The Duminere was smaller on the inside, implying the walls were quite thick, but there was still a lot of empty space. I could see the pedestal up ahead as Cyne had mentioned, but I held off walking up to it - instead I turned and poked at the doorway which was solid once more, and then trailed my fingers along the walls looking for any symbols or seams or... well, anything. But the walls were just blue crystal with no marks. The floor was some silvery metal, as was the pedestal, but like the walls they had no runes or wires or whatever I had been hoping for. There was light, and for a moment I thought it was coming from the walls before realizing that the light wasn't blue; it was a crisp white light that seemed to be emanating from nowhere at all. While trying to determine what might be giving off the light I looked for my shadow and realized I didn't have one, but even stranger was when I cupped my hands around my eyes and could still see my fingers. The light was just... coming from the air itself.

I wanted to know how it all worked, but if people native to this world hadn't been able to figure it out I doubted I had much of a chance. There was no point in delaying further. I stepped up to the pedestal and placed my hand on the golden hexagon there, and immediately words appeared in the air in English. YOUNG BLOSSOM, it said, and then underneath that SELECT YOUR GIFTS. The words vanished, leaving me wondering if I had imagined them - how had it known English? What did "young blossom" mean? Six hexagons spiraled into the air, glowing golden. Lines extended from them to little points of light, although I saw that a few of the hexagons had sides without lines - presumably those were the ones with prerequisites.

Thinking back to what Connie and Cyne had told me, I found the second to last hexagon - it had only one line extending from the top, and two from the bottom. I'd had some dim hope that my connection with Connie would let me access her powers, since her temporal abilities had seemed to count me as part of her, but if the Duminere had thought I had her abilities already then the divination gift would have been lit up - and presumably the probability one wouldn't be. I touched the probability one gently and could feel it, this vague understanding that I could influence random chance around me, that with time I could extend my reach or use the ability faster or have more control over how it happened. I took my hand away and touched enchantment, and could feel the possibilities of that as well. The ability to... to create some sort of field of mana that would cling to things, and that I could attach other effects to. I knew I could learn to make the fields bigger, or last longer, or use less mana. I selected it, and the dot of light changed color from gold to pulsing blue. The mystery option that Connie had said would be unlocked by probability, temporal, and enchantment didn't reveal itself - so much for the last hope of Connie's selections passing to me.

I touched enchantment again and un-selected it. That plan had been a longshot anyway - time to select my gifts for real. I'd been agonizing over it for weeks now, changing my mind and then changing it back. At one point or another I'd considered basically all of them, but pretty quickly I had decided that while things like throwing lightning around had a certain appeal in the end they were less exciting to me than the more subtle stuff. I'd thought about going with mana and entropy, so I could shut down other magic users. I'd also thought about doing life magic in order to create golems - with that and spirit maybe I could even do things like animate my phone. But in the end, I was just too worried about my memories to not take thought magic. The idea that I was having random false memories appear was pretty disturbing, and I wanted defenses to keep people from learning about Earth. If that hadn't been enough, this trip through Nusos with the tentacle thing tricking me and the parasite attaching to my leg and making me forget it was there... well, I didn't want to let anything like that ever happen again.

With thought being non-negotiable, I wanted to pick my other two slots to be complimentary. Going with something that required three slots seemed like a good choice, and thought was a prerequisite for divination. That would have saved me from the tentacle thing too, probably, and it would let me spy on people. I could use the object reading to identify magic items, something I'd wished we had been able to do a few times, and if I ever wanted to follow my original plan of hunting down monsters it would be good for tracking them. It wasn't a flashy ability, but it had a lot of utility and I was curious if I could somehow extend the remote viewing skill all the way to Earth since I was so familiar with it. Of course, selecting divination would mean taking another prerequisite - probability, temporal, or spatial. When I'd first put divination on my short list of possible gifts, it had been a no-brainer to take spatial. Connie already had temporal and probability, and I figured if Telen attacked I'd be able to follow him around as he teleported. But with Connie and Telen dead, it opened things up. Still, being able to bend space did sound amazing - Sige had talked to me a few times about how his family could twist space into some M.C. Escher shit, and it seemed like it could be really useful for fighting, running away, or just getting your groceries up to the third floor. Really, I should have put more thought into it after Connie died - but I had been avoiding thinking about that. I stared at the hexagons a moment longer, then selected spatial.

