Just Super

Before Emily and I can go anywhere, Principal Ruehl waves for our attention. We flicker over in front of her. 

She looks at the two of us. “This is—unexpected.”

Wow. I feel like I just won a medal. 

One nice thing about her power is that I won’t have to explain what happened—except, if I don’t tell her, she won’t know. Ugh. “Okay, so—”

“Thank you, Ms. Doyle. In somewhere between ninety seconds and two minutes from now, things were going to escalate, and everyone present would likely have died. Your improvisation has changed that. The School’s destruction does not appear to happen within the next two minutes or so., so I would suggest that the two of you make good use of the time.”

Emily and I nod to each other and flicker to the roof of The School.

Emily speaks first. “Any idea why you’re glowing gold?”

“I guess it’s like your white glow?”

“Huh. Weird.” She surveys the situation. “Let's stick together until you get the hang of this. Okay?”

“Works for me.” I gesture toward the biggest mech. I don’t know why that thing’s even here. It’s taller than the two-story building that holds The School, and would never fit inside.

“Let’s start with something smaller. You should see what you can do before going after something like that.”

She has a point, but it stings a little bit, for some reason.

I point at a cluster of steampunk-looking robots near the pick-up/drop-off pads. “Like those?”

That’s when an opaque sphere of green energy shimmers in existence around us. Emily and I exchange a glance. 

“Right. Mages first?” I ask. She has more experience at this sort of thing than I do.

She nods and we both flicker to a point right behind one of the mages. We apparently picked the right one, because he is pointing at the sphere and chanting in some weird language. He’s also guarded by twenty or so living statues, who immediately move toward us. He finishes his chanting and the sphere collapses to a point and explodes in a mass of green liquid. Yuck.

Emily reaches out to grab him from behind, but the instant her hand touches his cloak (yes, he’s wearing a cloak—dork) he vanishes. I project above the school building and into the gym to try to locate him, but he’s nowhere to be seen, and the other four humans are gone as well. I report this to Emily.

She looks around at the incoming statues, then me. I nod.

She does a weird flip-twist and ends upright, gripping the nearest statue by its feet. The thing is about eight feet tall, and she’s swinging it around like a plushie, using it as a club on the next three nearest.

I stop gawking and get to work. The flip thing seems like something I’d need to practice, so I go old school; I punch the nearest one with all my strength. That turns out to not have exactly the effect I expected. 

My fist hits the thing and stops, doing little or no damage. I’d swear that there’s then an almost imperceptible delay as a bit of the glow from my fist transfers onto the statue’s chest, then it goes flying backwards at very high velocity, smashing into the one behind it so hard that both of them break into multiple pieces.

While I’m wasting time puzzling over that, a large stone fist makes contact with my head. At least, I think it does. I feel something, and turn in time to see a statue sailing over the assembled army away from me.

“Uh, Emily?”

She’s smashed most of the rest of the statues to rubble already, and has started into a squad of robots. “What’s up?” She maneuvers so she can face me.

I have a feeling. “Watch this.” I hold up my hand, palm out, toward a statue that’s charging me, and give a mental push as it makes contact. A golden palmprint appears on its reaching fist, and it goes flying back even faster than the first one. On its flight, it takes out the last of this group of statues, and about five robots behind that. “Is that something I should be able to do?”

She reaches behind her to grab a robot and throws it in my direction. I hear it smash into something behind me. “Well, it’s not something I can do. Super cool, though. Do it again.”

I don’t need more encouragement than that.

I shoot straight up into the air to get a better view for a moment. There. Another squad of robots is headed our way at a run. I flicker into their midst and spin, brushing my fingers against at least five of them, leaving little traces of my golden glow. They explode away from me, and the robots that don’t get broken into pieces are in disarray. They’re quick, though, and turn toward me, weird-looking high-tech rifles raised. 

I flicker fifty feet straight up and look down in time to see a bunch of blue-green streaks of energy fly between them, taking out a bunch more.

I look around for Emily.

