Sara awoke in a soft, warm bed. In fact, it was too warm. The covers had been tucked up to her chin, and the sheets tucked in beneath the mattress. She was absolutely drenched in sweat.

  She flung a hand out to one side, patting over the covers in search for Evie or Hurlish, but found nothing. She tossed another probing hand out, assuming the feline had fallen asleep on top of Hurlish again, and still found nothing.

  It was in that moment of confusion that the aches of her body made themselves known, and with them, her memory of the previous day.

  Sara bolted upright, tearing the bnket off her, heart thundering. She started to roll off the bed, fumbling for a weapon. Her sleep-dusted eyes peeled open, finding only darkness. Daylight crept into the room through a shuttered window, but precious little, leaving her in a deep gloom.

  Just as Sara's fist reflexively clenched around the haft of a wall-mounted spear, her better senses soaked through the haze of adrenaline.

  She was in their home. The literal armory decorating the walls was proof of that. And she hadn't been captured, of course. They'd won the battle. She'd fallen asleep in the street, which wasn't the smartest thing in the world, but she'd done it surrounded by no one but friends.

  Sara forced her hand to unclench, leaving the weapon on the wall. She could hear voices murmuring in the other room, all familiar. Oddly, though, one was masculine.

  Oh shit.

  Sara hopped out of bed and ran over to the window throwing open the blinds. She winced as sunlight speared through her eyes, blinking past the pain as she moved to the mirror.

  To her surprise, she was dressed fairly modestly. A simple undyed peasant's shirt covered her bound chest, made of the scratchy cotton she'd long since been forced to get used to, as well as a simirly-composed pair of shorts that she'd always compared to oversized boxers. She was still visibly wounded, but far less than she had been the st time she'd seen herself.

  Sara gently touched one of the lines that traced from her right temple to the her cheekbone, prodding at the infmed flesh. It was a thin cut, but deep, and it was still sore. She didn't think she'd been asleep all that long. Retively speaking. The sun was rising, which meant she'd slept for at least a full day, but considering the circumstances, she thought that was fair.

  Taking a deep breath to steel herself, Sara moved to the door and creaked it open, poking her head out.

  As always with her seven-foot girlfriend- wife- Hurlish was the first to catch her eye. The orcish woman was in the diminutive kitchen, bent over a fire-burning stove that they'd put up on blocks, just to make it a bit easier for her to reach. The home they'd acquired hadn't been built for orcs, and it showed in the way Hurlish had to bend at the waist to do nearly everything, including cook. Of the three of them, Hurlish was the only one who had ever lived a life that actually required her to cook without servants or a microwave. As usual, the sight of her pregnant wife cooking a meal for her sent a twinge of guilt through Sara, but it wasn't as if she could force the woman to eat whatever atrocity she and Evie would have committed in the orc's pce.

  Evie, in turn, was sitting at their single table, dressed to the absolute nines. If Sara's vision had been just a bit blurrier, she could have been convinced Vesta had come to visit. The puffy ballgown certainly would have been a better fit for the former noblewoman, with its eborate embroidery and tight corset. Evie's hair was pulled back into a tighter braid than Sara had ever seen it, so tight she knew it couldn't have been comfortable, and she'd actually applied makeup, which was a product Sara would have bet decent money the entire city of Tulian cked. To Sara's modern sensibilities the rosy cheeks atop a powdery white complexion should've looked downright bizarre, even clownish, but this was Evie. The girl would've looked stunning if she'd been wearing the squeaky nose and clown shoes along with it.

  Besides, Sara wasn't the target audience. The man sitting across from Evie was.

  Her father was still dressed in his modern clothing, which might've looked intriguingly exotic to the Tulian citizenry if not for the massive sweat stains that ran down from his armpits. His tiny-rimmed gsses, an antiquated fashion disaster he'd willingly embraced to better look the part of a professor for his students, were perched atop his bald head, fogged to uselessness by the combination of Tulian humidity and cook-stove roaring just a few feet away. He was listening to Evie speak with undisguised delight, and as Sara tuned into the conversation, she could understand why.

  "Yes, while the Sporaton nobility clings tightly to the concept of de jure nd ownership, you are correct that there is no direct cultural equivalent to what you call the Divine Right or Mandate of Heaven, at least as I understand them. Considering the active involvement of divinity in the lives of humanity, it is no wonder that they are unable to sustain such a farcical cim. Rather, the nobility maintains the compliance of their subjects through what they cim to be a mutually beneficial arrangement of protection in exchange for working the nd."

  "But that's BS, right?" Sara's dad asked, leaning in eagerly. "Wealth disparity that extreme is inherently unsustainable. Rebellions must be inevitable."

