"This is all part of the plan," Connie said. She looked relaxed, her feet up on the table and a paper airplane in her hand.

"It was your plan for Hammersmith's attempt to get into Brynnklar to fail, General Telen and some guy that can turn into King Kong to sneak deep behind enemy lines with sixty troops and assault the fortress looking for you, and then for us to come close enough to dying that Hammersmith decides we should be kept under lock and key for our own good until Brynnklar is in alignment and you can take the army across?"

She hesitated, airplane poised for throwing, and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. "...No," she conceded, "not all of that. But this last part where we're locked up in a windowless basement room? That was part of the plan."

The paper airplane soared across the room and managed to wedge itself into the gap between the doorframe and the top of the door itself. Connie threw both hands in the air in a victory pose.

I wanted to hit my head against the wall. She had been extremely unhelpful since we'd been left alone. "I'm not letting you just leave it at that. Explain. For real, this time."

She sighed - in a way that was clearly meant to annoy me - but then after a moment of silence she did start talking. "See, I knew there was a chance the attempt to get into Brynnklar would fail, and if it did I knew Hammersmith would feel increased pressure to not let me roam. So I complimented this room in front of Hammersmith once or twice - not enough to be weird, just... Oh, it's nice and cool down here, and hey the walls have that neat wavy pattern, and boy it's nice and quiet in this room. Also I moved meetings down here a couple of times, and when I was acting like I was considering caving to her requests to skip the apartment and stay in the fort I muttered something about how maybe the two of us could move down here, since it's nice and spacious. And then, just to be safe, I made sure I was close to Hammersmith when she made her decision to keep us locked up."

I stopped pacing and stared at her. What was that supposed to mean? She waggled her eyebrows at me, closed her eyes, and threw another paper airplane. Despite being thrown at a totally different angle, it landed perfectly on top of the previous one.

"What the fuck?"

"Probability magic, my friend. I'm not great at it, I couldn't power it up because as I have bitterly mentioned before I was forced to focus almost entirely on my little rewind trick. But I had to get it to the point where I could at least use it outside of combat, for stuff where I could take a minute to calmly visualize it. It was part of the plan to help me make use of the time machine. So I was close to Hammersmith, and I just... put the vibes out there."

"You mind controlled Hammersmith?"

"Pfft. No. Even someone with actual thought magic would have trouble with her. I provided the teeniest tiniest little nudge to a previously existing possibility. Very low power stuff. Probability magic is strange, you don't get to tell it how to work. You just ask for a result, and give it some juice, and hope that it's enough. It's about visualization. I couldn't make something impossible happen, or convince Hammersmith to just let us go entirely. But if she was possibly already going to remember how much I liked this room, and possibly going to think about how it's nice and secure what with the lack of windows... well... a nudge is all you need. If you want to see something really funny, we should go back to Earth and hit Vegas."

"No shit. Wait, how does anyone gamble in this world?"

"Games of skill, partly. Or they check your Dumine."

"You can tell what they do by looking at them?"

"Some people can, yeah, but mainly what I meant is that there are gambling places that only let you in if you've got a dud. That leads to people making fake duds and gluing them on, of course, but you can tell pretty easily unless it's a super good fake."

I reached up and pulled the paper airplanes down. "Wait. Shit. You did it again." She'd been getting me off topic for hours. After the fight we'd been separated and questioned and then given time to wash up and sleep. In the morning, we were moved down to the basement and given a long speech about how we weren't prisoners, were totally free and able to go anywhere and do anything we wanted, and also would need to stay put for 'a while' until they figured out how so many enemy troops made it to us.

As soon as that was over and we were alone I'd tried to talk to Connie about escape plans, certain that she would be on the verge of mental collapse, but when I tried to sketch out some ideas of how we might get past the guards she stole my paper for airplanes. It had been at least three hours not counting lunch, and every single time I'd gotten her close to talking about a plan she turned the conversation around somehow.

"I did nothing. You keep distracting yourself. It's not my fault if every offhand comment I make causes you to lose your train of thought. Besides, it's good for you to think about potential application of magic powers before we get to the Duminere. I'd skip the probability stuff though, I've already got that. We don't need duplicates."

"They all seem so powerful. That guy became an enormous monster, how did he do that?"

She shrugged, adjusting the flaps on another paper airplane. "Enhancement and fabrication, mostly, both cranked up really high. He's probably got three, but I'm not sure what the third is. They call him the Behemoth, which... eh. I feel like there's got to be a more creative name to give him. He got away, him and Telen both. Oh, and the witch."

"Yeah, and what the fuck was up with her? Why was she using wild magic, and why did she steal Errod's toe?"

