After Maggie had gone, we didn’t speak. Despite our nine shared years of childhood together and our current desperate escape, we still felt too much like strangers. I had no idea what to say, if there was anything I could even say. Thank you for leaving your adopted grandmother and potential queenhood of the world to help me escape? Whew, that was a close one?

  When we reached another clearing, Adaline put a hand on my shoulder, speaking in a tight voice. “The last of the mental camouflage spell is gone. I can transform now.”

  I nodded. So she became a beast, leaving me to carry our bags and cling to her back as she ran through the rain.

  There were stories of the old Mage nobility of the empire turning peasants into giant animals to ride, but even if that were true, it couldn’t have been anything like this.

  It felt like I was clinging for my life as the wind whistled past and Adaline’s beastly body lurched constantly with each step. I’d never ridden anything besides a car before in my life, and the lurching probably would have made me nauseous if I weren’t too desperate and uncomfortable to notice. She even smelled like a wet dog.

  The speed we were going at made the rain feel like little needles hitting my skin, and I ended up having to push my face against her still-damp fur trying not to fall off. Sometimes branches whizzed past and skinned my arms, though at least that stopped after a while. I didn’t know how long I had to cling on as she galloped, but my fingers seemed to turn numb almost immediately.

  After an eternity she slowed, and stopped. She thumped herself down and jolted me out of the half-sleeping haze I had been failing to resist. I rolled down and thudded onto the grassy ground, looking up at a sky streaked with predawn light. It was just beginning to turn from dark navy to a softer blue, with fluffy clouds turning a gentle purple.

  “Ow,” I said.

  I heard movement beside me as she transformed, but I didn’t look over.

  “That should get us far enough,” she said. “We can work out the teleportation magic tomorrow. Or today, I suppose I mean. When will the binding on your magic wear out?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “A week? Let’s never do that again. I’ll walk you through a teleportation ritual step by step if I have to.”

  “Alright,” she said, with the same bone-deep weariness I felt. “Now let’s go to sleep while the sky is still dark enough.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said absently. Maybe everything that wasn’t wet fur would be beautiful to me right now, certainly the fresh smell of grass felt deeply beautiful, but it was true. “I’m free. Free of the Hands and the Heirs.”

  “And the Division,” she added.

  I couldn’t tell if her tone was irritable or just tired. I nodded, closing my eyes. “And the Division. And society.”

  I was sore and as exhausted as I’d ever been, but the air smelled fresh and the rain had finally stopped. The sky was clear above.

  “We’re free,” Adaline said.

  I thought I’d made some noise of agreement, but I wasn’t sure. I fell asleep so quickly that I couldn’t remember.

  When I woke up I was as wet, cold, and uncomfortable as I had ever been. My mouth tasted disgusting and the damp had seeped through my clothes enough to have me shivering all over. I sat up directly across from a tent, with no sign of Adaline. It took real effort to get my cold, aching bones to even crawl. At least it wasn’t raining.

  Inside Adaline had a stone with a heat spell that was radiating warmth, so hot she was cooking bacon on it. The smell immersed me. We’d grown up in a port city eating mostly fish and the meal plans of the Division had little good red meat, so I wasn’t used to it, but that bacon was the most delicious thing I had ever smelled.

  “Do you have a towel?” I croaked out.

  She wordlessly tossed one over. It was a fluffy green thing, bespelled to make moisture dissipate into the air. I rubbed it all over myself, treasuring the quick dryness.

  Adaline had started doling out the bacon into two tin cups.

  “Thank you,” I said, setting the towel down to take my cup of bacon. I was torn between scarfing it down immediately and savoring every bite. “My first meal as a new man.”

  I felt like a new man. Or like an earlier one, an earlier version of myself from before everything. Not only before being captured, but before Adain and everything else. The version of myself that could joke and smile. There was a lightness in me, new and fragile.

  Maybe it was just the dry clothes, bacon, and sleep. Maybe it was the relief of going through an ordeal and being released. Maybe it was more. Like Adaline pointed out, I was free not only of my recent captors but the institution that had held me since I was a child. I had a purpose, a clear mission to help Nalei.

