“Are you two going to spend the entire evening glowering ominously from afar?”

Delilah invaded their bubble of silence as she led Mason and Pijeru down the hill. Green fireflies radiated from her when she walked past a potion lamp someone had hooked onto the corner of the Root road.

“You know us,” Kyle said, because she didn’t, “we’re plotting revenge already.”

“From the distance away?” Pijeru surprisingly went along with his joke, as hard as her grammar was to decipher. “Would it not be better yourselves among the people to mix in order to their weaknesses learn?”

Delilah’s smile wavered. She gave her a wary, sidelong glance. “You’re not one to hold a grudge, I hope?”

She chittered something that might have been laughter. “Not normally. I make jokes.”

“Phew. Don’t say things like that. You’ll make Micah regret bargaining for your boon.”

“I’m patient,” Micah cut them off like he wanted to make that clear. There was no humor in his scratchy, low voice. “What did you and Principal Denner talk about?”

“She wanted that I her our side of the story tell … while she underhandedly tried to information out of me rip about things of which I am not permitted to speak. Things like how strong our military is or how much we about magic know.”

“You disapprove?”

“I am disappointed. I have war experienced. I want it not for our peoples.”

There it was, the word Kyle had tried not to think about. War. If there really were millions of them in Hadica’s Tower … Not that he would take her word for it. About that or anything else for that matter, their ‘perfect’ memories or their assumption that Woris would come back to life. And the numbers themselves mattered very little.

Hadica, the city proper and its immediate districts, had the highest population of any of the Five Cities, which was somewhere around one and a half million people. Despite that, its military had traditionally been the smallest, living safely in the heart of the league and prospering off of its infinite harvests.

The North had over ten times their numbers, but that didn’t matter when the average Lilian soldier was worth ten Northern ones, at minimum. The North had their own monsters with marks like his own, beast blood, or actual tamed monsters from the Witch’s Forest. And unlike the Five Cities, they had a solid grasp on how to create enchanted objects. Yet, none of them could hold a candle to their heroes who defended their borders.

But that was the deciding difference. Their borders. Two successful revolutions had more than proven the cities didn’t know how to fight a war that came from within.

“I liked their other question much more,” Pijeru said in a cheery tone. “Even if I only a few of them answer could. Our people have something planned for you. An event around a competition, but I am really not allowed to say much more.”

“A competition?” Mason asked. “Like a tournament?”

“Oh, great fucking idea to avoid war.” Kyle’s mood soured at the mere mention of tournaments. “Have a bunch of us pretend fight each other to get the idea out of our heads.”

“Not—” Pijeru said and snapped her beak shut with a brief muffled noise like she was trying to hold back her words. “Not necessarily a fight,” she said carefully. “Do you not have games of song and athleticism …? Our representatives should soon with your more share anyway. We will that maybe earlier do now because we each other already met have.”

Kyle wasn’t sure what to make of that. When he thought of games, he thought of hide and go seek, but he supposed she might mean something closer to baseball …? The other kids in town never would have allowed him to join them for a game like that, so he guessed this tournament wasn’t for him, one way or another.

Pijeru gestured at the bench on the opposite side of the table.

The other two had already seated themselves. Delilah had put her boots up on the bench and sat on the table. But Pijeru had remained standing and waited patiently.

“Sit, sit!” Delilah patted the wood. “So did you tell them more about this competition?”

She glanced back as she threaded her chicken feet between the bench and table. “No, they were not very for it interested to chat. That odd woman asked me about the spatial tunnel. Tswi, is she a stonesinger?”

“Yeah, you’re gonna have to explain that one if you want an answer. What do you mean, ‘Is she a geomancer like Kerataraian’?”

“Kera? No, she is a windsinger. A stonewindsinger to be exact.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Of co— Yes,” Pijeru caught herself and nodded patiently. “Windsingers manipulate the wind of the world, things that are above ground? Stone, metal, air, water … And stonesingers, kah … They manipulate what is underneath? The bedrock? Like for example in which directions things fall.”

“That seems like an odd distinction to make. To us, it would all be magic. A mage can manipulate gravity or the elements and it would, or could, fall under one hat.”

“‘Stonewindsingers.’ Seriously? Are there windwindsingers, too?”

Pijeru didn’t react to his jibes. “I am not a stonesinger and not an expert, for that I am sorry, but they are distinct. The winds are everywhere. They are a physical phenomenon that one can observe and interact with. The Stone less so.”

“Hm. Maybe whatever stonesongs manipulate is simply hard to observe? Micah, weren’t you researching something like that before summer break? Layers of natural magic?”

She directed the conversation back toward him, and Pijeru perked up with interest.

Micah shrugged and stayed silent.

“So you are a ‘metalwindsinger’?” Mason jumped in. “I saw you deflect those knives— thanks for that, by the way. But what, uh, ‘song’ lets you project your voice?”