That opened up divination. As soon as I selected it the rest of the hexagons flickered and went dim - indicating I couldn't go for a fourth. I hesitated for a moment. Was I making the right choice? Was I going too tame with it? Should I take gravity and force and heat and try to fly to the moon? Should I take artisan and light and make illusions? Deep breaths. Thought was important, divination was extremely useful, and spatial meant both defense and offence. It was a good combination. I touched the pedestal again and held the thought that I was ready. The hologram in front of me vanished, dissolving into motes of light, and then in an instant a silver hexagon coalesced - it was clearly solid, not just a light construct like the others had been. I watched as angular golden shapes scrawled over it, and then there was a flash and it was done. The Dumine hung impossibly in the air in front of me, waiting to be taken. No going back now. As soon as I pinched it between my fingers the walls turned purple and then almost maroon, and a searing pain shot through my chest. I dropped the Dumine and heard it give a little metallic ping as it hit the floor, but I couldn't look for it because it felt like something was burrowing into me, this horrible burning pain radiating into my sternum. I stumbled, stepping on something and almost slipping, and desperately fought to reach under my shirt and get rid of whatever was trying to kill me.

I was expecting blood, and imagining some other parasite like the one that had been on my leg was tearing into me - but instead I felt the cool metal of Connie's Dumine at the center of the white hot pain. The stone ring around the edge, as well as the leather cord strung through it, had partially merged with my skin as it sunk in and seemed to be the source of my agony. I was in panic mode, unable to think clearly. I pulled at the leather cord but that made it worse. I began pacing in circles, needing to do something but not knowing what - all I knew was that I had to make the pain stop. I could feel the Dumine, somehow, and frantically latched onto that sensation in the hopes it could help. I could sense it, in fact I could sense more than one... had the new one attached as well, or was this something else? Hadn't I dropped that one? In any case, I knew which one was Connie's - the feeling of this branching path of possibilities was there for both, but one of them had a glowing line struck through it, a gleaming fork of lightning carving out a path. I seized it, not understanding exactly what I was doing, and thought with all of my might that I just needed to do something, to fix this, to make it so this wasn't happening. That bright line flared, and the pain was gone.

I stood there, slightly dizzy and disoriented. The walls were back to being blue, and for some reason the hexagons were back up on the display over the pedestal. I reached for the leather cord around my neck and pulled it out from under my shirt, but the little ring of stone was empty. The Dumine was gone. With trembling hands I reached under my shirt and there it was, flush against my skin right where it had been hanging. But how had it finally broken free of the necklace? And why had the pedestal activated again? A chill ran through me suddenly, and I closed my eyes to concentrate. I could feel the Dumine - no, two of them - and both were empty of energy. That line of light was gone from Connie's Dumine. What had she said? That she could burn the mana out of it in an emergency to go back in time again?

I looked back up at the display, at the hexagons hovering there. I hadn't finished my selection yet. I had gone back in time. I staggered back, feeling something odd about my left foot. Collapsing to the ground in an undignified way, still staring up at the hexagons, I gingerly reached one hand down and felt underneath my heel. There, sure enough, was the other Dumine which I had stepped on after dropping it. So. You weren't supposed to be able to pull any shenanigans in a Duminere, but I had just gotten two instead of one - and, unless I was mistaken, was about to get a third. Had it happened before? Were there others that were running around with multiple Dumines?

