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Adaine hated this fucking tower.
The door was closed and locked from the outside—it seemed like Angwyn had never lost his fondness for dealing with her like that, even if he’d lost all memory of his time as its father—and it was driving her mad.
The room had a bed, a wardrobe filled with more traditional Elven Oracle clothes. There was an en suite too, but Adaine hadn’t found anything useful there.
It was just about to give up and bed down for the night when a faint blue shimmer appeared around the bed’s wooden headboard.
Curious.
Adaine touched it, and before she had time to think twice, she was falling.
~
Rule five: there’s always a way out.
This was the mantra looping through Adaine’s head as she banged her fists bloody against the crystal. Every prison had a weakness of some sort she just had to find it and she’d be fine. Rule number five: there’s always a way out. The rules were never wrong. Adaine had found the way out of her parents’ house even as they’d increased security countless times, she’d gotten her and the other Bad Kids out of every fight they’d ever been in, she was a rogue. She couldn’t be caught, and even if she could, she wouldn’t stay trapped for long. There was always a way out, and she was enough of a mastermind to always find it.
So where the fuck was the way out of this crystal?!
There wasn’t anywhere for it to be hiding. This crystal was just one, tiny, suffocating room. It had to be somewhere.
Adaine surveyed the crystal again, looking for any irregularities, any weaknesses that she could turn into her way out. She searched and searched and then, finally, she spotted a faint blue shimmer in the corner, almost like a trick of the light in this crystalline structure.
She knelt and touched it, the shimmer surrounding her finger as it disappeared from her sight, but not from her senses.
It was a portal. Nothing like any portal she’d ever heard about, but there was no way this could be anything else. She had no idea where it went, but…
Well. It was a way out.
She jumped in.
~
Adaine stood at the edge of a high cliff, staring at the choppy sea that killed her predecessor all those centuries ago. The water crashed against the rocks, battering away at its harsh edges and smoothing the stone with time.
Oh, time.
This cliff used to stretch farther into the sea. The tree line used to come all the way up to the edge, a river used to cut through that basin down there.
Even the landscape had changed to the point of near unrecognizability.
Adaine came and stood here more than she ever liked to admit. She should have been doing something better with her time. She should be back in Fallinel working on an exchange program for Kei Lumennura and places of secondary education abroad. She could have been in Elmville, maybe stopping by her old alma mater to yell at Aguefort a little bit. She could have been visiting Sandra Lynn or Aelwyn, or if she really wanted to she could have Plane Shifted down to the Nine Hells, or Bytopia, or any of the other afterlives her friends had ended up in. Hells, she was on the Thorn Coast. If she wanted to see Kristen it wasn’t a hassle at all to Teleport down to one of Cassandra’s temples.
Instead, she stood at the edge of a cliff, wasting hours of her infinite life staring at the sea.
Why shouldn’t she indulge her grief? After all, she had all the time in the world for it.
Her black skirt billowed around her in the wind, whipping around her legs. The sky overhead was completely covered in dark clouds. She didn’t need to be a good Oracle to see the storm coming today.
Suddenly, she heard the vicious cracking of wood behind her.
Adaine turned around to find a section of the forest line destroyed. Tree trunks cracked and splintered into wicked splinters, and a faint blue shimmer occupied the center of the blast radius.
How curious.
She approached, cautiously examining the phenomenon with her magic. To her highly developed arcane senses, it felt like a portal, and as she got closer, the more her suspicion was confirmed. The blue shimmer formed a ring around a picture of a different forest than the one she found herself on the edge of now, one consumed by thorns and briars and sharply bent trees that reminded her of what the Forest of the Nightmare King looked like, back when she and her friends were on that spring break quest so long ago.
This wasn’t a forest in Spyre. This was a hole through the universe that told Kristen it cared if she did and into another one. This portal would take her a long way from home, and even on this side of it, she could tell there was something deeply, deeply wrong with that world.
She could help it. She was a skilled enough wizard for that—she was the goddamn Elven Oracle.
It would be an adventure.
Adaine hadn’t had one of those in a very, very long time.
She stepped through.
~
Aelwyn was a meanie.
She had locked out of the house and was now taunting her through the sliding glass door with her hands on either side of her head and a gloating look on her face. Adaine stuck her tongue out at her. Aelwyn stuck her tongue out right back.
What a poo-head.
Adaine hated her. She knew hate was a strong word, but she felt strongly about this: Aelwyn was a meanie, and she hated her.
There was no way she was going to let Adaine into the house. She would be stuck outside… probably for a long time. Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t notice she was gone until dinner, and then they’d yell at her about spending all day outside and not coming in for dinner when Aelwyn was the one who’d locked her out of the house but they always yelled at her more when she told them that.
Whatever. If she was stuck outside at least she could have fun playing. Then at least she could think about how fun it was to play outside while Daddy was yelling at her later.
Adaine gave her sister one last mean look before she ran off into the yard. Some of the other houses in the neighborhood had playsets and fun stuff, but their yard was boring. Just a garden she wasn’t allowed to touch and a bunch of boring grass.
She walked through the garden with her hands in her pockets, because at least it was prettier than the grass. Later, she could go out into the yard and pretend to be snatched by hobgoblins or something.
She was pretty sure her parents wouldn’t even care if she was stolen by hobgoblins.
