Things were progressing well. The ship was swarming with people measuring walls and drawing diagrams, under the watchful eyes of Shitheel and the significantly less watchful eyes of Grunkle. It was actually a pretty potent good cop / bad cop routine, as Shitheel openly hissed and snapped at everyone and Grunkle smiled amicably and said it was fine, totally fine, he was sure they would all be good friends. It helped that Grunkle was fucking huge and made entirely of muscle.

He barely looked like the Behemoth anymore, despite so far being unable to make use of the man's Dumine. He just looked... well, less crazy, for one, and more... refined. He was wearing black silk robes with a bright streak of gold, a hat that was just big enough to be floppy, and something not unlike a feather boa, though it was shorter and wrapped around one arm. He assured me it had been extremely fashionable, at some distant point in the past. It matched the gold streak in his robes, and honestly it didn't look terrible.

He'd also shaved, plucked his eyebrows - something I was pretty sure nobody did on this world - and put on fancy makeup around his eyes. I'd seen that one, a few times, and it wasn't a gendered thing here but the overall look was still very... odd... from an Earth perspective. I wasn't sure if it would be enough to keep him from being recognized out in the world, but the likelihood that any random apprentice woodworkers would know whose body it was seemed vanishingly small.

The mana battery had been removed from the ship and replaced with a temporary one just strong enough to keep the lights on, and Brin Telemet Ranket, the artificer, was sure that the lump of extra mana crystal wasn't a sign that the whole thing was unstable. Most likely some small fragment of a crystal had gotten in there while the main one was being formed somehow. He was being careful with removing it, because he was terrified of damaging the device and also wanted to keep the crystal intact so he could have it stabilized and used as an additional battery. It would only have a fraction of the strength that the main one did, but was still way better than most you could easily purchase.

The main battery's casing was still damaged, and it would continue to potentially release extra mana or even grow more crystals in that spot, so he was also working on very carefully bending the metal back into place and routing any stray mana elsewhere to disperse.

I'd taken my oath for Mama Carnage, though she'd let keep my personalized one extremely simple - scraping away the flowery language, it boiled down to "I won't treat people like things". It wasn't even all that ironclad, but that was by design; it was like one of those finger trap things, where it was loose until you tried to fight it. The more I attempted to subvert or ignore the oath, the less I'd be able to, but if I just accidentally slipped up it wouldn't fuck me over. Errod had, much to my surprise, also gone fairly generic although I hadn't looked at the actual wording. He said it was because he was going to have it replaced with a better one once he was really happy with the wording, and from the amount of time he'd been agonizing over scribbled paragraphs he was serious about it.

We were headed out on a job soon, one that Mama Carnage had been nice enough to pick out for us. It wasn't going to pay well, because we were basically there as bonus mercenaries - the real one that had been hired was Sige. We'd be tracking down the source of some extraplanar monsters, which was a super cool-sounding job and almost exactly the kind of adventure that I had dreamed of. Sige's confidence that it would be easy took a little of the excitement off, but it's not like I wanted it to be hard, either.

There was just one more thing I wanted to do before we left, and I had to do it right away because it was too risky to work on during the job - the oath would kick in as soon as we got on the road. I'd been preparing for a while, and finally felt just certain enough that I knew what I was doing. If I was wrong, well, this was maybe going to be a big fucking mess.

The oydirme in front of me convulsed and took on Betokat's form, then giggled and looked around in confusion. "Interesting, interesting! Some time has passed, yes, and I have entered at the middle of your domain rather than the edge. A security measure, perhaps?"

"I had security, yeah, but thanks to you it's ruined." Betokat - as intended - clearly didn't remember our prior conversation, and was assuming they'd tripped an alarm and been temporarily trapped. They didn't need to know that I was instead referring to the Granch nest. "I was actually hoping you'd help me build a better one, since you're so knowledgeable." This felt like a longshot, but they'd said they could help me improve last time.

"Possibly, possibly. Unless you are just trying to keep me out and break our bargain?"

"Frankly I'm offended that you would think I'd break a bargain. Listen. You're still... you're in the tube, right? So this must be some sort of extremely artful customized oydirme. Brilliant, really. I promise that, no matter how much you help me, this oydirme can stay here in my domain. I won't try to kick it out. That promise is on top of all other deals I've made with the original Betokat."

He nodded. "Yes, good. Good. I will look at your defenses and see what I have to work with. But you must make progress yourself, as well."