“Windwindsong,” Kyle chuckled.

“Whisperwind. I believe you would them as radio waves know?”

Micah twitched but looked away, obviously pushing down some comment or question.

Mason glanced at him and, as if guessing at his thoughts, tentatively asked, “Radio waves aren’t stonesongs?”

“Of course, not. One can radio waves observe and interact with. They have their own wind. Stonesongs do not normally interact with the winds at all. They, tswi— It is hard to explain. I had never a talent for stonesong. Stonesingers are rare. Odd people. Or rather, it is polite to say they are people with a unique worldview. And they force this view onto the world. Kah, perhaps it is better to say, they transform their thoughts into reality …?”

“So you do have mana!” Kyle nearly jumped in his seat. Fuck, he loved being right.

“It does sound like mana,” Delilah admitted with a begrudging smile. She swiped his water bottle as if in some kind of retaliation and nodded at the hill. “In which case, your instincts weren’t far off. That woman you spoke to would be the [Archgamut] of Vistas, Kanaan Illyn.”

“‘Archgamut?’ I know this word not.”

Delilah fumbled the bottle. Her swagger faltered for a moment as she tried to explain, “Arch— Archmage? She is a powerful spellcaster? She can move mountains with her mind?”

That seemed to get the reaction she’d wanted. Pijeru twisted her head to an almost unnatural degree, eyes wide. “She?” She pointed and glanced back. “Her? Mountains— Is this an idiom?”

Ah, Kyle thought as he watched the woman dancing with the soldiers and Ameryth’s simulacrum around the bonfire. That tracks.

He had heard his fair share of rumors about their principal in Anevos, from classmates, or from the doctors while they performed their checks on him. Apparently, she had been on the [Archmage] track once, about a decade ago, and two or three of the archmages at the time had fought over the chance to tutor her. Allegedly, she’d rejected them, or spat in their faces, or won a duel to prove she was better than them, or lost a duel and been deemed unworthy—there was a lot of bull crap out there.

But now he could see a kernel of the truth with his own eyes.

Ameryth waved a hand and her simulacrum vanished. The [Archgamut] waved her arms and complained, but she ignored her to continue her discussion with Krirk. So the woman conjured a featureless, prismatic humanoid figure to dance with for herself, then a whole orchestra complete with instruments, and dance practice dummies for everyone else.

The soldiers tried to instruct them, and the dance dummies performed well, but the orchestra created a horrible cacophonous sound like they’d never held an instrument before.

They shimmered and shifted oddly when they moved, too, as if they were made up of many thin pillars of water. It almost hurt to watch.

“I’m exaggerating, but she is powerful. She’s actually kind of an inspiration. She’s sort of known to be a [Lover] not a [Fighter], and some would even call her the Lover. She is living proof that you don’t need to be a warrior to become powerful. In fact—” She grabbed one of his throwing knives off the table and pricked the back of her wrist.

Kyle lurched to snatch the blade out of her hand and froze with his arm outstretched, leaning over the table.

A lime green ripple traveled out from where the metal had touched her, up her arm, and into her glove. She dragged the blade across and a stronger ripple reached her jawline.

“I thought so. She warded us.”

“When?” Kyle asked.

“How?” Micah broke. A ghost of his usual curiosity haunted his voice.

Mason asked for the knife to gently poke the back of his hand, and the ripple that spread over his skin was clear like water.

Delilah smiled when she noticed Pijeru staring. “You wish you had known that earlier, huh? You look like you want to go speak to her again.”

“You not?”

“She probably has more important things to do than to speak to a first-year student. It’s fine. I’ll get to talk to her on even footing someday.”

She didn’t look like she had more important things to do, trying to mimic the bird music with her orchestra, and failing, but Kyle hadn’t noticed her cast that ward on them, so who knew what else she was up to? What did he care?

Delilah pulled her boots up to sit on the table. A lock of her dark hair fell over her face when she reached down, and she gave Pijeru a confident smile.

Mason handed her the knife back. She passed it on to Kyle.

“You, uh— Y’can keep it,” he spluttered.

Her eyebrows quirked up.

“Knives would be more useful than crystals for your floating armory thing, right?” He barely managed to sound normal as he explained. “I could show you how to throw them sometime, if you want?”

“Sure?” She didn’t sound opposed to the idea and laid the knife in her lap.

Kyle pressed his hands down on his legs and stretched in his seat. Smooth, Joshua. Real smooth.

“I feel the same way. I have also more important things to do.” She turned to Micah. “I understand if you not with me to speak want, but I wanted you to thank. Micah? You prevented that the situation much worse becomes.”

“Not on purpose,” he croaked.

“I don’t care. I know how it is to be angry because the world stopped making sense. You looked like you had questions. If you wanted, could I you answers give?”