Adaine kicked a stray pebble on the path, and instead of hearing it hit the dirt, she heard a faint woosh noise.
She stopped in her tracks and looked around to make sure no one was watching before she walked over to where the pebble should have landed: right next to Mummy’s Ungwe tree from Fallinel. She crouched and looked at the ground, finding no grey stone in the dirt.
Adaine frowned. That was weird. There was a little blue shimmer next to the tree. She poked it, and her finger disappeared.
She screamed and pulled her hand back, shaking out all her fingers—including the one she thought she’d lost forever. That would have been hard to explain to Daddy.
But Adaine’s hand was fine. It didn’t even hurt when she stuck her finger into the shimmer. Cautiously, she stuck her hand into it again, watching it disappear.
Where had it gone?
She wanted to find out. It was probably a terrible idea but…
Well, if her parents wouldn’t care if a hobgoblin had kidnapped her, then surely they wouldn’t care if she disappeared, right? It wasn’t like anyone cared about her.
Adaine took her hand out of the portal and stuck both her feet, then her whole body into it.
~
There was something magical happening here.
Literally. There was something about this section of the forest that was… not wrong, but certainly not right. It was twisted, but not like the Forest of the Nightmare King had been. Strange and unusual but probably not bad. At least, she didn’t think it was bad.
“Is it just me, or is there something… infernal about this?” Nil asked. They took off their gloves and touched one of the trees. Nil had never been a druid by any means, but between their position in Sylvaire and their natural aptitude for magic, they knew Sylvan magic well.
Adaine hummed, “A warlock, maybe?”
“Yeah, that makes sense, they affirmed, looking up at the tree, “Infernal signature, but the spell work is unaligned.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a blue shimmer near the base of a great tree. She crouched next to it with Nil peering over her shoulder, “No.” she casted Detect Magic, “It’s not just unaligned. It’s alien.”
“Like from space? Mom showed me those Solesian… what was it—science fiction movies? I liked the ones with the robots better, some of the alien stuff was kind of racist.”
“I don’t know if it’s from space,” she said, wondering when the hell Fig had shown them those movies and why she hadn’t been invited, “but it’s definitely not from Sypre.”
“Is it bad?”
Adaine moved her hand a little closer to the light, “I think—”
Whatever this magic was, it worked too quickly for her to do anything but watch as she was ripped out reality entirely.
~
Adaine ran.
She was so fucking stupid—she had completely forgotten that today was a full moon, and she’d needed to collect some moths for one of her assignments and now she was being chased through the woods by her stalker werewolf.
Well. Not literally chased. Adaine wouldn’t last half a minute in a real chase, but Jawbone was definitely searching for her. Her ears twitched as they picked up on the sounds of his snarling.
“Where are you, little girl?”
She stayed completely silent and still, trying to keep her breathing steady and her heartrate down even though she was absolutely having a panic attack right now and she couldn’t afford to have a panic attack now, Jawbone would certainly find her then and he would turn her into a werewolf for his weird cult and she’d put her family in danger and everyone would be so disappointed how could she be so stupid? Why hadn’t she told anyone about Jawbone, why wasn’t she a good enough wizard to handle it herself, why why why—
Adaine frantically started scanning the forest around her for something she could use. There was supposed to be wolfsbane somewhere in here, right? Somewhere in the dark, shadowed shrubbery and looming trees that had never been so threatening.
Her eyes caught on a glimmer of blue magic that in her desperation to find wolfsbane, she convinced herself it looked purple. Maybe this would be okay. Maybe she could deal with him once and for all and then no one would know how much of a stupid baby she was.
As sneakily as she could (which wasn’t very sneaky at all) she crept towards the shimmer, listening as the sound of Jawbone crushing twigs and sniffing got closer and closer. Then, just as her fingers were about to brush something she had long stopped pretending could be wolfsbane—
“Found you.”
Adaine thrust her hand into the shimmer, praying that it would do something, anything to help her situation.
Lo and behold, it did.
~
Adaine fell out of the crystal and landed on a an outcropping of rock surrounded by forest in a crouch.
Okay. So the portal hadn’t just taken her out of the crystal, it had brought her somewhere new. Some forest, with tall conifers and oaks surrounding her on all sides, and a thin thicket of nearly black thorns covering the ground. Strangely she could see tall buildings like the modern skyscrapers of Bastion City through the trees. Still, the environment surrounding her was forest, and she had rules for forests. Rule number eight: cover any tracks usually didn’t apply so literally, but her footprints would definitely be visible on this terrain, but at least there was enough stuff around for her to disappear into if she needed to.
But all of those observations were secondary compared to the five nearly identical people who had also appeared in this clearing with her.
Who were all these people? And what the fuck was going on here?
“Um. Hello,” greeted one of the girls (other versions of herself?) that looked her age, “are you all…”
The older woman in a long black dress finished her sentence, “Adaine Abernant?”
The girl who spoke originally nodded, as did the child. And Adaine…
Well, she was reluctant to give anyone any information about herself, much less rely on the goodwill of five strangers, but these weren’t strangers. They were her.
Rule number one was no one cares about Adaine Abernant. In this moment, she added and addendum: no one cares about Adaine Abernant except Adaine Abernant.
She nodded.
“I’m not an Abernant,” the girl her age dressed in a traditional elven get up said, “I used to be, but they were… bad.”
