WWW #16: Everything

This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number.

Miles tall,

faceted crystal glass,

flawless and completely clear.

A spire in the center of a white desert pointing towards the stars.

Endless fine white sand blowing in the breeze under

perfect

clear stars.

No cloud nor vapor hangs in the air.

So at night, the tower of the citadel, the Erian, is illuminated in a quality of light silvery but as clear as broad day.

Small yellow lanterns flicker heatlessly in trellises of rose and vine and brick buildings, and a vast marble balcony with a mica-flecked balustrade overlooks the edge of Malacanth Court, one of the 24

courts of the citadel.

Each of the courts timed to the hour floats up and down, one helix spiraling down, the other spiraling up, and pausing for the briefest of moments when one court lands in Haverward at the ground, and the other ascends to the apex at the very pinnacle of the Erian.

The dance of the floating platforms of the citadel marches inexorably to the steady beat of progress, innovation, exploration, discovery, learning, the secrets of a world of endless magic unveiling themselves with the steady ticking of time.

Gazing out over the white sand, Ahm, the witch, sits in a slender, shining wheelchair with a sleeping fox, his little black-socked paws splayed out off her lap in that way that cats will do when they're like on their stomach and the legs like shoot out on either side of their head and are completely straight, but they look somehow comfortable doing it.

In his glamour, the tall

red braided hair and broad shoulders of Ursulan with Wavebreaker at his side, dressed in...

Go ahead and describe like your martial cadet's uniform.

Like what does a wizard sword wielder cadet wear at the Citadel?

I mean I'm sure I feel like it looks like a kind of downgraded version of Suvi's attire.

Like it it lacks all of it's all the same colors and tones, but lacks all of the kind of finishes.

Like it's pretty rough hewn tunic

with you know, I feel like kind of like little shoulder plates on top.

I think you can tell Ursulan is maybe wearing the pauldron underneath it.

But yeah, I think maybe like a little

one of those half cloaks that kind of like hangs off the right shoulder.

And then I'm assuming I would have some kind of symbol that suggests that I'm the protectorate of someone as important as Sufi, be it either for her or for her patron silence.

So one of your sort of half cape has a clasp of a brooch on it that simply just has the tower of the citadel on it.

A simple symbol of a crystalline structure with a curving line behind it, the curved line representing the sand of the desert and the ordered angular symbol of the citadel, this geometric shape imposed over it.

It is the most simple symbol and form of saying this person is here at the invitation of the wizards of the citadel as a guest.

Like the wizards themselves don't wear this pin because they have more refined delineations of their tasks and stations.

So this most

recognizable symbol of the Citadel is actually what guests wear.

And you've seen, I would say that somewhere under 10%, but over 5% of the people you run into at the Citadel do wear this.

The Citadel is an important enough institution that there are some significant number of non-wizards here going about their business.

Wizards have, you know, occasionally wizards will fall in love with someone who is not a wizard, as shocking as that may be to some.

They will have representatives of the Imperium or other people here on official business.

So you do see these

emblems around from time to time.

And yeah, your tunic, it sort of is like a one-quarter robe.

It like ends, it doesn't end at your waist, but it does end above your knees still.

So you look a little bit more athletic than someone walking in full robe.

You know, I could run and it doesn't, it's not going to get caught in my knees.

Yes, exactly.

And Ami, I will also say,

you

have been out for a month in a magical sort of coma.

So you're being transported right now because you are, don't have your full strength returned to you yet.

But

in some, as the doctors told you back in the infirmary, probably with like a little bit of time and recuperation, you should be back to your old self.

The rings

when they were taken back

have left me

not as swole as I once was.

Right now I'm just wearing a kind of a plain white shift to get from the

infirmary back to wherever we're going.

And I have

my things all in a little pack attached to the wheelchair.

Yeah.

Subie is absolutely leading you less panickedly back to her her home dressed in sort of just nice green satin little pant, like a little button, button down with a man matching flowy pants.

Yeah, she looks, I look cool all the time.

Stop it.

She's here and trying to impress you.

And I think there is that sense of

all of the panic of getting to you and seeing Ahmed and confirming with her own eyes that Ahme is okay is now giving way to like the

sort of mental super long list of things that she like Suvi wanted to go over with you once you were awake and she's getting lost in that immediately like ah the dopamine of you are fine is okay now it's like okay i have no idea She'll probably want to leave right away because she didn't want to come here in the first place.

And I don't know what mood she's in.

She seemed really frenet.

So I got to give her like her gift before she leaves.

And then we have to talk about these things.

But she has things to talk about.

So Suvi has gone sort of radio silent and is just pushing the wheelchair and leading you back to her place on autopilot.

Suvi, with your staff of the Citadel gleaming, a full Apprentice Archmage, as you wheel Ahme off in the direction of your suite.

Moving silently through this place, you hear the soft little snores of the fox.

Get away from you.

Get away from it.

Bite your hand.

No.

See, we like tenses up.

Little sleeping angel.

All I say, sort of half

half paying attention.

I just, it's, there's so much here.

I'm looking around at the beautiful marble and the

these floating wonders.

It's beautiful.

This is where you grew up?

Yes.

Yes.

Uh,

it is.

This is.

yeah, you've been here for a month.

Uh, welcome, welcome to my home.

It's amazing, Abe.

You haven't even tried the food yet.

Oh, the food is good.

Oh, we got it.

Snow cone.

I can wait.

I can wait.

No, we can do that.

We can do that.

It's all right.

He comes once a week, and he'll be back next week.

Oh.

Uh, do you have questions?

We.

I have so many questions, but

I

uh Ursalon, you look so good.

Thank you.

It's uh I've been working with Steele

and she is a great, albeit incredibly mean trainer.

That is very true.

Subi is making the exact same face as you right now.

Like,

I have learned a lot, but it has come at quite a cost.

Uh, a lot of early mornings and push-ups.

Fucking Fucking push-ups.

Oh, I missed you both so much.

Do you have a sense of the time that's passed?

Or do you just remember a sword being swung and then waking up here?

I remember everything.

That's so ominous.

You arrive at Suvi's apartments.

You see,

as Abria described, hanging like fabric,

and again, there are like many different artifacts and

objects of importance, papers spread out in a work area, an unmade bed.

Ooh, yeah, I'm catching like a distance press education.

It's the one where you start casting outside of the range because you're waiting to hit the range to clean it the moment you can.

Like,

got it.

Hey, what?

Don't sniff.

Don't like.

Sniff.

His name is Silver.

Oh.

He's very handsome.

Oh.

Yeah.

Is he your boyfriend?

Yes, we've never.

Is it a wow?

Is there.

Do you have other labels?

There's.

Uh.

No.

No.

Labels are.

We could all die.

So.

Oh, of course.

Tomorrow is never promised.

Oh, you got it.

It's so good.

Roll with how things are.

It's so good that you're back.

Let's go one more step.

And I think there's some papers around in the suite, but the majority, and like Suvie's running around and kind of grabbing them, and then leads you to a door

that

just...

I think it looks very plain, like just hewn wood in the side of a wall, but somehow

just looks unopenable.

And she draws a small rune across the frame of it and unlocks it.

And I think this is sort of the vestigial wizard tower where you hide all of your secrets and your true study as she opens the door to her study.

And it's just a big

sort of dark oil, like analog oil lamp-lit study with a big dark desk and just just built-ins all around covered in books and vials and objects and in the center of the floor on top of a like dark red rug a big

circular sigil

made of

like salt

spread in the center like please don't kick that please don't kick it

you have to be careful in here yes it's filled with delicate things that i have already that i've broken many off Yeah, it's fine.

It's fine.

We can fix things.

Just try.

This is...

Wow, all the

jagged.

You can touch whatever you want.

You're fine.

Good.

She will fix it.

She won't be happy that she has to do it, but she will.

Oh my gosh.

There's so many lings on this thing.

Yeah.

So they don't, that's a spider that doesn't come with that many.

But if you can find a spider with an 11th sort of leg,

it will lead you to.

their webbing, is actually like a very good component when you're trying to stitch in

just magical, it's a reinforcing what's this formula.

Oh, well, okay.

So, you know, how when you look up at the sky and you kind of want to know.

I was looking at the transportation circles and the powder.

Okay, that's blue.

Yeah, don't.

It's a really nice blue.

Give me a dexterity savings room.

18.

As you blow the sand,

it circles back up and almost goes into your eyes for a minute.

You swat it out of the way, and the sand

moves off and hides in one of the books on Sudie's desk.

Hold on.

And I walk away from the.

It's all right.

I've done it before.

Oh.

I'm glad it didn't get in your eyes.

And just shaking a book wildly, trying to dump the spoofing up.

Cawing around a

You guys watch the sand sort of fall out, go about halfway to the floor before it bungees and goes back up into the book.

Stay down.

All right, okay.