  Evie nodded politely. "While your overarching conclusion is rgely correct, I must once again emphasize the differing socioeconomic climate created by the existence of Levels. What would be an untenable inequality in the framework you are familiar with is, in our world, buoyed by the disproportionate capacity of violence attainable by dedicated application of oneself to-"

  Evie's speech cut off in the middle of a word, ears flying towards Sara's direction, eyes following a fraction of a second ter.

  "Sara!" She cried, standing.

  "Sara?" Her dad echoed, fumbling for his gsses.

  Evie covered the ten feet between them fast enough to rattle the weapons mounted on the wall, and Sara opened her arms for a hug.

  Only for the feline to snag her arm and lift it higher, peeling up her shirt to inspect her wounds.

  "Are you hurting still? I ordered the healers to focus their efforts on the troops, as I knew you would prefer, but that provision can easily be reversed-"

  "I'm sore, but fine," she said, yanking her wrist out of her wife's grip. "How about you?"

  "Excellent, of course," she said, prodding her face for emphasis. "Though I still cannot smell anything, which is somewhat disconcerting. Perhaps the nasal cavity within is still-"

  "Evie," Hurlish drawled.

  "Oh!" Evie took a step back and, for the first time in gods knew how long, curtsied. "I apologize, Mr. Brown. This moment is far more appropriately your own, rather than mine."

  "Thanks?" Her dad said, sounding unsure of the words even as he swept firmly past her.

  Sara stepped forward, throwing her arms around her dad's shoulders.

  "Hey," he said, hugging her tight.

  "Hey," she whispered back, pressing her cheek into the top of his head.

  They stood together for a long, peaceful moment, the only sound coming from the eggs Hurlish was frying on the stovetop.

  Finally, as she felt her eyes began to water and a sniffle build up, Sara stepped back. She wiped her eyes, smiling widely.

  "Sorry we didn't talk earlier."

  Her dad ughed. "From what I've heard, you had a lot of stuff going on. Can't bme you. Always did need your beauty sleep."

  "Not anymore," Sara joked, tossing her hair side to side. "I got magic powers for that, thankfully. I could go through an avanche and come out the other end ready for a makeup commercial." She paused, uncertainty filling her. "So... how much have they told you so far?"

  "A lot, but probably not anywhere close to all of it," her dad replied. After wiping his own eyes, he moved back over to the table, waving for Sara to sit.

  "C'mon. Let's hear it. I've met your wives, clearly- lovely girls."

  "That's- um. Thanks."

  Sara joined Evie and her dad at the table, and, after a few minutes of both subjecting her to are-you-sure-you're-alright questions, Hurlish set down four wooden ptes, all featuring piles of scrambled eggs heaped beside thin slices of salted meat. It may not have looked like much, but for Tulian these days, the addition of seasoning was a downright luxury.

  "So," Hurlish said as she slid her own chair out and dropped down with a floor-rattling thud, "You really study rocks?"

  "Yes, I do, but first of all," her dad stabbed Sara through with an accusatory gre. "Did you really just not pull out your chair for your wife? Who's pregnant?"

  "Uh..." Sara trailed off awkwardly.

  "Ha!" Hurlish boomed her ughter, spping the table. "See, that's what I've been missing. Y'know how many people talk like that to her since she got here, Dave? Me! Just me. And Evie, sometimes, but barely ever."

  "You better not have let all this fame go to your head."

  "I assure you, she has not," Evie sniffed. "If anything, her efforts to maintain her humility are problematically fanatical. Perhaps if she allowed herself to recognize her own importance more often, she would not suffer the wounds she does."

  "So!" Sara all but shouted. "Dad! Geology, right? Studying rocks, like Hurlish asked?"

  "Oh! Oh, yes, sorry." He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief Evie had provided, turning to face Hurlish. "Technically, I'm not quite a geologist. It's a reted discipline, geomorphology, which studies the effects of erosion on geological time scales. Things like how a river cuts through the ndscape, gcier's effects on valleys, and rger-scale climate change. Compared to most geology, I'm dealing with things that happen in a blink of an eye, so I always like to say it's amongst the fastest-paced fields of geology."

  "Uh-huh," Hurlish nodded, chewing her food slowly. "But, like... why?"

  "Excellent question!"

  Sara sat back in her chair, content, at least for the moment, to let the conversation develop naturally. There would be plenty of difficult questions to come ter, but for right now, everyone was getting acclimated. They needed that time.

  Evie in particur, by the looks of things. The feline was sitting so straightly that Sara wanted to check the back of her chair for tacks, her hands folded primly in her p. It was clear to anyone with eyes or ears that she so desperately wanted to make a good impression, and equally obvious that she had no idea how to do that. None of her training in polite society had prepared her for a midwest science dad, that was for sure. If Sara had to guess, Evie was treating her dad like some mixture of a political dignitary and high-level mage, which was the closest equivalence her training gave her for a scientist father-in-w.

