“Rembrandt, stop,” Fontaine hissed, as Rembrandt shot yet another beam of magic at Ceyda. Ceyda gave a yell and ducked.

“I’ll kill you!” Rembrandt hissed. “I’ll kill you, you stupid insolent little bitch!”

“We don’t even know if we can die in this world!” Ceyda shot back as she grabbed a toy and put it in front of her face for protection.

“One way to find out!” Rembrandt said cheerfully.

“Rembrandt, we need her.” Fontaine grabbed Rembrandt by the shoulder, chains wrapping around his arm and coiling around Rembrandt’s torso.

“She’s just some twelve year old pillar!” Rembrandt snapped.

Ceyda once again fought the urge to correct them. Rude. Honestly so rude. She was not twelve! She didn’t even look twelve! She hadn’t looked twelve since she was eleven, a fact her mother had reminded of her every waking day since then!

“She bonded with the book! If there’s any chance we can get out, it’s probably through her!” Fontaine shot back.

Rembrandt ceased his spells. He clawed at his face. “I hope that when we get out of here, we can call the Sons of Kesterline to Bricketfriar, and watch as they burn this backwater town to the ground.”

Fontaine stared at Rembrandt.

“I--I misspoke. I don’t actually want that,” Rembrandt said, waving his hands defiantly. “It just came pouring out.”

“Can we at least call truce until we get out?” Ceyda yelled. “Can we do that? Truce?”

“Truce,” Fontaine said.

“... truce,” Rembrandt said reluctantly.

Dizziness hit Ceyda square in the head. The golden net swirled and blurred together. It wasn’t painful, not in the way a headache was or having her heart removed--it was jarring in how utterly inhuman it was.

There was something wrong with what she said. Something she couldn’t quite place.

“What did you do?” Fontaine asked, as he took a step forward and summoned his spell book.

“I don’t know! I only just learned Doc might be an Avatar! I have very limited information you know!” Ceyda snapped.

Above them, still bound in chains, Rage shook back and forth violently. Ceyda couldn’t help but think that a jailer probably would take great joy in three new prisoners.

“Why don’t we see if there is anything else? Outside of the dome?” Ceyda suggested feebly. Fontaine and Rembrandt talked amongst themselves, not hearing her.

“We’re going to look outside the dome,” Fontaine said. “You can follow us if you want.”

“Your hearing is terrible,” Ceyda replied. “I already suggested that!”

The two mages did not acknowledge her words, and walked past her. Rude. Was there some sort of silencing magic? Or were they just ignoring her? Magic was annoying, because now there were always at least two possibilities to every problem, and that just wouldn’t do.

In silence, the three fumbled their way through the dome, and back into the dark nothingness with no golden threads, toys, or trapped creatures named Rage to provide reference.

They had barely taken a few steps when Rembrandt gripped his hair and groaned. “This is ridiculous. We’re just going to get attacked by that not-rumination frenzy! We’re going to go insane in this damn prison, and it’s all the bitch’s fault!”

“I distinctly remember it being Fontaine who stabbed my book,” Ceyda replied.

“You stole it! And who told you our names? Who gave you the right?” Rembrandt snarled.

“You’ve been using each other’s names this entire time,” Ceyda said. “I’m not an idiot.”

“We are trained to never disclose important information, so you have some mind reading bullshit going on,” Rembrandt grabbed Ceyda’s shoulder forcibly.

“I wish,” Ceyda muttered, digging her nails into the soft flesh between Rembrandt’s thumb and pointer finger.

Rembrandt retracted his hand, hissing in pain. She had barely pinched him and he was reacting like she had bitten a finger off. Not that she was complaining--maybe it was some left over strength from Dorskina.

Ceyda clapped her hands together, and in her best spell invoking attempt, she yelled--

“Dorskina!”

Fontaine stared at her. Rembrandt covered his ears in annoyance.

“Look I had to at least try and summon an Avatar,” Ceyda said, staring Rembrandt dead in the eye. “I don’t see you trying anything!”

“Trying anything--try what?” Rembrandt muttered.

“Clearly the answer is a fuck ritual,” Fontaine said nonchalantly.

“What makes you say that? My book never said anything about sex based rituals,” Ceyda replied. “Or rituals at all.”