My guess is she’s in the middle of that pile of robots that’s rising rapidly skyward. In a couple of seconds they’re at three hundred feet or so, and begin falling as Emily flickers in next to me. 

“Having fun?” She grins at me.

I grin back. “Mech?”

She nods. “Mech.”

That’s good, because the thing is turning its massive cannon on us. 

That does it no good when we’re both suddenly standing on its back. I glance around for a hatch or something. I’m not sure how much damage we can do to this thing by pounding on it, or, in my case, pushing it really hard.

While I’m thinking, Emily zips to where the gun attaches to the top of the walking tank. She wedges herself into a gap between the cannon and the surface, then straightens up, ripping it free. There’s a crackling noise, and electricity arcs around and through her; she ignores it.

She shifts the disconnected cannon around until she finds a good way to grip it at its smaller end. “Have you ever heard of cow tipping?”

“I guess. What are you going to use that for?”

She gives me a little grin and flies toward a big cluster of armored figures, twirling the fifteen foot cannon around herself as she swoops in. The cannon meets the loosely arrayed figures like a huge baseball bat, shattering many of them, and sending the rest arcing through the air to crash back into the ground in pieces.

I turn back to my task—knocking this mech onto its side. I dart to the left side of the mech’s back and slap both palms against its side. It lurches a little bit, but not enough to have any real effect. I flicker out of the way of a series of energy bolts and bullets.

I try again, this time placing my hands on its side and trying to push the glow into it. Within a second I need to flicker out of the way again. I’m not sure either the bullets or the energy beams can hurt me, but I’m going to trust my instincts, which tell me to dodge.

Time for a new plan. I crouch toward the center of the mech’s back. None of the enemies on the ground can see me here. I press my palms onto the smooth metal surface and push the glow from my skin into it. I can see it spread across the surface and feel it sinking in. Another second and I’ll see if that’s enough for me to really send this thing flying. I don’t get that second.

The other mech, which had been out of sight on the other side of the building, lumbers into view. The enormous cannon on its back is already primed to fire. I do the only thing I can come up with in a split second. I flicker to the safest spot I can think of—the air directly above its back.

I take the mech I’ve been crouched on with me.

There’s a shout from Emily, but I must have misheard it because there is no way she just shouted “Holy fuck!” If I did mishear her, I think I can be forgiven, since I’m a little surprised by one mech falling from a hundred and sixty feet in the air to crash onto the other one. Then the surprises keep coming.

I’m still hanging here a hundred and sixty feet up when a concealed hatch springs open on the back of the mech, near where I’d been crouched, and what looks like an escape pod shoots out and up. I can see a woman in there, through the clear plastic shell.

Sure, I’d just flickered maybe ten tons with me, but that’s not the important thing. 

I’d just taken a person with me.

I can flicker with another person.

“Emily!”

She’s already there next to me. “I saw! We can get them out of here, to someplace safe!”

I nod and we flicker back into the gym. 

I’m only a little surprised to see Ms. Ruehl ten feet away with a group of eleven kids and one teacher in a line. The person closest to me is Grace, and next in line is Coach Lacey. These must be the principal’s best guess as to the people with marks that the bad guys want the most.

“You are correct, Ms. Doyle. There is, however, a further difficulty. Whomever you take, I can’t see what happens next.”

“Do you have any idea what happens if I don’t take anyone?” 

I have an idea. I don’t know if it’s a good one, but Emily isn’t telling me to stop, and I don’t feel any sense of foreboding. I flicker away my socks and the soles of my boots, so that my skin is on the gym floor.

I could try to tell someone what I’m doing, but that idea does give me a bad feeling. I think maybe Marie and Kyle weren’t the only people working with the assholes who’ve kidnapped us. If that’s the case, they’re probably in communication with the bad guys, and I’m afraid of what would happen if the big bad finds out what I’m about to do.

“We have not been idle while the two of you have been busy outside,“ Ms. Ruehl answers. “Five hundred feet below this building, where it would have been untouched by the portal which brought us here, a ritual circle has been inscribed into the bedrock. Presumably that is why our adversary brought us here, rather than enacting their plan at The School’s normal location.”