  The absurd level of formality was obviously keeping her dad on edge, and if it weren't for the fact that Evie could easily spout off all kinds of political jargon that her dad clearly enjoyed engaging in, she had to imagine their conversations in Sara's absence would have gone far worse.

  Hurlish, on the other hand, was doing far better. She didn't understand jack nor shit about geology, but she got enough of a kick out of the idea of someone dedicating their whole lives to studying rocks that her amusement could be mistaken for enthusiasm. Besides that, she was also just more of a natural socializer. What few odd ideas her dad threw out there, she took in stride, and when he mentioned something she had outright no clue about, she'd just ignore it. It was as close to a normal conversation as she imagined her dad would be capable of holding in this new world, at least for a while.

  Eventually, though, once the food was gone and the easy topics were spent, the more difficult questions reared their head.

  "So how long was I gone?" Sara finally asked. "To you, I mean." Her dad scraped at the st scraps of his eggs, a frown taking over his pudgy face. "That’s the odd thing. I didn’t think you were gone at all. At least, not until I got here."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I’m not sure, honestly." Her dad continued to push the eggs around his pte, making a little pile. "It’d been about a year since I saw you st. I should’ve been freaking out. I should’ve gone to the cops. Well, for whatever good they’d do, you know how that is. I should’ve filed a missing person report. Should’ve been asking your work and your friends. But I didn’t."

  "Harsh."

  He rolled his eyes at Sara. "You know that’s not what I mean. Just, for some reason, I never really thought about the fact that you were missing. It seemed normal, somehow. Like you were on a business trip and never called."

  "Amarat’s influence, one would presume," Evie said.

  "Probably," Sara agreed. "I guess it’s better than letting you think I died or something."

  "Is it?" He looked up from his meal, a glint of steel turning his frown into a scowl. "I don’t like it. Not at all. Screwing with my head like that? It crosses some lines."

  "She’s a God, Dad," Sara said. "She could’ve made you forget I even existed, probably. Or, maybe not. I don’t know how much power they have on Earth, or our universe, or whatever it is. But I don’t think smoothing over your panic is the worst thing they could have done."

  "Not the best thing, either. She owes me an apology."

  "Mr. Brown," Evie said, putting a cautioning hand forward. "I understand you were raised in a nd without divinities, where such words were idle chatter. But things are different here. Criticism of the gods is considerably ill-advised."

  "Oh, like she has time to tune into whatever I’m saying? Pretty sure a god has more important things to deal with."

  "No one and nothing is beneath their notice, sir," Evie replied. Her words were spoken gently, but firmly. "Please. You do not have the leeway afforded by your daughter’s status as a Champion. I ask that you restrain yourself, at least so far as speaking such thoughts aloud is concerned."

  "Can’t they read my mind, though?" He circled a finger at the ceiling, looking up. "If they’re all that, surely they'd at least be able to do that."

  "That is a matter of considerable schorly debate," Evie said. "Regardless, thinking something is an entirely different offense to voicing it for others. To lose faith privately is perhaps a shame, yet it is nothing next to jeopardizing the faith of others."

  Sara watched her dad’s jaw work at that, chewing over the words. She knew him well enough to know exactly what he thought of that. Of not being allowed to criticize a higher power.

  Thankfully for Evie’s sanity, he simply nodded. He could agree with the practicalities of the argument without recognizing the morality behind it. An advantage he had over Sara.

  "Anyway," he moved on, "No, I didn’t miss you. I should have, and I really started to the moment I got dropped off here, but that was it."

  "Well, I’m at least gd you didn’t spend a year freaking out about me." Sara cocked her head. "It was a year, right? There wasn’t any time manipution BS?"

  "Yeah, a year. It was the middle of March, 2023."

  "So that lines up, too. Interesting. I bet Garen will love to hear about that."

  "Garen?"

  "Oh, yeah. You’re gonna love him. He’s Tulian’s only Archmage. A real high-tier wizard dude. I’ve been having him work on using magic to build steam engines and stuff."

  "A wizard?" Her dad leaned across the table, white-knuckling his fork. "Like, a real, actual wizard? Magic spells and everything?"

  "Yeah. Actually, I can cast a bit of magic, too."

  Her dad gasped so hard he sent himself into a coughing fit, pounding his chest. Hurlish gave him a light thump on the back, ughing.

  "That excited about it, huh?"

  "It’s magic," he said, stuttering through his cough. "That’s the best thing there’s ever been. Show me, show me!"

  "Not lightning, though," Hurlish interjected. "Or at least not inside the house."

  "You can cast lightning?"