Fontaine stared at her. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Ceyda answered compulsively before she could stop herself from giving away pertinent information.

Rembrandt snorted. “So she’s just deficient.”

“I’m telling the truth! My book had a voice that dispersed information to me, and explained to me how magic worked! That’s part of what made it so magical--honestly didn’t the Blanches give this information to you?” Ceyda spat. She wasn’t going to appear like she didn’t know anything again.

Fontaine coughed. “Let’s just keep walking.”

“No! Explain to me what you meant! If you have an idea you should--” Ceyda’s words trailed off. There was gray fog flowing across the ground, murky and brilliant against the inky abyss.

Rembrandt cursed and raised his fist in the air, aiming at the fog.

The fog billowed into a single pillar, taking on the shape of something not quite humanoid. Lightning crackled around the fog, as if it were a storm cloud, and deeply embedded were two glowing green eyes.

“Another one? Another one!” Rembrandt yelled.

“My attention has been drawn here,” the fog whispered, its voice disjointed, like an echo across a canyon.

“Are you Dorskina?” Ceyda asked.

“No.”

"Are you the strange foggy woman that gave me the Grimoire?"

"No."

“Damn.”

Rembrandt cracked his knuckles, put on a glove, and lightly touched the fog. It passed through, and the green eyes did not even falter.

“You here to help us or try to kill us?” Rembrandt asked.

“Depends. What are you trying to do?” the fog asked.

“We want to leave here!” Ceyda said. “I have a grimoire, I think it belonged to Teractus, it makes you super powerful, and then these dinguses broke it, and it exploded and sucked us in and now we’re here.”

“... I could assist in such a thing,” the fog replied.

Ceyda clapped her hands together. Rembrandt breathed a sigh of relief, and Fontaine unfolded his arms.

“Great! Wonderful! How! When? Who or what are you?”

“With a deal. Now. I am nameless and I am formless,” the fog responded.

“Nameless? You don’t have a name?” Ceyda said.

“No.”

“No you do have a name or no you don’t--”

“Shut up,” Rembrandt snapped. “What’s the deal?”

“I have a friend I wish to see freed. They are trapped--perhaps you have seen them?” the nameless fog asked.

“Rage?” Ceyda supplied.

The fog nodded, the crackling lightning becoming louder and brighter.

“Done,” Fontaine said, turning around.

“What--no!” Ceyda grabbed Fontaine by the arm. “We can’t do that! Teractus will be tortured!”

“Teractus wants us to lose our minds and die in here,” Fontaine responded.

“Stop!” Ceyda yelled, as Fontaine tried to shake her off. To her surprise, he paused.

Ceyda rolled her head back to the fog. “Isn’t there something else we could do? Anything at all?”

“Yes.”

Ceyda let go of Fontaine, beamed, and jumped upwards in victory. “What is it? Also how do you know Rage? How do you know Teractus? Why are you trapped here? If you’re formless why are you made of fog and lightning? Do you have a brain? Do you think?”

The fog extended its arms, and from it, small wax candles, wicks alit, wrapped in brilliant glowing red ribbon, floated towards the group.

“Place your hand over the flame and give me a memory of your life. When you are ready, break the ribbon. I know all beings in this world. I was trapped here by mere chance. I am formless because I was not given form, but I have accumulated aspects. I do not have a brain. That is something only humans use.”

“I vote for freeing a random monster we know nothing about,” Rembrandt said. “Like fuck am I giving you a fucking-- a memory? Are you fucking serious?”

“Can it be any memory?” Ceyda asked. “Also--”

“If you ask another question with that screechy fucking voice of yours I’ll fucking burn your corpse at the stake,” Rembrandt hissed.

“You ripped my heart out!” Ceyda yelled. “You don’t get to insult me!”

“It can be any memory, any memory at all, but you will not have it afterwards,” the fog said.

“Just give them a random memory, Brandt,” Fontaine said. “That Rage thing might have tried to kill us on sight anyway.”

Rembrandt sighed, gritted his teeth, but did not protest.

Three candles, all intertwined in ribbon, floated in front of the mages and Ceyda.

“Hold out your hand, just above the flame,” the fog instructed.