Um, are we, is this, are we safe here?

Yeah, uh, flick of the, flick of the wrist, the door slams shut, and I think you can hear that like sound is dampened to just this room.

We're good.

Okay.

I want to know everything about uh your protectorate and about uh

silver and about like snow cones and everything, but what does the term akatitor mean to you?

We move back

to the night

that Ahme was first moved to the infirmary

and Suvi arrived at the Tower of the Sword, the tallest structure in Malakanth that overlooks the rest of the court and the vast deserts beyond the Erian.

On a tall balcony, a small

limestone bird bath sits in the wall, surrounded by flowers, burbling softly as a gargoyle's mouth conceals a small copper pipe, water gushing out from it.

And for one of the rare instances, you see Steele unarmored.

She is in a soft, comfortable-looking white robe,

hemmed in gold,

and

with a sort of a deep collar that comes down to show a small white pearlescent stone clasped in gold hanging around her neck from a thin gold chain.

Her hair is partially let down, like tied up a little bit on one side behind the ear.

There's like a small braid there.

White streaks on her face, the sort of partially whitened iris, the white through the hair.

She

sits at a table acknowledging your arrival.

You hear the voices of her children and husband inside.

Her children are largely older now.

Her eldest daughter, Kadila, who is 18 years old, just a few years younger than you,

who has like

sort of soft brown skin, very covered in freckles over the bridge of her nose and her cheeks

with a kind of

deep brown with little highlights of like dyed blonde and red and other things like that up through this very curly hair tied up in a bun.

You see that she's got a sword at her side.

She smiles with these sort of hazel intense eyes with like a little ring of gold around them.

Comes out to you as you arrive and goes, Suvie, you're back.

Hi.

Hey, how was it?

Oh, oh.

And I give a weird little look over at Steele and Lean, and it was

intense, but good.

Awesome.

Did you?

I heard you got like a protector out there and you came back with a witch.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

So they were friends from yes.

yes.

He's the strongest man in Silbury and she's in a coma, but that's okay.

She'll be better.

It's fine.

Oh my god.

It's wild out there.

I can't believe you got to go on an adventure.

Mom said that you were supposed to be back after like a week.

Yeah, it was okay.

So literally the first day, I see this like big

monster

and it broke.

And I think this is the first time Subi's like, uh-oh, has not locked in a cover story for any of this yet.

Uh, you see, Steele on the balcony says, Kadila, you need to be studying.

Oh, and you see that uh, the uh, you're basically, I mean, Kadila, you grew up, you're your sister, essentially.

Like,

um, she smiles and says,

Okay, um,

uh,

well, listen, I, I'm, um,

it's about, I'm about two months away from my final exam.

Let's go.

So, if you have any time that you want to help me

get around, okay, awesome.

I'm around.

It's great.

And she gives you a big hug and says, I'm glad you're not dead or captured.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

Yes.

Same.

No.

Thank you.

And I'm going to try to trip her as she walks away.

Success.

Yes.

Yes.

It's not fair.

And you see that yells.

The sword is keeping you off balance.

Maybe take it off while you're in the house.

You see, Steele says, Sirly!

Ah!

Adela, that's good advice.

You walk out to the balcony and you see there is a plate of

fresh baked, like small pastries and fruit tarts.

There's some like fresh strawberries and a little bowl of whipped sugared cream.

You see that there is a small bowl of like spiced green nuts and two cups of very small cups of coffee.

It's like just becoming evening.

So this is like a little almost like a pre-dinner.

Wizards stay caffeinated all the time.

All day.

All day.

Steel looks at you and says,

well,

I got word that Ahme is all set up at the infirmary.

Dr.

Tamry is

an incredibly proficient alchemist.

Do they know anything?

How long?

Things.

It's

the best people are working on it

all right.

I know that town

we don't know how it's going to go right now.

Yeah,

we'll put that on the list of things I should have trusted to you

in life.

There's a usually the right way and the fast way, but I understand

that

you had worked very hard to recover Wavebreaker and

So

that summer,

I came up...

That's the little boy.

Now, I'm not trying to come for you as the sword of the Citadel, but we have to agree that it was weird that the little boy that you met that looked a lot like me was running on all fours, right?

The running on all fours actually didn't...

bother me as much as you might think.

That was wild.

You didn't have Ovi yet.

No, no, no no but i i it's grandmother wren's house so i saw a little boy run on all fours and i went well that's not a little boy that's maybe a demon or some other kind of thing but i assumed

i assumed it was grandmother wren's business

I didn't know that, in other words, I didn't know that he had a connection to you.

I know that he looked like you, but I assumed that he looked like you because he could disguise himself or something like that that, and

had chosen to look like you as a trick or a joke, but it's not a trick, it's it means something.

It's it's his glamour.

I don't think he gets to change it.

No, but he did choose it.

Yeah,

it's kind of

my fault that he's stuck here.

So, it feels like

a very specific reminder.

So, he's fully way-shadowed then.

Yeah.

Does he have any idea of how he can get back?

And this happened when you were children.

This happened that summer.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, he's welcome here.

He'd be far from the only spirit at the citadel.

Yeah, should we introduce?

Is it weird to introduce a spirit to other spirits?

Also, some of them are

not great.

There spirits who are bound here.

There are spirits who asked to come here for our protection.

There are spirits who work here.

There are spirits who visit just to say hi.

The world of spirits is vast and broad, and there are many reasons to come to the citadel.

Got it.

Well,

I'm sure he'll find his way around.

He's good at surviving.

But he has no other connection to the business in Port Talon.

He has no other connection to what happened with the escape of Naram or what did Moro know he was a spirit?

Oh god, no.

Maro is an idiot.

Yeah, I know that.

No.

Naram got out.

We did our best.

Galani really

really kind of led the charge on.

We tried to get as many of the Empire's forces working in the right way as possible, but Maro's...

Maro's click

didn't know when to cut their losses.

Yeah, that could be a real problem.

Gambler's fallacy, good money after bad.

Yeah.

He spent years.

I get it.

It was a nightmare.

What?

What would you have done?

I would have listened to me.

Okay, I meant if you had arrived and everything had gone normally,

what could you have done?

done

we would have freed naram in such a way that it wasn't a crisis or an emergency we would have freed him with the abjurations in place to just get him back out to sea without losing the derrick or the lives of the people who are working on it presumably he wouldn't have flooded the wish fire plane if we'd been prepared

and uh then morrow would have been tried and we would have found his collaborators and we would have found

who in the Imperium had signed off on this as opposed to where we are now where we don't know and because it's a catastrophe now nobody will admit it and everybody that would have had their ass hanging in the wind now has a chance to cover themselves

that makes sense uh suvie is very subtly kind of working her fingers to kind of remember this wasn't accusatory she's trying to figure out like what is the right protocol for when you see something wild

out in the world.

Huge.

Steele sees you sort of working this out and just goes

when you encounter enormous horrors

the emotional response to destroy them

makes a mess that often doesn't teach you how to stop it from happening again.

And in a world where you can unravel something slowly and carefully, you can actually learn what happened.

Right now, all we know is that there was a guild mage named Mora who had an idea

what happened to his research.

We already, you know, by the time I arrived, that chantry of the scepter's chorus had been cleared out.

Yeah.

You know,

that guild protected itself.

Whoever they were working with, you know, in the crown and the Imperium,

you know, no one will take credit for it.

You know, maybe they'll clean house internally if it occurs to them to do so.

And I can put pressure on them to do so.

You know, I wrote a letter to the Imperium saying that the Citadel disavows magic that's dangerous, and we've already received a response back saying that they agree it was a horrifying error never to be repeated.

So handling it fast and dirty got us a letter.

Okay.

All right.

I don't mean to be oppressive in castigating and I'm not.

What was the jaunt out of Port Talon?

Ooh.

Okay.

Um

so you know how

you can't

like

Our honored friends can do sort of whatever they want and then we just sort of maneuver around that.

I have found in my time that witches are the exact same.

That they kind of do things with good intentions, and

because they have it's their thing to

their balance.

She went to the shrine of Arima

to plead, sort of, for mercy on the city,

and we went to go protect her.

Yeah, that checks out.

Yeah,

makes sense to me.

Probably better that you went than not.

I mean, I wish you had followed my orders, but in the end of things, like what Aame did was very foolish and she shouldn't have done that.

But in the world where she did that,

I still would have preferred you followed my orders and stayed.

But it ended up being good

that Ame came back to the city.

Yeah.

And Arima is probably where

everything got hashed out with.

I still,

the whole relationship of.

So the sword, the sword was from your childhood with Grandmother Wren.

Yes.

Okay.

Sword with Wren.

Small child trying to be very like, here's a symbolic thing about our friendship.

Gave a sword that didn't belong to me to an honored friend who took it and kind of lost track of it over a very hard life in a very harsh world.

And then we went to get it back because it would break the curse.