  In a few short minutes, Sara found herself leading the way to Tulian’s University. She did briefly consider giving her dad a demonstration in the smithing courtyard, but after so long spent under siege, she didn’t think the Tulian popuce would appreciate an almighty 9’am thundercp. Best to do it under the supervision of someone who could put a proverbial muffler on her spell.

  As they walked, though, Sara found her father quickly getting distracted by the oddities of Tulian’s foreign sights and sounds. At first, she’d worried that he would be gawking at every orc or catfolk they passed, but that didn’t come to pass. He did take more note of them than most did, of course, but in a polite, gncing fashion. That made sense. Her dad had spent his entire life in Detroit, Michigan. A seven-foot orc with a basket full of fruits was far, far easier to ignore than a man on PCP attempting to mate with a car’s tailpipe, or a fistfight between two people so blitzed on a cocktail of various substances that they may as well have been doing a waltz.

  No, the people of Tulian weren’t what interested her dad. It was the architecture. Or, truly, not even that.

  It was the bricks.

  "Is this all quarried stone?" He asked, walking up to some poor woman’s house, ignoring the baffled expression she shot him as she prepared breakfast in her kitchen window. "In Europe, a lot of the early modern structures were made of field stones, but these are all standard sizes. Not to mention it’s almost all granite, which is really surprising for such a rge city. The quarrying efforts must have been immense. Evie showed me some maps already, and I didn’t see any quarries nearby-" as he spoke, he retrieved a chisel and hammer from his pocket, a set which Sara could only assume Hurlish had given him, and began to chip at the bricks, adjusting his gsses by scrunching his nose. "-which implies that this is all fairly old construction. You said this city was founded four hundred years ago, Evie?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Interesting. That’s not nearly enough time to…" He trailed off, moving his chisel to the left. "Oh, and what is this mortar? It doesn’t look anything like-"

  "Excuse me," the woman in the window said, leaning out to stare down at the muttering geologist. "Are you breakin’ down my house?"

  Her dad’s face whipped upward, looking like a child caught with their fist in the cookie jar.

  "I’m sorry. I was just, uh-" he patted the damaged brickwork. "Not breaking it, no. It’ll be fine. It’s just a scrape."

  "Don’t like you scraping my house, neither."

  "Of course. Sorry."

  He retreated from the house, but only after he pocketed the fragments of mortar he had chipped off. Sara and her wives followed after him, sporting a variety of amused reactions.

  "Y’know, if you were anyone else, Evie would probably be getting on your ass about making a bad impression on Sara’s behalf," Hurlish noted.

  "But he is not anyone else," Evie quickly interjected, "and I do not judge him by the standards I would others. Not only are you father to a Champion, you have also spent little more than a day in a new world. It is of no concern, Mr. Brown."

  For his part, Sara’s dad just ughed in disbelief.

  "Thanks. It’s surreal, you know. Do you know how many times I brought Sara to some university event and spent the entire drive there warning her to behave? And now it’s me that’s worried about making a good impression on her behalf?" He ughed again. "I imagined a lot of pces in life for Sara to end up in, a whole lot, but politics?" A scoff. "Absolutely not."

  "Yeah, well, I’m doing my best to get out of it," Sara assured him. "I’m not anywhere close, but there’s no way in hell I want to be in charge of this shit forever."

  "What are you going to do instead?" He asked. "You’ve got too much power and authority to just sit around, you know. I’ve learned that much already."

  Sara shrugged. "No idea. Maybe I’ll just be, I dunno, a government contractor. Like, Tulian’ll pay me to work for them on diplomacy stuff or something, or train the army. Evie and I would be pretty good at that."

  "I didn’t imagine you being a PMC, either."

  "PMC?" Evie asked. "I am unfamiliar with the term."

  "Private Military Contractor," her dad expined. "Someone with military training for hire, either by governments or private individuals. Basically a mercenary."

  "I, for one, would certainly not mind such a path," Evie hummed. "If Master wishes to disengage from official governance, but remains invested in the fate of the Tulian Republic, I think founding a mercenary company would be an excellent middleground."

  For a second, Sara almost thought she got away with it. Her dad opened his mouth to respond, probably to make some joke or another, then paused, squinting at Evie.

  "Master?" He asked curiously.

  Goddammit. We were doing so good.

  "Kink thing," Sara butted in. "Don’t worry about it."

  "Oh. That’s… alright, then." He shuddered performatively. "I don’t want to know."

  Thank god.

  Her dad hadn’t yet learned that Evie, technically, had been ensved to Sara, in both realities she’d lived in. She wanted to keep it that way. He may not hold quite as extreme a view of politics as she did, but for a man born in the 1960s, he was close. Sara would’ve been surprised if he wasn’t listed on some dusty old ‘80s CIA file as a potential Communist. There’s no way he’d approve of the wildly inappropriate retionship they’d formed. Hell, Sara still didn’t approve of it herself.

