"What the fuck happened down here?" Sige asked, staring past me at the place where Connie and Telen had stood only a minute earlier. Not waiting for an answer he hauled me to my feet, and I winced at the pain.

"Connie killed Telen. She's..." she's dead, aged a thousand years all at once. The lights seemed to dim, and I felt myself getting dizzy. No. No, she had a plan. That wouldn't have been the plan. She's fine. "... going to be back soon. There's more, a wild mage and someone up in the air, and a guy with some spirit things - he has the others captured."

Sige looked from me to the pile of debris and back again, concerned. Then he turned towards the kids. "Okay guys, you stay here and hide. Keep away from the... the armor and stuff. Callie why don't you... uh..."

"I'll come with you. I can show you where he is." My voice sounded flat, distant. The room was still swimming slightly, and darkness kept creeping in around the edges like I was staring at the world from the end of a tunnel. I stumbled to the stairs and up into the fresh night air, and led Sige towards the other soldier.

Sige told me to stay put and snuck around the side, but I only waited a moment to start walking again. "Karstadt!" I called - that's what Telen had referred to him as, right? "Telen is dead. Are you ready to join him?"

He pulled out a sword and gestured with his other hand, sending two of the spirit things towards me. He looked nervous. Good. I reached down deep inside myself, and felt something. Something I'd always had - there was a faint glimmer of memory, some flicker of a car swerving and my mother screaming at me. As I began to speak it felt like my voice was coming from somewhere else and I knew that there was power woven into every word.

"I hope you have an aneurism and die, right now."

My blood turned to ice. I was colder than I'd ever been, like the warmth had somehow been sucked from my body and could never return. I stumbled, but forced myself to stay upright and watch the soldier as his eyes widened in horror. He knew. Then there was a flash from something around his neck, and he put a hand over it reflexively before looking down at the pendant and sighing in relief. The spirits hit me and everything went dark.

I came to some time later. It was night, and I was in the back of one of the wagons. There were others clustered around me, sleeping, but their body heat wasn't helping - I was sweating a little, but deep down I was still cold like my heart had turned to ice. I drifted off again. The next time I woke I was in an actual bed. Katrin and Cyne were arguing about something but it was like when I had a panic attack - the individual words were clear but my brain couldn't assemble them into anything meaningful. Katrin noticed that my eyes were open and came over, tried to talk to me slowly and gently as if she wasn't the younger one. I couldn't respond. Finally, hours or days later, I was being led back outside to the wagons and I realized I'd spoken.

"Is Connie back yet? She didn't tell me her whole plan. Is she back?"

The looks of pity that passed between them told me what I already feared was true, but there was still some tiny spark of hope burning until Mila reached her hand out - there was Connie's Dumine, and Mila had formed some stone around the edge so a leather cord could be strung through. I took it and put it on, then broke down crying and let them lead me the rest of the way to the wagon.

And when I woke up next, I was fine. The switch had flipped, and the whole world seemed muted and dull. I stretched, climbed down and waved off the concerned questions while I relieved myself off in the trees - surely I'd done that while in my stupor as well, right? Had someone had to walk me to the bathroom? The thought was mortifying, and I genuinely couldn't remember - the time since the spirits hit me was a confusing blur. I had to pause a moment to pull a thorn out of my foot because I hadn't seen my boots, but it didn't hurt much as I trudged back and went to the fire to see what was for breakfast. Errod cautiously approached as if I might shatter.

"Are you okay, Callie?"

"Yeah. I'm fine. You know how it is, I'll probably be a wreck again tomorrow but... man, Connie said she lost emotions completely at some point and right now I'm so looking forward to that. They keep you from thinking clearly, they waste your time, they... it's a mess. Good riddance."

"Don't say that."

"See, but if you didn't have empathy you wouldn't care if anyone else had it either. It's not actually a requirement. Have you heard of the golden rule? Do to others what you would want them to do to you. I'm sure you have it here, tons of different cultures on Earth came up with it independently."

"Yeah. Yeah, we have something like that."

"Okay so the thing is, I can still follow that rule even if it's just me being pragmatic, right? I don't want people to steal from me, so I'll respect property. I don't have to like them, or feel emotional about it. And look at the alternative - how long was I a blubbering mess?"

"Not actually that long. We left town and found some little farm, stayed there for the rest of the night. Then we traveled all day. By the end of today we should be at the next town, and then we were going to decide if the uh... well, if the plan is still on."

"Of course it is. What, we're going to go this far and then stop? Fuck that. We... oh, shit. Shit shit shit. We have to go back. Connie's bag, with the map and everything. It's hidden back in that town."

Sige's voice came booming from the top of the wagon. "Naw, got that."

