We hadn't taken the bounty on the cat things, since we were still feeling so secure with our funds from the Duminere deal. Instead we'd partied for a whole day with the people of the town, getting the hero treatment and waking up with ridiculous hangovers. Elba had left our best cookpot behind and I got a strange vibe from her about it although she seemed to be sorry, so I ended up stewing over it trying to decide if I'd said something to her while drunk that had made her want to ditch the pot as some sort of revenge. I hadn't been all that drunk though, since getting shitfaced at twelve years old had been traumatic enough to make me exercise some caution ever since. I chalked it up to a random mistake, but Elba started to have more of those as we traveled; over the course of the next five days she had an increasingly frustrating string of "accidents" that lost or destroyed more of our equipment. Otherwise the journey was uneventful, with only one attack from a monster - even that had been a bit anticlimactic since the monkey-like creature had been slammed brutally against a tree by Shitheel's flat bony head the second it arrived. The wretched thing have been maimed so badly before we reached it that killing the creature had been a matter of mercy rather than combat.

Errod had seen one before in a cage, and he said they had the ability to make people go into seizures with just a touch - but if it had tried it on Shitheel in that one brief moment they were in contact it didn't take. On a logical level, I was thrilled that Shitheel had directed his aggression in a productive way for once and of course wouldn't have wanted to deal with a rampaging seizure-monkey. But I also realized that some little part of me was disappointed because with the last few weeks being so relaxed I was starting to get back into my "holy shit I'm in a fantasy world" mode and killing monsters was supposed to be part of that. Like, I didn't want to potentially get eaten by a dragon but I did want to be able to say I fought a dragon and won. At any rate, I knew I would be regretting my desire to fight monsters soon enough - supposedly the deeper into the wilderness you went the more you would come across, and once Elba was dropped off we expected to head into seriously dangerous territory to speed up our training. I would probably end up wishing we were back on a nice road between cities where things like seizure monkeys or invisible cat things were noteworthy rather than a daily occurrence by the end of the first week camping out.

With some of the cheap and simple abilities purchased and others still out of reach, I was back to being unsure of how to proceed. My options were all making me feel unsatisfied - I was nervous about digging into my memories, I didn't want to dump points into divination only to find the threads I was seeing were still useless, and anything else was splitting my efforts. I told Katrin that I would decide after we got done at Sentortzi, since depending on what magic items we found it might make the most sense to build up mana a little more. Of course what I really wanted but couldn't justify was to develop spatial magic to the point I could do crazy flashy tricks - but that would have to wait a bit. Spreading myself thin dumping points into a bunch of things without ever getting them to a useful level was ridiculous.

The weather was getting hot, and when we finally got close enough to see the walls of Sentortzi there was a heat shimmer in the air. The farmlands surrounding the city were of a type I'd seen before, with the plants growing on huge vertical scaffolding towers, but I barely spared any of it a glance because I was busy squinting at the city proper in the distance.

"Are those skyscrapers? Is that - holy fuck is that an airship? Guys. Guys. We were going to skip this city? Really?"

Errod shrugged. "Well we're trying to get a kidnapped little girl home to her family, so..."

"Right. Yes. Very important. But this is an actual huge city with at least two airships flying over it. And that little girl lost or ruined half our shit. Besides, it's not that far out of our way."

He smiled, clearly not actually bothered by the detour. "I suppose with no magic airships must be almost impossible on Earth."

"No. What? No, we have shitloads of them."

Errod's brow scrunched up. "You've said you can't manipulate gravity, and you can't tap into the alternate physics of the other planes... oh, I heard some use a different sort of air that makes things float? That's not magic, right? But you need people with the fabrication gift to make that sort of air I thought..."

"Yeah, that's like... helium, or hydrogen. We have that, we've used it. You can get it without magic. But most of our airships... hang on."

I tore a used sheet of paper out of my notebook and folded it into a paper airplane, then threw it at Errod. It almost hit him but pulled a sudden nose dive into the ground at his feet. "Like that, kind of. Just wings that are shaped right to fly, and then you use... uh... well you know how lamp oil can kind of explode if the fumes get into the air?"