Ceyda did just so. She would need to find a memory she was willing to give up. Something boring and unrelated and unimportant. Unfortunately all her memories were important. If she didn’t remember the time Mehdi broke the vase and she got in trouble for it, who would be the one to remind her parents of it? No one! Absolutely no one!

And if she gave up a random lecture that was lost information!

Wait! The fact that she had to piss in a bucket! That was gross and something she never wanted to think about again! Wonderful!

“Release the memory, and break the ribbon,” the fog instructed.

Ceyda poked the ribbon experimentally, and it shattered, along with it, the memory.

Had she given up a memory? It looked like she had, since the ribbon was broken and she couldn’t remember what it was that had done it.

What had she given up? Past Ceyda was smart, she probably gave up something Ceyda never wanted to think about again. But also Past Ceyda was an idiot who was constantly screwing over Future Ceyda so what if it had been an important one? Aaargh!

And none of her memories were truly useless. They always held some sort of information she needed for later.

“Well, we played your game, what do you do now?” Fontaine asked.

“Nothing,” the fog replied.

“What do you mean?” Ceyda asked.

The fog started to fade and disperse.

“You were never trapped here. Your time was limited regardless. I do nothing but give you the gift of this information,” the fog replied, completely vanishing into the inky abyss.

“What?” Fontaine roared, his passive face breaking into rage, just for a moment.

“We got fucking played. Fucking played,” Rembrandt hissed.

“If we were just going to fade, why didn’t Teractus say something?” Ceyda said, blinking in confusion as she constantly tried to imagine them suddenly fading back into the real world. Maybe if she did it enough it would happen right now.

“Teractus is some sort of false idol who has no reason to tell us the truth,” Fontaine said. “I would call you gullible, but we’ve all been made fools tonight.”

“Teractus isn’t a false idol! Your king is!” Ceyda uttered, regretting it the moment the words were uttered. This would be a good time to immediately backtrack. “You have learned magic under false pretenses and attached it to your pride, but blame me for your failings as mages and as men!”

Ah yes. The classic “backtrack by yelling more.” Good job Ceyda. Good fucking job.

She flinched and took a step back.

“Well, if the timer’s running out,” Rembrandt said brightly as he activated his glowing glove. “And your magic isn’t working…”

Fontaine did not stop Rembrandt this time, and instead folded his arms and cocked a passive eyebrow.

Shit.

“Now would be a great time to expel us, dimension of dark badness!” Ceyda yelled, waving her hands in frustration.

The candles were flickering up in what Ceyda could only call the sky, the ribbons dancing against the nothingness. They were far away, but it gave Ceyda something to run to. She bolted away, not knowing what else to do. She couldn’t hear footsteps in this world, so she had no idea how far Rembrandt was from her.

Just run, make a turn, how far away was Teractus’ home? If she could make it back to the toys, those azads, surely they would protect her against the jackass that kicked them, right? That’s all she had to do. Find Teractus and--

Ceyda woke up.

The sun had almost entirely set.

She sat up, and rubbed her head in pain. She had tripped and fell and--

Teractus?

She had met Teractus. With those two mages who were trying to kill her. Because they had--

“Doc!” Ceyda whispered hoarsely, reaching down and instinctively grabbing for the grimoire.

Ceyda? Did I pass out or something? Can I pass out?

“Doc someone stabbed you and then you exploded and then I got absorbed into you and met Teractus and something named Rage and something named--” Ceyda frowned. “I don’t know. Something named something. And it stole my memories and now I’m here!”

Oh. Okay. That’s all.

“Also the mages definitely don’t know any of the Avatars. This one guy mentioned like--someone named Eido? And also they tried to kill me! And you! But you’re alive! And I wanted to tell them my name but I didn’t so they still don’t know that! And when you exploded everything slowed down and--and I think you killed a bunch of people! I killed a bunch of people! But they were mages so they would have killed me so it was probably for the best, right?” Ceyda rambled further.

Thank you Ceyda. That--well that explains why you have some Quasinonce spells.

“I do?!” Ceyda asked brightly.

Yes. You’ve learned… twenty-nine Quasinonce spells.

“Twenty-nine?! Can I resurrect people?” Ceyda exclaimed.