Cyne had - very carefully - sifted through the debris and located all the items that had survived. When he didn't find the map, he sent everyone searching - Katrin tried to ask me about it which I don't remember at all, and apparently I confirmed it was hidden somewhere but was in no shape to elaborate. They'd found the bag after promising the kids a reward, and now returned it to me - I poked through and saw the disassembled 'key' to the room we were going to and Connie's other things. I flipped through the journal and had a sneaking suspicion the bookmark had been moved; last I saw Connie looking at it right before bed there was a diagram of some kind on the page, but the marker was now in a section with just text. It was always possible I was mistaken, or that Connie had flipped through it after that without me seeing, or even that the bookmark had just fallen out by mistake and been shoved back in - but it seemed most likely that somebody got curious and tried to read it. Bad news for them, the whole thing was in English. One by one everyone gathered around the fire and Errod served up the bowls of mush he'd been cooking - it was something between oatmeal and snot in texture, but it had a pleasant sweetness to it that made the texture worth tolerating. I could see that Katrin and Mila were shooting looks at me and then each other, some mixture of pity and concern, but Cyne was businesslike as usual and Sige just had that ridiculously wide square-toothed muppet grin.

"Okay so now that everyone's up we've got some fucking loot to sort through. Callie, you'll be pleased to know I took out the fucker that put the whammy on you, thanks for that fucking top notch distraction. Saw someone flying off, never got a great look at them, and the kiddos said they saw a fucking caster with a mask which Errod says is someone you've run into before but uh, no sign of her. So probably those two ran for it, if they'd planned on fucking with us they wouldn't have waited this long. So we got Dumines from the three that we took out, those should be worth selling. Got Telen's armor which is worth a fucking pile of cash, not only am I pretty sure it's lurto azine - that alloy is fucking hard to make - but also there's multiple bounties on him and between the armor and his Dumine we should be able to collect. His sword is an artifact of some kind, you can just fucking feel that shit, but I can't figure out what the fuck it does. And then he had another device, I've seen shit that looks almost exactly like it before and so I'm pretty sure it reduced the amount of mana used by his abilities - but that thing broke in the... uh, the attack. Anyway it would have only worked with the specific thing it was designed for - teleportation I figure, what other fucking thing would he need - so that wouldn't have been too great for us anyway.

"Let's see. Both of the normal dudes we killed had anti-enchantment charms, the one on the spirit guy was burned out but the fucking gravity guy's charm is still good if anyone wants it. Spirit guy also had a glove that's magic, not sure what it does but it doesn't fit me and it doesn't have the look of a combat thing so I'll pass on it. Gravity guy had a belt, pretty basic design I've seen before - it's for endurance, like if you're hiking somewhere and you're worried you'll get tired. It's fine. Nothing amazing though. They all had communication devices but I smashed those, we only had the one end so they weren't useful anyway and I wasn't sure if they could use them to fucking listen in on us. Oh and then some money, we can deal with how that splits up when the fucking job is done."

Cyne cleared his throat. "On that topic... I have high hopes for the town ahead, and based on the view from the next hill I would expect us to reach it in just a few hours - had the road been in better shape we could have slept there last night. That means we can proceed into Nusos today if it is acceptable for everyone else."

All eyes turned to me. "Perfect, no point in delaying. In fact if we're being tracked by Halenvar it's best if we get off this plane as quickly as possible. Let's rent a place in a stable for the wagons and, I don't know, if they have a bath house or something it could be nice to get cleaned up before the final leg of the journey. But then yeah, let's get moving."

I went to wash my bowl but Errod took it - for a moment I wasn't sure why and then I remembered. Right, they were all going to treat me like I was fragile for a while... though I wasn't sure why not washing my own bowl would help.

I made it maybe ten feet before Cyne stopped me. "I'm very sorry for your loss." The platitude translated almost exactly, unlike a lot of the sayings which had to be sort of coaxed into a familiar form by the bracelet. I nodded and mumbled something, and then Cyne nodded back, and I could tell something was awkward - I just wasn't sure what.

"Do you... is there something else you wanted to say?"

"Well. I have lost several people that were close to me, over the years. And while each of us deals with that in our own way, even the strongest minds are... injured... by that kind of event. I am not judging you for being largely comatose over the past day, but if you have a relapse... we discussed, early on, that I would be authorized to give orders while we were traveling through Nusos. I would like that authority to be extended - right after the attack you were unable to lead us to the location of the model, and had we not found it before someone else the entire job would have been over. I would like to be informed of the details that have been kept from us, and I would like it if you told the others that I am second in command for the remainder of the job in case you find yourself... compromised. I only ask this with your best interests in mind."

"That's... reasonable." But Connie had kept it secret. Did it matter, at this point? She'd wanted to make sure none of the mercenaries betrayed us, and that they didn't spread rumors. But at this point there would be no way for anyone to beat us there, right? Unless Cyne got a message out before taking us to Nusos and then... what? Deliberately ran us in circles? No, he'd need to get the key - or a copy of it - to someone as well, and the town we were about to stop in was not only essentially random but by necessity was too small to have planar wards up which also meant getting word to people from there would be next to impossible.

