We ended up using the emergency beacon and paying for a lift out once we were back to where we started. There was no real question - we'd had several other minor incidents, everyone was out of mana, and morale was rock bottom. I suspect it would have been that way even if Aestrid hadn't died, just from the increasing distress of trekking day after day through darkness, but with the added toll of constantly coming up one short on a headcount before adjusting I think there would have been a mutiny if Connie had insisted on climbing the rest of the way.

The sun was low in the sky, and I sat and waited for it to go down enjoying every last second of actual daylight before I headed back to the outer ring of the city. I'd asked Katrin to break the news about Aestrid to her brother, and had handed off my backpack to Sige. I just wanted to wander around where there were people and lights and open sky. I purchased a meat pie of some sort from a street vendor and ate it so fast I burned myself, then bought a second one and savored it. He also had a pitcher of pale pink juice that tasted vaguely tropical and which I promptly forgot the name of. The next stop in my quest to avoid going back to our rented house was locating a bathhouse with some mostly-private nooks. The one I selected even had a laundry service, so by the time I was finished scrubbing the top few layers of grime off and then soaking for a while I had something clean to change into. I'd been a little worried about handing over my jeans, but if they'd seemed odd at least they hadn't been interesting enough to steal.

Even in the city the stars were brighter than anything I'd seen on Earth other than the camping trips, and those had stopped when I was still pretty young. I kept almost bumping into things because I was too busy watching the sky, trying to look for constellations. No big or little dippers, no Orion's belt. There was a streak across the sky like the Milky way but it looked different; it was a much brighter line in the center, but then didn't seem as wide. I climbed up onto a low wall and leaned against one of the decorative flourishes that stuck up, so I could better stargaze. The only thing missing was a good view of that ridiculous moon with its oceans and forests - or, well, green stuff anyway.

Eventually I had to start thinking about some stuff I'd been avoiding, starting with - had I used magic? The woman we paid to measure my capacity had thought so, and Sige certainly believed I had. But I hadn't noticed anything, so... maybe I had just spent mana on nothing at all? That seemed possible. It would have to have been wild magic, which would mean a high failure rate. Maybe I'd just sort of flailed wildly with raw magic and accomplished nothing. But if - just hypothetically - me telling that thing to dive into the pit had somehow caused the accident that sent him to his death... could I kill people by yelling at them? What if I was just angry at someone, and without thinking I cursed them somehow? It seemed both terrifying and ridiculous. And, I had to admit, a little cool.

If it really did only happen right when I was on the verge of death that would mean it wasn't so bad. Chances are it would always be against a person that was actively trying to murder me, though it did seem like there would be the chance of some misunderstanding. It was good that I'd only recently entered a world full of magic, since as a kid if I had discovered that ability I would have murdered half the people I met. Between some of the mean girls in the group homes and the ones that made my life miserable in school there would have been an absolute trail of corpses, but none of them had ever died. Hell, even the time Sarah Harkin tried to drown me I didn't do anything to her - I would have put a whammy on that bitch for sure.

I sat up and nearly fell off the wall. "Oh fuck. Fuck. What the fuck."

I hopped down and ran for a minute, then slowed and tried to compose myself while still looking for our rental house. I still wasn't ready to talk about Aestrid, especially with Errod since he had obviously had a bit of a crush on her, so I snuck in quietly and located Connie - with a few glares and signals from across the room, I crudely communicated that I needed her outside and snuck away again. She came out looking worried.

"You okay? We were about to send a search party."

"I'm fine. I'm good. Did you do magic before you went to the Duminere?"

She raised an eyebrow at me and grinned. "Why, did you manage to cast a spell?"

"Just answer me. Please."

"Fine. Uh, no. No, I studied with Katrin - my timeline's Katrin - but I could never get it to click."

"Okay, so did you ever - in a life or death situation - feel really cold all of a sudden?"

"You know we have, sure. That's a fear response. What about it?"

"Is that cold the same kind of cold you feel when you use too much mana?"

"It's... I mean, cold is cold. I guess it's similar. I haven't felt it in a long time, so it's hard to compare. I think all this time running around nearly getting killed has given me some callouses."

"How long? Since you felt that, I mean? Is it maybe since you got your Dumine?"

"Shit Callie, I don't know. I don't almost die often enough to think about it. But if you - we - were doing magic when we were on the verge of death I'd say it's possible but very unlikely. Could have been wild magic but if so what would it have done?"

I paced around for a moment, and then decided to get right to the point. "Sige thinks when I was cold earlier it was because I overextended myself and spent too much mana, and the lady that Katrin and I paid to check my mana capacity said I had used too much some time recently. And there... there have been some close calls, where things just sort of worked out. And this last time I told that possessed guy to jump in the pit and then I was super cold and something knocked him in there."