  Didn’t make her any less happy to have Evie by her side, though. The rest of the walk to the University was spent with her wives and her father deep in conversation, Sara only occasionally interjecting her own comments or crifications. Both women had a lot of interest in her dad, and not just because he was their new father-in-w.

  Hurlish was fascinated by his firearms knowledge, which far eclipsed anything Sara had on offer. Back on Earth, she’d owned a few guns, but only modern, practical examples. The sort she bought in her more naive years, on the off chance that the "glorious leftist revolution" finally reared its head. Her dad, by contrast, had an interest in the Civil War and the first World War (or Great War, as he always insisted on calling it). Sure, Hurlish would’ve loved to crank out a copy of Sara’s ACOG-equipped AR-15, but that was a ughably distant dream. Bck powder weapons were far, far more accessible for a smith like Hurlish, and she was doing a pretty poor job of pretending she wanted to talk about anything else.

  Evie was also fairly interested in her dad’s firearm knowledge, but for the politically savvy feline, that was a secondary concern to her father’s knowledge of Earthly history. Sara had talked a lot– a lot– about the western world’s centuries-long transition from feudalism to capitalistic democracy, and even considered herself fairly knowledgeable on the topic, but like nearly every other topic, her dad’s actual schorly knowledge-base blew hers out of the water. Evie politely picked and pried at his mind through the sedate walk, teasing out every little detail she could. While her dad definitely didn’t notice, Sara could tell that Evie was herding him like a sheepdog, always keeping the topic towards the problems she suspected would arise in Tulian. For all she respected Sara’s ambition of an equal society, Evie had absolutely no faith in the democratic process. She wanted to know everything that would fail over the coming months and years, and she wanted to know about it as soon as possible.

  Eventually, though, even the two women’s poorly disguised interrogation efforts couldn’t overcome the sheer excitement of a lifelong Tolkien fan on his way to meet a real, literal wizard. When the University of Tulian finally came into sight, two stories tall and sitting atop the city’s only remaining hill, they lost control of the discussion entirely.

  "That’s- oh, man, it looks just like an Early Modern university," he gushed, hurrying forward. "How big is it, internally? What was the student load like, before the storms? It’s only been ten years, right? And you said there’s facilities specifically for magic?"

  The questions didn’t stop coming long enough for Sara to even pretend she knew the answers, and they kept rolling as they crossed the empty stretch of dirt where an entire boulevard had once been, all the way up the University’s steps, and they continued even while Sara went up to the massive doors and pounded out a firm knock.

  She stepped back just as the doors flew open, revealing a smiling Garen, hands raised, dressed in his simple brown mage’s robes. After a year spent in this world, Sara knew that most people would consider Garen’s attire disappointing. There were no fshy runes embedded in fine silk, nor subtle enchantments that kept the garments flowing even on a windless day, and certainly no encrusted jewels brimming with magical energy. Just brown on brown, worn by a tired-looking man who needed a shave. Certainly not what the average Tulian citizen would expect of an archmage renowned for thousands of miles.

  But Sara also knew her dad. And she knew exactly what Garen’s outfit looked like to him: a Jedi.

  "Hello," Garen greeted warmly, folding his hands back into his sleeves. "It is an honor to meet you, David Brown. I am Garen, head of the University of Tulian. I have heard much about you, and thanks to your daughter’s stories and illusions, feel as if we have already met. I look forward to introducing myself properly."

  "Did you use a spell to open the door like that?" Her dad asked immediately. "Like, is magic that easy that you can use it to open doors? Because Sara was talking about how she can cast a few spells per day, but if that was magic and you just used one just like that, you must either have way more spells you can cast than her or something, right?"

  Garen ughed warmly. "You’ve already proven much like I expected, David Brown. To answer your question: to a degree. For a mage of the requisite skill, exerting simple force upon a door’s hinge is hardly worth calling a spell. It does not require the effort from myself that your daughter’s more extreme spells might, in her pce."

  "On the hinge, though?" Her dad asked, honing in on the minor detail. "You applied the force there? Not on the edges of the doors?"

  Garen cocked his head, smile shifting to a less performative grin. He was impressed. "You are correct. While it would have been easier with mundane, physical effort to push from the centers of the door, therefore applying useful leverage, with spellcraft, one must focus on the locus of motion: the hinges. It is from them that the integral concept of motion originates, not from the door itself."