And

it was hard to do that, but we did it and it was fine.

And then, yeah.

So a witch sees, oh, there's witch fires and obviously an angry spirit.

And then whatever the hell was happening on the derrick.

And ooh, they were like, we got to do the right thing.

And I was like, no, I got to listen to Steve.

And that didn't really, that wasn't great.

Yeah.

But I think they did the right.

So many people died.

A lot of people died, Suvi.

And you also attacked an Imperial soldier.

Okay.

Yeah.

A little.

So.

We're gonna get your name cloak set up a little bit ahead of time.

after that, by the way, um,

I'd love to show you your parents' names.

Really?

Yeah, I can show you their names and where they're from, and

I'd like that very much.

Okay, she touches your arm and

smiles.

Um,

Yorin,

Yorin

Yorin is a shapeshifter.

And to the best of our knowledge, he's still alive.

I know you remember him from childhood.

Yeah.

Your

parents

were

incredible heroes of the Citadel.

Their heroism in battle was very well known.

90% of the battles they fought on behalf of the Citadel are not well known at all.

The battles that they participated in publicly were the tip of the iceberg

because your parents were some of the most effective double agents the Citadel has ever had.

What?

To this day, there are

entities within Gauthmai and Roove that believe that your parents were traitors to the Citadel.

And those relationships are still providing dividends many years after your parents' heroic sacrifice.

What?

I'm going to slam

both her and my little things of coffee.

Okay, from the beginning.

Oh, you have been burying the lead for

years.

Everything.

The summer that we left you in Silbury,

there had been an attack on the citadel from Rouve.

The wards, not only around the citadel, but the standing stones around Temen Rouve,

the crystal lake of Khet, which is

near the

capital of Gauthmai, the Kanteranacht, all of the...

various castles of the royal family of Golvang, these far-flung places, and importantly, the citadel itself,

a

movement was made in the relationship of the celestial paths to Umora itself that affected every single barrier

for teleportation and the creation of gates.

Throughout the history of Umora,

Times have come where magical travel was made more or less difficult.

And when you were born, we were in an age of incredible safety, in which teleportation was very easy to abjure.

It was very easy to stop.

And during the first three or four years of your life, all of that changed as

the celestial path shifted ever so slightly.

And that slight, slight shift meant that all of a sudden you could teleport anywhere, pretty much unstoppably, very easily.

So all of a sudden, this world that we had been living in, and this is you know similar to um

uh

you know if you if you studied your history you'll know that the first gates of star and sun were created by the sorcerer kings of the gauth dynasty which created the first great travel those gates were set up all over the world you know so there have been ages of teleportation within Umura's history for a long, long time.

This was just the one that happened when the world was already at war.

And so it was not an age of enlightenment and trade like several hundred years ago.

It meant that anything was possible,

militarily speaking.

So we moved from this position of deeply entrenched lines and huge battalions to this incredibly violent couple of years where small groups of wizards or sorcerers or warlocks could appear in an instant, inflict devastation, cripple, you know, logistical linchpins, and we had to figure out what we were going to do.

When you were six years old,

an enormous group of powerful warlocks from Rouvre appeared and attacked the citadel.

They

were wielding a type of power

that we had some idea was coming, but it had advanced so

These were our first encounters with chalices.

Yeah.

The captain that attacked us on the boat was a chalice.

They're extremely active.

They had gone underground for some time.

You know, around when you were,

you know, I think seven or eight, the Abjur's Hall figured out how to stop most of this teleportation.

and we're in an age once again where it's for the time being the wards are holding fast.

But that couple of years was incredibly dangerous.

That attack on the citadel, where we had to leave very quickly, and we, you know,

Yorin was here.

Yorin

theoretically,

Yorin is a revolutionary revolutionary of Gauthmai.

The Konteranach, the great houses of Gauthmai that oversee the protectorate, are powerful sorcerers.

And historically,

the sorcerers of Gauthmai have always tried to eradicate shapeshifters like Yorin.

After that summer,

I'm no longer certain.

I mean, Yorin is a shapeshifter, but that ancestral feud between them,

it is my belief

that Yorin is responsible for the death of your parents.

They

died

from

an attack in Gauthmais searching for a

dangerous sorceress named Nahani.

This was a type of mission they'd gone on many, many times before.

The only difference this time was that instead of me

tending to

the safety and security of that mission,

side by side with Yorin, it was left solely to Yorin.

So, the first time that it was just the three of them

was their last mission.

I'm gonna ask the questions now that I think are why you didn't tell me this story earlier.

You think he's still alive?

You haven't found him.

Do you know where he is?

I'm telling you now

because I have come to the certainty that I cannot find him.

Why?

I think that there are

means that he has at his disposal to keep him hidden from the citadel.

Obviously, we have tremendous power at our disposal.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

The thing, you sent me with stuff for Grandmother Ren.

One of them was diagrams that looked like urine.

Why?

What were they?

Why?

She

takes a long drag of the coffee.

There's only a little at the bottom of the cup.

I drank half of hers.

What happened to my.

Oh.

She looks and goes.

Several weeks ago,

I made the determination that

Jorin

was still alive.

Something that I was unsure of up until recently.

Realizing that he was still alive, it led me to...

Even when I believed him dead,

There was a part of me that thought he might be responsible.

Learning that he was still alive,

I became certain that he must be.

If there's no world in which Soft and Stone would have died and he would have made it out alive, unless he wanted them dead.

Okay.

Even not even because of any virtue on his part, just because he's such a violent, deranged lunatic that I don't think he would have left a fight unless he'd won it.

Does that make sense?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

The diagram that was going with you to Grandmother Wren

was me conceding defeat and asking for help from one of the world's most powerful witches to find him.

Oh.

So you think Grandmother Wren could find him or the witch of Toma?

If magical power could solve this, then the Citadel could solve this.

What we're dealing with is something outside of our sphere of understanding.

He has some form of abjuration on him, but we have probed around the edges.

We've talked to all of the diviners' college.

We've seen everything we can trying to go after him.

We've found locked doors,

which is not the same as finding a wall.

Yeah.

So it's just about who has the key.

And to our knowledge,

and

grandmother wren when she was still alive

there was a chance that she would tell me it was impossible in which case I never would have told you to have you

go berserk with something like this hanging over your head

instead

with her gone

We're left with an open-ended question.

Perhaps a witch could find Yorin.

Perhaps a spirit could find urine.

Perhaps soft and stone

gave some ability to you to bypass these locked doors.

I don't know.

What I do know is this, and I need you to hear me.

Urin would kill you

as you are today.

I hear you.

Okay.

So I'm out of options,

and there's elements of this left to explore that we can explore when Ahme is awake again.

We'll put some more coffee on.

I'm gonna stay up.

She should be up soon.

Okay.

She gives you a kiss, and we come back to this present moment.

Sufi, Ahme, and Ursulan in the private study of Suvi's quarters.

Small flicker of warm light from a lit lamp.

There is a maybe a little bit of incense or some flower petals, rich smells of a wonderful dwelling place.

Having come back from this memory, Ahme in the process of sharing what she now remembers with Suvi.

I know that your parents were part of it.

And so was Yorin and Steele and Grandma Ren.

And that Grandma Ren believes that Yorin's loyalty was in question.

And that...

Hmm.

I give a whispered rundown of everything that I remember about them.

A small group of self-deputized individuals within the leadership of the Citadel.

They were chasing, which I believe they jokingly referred to as the League of Whispers, was dedicated to the downfall of the Citadel because they believed there was a corruption within the Citadel and it resulted in a prolonged series of secret violences across Umura.

Suvi was brought here because they thought they had more time.

They were intending on coming back.

Steel has often asked me if I had any idea where Yorin was.

I have my suspicions about it.

It's all, it's, it's all, and it's all a lot of, a lot to process right at this moment.

Oh, yeah.

Do you...

I'm being a bad hostie.

Do you need something to drink or eat?

Yes, I was going to ask, where is the dessert wine?

Yeah, actually, I'm.

I'm okay.

I'm really hungry.

Yeah, I'm really hungry.

I haven't eaten food in a month.

I think they did some sort of

tube deal, but that's not real food.

I want to eat food.

Yeah, okay.

Um, let's go.

We could just go get food.

Let's go.

Let's go get food.

Let's get good.

Oh.

Well, what is there to eat around here?

Well, it depends on if we eat in Malakath Court or if we go somewhere else.

Yeah, that's fair.

Um, can we do both?

Um,

I mean, I'm very hungry.

Okay, all right, okay.

I'm gonna let you lead this because I'm kind of a I go to that like one little cafe that's sort of at the bottom of this building.

Well, we'll start there because they do have nice treats there, but it's not a real meal, you know.

It's more like snack'ems.

Snack'ems?

Yes, that's a word somebody else told me that I really like.

So we'll go start with snack'ems.