“They fucking suck,” she blurted. Both of the older women gave her matching dirty looks as the child’s eyes widened.
The one with trousers turned to the kid, “Don’t repeat that word.”
“’Fucking?’”
“Yes, that one.” she confirmed, “Definitely don’t say it in front of your parents, it’s a grownup word.”
“But why?”
“Because it describes an activity that only grownups are supposed to do, and because it’s a very rude word that people should not say in front of children.”
“Okay.”
The Adaine in black raised an eyebrow at her, “Spend a lot of time with kids?”
“One specific kid, yeah.”
“Stars, I can’t imagine having a child.”
“Well they’re not—I mean, I did—it’s… complicated.”
Both her eyebrows rose now, “Oh?”
“They’re my owner’s kid. I’m a Thrall.”
“Me too!” the girl dressed like the Elven Oracle said, “I’ve never met another Thrall before! Wait, does this actually count as me meeting another Thrall or…”
“If you want it to count, I think it counts.”
Adaine frowned and raised her hand like she was in class, “Excuse me, but what’s a Thrall?”
“They have to do with dragons, right?” the other girl her age posited.
“Not always, but yes,” the elder Thrall explained, “A Thrall is a person who gives away their free will to another being, usually a dragon, and becomes a magical artifact. It’s like slavery, but worse because your owner has direct magical influence over your emotions, can give away your free will to other people, and Thralls have no legal protections because they’re so rare.”
The other Thrall frowned, “It’s not bad though! I like it. People actually care about me now that I’m an object. All my friends own a piece of me, and we have a special bond because of it. They think I should be more independent, but I like doing what they tell me to do, they’re usually right.”
…What the fuck was wrong with that girl? Adaine took a small step back, “So you two aren’t the rest of us right? You’re not Adaine Abernant?”
“No. I’m Adaine Aguefort.”
“And your owner is Aelwyn Aguefort, I assume?” the elder Thrall asked, as if ‘Aelwyn Aguefort’ was a normal thing to say.
“Yeah! I love my big sister.”
Adaine gagged. “Aelwyn? Really? She’s such a bi—” her eyes landed on the kid, “bad person. A really, really bad person.”
The child nodded sagely, “Aelwyn’s a meanie.”
“How did she end up an Aguefort?” the other girl her age asked.
“I was kidnapped by Kalvaxus Goldenhoard and a few days later she was kidnapped by Arthur Aguefort.”
The older Thrall nodded, “That happened in my world as well.”
“Wait, then what happened? Why don’t you like being a Thrall?”
“Well, your owner is Aelwyn. Mine is a… complicated man. Do you recognize the name Riz Gukgak?”
Oh that son of a bitch, “Fuck that guy, he pretended to be my friend for months and then he put me in a fucking crystal for this creep—”
The woman in black raised her hand, and with just a twinge of shame, Adaine shut up. “If we’re so different, it makes sense that other people from our worlds would be different to. Riz Gukgak was a dear friend to me, I’ve missed him for… more than five times his lifespan.”
“I like Riz,” the girl who so far seemed most similar to her said, “he’s pretty secretive and kinda hard to work with, but he’s a good guy. He’s in my adventuring party.”
“Mine too.”
“Mine three.”
“Mine four.”
“While he was alive, yes, he was in mine as well. I assume this isn’t the case in your world?” the woman in black asked.
“No,” she confirmed, “Not at all. He was raised—groomed, really—by Kalina.”
“Oh fu—screw her!” the younger Thrall exclaimed.
“I have to admit that sounds… terrifying.”
“You have no idea.”
“I don’t know,” the other girl her age said, “I’ve never met Kalina but from how Riz talks about her, she seems… nice. Nicer than Mr. and Mrs. Gukgak, anyway.”
The younger Thrall’s jaw dropped, “In what world—"
“Not yours, obviously.” The woman in black interrupted, “Not mine either, but please, continue.”
She shrugged, “There’s not really more to say? I only met Mr. Gukgak once, but he was… uh.”
The older thrall nodded, “Yeah, he’s a piece of work.”
Adaine furrowed her brow, “Wait, how did that happen? In my world, he’d died long before I ever met Riz.”
“He died in my world too. Twice,” the older thrall said.
“Well, he, um. He did die last year,” the other girl said. “There was a thing with Kalvaxus and he tried to burn down all our houses and everyone made it out except…”
Even if it was in an alternate universe, Adaine felt a lance of vindication shoot through her at the prospect of Riz’s dad dying horribly. “Wait, what’s this about Kalvaxus?”
“It’s… complicated, but Kalvaxus Goldenhoard kidnapped seven girls—”
“Our vice principal is Kalvaxus!?”
“He is in my world.”
“And mine.”
“He was also my dad,” the younger thrall said pleasantly, as if it wasn’t a fucking insane thing to say.
“Ditto.”
“Okay, okay,” This was so confusing, “You’re me but old, you two are both Thralls, except you’re owned by Riz and also old and you just belong to your friends, that’s a child and you… I don’t know, Riz’s parents are different? Is that all?”
She shrugged, “I don’t know. I mean, my parents are great—”
“I’m sorry, what?!” The other two teenage girls exclaimed.
“Uh. What?”
“Why do you think I like being a Thrall so much it’s better than our fucking parents—”
“They locked me in my room for three months straight when I got caught cheating on the Hudol entrance exam!”
