I made it back into New York, feeling strangely numb. I'd gotten some concerned texts from Errod, of all people, but when I said I was fine and asked why he was worried he said "DONT KNOW TALK LATER". He wasn't the best at texting, and I wasn't sure how he kept ending up sending in all caps. I'd assumed that as soon as I reached the hotel we would start preparing for an attempt at Coelestis, but, but when I got there around eleven I was immediately dragged away by a very excited Matlyn.

There was a big outdoor market about fifteen minutes away at Union Square, and she started taking me from stall to stall to template everything. After that, it was off to another market. And another. And after that, she let me know that there were a shocking number of botanical gardens in or around New York City. Sadly for Matlyn, we were still in the first one when it closed at six because that place was enormous. It was a long day of learning way, way too much about plants, but I was thankful for the distraction; I still had some complicated feelings about seeing mom again, and how it had gone.

We all met for dinner. It was my first time doing the teppanyaki thing, though I'd seen it on the internet, and I got to hear all about the touristy shit the others had gotten up to while Katrin and I had been bedridden for two days. There were a few things I was sad I'd missed, but for the most part I wasn't that concerned; I had a whole other world to explore, and there would always be things I didn't get to do on Earth. I said something to that effect, and Errod got a thoughtful look.

"Couldn't you, though?" he asked. "I just mean... you're confident you'll be able to get us back when we need to. If that's true, and I think it is, then why couldn't we just come back whenever we want?"

I wasn't sure how to answer. "I... you're right, but it doesn't feel like that. Maybe it's just that I'm picturing us having to run after we hit Coelestis, or maybe it's that this feels like a discrete job that's going to be over, but... I think maybe it's more than that. Fate isn't going to let me not be back for the Grand Alignment, which is good because it means we can't get stuck here. But the flip side of that is that we're not going to be allowed to just hang out on Earth, right? And after the Grand Alignment..."

I wasn't really sure there would even be an "after the Grand Alignment", but even if there was and we saved the world, I had trouble imagining I'd be around to enjoy it. There was too much happening, and so many people wanted to kill me. Then again, maybe coming back to Earth would be how I saved myself; I didn't want to, I wanted to explore the planes and visit all the different countries around fantasyland, but if it was the only place they wouldn't find me I might not have a choice. Especially with every single Sahrger after me Earth was probably the only place that was safe.

Wait. Earth... was safe.

If the world ended, that wasn't the whole universe. It was just the thirty-six planes. Earth was outside of that system, and would be totally fine. If we didn't stumble into some way to save everything, then right before the Grand Alignment we could all just come back here. Errod wouldn't want to leave unless it was certain we were fucked, and I couldn't tell Katrin because she'd think I was giving up on stopping the end of the world. But I didn't even need to bring it up too far ahead of time. I'd plan for it, gather some magic items... although, would they even work once the world ended? If it truly ended, if the gods declared it broken and just trashed everything, would magic simply be... gone?

Whatever. Saving the world was still plan A anyway. But if, when I tried to speak to the gods upon our return to fantasyland, they said we were just fucked? We had somewhere we could go.

Zoey was strangely subdued, and while my natural impulse was to wait and hope someone else dealt with it, I eventually caved to the nagging voice of Bill in my head and asked her what was going on. She glared at me, but it didn't feel like she was actually angry. "Every time you... scan something... I get it too. It's awful. So many plants! They don't stick around, it's all gone an instant later, but I just keep getting these dense blasts of information. Oh, and don't blame it all on Mattie. I caught all the junk food, too."

Well, yeah. Damn right I was going to template all the junk food. "I have a thing I could try, but I don't really know the best way to do it. Might make it better, might make it worse."

It was Matlyn that seemed most intrigued. "What is it? I thought you didn't even know what's going on?"

"Yeah, I don't. But I know it's something with this web of connections between the spirits that everyone has, and it's probably getting Zoey in a way it's not getting anyone else because hers has been hammered into the shape of a mind. It's not quite the same as a normal mind, sure, but it looks like her and she was able to think through it. I'm pretty sure that everyone else's is just a little vestigial nub, with no deeper connection to them. Like a tick. I've got the ability to changer her connection to her spirit, turn it into something a lot like what connected... Calliope... and me, and I can choose how much information passes back and forth."

Errod tilted his head and squinted at me. "You hesitated, when you said her name."

"I... yeah, she... she... mom was being a bitch, and I was being a bitch, and we screamed at each other - mostly I screamed, actually - and then Calliope... she uh, she gave me great-grandma's scissors, and her mask, and her..." I was having trouble suddenly, and I tried to tell myself that my throat was swelling shut from something I'd ate. Maybe I was allergic to shrimp now, and the traveler's band that was supposed to protect us from disease and allergies had failed, and... I knew that was bullshit. I managed to squeak out "her name" and then tried to excuse myself to the bathroom, but Errod had already made it to me and was hugging me.

