I flew in close, and used my affinity with stone to get some of the larger pieces that had tumbled down to mold a little to the side and make room for me. Not enough to disturb the rocks balanced on top of them, but enough to get me back to my original position. The base of the cliff where I had measured with yarn was now the home of a dozen boulders of amazing size. It would have taken me days or months to move all this stone in the regular, conventional way.

  When Ryichsur had suggested I pick up a side gig in demolitions, he had no idea that I already had run geological feasibility surveys on the Fissuring. He had thought I was going to knock down some fire-damaged houses or bust out some rocks that were blocking a road. But as it turns out I already do have a plan in the works that I can get started on.

  And now we're moving to a modified version of my first test.

  I curved stone to dig another borehole into the cliff face, starting from the back of the hollow I had just dug out. Starting from a point thirty feet in, I started a new hole and went just as deep. It was uncomfortable- I was standing on tilting fresh-broken rock instead of flat level meadow. And I had about a billion tons of broken, unstable rock above my head. The fact that I was standing inside of this and tampering with the bedrock further is ...

  Well, it's enough to have me pause a moment and revisit all the people lately who have accused me of having a death wish.

  But on the other hand, I've got my sorcerous senses active, and they're tuned to the stone around me. Any vibration, any sifting, any settling, and I'm turning my body into steel and waiting until I can rescue myself. Only later did I notice that I've lost focus on my appearance again, and my hair has come loose from every comb and is flying around my head. Wind whips up, flaring my skirt and floating my hair all out around me on buffeting gusts.

  The second borehole is done. Sixty feet in through the face of the cliff. And just like before, I started the singularity, bringing in a black hole. But this time I fed the thing.

  I've noticed before that my singularity-shockwaves have a lot more gusto if they're working with incompressible materials. Even exponentially more. So now I'm curving stone to turn the material around it into gravel that the singularity picks up and consumes. I break down the rock, and the black hole pulls it in, vanishing it away.

  Ten heartbeats. I pay attention to the rocky roof overhead. Thirty heartbeats, that's a lot of gravel already. Forty-five heartbeats, I start backing off, flying back out, taking my distance. I go way back, and way up, and I've got earplugs and goggles on when I release the gravel-fed maw and return all that matter back instantaneously.

  The cliff face is ripped out like a giant claw came through. the ground thuds hard, the whole cliff seems to jump for a second. Rocks tumbling out of the ripped crag like a bleeding wound, but what looks like pebbles falling from the damaged walls are boulders bigger than a horse-cart. The cracks radiating through the stone lance straight up to the top and out to the sides at fractured angles, crackled and crazed. With a groan the precipice leans outward and topples, spilling like a cresting wave of water. The new gaps are filling in, rocks crack and break in and the collapse goes on and on, spreading, filling in, falling out, grass and flowers topple uprooted through the air as all the ground beneath them gives way, falling thousands of feet to crash against the prairie below.

  It is a catastrophic demonstration of power applied properly. I am cheering and laughing as the massive destruction rumbles on, caving in on itself again and again, like icebergs calving into the water.

  From the top surface, a deep v-shaped notch is carving into the ground, falling away to tumble and crumble down into the valley. The bottom is too damaged to hold the incalculable weights, and the ground shakes for minutes as the earth moves itself to a new shape and stance.

  From below, the sky is falling. Titanic slabs of mineral drop in free fall, one after another, bouncing off each other in the air. Hails of fist-sized stones are sifting down, from a distance they look like a gray mist falling gently but up close the effect is apocalyptic. With a grating groan entire strata peel loose and drop into the air, prompting the collapse of the higher levels. The impact of fast-moving higher boulders slamming against the Fissuring's face just knocks loose more matter, collapsing the bottom as well.

  There is just so much movement and energy and impact that it cannot be done quickly, rocks bumping against each other all slow each other down slightly, times a hundred slows each other down significantly, times a million more means this quake goes on for nearly an hour.

  When the scouts from the nearby town arrive, I'm flying back and forth, making sketches in my notebook and marking down measurements.

  "What the hell happened here?" demanded the lead scout. He was an older man, with a sense of leadership and authority. He also had the wind-burned sun-tanned look of a lifelong outdoorsman, and if he was any more comfortable in the saddle that horse would not even notice he was there.

  "I'm running some early tests," I said. "Proof of concept. I need to know how much to scale the impact, after all."

  The riders stared as I flitted about, flying without seeming to pay attention to my movement or to themselves, my head down in my pages. My dark somber dress swirled around my legs, but my hair was still out and floating around me. It had been years uncut, and hung past my waist. Wispy white and weightless, it was a stormy cloud behind me as I worked.