Yeah, okay.

Also, by the way, I remembered everything that happened in between when we last spoke and now.

I've traveled the world and I know I'm the witch of the world's heart and also

kids are dicks.

What?

Okay.

Okay.

Snacks first, though.

Yes, snacks.

Hey, are you sure you don't need to...

This is a...

This is a big energy.

Do you want to get this out while we're in this room?

Yes, that's what I'm trying to do.

Okay, here's what I'm saying.

I was going to say,

I push you two out of the little room for a second.

I say, hey, look, that's very clear.

You're not going to close the door.

That's my room.

I start primally screaming.

Hi.

Is everything all right?

I

scoop him up and I squeeze him and I just don't want to let him go.

Fox.

How's it going, boss?

You're awake.

Oh, you sweetheart.

Oh,

I love you so much, Fox.

Um,

yeah.

Uh, well, we're unraveling a conspiracy.

And also, we're gonna go, uh, apparently, the eating's great here.

I hear you were in my room the whole time, and so you didn't get to have any of the treats that the Citadel has to offer.

So, we're gonna go get you some snacks and then snack snack'ems.

Snack'ems.

Snack'ems.

Snack'ems.

And also, I'm gonna tell you everything that I remember

that was cursed out of me.

Okay, there's a lot to process, and so I'm just going to kind of take it one step at a time.

Food first, food first.

Ursulan.

Food first.

Malacanth Court is the sort of the uppermost.

It is the highest clearance class.

It is the apex of the 24 floating courts of the Citadel.

What is Ursulan's go-to snack spot?

Well, I think if I'm taking them to the one that Suvi likes, which is in the bottom kind of area, like right as you enter, it's cute and it's open all night.

It's the kind of place you can always go.

And it's a lot of like grab and go options.

You know,

they have two tables out front, but nobody really sits and eats there.

But it's a lot of stuff that you can take and carry to wherever you're headed to work and do those sorts of things.

Like a lot of the bonbons and baguettes and things that I had been eating earlier were all from this spot that you can always, always, that is always open and always available.

Ursulan leads you to this all-night 24-hour spot.

The reason it's 24-hours is you see that there is a long stone pier that goes off with that mica balustrade that borders the edge of the platform.

The platforms of each of these places tend to be perfectly circular with either two, four, or eight stone piers coming off of them, where you see there are these long, thin sky boats called gallithopters.

They are about 30 feet long, but only at their widest about like

five or six feet wide, so that you can like sit kind of like two to three people on a little bench.

And that's if you're like squeezing in.

And there are these long gossamer dragonfly wings that come off the side of them.

There's about eight of them, so four that are lined up on each side.

Rather than being spaced out, they are all centered, but the wings joint out so that when it flies, it almost is like a circle of buzzing with this long gondola across the center.

Almost like if you were looking down at a gallopter flying, you would see a weird buzzing circle of dragonfly wings with like a long cat's pupil of a wooden gondola in the middle of it.

They have small lanterns hanging from the front and back, which is more of a safety thing.

As you can see, the night sky within the Erian has them sort of flying out to and fro.

But you also see that they are,

there are people waiting at them, even at this like late hour.

It's probably like 10 p.m.

or like you know, 10:30.

Um, there are people waiting for them

who are waiting for the next platform to get closer to make the flight shorter.

So it looks like they're like not the most reliable for long flights up and down the Erie to faraway platforms and that those are better served by waiting for one of the true like Zeppelin or airships to happen or given that 95% of people in this place are wizards just teleporting or dimension during or flying under your own power, which seems very popular.

These are much more it looks like for, you know, it's like a public transportation option in a place where everyone has magical ways of getting around themselves.

Ursuline, you approach your favorite spot or Suvi's favorite spot in Malacanth, Candle Street Bakery,

which is the very first building at the end of the pier

where the long avenue that circles Malacanth, so Malacanth Avenue,

takes off that follows the balustrade around the edge of the entire court at the edge of the platform.

And then Candle Street is the little street that goes up into the heart of this place.

The two tiny little tables, like little cafe tables outside,

a standing counter with like a gold bar near your shoes on the inside to like rest, drink, and have a little baked good or a snack or a bonbon.

And then a counter, big glass with like gilded letters up on top saying Candle Street Bakery.

And you see that there is a warm wood, like that kind of like highly varnished orange wood counter big glass showing the different bonbons and baked goods

and you see that there is a

sort of smiling looking baker who is partially translucent behind the counter

um and that seems like the best the our best bet for actually

meeting up but um an injury of the wind and stars and she just walks the halls of her crystalline palace.

Uh, and that's her job, I guess.

Um, I like that.

Well, uh, okay, and remember, everybody, that uh, we only get one little treat each from here so that we have room for the other places.

And

hello?

You see, this figure turns to, uh, turns to look at you and says, oh, hello there.

Ah, Mr.

Bay!

It's a pleasure to see you again.

This you recognize as Mr.

Callum, who is one of the bakers here.

You see that he is partially translucent.

The only part of him that is opaque, and he is sort of a

powdery robin's egg blue translucent.

The only parts of him that are opaque are his eyes, his smile,

a kind of decorated sparkling orange mustache, and a little Van Dyke goatee.

I have a type.

I have a type.

Yes.

His clothing is opaque.

So he's got a white shirt, a white baker's apron.

He's got a little sort of like paper hat

that has sort of like a little folded hat.

And he has

a sort of humble brass watch on his wrist that looks like a real watch.

But you see that the palms of his hands are opaque as well.

But his skin,

of his forearms, his fingernails, his face and head are partially translucent.

When you look through a part of him that you can see, like when you look at his head, for example, you can see

it's translucent in a way that you can see the back of his head as well, if that makes sense.

So he's not like a vapor because you're like, ooh, there's almost like a translucent glass at the front of your head, but I can also see the curve at the back.

Like looking at a light bulb, like looking at a frosted light bulb.

Yeah.

See,

dope.

Mr.

Bear and the art, mine British.

Hi.

Time for a little cheeky late night treat.

Yes, you know what I like.

There's this, okay, ome.

So my favorite, if I have to pick one, so there's this cute little, it's like a baguette, and then there's like melon and cured meat and bone marrow.

And that's my pick.

And that's what I get every time.

Every time.

Every time.

This is so fancy.

I love it.

I well, it depends on your mood, but I like the croissant with chocolate and marshmallow.

But then there's also the zucchini sandwich.

It's light, so I need about three or four, but they're excellent.

Okay, why don't we each get one of those and then we'll share a little bit of each?

That we can do.

Okay, okay.

See, the fox looks up and goes, What's wrong with your head?

Oh, no.

Fox.

What's that?

Uh, what?

Why is your head so good?

Is that better?

Yeah,

that's actually better.

Why is your head so good?

You see, uh, you see that, uh,

Mr.

Cowlem, turning.

I'm Ahme.

Ahme.

Oh!

Yeah.

Up and about, the witch of Tova.

Oh.

Well, welcome to the Citadel, Miss Arme.

You must understand that the Archmage Apprentice's friend, you know, there's a lot of studying going around.

Yes, so something as dramatic as a witch in a deep slumber has caused some bit of a stir.

Happy to see you up and about.

Yes, I'm very glad to be up and about, and I am starving.

Yes.

Mr.

Callum looks down at the fox and says, And it need not trouble you that I am a little bit more translucent than some might say is normal.

Of my type, I am Tamori.

And Sufi, you would know this very well.

Mr.

Callum

is a living spell.

He is a construct of pure magic.

You would actually know him as a very common type of Tamori here at the Citadel.

He is a.

He is a magehand hand cantrip made

aerial.

That's so cool.

Yes.

And you see those opaque palms on his hand.

And he is working here as a baker at Candace Racket.

Have I met sentient spells before?

You have never met a sentient spell before.

Well then, that's wild.

Yeah, I'm in your ear, absolutely just leaning down and being like, Tamori, it's like, if you have a spell and you make it like a whole person.

So do you have free will?

Oh, my God.

You see, the fox looks at you, Ahmed, and says, that's got to be worse than my question.

Hey, let me be clear.

Super is.

It is.

You see that Mr.

Cowell looks at you and goes,

do I have free will?

Begs the question.

Do you?

I don't know either, but my questioning it, I feel like, probably,

you know, is a bit of an answer, right?

Well,

I'm interested in the same.

Here's the issue, and I understand that you you might feel sort of strange about this.

I was born this age and of this temperament, and I

love baking.

I love to bake.

I also love baking.

Now, you may question whether being created to love baking is an abrogation of my free will, but my free will did not exist before my creation.

So there would be no free will to abrogate.

So,

it's complicated.

You know, you can feel about it however you wish.

It's true.

I was born a witch because, you know, I had the powers, but then I love being a witch, but then that, you know, is that my destiny?

Or is that just how I was born?