“Okay, hold on. You cheated on the Hudol entrance exam?” The woman in black asked.
“Uh, yeah.” She crossed her arms, “I’m not a wizard, how else was I supposed to get in?”
“You’re not a wizard?” the younger thrall questioned.
“Are you all wizards?”
Everyone nodded, save for the youngest Adaine, who mostly seemed to be upset about everyone yelling.
Adaine clicked her tongue, “Well, alright then.”
“Okay, let me make sure I have this all correct,” the woman in black started, “You two are both dragon thralls, but you’re owned by a version of Riz raised by Kalina and you’re owned by Aelwyn Aguefort. You were raised by a Mother and Father who weren’t horrible people, you’re a rogue who has beef with Riz, and you’re a child. How old are you, anyway?”
The kid held up eight fingers, then winced and said “Eight,” aloud.
Yeah, that version of her probably didn’t have the good parents. Stars, Adaine could barely imagine it. Her parents? Being not just good people, but good parents? It was laughable. She wasn’t laughing, but the idea was simply absurd.
And yet it was true.
Why didn’t she get good parents?
Adaine pushed away that conundrum for the moment and turned to the woman in black. “And what are you?”
“I’m from the future,” she answered simply, “I don’t want to cause any problems with your timelines, but just to be clear, yes. I am five hundred years old and all my friends are dead.”
Well damn.
“I’m so sorry for your losses,” the older Thrall comforted.
“I appreciate it. Now, did I get anything wrong, or does anyone have any more pertinent information that might allow us to return to our worlds?”
“As a matter of fact, Miss Abernant, I do.”
Adaine startled—she was supposed to be more perceptive than this—and she whipped around to find an illusion of Arthur Aguefort before them. It was a very good illusion, of course, but Adaine had spent years tricking people into believing she was a wizard with nothing but a Minor Illusion spell. She could tell when something was fake.
“Professor Aguefort!”
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
“Oh my, well isn’t this a little kink in the quangle.” He looked around at all the Adaines, “Six Adaine Abernants, all together in one place. Yes, this is a very strange quangle indeed.”
“What’s a quangle?” the kid asked.
“Ah, well young one, a quangle is when an infinitesimally small bit of spacetime is quantumly quangled by the powers of consciousness and chance from beyond even the seventeenth outer plane.”
“I only know what half of those words mean.”
“Well I’m sure you’ll understand it someday.” Aguefort patted her head, “But more importantly, you all must work together to resolve the quangle and return to your proper universes.”
“What if we don’t want to go back to our universes?” Adaine asked. Going back to that crystal would be…
Suffice to say, she wasn’t excited about that prospect.
“I suppose you could find another universe to travel to, or perhaps stay here. I believe this is the greatest city in the world, according to some.”
“This is a city?”
“Oh, yes, it appears that you’re in the middle of a very large and unusually overgrown park in the middle of a major metropolitan area! How strange and exciting!”
“Um, Professor Aguefort, how do we go home?”
“Ah, well you must resolve the quangle of course. It appears that the source is somewhere deeper into the park. Based on my understanding of this particular phenomena, it would appear that only the kiss of true love bestowed upon a princess will unquangle this. You’re all very skilled wizards, I’m sure you’ll manage. Good luck!”
And just as soon as Principal Aguefort appeared, he vanished again.
The older Thrall sighed, “I really hadn’t missed that.”
“That’s Arthur for you.” the woman in black said, “Alright, this is going to go best if we all work together, and for that we all need names. We can’t all be ‘Adaine’ it’ll be much too confusing.”
“Aelwyn used to call me Addy, when we were little,” the girl with actually good parents (Adaine would never get over that) offered.
“Rogue is fine.”
“My last name is Aguefort.”
The older Thrall turned to the woman in black, “Would you prefer to be the Oracle? I don’t… well I belong to House Gukgak, but I’ve never really used the name—”
“Use the name.” she insisted, “The Oracle suits me best.
“Okay then,” Gukgak conceded, then, she crouched down to the youngest Adaine’s level, “you good with being Adaine?”
“Duh, it’s my name.”
“Just making sure,” She confirmed placidly.
“Alright then. Shall we make our way to the center of all this, then?” Oracle proposed.
“Do you even know where the center of all this is?” she snipped back.
“We could split off into pairs.” Gukgak suggested, “Who has Sending?”
Addy, Oracle, Aguefort and Gukgak all raised their hands.
“I want to go with Gukgak,” Aguefort said.
Of course she did.
“I can take the kid,” Oracle proposed, “Are you good with that, Adaine.”
She nodded, “Okay.”
And that left her with… Addy.
The fucking princess. Winner of the cosmic lottery, with her good parents and good sister and friends that she could actually rely on. She didn’t have any of that shit. She had her rules, and first among them was ‘no one cares about Adaine Abernant.’
It seemed like she was going to be adding a lot of addendums to that rule today. No one cares about Adaine Abernant except for other Adaine Abernants. No one cares about Adaine Abernant except for the universes where even her parents cared about her.
She didn’t like that. The rules were supposed to be simple and all encompassing, the guiding principals by which she could live her life and be confident in her choices because they followed the rules. But here, in this fucked up forest that wasn’t even a real forest, her rules had exceptions. Complications.
Goddammit why couldn’t anything be simple?