  "This is ... a test?" the rider said, staring around. I think he was quite confused, like maybe I was testing them. Like maybe a hundred feet of the cliff face had not been cast down to crash against the ground far below. He rode a little closer, like he could make out the difference between the test ground and the real ground.

  "I needed to test how the ground reacts to my spells," I said. "I need to be careful with timing and placement. There's lots of variables at work here- distance, pressure, time, strata, depth, medium, vectors, and previous impacts. This is not the final version, this is just to take some measurements so I can go back and do some math, to find the optimal placement going forward."

  With a snap I closed the notebook, and pushed it and the charcoal through an incandescent portal, pulling my hands back and closing it with a snap. "So, you must be from Tepovo, five miles north from here?"

  "Yes, we are and who are-"

  "Well, if House Eyellon picks up my proposal this will be big news for your town. There's a matching town about fifteen miles south of here, and if I get to cut a road across this space you'll be a single day's travel away from each other, which probably turns both your towns into major trading posts. Really good for the local economy and merchants," I said, glancing back. "Not so much for anyone that enjoys the unchanged traditions of the semi-rustic lifestyle. For a lot of people, these are about to become 'the good old days', you know?"

  "You did this?" one woman yelled from the other riders, sidestepping her horse out of formation with just a nudge from her knees. I've seen my mother do that move, it's not easy. "You did this.. with a spell?"

  "Well, I needed about four spells to set up first, but the real impact here was basically one spell put in exactly the right spot," I said with a smile. The rider had reddish hair, and was maybe ten years older than me. Reminded me of my mother.

  The scouts either murmured amongst themselves in surprise or stared at me silently, also in surprise. "All this?... " one of them said. "I didn't think they had wizards that powerful..."

  It was time. I released my best villain laugh, high and ringing and refined, with one hand delicately curled in front of my mouth. My smile was absolutely beaming. "Oh, sweetie no, I'm not wizard. I'm a sorceress. Very different things."

  They recoiled a little- legends about sorceresses that poison mothers and steal babies are a lot more common in the small towns than they are in Hearstcliff. And, a flying woman examining a site of catastrophic devastation with a notebook and a floating length of yarn for measurements must be intimidating on its own, claiming that she caused this and plans to do far more in the future.

  The scout leader, windburned, sunburned, snorted and scoffed. "Bullshit. Sorcerers can't do anything like this."

  I hovered towards him, suspended in the air, my head only a little higher than his, the toes of my boots trailing below. "Oh, come now! Surely you've heard of Natalie Harigold!" My voice was teasing but sharp.

  And, they had heard of me. The whispers in the back of the pack picked up sharply. The woman with the red hair backed her horse up a few steps, and it turned as if it was ready to bolt away from me. The leader paused, and then bowed from the saddle, the first time I'd seen him do anything that looked awkward. "Lady Harigold," he said, gruffly. "I've been sent to find out what is happening. I'll need to know more about-"

  "No," I said, shaking my head. And that was when I first noticed what a state my hair was in. I had a dozen silver combs caught in it, but the whole of it was unconfined. I started the brushes going, combing out tangles, teasing out snarls. They were combs, they knew their job. They were made of silver, one of the most vain metals, it could be counted on to keep me coiffed properly. Gold is vain but only cares about showing itself off, silver wants to be seen in good company.

  My hair straightened, loosened, unraveled, and then was gathered up into a long fall running down my back, and a swarm of small silver combs like darting fish swept in, quickly cinching it into three long braids that were pulled up, crossed over, and coiled into a single intricate composition at the crown of my head, then pinned securely by the same silver implements, settled in and satisfied now to be shown off at advantage.

  "No, I don't need to take your questions," I said. "I'm nearly done here, and I'll be in touch with your liege, or your liege's liege. Tell your mayor whatever you have to."

  And then I floated backwards through a new portal, and disappeared away.

  It felt like a bit much. But it needed doing. The story of Natalie Harigold, woman of the people, savior of the common folk, is only one story. I also need the story of Natalie Harigold, the high-handed arrogant witch-princess. When conflicting stories collide, they fracture. Two tales of the kindly and humble egalitarian princess can be told and never interact. But one story of that and one story of the same woman delivering a nasty, arrogant princess laugh and declaring that she is too good to answer to the commoners? Those two stories need to be reconciled.

  "Maybe she was having a bad day."

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "Maybe she only cares about Meadowtam."

  "Maybe the sorcery was corrupting her."

  "Maybe the scouts had it coming."

  "Maybe she's stopped trying to fool everyone."

  "Maybe they misinterpreted her."