  "So magic really is divorced from physics, then?" Her dad asked, stepping into the University. "Sara expined that her Lightning spell manifests pretty much exactly like a normal lightning bolt, which implies her spell was recreating natural phenomena, rather than following some new ruleset…"

  "You’ve already stumbled upon a rather common conundrum encountered by prospective mages." Garen lifted a hand and snapped his fingers, sparking to life a simple ball of light over his thumb. Her dad gawked at the formless white ball, tears budding at the corners of his eyes. "Spellcraft, or ‘magic,’ if you prefer, is not constrained by simple logic. It is a product of the self and divine intertwined, a gift to us all granted by the universe itself. One can no more define ‘magic’ than one can a human soul, or perception itself. Your daughter has taught me much of your world, David Brown, and with this knowledge, I can both assure and warn you: spellcraft is unlike anything you have ever encountered."

  "Oh hell yeah," her dad breathed, leaning ever closer to the little ball of light. After a moment, he blinked, looking up at Garen with pleading eyes. "Can you teach me? Is it possible for me to learn? To learn magic?"

  The warmest smile of the day- perhaps the warmest smile Sara had ever seen from Garen- bloomed across his face. The mage nodded.

  "The surest sign of a mage’s ability is the desire to exercise it. While I know not how you will interact with the nature of this world, having not been born to it, I doubt anyone with such a passion would be denied Tavan’s gifts." Garen released the light, sweeping his hand down the hallway. "Now, if it is agreeable to you, I would like to show you to your office."

  "My office?"

  "You were a professor on Earth, were you not? An instructor of ‘geology,’ the study of the pnet? Your skillset is likely unique across the entire world, David Brown. I would be remiss to not offer you a position amongst the University. And while I cannot speak to wages at this time, you would be the second professor present, after myself. I can only hope you will find it adequate."

  "Oh! Oh, um, sure." Her dad scratched at his neck. "I think that’s the easiest job interview I’ve ever had. And I’d only be the second professor? Across the whole University? That’s gotta be hell on the student-to-faculty ratio."

  Sara ughed. "Dad, I’m pretty sure that you’re not going to have to worry about appealing to College Board metrics anymore."

  "Huh. I guess not, no." He turned to Garen. "Sure, let’s see it. How many students do you have?"

  Sara started to follow after Garen and her dad, but the archmage held up a hand.

  "Before you join us, Sara, I would recommend that you pay a visit to the Steam Division’s room. Provisional Finance Minister Vesta is in fact already present to review our progress, so your timing could not be better."

  Sara raised an eyebrow. "You sure? I don’t think it’ll matter much if I wait a little bit longer."

  "Call me overly eager, Sara. I would appreciate it."

  "Alright," Sara said with a shrug. "C’mon, girls, let’s go."

  "Actually, Sara," Evie said, "I think I will remain with Garen and your father. I would add little to yours and Hurlish’s evaluation of steam technology, and I would like to assure myself that the proper security measures have been taken for your father’s office."

  "Huh. Okay. I’ll see you in an hour or so, I guess?"

  Evie patted her pocket, where she kept her communication crystal. "Or whenever is convenient. I will not be far."

  Sara was a little bit surprised to see Evie voluntarily heading somewhere Sara wasn’t, but she shrugged it off quickly enough. She was clearly still obsessed with making a good impression on her dad, and her overprotectiveness (which was seeming more reasonable with every passing day) had already begun to include him.

  Sara meandered down the halls with Hurlish, easily finding her way to the room she knew to be used for Garen’s many failed attempts at creating various steam engines. They walked hand-in-hand, making little jokes about her dad’s reaction to Garen, until suddenly Sara stopped, cocking an ear forward.

  "You hear that?" She asked.

  "Yeah," Hurlish said.

  Muted, but still distinct, was the sound of rhythmic cnks and quiet hisses. Sara shared a gnce with Hurlish, then hurried forward.

  The door to the testing room, for once, was wide open. That shouldn’t have been the case; Garen always kept it sealed shut, for safety. Sara peaked around the corner, nerves rattling in the back of her mind.

  He didn’t really do it…?

  Four people were in the room, two sitting in chairs, two sitting before the central piece of machinery. Sitting in the middle of a bnk, stone-walled room, was a contraption taller than Hurlish. It was twice the size of any previous version Garen had shown her, and for once, it was in one piece. Sara recognized the two students that were sitting cross-legged at the mouth of the machine, talking quietly with one another. The vanara girl, Chona, was unmistakable, with her monkey-like fur and tail, while Tinvel, the human boy at her side, was familiar to Sara mostly through Hurlish’s stories of the young artificer. In the far corner of the room, sitting at a table covered with papers, inkwells, and quills, was Vesta and Oddry. Vesta was hunched in concentration, scribbling numbers out on a paper, while Oddry was waiting patiently beside her, a stack of fresh papers and quills ready to go.

  But what really caught Sara’s attention was the room’s most prominent feature.

  They really did it, she thought. She wasn’t sure if she should be relieved, eted, or terrified.

