I allowed my body to wake up and turned my physical senses back on, finding that I was itchy and sore. "I don't know if the curse is starting in on me already, or if it's just the dust from all the dead plants irritating me. Is anyone else tempted to peel off all your skin?"

Errod nodded, looking bleary. "It's possibly both. I know the curse killed all the plants and dried everything out, but the skin issues may be a secondary concern. The lack of moisture and the dust together, maybe?"

Katrin stretched and tried to stand, but collapsed back down instead. "Grandfather did mention skin lesions as part of the curse. Whatever it is, it went away as soon as people evacuated so it's not contagious or incurable. We just have to make sure we don't stay too long. Will the portals work now that the alignment is over?"

I nodded, and started putting away the bedroll. "To exit, yeah, and the evacuation thingies I mentioned are apparently something else in addition to those so we have options. The real question is if Hammersmith was able to break through and rout Halenvar's guys in a single day like she planned, or if there's still fighting going on. Also an important question: why the fuck are you two so tired if I'm the one that was on watch all night?"

It had taken a few hours, but I'd managed to get one mind at a time to go dormant while the other used divination. With the new bracer I had still been just barely regenerating mana so long as I didn't try to look through walls or anything, although that had stopped being true when the alignment ended. At that point my mana started draining again, but after another few hours I woke Katrin up just enough to have her move Errod's mana into me so I could keep going. It meant that everyone got a full night's sleep and we could still get moving before dawn.

We'd been huddled in a wooded area, dry-rotted tree trunks giving us plenty of cover while allowing me to scan the landscape for threats. There hadn't been a lot of excitement, just one brief flicker of lights in the distance. I had played around with my divination view, inspired by what I'd done in Storm's Keep, and found that for the area within my actual range I could see in the dark by just... making it not be dark. It was, after all, a representation in my memory palace and not the real thing. This didn't work for things further away yet, but I wasn't ready to give up until I had taken the time to really deeply understand how my divination actually worked - I knew the basic parts that were involved, but when it came to how that turned into an image I could process I was a bit fuzzy.

"Come on, there's a thing I want to check out. It's far away, and I could barely see it in the dark, and it's probably nothing, but... what the fuck else are we doing?"

They agreed since I promised them it wasn't far off our course, but I could tell they weren't thrilled with it. Previously on our travels we'd been using moskar that could go at a decent pace with minimal breaks and had, mostly, been on established roads. Now we were trekking along over and around hills on foot and we were making abysmal time. Worse, we could only go as fast as Katrin unless we wanted to leave her behind, and she hadn't been training like Errod and I. I'd actually surpassed Errod in most ways, as the daily training with constant healing had made me a force to be reckoned with.

Still, Katrin was doing her best and not complaining. We kept getting glimpses of my chosen destination and then losing it as we curved around hills - I'd managed to see it by sending my mind to the top of a tree in the divination view, something that would have been disastrous if I'd done it with my body. Not only would it have risked someone seeing me, but the long-dead tree probably would have crumbled under my weight. In theory I should have been able to just fly up there, but I'd never really gotten the hang of flying in my memory palace. The other option would be to create stairs, which... hmm.

I tried it as we walked, and found that much like when I had been practicing driving with human Callie I could make a platform that reached up to the top of my divination range and perch on it, then let the divination view move past me. It was way, way easier than trying to fly and I got a top-down view of things. Having two minds made it easier, since I didn't have to trust my body's autopilot on the uneven terrain. I'd gotten better at making things like the platform - I had been doing it subconsciously from the start, but when I'd first entered my memory palace there's no way I could have just created a structure that easily. Hell, I had scrounged items from my memories.

That gave me another thought, and I created a spyglass to get a better look at things in the distance. I'd only barely started to look through it when I realized that was stupid and tossed it over my shoulder, replacing it with a circular pane of glass about a foot and a half across. The glass distorted as I focused on it, zooming in and out. Perfect. Probably I could do something fancy without holding anything at all, but having an item was easy enough. That did bring me back to the question of how I was seeing the things around me with divination, though.

