken if I were still me. If you speak true…”

“You are not just an echo. Trust me, I would know. As to whether you’re the same person you were…that is a matter of philosophical debate. But there isn’t time for that.” He frowned. “You should hurry back to Ciendil.”

“Why?” asked Saskia, feeling a sudden surge of worry. “What happened?”

“Nothing yet,” said Calburn. “But the second rift—the one boiling beneath Wengarlen—is about to blow open.”