Micah didn’t immediately respond, and if Kyle hadn’t known something was off before, he would have known then. He fixed his sleeves, shoulders hunched, looked down, and then away like he would rather be somewhere else right now.

But he didn’t leave, so some part of him must have still wanted answers. Or, at least, he was fishing for attention.

“You can start by telling us how you got here,” Kyle said, “and why you talk so weird.”

Pijeru waited for a beat, but Micah didn’t budge. The smile in her eyes faded and she rested her arms on the table in frustration. “You have to understand, we were not thrilled when we were told we would have to your language learn, and that we our home must leave for this. Many of us it for us easy made and the minimal learned to pass the tests. We learned dictionaries by heart. And when we speak, switch we simply the words out. You sound yourself for me strange.”

“You’re actively translating speech one to one?” Mason sounded impressed.

“Dictionaries?”

Delilah leaned in, blocking Pijeru from his line of sight. “Do you have any sort of magic or Skills to help you process that much information?”

“No. The others use magic. That is why they … speak fluently,” she furrowed the skin where her eyebrows would have been as she tried to speak properly, “but it has a cost.” Again, she looked at Micah like she was trying to communicate telepathically with him.

“Hold on. Tests? And where did you get dictionaries of our language? Who brought you here anyway and why did you have to leave your home?”

Pijeru shook her head without turning away. “I don’t want to answer a thousand questions. It would be easier to show you.” She reached into her pocket and placed her boon feather on the table.

Finally, Micah looked.

“I know how to grant boons. I have the knowledge that the Pretender gave me, and I have also still this, thanks to you. I could use it to grant you the same. A boon of knowledge.”

Micah’s face twisted as if it pained him to even say the words, “I don’t trust you.”

“Yeah, there is no way I’m letting you plant thoughts into his head—”

“Is there any way to share that knowledge with us?” Delilah pleaded. “So we know what you taught him? Not just for safety, I would love to know.”

Pijeru looked at them dubiously, leaning back like she was overwhelmed. “I— I know not if I the boon so often split can. I need to take one part for myself to do this at all …”

“I don’t need to know,” Mason volunteered. “Pure [Alchemist], remember? I’m not planning on eating my boon in any case, though I’m not sure what else to do with it …”

“That’s stupid,” Micah snapped with sudden animation. “Nobody cares if alchemists can be fighters. You don’t have to stay a pure [Alchemist] to prove ‘nobody’ wrong.”

Mason shrugged. “I care. Could you do it, if you only had to split the boon three ways?”

Hold on. Why was he grouping Kyle together with the crazy people?

“If you trust me this way,” Pijeru said and lifted the feather, “I am willing to try.”

She and Micah both glanced from Delilah, who looked eager, to him.

Kyle hesitated. He really didn’t want to be making dark bargains with strange bird women in a Tower. Every bedtime story he knew told him that was how idiots got cursed.

A man approaches the Witch of the Forest, asking about immortality. She fulfills his wish by fusing him to a tree of meat where he is forever doomed to be nibbled on by the critters of the forest.

From the kindness of her heart, a farmer takes in a woman who stumbles out of the forest, wounded and bedraggled. She turns out to be a spirit who hollows out the farmer’s insides to wear her skin and kill her family.

A child follows a call into the woods and stumbles upon a patrol of Northern soldiers. The soldiers drag the child north where talking animals who walk on two feet hunt it for sport.

But if the others were doing it … And really, what were his options?

Kyle remembered another night like this. He had spent weeks in the Tower, leveled in all of his Classes once, and in [Rogue] twice. Then he’d gone to a party, shaken hands with a fake smile plastered on his face, and leveled again. Days after his last level up.

He’d woken up confused, half-dressed himself in the suit from the night before, and marched his ass straight to the library.

It turned out, [Rogues] could level from social settings. Because fuck logic.

Apparently, he could get Skills to deal with people the same way [Firefighters] could get Skills to deal with house fires. ‘[Rogues] were not [Hermits] after all.’ Well, fuck [Hermits] and fuck that. He could only get so many Skills in his lifetime. He didn’t want to waste any of them on [Basic Style], which was a Skill he had now.

How was a haircut supposed to help him survive the Towers?

Ameryth had been right. He hadn’t even told her yet because he knew she would gloat and say, I told you so.

Kyle knew jack shit about nothing.

Hadica had closed its Tower to students after the changes last autumn, and he had looked to the arena to get away from the sparring matches and team-building exercises at school, to get away from his [Fighter] Class. But the arena was built on fair play and [Fighters].

He had already put in the hours to earn his place so he had stuck around for the big tournament, but the playacting, the need to satisfy an audience, had grated on him. Kyle had not been a fan favorite. Obviously. Some people in the audience had even laughed and cheered when he had fallen into that trap. He’d flunked out in the quarterfinals.