I weakly shoved at him. "I'm fine, I was fine all fucking day, I don't know why - I'm not crying. My face is just wet, and salty. Fuck. This is so stupid. And I didn't need her fucking permission, it was already my name. I'd had it for almost my whole life, and it's not like names are unique anyway, she can't call dibs on it."

"I know," he said.

And I broke down into a blubbering mess for a full five minutes, still in the fucking restaurant. It was mortifying, although... something about the crowd of people potentially judging me didn't even feel real. It probably wasn't a healthy thing, it felt mildly sociopathic, but Earth just felt... temporary. None of these people mattered. They were hardly even real. Soon I'd be gone, back to where I actually belonged - where there was magic, and other planes, and my badass airship waiting for me. Who cares if some normies on Earth saw me cry a little?

Errod asked to see the scissors, and pondered over them for a moment before handing them back to me. "When you were gone, I felt... something change. It's why I texted you. It's something about my connection to the sword, it got stronger somehow. I think that, maybe, your own connection to it is either gone or suppressed. Before, you were able to remove it from... from the throne... even though I couldn't budge it. It was your sword, in a way, and you had only loaned it to me."

"No," I said, "you had that fate thread."

"Sure, it was fated to be with me, but there was still a connection to you. I could feel it, just a tiny bit, and now... I can't. I think these scissors have taken that place, as if they were your ancestral blade. You can't really have more than one, normally, though there are a few legends. When a family would have more than one, the family line splits. You're still a Runelighter, always, but you wouldn't be able to entrust me with those scissors."

I turned the old iron scissors over in my hands. "So... are they magic?"

"I don't know. Presumably there's something to them, but it could be very minor. Something related to how they were significant to you and your family, I assume. They're not burning you, clearly, so it could be as simple as that."

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Being able to hold my own ancestral blade seemed like the bare minimum, but it at least felt like a symbolic victory over my childhood. We got out of there not long after, and Zoey walked alongside me. "So this thing you can do - you think you can shut it down?"

"I'm almost certain I can," I said, "but the question is if I can change it afterwards. If not, shutting it down entirely might be too risky; you're used to it now, and have been using it as your mind which means some degree of function may have passed on to it. I could also improve the connection so it's not so disordered - it's got hints of Comprehension and Thought and Perception in it - but if that goes wrong you might be getting information all the fucking time, and go crazy from it. Which I assume you don't want."

She sighed. "Is there a way to just test it out?"

"I don't know. There's two layers of reality that magic can work on. Normal, and fate. You have a normal connection right now. Normal spirit connections are very sturdy, very hard to fuck with accidentally, which is good. I can make one of those and have it be temporary, but it's not a good test unless I were to cut the existing one first which... that has risks I don't understand, and I've never tried it. If I make a new one on the fate layer it'll take the place of the other one, but I for sure can't un-do it so it's not useful for a test."

"And you can change what goes through the connection?"

"Yeah, some. But since it wouldn't be connecting to me, just between you and your spirit thingy, I don't think I would be able to keep fiddling with it after it's in place. No connection at all might fuck up your brain a little, though you'd recover - might lose some memories or something, I don't know - and having it on full blast could do gods know what, and having it in the middle... presumably that could work, but I won't know unless I try it and would have to figure out what the options are."

She nodded. "So, you're saying it's a bad idea and you got my hopes up for no reason."

"I guess. Wait, no. I could... hmm. I could hold it in place, while I'm making it, and fine-tune it some before letting it settle? Although, if it's only giving you trouble when I template stuff I guess you can just tough it out until I'm gone."

"It's not just then. That's when it's worst, but there's... little flashes, and this background murmur like someone is listening to a podcast in the next room. It got worse over the course of the day, to a point. It stopped at some point, maybe four o'clock or so, but it also hasn't gotten any better since then even after you were done with your 'templating' thing. If you think you can adjust it before making it permanent... let's try it, and see if you can get rid of the buzzing."

The first time I'd done this, to my own mind, I hadn't been ready and it had snapped into place right away. I was sure that wouldn't happen again, not now that I'd been practicing with the threads for longer. I spun one out, holding it tightly, and reached into Zoey to bind it with the existing connection between her body and the spirit. As it twisted into place and seemed to pull it in some impossible fourth-dimensional way, I started adjusting the flow of information. First, all the way off.

Zoey frowned. "It's... foggy... to, to, um."

Yeah, that was a no. Now all the way on.

She perked up. "I can hear it. Not hear, not really. It's... it's too much, I think, but it's actually better than the muffled buzzing. I'd rather hear it clearly than constantly feel like there's something just out of reach. Dial it back some, if you can, and I'll tell you when. Okay... okay... hmm, no. No, now it feels like something is missing."

I switched gears - the main thing I could adjust was the flow of information between them, but I could also adjust different types of information. I could have, for example, shut down the Perception aspect but not the Thought aspect. I put everything to full again, and started messing with each of the 'sliders' individually. The thread was getting a little more slippery every moment, taking a little more concentration to hold, but I knew I still had time for now.