No. That comes with spell three thousand six hundred, I believe.

Ceyda stared at the sky, back at Doc and back at the sky.

“Quasinonce is stupid.”

It is not!

“Then what can I do?”

You can cast a spell to count something for twenty-nine seconds. You can cast a spell to play back something in your minds eye that is twenty-nine seconds. You can set a reminder for yourself to go off in twenty-nine seconds. You can cast a spell that, if you cast it again, it will tell you when the last time you cast it was, so long as it is within twenty-nine seconds…

Ceyda groaned. “Please stop. I’m so tired, and so hungry.”

We can talk about this later. And about your experience… inside me? I guess. This grimoire being connected to a dead Avatar, I have to admit I hadn’t considered that.

Ceyda nodded and slowly stood up.

“Shield,” she muttered, and a glowing shield warped around her.

Nothing. No random snipes of an arrow.

“Senses,” she said in the same tired voice.

The shield remained up, and she caught a glimpse of the entire hill. It was the same one she had been trapped on, and there were indeed bodies of mages cut in half, some were still freshly bleeding, which lent credence to Teractus being wrong or lying about how time worked.

But it also meant anyone could be nearby.

No Rembrandt or Fontaine. That was the strange part. If she had ended up in the same spot, they should have been a few feet away from her.

Nothing, just some stomped on flowers and blades of grass.

She had two options. Stay in the woods on the off chance she was being followed, or go back to Whiskey Road and hope she wasn’t.

Her limbs shivered in protest, and a chill went through the air.

Whiskey Road it was.

Every rustle of leaves, every shadow in the night, every drumming noise in her head gave her pause. Hiding from the nobles had been stressful earlier today, but this was different. She couldn’t describe it, and what annoyed her the most was that if she tried to explain it to herself from a few days ago, she probably would have dismissed such a concept as hyperbolic nonsense.

It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t pain. Ceyda knew those feelings. Knew the feeling of the world ending because something terrible happened. Usually because she had been grounded for a week.

This… was just a gulf of crackling acid. Which wasn’t an emotion. Not one Ceyda knew of. But she experienced it all the same.

She thought of going through this again. Stealing again, getting caught, having to fight. Her grimoire breaking. If Rembrandt and Fontaine were out there, they now knew the best way to take her down, aim for the grimoire, and then kill her inside it.

Sacred Skies, no. She couldn’t let that happen. And even if they didn’t, she couldn’t go through another fight. Not like what had happened. Not again. Not ever.

“Doc?”

Yes, Ceyda?

“Maybe--maybe we could try and teach magic to one or two people. Just a few, to see if it works”

Huh, I’d thought you’d be further adamant than before.

“Why?” Ceyda asked.

You casting magic has put a target on your chest. For them to learn the same thing, that will create targets on their chests as well, and I assure you, they will be nowhere near as powerful as you are.

“Right, but, did you see those spells that guy was dishing out? Rembrandt?” Ceyda asked. “And what about all those other schools you mentioned? I can’t learn them all, not all at once. Not fast enough. But if a bunch of people are learning… maybe it will be easier. I won’t have to figure everything out on my own.”

That makes sense. It would be easier to narrow down the possibilities. Especially since

Silence.

Ceyda sighed. Not about to let whatever was making Doc act weird stop her, she continued her thoughts. “I don’t want to have to stay up all day, every day, on the chance that someone attacks me. I want to be safe. I want to feel safe. If others can fight, even for a second...well, that means I’m safer.”

That’s a tad cold blooded.

“I know. But it’s how I feel,” Ceyda said.

Well, you’re not wrong. And while it is harshly worded, you’ve hit a very basic aspect of societal groupings. If more than one person has a skill, they are no longer the most important person in the town. A rare skill means you’re valued, but a common skill means you can sleep in.

“I would very much like to sleep in,” Ceyda replied. “I’ve enjoyed being special, but for now I just want to sleep in, thank you.”

Well, I’m not going to disagree with teaching magic. We should also see if we can find out if there are other mages like that man you met. If there is, you could find yourself a teacher, and you wouldn’t have to do this alone.

“Mm.”