Errod winced, and looked at his feet. "Yes. I'm familiar."

"Well we use explosions to push the airships along. And if you build it right, and you have something way more volatile than lamp oil, then you can get even really big heavy airships to fly without magic."

"I've heard of people flying that way, though they still use magic rather than explosions. Your way sounds insane."

"Sure, fine. Okay but... why haven't I seen airships before now? If you guys can make them?"

"They're expensive to use, and just generally not needed. People fly with magic all the time but they do it for just themselves and a handful of others. For larger groups you have teleportation circles if it's an emergency, and if it's not an emergency why not ride an animal? Airships are mainly only used to carry freight over difficult areas - we're right near the Tundren Ridge, where the land drops off very steeply into some canyons before leveling off. So probably they're using the airships to get down to... well I'm not sure what city is closest. But it's just for those short trips, between the two places so they don't need to take narrow, winding roads up and down each way. You haven't seen airships because most of the roads we've traveled are along nice wide valleys where you can use boats or wagons without any difficulty."

As we got closer to the city the airships became less impressive and I could see Errod was right; they were just barges, basically floating platforms stacked with crates. It was still badass, but a far cry from the standard steampunk fantasy airships I'd been briefly hoping for. The sky scrapers came into clearer view as well, but those remained at least as amazing as at first sight. The bulk of them looked to be around twelve stories high, and many had little bridges connecting them. So sure, maybe not really "sky scrapers" but considering most of the structures I'd seen since arriving were three or four stories at most it was extremely cool to see a big cluster of towers like that. The majority were topped with polished copper domes, but there was an overall larger variety of materials and styles on display when compared to the other cities we'd been through. Heading down the hill and past the farms took another hour, but then we were standing before the massive city walls. There were guards, sort of, but they seemed to be focused primarily on directing traffic - it was clear they weren't expecting to have to fight anyone, and in fact the city gates had been open so long that plants had grown up around them. If anyone was even remotely concerned with fortifying the city it wasn't anyone important.

Katrin got directions to somewhere we could park the wagons and we paid some attendants to feed and wash down the moskar. I whispered a plan to her and while she rolled her eyes some she did it: waving her hands and causing small lights to appear in the air, she did a mock magical ritual over the wagons before telling me - in earshot of the stable hands - that the wagons were "secured". I figured it would make them less likely to root through our things, though the most valuable items were extremely well hidden.

"Okay. Magic item shopping, and replacing some supplies, and getting some more supplies for the next part of the journey, and maybe swing past the university to see if they know anything about the weird kind of magic I've got. We should be able to do all that in like a day, right? It's lunchtime now, so figure we do half today and half tomorrow morning and then get back on the road?"

Errod volunteered to take Elba shopping for mundane stuff while Katrin and I hit the magic items shops, and we split up. I wasn't too worried about finding him, since I could see a tether connecting him and Katrin any time I wanted to.

"I don't want to do anything too much here, I can feel... just the total lack of ambient mana."

"It's from too many people living close together," Katrin said, "it's convenient but it drains the mana for a few miles around. And this city is denser than most, so the effect is stronger. Still, that should just slow down your regeneration of mana not make you use it up faster."

"Yeah, I know. The roads between towns were weaker than off in the woods, but it's nothing compared to this."

Still, I had plenty and I was curious what it would look like to turn on that thread-vision with so many people around. Would I even be able to follow one to Errod with so many things competing for attention? But instead, when I turned it on there was practically nothing.

"What the actual fuck?"

"What's wrong? Did something change?"

"Not about us, but... look, we each have a few of these thread things. I've got a bunch, you and Errod have one connecting you and one each tying to your magic items and some others hanging off. But... that's it. There are a few others, but most of these people have nothing. Even Elba has one! I didn't check in that last town, I should have but we were partying and... hmm." we were still walking, weaving through the crowd and headed towards the part of town we'd been told would have magic items shops. "Maybe I need to know them better? But no, because some people do have them. Plus I saw some just... in the sky, or stretching across our path from somewhere. So that's not it."