Zoey kept a running commentary for me. "Okay, that's bad. Ugh. Back to... yeah, that. Hmm... this one is... yeah, yeah. No. Too far, back up. Okay, right there. That feels right, somehow."

I fine-tuned it more and more, sometimes having to back up when changing one aspect of the connection fucked up one we'd already had in place. Finally the thread was just too hard to hold onto, and I warned her we needed to finalize things.

She nodded. "It's about right. Um. Go back to, to, whatever you were doing two steps ago. Make that... more. Yes, right there. It's... it's quiet, now, but it's like I can still feel it in the distance. It doesn't feel like there's a hole in my mind, or like there's a crowd of people in there. Can you template something while it's like this?"

That was a tall order. I needed to force my mind into the memory palace, which took effort and concentration, and I needed to hold the thread in place which was getting difficult. Still, she was right that that should be part of the test. I managed to get my mind in place, and tried to decide what to template; it needed to be something right next to us, where my lutore and someone else's overlapped, and that was hard because most people's lutores were puny compared to mine.

"Katrin, come hug me and show me something cool from Earth!"

She ran over, pulling out a cheap calculator she'd gotten from somewhere. It was one of those ones that had the little solar panel, the kind practically nobody used anymore since we all had phones. I wasn't surprised Katrin had grabbed one, it was honestly a perfect thing to bring back to fantasyland. I triggered the templating, and as the rush of information came at me the thread I was holding jerked and shifted, settings changing against my will as impressions came directly through it and into me. It pulled from my mental grasp and snapped into place. "Shit! Fuck!"

Zoey staggered. "Whoa, that was different."

"I'm so sorry, it... fuck, I lost the settings we'd dialed in. I don't think it changed much, though. Do you feel okay?"

She thought for a moment, and then nodded. "I do. Yeah. It's... strange, but not bad. For sure better than it was."

Well, that was something. I tested it by going into some stores and templating a bunch more shit, random things I thought might be nice to have. If nothing else, even if I never had a Fabricator make them for real, it would mean I could have extremely detailed copies in my memory palace. Most of it was food, but I did grab some electronics and other stuff. I finally got the panties I'd been dying for, with nice elastic waistbands. That had been high on my list of things to import to fantasyland from Earth.

Throughout all of it, Zoey was okay. She said she could still tell I was doing it, but she wasn't getting inundated with information anymore. She was aware of it, but could simply ignore it. We made it back to the hotel, and gathered in the same room to discuss our assault on Coelestis. Katrin opened the laptop she'd bought, and pulled up pictures of the Coelestis building. Errod had gone by there again, this time doing a more thorough casing of the place with his glove while trying his best to avoid any cameras.

We talked about the surrounding buildings, and where we could go to escape if things went wrong, and where we should meet up if we got separated. It was agreed that we should pack up and bring our backpacks, since there was no guarantee we'd be able to go back to the hotel afterwards. Everyone had some gold, everyone had some cash, and everyone had some prepaid credit cards. I made sure they all knew how to buy and set up new prepaid phones since we might need to ditch and destroy the ones we had, and we talked about ways to get back in touch even if we all had new numbers.

None of that was the problem.

The problem was that the building looked secure, with some sort of electronic lock on the door. Katrin zoomed into the picture so it filled the whole screen, and we stared at it impotently. "Well," I said, "I guess Katrin could use magic to just... blow the door in. It looks pretty fucking sturdy, and we'd set off alarms, but if we did a smash and grab? Like, most people could get on a train and head out of town, and then team Runelighter could sweep in and grab everything we can and get out before the cops arrive?"

"I don't like it," Katrin said, "what if everything is in safes or on... you called it the cloud, right? If it's not on local computers, but we need the local computers to access it, then we'd need time in there. And as for the possibility of safes, I can destroy those but I don't feel confident I'd keep anything inside intact. We'd need more time to do it right."

I shrugged. "Sure, but we're already counting on them having shitty security. When I raided the storage place it was a shitshow, Greg had passwords written on sticky notes and the wards... didn't work, or something? Actually, I'm not sure about that. I opened the door by poking at a hole with something, and I think he didn't think that should have worked? The point is, anything computer-related was lazy and bad. If we get in there, and deal with any magic stuff, I'm hoping the mundane security will be dumb."

Zoey furrowed her brow. "I don't know about that," she said. "The panel we can see on the door is an AegisTech 3600, those are a bit outdated but they're expensive. Probably he had everything installed by a professional. We can hope it hasn't been serviced in a few years, there's an exploit with the whole AegisTech line because the backdoor they installed can be triggered by shorting the panel in the right way, but there's a simple fix for it if anyone has bothered. That's really what we have to hope for - it has a bit of an abandoned look, and any security that is a few years out of date is vulnerable."

Silently, we all turned to look at her.

"What?" Zoey said, and then her eyes got wide as she realized what she'd been saying.

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