  I had no responsibilities but to take care of myself and to work on a mission I believed in. There was a lightness to that.

  Adaline ruined it immediately. “Oh, do you still refer to yourself as a man when you’re alone? I thought you might have decided to- to become a man to get more respect from people.”

  I sighed deeply, trying to hold on to both my patience and my newfound lightness. Adaline blinked at me. I bit my lip, trying to think of a way to explain things that would make sense and that she wouldn’t take as an insult.

  “Adaline, if I wanted more respect, transitioning would not be a great way of getting it. The Division is small, in some ways, and everyone knows I’m trans. The people who treat me like a man are mostly the same people who would have treated me with respect as a woman.”

  “Then why do it?” she asked. There wasn’t any insult in her words; she just didn’t understand.

  “Because I was already having to compete and pretend in almost every part of my life,” I said. “You understand, I saw you competing with Calenthe and struggling to prove your worth as a Mage. I know it must have been hard for you coming in as a new kid in the Heirs, just like I was the new kid in the Division. I needed one part of my life where I could be authentic. This is who I am.”

  I went back to eating my bacon with my fingers, looking down at my cup. Across from me Adaline paused.

  “Oh,” she said. “I… suppose I understand? Having Theo as my assistant kind of felt like that to me, like when it was us we could just be siblings again. I didn’t have to fight to be a part of the great destiny or anything.” She fell silent.

  I was eating slowly, savoring my bacon and trying to make it last as an excuse. I didn’t think that Adaline would like anything I had to say on Theo. Gods, I didn’t even like anything I had to say on Theo. I didn’t want to hear anyone defend him, but I also hated the way the Heirs talked about him. Including Adaline.

  And I still needed Adaline’s help. So I chewed slowly and waited for her to speak.

  “I know you’re sympathetic to him,” she said. I looked down at my bacon, trying to keep my expression blank. “Don’t try to pretend that you’re not, I saw your look when Drianthenes talked about him.”

  “Like I’d swallowed something nasty?” I asked. “That’s how I always feel when Drianthenes talks.”

  She ignored me. “I don’t understand it. He hurt you as much as anyone, he still has one of your friends prisoner! We might have to get past him to rescue her.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” I interrupted. My heart beat hard with hope when I heard her say the word “we”. I wasn’t sure if she’d still be helping me now that we knew the Hands of Humanity didn’t have Sarai. “I’m sympathetic to how he got treated like a second-class human being growing up, but I’m not going to let him hurt my friend.”

  She nodded, and looked down at her own food. Without preamble, she launched into her deal. “If you help me find Sarai, I’ll take you to the Headquarters of the Hands of Humanity.”

  “Will you help me deal with them?” I asked. “Since you hate Theo. And since I’m still your brother, too.”

  She hesitated, glancing up at me and then back down. “I hope to. But I’ll have to see if Sarai’s okay. If she needs help then I might not be able to help you.” She glanced up at me again, worried and guilty, but I was inclined to believe her.

  I felt my shoulders relax. I preferred a complicated, even ugly, truth to a pretty lie.

  “Should we be worried about the Heirs?” I asked. The plans the Heirs talked about scared me. Their sacrifices were fueling powerful magic, and I could still remember the taste of ozone and power around the sacred tree they’d brought me to. They seemed so confident that they would be the rulers of the new Raxolan Empire, and eventually the world. With the strange power of that tree, they might be right.

  “They shouldn’t be able to track us, and we’re well out of their range now,” Adaline said with a shrug. “They’re unlikely to find us.”

  “I meant about their plan to take over the world,” I said. “Should we do something about that once we get our friends?”

  There was something I could do about it, definitely. Something that would be easy once my binding faded and I got access to my magic again. I could call the Mage Division.

  Then they’d swoop in and quiz me on the Heirs, and I’d be taken away entirely from the mission to rescue Nalei. What does that matter, though? I thought. I shouldn’t be selfish. They could send a whole team in my place. But would they? Would one missing team weigh out the cult they’d been focusing on for months, the one trying to use powerful magic to take over the world?