I’m pushing the glow through my feet into the gymnasium floor. I make a conscious effort to keep it below the surface; I don’t want this to be visible.

Meanwhile, Ms. Ruehl continues, “It is our surmise that they are waiting for a ritually significant moment, at which point they will act. That does not appear to be within the next two minutes.”

If this works, and that is a very big if, there’s still a potential major problem.

“How did they move The School anyway?” I ask, for two reasons. For one, I need to know, to know if there’s any point to my plan. For the other, it helps me stall for time.

“Those pieces of jewelry we warned you about. They were not magic in and of themselves, but enough of them were secreted around the circumference of the grounds to form a pattern for a portal to lock onto.”

It’s a little hard for me to focus on what she just said, but I got the gist. I’m a little distracted by this sense I’ve never had before. My glow has spread, and I can feel the entirety of the building I’m standing in and the hemisphere of stolen ground that it rests on.

I look at Emily and we lock gazes. I want to tell her what I’m about to do, but I can’t. As hard as I can, I think “trust me.” 

I think she gives me an almost imperceptible nod, but that may be wishful thinking.

I’ve figured something out. I know what the golden glow is. I know what Emily is. That means I know what I am, at least for now.

“Ms. Doyle, are you alright, you—”

Whatever else she says is cut off as I put The School back where it belongs.

“Frank?” Emily stands right in front of me.

Huh. I’m still standing this time. That’s a nice change.

Emily is reaching for my shoulder, which should be nice, but very much isn’t. I flicker back a few feet. The pain subsides as soon as I’m away from her.

“I’m okay.” I look around. Everyone is looking down at phones. That’s a good sign. But I think everyone is still here, which is not so great. I was hoping the crowd would be thinning out by now. “Did it work?”

“You have surprised me again, Ms. Doyle,” Ms. Ruehl answers. “Yes. It worked.”

I remember something. “The crystals, we need to—”

Emily holds out her hand and opens it; it’s full of little oddly shaped crystals. She closes the hand into a fist and squeezes. There’s a crackling sound, and dust flows from her hand to the floor. “I thought you’d want to see them first.”

“Should I start getting people home now?”

“That shouldn’t be necessary,” the principal replies, “Checkers will be available shortly.”

I don’t know what’s going on with that, but it's not high on my list of concerns. If Ms. Ruehl says Checkers can handle getting people to safety from here, I trust her. There’s still an invasion going on.

I turn to Emily. “We should probably get to work.”

Ms. Ruehl looks annoyed. If I had to guess, she’s just exhausted every argument she can come up with to keep us from going, and none of them have worked.

Emily nods. “We should probably start from the middle and work our way out. If the big bad guy is anywhere in our world, that’s where I’d guess he’ll be.”

“Should we do that or sweep the edges to try to keep it contained?”

Ms. Ruehl fields that one. “The area is currently contained by a forcefield. I have been unable to reach Tiara, but I suspect that is her doing.”

That answers that.

“Ground zero, three miles up?” Emily asks. “That way we can get a good look at the area before we go in.”

We could also just project there first (or at least I could—I’m not sure if she’s figured that one out yet), but I get the feeling that there’s more to it than she’s saying.

“Sure.” I turn to Ms. Ruehl. “You can reach us if you need us, right?”

“I can.”

I look back to Emily. We both nod, and then we’re hanging in the air over a different great fortress than the one that is usually there in Death Valley. An area about five miles in diameter is covered by a shimmering transparent blue dome. First things first.

“You know what we are, right?” I get right to the point.

“We’re not gods.”

“I prefer goddesses, but no, I don’t think we’re that. We’re in the minor league version for that ballpark, though.”

“You really think we’re demigod—” she catches my look, “—desses?”

I shrug. “Maybe not even that, but I don’t have a better word.” I’m getting uncomfortable, so I drift a couple feet further away from her. 

“What’s that about?”

“You can feel it, can’t you? When we’re too close?”