"Well, we can try to access the university library tomorrow morning. I'm not sure how much they'll charge, but it probably won't be too bad. There has to be something there that can tell us more."

It was bothering me. I had some instinctive understanding of the ability - though less than for my other gifts - and I could just feel that I should be seeing all of these things, whatever they were, not just the ones on people I knew or whatever. So why would my friends and I have multiple threads while the vast majority of the people we passed had none at all? When I was younger, before I had needed to actually worry about the details of going out on my own and being an adult, I had wanted to be the main character of a story. I'd read the Jake Ross books and various other sci-fi and fantasy novels - often random installments from a series I hadn't had the chance to read the other books from - and I would think about how I wanted to be the hero going on amazing adventures and saving the world and whatever else. And I'd been thinking of this whole situation that way to some extent because when you get sucked into an actual fantasy world it's hard not to do that. But I didn't mean it literally. I meant it like in the "be the main character of your life" spiel that Bill had given me. This thing where only me and my companions had these mysterious lines? That felt like the bad kind of main character shit. Oh no I'm the only kid with purple hair kind of stuff, where you had to worry that there would just be more and more problems coming for you. The thing about being the main character of the story in real life is that it means someone is writing that story - and you don't know they have your best interests in mind. Shit, I didn't know how to even be sure of the genre. Fantasy, yeah, but it could be horror too. I took a deep breath and focused on not bumping into people or getting pick pocketed. I was being silly, I knew. I had more thread things because... well, because I had the ability probably. Or because they were more likely depending on how many gifts you had (setting Errod aside, since he didn't quite line up with that theory). Or maybe because of the time travel stuff I was somewhat connected to, or the fact I was from another planet. Maybe everyone on Earth had a bunch of lines. The main character talk was absurd. It was nothing.

We hit three different magic item shops, and this time none gave me a headache when I walked inside. As I'd suspected, with enough money and the ability to charge things up with mana you could get some extremely interesting gear - and if I were to dump some points into specifically increasing my efficiency at charging magic items I could be a god damned super hero. Magic items lacked the versatility of spellcasting of course, since you not only needed a different item for each use but generally couldn't tweak how they worked on the fly. There were artifacts that could do more, supposedly, including some legendary ones that could actually replicate having a gift from a Duminere - but those were ridiculously rare and wouldn't be for sale. I ended up buying so much gear that we had to get a banker involved - they had some magical means of contacting the bank in Radagan and doing the magical equivalent of a wire transfer, although it came with some disturbing news.

"There has been an incident, at the auction house. You had an item there, and the proceeds were to be sent to your account?"

"Oh! The war hammer. Yeah." I'd have to split out the proceeds to Sige, Cyne, and Mila once it sold. Same went for the bounties on Telen, some of which would take a while to collect on even with his armor and Dumine in a vault in Radagan for verification.

"That item was, unfortunately, stolen from the auction house during an attack. Several people were killed. As this is related to a contract with the government, a lawyer is working with the auction house on your behalf to resolve the question of reimbursement."

"Fuck. Wow. Uh, okay. I mean I guess that's... can you send a message back? Tell my lawyer to... shit, I guess just... just whatever amount we get from the auction house, give it to the families of whoever died. If that's a thing they can do." I'd have to also arrange to send some of my stipend to the others to make that up to them since I hadn't consulted them first, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. I felt responsible, somehow.

"I'll send that message, right away. Otherwise, your accounts are in order and I can arrange payment to these merchants as needed."

First things first, we needed a better healing option. The tradeoff was between portability, mana cost, and healing ability. I went for the best healing ability with terrible portability, meaning it would need to be mounted to one of the wagons. The cost was extreme, but not ridiculous - and it had a capacitor which meant as long as I kept it charged after every use we would be fine. If it was ever out of juice and then I was the one that needed it, well... hopefully in that case Katrin's quick and dirty healing spell would suffice. I wanted to get a few high quality healing potions as well, but there was some sort of city-wide shortage. With healing taken care of, I purchased some throwing knives with extra tricks to them - they could be charged with mana, and then go off when they hit something. I got two each of heat, lightning, and force - that last one was particularly mean, as the force actually caused it to dig in deeper. I wanted to get Errod a magic sword, but Katrin said he would want to pick one out for himself so I let it go - even though I knew that he wouldn't pick out one as cool as what I had in mind, a wicked looking black blade that used spatial magic to teleport a chunk of whoever it hit a foot to the left. It was outrageously expensive, would need to be recharged every time, and probably would constitute a war crime. But oh man, so cool.