"I feel like that's probably a coincidence. That would be - I mean, that's probability magic at a minimum and a possibly a full on curse. I don't think you could do that instinctively."

"What if I had practice? What if we've been doing it for a long time?"

"That's... Callie, that is a ridiculous question."

"Do you remember Sarah Harkin?"

"The bitch that literally tried to drown me? Yes. And see, she didn't have a heart attack or anything. I one hundred percent would have given her a heart attack."

"We couldn't, because we were out of mana."

"Callie. My younger dumber self. Sweetheart. There is no mana on Earth. No magic."

"Why did she try to drown us?"

Connie hesitated. "Sarah's hair fell out and she thought we put something in her shampoo."

"And she thought it was us because...?"

"Because I said something like... 'I hope your fucking hair falls out you skanky bitch' I believe. Someone must have overheard, and then put some Nair in her shampoo."

"So we said we wanted her hair to fall out, and then it fell out. Right?"

"That's... Callie, there's no magic on Earth."

"You don't know that, though! Also you're me, you should be agreeing with me."

Connie laughed, and I tried to glare but laughed instead, and it was a few minutes before we could speak clearly again.

"Okay Callie. Let's say it was magic somehow. Let's say that - uh, Sarah was right after mom found her little legal loophole so we were in Phoenix - let's say that there's some source of mana in Phoenix, Arizona of all places and we got all charged up and then also somehow managed to do a perfect curse without training in wild magic. Fine. But in the end, it doesn't matter. Soon you'll have your own Dumine, and you were never going back to Earth anyway - right?"

"Right. Sure. It would just... I don't know, it seems like it means something. You know when we were little, and we'd make up stories about how we were special and... I don't know, our father was a secret agent who was going to come and bust us out of the group home as soon as he was done his mission, or we had a sister that was waiting in our secret fort in the woods for us, or we were actually a princess because mom was next in line to the throne of wherever but had run away because they said she had to marry an evil prince? I think... well, the idea that we might have actually been special, that we might have done something magical back on Earth has me all wound up. I guess you're not as excited because you can already like... go back in time or whatever."

"I guess. And also... you know I went through some shit that was worse that what you've done so far - I guess not worse than the fucking Necropolis stuff, but I mean on a normal day to day basis. And at the end, when I realized I might be going back in time, I got all wrapped up in the idea that you would get to have the more perfect version of that adventure. You could skip the hardcore training, and being scared and alone, and not being able to eat anything, and the loyalty oath. And I've built that image up in my head so now... you talk about Earth, I'm worried you're going to go back and just be normal."

I pulled her in for a hug and we just stood there a moment. "I'm not going back. There's nothing for me there. And anyway you're right, it probably was just a coincidence. If you could do magic on Earth, we'd know about it."

"Yeah, all that secret world of magic shit is fun to read about but no way could you keep actual magic from everyone. So listen. You need to start thinking about what you're going to take when we reach the Duminere - it's coming up soon. Tomorrow we hang out here, get all rested up, and then we'll head to whatever city is nearby that we think doesn't have wards preventing travel to and from Nusos. Probably a few days' travel, and then going through Nusos should take most of a day from what I've heard. That means you'll have magic - actual magic - in less than a week. Say, the tenth or eleventh of the month probably." She'd said 'tenth' after a slight pause, probably converting back to base-10.

"Okay yeah, let's talk about it. Is Errod okay?"

"He's... taking it as well as I would have expected. I think he feels bad for not being there, and he tried to convince us that we needed to mount a rescue expedition until Katrin had a talk with him."

"Sorry I bailed for that talk, I should have helped."

"Fuck, I'm just mad you thought of it first. I sure as hell didn't want to be there for it. What do we know about being emotional support? I just... patted his arm awkwardly, it was awful."

"Well, I should get it over with. Fingers crossed I don't fuck this up."

I was at medium-high empathy, but while that made me less likely to do things like say "Oh interesting, anyway I'm thinking burritos for lunch" in response to someone saying their grandmother just died it didn't actually mean I was any good at comforting anyone. Thankfully it turned out not to matter - I found Errod and gave him a hug, then randomly started crying which caught me off guard, and then he just nodded and we went to our beds. As was pretty typical I had some fucked up dreams, most of which involved me being back down in the Necropolis while everyone in the group slipped and fell off into the pit one by one. At the end of the dream I realized it was happening because I was looking at them, and therefore my fault. So that wasn't great. The one memorable outlier was a dream where I was sitting at a table in a cute little kitchen, doing homework with Bill.

"It's about the mana levels on Earth," I said, "but I can't figure out how to get the answer."