Or is it the thing that I love and that I just pursue?

You know,

we have those questions too.

Yes.

I understand that there are some,

you know, there's, we have a lot of, they don't come up to Malacanthala, but my other friends who,

my other friends who, you know, come by sometimes and have those, yeah, have those interactions.

There's always about, like, the 12 or 13-year-olds come around and they always have a big thing.

They're like, yo, it's your free will, da-da-da-da-da.

And it's sort of like, well, do our gifts define us?

You have a gift for magic.

Is it really, was your choice to embrace the thing you were good at really a choice?

You know, that sort of thing.

So in other words, a good way to think about it, Ms.

Armé, is that I struggle with the same things you do.

Hmm.

That makes us very similar.

It does.

I think that, um,

yeah.

I'm gonna lean over to Subi.

Wow, it is, uh, I forgot what it's like to hang out with Armé.

Yeah, right.

I don't think I've ever come in here and been here for more than two minutes.

Thank you.

I like got the food and walked out.

It's a clean interaction.

Exactly.

And then this.

We're back.

Chocolate marshmallow croissant, Mr.

Bay.

yeah

um you see that mr callum walks over uh prepares a croissant with marshmallow and chocolate looks over and says and uh miss sousie uh what can i do for you i'm not gonna get the same thing i normally get no no no we should get it i want i want to try the thing that you always get yeah can i get that melon the melon prosciutto baguette that little sandwich

absolutely oh and can i get an extra little dish of the marrow for Fox here?

You see, Fox says, marrow?

And you see, Mr.

Callum goes off and takes out this huge, massive, like sheep's bone and cracks it open, scoops the marrow out, and puts a bunch of it on a plate.

You see, here you go, my fun, furry friend, and puts it on the ground and prepares a melon prosciutto sandwich for you.

It says, and for you, Ms.

Armé.

I'd like one of the light sandwiches.

Zucchini fritter sandwich.

Zucchini fritter sandwich, please.

A fraud fraud zucchini sandwich coming right up.

And you see he goes over.

And yeah, you see like all of the tasks that Mr.

Callum is doing here.

They're all less than five pounds.

It's just this, you know, all of the things that he's...

Everything he's lifting is sort of in these places where he can lift and interact with it

as he moves around.

And you do see, I think, Ame, give me an insight check if you would be so kind.

That's 19.

I think there's something interesting happening with Ama here as you look at Mr.

Callum.

Mr.

Callum is happy, happy, clearly intelligent, clearly sapient,

but you also do get the feeling from his sentience

that he is more similar to a spirit than to a human.

There's a part of him where you're like, oh,

you're talking to me about struggling, but I can kind of tell that you're not struggling.

I can kind of tell that there's something that's like...

There's sort of

primary instincts that you go with.

And I think that it is okay for some parts of this to make Ahme almost a little bit uncomfortable.

You recognize that he is a spell, that there is something not human here.

I just think about all the times that I've cast spells and

where did they go and did they create anything?

Like, like, you know, anytime I mended, was that somebody mending something?

And then are they there?

And then, you know, I mean,

are they happy doing the mending?

And are they happy at doing the mending because I made them happy or because they just genuinely enjoy mending, which I do.

Yeah.

Here's the thing.

A bunch of us tend to meet our first Tamori when we're like 10 to 12.

Those guys throw like half of the first years in the crisis and they bomb out because they can't really reckon with what it means to.

Yeah.

Has Mr.

Callum been here like my whole life?

Give me a history check.

23.

On a a 23 history check,

Mr.

Callum, you've not only known your whole life, this is not the only Mr.

Callum in the Citadel.

Do I tell you?

Yeah.

There's a couple Mr.

Callums.

I don't know if that makes it better or worse for you.

A couple of

yeah.

Mr.

Callum, are you friends with all the other Mr.

Callums?

Do you, or can you

tell me?

How can you be a friend of anyone if you're not already a friend of yourself?

And I'm a friend with all eight dozen of me.

They all have different mustache colors.

Oh, wow.

Suvi mouthed that answer along with him.

Like, we all ask it, and we all get that answer.

It's kind of on a loop.

So you see, yeah, Mr.

Caller, I think that there is this world for Ahme that's like...

a little bit of a task of expanding your own empathy to allow for a type of being and intelligence that

is worthy of respect and empathy and consideration, but is a spell,

a working of magic,

a little sort of like

arcane construct.

It sort of reminds you in some ways of Flickr, who was also deeply humanized by ghost, but Flickr, of course, was not human.

Flickr doesn't require sleep or a soft bed.

Flickr doesn't need to eat food.

But, so it's basically about like, what are the right types of consideration to extend to a thing that doesn't participate in the world like me.

Uh-huh.

I guess I'll just have to ask.

Every

every time?

Well, I guess.

Well, I mean, all the Mr.

Callums might have different mustache colors.

Maybe they have different preferences or joys, you know.

Maybe some of them are better at making the prosciutto sandwich and some of them are better at making the croissants.

They're all the same spell.

But then explain the different mustaches.

And one fried zucchini sandwich.

Oh, thank you.

Okay, we'll each have like a little bite of each other's.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We get like a little night.

No, look at these, Patrick.

So Ursulan is considering.

Ursulan's favorite place to eat at the Citadel is the night market in Haverford.

Or Haverward.

Haverward, yeah.

Haverward.

How long will it take us to get down there?

Is it worth, like at 10 p.m., it probably.

We're We're almost down there now.

Okay, you're an hour and a half away.

Best timing.

Sufi, we should

get one of the

what are they called?

The galafopters.

Yes, we should get one of those to take us down.

I know you don't love to go there, but I feel like Ahme should see it.

Yeah, it's so

it's busy.

It's very busy, but I mean, it's Ahme's free.

You'd love it.

You would.

You will probably love it.

I really do like Nightmark Kit.

Yeah.

Okay.

Everyone should see everything once.

Once, yes.

But yeah, let's get a copter.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'll go get it.

Stay here and enjoy your sandwiches.

And I just run off with like half of my weird sandwich.

And I'm going to go figure it out.

I know how to hail a Galithopter.

Yeah, of course.

You run up to one of the Galithopters and you see that there is a lantern set into the front.

And as you approach, you see that small illusory images of the various platforms of the citadel appear, rotating slowly in space.

And you need but interact with the lantern and gesture to where you wish to go.

Yeah, it's definitely the like walk up and then turn back over the shoulder, like interacting with the same interface for years.

Like you, you kind of remember where everything is.

So I like...

gesticulate arcanely at a Haverward while looking over my shoulder and sort of seeing my friends in the light of the citadel.

Like I have dreamt about this for a decade.

It's very, very cool and I can't believe it's happening.

And then I look up and I actually hit the wrong platform.

So I'm going to correct that.

And we will go to Haverworthy, like we were always going to.

You look back and see Candle Street Bakery, the bakery's exterior, its small little patio with those two tables.

There are, it has a wall of wax that kind of goes up where like a vine trellis would, of thousands of melted candles.

And it's covered in little wicks that all are burning with different colors of light from the different wax of the candles.

It just looks like a beautiful candle sculpture that's been going for like 100, 100 years.

And you see through the window

Ursulan and Ame happy, smiling, even a little contented fox licking his lips as Mr.

Callum like leans with his translucent forearms and sort of laughs and talks with them

in the beautiful starlight.

Your Galithopter is ready to go to the night market.

Come on.

Pushing Ahme's wheelchair way too fast.

You get up to the Gallithopter, the wings kick up, and you look down.

So, each of the platforms of the citadel are enormous, but they are not so enormous that, like, so if you think about the width of the citadel as being probably like

between like a quarter to a half a mile wide, so these various platforms do pass each other within the citadel.

So, each of these sort of neighborhoods is almost like somewhere between like an eighth to a quarter of a mile wide.

So, tons of buildings within them.

You know, there are like small neighborhoods unto themselves.

And Haverward at the base is actually like a city.

You can see it fills all the way to the edges of the crystal tower of the Erian.

There is one central place that you see has this huge number of spiraling towers, huge beams, and platforms, and you see that there are retracted bridges, almost like these platforms that have been wound up in huge spools.

And as the Galathopter descends, you see that these towers are where the platform lands, that people can come up the staircases and the bridges insert.

And you see there are wagons and gondolas and terrestrial vehicles and all that stuff.

And down in Haverward, you see that there are a number of enormous gatehouses.

The gatehouses are glowing with a kind of scintillating orange energy that go to Cairo and the seat of the Imperium and a number of enormous metropolises.

These are permanent portals to go for throughout the Empire to other places.

So this is where all of the vast resources, it's like, yes, there are skyships that fly and enter the Citadel, like permeating through the class magically, but

that's a hard way to get like water and food and all this other stuff into the citadel.

So that these permanent portals in these gate houses.

But the main thing you see is

hard-packed white sand streets.