"Where does light come from in Ematse?" I asked, but Katrin just looked confused. "I mean, the matter is made of magic, basically, which is why it's barely real and fades away if you take it to the prime plane. But the light... fake light would still just be light, right? Ephemeral matter is flimsy or even invisible on the prime plane, but... wait, I just said invisible. Right. So light in Ematse bounces off the matter in Ematse but light on the prime plane goes right through it. But. Hmm."

"Sorry," Katrin said, "I don't really understand what you're talking about. Light is light, matter is matter."

I sighed. The fact was, I didn't really understand physics past what you pick up in general high school science classes and the things I'd halfway learned on some YouTube channels. I certainly wasn't going to be able to explain it to anyone else. I wasn't even sure why the idea of magical semi-real matter seemed fine to me but magical semi-real light was unacceptable. For now I'd just have to accept that there was, in fact, some kind of ephemeral light that was illuminating some planes but which would be invisible to human eyes. Was the reason ghosts glowed a little the same reason you could touch them a little? Could I somehow generate ephemeral light and see in the dark with it? It didn't seem super useful since my divination could already solve that problem, but it was something to think about.

We finally reached our goal, a long wide ledge between a cliff leading up to a stretch of higher hills, and a cliff leading down to the shoreline. There was a strange pile of rubble I wanted to check out, but also as we approached I could see the area had been paved at some point - grass and shrubs had grown over everything, which meant it had to have been abandoned before the curse murdered all the plant life. The thing that had really caught my eye was a metallic corner of something sticking out of the rubble; it had just faintly caught the little bit of light given off by the sky at night.

The sky over Brinkmar was... interesting. It felt like it was being projected onto a dome above us - the arc of stars and the moon were there just like on the prime plane, but everything looked somehow wrong. A little flat, a little distorted, a little dark. As things moved, that distortion made it seem as if they weren't moving smoothly like they should. At any rate, it made the landscape at night extra dim. Good thing I had been extremely bored and desperately searching our surroundings for anything other than dead grass.

As we approached the base of the higher cliff, it became clear that the rubble had at some point been a small building or... something. "There's not enough here, look at this column. You don't put things like that on a little shack. Was it built into the cliff? Is there more behind the rubble?"

Errod had climbed up onto some of the shattered stone. "And what is this thing, underneath? It has wheels."

I scrambled up after him, and sure enough that metallic corner was part of a larger thing with wheels and small windows - the panes were cracked but in one piece, like some kinds of safety glass. It looked almost like a train car. Had someone thrown a whole train car at this place? Or... no... the other way. Holy shit. "Guys! Oh my god. This is amazing. We have to... uh... hang on, help me find a door."

I didn't find a door, but I did manage to smash a window all the way in after some serious hits. I squeezed through and climbed down the steep slope along the seats, ignoring the door I located on the side and instead heading for a hatch at the bottom. When I forced it open I was greeted with more rubble, but not so much that I couldn't see what I was hoping for: another hatch to another car. The train - no, subway - hadn't been chucked at a building. It had derailed and burst out of one. Katrin and Errod were already following, and I handed chunks of masonry to them as I uncovered the way back.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

The next car was at a slightly gentler slope, but was tilted a bit sideways. At the back, the next hatch revealed a gap between this one and the next car and I was able to squeeze out into a tunnel. I dug in the bag until I found a light that had been looted from the wagon; it was made to be attached to a wall rather than used like a flashlight, and I fumbled with it some before the whole tunnel was suddenly visible. I turned and saw we each had a perfect orb glowing over our shoulders. Right. Duh.

"Thanks Katrin," I said, putting the light away. With the lights, I could easily re-create the incident that must have taken place. There was a Y-fork in the track about a hundred feet back that ended in what had previously been a wall - probably something designed to allow a car to be set aside or something. Instead, the whole train had made the turn at some ridiculous speed, and smashed clean through before blasting out of whatever the building had been. A station? Unlikely in this remote area. Maybe a service stop? I couldn't explore the actual building, because it had collapsed down on itself around the train.