He nodded, and pushed down on the table - it dented inwards as if it was made of rubber, which didn't seem odd to me at all in the dream. "See, when there's only one source of magic it bends everything. So other magic stuff, well, it kinda rolls in towards the biggest source. It's like gravity."

"I guess that explains the basement."

"Yeah. Well. Speaking of, kiddo, I think it's time to add you to the collection."

We got up and walked down some stairs that hadn't been there before, and found ourselves in the Necropolis which was somehow also a carpeted basement. There were shelves, stretching off into the distance, each with a mummified body on it. I knew, as soon as I looked, that they were all kids that had thought they were going to be heroes and go on fun magical adventures like in a book. They all had magic items laying on them - swords, amulets, rings. One for each. There was a shelf with no body on it, just a little golden brooch - it was laying there upside down, and I could see there was blood on the pin. I picked it up, sighed, and climbed onto the shelf.

To pay them back for my disappearing act the night before, I spent all day with the refugee kids while Errod and Katrin wandered the city. I was on ultra high empathy, and being forced to finally spend real time with the kids rather than just trying to read the spellbook or throwing things at Errod while they were off on the other side of the room was getting me all worked up. How could it not?

Roran and Tig, the two boys, had obtained knives from somewhere while I was gone and were whittling sticks down to little pointy nubs for no apparent purpose. Elba was braiding Lilan's hair, and Yasna was brushing mine. The somewhat traditionally gendered choice of activities was a temporary coincidence; Tig had been braiding flower crowns earlier, and Elba had been practicing throwing forks at a target she'd made across the room before the others complained about the noise.

"And we're going to get magic?" Yasna asked for the fifth time.

"That's the plan. And then we'll make sure you're somewhere nice, and have some people try to find your parents. But don't... don't get your hopes up, okay?"

"You said you went back to your mom after you were taken away though, right?"

The others stopped what they were doing and listened intently. I'd made some comments, and they were fascinated with the idea that I had also spent time in strange places with other kids. I'd tried to make it clear that what happened to me and what they had gone through had practically nothing in common, but it they kept wanting to hear more.

"Well. My mom... she had something wrong with her head. She thought that I was evil, sort of, and so I had to get taken away because she wasn't taking care of me like she should. So I wasn't... I wasn't kidnapped like you were, though - I guess at the time I felt like I had been. And some of the people I had to stay with were bad, but not as bad as the Sahrger. But yeah, they sent me back to my mom and said she should try again."

She'd been scared of getting in trouble, but still didn't want me around. So she had sent me to live with her brother at the Long Haul Hotel, and when I got kicked back to her after that she tried for a while before kicking me out when I was ten - so it was back into foster care, first at a foster home and then when I was eleven a group home since the foster parents didn't appreciate me stealing the car. For an eleven year old I maintain I did a damn good job driving. But then it was back to mom again, and she did so much better for a while. Until that manic day where she announced the road trip to Arizona.

She didn't lie to me about it, she didn't try to hide anything. She was abandoning me again, but this time it would be legal and therefore final. And honestly, it was the best time I'd had with her since my sixth birthday. We stopped at little roadside tourist traps. She got me ice cream along with my lunch when we got food, and didn't get mad when some dripped on the seat. I was twelve, and smart enough to know things hadn't magically been fixed somehow, but assumed that my mom's plan was just to ditch me on the opposite side of the country so that they couldn't send me back somehow. Instead, just before we reached Phoenix we stopped for lunch and she walked me through it.

There had been some well-meaning politicians that were concerned over new mothers abandoning their babies just after being born, in dumpsters or wherever. So they made a law, one that multiple states had versions of - they called them "safe haven" laws - that said if you dropped your kid off at a fire department or some other designated places you didn't have to worry about child abandonment charges or anything. No questions asked, you give up the kid and you don't get in trouble. In most states this specified an age, but for whatever reason the one that had just passed in Arizona merely said "child" which meant at twelve I could still be left on the fire department steps. They changed the wording after that, but I never saw my mom again.

I didn't think I could explain all that to our little refugees, so I settled for just telling them that even if things didn't work out quite how they imagined, somehow it would all be okay eventually. I even mostly believed it.

"But I remember where my parents are," Elba said, "I remember the town. So I can go back, right?"

I thought of all the things that could go wrong. Her parents could have died, or moved, or might think she had been somehow tainted by her time with the Sahrger - I wasn't sure what sort of superstitions people had. "We'll do our best. Now get a lot of sleep tonight. Tomorrow we have a lot of ground to cover, and the day after that you get to go to another plane."

They all looked excited, but for the first time I wasn't eager for this next leg of the journey. Something felt off, like dark clouds on the horizon. I couldn't shake the thought that Aestrid wouldn't be the only one missing by the time we reached the Duminere.