“I feel something, but it’s not bad, just strange.”

“There aren’t supposed to be two of us. When we’re close, I can feel myself being pulled into you, and not in a good way. Worse, the ‘too close’ zone is getting bigger.”

“We’ll figure something out.”

“Sure. Once we’ve kicked all the ass we need to kick down there, I’ll undo this and go back to how I was.” I’m not sure that’s possible. I feel like I may have made a fundamental change to who and what I am; there may be no going back.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I can go back. In any case, I can at least do this part as the non-shortstack version of myself. I flicker my body back to how it’s supposed to be. 

That feels better, all five foot eight of me. For now, I might as well assume that I can get the rest of the way back, too. In which case Emily and I are going to need to talk.

We flicker right above the dome and look through it to the castle below.

“I think there’s the best place to start,” Emily says.

She points out the courtyard, which holds squadrons of steampunk robots. Most of them are a pretty standard humanoid shape, but one of them is an enormous mechanical dragon. Of course.

“You’re the expert.”

We appear in the center of the courtyard. 

The robots are quick to react, but we don’t stay in one spot for long. I touch the two nearest robots and launch them skyward, and Emily disappears again. I flicker several times, launching more of the mechanical humanoids out of the courtyard, and I’m starting to wonder where Emily went when the robot dragon’s chest rips open from the inside.

“I figured there must be a space in there big enough for me to fit,” Emily says with a grin, as she floats away from the ruined construct. It collapses in a heap behind her.

I roll my eyes. “What’s our goal here?”

“I thought we could clear a space in case we want to bring in reinforcements.” She begins punching and kicking robots to pieces. This is going to take forever.

“Remember our sparring sessions,” I say. “Picture spots in front of a bunch of these guys, then flicker—”

She flickers so fast I’d almost swear I see multiple of her at once. Each place she appears, fist already at the end of an uppercut, a robotic head goes flying into the air, and a robotic body collapses in a heap. 

Ten seconds later we’re the only things moving in the courtyard.

“Into the keep, I guess.” Emily gestures at the huge arched entryway.

We fly into the dimly lit corridor beyond.

“Hey, Emily.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been sort of scared lately.”

“That makes sense. This is some major scary stuff happening.”

“No, not that. Well, yes that, but this—” I gesture around at everything “—isn’t what I’m talking about. I mean about us.”

“Really?”

Five people in odd, futuristic-looking body armor teleport in, appearing around us in a circle. Before they can fire their high-tech rifles, I flicker several times in rapid succession and they’re gone, leaving their body armor and weapons to fall in heaps.

“What did you do with them?” Emily asks.

“I dropped them off in detention.” That’s an armored room at the school that only opens from the outside. “I made sure the door was locked.”

“Makes sense. So. The being scared thing?”

We continue down the corridor.

“I don’t know—maybe not scared, but worried.”

“About what?”

“I’m worried that I’m going to fuck up and do something to make you hate me. Or that you’re going to get bored with me. Or—”

Crackling walls of energy appear in front of and behind us and begin closing in. We ignore them and keep flying. I’m pretty sure the one we pass through tries to drain our life force from our bodies. It tickles.

“Or what?”

“Or that I’ll be so worried about those happening that I’ll sabotage things to get it over with.”

“You wouldn't do that.”

I shrug.

We’re busy for the next twenty seconds or so as throngs of skeletons wearing plate armor flood the corridor from a bunch of concealed doors. Once the floor is littered with bones and metal plates, we continue.

“Maybe I wouldn’t; I definitely won’t do it on purpose. But…”

“And how could I possibly get bored with you? I can’t even imagine that.”

“I don’t know.” This was probably not the ideal time to have this conversation.

We reach the end of the corridor. Enormous double doors block our way, or at least our line of sight. I put a hand on each. Electricity arcs through my arms into my body. I roll my eyes and make the doors go away.

Through the doorway is an enormous room. It’s probably a throne room, given the enormous chair sitting on a dais in the middle back. Right now that throne is empty, but the room is filled with an army of robots, armored skeletons, and animated statues. You know, the usual. They open fire.