"I am, I think - swore a binding oath, and... you had been talking to me about the intent behind the planes, before we were interrupted. What we could learn about the gods, and what we could pull from the planes, and all that shit. Well when the oath was writing itself onto my lutore, I could feel the intent behind it. The meaning of the words, my understanding of them. My question is... even without having the specific magical abilities to create binding oaths, can I imprint intent onto things like that?"

Betokat spun in a circle, giggling madly. "Yes! Exactly! Yes, good, good. Not to most, of course. Not to other humans, or even higher spirits. But to yourself? To weak spirits? And oh, oh, the oydirme, who specifically pull external influence into themselves! I will go and look at your defenses and see what can be done to improve them, so that we will not be interrupted. But while I work, you will think on what you have just said and then ponder what it means that the planar boundary so easily interacts with lutores."

The lessons didn't last much longer before we got onto a topic that made Betokat mad and they had to be... put away... again. But I'd learned a lot, and I was sure that I could keep squeezing information out of them a little at a time. Eventually I'd also have to figure out how to draw knowledge out of the archived version directly, so I didn't have to take the risk of talking to them with an actual body; I felt like I was close, but I was worried that if I did it wrong I'd break it or something.

In the morning, Errod and I met with Sige at the Heregie terminal. It was how we had been planning on leaving Good Charl the first time we were here, before the Empire set up a checkpoint there and made us sneak out another way. I was excited, since it meant going to a new plane.

When we walked in, it had the look of a train station - not a huge one, just a small room with benches and a ticket counter and a little cafe. We paid to go in, and headed straight back to the large archway at the side - it was big enough for merchant wagons to pass through, and in fact some were headed past via a larger vehicle entrance.

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Someone was on a ladder, using a small tank with a sprayer to hose down what appeared to be a tendril of fungus or something - although I realized a second later that with what I'd been told about Heregie it was probably made of meat. The whole plane was alive, one big crazy organism. As we walked in there was no indication of that however, since the tunnel was made from stone. I saw a few spots where something organic was growing through a crack, but I wanted a better look.

"So this whole place is alive, right? Is it going to be hidden behind stone blocks the whole time or am I going to get to see it?"

Sige grinned. "Yeah, you'll see plenty. We're going out to the middle of fucking nowhere, and the last stop on this route is too small of a station to have them cover the path. It's also too small for them to have a permanent opening, so we'll have to wait to - hey, where you going?"

I ran back to the arch we'd stepped through into the tunnel and turned on threadsight, hoping to get a better look at how the permanent connection to Heregie was made and holy shit did I get more than I expected. There were complicated purple and white threads woven all around, somehow tying the planes together. A few sections looked frayed, somehow, and others seemed extra crisp. Did they wear out over time, maybe, and need to be repaired? I made sure I'd gotten a good look and then ran back to Sige and Errod.

"Sorry, I wanted to see if I could feel how they'd bound the planes together. You were saying we'd have to wait to get let back into the prime plane?"

"Yeah, it's on a schedule. I could force a way open, but that pisses the station crew off. And I could back away from the station to do it, but we'd have to hike into town and we might show up somewhere shitty - so probably it's easiest to just fucking wait - if we're unlucky we might have to camp at the stop for a whole day, but I'm gonna get impatient after about four hours."

We kept a brisk pace, while Sige warned us about various parasites and other monsters. Heregie was great for travel because distance was significantly contracted as compared to the prime plane and, even better, the locations remained consistent. Other planes could get you places faster, but had their own drawbacks.

"Yeah, this place is pretty fucking useful," Sige said, "so long as you keep moving. Mild healing effects, predictable travel, and - if you're really desperate - free food."

"Oh gross," I said, eyeing another vein-like growth coming from a crack in the wall.

Sige just laughed. "Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it. And I wouldn't use it to get anywhere that's not already mapped out, either. Once you get off the road, it's a maze. If you get lost, stay here too long, you can start to change. I don't know if it's the parasites, or some disease, or what - but if you're here for longer than six days or so you're not coming out the same, if you come out at all. But, y'know, it's super fucking convenient as long as you stay on the road."

We took breaks as needed, and after each one we looked each other over for anything odd. One time I found some gross slug-like thing on Sige's leg, but otherwise we remained unmolested. Eventually we reached a crossroad, and shortly after turning from the main path the walls started to be covered in meaty growths. Whoever had been cleaning things off in here hadn't come this way in a while, and it looked like an absolute horror show.

A bit further and the walls had either ended or been completely enveloped, it was impossible to say at a glance. Parts of the tunnel were smooth, while others were covered in strange bumps or creeping veins. Some bits were pulsing, or breathing, or just... twitching. Sige stopped to crouch down and point something out at one spot, and after realizing what it was I wished he hadn't.