Coincidentally, Brent and his friends had been in the audience. They had ambushed him on his way out and strong-armed him into letting them buy him a consolation drink and some grub, which had led to getting drunk in the park, which had led to Kyle making out with a girl he barely knew.

Attica.

She had been kind of annoying at first if he was being honest. And she’d been the highlight of his summer.

It turned out, kissing someone felt like an electric hug. No wonder why people loved doing it. And he couldn’t stop thinking of her.

He’d be eating breakfast and feel the bump of her bra under her top. He’d be working out and feel her hand running through his hair. He hit the hay and imagined her lips.

If making out had felt that great with her, how awesome would it be to make out with someone he cared about?

Was there anyone he cared about? Anything? What would he even do with his life in eight months after graduation? What if Ameryth and the doctors stopped needing his blood?

Thinking of the future cast him back to the past, to the day he’d left home after burning his house down. He’d followed a road south through gnat swarms and the withering heat. His feet had felt like clumps of dirt and the belongings he’d saved from the fire had dug uncomfortably into his spine.

Still, he had walked, unthinking. Until he had reached a crossroads. Then, his thoughts had caught up with him. Then, he had panicked.

Should he go back? Should he have helped put out the fire? Should he have stayed? Someone needed to watch over the house— what was left of the house. He thought of the neglected shed he and his friends had found in the woods once, caked in weeds and dirt, and his chest ached. He didn’t want that for his home.

Should he have gone north instead? His mom was supposed to live in Ostfeld, somewhere? But would she want to see him? Did he want to meet her?

He was running out of time. It would be dark soon. Where would he even sleep? He didn’t even know which road led to Anevos. Which road led to Ostfeld. Which road—

He’d spent an hour pacing in circles, walked a stretch down one road, turned, gone in another direction, stopped, and ruffled his hair as he screamed into the wind.

It hadn’t mattered in the end. He’d traveled south and slept in a ditch.

Most of his days felt like sleeping in a ditch. Thinking of the future felt like screaming into the wind, except there wasn’t even a crossroads. Kyle was lost in the woods.

“Kyle? Are you … okay?” Micah asked.

He blinked. Huh? Why had he asked him that? He noticed he was still staring at the feather, gulped, and looked away. The heat from the bonfire had to be traveling downhill. His skin was burning.

“You don’t have to do this if you …” Delilah’s eyes flickered from him to Pijeru. She sounded like she had no idea where to go with that sentence but wanted to be diplomatic. “If this is an issue for you? I’m sure it would be easier on Pijeru if she only had to split her boon two—”

“No.”

Kyle was an idiot after all. If it wasn’t this, it would be harder drugs, or flunking out of school, or getting into a fight that went wrong, or having someone find out about his tattoo. It was only a matter of time before the life he had here also went down in flames.

His classmates were jumping off a bridge so … Might as well get cursed.

“I want answers, too.”

“Then I will try.” Pijeru snapped the feather in half. She made a face when she placed one half inside her beak, and Kyle guessed it had to feel how eating a ball of hair would for them. Her pale yellow eyes turned green and the remaining half of the feather levitated over her hand. She was, at that moment, the spitting image of the Pretender, and Kyle could have punched her before running for the hills.

The world even flickered the same way it had before and one half of a feather became three tiny ones, fish bones of starlight touched with green. They pulsed as they floated toward them, twisting into different shapes like flames dancing to a nonexistent beat. Stylized tail feathers. Leaves. A musical note?

Kyle gripped the edge of his seat and went cross-eyed as his feather floated past his nose. He glanced at Delilah and Micah, but they stared their feathers down with confident, nearly impatient eyes. Lime and blue.

Pijeru didn’t whisper to them as the Pretender had. The feather did. He almost made out a word.

The world dropped out from under him.

His hands snatched at empty air. Kyle fumbled for something to hold onto. Anything. He dropped, kicking and screaming, into the night sky.

Delilah unfolded her legs and fell, standing straight up. She frowned at the twinkling stars all around her. She didn’t recognize these constellations.

Rowan surfaced from the void to orbit her. He cast a shadow onto the stars that loomed as he approached her glow. Her black hair and gambeson fluttered madly. When he alighted on her arm, she cradled him to her chest to shield him from the wind.

Together, they stared into the abyss as the stars began to whisper.

It came in waves. Hushed whispers rose on a yawning wind, then cut off. Silence.

Micah tumbled madly through the void, eyes shut. His limbs strained to stay close to his chest as the force of his fall pulled him apart.

A quiet voice broke into a sprinted chant like a spoken fiddle. It caught his heartbeat in its momentum and made his ears ring. Then silence.

This is not that same void, a voice whispered in the darkness.

Micah didn’t want to risk it. He had caught a glimpse of a sea of stars and shut his eyes.

Those stars are red and white, the voice said. Are you afraid of looking at the night sky?

Singers joined the chant. Entire choirs. They rose in volume, overlapping one another in a disharmonious cacophony.