"Okay first of all, wild magic is badass. It's just super dangerous and unpredictable. But it uses less mana, and you can do whatever you can imagine properly if you practice at it whereas with spellcasting you need to learn specific spells that do the thing you need and then actually remember them when you need them. Plus learning magic spells is really tough, they just don't stick in your brain sometimes. It's like those magic eye pictures, I could never get those fucking things to work."

I almost said 'yeah, me either' before realizing what a dumb statement that would be.

"And second of all, I listened in on part of what Errod said and he was pretty clear that it wasn't the one that took his toe. He said the hair was different, the staff was wood rather than metal, the height was different, and he was even sure the skin tone wasn't right. That's a lot of differences."

"Sure, but what are the odds two crazy masked magic users were following us?"

"Not as bad as you'd think. I've killed like... four? Yeah, four people with masks. Two were fanatics that were guarding the portal to Brynnklar, one was a Klunlesh or something which was fucked up because when I pulled the mask off it was my own face looking back at me, and then one of them was an assassin that was trying to kill Hammersmith. The other Hammersmith, of course. These were all in the old timeline."

"How would you even kill Hammersmith? She's unstoppable."

Connie gave me a funny look. "Oh come on. We're more creative than that. She can choke on something, she can be cooked to death or electrocuted or poisoned or teleported into a hostile dimension or any number of things. That's why she normally keeps... uh... well, she normally keeps some other soldiers around her. All she can do is fight and not have to wear armor."

"What were you about to say?"

"Okay fine, she can fight and not wear armor and also just be generally annoying. But that last part has nothing to do with magic."

"Don't do that. Don't treat me like a baby, or like I'm stupid. What did you stop yourself from saying?"

Connie looked at me with... pity? "She... normally keeps someone nearby to act as a lightning rod. Someone with entropy magic, to drain attacks that could otherwise kill her."

"Okay? So why didn't you want to just say... oh."

I pictured it again, Betrad's body sliding down off of the blade. He'd been hit by lightning at least twice, and whatever that distortion was around the other soldier had stopped when he got up close. I hadn't known him that well, but he had seemed nice. "Shit. Fuck, I'm depressed again. Okay, now I actually want you to do the thing where you derail my train of thought. Give it your best shot."

"Okay. Did I tell you what happened to my phone? Hah! I knew that would get your attention. So I got some money, and I was desperate to get the phone working again. All it needed was a charge, right? Well we're not stupid, so right away I knew that shoving electricity into it wouldn't solve anything; there's voltages and shit you have to get right, and obviously we have no clue how that would work. So I take it to this guy, he's super expensive but he gives me a discount just because he wants to see what the fuck the cell phone even is.

"He's got temporal, transmutation, and reinforcement magic and his whole thing is that he swears he can return anything to its prior state. Like, you've got a painting and it gets something spilled on it that strips the paint? Normal repairs can't do anything for that. But this guy can get the original painting back for you. So I think, okay, the battery is a chemical thing and maybe he can return it to a time when it was charged. Makes sense, right? He gets to work, and then looks really confused, and then the back of the phone pops right off. The battery falls out, and it's swollen up like a balloon and the guy is flipping out, he has no idea why his powers have failed him.

"He starts to apologize, and then it explodes. Like actually explodes. The guy screams, we both make a run for it, and a minute later we're watching his whole shop burn down. He wasn't as pissed as you'd think, he was crazy rich and anyway some of the stuff wasn't that badly burnt and obviously he was the perfect guy to fix it. But he wouldn't even look at me, just kept muttering that he shouldn't have tampered with a device made by demons."

"Holy shit. Well I still have mine, so if you think of a better idea we could try one more time. God, I really miss that stupid phone sometimes. This place has magic and dinosaurs and whatever but a couple times now I've just... I don't know, I've wanted to sit back and play that shitty Tetris knock-off or listen to music or whatever. I also miss proper toilets, and toothpaste that doesn't taste like poison. Is there magic for that?"

"What, like magic for wiping your ass and brushing your teeth?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Hygiene magic."

"Uh... There are some spells, I think, but they're way more mana intensive than they're worth. It's a pretty complicated concept when you think about it. It's the kind of thing that super rich people probably have a device for. The ultra rich have some odd stuff."

"Fantasy Republicans?"

"Hah! No. Money is strange here. I mean, with the right magic you can just make it yourself but also if you can make money from nothing you can do things that are worth more than that. A lot of stuff gets done without money being involved, if it's for the community or whatever. They might still get paid, kinda, but chances are it's in pigs or fabric or something rather than coins. They trade favors and stuff a lot too, and that means people who are rich in cash only are looked down on. Like... if you're rich in terms of everyone in town owing you a favor then you're a badass. If you're rich because you have a bunch of little metal circles you're powerful but also kind of a loser."