So the streets themselves are pure white, glittering with a kind of crystalline diamond energy to them.

There are still little bits of sand that have like blown in from other places that are sort of like piled up in various areas.

And you see

this multi-story neighborhood of wild, almost Seussian wizard towers that are like partially built, but maybe not stacked evenly.

So like there's overhangs and there's roofs that come over on top with enormous trails of paper lanterns overhead with various arcane runes inscribed on the outside of the lanterns.

You see this multi-story descending market built into various bridges of like rope and plank, and there are like hanging bars and little creperies and noodle shops that are being pulled up and down on ropes throughout the night market as these different platforms move both vertically and horizontally through this cluster of towers.

I've never seen so much magic together before.

I mean, it's just all so cleverly done.

Wow.

It smells incredible.

Oh, it only gets better once you're inside.

There's a specific stand that I would like to take us to that's a seafood stand that I feel like I go to probably

after every training session with steel.

Hell yeah.

One second, we just have to find it because things are constantly moving around.

That's the one thing I don't like about this place.

Yeah, it's kind of more for show, less for convenience, right?

No,

yeah.

I mean, it is cool, because once you find it, there is a satisfaction.

Like,

it's worth the journey.

Everything's a quest.

Yes.

Creaking ropes, swinging bridges, and you see suddenly as it's being pulled up to another level in anticipation of the next, of actually of

Malakanth making its landing to get all of its, you know, resources and various things and let people come and go.

You see a big shop with a bright wooden sign and a kind of splashy, it looks like like a huge paintbrush was used to paint the words on the outside that says chura chowder.

And you see, there's an enormous sea bass on ice behind them.

There's some lobsters.

There's like multiple massive cauldrons brewing with different like seafood soups and stuff like that within them.

You see there is a small row of ice on the central counter.

There's like five or six bar stools as it comes up, but you do see that they are stopping and just having like little crowds of like five to ten people wait to just pay them some imperial marks real quick and just get a bag of something fried off the back of the counter very quickly.

You see, there is an older man here, and also what looks like his like sort of middle-aged adult daughter.

You would know this as Anton Chura and Mariah Chura.

Anton has a sort of olive skin, white, peppery, long beard, sort of balding head, but sort of wild

white hair coming over his ears.

His daughter, like sort of black brows, black hair tied up in a bun with sort of a bandana over it.

They're both working.

Anton looks up and says,

Second time today, huh, Bear?

Why you come back?

I can't get enough, Anton.

And you have to meet my friends.

I'm going to pick up Ahme's wheelchair.

This is Arme.

Hi.

I wave.

He says, oh, you eat as much as your friend, you drive me out of business.

I give off entire already.

What do you want this time?

I'm gonna do, I think, what Ursulan comes to eat here, which is not, the chowder is delicious, but I think they offer a weird, almost like food challenge-esque, kind of

like, almost like massive clam.

Uh, that it's like a stew cooked inside the clam.

Uh, and uh, you get to break the clam open with your uh, I think they give most people a mallet, but I think Ursula does it with his hands.

But it's this giant, like, almost like maybe two foot,

like two foot wide, one foot tall clamp.

Open it up, the smell of like rich, savory broth, like salty, fatty.

It's swimming with like spices and little scallions and green shoots and vegetables.

And this cut-up,

the actual meat of this massive ocean mollusk is in there.

But there's shrimp in there.

There's other little oysters and clams.

It's like basically this huge gumbo.

But you can see the liquid that looks like rich rameny.

I'm salivating so much.

Why would you do that?

Yeah,

but you see, in that first thing that goes down, underneath that layer of stew, you see

rice that has been marinating.

So there's like a rich risotto-esque, or like it's this

down there that's just soaking up.

Like as you do the food challenge, the thing waiting for you is just the rice that has soaked up all of the goodness that they've been cooking in this massive stew.

Fox and I look at each other.

The fox goes, I need it.

I need a whole one to myself.

Mariah says that these are normally shared between families of four to six.

Yeah, but I'm like Ursulan.

I eat as much as Ursuline and I'm as big as Ursuline.

You're as big as that.

Okay, yeah, but right now we're gonna like save room so that we can go to all the other places and try all the things.

Those other places might be gone.

You don't know that the other places will be there.

This is the only real place right in front of us.

Honestly, the fox is not wrong because I have

seen a place, wanted to go there, eaten somewhere else, and then lost it in the shuffle.

Oh, no.

Yeah, Steve's looking at the horizon, looking for like the big purple sign that is a bar in motion across.

Okay, all right.

Well, you eat as much as you can, but keep in mind that we're gonna still have delicious things to eat later.

Okay, if you, you know.

Consequences.

Listen, I'm gonna eat all of this, and I'm telling you right now, I would bet all of my money that there will be no consequences.

Okay,

how much you got?

I don't have any.

I'm going to pass the fox three Imperial marks.

The Imperial Mark says there's no consequences.

Okay.

I'm about to get twice as many as three Imperial marks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know how betting works.

I know how betting works.

We've gambled before.

You see,

Suvi, as you get distracted, you see a purple flash as a massive, it looks like a fucking like Viking long ship, but instead of a dragon figurehead, there is like a painted wooden horse, and you see there's tents, you hear people screaming, a little rain of like gin cocktail falls on you all, as this massive purple sign that says, La Calcell

moves around the corner,

and it leaves a purple streak hanging in the air, fading behind it, as it just swings down the street from ropes attached to something you kind of can't see.

I got it off!

I found it!

And then Suvi just takes off.

Two more enormous of these like massive ocean

stews land in front of you.

Boom.

Anton

asks for some exchange of Imperial marks here, but we can probably put it on Suvi's tab.

I think I, yes, I think I come here often and put a lot on Silence's tab.

On Silence, yeah,

the Artmage Silence's tab, it lands.

Fox goes to work,

stops for a second,

coughs, and a baseball-sized pearl falls out of his mouth.

That's good luck.

Your next one is free, Fox.

Good luck.

Getting a rock is good luck.

There was a rock in my food.

It's a pretty rock that humans like.

Okay.

Congratulations to humans on loving rocks.

What did a rock ever do to to you?

So much.

Rocks have been a constant problem for all of my life.

Sometimes they shoot up out of the ground and you can't get past them.

Sometimes they're in your way when a rabbit's running.

I say, no rocks.

No rocks.

I'll put that on the list.

You see, you have this Suvi.

You take off running.

And Ame, you find yourself

here with Ursula.

This stew is rich and filling.

You can feel yourself having the first real meal in a month's time.

This is like extravagant.

Like, now, Ursulan, who's like physically exerting himself every day, eating one of these every day, feels like it makes sense.

But for you, even like a few spoonfuls into this, you were like, I want, it's like the feeling of I want to eat this whole thing, and I know I do not want this tomorrow.

It's too much.

You don't have to finish it, Armay.

It's more about the spectacle.

I just wanted you to feel.

I mean, this is, it's, it's been amazing here.

It is very spectacular.

You,

you seem so well.

This, this place suits you.

It's, well,

I understand now what Suvi was talking about.

This place is...

Every the first couple of days, once, you know, the doctors told us that you wouldn't be waking up anytime soon.

I just kind of wandered, you know, just looking, moving around and checking in with Suvi occasionally and

I it doesn't stop.

It's the strange thing.

It's been a month and I still feel like there are places and things I haven't experienced or seen.

It is truly wondrous.

It it is.

I feel like, of course, you know, a whole city full of Suvis like working overtime full of caffeine.

I mean it's absolutely pain some marvels.

Yes.

But people being are being being kind to you?

Yes.

You know, I gestured to the kind of pin on my chest.

I think this goes a long way here.

You know, I mean, I haven't had to do a, I haven't had to like pull a Sousie with anyone and like stamp around or anything like that.

Yeah, you don't have a staff, you can slam on the ground and say, do you know who my father is?

But you won't believe how often I hear that.

Like,

I'll just be walking around and then you'll just hear a kerfuffle and give it like five to ten seconds before somebody goes, do you know?

And then, you know, fill in whatever proper nouns you'd like there.

But and still,

I'm glad that that

grace extends to you.

Thank you for visiting me.

Well, I was, I heard that you were there every day and that you were the only reason that the fox could catch a nap.

Yes, well, um, I don't

it's it's weird because I uh

there are a bunch of other trainees, I guess, but

because I'm training with steel, I don't have to do all the normal stuff, so I have a lot more time in my day than some of the other uh people who are kind of coming up.

Is it because she knows

she knows?

I think so, but I mean, I think it's also just the SUV connection, and

you know, I don't have to.

They do a lot of running here.

It's unbelievable.

And it's not even, it's not even.

Running to run.

What?

I don't know.

They all talk about some kind of high they get once they pass like mile three.

And I just don't fucking get it, man.

It's like

mile three dark, right?

What?

Exactly.

Nothing is chasing them.