  There had been a spy in the Hands of Humanity, though. I’d almost forgotten about that. Emry, provincial Mage who was so weak he only ever got to be a Mage because of his family, was a traitor. I could remember his voice speaking in that horrible room when they’d strapped me down and tried to rid me of my magic.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  A spy was something. That had to make the Hands of Humanity relevant as well. They had to rescue Nalei. But would they make it a priority?

  I was so busy wrestling with my thoughts, I barely noticed how long Adaline was quiet for. Her bowl was empty, she’d set it down on the floor of the tent. Her eyes were shadowed under the dim dawn light that filtered through.

  “The ritual will work or it won’t,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Her voice was dead, and I didn’t believe her. We were two full Mages and I already knew at least one thing I could do. I think she just didn’t want to think about having to fight the Cult.

  I didn’t try to argue with her. Mostly because I was too busy making my own excuses for why I could stay free and didn’t have to call the Division immediately. Neither of us wanted to think too hard about our reasons or excuses, so the tent dropped into silence.

  After a moment, I spoke into the silence.

  “So what’s next?"

  She spread out the map Maggie had given us on the tent floor below. I pulled in closer to stare at it, trying to memorize every inch. The Mage Division would pay for this map with more than my weight in gold. There, clear as day, were the markings for their ritual tree in the Northern mountains, markings for previous camp spots, and other markings that I couldn’t understand at first glance. There, past the Southern border of Westrion in the high mountains between Amdriel and Schorchstal, was a blood red hand marking the headquarters of the Hands of Humanity.

  I knew it even before Adaline pointed it out to me. She started explaining the entire map and context anyway, though, and I didn’t mind. I could use the refresher.

  “The base of the Hands is in between Amdriel and Schorstal, where they get their funding from the Scorchstal government. And maybe some from Amdirel, too; even if they aren’t anti-magic they like to keep their powerful Northern neighbor off-guard.”

  “Like the Cult gets funding from Horasta?”

  “I’m not talking about that right now. The location of their base isn’t incredibly secret, but it’s positioned to be secure and in ambiguously international territory. Anyone who does anything there risks a war where they could be seen as the aggressor.”

  As she explained her map, I thought about all the politics Auralia mentioned, the kind that had mostly disappeared to me after Adain’s death. I had thought about my struggle these past weeks on an individual level, about me and the people around me. But as Adaline drew her map, I realized how huge this was. This was a struggle between nations, about their own power and the power they believed Mages should have. I had wandered into the middle of the world stage, and the choices I made could affect things far beyond me.

  I should have found that terrifying. After all, I still wasn’t certain of a single decision I had made so far. Yet I felt a twitch of my old ambition.

  I had always told Adain I would change the world and now, free from all the organizations that had held me, I felt like I could. The Hands of Humanity, the Heirs of Empire, and even the Mage Division didn’t have any true hold on me now. There was no anti-magic collar on my neck or Division tracker charm in my arm. I felt like maybe I could hold the world. I wanted to try.

  “Here’s the Headquarters, the direction they retreated to after we took down their fortress in Southern Westerion,” Adaline said. She drew her finger across the map to an Amdrielan city at the edge of the mountains. “Here’s the city where Sarai and I planned to go, Frostfall. We wanted to be able to escape to the mountains if we needed to, and Amdriel is known for taking in refugee Mages. I can look for Sarai, while you can gather supplies and make a plan.”

  I nodded grimly. “Perfect. How trained are you in spacetime magic? How many times have you done ritual teleportation before?”

  She blinked at me, her mouth twisting into a shallow, chagrin smile. “The Heirs don’t train women in spacetime magic. I’ve never been instructed in ritual teleportation.”

  I breathed deeply in and out. Of course it couldn’t be that easy. I could feel the magic within me, hot and bright, but Maggie’s binding still sealed it inside. The binding was growing thinner, but it would be days more before it broke. I also had to admit Maggie was right, the magic was healing faster without me tugging on it. Still, I could have used it right about now.