There were plates that could be attached to the wagons to make them lighter and therefore easer to get over rough terrain, and a water purifier, and a canister that would make it easier for me to make crystalized mana, and for protection a woven metal jacket thing made from alchemical materials - not only did it look badass, but it was virtually immune to damage. I could still get my ass kicked, but it would be bludgeoning rather than getting sliced to ribbons and that seemed like an important upgrade. After that I was out of the really important things but not out of money, and so I went a little crazy.

"Katrin! It's a diving helmet!"

"Do we need a diving helmet?"

"It's! Look at it! It's totally one of those fishbowl helmets from old sci-fi stories!"

"You know that I didn't understand that."

"I'm buying it. And the hover shoes."

"You're going to kill yourself with those things."

"Oh absolutely. I'm for sure going to break my tailbone like, within thirty seconds. But won't that be hilarious? And I'm getting the remote control spider."

"Oh please don't. I'm begging you."

"Who doesn't want a remote controlled spider? Plus it can control other stuff, like if we find a really stupid bird or something. Oh, a fish! Fish are dumb, right? And it can swim alongside me as I explore the ocean with my diving helmet!"

The remote controlled spider was a huge lobotomized spider with an extremely expensive magical device attached to it. On the spider end, the device was a metal disc about as big around as a baseball. It stuck to the spider and melded with its body, and kept it healthy by borrowing life mana from the person touching the other half of the device, which you could strap to yourself. It even clicked together, so you could wear the huge spider on your arm while it wasn't in use. And then whenever you wanted you could remote control it and drive it around and - to some extent - even see through its eyes. You couldn't attach it to something smart or it would fight you for control and probably win, and you couldn't attach it to something large or the drain of life mana would be too much. But having a spider or crab or whatever I could pilot around was just the right level of fucked up to be really fascinating to me. I bought it despite - or maybe because of - Katrin's obvious disgust, and named the spider Mister Creepy. We had to have the healing platform and the gravity plates delivered to the wagons for installation, and by the time everything was ready Errod was back with supplies and a very bored-looking Elba. We showed him our haul - Katrin had purchased a few things as well including something that was supposed to repair minor damage to objects and some fireproof gloves - and he was appropriately baffled by Mister Creepy. He was also disturbed to find out I'd blown all my money when the bank representative stopped by to provide some receipts.

"Ah, and they acknowledged your request about the money from the auction settlement. The proceeds will be split between the families of the four - I'm sorry, three - people killed in the attack."

"Wait, was it three or four?"

"Ah, yes. Well. There were four deaths, but one was believed to be assisting the criminals."

"Believed to be, or was for sure? What even happened?"

"The man who was killed picked the locks and bypassed security for the auction house, and allowed two heavily armed and armored persons inside. They stole several items, including the war hammer, and killed the guards that responded to the alarm. The one that picked the locks reportedly panicked and ran, and was killed as well."

"By the guards or the armored guys?"

"I'm not certain, the report was rather... sparse."

"Huh. Okay. Well, whatever. Include that guy's family too."

"I - excuse me?"

"I said include that guy's family. Some dude breaks in, freaks out when people start getting killed? And he wasn't geared up like the others? Probably some poor asshole just trying to get by. Shit. I've broken into places. I've stolen things. He probably had someone that cared about him, and now he's dead. So cut him in."

"I... I don't know that that's..."

"Is it my money?"

"Well yes. Yes of course."

"Yes? Not 'yes, but...' or anything?"

"No. It's your money. I apologize, it wasn't my place to question your choices."

And the little banker packed up, very quickly, and left.