I knew magic items, spells, and wild magic didn't work in the Duminere. Dumines could work in theory, but you couldn't go in if you already had a Dumine and you couldn't attach someone else's Dumine to yourself - except of course I had done exactly that. Or had I? After all, it wasn't really someone else's - it was mine. A different me, from a dead timeline, but still essentially me. It made sense that the Duminere got confused, it was the same basic thing I had been worried would prevent me from entering. And surely nobody else had been able to go back in time within a Duminere, because to level up the temporal magic enough you had to train for ages; even if you could somehow manage it without leaving it would take far too long to make rewinding a possibility since you'd only go back thirty seconds or so. My situation was, almost certainly, unique. I couldn't help it - I started laughing.

Finally I stood up, testing my left foot - the Dumine had sunk in lower there, at a glance I was guessing because it ignored the callouses on my heel and went in enough to line up with the living skin. That meant that it didn't click when I walked, but it did feel a little funny and was hard to ignore - like a missing tooth that you can't help but poke at with your tongue. Hoping that I would get used to it, or that it at least would be less noticeable with shoes on, I walked over to the pedestal and took a look. All of the hexes were dark, preventing me from selecting anything - thought was still selected, but had turned red rather than blue. I touched thought and it de-selected without me even consciously asking it to, and immediately the rest of the hexes lit up gold again. It seemed like I had triggered an error since you weren't supposed to be able to select the same thing twice. What would have happened if I had gone with temporal or probability when unlocking divination? Both the Dumines would have implanted without the Duminere having the opportunity to give the error, so... Hmm. Well, there was no way to tell now.

I felt giddy. I was nervous, excited, and confused all at once. I hadn't planned for this. Or... well, in a way I had. I'd planned on trying enchantment first, to see if it combined with Connie's selections somehow, and now that seemed way more likely to work. I selected it and was immediately rewarded with one of the mystery abilities lighting up - so it didn't need them to be on the same Dumine. Touching the new gift gently, I tried to figure out what it was - I sensed something, an ability to manipulate events, or to see how events were being manipulated, or... something. Everyone had been clear that curses were essentially probability and enchantment. So what was the difference here? What was temporal adding? It felt like it was somehow... broader? Like it applied to the world in some bigger way. I wished I could understand it more, but in the end I didn't feel like it mattered; I had the opportunity to take a gift nobody else could get, so obviously I was going to go for it. For now I'd have to just keep thinking of it as 'the mystery one'. Whatever it did precisely, I had a strange feeling that it would combine really well with divination - the thought made me step back and think, and I realized that I had the potential to be way, way better at divination than anyone else - it required two out of probability, thought, spatial, and temporal but I now had all four.

"Okay. Okay. Last one. Choose wisely. Keep it together." Again, some part of me thought of the big flashy stuff. Blow shit up, fly, make force fields. But I would never be able to train all these different abilities to their maximum - presumably having three Dumines would mean three times as long to reach full potential, so there was more utility in looking for abilities where you could combine them, take just a little of one in order to synergize. What would be a small investment, so I could focus on my other abilities? Spellcasting would let me read spells just by having it, without developing it at all, but Katrin had that covered and if I really wanted to dedicate myself to learning a magic language I had runic. That last hex had artisan, crafter, scholar, fighter, and leader; any of those would give me a little passive boost. It also had that mystery one - as a quick experiment I got rid of my current selections and tried as many combinations as I could, but nothing I did got it to light up. The other mystery one required light, heat, and fabrication so it was for sure too late to unlock it; if I had known I would be getting three Dumines I might have tried to get that one just out of curiosity, but whatever. I re-selected enchantment and the other one.

Out of the ones on that last hex fighter would make the most sense if I was going to keep putting myself into harm's way, but I just... didn't want to. It was the same with life magic - probably there was some easy to learn a passive life-based ability that would make me healthier, but... well, I had to assume there were magic items we could buy for that now that we were going to have money. Of course they were probably mana intensive, and everyone was always complaining about low mana areas and over-using and... Hmm. Mana would mean I could recharge magic items, support Katrin as she cast spells, maybe even crystalize mana while we were in high magic zones and then easily convert it back when I needed it. That could speed up my training, and even if I didn't ever invest a lot into it just being able to sense mana and move it around would be really nice. It was a solid choice.