  “I’ll instruct you. I could teleport in my sleep, you’ll get it quickly.” I eyed the map again, re-assessing. “It’ll be easier to teleport to places you’re familiar with. You’ve been to every previous campsite marked with a tent?”

  “Yes, they’re sites we’ve been to and used before,” Adaline said. “There are a few South enough to go into Amdriel, we- the Heirs don’t believe the borders of modern Westrion contain them. I’ve never been to Frostfall before, though.”

  “If you do a ritual teleportation every day for four days then you’ll be practiced enough to manage a teleportation to a place you’ve never been,” I said, pulling from my own experience learning the spell. “We’ll have to cross the border on foot, though. The Mage Division monitors magic transportation over the borders.”

  Adaline scoffed. “I know that. I’ve been passing through those borders with an illicit group of Mages since I was a child, Izak. I can get us through, but it will take a day of walking.”

  “That’s four days teleporting between campsites, then,” I said, mapping out a route with my fingers. “Then a day crossing over the border and one more day teleporting to the outskirts of the city. That’s a six day journey.”

  “Six days,” Adaline said. “Six days between me and Sarai.”

  Six days between me and Nalei. Six days before I had to figure out how to storm the headquarters of a violently anti-magic paramilitary operation with two Mages. Six days of just me and Adaline out in the wilderness.

  “I’m going to go out and meditate,” I said. “You should try to meditate, too. Ground your magic. When you feel ready, I’ll show you how to do a ritual teleportation.”

  With that, I got up and left the tent. Outside the landscape was vast. Fields spread out into the distance as far as the eyes could see. It was more disorienting than the forest, which had stood between the horizon and I the same way the city buildings had. It reminded me of the World Lake, or the ocean I’d seen when I was still young and living with my family. An ocean of wheat and earth.

  It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. That felt raw and good, somehow, like the realization that I was free all over again. I sat down, breathed in clear air, and focused on my magic. Closing my eyes, I began to meditate.

  I could feel my magic, warm and healing, but eventually my mind began to wander.

  With the memory of how the Machine of the Hands pulled at it, the way it stretched out and tugged on something in me, some connection with something deeper, my awareness of my magic had changed slightly. It was still there, warm light pulled into patterns within me, but now I felt how it connected to something beyond that. The Machine had been pulling on that connection. A connection to the world itself, maybe.

  I could remember the vivid visions.

  Explosions, blood, and armies had filled the visions I’d seen while in the Machine, after I was finished reliving my entire life in fast motion. There had been a feeling that it was important, that I had to pay attention. A voice? Had there been a voice? I couldn’t remember.

  They were visions of war and bloodshed. After learning about the Cult’s plan to use blood sacrifice and some “interdimensional equinox” to take over the world, I had to wonder if that was it. Now that I was free of the pressing fear of the Cult itself I had to think about it.

  If the Cult was going to give every one of their Mages super-charged powers and immortality to try to take over the world, then their wars would be even bloodier than the old Emperor’s was. He’d made a bloodthirsty empire that eventually drove its people to fight for nearly ten years and slaughter their leaders to be free. The blood and armies in my visions could easily have been the Cult.

  Except those armies had war machines and bombs, mechanical bombs. I wondered if the Cult would bother to use technology. It didn’t seem to fit their “magic good, Mages best” philosophy. I’d also seen something like the Machine in my vision, but even larger… Maybe Adaline was right. Maybe we needed to find the Hands. And I still did need to rescue Nalei, I couldn’t leave her there after all of this.

  Even if you’re just rescuing her body? Some part of my mind whispered. I shook my head, trying not to think about that. But my mind insisted on pressing the thought. If Nalei was already dead, then the Cult and their human sacrifices could be the biggest threat. By doing nothing about them I could be co-signing the deaths of innocents.

  Adain? I thought, opening my eyes and looking out into the expanse around me. I had slept through most of the day, and the sun was beginning to set into dramatic red clouds. Looking into the sky, the moon was beginning to glow. Adain, what would you do? What’s the right thing to do?