It could have been worse, though. Aguefort seemed like a fucking basket case. At least Addy thought she was a person.
“Alright. Let’s get this over with then,” She walked over to Addy and looked ahead at the three-way fork in the road. She picked the left-most path. “Shall we?”
Addy nodded, and they started down the path towards their destination, or at least, the path they hoped would lead them to their destination.
Well. At least she was out of that fucking crystal.
~
Aguefort had latched onto Adaine fast.
Maybe she should have expected it. She probably would have imprinted onto a fellow Thrall quickly at that age too. It was only sixteen. And Aguefort seemed like she’d had a much kinder sixteenth year than Adaine’s.
“I can’t believe Riz is okay with owning you.” She commented as they were walking. Most of the Adaines were clustered up ahead, trying to figure out where to go. But in all honesty, Adaine didn’t care about that. She was just as content to follow directions as the other thrall was. “My Riz… um, he doesn’t like it very much. He thinks that being a Thrall is bad for me and that I should want to be a person. None of my friends really thought I should want to be a Thrall but they’ve come around! They even use ‘it’ pronouns for me!”
Stars, she could hardly imagine it. Sklonda was… a complicated woman, but she had no doubt that Riz would have turned out much… kinder and well-adjusted if she’d raised him. Someone who didn’t just believe in principals but actually followed them without hypocrisy.
Sylvaire was the land of the free. Adaine was anything but.
“And do you agree with that?” It asked, even though she already knew the answer.
“No! I’m… valuable, like this. People love me like this, I have a family like this. Why would I ever want to give it up?”
“It’s a lot easier for people to hurt you.”
“My friends would never hurt me,” Aguefort proclaimed with naive confidence.
Images of Poxson chiding her for cheating at cornhole and Fig accidently melting her ice cream at Basrar’s again flashed in her mind, quickly followed up with the sense memories of Riz’s bloodied thumb on its lips and Fig pressing her mouth to its in a moment of passion.
Her lips tingled.
“Maybe not on purpose. But hurt is hurt.”
“I can live with that.” She said too quickly, “And I can just talk to them about it! They won’t keep doing something if they know it hurts me. They own me.”
Which meant they would take care of her. Like a child.
“Adaine… have you ever thought about the future?”
It frowned, “Yeah? I’m literally the Oracle. I don’t just think about the future—I see it.”
“Well, what I mean is: do you ever think about your own future?”
“I… um,” she twisted her fingers, “now that you mention it…”
Silence sat heavy between them. Adaine let her think for a long time before she finally sighed, “Look, you’re young. We’re both young, really, but you have a lot of time to figure out what you want to do with your life. Because it’s going to be your life. Not Aelwyn’s or Riz’s or anyone else’s. Yours.”
Its life wasn’t its own. Riz had made that crystal clear. Once he died, she was to be passed from generation to generation of Gukgaks, forever serving them until she finally died herself.
Aguefort’s owners seemed to want it to be happy, though. Hopefully they would set her free if she wanted it.
She had to want it though.
“But it’s not my life. It’s Aelwyn’s.”
“She’s not the one who has to live it. The person who knows what’s best for you is always going to be you. Why bother with a middleman?”
“There’s no middleman,” Aguefort protested, “she’s my sister and my owner. I want to make her happy. I want to make all my friends happy.”
“What about you?”
“Me? Well I’m perfectly fine with how things are.”
Yeah. Of course she would be. Aguefort didn’t know what it was liked to really be owned, for fuck’s sake, her Riz didn’t think it should be a Thrall! She belonged to her friends and they were good to her. For now. It didn’t understand what could happen to her when it was a Thrall. It didn’t understand that ownership wasn’t just about connection—it was about authority, and control. Either she would go through its entire life following Aelwyn like a wide-eyed puppy or she would have a rude awakening to what being a Thrall really meant when her owners finally started treating her as she kept asking to be treated.
Adaine wanted better for her. She deserved better. It did!
“What happens when things change?” she asked too quietly.
“We’ll get through it.”
“No, Adaine, that’s not how it works.” She insisted. “You can’t just say you’ll get through it, you don’t know what you’re asking for—”
“Yes, I do! Stars, I thought you’d understand, but apparently not!”
“Oh, I understand this a hell of a lot better than you do.”
“No, you don’t! Your world sucks! You don’t know my friends—they love me! They would never abandon or hurt me.”
“And what if they did? What if they didn’t have a choice? What happens if Aelwyn gets tired of taking care of you, what happens when your friends go off to college, or whatever awaits them after high school? Worse—what if Aelwyn does want to keep you around? What if she uses you as a lab rat for her experimental magic? What if she wakes up one day and decides that unless you complete an impossible task, you will have betrayed her so badly that you have to be punished severely for two months?!”
“That’s never going to happen—”
“It did to me. I—” its voice broke, “You can say my world sucks all you like. It sort of does now, I’ll grant you that. But it didn’t always. Poxson—Riz used to be my friend. He still is, kind of, but he’s my master first. He used to be my friend first. Things were good, for a while! And then one day…”
She recalled wrapping her fingers around the handle of a too-small knife in a shaking grip.
“it all went away. I don’t even know why he did it, but he pushed me too far, he asked me to do something I couldn’t do, and when I failed…” she pursed her lips, “let’s just say it was bad.”