"Why is that lump shaped like a person? Why is there hair at the head end? Is it turning into a person, or did it eat someone?"

Errod had been relaxed all day, but I noticed he had his sword out and had taken a step back. "I would also like to know the answer to that," he said, "or... well, maybe I don't."

Sige chuckled, but there was little warmth to it. "Yeah, fucking messed up. This is someone that was injured or dying, and just laid here too long. Maybe a parasite put them to sleep, who fucking knows."

"And this is a normal way for people to travel? Seriously?"

He stood and shrugged. "Yeah? Like I said, you keep moving and stay on the road. Don't travel alone. It's dangerous to travel no matter how you do it, there's always the chance of monsters or storms or bandits. I'm just making sure you understand why we're not going to sleep directly on the fucking ground here."

I sputtered some, but before I could say anything Errod cut in. "Should we do anything? Remove the body, so it can be taken to the Necropolis? Try to find some identifying item?"

"We can report it," Sige said, "but someone who maintains the route will have to be the one to deal with it. There's stranger things, away from the main routes. There's a spot a guy I know found where some guy is suspended in a clear tube of goo, looks perfectly preserved but won't respond to anything. The walls there, they're skin the same shade as the fucking tube guy, and there's hair that looks like his hanging from the ceiling, and other shit like that. As if the whole section around there is made from this one fucking person. When he tried to break the tube open, all sorts of shit came out of the walls and attacked, and he had to fucking run. Never did find that spot again."

I was still thinking about this horror story when we had to stop for the night, and it didn't make me eager to get in my bedroll. We all made sure there was no skin contact with the horrible fleshscape around us, and then just to be safe I kept watch via divination all night. There were a few little fleshy bug-like things that approached us, but my ghost was able to deal with them. Heregie was creepy as fuck, but once we were all awake and moving again I had to admit that it really did seem manageable - and despite only walking about forty miles over our day and a half in the plane, we'd be exiting well over two hundred miles away.

We got to the station at midday, and as expected the portal wasn't open. Instead there was just a large stone room, kept mostly clear of creeping growth, and some metal benches. We waited for a few hours and had lunch, and then as promised Sige got impatient.

"Okay, they get pissed if we burst into the fucking terminal. We also don't want to make too much work for ourselves to get into town, or appear in some fucking awful spot like a high ledge or a river or some shit. So... if we stay really close, and assume the terminal is close to the city walls..." He paced away from the stone room, muttering to himself. He kept looking back and forth, and I was pretty sure he was counting his steps. "Okay, figure every foot here is six on the prime plane, and... shit, I don't know which side of the city the terminal is on. Huh."

"If we get it wrong in that direction, won't the wards just keep it from working?"

"Probably. But it's hard to tell if it's that, or if it's just not working. And also, hypothetically, we could break the fucking wards and get in trouble. They'd have to be shitty wards, but some of these cities... man, I wish I'd been there before. You been to Haminshast?"

Errod shook his head. "We could just wait a little longer?"

Sige and I ignored that. We did some more measurements, and finally he felt ready to try getting us out. He glared at a wall of rippling purple muscle and concentrated, but after a minute or so nothing had happened. "Want a hand?"

"I thought you couldn't fucking do that?"

"I can't... generally," I said, "but I can help to thin the planar membrane. Mostly I do it for Ematse, but I deliberately made sure it would work in other directions. It's just that I don't really feel which way to... reach... but I have a custom magic item that seems to help with that."

I turned the little dial on one of my bracers, so that the sigil for the prime plane was visible, and I concentrated. Almost immediately the wall in front of us opened with a wet slurping sound, and through a short tunnel I could see daylight and trees. Even though it had been Sige that did the actual work, there was no question that I'd helped - and I'd felt it happen. I wasn't sure to what extent I needed to develop my Dumine to do it on my own, but with the bracer I suspected even the bare minimum would be enough. It would depend on the plane, of course, since some were easier to get into than others, but at least for returning to the prime plane it should be a cake walk.

We pushed through the tunnel of meat, which wasn't roomy enough for comfort, and were birthed out into a wooded area just a mile away from the town of Haminshast. When we finally got inside the walls I wasted no time in arranging for the hottest, most thorough bath I'd ever taken. Heregie was extremely cool in its own way, but I couldn't wait for my airship to be finished so I wouldn't need to go back ever again. The rest of this journey would be on foot - or by coach if we could hire one - starting in the morning after a day of resting and resupplying. Either way, by this time tomorrow I'd be well and truly on my first adventuring job.

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