  I’d told Adain once that there was no such thing as “good people” and everyone was just trying to do their best to get ahead. That he was an idiot for believing otherwise. It had been in one of our many fights about how much time I spent around the gossipy, casually cruel children of Advanced and Elite Mages. It was bitterly ironic how, when Adain had died, I realized I had believed in good people. He was the one good person I had and without him there was no good in the world. My ambitions had crumbled, and not only because of my own erratic grief. I no longer truly wanted any of it, even when I tried to force myself to. Even when I killed for it.

  My eyes stung and I pushed the palm of my hands over my eyelids, trying to stop the tears. The world was beautiful and raw and I desperately wanted to be good. To do the right thing, even if it didn’t matter anymore, even if Adain was gone. But I didn’t know what the right thing was. Theo, Maggie, Freidrick - they’d all believed they were doing the right thing. Maybe even Hendar and Drianthenes believed that. What even was right?

  Of course the first thing I’d do when free would be to have an existential crisis.

  A light touch on my shoulder made me practically jump out of my skin. I looked around wildly, wiping my eyes, to find that Adaline had packed up the tent.

  “We should do this before we run out of light, right?” she asked, gesturing toward the setting sun. “Are you ready?”

  I breathed in shakily, nodding. I found the part of myself that could shove down the emotions and do what I needed to do, and I forced down my tears. It started by pushing myself to my feet, and followed from there.

  The lessons started with finding a stick and carving runes into the muddy ground. I had to explain each one, because we didn’t know if they meant the same thing in the Division rune system as the Heir’s rune system.

  We went over the runes several times, and I had Adaline draw her first attempt at what her teleportation rune circle would look like. Then came the hard part.

  I had to explain the concept and understanding of the magic, the intellectual and emotional understanding. It started with going through the concepts and mathematical formula of movement in a simple way. Distance=speed*time. Velocity is speed+direction. Speed is determined by energy. To move from one place to another place instantaneously would mean that time would be zero, so it would be speed*zero and the distance would have to be zero. Anything times zero is zero.

  The only way for it not to be zero would be for speed to be infinite, which would create an undefined result of distance because it would be impossible, it would take infinite energy.

  “Do you understand?” I asked.

  I was sitting on the largest rock I could find across from Adaline, who was crouched on a log. We’d walked to the edge of the field to find somewhere sufficiently dry and un-muddy enough for Adaline to concentrate.

  “Yes,” Adaline said, “but I don’t see how believing it’s impossible helps?”

  “Ah,” I said. “That’s the key. Magic is also impossible. It breaks the laws of physics and is capable of infinite energy. The key to magic is understanding: you have to understand the rules in order to understand how to use magic to break them. You can’t just imagine something happening without understanding or the magic will go wrong.”

  Adaline shot me an annoyed look. “I’m a full Mage myself. I know how magic works.”

  “Then use that knowledge!” I said, gesturing in annoyance. “You generate mass when you become a beast and you use magic to enhance your body in ways it couldn’t work otherwise. You can do that because you understand bodies, how they work, and how to use magic to shift them in impossible ways that still work. It’s the same principle here.”

  Despite my stellar teaching skills, it still took her some time. Eventually, though, she understood enough of the sigils and theory to start practicing. We started with teleporting rocks.

  We went to sleep early, and woke up early. We barely talked about anything but the magic, leaving all our fears for the future aside. It was an almost natural pattern for us to fall into, with our Mage training so recent in our memories. This was a way we could work in tandem. This is one connection we had that wasn’t a decade or more old. We both understood the study of magic in the way you understood something you lived for years.

  By the next day she was able to teleport us to the nearest of the campsites on her map. It took a couple of false starts, but I made sure to teach her the safest form of ritual teleportation with the most failsafes I knew. The magic was designed to simply not work if it risked hurting us. All we had to do was keep trying, and it paid off.

  We stood in the clearing of a place I’d never seen before, at the base of a steep hillside. In the distance, to the South of us, there were mountains that had to be the very ones marking the border of Amdriel and Scorchstal. The same mountains that held the headquarters of the Hands of Humanity.

  We were there. We were finally on our way.