“That was pointless,” I say.

Emily and I are back to floating above the forcefield that encloses the citadel and its armies. It took us about thirty seconds to wreck the small army in the throne room—admittedly, that was at least two-thirds Emily’s doing—and search it, only to find nothing remotely helpful.

“It was worth checking. How else are we supposed to find them?”

Like this. I imagine a grid overlaid on the castle below, and project myself to every intersection. Nothing except obvious traps and minions. I repeat that fifteen feet lower and continue until I run out of spaces.

“They’re not in there,” I say, “just monsters, minions, and traps.”

“Where could they be? And where is Tiara? Did you see her anywhere?”

The only one of those three questions I can answer is the third; no, I didn’t see Tiara. Going down there and fighting more seems pointless. There are way too many of them for us to make more than a dent.

We both have the same question. “What now?”

Since more fighting isn’t the way to go, we have to come up with another plan. If the big bad guy is in our world, they could be anywhere, so there’s not much we can do there. If they’re not, though, there are two logical places to look.

“Let’s do our citadel first,” Emily says. “There are probably people there who need a lift home, anyway.”

She makes a good point.

We flicker into the courtyard of the citadel that this latest archmage wannabe ripped from our world.

At first there’s no sign of anyone. There is, however, a dead creature lying on the ground off to one side. It might have been a griffin, or something like that. I’m no expert on monsters. 

“Anybody here!” I shout. “We’ve come to take you home!”

A figure leans out of a doorway—a young woman in a National Park Service uniform. That’s a good sign.

It turns out there were about a hundred tourists here when it got swapped out of our world, and ten employees. It takes me thirty trips, but I get them all to a shelter in Denver that is taking in people from the areas closest to Death Valley.

That leaves one more place we can think to check: the place where The School was swapped.

We’re standing outside the shelter. The people we rescued are all checked in. We’re both hesitating.

“You feel it, too, don’t you?” Emily asks.

I nod. It isn’t fear, and nothing is telling me not to go. It’s more like “be ready,” or “brace yourself.”

“Ready, then?” she asks.

I look at my reflection in the glass window of the shelter. “Just a sec.”

I picture the outfit I want to wear for this. It doesn’t matter right now that I don’t own most of it, that I never have. I know what my mark means now. There’s not a single English word for it; the best I can do is “Desire, enlightened, unbeholden to my past.” “Informed” might be better than “enlightened;” I’m not sure.

I flicker and I’m wearing a new variation on goth-punk-princess. I’m covered in black with pink accents, chiffon and leather, chains and lace. My hair is raven black, with pink streaks running its length, and styled into twin ponytails that fall to my waist. My makeup is on point.

Emily looks amused. “You were supposed to hold your hand above your head and shout a catch phrase, then change in a flash of light.”

“What?” I take advantage of my regained height and the four inch heels on my faux combat boots to look aloof.

“That’s such a magical girl outfit.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” That’s a lie, but I don’t want to admit that I might have been influenced by an anime or two I’ve watched with Denise.

“Uh huh.”

Clearly I’ve fooled her.

She flickers and is wearing her red leather jacket over a black sports bra. Her pants seem to be the same material as the jacket. Her shoes stay the same red Chucks as usual.

That’s it. It’s time. I wish I could hug her before we go.

We appear a quarter mile from the fringes of the army that had surrounded The School. I can see the wreckage of the two mechs that I took out, and beyond that, The School?

It’s clearly not the same building. This one looks like a 1:1 scale model of The School, if that makes any sense. From what Tiara told us about portals, that probably made it easier to do the switch. 

It looks deeply out of place in the middle of this seemingly endless prairie. I’m sure the actual School did, too, but I didn’t get a chance to see it from this perspective.

I’m not sure why that’s standing out to me, given the three women standing on the roof having a magical battle.

I turn to Emily. “Is that Tiara?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“And Tiara?”

“It definitely seems that way.”