What about Kyle and Delilah?, Micah asked himself. And, despite what he’d said, he wanted to trust Pijeru. As the songs thrummed against his skull like a foghorn, he slowly, reluctantly cracked open an eye.

Silence.

Stars sprinkled the dark as far as he could see. The only lines drawn between them were the afterimages his spin left in his eyes. They grouped into great rivers, galaxies, and nebulas. Micah thrust his limbs out to arrest his momentum and stared.

His classmates were nowhere to be seen, but his eyes hung on the sights he raced past until he found one that kept pace with him. It obscured a line of white dots in passing: a lonely asteroid on its path through the cosmos.

It was terrifying, and beautiful, and terrifying again when he looked ‘down.’ Because there was no sea of flames, no river breaking his way, but his path cast him toward a distant, emerald star. It expanded from a dot to a spiral, and it sang to him in countless voices, countless melodies, and every tempo and volume he could imagine.

Each song recounted a different tale, a different life, a different place, an experience. Delilah’s smile wavered as she hugged Rowan tight. It was overwhelming. A billion different voices wanted to scream at her and anyone who would listen:

We went on an adventure! This is what We saw!

They showed him. Great streamers of green unfurled and shot past him, quicker than any arrow. They trailed into infinity, large enough to house nations, teeming forests, crashing oceans, and mountains that rose and fell from their cloth—like a world cut into ribbons.

Kyle saw layers of rock. Layers of magma. A slice of a miniature sun far beneath the trees. Was that what lay at the center of their world?

They were the most realistic pop-up storybooks he had ever seen, for what had to be the greatest children’s choir in existence.

Kyle pressed his gloves against his ears as hard as he could, until the pressure on his skull was painful, but he couldn’t block out the noise one bit.

He’d been screaming for Pijeru to stop. Finally, her voice cut through the chorus, whispering in his left ear, “This is what I saw.”

Like two fingers, her words nudged the side of his skull, and Kyle rocketed toward one of those streamers. Toward a nation next to an ocean. A city. The stars faded into a bright blue sky. He punched through a cloud, rushed toward the rooftops, accelerated—

Delilah hit the ground like lightning from a clear sky. She nearly ran into a person, twisted, and hit someone else instead. “I’m—” She began to say and straightened up, taking in deep breaths, but the person hadn’t reacted. No had anyone else. She stood in the middle of the foot traffic in a looming city. Shadows flitted over her vision as she stared. “—sorry …?”

Beaks and feathers. She was surrounded by a crowd of avashay and alien buildings that rose five stories tall. Ten stories tall. Fifty stories tall …?

She had never seen a structure that big other than the Towers. And there were dozens of them, more lining the distant cityscape. They were made of stone and glass and ringed with nets that grew shorter toward the top, like pine trees.

Each floor had a small ledge below an odd rectangular frame set within a window, staggered in a slanted line toward the tenth floor where they cut off.

Doors, she realized as she watched a bird person efficiently open the window to step outside, close it, and jump off the ledge.

Her hand jerked to cover an instinctual gasp, but her mind caught up before her body, and she watched the person spread their wings and soar. Their shirt trailed long tassels with little fabric balls like peacock feathers, and their shadow joined the others, flitting by.

“Piji …? Piji? Pijeru, are you even listening to me?”

“Yes, mom. I’m listening,” a voice groaned. It almost sounded unrecognizable from the Pijeru she knew, and it had come from where Delilah stood. She wasn’t sure if she had said the words herself.

A ghost stepped out from her and materialized into a Pijeru not much younger than the woman she had met. She faced two adults … Were these her parents?

“You need to take care of yourself tonight, okay? There are a lot of strange people coming into the city for the festival, so don’t agree to go to any ‘cool clubs’ some girl tells you about halfway across the city or any other second locations. Tonight is not the night for that.”

The short woman ruffled through what might have been a purse while she spoke: a thin satchel that hugged her side, bulging a little with various knickknacks. Her feathers were a swampy green rather than bright green like the man who stood next to her. Her beak also curved downward near the tip and had a discolored triangular piece set within it … Something like a piercing or gold tooth? It was only one shade off from the rest of her beak. It might have been a prosthetic.

“We’re going to Zwfry’s Park,” Pijeru said and a sound like a ghostly ship's whistle escaped her beak at the same time, overlapping the name. “We’ve been there tons of times. You’ve been there with us. They have this whole event planned for tonight.”

“Well. Okay. But,” her mom sounded distracted. “You know how to reach us if you need to, right? You—I shouldn’t have to ask this—but you know all of the help channels, right? That will be your job in a few weeks, to know that.”

“It’s not like I haven’t been studying this.” Her beak twitched up in annoyance.

“You have your phone? Your ID? Your key? Do you have money?”