“It sounds… bad. I’m sorry that happened to you. But I’m not you.”
“You’re not. But you have to understand: if you’re owned—by anyone—you’re always risking that something like that is going to happen to you. It might not. I don’t know your friends or your sister, maybe they would never do something like that. But you can’t know. You will never know for certain. And by the time something breaks, it’s far too late.”
Aguefort gave her the same look Nil did when they thought she had all the answers in the world, “Then what in the hells are we supposed to do?”
“Well I’m certainly going to take any chance at freedom I can get.”
“And after?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?!”
“I don’t.” she confirmed, “I’d like to got back to Elmville for a little bit. It’s been a very long time since I was home. Get some Basrar’s. But after that… I don’t know.”
Aguefort didn’t have a response to that.
“Look, I’m not saying you need to renounce your identity or anything like that. It’s actually really heartening to hear that you chose to use she/it pronouns. Those are my pronouns too. But just… be careful. Thrallhood is a double-edged sword. If you make yourself useful, you’re going to be used, and you don’t get a say in who uses you.”
“Okay,” she replied too small. “I’ll. Uh. I’ll think about that.”
Adaine supposed that was the best she could have hoped for.
~
Addy didn’t know how to feel about the other Adaines.
She supposed she should have felt lucky. None of the rest of them had good parents, but she did. Mum and Dad were never cruel to her, all her issues with Aelwyn were childish and behind them, and her life was good. Sure, she might have been a little sheltered, but she knew she had a good life. Especially compared to some of her friends, Fig and Gorgug’s parents were just…
Well, she was very glad they were living with different people now.
But she was good. Her family was good. Addy was extremely aware of how lucky she was to not have to deal with terrible parents or financial struggles, but even among alternate versions of herself, she was the most fortunate.
At this point she might as well have the Lucky feat.
Rogue in particular seemed… frustrated with her. She kind of understood why. Even her parents wouldn’t have been too happy about her being a rogue, though she was certain they would have supported her once they knew it was what she really wanted.
But if Rogue’s parents were as bad or worse than the Abernants in every other universe… yeah. She’d cheated on the Hudol exam for star’s sake, she didn’t even want to think about how a terrible version of her parents would have reacted to that. Addy understood why she was so mistrustful of her, never mind the fact that her friend Riz had apparently trapped her in a crystal.
That didn’t mean she had to like it.
They walked under a canopy of trees and passed into a more shadowed section of the forest. The trees looked strange. Many were split in half, with different, darker trees growing out of the stump. Others had random branches that didn’t match the others at all, and their thick roots were all covered in dense tangles of thorns.
Addy took out her crystal and turned on the flashlight as she passed into the shade. She heard a faint noise next to her and whipped around to see what it was, shining a light on the area.
There was nothing. She looked around cautiously, searching the shadowy underbrush for anything, but there was nothing.
Not even Rogue.
She sighed, “Rogue? I know you’re here somewhere. Come out.”
“Rule number four: stay out of sight whenever possible,” she said from somewhere nearby, but Addy still couldn’t see her.
“Is there a rule about not letting your allies walk alone in a scary forest?”
“I don’t have allies.”
“Oh, are you from the alternate universe where I’m emo? Is that why you’re wearing all black and brooding about how no one cares about you?” Fig did the same thing when they first met.
“No one does care about me. That’s rule number one, my friends made me forget it once, but I’m not going to let myself forget again. No one cares about Adaine Abernant.”
Addy kept walking. If Rogue wanted to be ridiculous, she would let her, “Your rule is wrong. People care about me.”
“Okay, maybe you come from a universe where that’s true, but people don’t care about me.”
“They do if you let them.”
“Then why did Riz betray me?” she asked, raw and accusatory.
“I don’t know,” she replied softly. “but that’s not about you. It’s about him. Your parents—”
“Don’t tell me they care. Just because you won the fucking lottery doesn’t mean—”
“It’s not about you!” she yelled, because stars, she’d gone through this once with Fig and she didn’t have time to break down Rogue’s walls gently. Even if this was a different version of her with different parents and a different class, it was still her. And of everything her parents had taught her, the most important was self-knowledge. It was practically a family motto—‘above all, to thine own self be true.’ Addy was good at that. She liked herself. It was the other, more invisible part of self-knowledge that had eluded her for so long, that she was only just starting to understand now that she had spent so much time supporting her friends.
“It’s not about you.” She repeated. “People don’t hurt you because there’s something wrong with you, they do it because there’s something wrong with them!”
“Addy…” Rogue warned, her tone dark and cautious.
“You can make up all the rules you want but it’s never going to keep you safe because there are always exceptions, and stuff is always more complicated than you think it is and—"
“Addy!” Rouge sprinted out of the darkness and tackled her.
She yelped as she hit the ground hard, dirt and dust kicking up by her face and flying into her mouth. She coughed and struggled to push against the weight of Rouge on top of her, “What the hell…”
Oh.
She looked up to see a massive dear monster with two heads and a crown of sharp antlers. Its six eyes blinked at them and Addy stared back in wonder and horror.
It lowered its antlers and charged.
“Rule seven!” Rogue yelled as she dived out of the way, “Stay out of the path of rampaging creatures!”
Addy squeezed her eyes shut to protect herself against the dust the monster was kicking up and Misty Stepped to the side of the road right before it impaled her.