“And Tiara?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, but, yeah, I think so.”

“Well, fuck.”

“Yep.”

The army surrounding the building is no more. Emily and I had eliminated maybe a quarter of it; the rest has been annihilated. Entire swaths of the already trampled prairie have been charred to ash, scoured to a depth of ten feet, or been overrun with vines of stone. We’ve only been gone ten or fifteen minutes, maximum. 

With a glance, but no words, we halve the distance between ourselves and the Tiaras. From here we can get a good look at all three of them. One is wearing full fantasy sorceress garb and looks to be in her mid-thirties. Another is wearing a business suit and appears to be in her early twenties. The final Tiara is wearing cargo pants and a tank top with combat boots. I’d put her in her late thirties or early forties

Oddly, the two who obviously aren’t the rea—our Tiara aren’t ganging up on ours. It looks like they’ve got an every mage for herself situation going on. 

“Girls! Get out of here! Now!” Tiara A (our Tiara) shouts.

The other two are paying attention to us now. 

“Oh, look,” Tiara B (for bad dress) says, “there are two of them. One each.”

Tiara C (for casual) considers. “Truce?” She’s addressing Tiara B.

“Frank! Emily!! Go!” That’s Tiara A again.

“Truce,” Tiara B answers Tiara C.

Tiara B turns her full attention to Tiara A, while Tiara C turns to us. She makes a quick gesture, but before she can complete, Emily and I are back at The School.

“They’re not sure whatever they want us for will work,” I say.

“Why do you say—”

“Incoming,” I interrupt, “follow me.” As a swirling portal begins to form, I flicker to Death Valley in Jane’s world. Emily appears with me.

“Why do you say that?” Emily finishes her question this time.

“They didn’t want you at The School for their big ritual. If they could have just used you, they wouldn’t even have needed such a complicated plan; they lured you easily enough with a big fire.”

“That’s fair. But this Tiara—”

“Tiara C, for ‘cargo pants.’”

“Fine. Tiara C seems to think she can take out both of us. Why didn’t she deal with me before all this?”

“Like I said, I don’t think they’re sure, and what they tried probably felt like the safer bet. Also, here she comes again.”

“Stay or go?”

That’s a tough one, but I don’t want to run forever. “I think we stay.”

“You sure?”

I can tell she wants to stand and fight. I guess I do, too. I nod.

The portal that’s been swirling into existence stabilizes, and Tiara C steps out. “Oh, good. You decided to stay and fight.”

I don’t bother to answer. Instead, I flicker right behind her and try to put a hand on her back. It passes through and she disappears. I flicker a hundred feet away immediately, turned so I can see the spot I just left. A beam of bluish light shines down from above, melting the sand below where I’d been floating.

I flicker again.

Emily takes a swing at what appears to be empty air, and I think she makes contact with something, but there’s no immediate effect, and she flickers up and to the side. This isn’t getting us anywhere.

The next time I flicker, I pant a little, and delay a quarter second. As I flicker away I feel someone grabbing for me. She doesn’t get a grip before I’m gone. Invisibility plus teleportation is definitely cheating. I guess I should cheat, too.

Her teleports aren’t quite the same as using a portal, but if I look just right…

There. She’s not staying anywhere longer than a second, but now that I know what it feels like, I know where she is even during those short rests. Luckily, I’m not using my eyes for this, so I don’t give away the game by looking.

I take longer and longer gaps between flickers. She occasionally has a go at Emily, but she seems mostly focused on me. I suspect that Emily’s the tougher of the two of us, and she definitely has a quicker response to danger, so it makes sense.

“Are you okay, Frank?” Emily has noticed that I'm lagging. Good.

“I’m fine,” I let myself pant a little there. I don’t want to worry her, but… “Moving the whole school was a lot. Maybe we should have taken a longer break.”

My next couple of flickers I let myself blur a little first. A half second, then a second.

The next time I flicker, I go way up, and pause to take a breath. I feel an arm like a steel band wrap around my shoulders, and something press against my throat. 

