Not fifteen minutes after meeting my alternate future self, I got to watch her have a total breakdown.

She had tried to charge out of the fort to see Errod and Katrin, who I assumed (and quickly confirmed) were the ones she had mentioned staying with in Handoleren prior to their murder. "I looked for them in Handoleren," she'd said as she marched towards the front of the fort, "but the apartment we lived in was vacant. I kept checking, but they hadn't moved in yet and I was worried they died earlier this time because of something I changed." It made sense, they had been awfully eager to leave town when the opportunity arose - of course they would have found some other excuse if I had stayed up in the mountains longer like my alternate did.

The reunion would have been awkward, considering they'd have had to deal with the knowledge of an alternate destroyed timeline and their own murders, but it didn't end up happening at all because Hammersmith stopped her in the courtyard before she could reach the main gate. This time the argument was in a language I could understand.

"Calliope, stop!"

"Fuck off, I'm going to see my friends!" She tried to step around Hammersmith, who grabbed her by the arm. Alternate Callie struggled, but clearly wasn't going to be able to budge the colossal woman. "I swear to god, I'll cut that hand off if you don't let me go."

"If it would make you feel better, you could surely try."

To my absolute shock, she did. In an instant a knife was in her free hand, and she slammed it down point first into Hammersmith's exposed wrist. It dented the skin, but that was it.

"Feel better?"

"Don't talk to me like a child."

"Don't act like one."

"I'm - fucking let go - I'm acting like a child because you're treating me like one, you piece of shit! I'm an adult, and I want to leave this fortress, and you promised that you would let me!"

I was on her side, not surprisingly, but it was pretty awkward watching myself have a tantrum from the outside. I knew that feeling, that righteous indignation, and it hurt to see how undignified it looked from this perspective. It also hurt to see any version of me be so calmly manhandled by an authority figure.

Hammersmith sighed, and lowered her voice to a whisper. "I'm doing my best to keep the promises that were made to you, but they were not made by me. Not really. They were made by some other version of me that has since been utterly destroyed. Right now we still need you, and for the sake of the whole world that means limiting your freedom." She released the hand, and looked at the gates leading out to the city. "I know how you hate this. I do. And I know that you have already done much for the cause. I believe we are close to ending this, and then you will be truly free from me. You have friends here? Good. They will die, along with everyone they love, if we fail again."

Hammersmith began to walk away, while Alternate Callie stood there staring at nothing. She turned back as she reached a small side door into the fortress. "You can leave. I'll keep that promise. But Halenvar isn't following your predictions anymore - we've changed too much. If something happens to you and the other plan to get into Brynnklar doesn't work we all die. Think about whether or not it's worth going out there and starting the rumors. They'll send kidnappers, and assassins, and mind rippers. If you wait, at least until Halenvar castle falls, then you can do as you wish without concern. Do the right thing. Make sure at least one of you stays within these walls at all times. You're the key to Brynnklar, Calliope, whether you like it or not."

The door shut behind Hammersmith, and Alternate Callie collapsed to her knees. I rushed over, and heard her muttering to herself under her breath. "Two, the practice dummies. That one needs to be replaced. Three, the gates, big chip out of the bottom left corner. Four, Hammersmith's flag. Anvil is the same shape as on Earth, that's strange." She looked up at me, and her eyes took a minute to focus. "Five... me. The better me." She took my arm and let me pull her to her feet, then stumbled along with me to a bench where we sat together for a few minutes in silence.

"I haven't had a panic attack in a long time. Not even with the world ending. I just felt trapped, you know? I've been looking forward to being done with this for so long, and you're finally here and I need to see you really ready and free before..." she shook her head.

"Shit, you can't just trail off like that! Before what, bitch?"

She smiled, then giggled, then we both started laughing until I actually slid off the bench by mistake. That just made her laugh harder, so I had to pull her off the bench as revenge. Ignoring some very strange looks from a passing group of soldiers, we eventually calmed down.

"Ah. Man, I haven't laughed like that for a while. Thanks. The 'before'... it's fine. I don't want to make a big deal out of it, but when I blew up the lab I didn't actually get out in time."

"Wait, what?"

"They've tried to fix it, of course, but... there's something really fucked up about me now. Half my face was all wrinkled and gross when I got here... Like, obviously some old people are a little gross but that's normal, I don't give a shit if I look kinda ugly when I'm super old. This was unnatural gross, Jesus Christ what happened kind of gross. Whoops there was a fly in the teleporter kind of gross. And they fixed it, obviously, but something wasn't right about it even after they were done. They said I aged - at a minimum - like six hundred years. Maybe more. And that should have killed me, right, but for whatever reason it didn't.

"But the thing is, even though they could make me look young there were some strange changes and my body is fighting it, it's... it wants to age up again. I might have mentioned, I stole some shit on my way out of Ulren's lab. I'll show it to you later but I have this thing I sleep with now that fixes my temporal field. I had to make it out of stolen parts, it's got a huge chunk of temporally charged mana and... You remember Martha, at that first group home? She had that sleep apnea mask she had to wear while she slept? Yeah. I feel like Martha.

"And it's fine. Really. Even if I die tomorrow I got to go to another world and other dimensions and time travel and use magic and save the universe. And I don't want to freak you out, I could live for a thousand years or something - for all I know this thing just made me immortal - but in case I die soon I really, really, really need to make sure you're going to be able to have fun here. So being told we have to wait and sit around and keep working on this problem that I've basically already solved got me all... ugh. Plus I'm still adjusting to feeling emotions again."

Wait. "What do you mean, feeling emotions again?"

