“No. Not for a long time. Only the title.”

Teacher rested a hand on the Overseer’s shoulder. She laid hers over his.

They left the portal behind them, and as they did, she pulled away, casting off innumerable light-as-air duplicates, each one leaving her original self diminished, less there.

Until the original self was gone, left behind to fade into tremors in the air.

Teacher’s hand dropped as there ceased to be anything to hold.

And she rose, in her glory, in her manifold form, to fill the air above and around, to identify every person with eyes and insubstantial hands, to track weapons and search for traps.

She could see the crowds, the celebrations. There were many crowds, gathered for ceremony and festival. What might have been four large schools worth of students were singing, choiral. Drums joined with the singing. White birds were being released at set stages, so there were always some over head.

She saw the shapes of the buildings, the way they stacked and layered upon each other, crowded, the peaks decorated while the foundations were pure utility. Though decades had passed, she knew them to be home.

Earth Cheit.

“Ally, brother,” was a greeting. A man hugged Teacher, the hug becoming a two-handed handshake, as hand slid down arm to hand.

“I was told to expect something amazing. This for just a saint?”

“A saint’s day, a hundred years after their death. People needed an excuse to celebrate. The memories of our brush with the end of days was close.”

Saint kept his distance from the Fallen. With the word ‘saint’, Secondhand looked his way, and he looked away, avoiding eye contact.

Only here because of his ongoing concerns about Dragon. Because he wanted every resource.

It barely mattered. The Overseer had ten thousand hearts and though each was insubstantial, they added up to a thrum, like a hundred hummingbirds flying through the air. Her eyes drank in home, and remembered the moment the syringe had been injected. She remembered going to pieces the first time, a bloody, screaming process, and she’d reveled in it.

Reveled because it had been change, and she’d been escaping a role that was frozen, unchanging.

Everyone on the dais was being recognized as a sponsor of the play. For Earth Cheit, it was a way to elevate Teacher and the others. Though the pretense was false, the festivities were in part for them.

The Overseer watched as Madam Mathers had her moment at the front of the dais. Center of the stage, just behind a short, balcony-like fence, stairs covered in red velvet stretching down to the city street on either side of the dais. She watched as nearly every eye present looked at the woman.

With that, with one fell stroke, Teacher assumed the ability to cripple the capitol of Earth Cheit.

Elijah couldn’t even keep the smile from his face.