Pijeru nodded along with every question until the last one. “Tswi …”

“Here, have some extra.” She pulled a strip of pale purple paper out of her satchel and pressed it into her hand.

Delilah stepped closer. What was this? A receipt? A cheque? … Paper money? Rowan perked up. Nobody had reacted to her presence, and neither did they when he jumped over to scuttle down Pijeru’s arm and sniff it.

Fruity, she got the impression from their bond. They had scented money?

“Mom, no, this is too much.”

“You might need it in an emergency,” her dad said. “Take it and have fun tonight, Piji.”

It sounded like a goodbye, but Pijeru didn’t move from the spot. Rowan nibbled on the money and, the same way the Pretender had duplicated the boons, the paper flickered. Rowan tore off a chunk of money— The money was unharmed. Huh. How was Pijeru reconstructing this scene for them? If it was based on a memory … Delilah spun but the world in Pijeru’s blind spot was clear even if she wasn’t looking at it.

How did that work? She shouldn’t have been able to reconstruct something she could not remember. Was she letting the spell fill in the blanks? How far could that reach? A city block? Two? The parts of the city she was familiar with?

Delilah smiled at Rowan. “Do you want to go exploring?”

Her familiar didn’t hesitate. He scuttled up to Pijeru’s and leaped off to soar through the busy city streets.

Delilah kept an ear on the conversation as she did the same. She wove through the crowd, opened purses, stole cheap leather business card holders out of them, and odd glass cards with glowing surfaces out of people’s hands to inspect them.

Rowan fed her information from afar about what he saw and smelled and heard. He asked her, Should I hitch a ride on a train?

Delilah shrugged. Sure. They had a whole new world to discover. Literally. They had to hurry up.

“Thank you,” Pijeru said.

Micah placed the bill back in her hand before she tucked it away. Her eyes weren’t on the money or her parents; they stared past them at an elderly bird man who sat hunched on a bench just out of earshot. Her parents looked ready to let her leave, but Pijeru hesitated.

“You’ll … be nice to grandpa, right?” she asked.

Ah, Micah thought.

“‘Nice to grandpa’?” Her mom chuckled. “You should ask your grandpa to be nice to us for a change.”

You should ask your grandmother to stop being rude, not me, he heard his own dad say. How often have I asked her not to pray at the dinner table?

The tone didn’t match. There was a hint of bitterness in her mother’s voice, but her humor was genuine.

“He’s going to have a good time tonight,” her dad said. “We’ll treat him to a drink among people for a change. We’ll make sure he gets home safe. You don’t have to worry about any of that.”

“I’m not worried, it’s just— I don’t like the thought of him being locked alone in his apartment for weeks on end. Can’t you please ask if he wants to wait out the ritual with us?”

Her dad sighed. “Pijeru.”

“I know that he’s stubborn, but we still have two or three days until the fallout is supposed to show. I can get his stuff and sleep on the couch if I have to. Like when he used to visit. Please?”

Unlike his own, her parents heard her out before they shared a defeated look. “We’ll ask,” her mom reluctantly agreed because she sensed how important this had to be to her daughter, “but there’s nothing to worry about. He’ll probably refuse your invitation in any case.”

Pijeru didn’t seem to hear that last bit, or her parents’ agreement was reason enough to celebrate. She shrugged her arms, feathers puffed, and her eyes narrowed as she gave a delighted squawk.

Micah knew it was a smile, but he couldn’t see any happiness essences around her to confirm it. He couldn’t see any essences at all. In exchange, he could see so much else.

The stores had glass doors that opened sideways on their own whenever someone approached them. Some of the shop windows had glass panes within them that depicted moving pictures, most of them advertisements of one thing or another. He could see a small shop—it had to be a shop—across the streets filled with shelves lined with pictures of food, bottled drinks, and so much else. Most of the moving pictures looked like advertisements for different products—smoothies, cosmetics, horseless metal carriages—but a massive glass pane covered an entire building above a plaza in the distance and all it showed was a large choir in an arena and something that might have been a factory, or a science lab, filled with tubes and avashay wearing protective equipment.

It was, in short, an entirely different world. And Micah stayed by Pijeru’s side. “What did you want to show me here? You looked like you had a good life. Loving parents. At a first glance …”

“And we’re making it clear this is your invitation,” her dad said.

“That’s right. God forbid your grandpa says yes. You will be the one to host him, do you understand? That means no running off with your friends day and night.”

Pijeru hesitated but gave a confident nod. “I don’t mind, just don’t mention that I was worried, okay? Say, kah— Tell him this is a chance to spend time with family or something, I don’t know.”

“See?” Her mom gloated and sounded proud at the same time. “You know we’ll have to spin the invitation somehow because of his stubbornness.”

“I’m not an idiot, mom.”

They continued to chat and say their goodbyes as Micah watched with a concerned smile.