Tiara’s voice comes from right next to my ear. “If you so much as think about teleporting away, off comes your head.”

She draws the blade against my throat and I feel it actually bite in. A trickle of warmth runs down my neck.

“This blade will cut through absolutely anything,” she continues. “Emily, if you move a single inch, I will cut your girlfriend's head right off. You’re fast, but so am I.”

She might be able to do it, but I don’t think I’ll give her the chance. Kyle had been dragged into the gym while I was zoned out from moving The School. If I’d asked Coach Lacey to loan me Kyle’s mark, she definitely would have. With my low-cut top and the way Tiara C (it stands for something else now) is holding me, we already have a lot of skin-to-skin contact.

I flicker.

I consider letting her hit the ground, but only for a half second. Emily reaches her first anyway. I’m about to suggest I keep a hand on our sleeping enemy when I notice that Emily has Kyle’s mark just below her collarbone, right where I have it. Of course.

“Maybe lose one of your gloves and keep a hand on her,” I suggest.

“Sure.” She takes the suggestion. “Let’s go.” She doesn’t have to say where. 

She’s holding our prisoner, so I make the attack. I don’t feel the need for subterfuge this time. I appear behind Tiara B with my hands already on her bare neck. There’s some powerful defensive spell up, because I feel a brief, incredibly intense pain as my lower body is separated from the upper body. I flicker it back into place.

Rude.

I am not gentle as I lower her to the ground.

Tiara (just ‘Tiara,’ now that the other two are out of action) appears next to me. “Hold her for a moment longer, please.”

I do, while she speaks a complex series of unintelligible syllables and makes complicated gestures. Blue energy pours from her hands into the unconscious mage, disappearing into her skin.

Tiara repeats the process with the other Tiara in Emily’s arms.

Once the two unconscious mages are laid out on the roof, Emily and I look at Tiara expectantly. We both look from her, to her unconscious near-duplicates and back.

Tiara sighs and points at Tiara C. “That one was unwilling to make the necessary sacrifice to stop the archmage and has been looking for a way to defeat him ever since. This scheme was initially hers.” She points to the other. “I’m unsure what her situation is. All I know is that her world diverged from ours a year after the invasion. She learned of the other one’s plan and decided to seize power for herself.”

It seems rude, and this is Tiara I’m talking to, but—I glance at the unconscious women—so are they. “Is this going to, or likely to happen again?”

“I hadn’t thought that any version of me would stoop to such actions. Now that I know better, I will take steps to make sure this does not recur.”

That helps, but it’s not as reassuring as it would have been before all of this. There’s a moment of silence.

“Thank you for your timely assistance,” she goes on. “I have questions for the two of you, but first I must deal with the mess these two have left behind.”

“Will their army still be a problem with them out of commission?”

“Unfortunately, she set them to proceed autonomously until and unless she returned to intervene. I’m certain I could override her control, given a few days of study, but the field I enclosed the fortress in will fail in hours, and I can not form another for at least a day.”

She reaches down and removes a necklace from Tiara C, then waves her hands; a portal swirls into existence under the two unconscious figures. They fall into it and it collapses. “You two should return home.”

“Seriously?” Emily says, as I say “Really?”

“You are children and this is an army.”

“How old were you when you started fighting?” I ask.

“I was seventeen, but—”

“She’ll be seventeen in a week,” Emily interrupts, “and so will I, a week and a half later.”

“And we’re not just children,” I add. “I think you know that.”

She hesitates.

“I don’t have this for much longer. Let me do some good with it. Please?”

She looks surprised. Odd. I figured she’d know exactly what’s going on. She casts another spell and peers closely at me, then at Emily.

“Oh. I see.” She considers her words carefully. “Still, I cannot put the two of you in danger.”

I’m out of ideas. It’s not that I’m not going to go anyway; it’s that I’d rather go with her approval than without.

I look at Emily. She shakes her head, then turns back to Tiara. “Can you stop them all, or even most of them, before the field drops?”

Tiara closes her eyes for a moment. She reopens them. “Very well.”