The Jake Ross books had not mentioned a subway system. It wouldn't have gone with the whole fantasy vibe. As it was, I wasn't sure how functional the trains had been during that time. Could it have been broken ever since the Clockmaker? That didn't seem likely given the level of overgrowth outside. Probably this crash had been during the civil war between the queen and Thanatos or Tantek or whatever his real name had been. Marjorie West had most likely left the subway out of the stories because she didn't want to get too modern with things. Or... steampunk, maybe, without the steam. Cogpunk? Whatever.

Errod looked concerned. "If these tunnels lead to the cities, it would be a good way for us to travel. Unfortunately, it would also be a good way for everyone else to travel."

Katrin was crouched down, looking at the tracks. "This is fascinating. Did they run metal rails all the way across the island? And nobody stole them?" She stood up and stretched. "I think we're safe in here for now, there's dust everywhere and I don't see any footprints. A flyer wouldn't be able to make it past that... conjoined wagon thing... so they would need to have touched the ground. My only concern is that we'll walk along it for ten miles and then come to a collapsed portion and have to backtrack the whole way."

In the end, they caved to my excitement. We headed out, in the same direction we'd been going up above, and were immediately covering ground faster. Part of me wondered if Jake Ross had brought knowledge of subways to Brinkmar, but it was probably a convergent evolution kind of thing; trains made a lot of sense, and there were limited numbers of ways to do them right. Of course they'd end up looking similar. I hadn't seen any kind of engine on the crashed train, but if there had been one at some point that probably would have been the bit most worth salvaging and it was possible someone had already carted it away. There had also been a distinct lack of corpses which was probably good, and no discarded items or luggage which was a shame.

We passed some sort of access hatch at one point but couldn't get it to open, and other than that it was just a very boring hike. I was starting to worry that Katrin's prediction would come true and we'd come to a dead end when the tunnel ahead opened up into what had to be a station; it didn't look quite like I would have expected from riding on trains and subways as a kid before coming to Arizona, but there was a bit of a platform and some hallways coming off so it was similar enough. There was an odd person-shaped alcove on one wall, but it was empty and the runes that had been on the back of it had been chiseled out and destroyed.

The hallways split off, with the main one going up to an exit that was sealed with huge metal doors, and the smaller ones going into some kind of office-like area on one side and a maintenance bay on the other. There were tools scattered around, but they didn't appear to be made out of anything fancy. Anything made from leather or wood was completely dried out, but I snagged a strange wrench-like thingy just as a souvenir in case this was the only chance I got.

The office area was pretty cleaned out as well. "Find anything?" I asked as we poked around, "I've got nothing over here. Very disappointing. They must have already abandoned this place before the evacuation."

Katrin popped around the corner with something in her hands. "I found this, if you want... sorry. Are you okay?"

I'd taken a huge step away from her involuntarily. "No, I'm fine. You just startled me." I looked at the object in her hand. It would have been a very cool souvenir, with its brass handles and decorative touches along the blades. "I don't... I don't use scissors. You can keep that."

Just then Errod called to us, and we found him hunched over a map - he warned us not to touch it, and pointed to where one corner had crumbled away at his touch. "Can you compare this to the map Hammersmith had, Calliope?"

My other mind was already on it. I'd overlaid the two, and after rotating a little to get the stops to line up with landmarks on the map I could finally say exactly where we were. "Okay, so I still don't know quite what the symbols on the map mean but the one here is small, probably a little town or a depot or something. I don't know if it's worth busting the doors open. More importantly, we're getting really close to Evellunis, which is where I wanted to go."

I was going to get to see the palace. Probably. Maybe. What if I could sit on the crystal throne? A memory filtered up from the Connie side of things, a large throne, split down the center and covered in lichen. That was in... Trallanar, somewhere. "Man. I wish I could remember the stuff from the first timeline better, I vaguely remember sitting on the Sundered Throne."