  "Maybe she was settling a bet."

  "Maybe the folk of Skydown are covering for her."

  "Maybe it was an imposter."

  "Maybe they were secretly in a coma."

  Two stories in conflict will fracture and divide and forge a dozen new stories in their wake. So I need there to be as many different versions of me in the world as possible. I need people to remember me as nasty, nice, flirtatious, austere, businesslike, scatterbrained, humble, hubristic, loving, hateful... all of it. And tell others about it.

  I can't tell enough stories to fill this world. I need help.

  My portal let me out into the grassy verge of the quad, back at the Academy campus in Hearstcliff. I paused there, blinked the lights out of my eyes, and then lowered myself to the ground and walked calmly towards the dining hall.

  I could smell it already, something with sizzling grilled onions and finely-minced garlic. A brief bout of discomfort reminded me that I've not seen a washroom since the pub back at Skydown, so I mounted the steps of the Student Center and then Nathan appeared out of nowhere.

  Okay, I know that might sound a little funny coming from the only person with teleportation abilities, it still made me jump almost a foot in the air. I have the ability to vanish with magic, he's just on a rogue track and can passively train stealth skills without even allocating skill points. So he was just there all very sudden.

  "Gods!" I yelped, staggering back, lowering my hands. "Don't do that!"

  He did not even look embarrassed. "That was uncalled for, Natalie. Cutting me off from Skydown?"

  "Everyone else here is cut off from their home chapel," I said. "Why not you?"

  He frowned at me. "You were going that direction anyway. You could have done the decent thing."

  "I don't need a sanctimonious speech right now," I said. "I'm having an extremely good day, Nathan. An extremely good weekend. I don't need your lecture right before the finish line. Not after the way you've sold out the family."

  "Sold them out? What do you mean?" he sounded surprised. He really did.

  I shifted uncomfortably. "If nothing else, if none of the other stunts you've pulled are considered, giving you every benefit of the doubt, there's the simple fact that you went to a trade minister to blockade all of Meadowtam instead of getting the royal armies to help eliminate the threat! I showed you that our home was under siege and instead of bringing help you locked them all in!"

  "Oh, that," he said, with a placating smile. "You're still taking a short view. I've got this under control."

  "How?!" I demanded.

  He winked at me. "See, I'm gathering plenty of good favor and grace with the Freckentops, the ruling house of the kingdom. And when I've got enough leverage and connections, I can apply that to benefit Meadowtam even more than ever."

  "What?" I blinked. "No. That's not going to work. You know that's not going to work because you've studied the politics and the history. You cannot betray Meadowtam to get credit with the king and then spend that credit to benefit Meadowtam more than you've harmed it. They're not going to give you more than you've given them."

  "They might."

  "You can't be gambling those lives on 'they might'," I said, disbelieving. This time I was sure he was up to something. Some game he's playing, some angle he's concealing. He was definitely not doing what he's doing for the reasons he is saying. I know he's smarter than they might.

  He frowned. "This is immaterial. Next time, wait for me to go to church with you."

  "I don't think I will," I said.

  Maybe I could just say it out loud. Every time I've let you in, you've screwed me over. Or I could try I can't trust you anymore brother. What would happen if I said you don't get a single consideration from me until I see you fulfilling your destiny as a hero.

  Well, it would start one hell of an argument. Which I would lose.

  I don't see any way that I could win that argument. Not against him. Other people could surely, but I'm pretty good at knowing my limits. And more and more it's becoming apparent that I only come out ahead if I do not engage. So I took a step to the side. "I must powder my nose," I said primly. "I trust you will not obstruct me."

  He chuckled ruefully. "We both know I can't. Not unless you let me."

  Which, yes, true. I could channel steel and throw him all around this room like a rag doll. My current Strength score is a 9. He's a low-level rogue who seems to be on a Charisma-based build.

  And also, yes, true. I could just teleport around him or channel lightning or fly away. He cannot stop me unless I allow him to manipulate convention and etiquette to compel me to stop.

  And we are rapidly reaching a point in our relationship where I am no longer going to allow him to manipulate convention and etiquette to wring concessions out of me.

  I walked past him, head held high.

  This would be the first time that I stood up to him and did not have that queasy I'm in trouble feeling in my gut. This time it felt good. This time I was satisfied that I denied him what he wanted, challenged his story to his face, and refuted his version of events. I let him have the last word without winning the argument. I did not let him dictate the pace or the duration of our conversation. And I didn't have that breathless what have I done anxiety afterwards. I washed up, dried my hands on the paper towels, and went to take dinner with my friends, even the really awful ones.