He spoke out loud, because maybe the real Pijeru, or Mason, could hear him, “My ancestors, the million or so people who were brought to our lands over a hundred years ago; they were supposed to have been people who had fallen through the cracks. People whose lives had fallen apart, or how had never had a chance at a proper life in the first place. The type of people who wouldn’t be noticed if they went missing, but—and our history books like to stress this part—people who deserved a second chance.

“Your parents look like they would notice if you went missing.”

Even his own had, and Micah and his parents had barely ever spoken to each other.

“I know, I know— I really do have to go, though. Bye! Have fun and— Bye grandpa!” Pijeru raised her voice to call out to the man on the bench. “HAVE FUN TONIGHT!”

He perked up, noticed her, and gave a distracted wave like he wasn’t listening.

“What happened that brought you to our world? To the Towers?” Micah asked. “And how will this fulfill your promise to answer my questions?”

He followed Pijeru through the alien streets. The crowd didn’t so much as step around him. They couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him, but somehow, they scowled and glanced around at his passing as if the very memory of this world rejected his presence.

“Why do you hate me?”

“What is this?” Delilah demanded, even though she didn’t expect an answer from Pijeru or anyone else, and she sounded hysterical even to herself. She didn’t know if she was more afraid or more excited. It wasn’t ending. “Five levels? That can’t be enough. You had to split the boon four ways to do this so how …”

Rowan had found a train. Not a tram, but a train. He had hitched a ride to the station and dashed onto the first train he had found before its doors could close. It had shot out of the city at blinding speeds.

And her familiar was sharing with her, in detail, his impressions of the people on the train, the contents of their belongings, what they were doing, wearing, saying—even what they smelled like. He shared with her the alien scenery that rushed by outside the windows, the town, and roads, and engine carriages, and tall metal trees that dotted the lands.

And she saw no less herself as she flipped through books and magazines filled with unrecognizable letters and highly-detailed photographs, as she dipped into stores and found a hundred different articles of clothing.

There was no way a simple memory-sharing spell could have filled in the gaps in her memory with such detail. Was the [Archgamut] interfering with the spell? Delilah didn’t think so, but how else was she doing this?

She stumbled out of a shop, made sure she had eyes on Pijeru—because if the memory didn’t fade if she left her presence, she didn’t want to get lost in here—and caught her breath.

“What is this? What— No. Where are we?”

It wasn’t that different from home. Kyle held his right hand with a grimace as he carefully followed in Pijeru’s footsteps. The people here didn’t seem able to notice him. He had been minding his own business and suddenly, giant bird head looming over him.

Even when he had punched them, they had just … picked themselves back up and continued on their day like he didn’t exist. His fist still smarted. It was fucking creepy.

… But not that different from home.

Trams drove through the middle of the streets … but so did sleek horseless carriages of metal, as well as thick metal boxes that curved around corners like accordions, full of people standing around inside of them.

Some trams hung from thick railings overhead, and those stopped at elevated platforms that connected to the upper floors of buildings.

Many of the buildings had rooftop gardens like the rich in Hadica … but rather than flowers, they had curtains of green moss, vines, and giant leaves that offered shade, dotted with tiny flowers.

The animals he spotted looked like half-remembered fever dreams. Odd crab-like creatures clung to trees and alleyways. Monkeys the size of his hand begged for food from people sitting on benches. Feathered lizards peeked out from holes in the stone.

There were street signs … which stretched over ten meters into the sky, with odd colored symbols, flags, and electric lamps attached to them. Sometimes, a bird person would wait for the lamp to turn white before they leapt off a building.

They could fly. Kyle still jerked whenever he saw a body drop.

They had restaurants and cafés, but little to no street vendors, which was something both Anevos and Hadica had had—Kyle had assumed all cities had them.

And they had fenced-off patches of greenery, but some rose from holes in the ground that led to deeper, layered streets below.

Stairs led between street levels. Glass boxes carried people up and down the sides of buildings. Moving images tried to sell him things, and the bird people they depicted acted like they were speaking, but the images were silent and the words spelled out at the bottom of the picture in twin rows of characters.

Pijeru stopped to check her half-reflected image in a window. She twisted a rebellious feather that stuck out from the side of her head into place, and Kyle waited patiently.

He just had to sit this out, whatever she wanted to show them—or him; were Micah and Delilah even seeing this?—then he could go home and put all of this behind him. Watching Pijeru go to a party had to be better than being fused to a meat tree for all of eternity, he supposed.

She stopped at a plaza beneath a massive moving painting that depicted a bird choir, searched around, and idled on the spot. Waiting for someone.

Kyle was building up the courage to scream at the top of his lungs when someone began to hum a tune near them. Pijeru must have heard it too, because she searched around until she spotted a woman only a few meters away from them.

Her eyes flickered down, then up, and quickly glanced away again, only to inch their way back toward her.

Kyle could have laughed. Was this what she’d wanted to show them? Herself, checking out strangers? What, was that woman attractive by bird person standards?