"The what?" Errod asked, and Katrin's face told me she didn't know either.

"Your family is from here, right? I mean I know it was your great grandfather but like... surely there are legends. Nothing? Huh. Well, maybe the title of the book was more accurate than I assumed. In the first book in the Jake Ross series - Jake Ross and the Forgotten Throne - the bad guy is trying to claim control of Brinkmar by skipping past the normal rules and tapping into something older, a throne from the first kingdom to exist on Brinkmar."

Given what Harmid had told me, that was some other magic user that the Clockmaker conquered. "Anyway, Jake Ross stops him by destroying the magic device he was using. I doubt the details are accurate, but I remember finding the throne and sitting on it. You know, when I was Connie. I only remembered it because I was thinking of the throne in the palace. I want to sit on that too, just to say I have. Wait. What happened to the queen?"

Katrin shrugged. "Probably she died. There's no record of her after the evacuation."

Man. In the books she was this perfect fairy tale queen, immortal and benevolent. She adopted Jake Ross and... hmm. I wasn't sure how much was real, but Bill's complaints about young adult fantasy tropes was sticking with me. Was Jake Ross really just a kid? Had he been turned into a child soldier? Surely if he was really that young the queen wouldn't have put him in charge of jack shit, right? He'd have to have been older. He did age throughout the books, but only by a few years - maybe that was what was different, maybe he'd been in Brinkmar way longer.

We'd wandered back to the main area, and Errod was looking at the sealed doors again. "They must have closed these tunnels off during the civil war, I can't think of any other reason they would be abandoned."

I used divination to get through the doors, and on the other side... huh. "Holy shit. Yeah, had to be during the war. They're not just locked or something, they're melted together - and there's barricades and stuff here. Whoever sealed this off was very worried that something would come through. I see stairs beyond that, but I can't reach the exit or anything."

Katrin sighed. "If they had it sealed off to protect against people going this way during the war, then the tunnel probably won't be easy to get out of in Evellunis. Should we turn back?"

I really didn't want to. I wanted to gamble on us finding a way through. I turned to talk to Katrin about it, but stopped with my mouth hanging open. Something was wrong. Something... bad. My other mind snapped back from poking around behind the door, and suddenly a figure was outlined in bright red. The figure itself wasn't important, but the outline was flashing.

I felt my other mind seize control of the body without fully stepping in, and I threw a knife at the thing's head. I might have hit, it didn't matter. I threw another, and another, and another for some reason, and the flashing red outline stalked closer. The thing the outline was around came with it, I guess, but all I could focus on was the outline. My other mind really wanted me to attack.

Yeah, okay. Sure.

I tackled the outline, aiming for the legs, and managed to trip it. The thing inside the flashing outline was made of something hard - I didn't care what, but it did mean I hurt my shoulder. I scrambled up and stepped back, still unsure as to why this was important. The red outline vanished, and the spot was replaced by Adrian. That asshole who stole my money and all my shit and swore to me that he had an apartment lined up. That fucking dick.

I thought about punching him in his smug face, but it wasn't like he was really there. My mind was screaming something at me. This couldn't... this wasn't a mental attack, was it? I should be immune to that, because nothing could get me in my memory palace. Except... one of my minds was here. Hmm.

Words appeared in blazing neon. YES MENTAL ATTACK! If it was a mental attack, who was it doing the attacking? Not the thing in front of me that my mind had been highlighting and disguising as Adrian, that was irrelevant. Arrows of light pointed at it. YES THIS THING KILL IT! Was there something behind Adrian? I turned to get a second opinion from Katrin, but she was busy bleeding all over the floor for some reason.

It wasn't my business.

I considered asking Errod instead, but he was beating the living shit out of Adrian with his sword while also looking around in confusion. He seemed busy. I decided to leave him alone too. None of this was urgent anyway, I could wait until both of them were finished.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.