Calliope sat up suddenly and wished she hadn’t as a wave of nausea washed through her. It was only with an effort of will she managed to avoid vomiting. Her hand reached out for the book, fingers literally trembling as they approached the spine. Then they froze, hung for a moment and finally retreated.

“I better not,” she said at last. Even reading the book might be enough to set her spellburn off again, and if it started now she might not be able to stop it before it killed her. The book seemed almost disappointed as Neil slowly lowered it.

 

“Put it away will you?” she asked, but the thief was already tucking it back into his tunic.

“In a couple of hours, maybe a day I can take a look at it, but its too much of risk now,” she told him, though she didn’t elaborate on exactly what kind of risk it posed. Artifacts like that had their own ways to influence the world, and Calliope didn’t much care for being the pawn of some ancient wizard. She picked up the fish and took another bite, chewing mechanically.

 

“Do you still have the token?” she asked suddenly. Neil reached into a pocket and withdrew a handful of dust.

“Huh,” he said, letting it spill to the ground. The token had taken the majority of the magical backlash of the portal they had traveled. Likely if he hadn’t held it they would both be dead now. Seeing they weren’t dead that meant they had to make some decisions.

 

“We…ummm…” she paused trying to come up with a politic way of saying what she had to tell him.

“We don’t have any way of knowing where we are, or when, or even if we are in the same world as we started out in,” she admitted. Traveling anywhere by portal was always a risky endeavor, and a portal in collapse could have thrown them nearly anywhere.

“What do you mean when? Or world?” Neil asked, his voice raising in alarm. Calliope held up her hands.

 

“Relax, the fact that we are anywhere probably means we are on our own world and fairly close in time, otherwise wed have been more likely to be thrown into the black of the void than land anywhere.” Neil arched an eyebrow, picked up his fish and took a bite.

“You know,” he said around a mouthful, “if this is your attempt to reassure me, you are fucking terrible at it.” Calliope sagged back close to the fire, feeling much warmer now that the wood had built it up.

“Well if you want comforting words you should have jumped through a mystical portal with a priest,” she retorted holding her hands out to the flames.