I knew the others would be wondering what was taking me so long, but I wasn't going to rush. I touched each of the twenty-six options options that remained, considering each. The problem was that I wanted all of them, which felt ridiculously greedy. Most people got nothing, and even if they did get magic they probably got just one. I was receiving nine, three times as many as anyone else in the world. Well, probably. After all, it seemed like there had to be some other way to get more since some of them had requirements that would otherwise be impossible. At any rate, nine was almost certainly a record.

"Aw, fuck it," I said, and selected mana. It really did seem useful. Everything else went dim, and after one more moment of pacing around I hurried back to the pedestal and slapped my hand down on the hexagon to tell it I was ready before I could change my mind.

The new Dumine appeared, just like the other had. I was nervous to take it, partly because last time that had caused me excruciating pain (knowing why that happened and that it would not happen again did nothing to reassure the primitive part of my brain that was rebelling) and partly because I had this nagging sense I was breaking something, that I was tampering with things I couldn't understand and which could possibly kill me. After all, maybe nobody had three Dumines for a very good reason. Maybe it would kill me instantly. But then, I already had two - so if cheating the system was going to get me killed I was already taking a risk. I plucked the Dumine out of the air and the walls once again shifted to maroon, indicating it was time to apply the thing to my body. I'd been planning on putting it in the same place Connie had had hers, on my right hip, but I was worried that if circumstances ever caused me to be largely undressed it would be too easy to see two of the Dumines at once. Who knows what people would do if they realized I had somehow gotten more than one - they would pull my mind apart to get that secret, not that it would do them much good.

I considered a few locations. My armpit, even all the way up, was still a bit risky considering the popularity of sleeveless clothes here. Likewise my inner thigh felt like it could still come into view a little too easily. Back when I was first traveling down off the mountain and snuck into that Halenvar camp, I'd heard the soldiers talking about checking for a Dumine between the soul tracker's ass cheeks. I considered it, and it seemed like the best option for keeping it out of sight, but something about it just bothered me. Inside my mouth probably wouldn't work and even if it did it would potentially be bad, and while I could put it on my other heel for symmetry Connie had suggested that having them on your extremities was risky because you could have a hand or foot lopped off and lose your abilities. Where else would be covered? The back of my head seemed like an option - at the lowest part of my skull, where my hair would always be covering it up. There were a few hairstyles that would expose it, of course, but I could avoid those easily enough. My only concern was for the existing hair - I kept remembering the pain of the necklace trying to merge into my skin and thinking of what could be the worst ingrown hair imaginable. But you had little hairs almost everywhere, and the one on my foot had dealt with the calluses in its way without issue. Presumably as long as it was a part of my body it would be fine.

I played with my hair for a bit, to make sure I was going to put the Dumine in the right spot, and then very carefully pressed it into place. There was a slight tug as if my hair had caught on something but that was it, and then it was flush with my skin. The walls turned back to blue, and I ruffled my hair and patted the back of my head to make sure the Dumine was covered - it seemed good, but I did note some loose locks of hair falling free to the ground after somehow being severed by the Dumine implanting. I scooped them up, since it seemed wrong to leave a mess behind, and crammed it into my coin pouch. I closed my eyes and concentrated and I could feel the Dumines, all three of them, floating there. What did it mean? Everyone had said that getting multiple gifts didn't really make you more powerful, just more versatile - but was that because a Dumine could only hold so much power? With three, could I genuinely be three times more powerful than anyone else? Then again, even if that was true it would take years to get all three maxed out - and at first I would be just as weak as ever. Worse, because getting a Dumine would have taken away whatever strange probability magic I had used instinctively.

I'd have plenty of time to think about it. I took a deep breath, and walked out of the Duminere - despite my fears that it would prevent me from leaving due to some sort of error I'd caused, I passed through the barrier as if it wasn't there. I gave Katrin and Errod a thumbs up, then reached back as I left and touched the mirror gateway again - feeling it turn solid and prevent me from going back in. It was done.