Ceyda stumbled her way onto the main road. She wasn’t too sure how she got here, as in a panic, she hadn’t been paying attention to directions, but if her mental map was correct, she was on the other side of town. Which meant Whiskey street was a ways away.

Her stolen slippers had long broken off, so barefoot and dirty, Ceyda walked the cobblestone road, not knowing what to do.

She made another turn, and the familiar smell of leather returned to her. With a little trial and error, she found the building she was being held in. It was pitch black, not a single candle. Ceyda hesitantly walked in, not daring to step on the fractured wooden planks.

No one.

It was abandoned.

Ceyda sat on the cobblestone road. She took a deep breath, and blinked, and found tears in her eyes.

They probably didn’t want to risk coming back.

“No one ever tells a story where nothing works out,” Ceyda muttered.

Hey! Listen, you’re alive, aren’tcha? And things will get better. They just suck a lot right now!

“I think I’m going to go home.”

Like your real home? The place you were before a bunch of teenagers kidnapped you and locked you in a basement with a meathook?

Ceyda nodded. “I don’t know what I’m doing, and they all hated me anyway.”

Aw, Ceyda. Well, look, you do whatever you want. I’ll support you regardless, but for what it’s worth, I like you. And those kids were just making the smart move.

“I know but I want a bed! I want to sleep in a real bed! Not the floor of a basement or the ground!” Ceyda spat. “And I want to take a bath! And eat a warm meal! And a dozen other things!”

That’s fair. How do you intend to explain me?

“I’ll hide you, and I’ll--hm,” Ceyda frowned. “I just remembered I’m very bad at lying. What if I erased my own memories, and then reawakened them at a later time?”

Well, I admire your ambition, but that is not possible in any magical sphere I know of, except through Yore’s Oaths. And even that one I’m not sure about. I guess you could figure a way to use Quasinonce for it, you know, with Time Magic. But that’s a dangerous path too.

“There is definitely a way to remove memories,” Ceyda mumbled.

Pardon?

“The--the nameless fog we met. It had these candles we could sacrifice our memories too.”

Did you--did it work?

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

There was a dark silence between Doc and Ceyda.

“Ceyda!” A familiar voice yelled her name.

Holding a lantern, racing over to her, was a human shaped blob of a specific height. Ceyda squinted, trying to make heads or tails over who this person was.

As he got close, Ceyda recognized it to be Merlin, thanks to the glasses he was sporting.

To her surprise, he hugged her without hesitation.

“I knew you’d be here!”

Ceyda hugged back, not sure if it would be rude not to. “Merlin! I’ve had a terrible day!”

“Yeah, I heard. There were mages all over the town, just stationed. It was crazy,” Merlin babbled, as he started to drag her into a direction that was not where her home was.

“It’s my fault,” Ceyda said sourly.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. We had been anticipating an attack like that for a while now. We just assumed it would be because, well, Opal had the spellbook. We have a place to hide and everything. We uh, sort of kept you in a secondary location,” Merlin babbled as he walked down the streets.

Ceyda’s eyes lit up.

Sooo, is that a nix on the plan to meet the parental units?

“And you’re taking me there?” Ceyda squeaked happily.

“Yeah, dude, you’re a king blessed hero! You stole a bunch of shit that we can probably hawk for ages. We’ll have to space it out, but you got some legit silver trinkets and silk clothing!” Merlin said, his voice getting quieter as he talked.

Ceyda beamed. She had helped!

Yep, all right. Change of plans it is. I’ll uh, look into memory erasing spells just in case.

“Oh!” Merlin stopped walking and handed something to Ceyda.

She took it, and to her surprise, they were a pair of glasses.

“I nicked these, I don’t know if they’re you’re kind or not, but I figured it was a start,” Merlin said. “Told ya I’d get you glasses.”

Ceyda put them on her face. They didn’t fit, and were in fact rather loose. They were also a bit weak for magnifying.

But she could see better than ever.

“Thank you Merlin, this might be the second nicest thing I’ve ever received,” Ceyda gushed.

“Don’t worry about it. It wouldn’t stop bothering me, so that’s a load off my mind,” Merlin said.

That’s an interesting statement, Ceyda.

Ceyda shrugged. “I suppose.”

She followed Merlin into the dark, wearily hoping that wherever they ended up, there was a bed for her.