"Yeah. Okay. So, before I tell you this I need you to know I have a contract written up in this journal that... I can't tell you how I know this, but I can guarantee the terms of this contract will be accepted by the kingdom of Erathik. The contract will make us all rich, I'll probably put something in there for the kids but regardless this is going to be the most profitable job you've ever done as long as I get to handle it."

He smiled. "Miss Smith, even if I were the type to betray my employer - and I am most certainly not - it would be a disaster to do so at this stage. You have nothing to worry about."

"Yeah. Okay, well. We're going to a treasure vault owned by a king and he kept it such a secret that when the kingdom fell and Erathik absorbed it they never found the place, probably weren't even sure it existed."

"So you're expecting to find artifacts that still hold their power?"

I was still a little foggy on what made a magic item count as an 'artifact' other than it just being better than normal - I did know that it was a different word entirely from the local word for mundane old objects you might find in ruins or something, though in both cases the bracelet used 'artifact' as the English equivalent. The Sword of Destiny from the Jake Ross books sounded like it was for sure an artifact, since it was thousands of years old and - if the books were describing it right - ridiculously powerful. Jake had cleaved through a castle wall in a single swing in Jake Ross and the Shattered Crown. But while on the road to Zistarne, Katrin had mentioned an artifact that was just a flower carved from crystal that always smelled nice. That was it. I'd gotten the impression that the craftsmanship was most of it, but even Katrin didn't seem totally clear on where the line was.

"Well we do hope to find some good artifacts, yeah. But that's not all that is hidden in the vault. There is... there is a Duminere down there."

Cyne went pale. "Any kingdom would... they would kill for exclusive access to an otherwise unknown Duminere. You said this is in Erathik, but... with it hidden, its location could be sold to anyone - anywhere - and so long as they were careful they could maintain control over it. Hmm. Yes. I see why you were reluctant to tell me, though at some point I would have found out regardless. This is... what are the terms?"

"I don't have the energy to go through the whole contract with you right now, but it's a lot of money and a certain number of free passes per year with no strings attached so you can send family or friends through - or sell them to make more money. There's a little more, full citizen status in Erathik and a monthly stipend in case someone blows all their money gambling. Some clauses about what happens if we die, too. It's very solid. It was written by some of the best lawyers on the continent." In another timeline, for a different group of explorers that originally found the place. Which meant I already knew the terms were acceptable, though I was prepared for Erathik to feel the need to haggle some anyway. Cyne nodded to himself, still thinking through the ramifications, and I headed over to the wagons.

"Hey, where are my boots?" I'd flipped over all the blankets and looked in the bags. No sign of the silent boots, and I wanted to spend some time walking alongside the wagon to stretch my legs. Sige came over, still with that grin, and clapped me on the shoulder so hard that I nearly fell over.

"Not a chance, boss. They pull mana, and you nearly fucking killed yourself the other day. You hired me to protect you, so the boots are off limits. If I could've found the latch on that fucking bracelet I'd have taken it too."

"I... fine. Sure. I feel okay though."

"Naw, that's bullshit. You just think you feel okay because now you don't feel like you're fucking dying. But the injury is there, guaranteed. You ever broke a bone? That's your soul right now. Take it easy. You never practiced, growing up?"

I shook my head.

"Yeah. I get it. My people, we can bend space. That's our thing. You turn left, but you end up going straight anyway. But the thing is, I was never great at it and I never liked it for some reason. Never practiced, always wanted to travel off plane instead. We talked about hitting a Duminere, you and your friends and the kids. If you can swing it that's fucking great, but keep in mind it's a risk. Humans, well, they aren't much worse off if they get a dud. They lose out on wild magic, and it'll take them a little longer to learn to cast spells - but they'll still be just as strong at it once they learn. The other races like us? We're fucked. We lose our innate powers, so getting a dud... shit, it's bad."

"I'm human, Sige."

He winked. "You don't want to tell me what plane you're from, that's fine. That's your business. But you're not from this world - not with whatever you're flinging around. I didn't catch what you tried to do, but it wasn't wild magic and it wasn't a spell so that narrows things right the fuck down, doesn't it? Someone like Cyne would probably be able to figure out exactly where you're from, he knows more about the different planes than I do - I focused on a couple that were useful to me, like Itzele and Kertzale, and besides... like I said, it's your fucking business. But just think hard before you walk into that Duminere, you can't take that back."

He walked away, whistling. Was that why I couldn't learn magic from the spellbook? Did humans from Earth just have different rules, in the same way that people on other planes did? And if so, was it worth trying to develop those powers rather than going to the Duminere? It seemed like I was virtually guaranteed to get three different categories of magic since Connie had, and I was hard pressed to think of anything any conceivable natural magic could do that some combination of three gifts couldn't replicate anyway. So... the Duminere still seemed like the right call. But it was something to think about.