  The shuddering, trembling contraptions Sara had been familiar with were no more. In their pce stood an obelisk of whirling iron, trimmed to sleek efficiency. At its base, carefully monitored by Chona, sat a glowing ruby the size of two fists. The gemstone was carved into an irregur shape, runes etched into its precious few ft surfaces, save, presumably, for the space which was set into the iron of the machinery above. A thick cylinder formed the basis of the boiler tank, kept watertight by the inset ruby, which was hot enough to create shimmering mirages in the air around it. The boiler widened as it ascended, until a simple valve connected it to the second tank above, which was gasping out little puffs of steam at regur, almost musical intervals. A simple chain connected it to a rocking beam, itself connected to a series of pipes which terminated in a small pool of water nearby. As Sara watched, the water was sucked up into the tubes, rumbled through the iron pipes, and was spat out a short distance away, refilling the pool.

  In the modern world, it would have been a crude, crude tool. Here in Tulian? Sara was bearing witness to a miracle.

  "Ah, Sara," Vesta greeted, looking up from her papers. "Excellent timing. Are you feeling recovered from your ordeals?"

  "For the most part," Sara mumbled distractedly, circling to one side of the steam engine. "What’re you doing here?"

  "I am evaluating the cost of this device," Vesta replied, gesturing to the papers across the desk she sat at. "While I am told it is a revolutionary success in technical terms, it will only have the desired effect upon Tulian if it proves possible to deploy en masse."

  "And?" Tinvel spoke up, gring Vesta’s way. Judging by the amount of papers Vesta was juggling, the finance minister had been there for quite a while, and the young artificer was well past impatient. "What’s the verdict? Can we actually afford to make more of them?"

  "Young sir, I would ask that you moderate your tone. In the future, if you want a more prompt evaluation of your devices, I would recommend you do a better job tracking your expenses. Had you done so, I could have been done hours ago."

  "Okay," Chona said, warming her hands by the crystal, "We might do that. Now can you please tell us if we just wasted months of our lives?"

  "Children," Vesta sniffed derisively. She collected a stack of papers and tapped them on the table, looking over her conclusions. "In short? Yes. Barely. If the device increases mine productivity by the percentage you cim it will, the cost of material should be recouped within eight months." Vesta looked down her nose at the two magelings, hiding a smirk. "Congratutions, children. You have changed the world."

  Chona ughed in delight, while Tinvel simply hung his head, blowing out a long, relieved sigh. Hurlish walked up to the two of them, giving them both a firm sp on the back.

  "Way to go, kiddos," the massive orc said, crouching down between them. "Knew you could do it."

  "I didn’t," Tinvel breathed.

  "I did," Chona countered. "At least, I knew my crystal would work. Kinda surprised the rest of it didn’t fall apart, though."

  "Oh, shut up," Tinvel snapped, shoving her shoulder. "Just be gd we actually finished a project for once."

  Sara left them to their celebratory bickering, instead moving over to Vesta’s desk. The steam engine continued to click and whirr and hiss behind her, and the sound of it set her hair on end for all sorts of reasons.

  "So," Sara said, hopping up to sit on the edge of the desk, "Does all that math compare the cost of using crystals vs coal?"

  "Only in rudimentary fashion," Vesta hummed, flipping through the pages. She found whatever she was looking for, giving it a cursory once-over. "The economics of coal mining are poorly explored at present, as there has never been a need for mass exploitation of the resource. I suspect that coal would be a considerably cheaper initial power source, but unlike an enchanted apparatus, coal must be continually supplied, while a crystal will only need intermittent rest. Independence from resupply and its associated logistics are a powerful motivator for alternative power sources, regardless of preliminary economics. Particurly if, as you intend, the majority of these ‘steam engines’ are empced on mobile constructions."

  "Huh."

  Sara felt like she should have said more. Hell, she felt like she should give a speech. This was a big moment in history. Not just the invention of the steam engine, but the very minute that it was pnned for mass production. Hell, this was probably the invention of mass production in general. Sara certainly wasn't going to have each and every steam engine that was soon to be distributed across Tulian be a bespoke, custom job. The artificers probably wouldn't like that, but fuck 'em.

  Sara turned her eye towards Hurlish, who was standing between Chona and Tinvel, listening to them chatter about the metallurgy of their project. She bent forward, resting a hand on her belly, inspecting the metal's seams for leaking steam.

  My kid's gonna grow up in a world I've never seen, Sara realized. God knows how long this pce has been the same. Thousands of years, probably. And now it's never going back.