“Do you really need a rule for that?” She quipped.
Rogue shot her a dirty look and took out a gun. She shot twice, loud bangs echoing through the forest as the deer-monster screeched and turned to face them.
Okay. She could do this. Contrary to what her friends thought sometimes, she wasn’t weak. Adaine casted Lighting Bolt on the monster. Its muscles contorted and twitched with the shock, especially when Rogue shot at it again, the lightning electrifying the bullet before it was buried deep in the monster’s flank.
They kept a good distance from the monster, slinging offensive spells and shooting bullets at it. Rogue could move fast, ducking and weaving with ease, and between Misty Step and Dimension Door, Addy had more than enough spells to stay out of range. It was only a matter of time before Rogue shot the monster in the eye, finally scrambling it enough that it died with a pitiful moan.
Addy bent over her knees and panted. It hadn’t even gotten close to injuring either of them, but she always felt exhausted after a fight.
Rogue held out her hand in an offer to help her up, “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she said between breaths. “Just give me a sec, you knocked the wind out of me.”
“Sorry.” Rogue replied unapologetically. “That was some good spell work.”
“Thanks. You did good too—where the hell did you get a gun?”
She shrugged, “Stole it.”
“Of course you did.”
Slowly, she rose back up to her full height.
“Let’s keep going.”
“You sure you don’t need more time?”
“No.” She wasn’t weak. She could keep going.
Addy started walking, but, when Rogue didn’t follow her, she stopped and turned around to find her just standing there, “I said I’m fine! Let’s just keep going.”
“No.”
“No?”
She smirked, “Not everything’s about you. I want to take a break. I fucked up my wrist saving you.”
Addy rolled her eyes but walked back over. “Did you now?”
“Yep.”
“Nobody cares about Adaine Abernant my ass,” she muttered.
“Except Adaine Abernant.” Rogue added, “You need to look out for yourself.”
Addy ducked her head, “Maybe. But you looked out for me. So, now can you trust me when I say I can keep going?”
For a moment, they just held eye contact.
“Okay,” Rogue said at last, “We’ll keep going.”
And so they did.
~
Adaine had never considered herself to be good with children. She wasn’t expected to act like a child when she was one, and outside of her own childhood, she had rarely interacted with kids. She knew, vaguely, that Fabian had a child—or maybe a grandchild—running around somewhere in Spyre, probably doing the same dumb shit their father or grandfather did when they were his age. Gorgug had a kid a long, long time ago. So did Kristen. But by now their families were vast and difficult to keep track of, so many generations down the line.
So suffice to say, she had no idea what to do with the younger version of herself. Adaine had volunteered to take her because Aguefort had insisted on pairing with Gukgak, and she wasn’t about to leave the care of an eight-year-old to a teenager.
But being the best option wasn’t the same as being a good option.
The kid was being pretty quiet though. Adaine didn’t know if it was because she was scared of her or because she was too nervous for it or any other reason.
“You’re quiet.” she finally said after they’d been walking alone in the silence for some time. She tried to keep her tone neutral and nonjudgmental, but the kid flinched anyway.
“Sorry, ma’am. Mummy and Daddy don’t like it when I talk without being spoken to first.”
“Well… if your mum and dad are anything like mine, or most of the other Adaines’, they’re not good people.”
“They’re mean.” she agreed. “I wish I didn’t have to live with them.”
Adaine sighed, “Yeah, me too.”
She tried not to think about her childhood, but that lack of freedom and choice had always been the worst part of it. So many people she knew spoke of their childhoods fondly, reminiscing about simpler days when they didn’t have to worry so much and they could just play, carefree and innocent.
Adaine had never been either of those things. Adulthood had always meant escape, for her. From her parents, from expectations, from Fallinel’s social conventions. She had reveled in punching her father to death and hunting down her mother with Aelwyn was just the cathartic, sisterly-bonding experience she’d secretly always wanted. Her life was a ball that was only rolling up but this kid had no way of knowing that. She had no idea what life was like outside the shithole of her parents’ house, and she wouldn’t be free from them for years to come.
There were so many things she wanted to tell her about. She wanted to tell her that no, it wasn’t her being irrational, her parents really did suck and she deserved better. She wanted to say she was sorry about them but that one day she would be free. She wanted to tell her that Aelwyn wasn’t so bad, really, she was an abused kid, just like Adaine. She wanted to tell her that one day, she would be the Elven Oracle and that when she went to high school she would befriend some of the most incredible people in the universe and that she had so, so much adventure to look forward to in her life.
She wanted to tell her that she was strong.
But none of those words would do this kid as much good as the ones she said next.
“If it’s an option—and I don’t know if it is—but if it is… would you like to go home with me instead of returning to your world?”
The kid looked up at her with wide eyes, “You mean it?”
“Yeah,” she didn’t know how to take care of a kid, but she was positive she would be better at it than the Abernants, “so if that’s something you want—”
“Yes, please,” she interrupted before slamming her hand over her mouth, her eyes widening in terror. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have interrupted you.”
Adaine crouched down and got on her level like she’d seen Gukgak do earlier. “Hey, it’s okay. Your words are just as important as mine, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed uneasily. Adaine could tell she didn’t really believe her, but that was okay. They would work on it.
She sighed as she stood back up. Stars, she really had no idea what to do with kids. Looking around, she saw an abandoned food cart.