"Well, you know. The thing. The semi-sociopath no empathy thing. Until I came back in time I'd been the cold hearted bitch version of us for like... I don't know, at least a year. Not sure why, just one of those things. I thought about getting myself checked out, but we were busy saving the world and you know, stuff is way less traumatic in that mode anyway. I never trusted therapists anyway, so I'm sure as fuck not going to trust some random unlicensed wacko to permanently alter my emotional state. Not without... I don't know, some sort of guarantee. Could probably do it now, with some time to find someone really good at it and maybe a threatening letter from Hammersmith to keep them honest."

I couldn't picture being low-empathy for a whole year. I was constantly having to monitor myself and pretend to give a shit about people. If someone said something sad I had to make the effort to realize I should say "oh, I'm so sorry to hear that" or whatever. It was exhausting, but if I didn't do it then it just caused more trouble. And even with empathy I sometimes struggled to not be selfish and to do the right thing, so a year without that... it's possible Alternate Me did some bad shit. I decided for both our sakes I would change the subject.

"So how does it work, when you get a Dumine?"

"Oh right!" She perked up, and sat up some - though she remained on the ground. "So they're these big geodesic domes - you know what that... right, of course you do. I do. Anyway, big geodesic domes and you can't go in if you already have a Dumine. Totally impossible. No teleportation, no way to break in, nothing. You can bring magic items in but they don't work in there, so you can't try and bring a portal bridge in or hide someone in an extradimensional space or whatever. No spellcasting either, no wild magic even if you're bursting with mana. People have tried to break these things every way you can imagine.

"Once you're in, there's this hexagon and you touch it and a display pops up with all the options. It's basically a holographic touchscreen. There are six little hexagons, and each side has a line coming from it to a symbol that refers to a type of magic. Three above, three below. Generally those three have something in common, some theme or whatever, and sometimes all six from a given hex do. But it's a bit of a stretch for some of them if you ask me. Plus, there's some overlap and stuff - the whole system is kinda sloppy. We should do dinner or something, and I'll bring my notes and I can tell you all the types of magic so you can start trying to decide what you want to pick.

"Anyway, you select stuff and then confirm it and the Dumine appears in front of you, hanging there in the air. Once you take it, the walls all change color and at that point if you stick it to your skin it kinda... digs in some and becomes part of you. It's painless, don't worry."

I reached for my bag before remembering I'd left it with Katrin and Errod. "I've got a Dumine, from the soul tracker. If I bring it with me, could I stick that to me along with my own?"

She laughed, and shook her head. "Oh my god, can you imagine if it worked like that? People would go in with like a hundred of them and come out covered head to toe. No, they've tried it and you can bring them in but they don't stick. That means the only way to do magic in the Duminere is to use your own after you stick it on, and since it starts out totally useless you'd need to somehow train yourself up while you're in there.

"And I'm sure someone has tried that too, but it's a shitty environment to learn in. You'd have to cart mana crystals and food in with you, but you'd have to carry it all since only one person can go through and you can't chuck loose objects across the barrier. So you'd at best be able to prod at it with the teeny bit of skill you could learn in your chosen area over the course of a few days, which would be useless. They're going to remain a mystery forever, unless someone figures out how to break one open from the outside - and if you succeed but ruin it in the process? Not worth it. But that's fine, it's okay to have some shit we can't explain - especially with magic, right?"

She leaned to the side and tugged her pants down a little to reveal her Dumine on the skin of her right hip. Like the other two I'd seen, it was a gold hexagon covered in angular silver shapes almost like a camouflage pattern. I reached out and touched it, ran my fingers along the edge. It was flush with her skin, though I remembered the one on the soul tracker being raised slightly as if the dead flesh had pushed it out.

"The general rule is to get it somewhere covered up, and not on your hands or feet. They're extremely hard to cut out of someone, but it can be done and chopping off an arm is easy. At that point you've got a few hours to reattach the limb or the thing drops off. And you can't get another, if you go to a Duminere it won't let you in even though you don't have one anymore. It knows, somehow. It's a punishment for certain crimes, they get someone with enhancement magic in to assist and they slowly move it to somewhere they can lop it off." She shivered at the thought, and covered her Dumine again as if having it exposed was a risk.

She stood up, stretched, then reached down to pull me to my feet. "Anyway. That was nice. You know we like to hear ourselves talk sometimes, and it was cool to be the expert on something. Oh, man, since you did a speed run to this point I bet I know all kinds of shit you don't. Do you know the currency? Or the different kingdoms? Or the vegetables and stuff?"

She looked like she was feeling way better. "I know pretty much nothing. Pile it on."

"Looking forward to it! We'll do the magic tonight, but then think about what else you want to know. Anyway. I'm going to go take a piss and start making plans. You should go let Katrin and Errod know you're not dead and then I'll see you soon, uh... Callie? I guess? I could go by Calliope and you could be Callie or... well, whatever. Thanks for being a good... time double, clone, sister-thing."

I shrugged, not sure what to say, and then started wandering towards the gate. Partway there, I turned around and walked back to where she was still standing and looking vaguely lost. "You mentioned sisters - you remember our fake big sister? We made her up that time mom left us at the Sears?"

Alternate me smirked. "Yeah. And then we used to tell people she was in foster care too, just at a different house. Oh, yeah, my sister Constance is at a foster home and they're building on a new bedroom for me so I'll be leaving soon."

"Oh, sure, I have a sister. Connie ran away when CPS came for us though, she's living in the woods in a treehouse with the fairies."

"Constance is in witness protection, actually, which is why she's not here right now. But after the trial she'll be back - assuming the mob doesn't send another hit man."

"That's the one. Well um... I'll see you tonight, Connie."