Kyle checked her out himself. His smile died on his lips.

It was Tuhrie. She looked a few years younger than the mani woman who had attacked them and she wore different clothes. Her bland blue sweater looked cheap. It was sleeveless and hung further open on the side than most other outfits he had seen—though there was nothing to see other than hints of muscle beneath her feathers, he supposed. Her baggs brown shorts looked more expensive. They had yellow accents and laces to fasten them below the knees. She also wore an ankle bracelet. None of that matched the form-adjusted gambeson she’d worn, and it was hard to tell because all of these bird people looked sort of the same to him.

But her eyes.

It was Tuhrie.

She was focused on an odd object in her hand: like a rectangular handheld mirror, but it depicted moving images. They were somewhat common among the crowds. Kyle mentally compared them to the sight of people reading newspapers in the city.

Tuhrie, apparently, was the type of person to hum to herself while reading the papers.

And, a moment later, Pijeru joined her, humming a note here and there, barely audible, while she bobbed on the spot to a song only they could hear.

Tuhrie looked at her and her eyes went down, then up. But unlike Pijeru, she didn’t look away. So when Pijeru snuck a glance again, Tuhrie caught her and cocked her beak.

Pijeru immediately turned away. Her face feathers puffed up slightly. She scratched her beak and surreptitiously swept them down with her hand when she lowered it again.

Tuhrie’s hummed song wavered as she chuckled to herself and turned back to her news mirror. But, inevitably, both of them snuck a glance at each other a few seconds later, and they shared a blushing smile.

“Smooth, lady,” Kyle mumbled as he watched the love birds. “Real smooth.”

Pijeru perked up and looked at him. Kyle startled. Had she heard him? But no, her eyes stared right through him and she thrust an arm up, her wing hanging loose like a dress, to wave at someone across the plaza.

Multiple someones. A group of four other bird people headed her way. One of them screeched and broke off from the chain to tackle Pijeru into a hug, and they chittered like they could rip each other to shreds at any moment.

Kyle took a wary step back.

They spoke so quickly that, even with whatever magics translating their speech so he could understand it, he could barely keep up, but it was mostly catching up and excited chatter about all the fun shit they had planned for tonight.

Kyle groaned. Yeah, he’d been ready to drop dead in his bed five minutes ago, before he’d been hurled through time and space. He didn’t even try to decipher their mad ramblings. This was going to be a long night.

Pijeru squawked in surprise and quickly hushed her friends, nodding in the direction of Tuhrie, who was approaching their little group to flirt, he was guessing.

That was, until her friend spoke up, “AHH! You're here already, too!? Ah, wait, have you met already? Piji, this is Tuhrie. Tuhrie, Piju. She’s that classmate I mentioned would be joining us tonight? Oh, and Pijeru is an old friend. We used to go to kindergarten together.”

Pijeru and Tuhrie awkwardly stared at each other like they hadn’t been blatantly checking each other out a moment before.

“Tsi— Yeah, no. We haven’t met,” Tuhrie spluttered and tapped Pijeru’s right shoulder while she did the same, “but it is nice to meet you, ‘Piji’?”

"Pijeru," she mumbled while wiping a hand over her cheek.

“Great, we’re all here,” another one of her friends cut in with an impatient tone. “Can we go already? The next train leaves in five minutes. The sooner we get there, the better our chances of getting a good table.”

“Walk and talk, walk and talk. We’ve got a tight schedule to keep, people! Oh, this is going to be so much fun. I— Ah.” Her bubbly friend froze in the middle of talking, and Kyle had known her for fifteen seconds, but he already knew that was unusual for her.

The rest of their little group had frozen as well, as had half of the crowd in the plaza around them while the rest of the crowd slowly joined them, all of them staring at the massive news mirror covering the building, the silently moving pictures, like they could hear what the people in the pictures were saying.

And then suddenly, slowly, a sussurration went through the crowd followed by an awkward cheer. The people glanced around, strangers to one another, and patted each other on the shoulders as they said things like, “They actually did it,” or, dubiously, “We’ll see if it works.”

It was the lamest New Year’s cheer Kyle had ever witnessed, in the middle of broad daylight, and he'd once spent New Year’s with only his dad and a few of his coworkers, hiding away in the other room to avoid the people who awkwardly tried to be nice to him.

And then everyone moved on with their lives.

“What the hell was that?” he asked out loud as he shuffled behind after the group.

They had completely forgotten that they were in a hurry, and they kept glancing up at the sky where thin clouds drew themselves into existence and faded just as quickly, and the shadow of an unfamiliar moon hung … and a not-so-distant emerald star grew in size, glimmering brightly in the middle of the blue sky.

“It’s starting,” Pijeru whispered.

A shiver went down his spine, because he knew then, whatever this was, it was the beginning of their end.