Kids needed food. Providing for a child’s physical needs was the bare minimum and it was one her parents had barely satisfied.
“Do you want a snack?”
The child nodded and Adaine walked over to the food cart and started rummaging around for anything packaged. She didn’t trust the fresh pretzels and popcorn that had just been sitting out.
Adaine reached deep into the cabinet and pulled out a bag of something called ‘Hershey’s Kisses.’
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “We’re supposed to give the princess a kiss to wake her up, right?”
The kid nodded.
“Well, I think we’ve found our kiss.”
The kid snorted and laughed a little. “That’s funny.”
Adaine smiled, “I’m glad you think so.”
Yeah. She was going to be just fine.
~
Adaine couldn’t stop turning over Gukgak’s words in her head.
What would she do if Aelwyn suddenly started treating it poorly? What if she asked Adaine to do something she didn’t want to do? What if she told her not to do something it wanted to do?
Kir said that its wants didn’t matter because she was a Thrall. Adaine felt like its wants mattered, and clearly, they did to Aelwyn and her friends…
But just because they honored her wants didn’t mean they mattered. Because they didn’t, not really. This entire quest, Adaine had just been along for the ride. She’d liked the ride, sure, but if something changed…
She had no way to get off.
Once she was back in its universe, her and Aelwyn would figure out how to get out of Calethriel Tower. And then, once the quest was over, Adaine could really sit down and think about what it meant to have its life controlled by other people.
First, she needed to get home though.
Gukgak seemed to have a decent sense of direction, so Adaine followed it through paths framed by thorns until finally, after about an hour of walking, they found it: a little stone fortress with a patio, a covered pavilion, and a short tower flying a tattered red, white, and blue flag. Small windows framed by arches lined the walls. She looked at Gukgak in revelation.
This was it.
Gukgak casted out her Sending spells and Adaine stepped up onto the patio. Vines and thorns spilled out of the doorway, making the path impossible to traverse.
Adaine casted Fly on herself and floated up to the rooftop to start tearing away the thorns by the open window with her Mage Hand. Once she’d finished with the Sending spells, Gukgak started chewing her way through the thorns on the bottom floor with a rapier.
It was slow work, but they were making progress. The foliage was thick and dead, but eventually, Adaine could start to make out the shape of a girl in a bed through the thorns.
Eventually, all the others came to the castle too, first the other teenagers, and then the Oracle and the kid. With all six of them there (Well. All five. Obviously they didn’t let the child anywhere near the pointy plants) they cleared out the tower and finally saw the source of the quangle.
She was a girl. A princess, sleeping on top of the bedding with her arms crossed and a rose tucked under them. She wore a long sleeved, vaguely elven dress and her long blonde hair had been draped artfully over her shoulders to frame the face of a princess who looked about her age.
“Not it for kissing her,” she blurted into the somewhat reverent silence.
“Oh, I have something for that.” Oracle took out a bag of something called Hershey’s Kisses and took out a small, stout foil cone with a paper label curling out of the top. She unwrapped the foil to revealed…
“Is that chocolate?”
“Yeah. A red licorice girl came out of that cabinet as well, but she stabbed me and ran off before I could stop her.”
“Huh.”
Quangles were weird.
“Wait! What happens if she chokes?” Addy asked.
“I know the Heimlich,” Gukgak said.
“As do I. Don’t worry, we won’t hurt her,” Oracle soothed.
Addy bit her lip, but she nodded her acquiescence and Oracle slipped the chocolate into her mouth. She pressed the princess’ lips shut and backed away.
Nothing happened for a second. And then two.
And then the princess’ eyes fluttered open and magic rippled around them. A portal formed under the princess’ bed and she yelped as it fell, trying and failing to jump to out of the portal.
“Is she okay?!” Adaine exclaimed.
“I can assure you she’s perfectly fine, Miss Abernant.” It whipped around to see Aguefort’s illusion standing there again, “Just back in her home world. I must say, that was an unconventional kiss for an unconventional quangle. How novel! Congratulations, you have resolved this facet of the time quangle. As you can see, you are free to return to your own worlds should you wish to, or if you would prefer to create a divergent timeline—”
“The kid’s coming with me.” Oracle announced. “I’m not letting her go back there.”
Rogue turned to Addy, “I mean. Would your parents be okay with me…”
“Of course! You’ll love it there, I swear,” she took her hand and, to Adaine’s surprise, Rogue took it back.
“I’m staying.” Gukgak announced. She flinched as she said it, but her word was firm and final.
Though her own feelings toward Thrallhood were suddenly complicated, she knew that wasn’t the case for Gukgak. Adaine hugged her, “Congratulations on being free.”
“I don’t get to visit Elmville again.” She said with shaky breath, “But I think I’ll find something better here. It’s a leap of faith.”
“I believe in you.”
She pulled out of the hug and looked at the portal back to her cell in Calethriel Tower. She would be returning to her cell, yes, but also to her friends and her sisters and her… owners.
Her story wasn’t over yet, and she wanted to have a hand in writing it.
The kid waved at them joyfully as she walked with Oracle through the portal, “Bye!”
She smiled. “Goodbye, Adaine.”
The portal closed behind them. Adaine turned back to its and stepped through, finding herself in a different tower in a different stone fortress. Everything the same as when she’d left.
Everything, that is, except for her.