I honestly asked Steele, because Steele was like, you should start to work on your endurance and things like that.

And I was like, well, can you give me any sort of stimuli?

And she was like, well, you should just want it.

And I was like, what?

What?

Exactly.

Exactly.

I don't understand.

Okay, well, and so, oh, and so, oh, so you're like running towards this food.

Well, exactly.

I would love that.

I was like, oh, I tried to get that going.

I was like, can we put something at the end?

Like, especially the erase that I do for myself.

Yes, but I don't know.

Steele then started talking about discipline and I just started dreaming about this

beautiful meal.

Oh god,

so good.

Also, um

I uh

I think Suey was there

at my at my bedside a lot, huh?

Yeah, we I mean we both Suvi's been more busy with the name cloak and all those sorts of things, but we came

often.

Yeah, but she like I could smell, you know, the the the incense.

She has, I could, I could smell it.

There was like a spot on the on the bed.

It was

just

absolutely drenched in it.

She said, she always said that she did it because it was, she could get away to read, but I think she also just wanted, we wanted to be there.

Nate, hug you

again.

Oh, I'm coming back over.

Sufi's already a little drunk and has just like a giant purple bottle with like shot glasses stacked on top.

I found it.

Oh, good.

Oh,

I never think it's worth the chase, but whenever Smoothie's here.

This is why we run.

Yeah.

Oh,

this is why we run.

And we are now adding alcohol to the equation.

Okay.

Alcohol gets added.

Are you having any of the stew?

I think I have one bite.

I didn't know I was getting my own.

I have like two bites.

Gotcha.

Give me.

So you give me a constitution saving throw as you guys start drinking.

Because

for everyone with stew, that soaks up all of the

eight.

Eight.

Smoothie's feeling good.

I'm great.

This is so good.

I think there's a cigarette somewhere comes out, just like, hey, yeah, we're good.

Yes.

Night market, like,

it's got calm emotions in it.

Calm down.

We're great.

This is so good.

I love this.

This is so nice.

It's been a minute, yes.

God.

Hi, I'm Erika Ishii, known tabletop role-playing game enjoyer.

All my life, I wanted to play in a Dungeons and Dragons game as a witch, a little studio ghibliesque cutie, a powerful enchantress in a tower, or just an eccentric old lady that fucks with the villagers' milk.

I tried so many homebrews, a Hexblade Warlock build, but that was just a violent sugar baby.

Druids were too powerful.

I even tried a wizard, but as we all know, wizards are nerds.

That's when a friend told me to try the playtestable witch class from Worlds Beyond Number.

Designed by Maisie Veselak, Brandis Stoddard, Brennan Lee Mulligan, and Hannah Rose, it gave me the perfect mechanics for witchy crafting and consequences.

Just try out the Coven of the Heart for a cozy cottage core experience.

Or perhaps you're all about the verdant growth of gardens and forests like the Coven of the Green.

Or dare to dip your toes into the Coven of the Wicked, complete with redemption mechanics.

Don't like what the designers have crafted?

Tell them about it, but politely, lest you invoke a retributive curse.

Access 14 pages of beautifully illustrated news spells, features, and subclasses by subscribing to the World's Beyond Number Patreon right now.

Make your witch fantasies a reality today.

You see,

so as far as that night goes,

you hear the noise of music playing in the distance.

You see a sort of like hovering party barge sort of moving through the air that has a club and some dancing going on.

You see, there are people that are sort of, there's one that feels like very raucous.

You see that there's another tall tower, though, where you can can see that there are some people drinking and there is an actual live band of musicians playing and there are people sort of slow dancing and waltzing.

You hear sort of rowdier noises as you go down into the darker recesses amongst the towers.

You think you hear a sort of carnival barker for something that would be more like games of chance and maybe even you hear some rowdiness of people shouting at some kind of sport or like they're gambling or betting on something.

All of this unfolds here in Haverward, which is, Haverward has the most human, like people can live in Haverward at the lowest level of clearance from the citadel.

So there's lots of humans that are non-wizards here that are like just working and doing jobs and that go to and fro from the cities that the gates are connected to.

For all of you that are here, however,

you know, like, Ame, how are you feeling having just woken up from a coma?

You've had a sandwich and a bunch of stew.

You see that the fox looks up at you and goes, How you feeling, bud?

I.

Yeah?

Wanna go get some dessert?

Can you get

some ice cream?

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm so hungry.

Oh, great.

I'm glad because I've still got so much room for other,

maybe some more fried treats.

Well, I'm not done with my stew yet.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Well, I'm good.

Yeah.

I thought you can have as much as you wanted.

Yeah, you ate all of the fish, but the rice is still there.

The rice is the same.

So you eat all the rice.

Tell me, can you guys tell me what rice is?

What is that?

Yeah.

The little bits of grain at the bottom.

Yeah.

So that's, oh, it's plants.

Yeah.

It's plants.

But it tastes like it has fat.

Yes.

It's been soaking in the fat.

Okay.

You know, some animals swallow little rocks to help with the digestion.

Oh.

There's any chance you want to.

Well, I don't like rocks.

Okay, well, look at that.

And I said that, and something

that feels like people do it is if they say something,

people get, people make fun of them.

We'd never.

I'm going to pour some alcohol and just put a little shot glass in front of the fox.

What's that?

That doesn't smell like meat.

It's not.

Do you remember wine?

Oh.

It's like wine.

It's like double wine.

You see, he's double wine.

He laps up a bunch of it and goes,

That's not like wine.

That's different than wine.

Spicier.

Yeah.

Hey, why the fuck did you bite me?

Huh?

You bit me.

Oh.

I was crying.

Fuck.

Yeah.

It was really cranky.

I wasn't sleeping at all.

No, I know why.

I get it.

Ugh.

Okay.

Um.

You gonna eat your rice?

Or are you gonna pay her?

He looks down at the marks and he looks at the rice.

His stomach is a ball.

It's just a full ball.

And you see, he goes, wait a minute.

I'm going.

to

lose because this gold I can't eat.

And you see, he nudges the pieces across the thing and goes, I don't even care about this.

And he falls over on his side and says, If you'll excuse me, I'm going to be breathing hard.

I did so good, little buddy.

Thank you.

And I know I did.

Blood the three marks.

So ran into one of my pouches.

Hell yeah.

Do you think I could teleport the stew out of his stomach?

Because I feel like I could.

Fox, how do you feel about uh

maybe getting the food out of your stomach real fast?

No, no, no, no.

It'll kill me.

Don't get the food out of my stomach.

I need it to live.

No, no, no, no.

There'll be more food later.

I promise.

No,

no.

I believe the promise, but what if something terrible happens and I didn't have food in my stomach?

I get that fear.

Yeah, okay.

You just, you just lie there.

I'll be here.

Oh, okay, okay, okay, yeah.

Wait, put me on your lap.

Okay.

Okay, here you go.

Okay.

No one look at me.

Well, Amy, I mean, are you, are you tired?

I mean, we can still go.

We can keep going if you want.

I've been sleeping for a month.

I'm fine.

Yeah, let's keep going.

I had, when I, we saw one of the club ships pass by, I had stood up really quickly and I was like, dancing.

Oh, and I sat right back down immediately.

Um, my legs are still a little wobbly.

Um, and now we have a little fox asleep on my lap, and so I can't really move too much.

But yeah, let's just show me some of your favorite places.

And uh, you know, you know, I

uh have you made any new friends,

uh, yes.

I uh some of those places are only open during the day, so I could take you tomorrow.

But I, I mean, there's awesome shit we could do here.

Um, let's go.

Uh, oh, shit, what do we do?

What do we do?

We could do that.

Yeah, actually, I will say this.

Who is someone in Haverward that Ursulan

has befriended and really loves in the time that you've spent?

Haverward is a very interesting place.

I think there would be a lot to Ursulan that appeals there.

Even though wizards are like, oh, Haverward is what is that's the, that's the, that's the industrial, that's like the sort of grind.

There's griminess in Haverward.

But for Ursulan, Haverward is a friendly, lovely metropolis filled with interesting people.

It's like, to you, in the places you've spent time, Haverward is actually kind of nice because your

appearance is never questioned there.

No one ever, like, you walking around in Haverward are like met in a friendly, nice way by everybody who's there.

So,

who's someone that you know in Haverward that you

handing the reins over to you for a second?

There's a boxing promoter who runs a pit

fight thing that is constantly trying to get me to go there and fight.

I don't fight, but he does give me free drinks anytime I show up.

So I think Suvi's provided alcohol, so now Ursulan is like,

I know a place actually where we can drink for free, and it's not even because of the badge.

And so I'm going to take them to this really scummy, scary, pitfighting, illegal pitfighting ring

where I hang out sometimes because the drinks are free.

You head to a place.

This is, let me be clear,

flying vehicles cannot get here because this place is so deep in the stacks of towers that it is effectively subterranean.