"Seems like that would make it hard to move, though. Didn't you want to keep traveling and having adventures?"

"Yeah, well, I'm okay with being kind of a loser."

"Capitalist swine."

"Nah, I'll still do shit for people. They just won't get a chance to pay me back before I move on. And then maybe I'll come back to whatever little shit town some day and people will remember me and buy me a drink or something. Best of both worlds. No attachment, no acting like I care about people, but you still get to be a goodguy. It's the social equivalent of the cool uncle."

"We didn't have a cool uncle. We had uncle Roy."

"Hey, he never made us go to school that whole time. That was pretty cool."

Child Protective Services hadn't thought so.

I went around the room collecting paper airplanes, then perched on the chest by the bed so I could start throwing them back at Connie. "Okay so the favor economy thing seems pretty cool I guess. Not enough to balance out the lack of phones and flush toilets."

"Okay, what else... uh, way less sexism and homophobia and shit here. It's hard to get upset about gender stuff when you can change gender."

"Wait. Oh, shit. Right. Enhancement?"

"Yeah. So like, if you're trans? You just... switch. If you want to, I mean. It's not a big deal. Nobody gives a shit. You have to find someone that can do it, but for obvious reasons a lot of the people that know how are people who wanted it for themselves and they're usually going to do that sort of thing pro bono if you ask nicely. I considered doing a short term sex change at one point when I had run away and was trying to hide, but I didn't actually go through with it. Anyway, with the main thing that makes you powerful being what magic you get or how good you are at spells and runes, and with no way to argue that gender is some important unchangeable thing, there's just not a lot of concerns in society about women in power or gay marriage or anything. Except in Markonti, but nobody goes there. They basically got shut out from global politics because everyone agreed that they're assholes."

"What about Halenvar?"

She caught the paper airplane I had thrown at her, and she attempted to throw it back as she considered her answer but it took an immediate nosedive. "Bah. Um... yeah, they're awful and we're at war with them and everything but as a nation they're not terrible. Like, the king is the absolute worst obviously - he's evil and a religious fanatic and wants to destroy the universe - but he's never taken much of a hands-on approach with the day to day shit and some of the people a few steps down the ladder from him were pretty decent so... yeah, overall it's not a bad place. Once he's dead and the war is over they'll probably sign some treaty right away and people will act like it all never happened. Of course they also won't ever know about the destroying the universe part because you don't want to advertize that sort of thing in case it encourages copycats."

"I guess as long as Telen gets what's coming to him. Man, you were so close."

"Nah, that was as much damage as I was ever going to do. When you teleport, it clears a path for you - moves air out of the way and stuff - and if there's something in the way that you can't move it just won't teleport you at all. But there's a split second between vanishing and reappearing for whatever reason, and if something ends up in the way right at the perfect moment you're in trouble. But the thing is, I'm not that fast and so even with a little teeny bit of probability magic on my side I barely was able to get part of my dagger into position. With his armor, and the padding they wear under it? Most likely I got an inch or so in there."

"That's what she said. Er, he said? Whatever. Anyway, that still clearly hurt him. If you'd gotten the knife a little deeper, or aimed for the head..."

"Maybe. It was a tough shot, I don't think I would have gotten the head. Once you get powers I'll burn out the mana in my Dumine and maybe next time I'll focus more on the probability shit so it's useful in a fight, or I'll spend more time on runes so I can write smaller and make magic items that aren't shit. But with my current abilities I doubt I could take him. I'd love to. He... well, a version of him... killed some people I really liked. I would happily trade my life for his. But... chances are it won't have anything to do with me, it'll be Hammersmith or some random soldier or he'll slip in the shower and hit his head on something. We'll hear about it a month later, it'll be totally anticlimactic but we won't care because we'll be off on an adventure."

I crumpled the last paper airplane and threw it at her head. She didn't bother dodging. "And how will we be on an adventure when we're being kept locked in a basement?"

As if on cue, the floor opened up. Milanata Hurst, the potter I'd gone to see when I first arrived in Theramas, looked up from the hole. "Oh! There are two of you! Well that's... interesting. Sorry I'm late dears, I couldn't get the nose right on my latest project and it was going to kill me if I left it like that - especially if I get caught and executed for treason. And then I forgot to lock up the shop, and then I got distracted chatting with Harron - you don't know him, he's just set up a stall in the market with vegetables and I was trying to convince him to court my friend's niece. But I'm here now, and I brought sandwiches and some knives and some lamp oil because I couldn't recall if you'd said there would be arson involved and I thought it best to err on the side of caution. Anyway, are you both ready to go?"