  Sara didn't know what Tulian's industrial revolution would look like. It certainly wasn't going to be anything like Earth's equivalent. Sure, some basic trends might be the same; the quest for energy, speed, and material strength, all that would likely hold over. What people wanted from technology wouldn't change. But how much power that technology could deliver, and how? Even she couldn't say. Once these engines were distributed across Tulian, it was out of her hands. She knew from her dad's endless lectures that the early years of steam power were a free-for-all. With bor unshackled from physical effort, making improvements required little more than a clever idea and a napkin for taking notes. Yes, the Tulian popuce was uneducated, but that didn't mean they were stupid. Compared to centuries of stagnation, what was coming next would be obscene.

  And with someone that has an actual education...

  "Did you know my dad's in the building?" Sara asked suddenly.

  Vesta gnced up at her, raising an eyebrow. "No. I had heard that you asked for his presence as a boon from your Goddess, in addition to your alterations of the colrs, but that was all."

  "Yeah. You should meet him, Vesta."

  "I would of course be delighted, but I was under the impression his interests and mine did not align. More specifically, I believe you said he would consider me a 'proto-capitalist member of the bourgeoisie,' and that he would firmly oppose me having any role in governance."

  "That's still true," Sara admitted, "but you should still meet him. He's... well, you're not an economics major. He can get along with you. And with what he knows..." Sara couldn't tear her gaze off the steam engine long enough to look Vesta in the eye. She shook her head instead. "You're gonna want to chat with him. There's not a lot that's going to be left of the old economy, soon enough."

  Vesta chuckled. "That doesn't concern me. Tulian hardly had an economy to begin with."

  "I'm not talking about Tulian's economy."

  The gentle scratch of quill against paper stilled, leaving only the chorus of steam and murmuring artificers.

  "A statement rich with implications," Vesta purred. "Oddry, do we have time to stay a few extra hours at the University?"

  The former maid flipped open a notebook, frowning slightly. "Technically, no. However, our other engagements strike me as less pressing, dear. I recommend we stay."

  "Yeah. Everyone, everywhere, is about to get a whole lot richer. Wealth has always been tied to physical resources, and with the mines jumping in productivity soon, there's gonna be-"

  Sara felt a tug at her wrist, then heard a metallic cnk as something hit the stone floor. The sound seemed to ring through the air with a force disproportionate to its simple nature. It felt like there should have been a thundercp, a booming echo, not just a quiet little click.

  Gcially, in shock, Sara turned her head down. She almost didn't want to look.

  Sitting on the floor, broken in half, was a metal wristband. The runes that had once glowed so subtly along its surface were emitting a slight haze of smoke, first dimming to a flicker, then disappearing.

  Sara almost didn't recognize it. It felt impossible. The control band. The band that controlled Evie's colr, and by extension, her. The thin piece of metal that had filled her throat with acid from the moment it had first graced her skin. The monumental sin that had turned her dreams to nightmares, her love to something poisoned.

  It had just...

  Fallen off.

  "Sara," Hurlish said, staring at the band. The orc was shaking. Trembling, even.

  They didn't say anything else. They just took off for the door, sprinting down the hallways.

  Evie met them halfway down the hallway, alone. Sara's attention immediately snagged on her neck, which had a streak of pale skin wrapped around it, the colr conspicuously absent.

  "Hello, dears," Evie greeted. "Done so soon?"

  Sara reached out, hand shaking, and let a single finger touch Evie's neck. Evie let her, smiling gently.

  "A-are you sure?" Sara asked, throat sticking.

  "I think it's a bit te for that," Evie noted. "Are you really so surprised? This is what you wanted, is it not?"

  "Yeah," Hurlish said, face contorting in a confused frown. "It's what she wanted. But was it what you wanted?"

  Evie shrugged, her nonchance precisely calibrated. "I don't see why not. Even if I had insisted that neither of you remove the colr, contrary to your desires, would that not ruin the allure of total submission? The simple fact I wore the colr would, ironically, signify that you would never truly viote my consent. Either way, the result is unchanged. I am free."

  "But..." Sara felt tears form at the corners of her eyes. She shook her head, and for the first time she'd arrived in this world, she didn't trust herself to speak. "Okay," she said instead. She swallowed hard. "Okay. Alright. Thank you, Evie."

  "You owe me no thanks, Sara. It was my own choice." She sighed theatrically, checking the hallway for others. "Perhaps the only thing I might miss would be the particurly complex possibilities the device offered in the bedroom."

  Still choked up, but never one to miss an opportunity, Sara flicked her eyes to Hurlish. Something passed between them, impossibly quick, and then their attention was back on Evie.

  "So," Hurlish said. "Guess old pops is gonna be busy going nuts over magic shit for a while."

  "Probably," Sara agreed.

  "Think we can pop home for a bit then?"

  "Hopefully," Sara said.

  Evie crossed her arms, frowning at her wives. Then she scoffed.

  "As if I would have given you two a choice otherwise."