It just keeps going.

No, this is the way.

Yeah, no, this is the right way.

Yep.

Seems like a dead end.

No, well, see, this door opens.

You walk into a door and arrive in an extra-dimensionally large interior place within the citadel.

So this is like if a catacombs was squatted in by a bunch of circus performers.

You see that there is a,

there are like, there are tiles on the ground that are a steely gray lapis lazuli kind of color and then a very light creamy teal, all of them a little bit metallic, a little bit reflective as you walk.

The arches are those kind of catacomb arches where everything is like domed.

So there's not a flat ceiling anywhere, but just either square or hexagonal or octagonal, kind of like quarters and weird little places in between.

Some of them get so large that suddenly there are lights and tents and strings.

You see that there are stilt walkers and fire breathers moving around in this place.

There is a man who is about six foot four,

enormously muscular.

He has

very baggy pinstripe trousers with suspenders over what looks like a red and white striped like swimming suit top.

Again, I have the type.

I hide the type.

I hang out with mustaches and fucking guys in wild outfits.

You see this guy, I will say, mustaches are very common in this, like this kind of facial hair is very in vogue.

So, this guy has a.

He's just changed the whole tenor of the campaign.

Now, you have to imagine everybody, like, Naram with

Narom Philip.

Typically, guys with mustaches worth mentioning.

All right.

I don't vote for any mustaches.

This guy has pure Salvador Dolly, like two big points coming off his face.

Sorry, how hot is he?

He's incredibly.

He looks like freaky Tom Hardy

with a...

So he's got...

He's got the, he's got the, he's like the little red and white striped A-frame, suspenders and baggy trousers, and a cocked forward top hat with a gold sash around it,

mustache coming out, handing out flyers.

He's got a lot of rings and bracelets on his hands.

And you see, he goes, come on up to the bloody carnival.

Step up, one and all, to see the fight of the century.

This guy's name is Losario Racamante.

And you see, he comes up and says, he is a man who knows his way around a fight.

Oh, Losario,

strongest man in Silvery.

I'm gonna, we're gonna just like fake box for a second.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, fight, okay,

but not today.

Not today, Losario, not ever.

You see, he says, Wizard of the Citadel on Chante, Archmage Apprentice.

You see, he bows, he says, he says, I can feel the property values going up just to your mere presence.

Subi is chain-smoking these cigarettes to remain chill with the situation and now has clocked how hot he is.

And like, I'm glad we're here, actually.

I'm very, it's so nice to meet you.

I'm very happy to be here.

What was your name again?

This is Mr.

Rockamonte, but you can call me Losario.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

He says,

he says, have you ever been down to the bloody carnival before?

I'd be delighted to show you.

Yes, please.

And you see, he says, he says, Madame,

with all of the sights and he said, gesturing to Ama, he goes, Madame, with all of the sights and wonders around here, would you like a little bit more of a vantage point?

Oh, I would love that.

He hoists the wheelchair up onto his bicycle and just rests it between his like, like, so it's that you're on his shoulder, outstretched arm

as the fox goes, ugh, moving too fast.

And he says, come in for the fight of your life.

And he just tries to gesture you to a prize fight.

Bear, the fact that you have not mentioned this man to me is a point of contention between us.

Well, I feel like anytime you come, I ask you to come down here, you're like, you don't like the smells.

You're just too busy.

The chairs are all plastic and not made of metal.

It is a funky smell down there.

Like for all of this, there's the smell of like the fluids that the fire breathers are using to breathe fire.

There's like, it's like, ooh, that's like a great smell of a snack somewhere.

And someone threw up.

And then there's, okay, and then

it's, we're in a, like, all of the wonder of, like, oh, it's Candle Street Bakery.

How incredibly charming.

This is like, oh, no, this is, it's rowdy.

We're in a rowdy spot.

I just didn't know what you would do.

I didn't know you would be excited about this, but now I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I've been with you.

So good.

I love this so much.

I love you so much.

Hey, I love you.

You're right.

You need a break.

If you try to take this bottle from me, I will fight you.

Okay.

You see that as it goes up, do you have any of any snacks survived with you throughout your trips?

Any other stuff still here?

Like Bon Bons or anything else like that?

I mean, I probably have just, even not from tonight, but just whatever pockets I have, have some snacks.

You see that as you're going along,

there's a flitter

and a tiny winged marmoset.

It's about as tall as your thumb.

Flies in, grabs a crumb of something out of Ursulan's pocket and flies up towards a little thatched nest where a number of

so small little winged marmosets with these big, like, sort of like

dull warm brown orangey eyes begin to like pass and break out crumbs from each other.

You see those little scraps of popcorn bags up there with them?

And you see Lasario and says not cute not cute pests

pests no i'm sorry i should warn you guys yeah it's not you can't bring any food down here that you don't buy inside uh yeah you see that uh you look up uh you would know these as imchin

which are some of the few uh the vast majority of animals that you see up on the courts like especially basically haverward being terrestrial for whatever reason and the amount of food and work and there's like that has a whole little little ecosystem of very weird magical animals.

There are more than 200 species of animal that are native exclusively to this one city because of all the weird magical energy going on in this place.

You could be a biologist and just study animals of the citadel, but they all live in Haverward.

Most because they maintain for pests very carefully amongst like the hovering courts of the citadel.

And all the animals up there

are illusory and there's the actual name for them is

phonologue they are phonologue animals

but

but

the sort of slang term for them is unfamiliars

that's great

you watch a prize fight begin there's popcorn life is good

I think the evening continues with this and much more adventure.

What time of night is it when you guys finally make the decision with your freshly recovered bird?

I think we fully lose Ahme's wheelchair.

Like, I think we're carrying Ahme back up.

I'm like back on, like, on top of Ursula's shoulder.

It's like a full kind of piggyback situation.

We lost it in a fight, you know.

Things got raw outside the bloody carnival.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

And

Fox is on top of, of like Sue.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

I'm wearing

a little soul.

Like an overly full soul.

Wine and good cheer, snacks and wonders, music.

You

get back.

The question is this.

Do you get back in time

for before Malakanth's court takes off?

No.

Is the sun rising by the time you get it?

Yeah.

lost the wheelchair?

We lost the wheelchair.

You lost the wheelchair.

We will see the day star and that will tell us.

Fuck that wheelchair.

Fuck that wheelchair.

We can get more.

You could have a hundred.

Yes.

Abe demanded I throw it.

Give up the chair.

You guys get woken up at about 11:30 in the morning on a straight-up bench in a massive Sky Station airship terminal as a voice projected magically from a central kiosk says, The 11:30 from Alecan Court departs in five minutes from platform four.

Please have your

That's us.

That's us.

Oh, my mouth tastes terrible.

Ten more minutes.

We have to go.

Ame, get your shape.

You gotta go.

Where's Ami's chair?

No, I threw it.

Amen.

Throw it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ame, you gotta get up.

Ame, you gotta get up.

Carry me.

I'm going to, but you have to, you have to put your legs over my shoulders.

And I just need to just hold onto my forehead.

You gotta go.

Sling me over your shoulders.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

I got Ahme.

Do you have the fox?

Yeah, I got the fox.

That's good.

I was on the fox.

That's good.

At about 12:15,

you arrive and see in broad daylight Candle Street Bakery and the mocking horror of busy wizards, mostly walking, some levitating, a few teleporting, some flying, all going about their busy day of work here in the Citadel as you, sort of hairied and partially unkempt, stumble back to Alabast Hall.

What are the final thoughts as each of you get into the cool, welcoming shade of Suvi's lovingly appointed abode?

As they carry me past, I see some wizard, you know, looking at me, judgment, what I think to be judgmentally, and I say, it's not a walk of shame.

I'm not walking.

I busy myself with the important business of the Empire.

And I feel no shame.

Well,

wanders off.

Before you drift off into unconsciousness, after, I'd say you probably got like 90 minutes

at sunrise

in the terminal, and you get back either hungover or still drunk.

What are your final thoughts before drifting off to slumber altogether here in Suvi's home?

I think Suvi's thought was just that was the best narrative of my life.

Easily.

I think Ursulant's thought is that

this was awesome.

And God, I hope it lasts.

As I cuddle up,

I think about

that this is

everything that I ever hoped for and wanted,

and I'm going to do

whatever it takes to protect these people.

The loving noises of illusory bumblebees on flowers that never lose their scent in a deep, soft red home

with sheets and cushions scattered across the floor and off of the bed and a constellation of beloved friends sleeping restfully in the glorious day.

That was Lou Wilson as Ursulan, Erika Ishii as Ahme, Abria Iyengar as Suvi, and Brennan Lee Mulligan as Everyone and Everything Else.

Worlds Beyond Numbered is edited, designed, and scored by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse with additional sound design from Michael Gelfie Studios.

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