He woke up in the dark. The first sound he heard was the horse’s breath, a quiet one. The stead was staying put for fear to not hurt them. Istaìnn moaned and tried to move, but his hands were stretched above him, still captive.

“Shh...don’t move… wait until you get enough force to heal…” whispered a voice.

His head was in the leap of one of the girls; he had no idea whose. She was caressing his cheek, and he felt some drops falling on his face, her tears. Then he felt her body inclining forward, her breast weight leaning on his forehead, her hair touching his cheeks. Her mouth found his chin, then went up, searching for his lips. They kissed. It was intense but short, the pain was still there, and he needed to breathe.

“Wait,” he whispered, then asked again: “don’t go …”

They kissed again, for longer.

When he took the next breath, he could concentrate enough to do magic. He willed himself free, and the glass broke, letting his hands fall. He invoked healing, and the burning disappeared, leaving behind only a terrible numbness.

“Aaaaah, I could use a little massage on the hands!” he sighed.

The other girl took his hands and started massaging them.

“Tell me when you want to change again,” she told her sister.

“How much time was I passed out?” he asked.

“I don’t know…” replied the one who held him. “Probably half an hour? We shifted when we got numb, every ten minutes or so.”

“Find the bead in my pocket and break it. Outside should be still daylight, and we’ll see the tunnel. Let’s escape this damn place…”

But before that, a faint light appeared on a screen and the Mind’s face with it.

“Mind, you’ve escaped!” exclaimed Feyra, the one who was holding him.

“Barely… There are a few Realm energy ley lines around, and I managed to connect to one. I came back to see if you are well, and ask: what happened? How did you manage to stop them.”

Before answering, the spy hugged both of them, kissing their hair, then got on his feet and began rotating his wrists to get rid of the last remains of numbness.

“Yes, tell us, what happened?” asked Heyra, rising too. “They got what they wanted, and they abandoned?”

He swallowed hard.

“No,” he answered. “Things are different from what everyone imagined... The reactor, the magic, everything...”

Heyra caressed his hand slightly, and he smiled at her. He gathered his thoughts and continued.

“The Reactor was working and not working at the same time. When I tried to connect to it, using magic, I found only nothingness. It was not there. As she said, it was dismantled. But that piece left behind… that piece worked… It was doing for them what you two do for me. Channeling energy, giving them powers. Like an amulet from the stories, one which grants wishes.”

“Absurd!” exclaimed the Mind. “An amulet granting wishes… that’s…”

She stopped. After a long pause, she talked again, visibly shivering.

“Yes, it can be. Although it has no sense.”

“What?” asked Feyra.

“I don’t know if you’ll understand,” the Mind sighed.

“Try us!” ordered Heyra. “I’m fed up. All these months fumbling around without a clue, I can’t take it anymore… I want a clear explanation, right now!”

“As you wish. Imagine you have a book. A thick book, thousands of pages thick, and this book is filled with possible realities. Imagine you jump headfirst into a wall, and while jumping, you open the book. What’s on the page you open happens. On some pages, the story wants you to get a bump. In others, you step on your toes and fail to jump; in others, like by magic, you are transported to the other side, safe. You have the interest to open the book on the right page. That was what the Certitude Inductor was doing; he chose the right probability for the ship to safely pass through the tunnels and the best destination possible. It was the Inductor who brought us here. And seems that King of the Others had the same power. He knew all the versions of the story and could choose the one he wanted.”

“Yes, exactly,” said Istaìnn. “That piece gave him this power.”

“Yes, but how? How? Where is the causality? Do you think it’s enough to stay on the moon and wish for powers? No, you need to have the inductor, work directly with it, and put a lot of energy into it to make it work. A lot. Like a small star’s energy. But they never had access to the Inductor. Never. I assure…”

“Sure they did!” talked Istaìnn over her because he was drained and in no mood for a long chat. “They had access just now when I’ve sent Faredhiel on the other side of the tunnel. That guy, the monster, he was confident he will win and get the Certitude Inductor. Because if they didn’t have it in the past, the only explanation is that they were sure to reach it in the future. As soon as the Inductor got there, it gave them powers, reflecting back into the past. That’s how probabilities work, sometimes, through time.”

“So his plan succeeded,” sighed Heyra. “I hope he will be content with this and leave us alone.”

“No,” he stopped her with a caress on her cheek. “His plan failed. I’ve told you, magic works differently than how people think it works. People's minds complicate things. That monster had the power of reading hundreds, thousands of possibilities, maybe.”

“Ugh!” shivered the girl.”Quite a power…”

“Yes, but let’s imagine this. Instead of that book with thousands of pages, you have a paper and a pen. You can write yourself the story you wish for. This is how a spell should be: direct, simple. And I’ve told myself: If I killed one of them, why not kill the second the same way? I put a spell on that item, the same I’ve put on the arrow I used in the Old City. Kill the monster. Simple, direct. They underestimated be, drunken by their power to read futures, took me for a moth chewing at their mighty thread. But I’m no moth, to his probabilistic fabric, I’m a flame, a knife. I presume that the Certitude Inductor gave them the powers, as he asked, then it killed him, as I’ve asked. With him gone, their powers were gone too, so the tunnel disappeared. The Others are now stuck on the Second Moon, powerless.”

The Mind looked at him with respect, then just disappeared, letting them in the dark again.

“So, where’s that bead?” asked Heyra, stretching like a cat.

t.