Chapter 11: Lobotomite and princess create a magic circle together

The teleportation circle lay splayed across the cobblestones like a half-sketched crime scene.

It was the kind of mess that happened when ambition got into a fistfight with competence

and both decided to settle things with crayons.

Runes looped and tangled in spirals that looked suspiciously like the artist had been drinking heavily

and decided halfway through that straight lines were for cowards.

It wasn’t just incorrect; it was wrong in ways that made geometry weep softly into its handkerchief.

Kaz and Leonor stood over it with the mutual suspicion of two cats at opposite ends of a very narrow shelf.

They both looked down, then at each other, then back at the circle,

as if expecting it to apologize.

“Well,” Kaz declared, hands in his pockets, head cocked to the side like he was considering buying it at a discount,

“it’s more of an oval than a circle.”

Leonor sniffed, her nose scrunching up like it had smelled bad arithmetic.

“I can’t even tell what half of these runes are supposed to mean.

This one looks like it was written in a hurry,

by a chicken. With vertigo.”

Kaz squinted at the markings.

“Chicken? I was thinking more… spider. After a long night out.

Maybe took up smoking.”

He nudged a particularly wobbly rune with the toe of his boot,

and it crumbled like it had just given up.

Leonor leaned in, squinting.

“And this, oh, no. This is supposed to be a stabilizer rune.

Why does it look like it’s... melting?”

Kaz shrugged, a grin stretching across his face.

“Well, the smuggler who etched this beauty apparently ended up teleporting himself into the bay.

Heard he spent three days floating around, yelling about tariffs

and promising never to drink sea water again.”

Leonor raised her eyebrow.

“That a joke?”

Kaz shook his head, all innocent eyes and practiced sincerity.

“Not even a little bit.

They say a fish slapped him every time he tried to swim back to shore.

City council had to send a boat after him when he started shouting that the fish were

‘levying unfair docking fees.’”

Leonor’s mouth twitched.

Kaz saw it,

there and gone in a flicker.

He decided that was a victory and moved on.

“Well,” she said, brushing ash off her cloak.

“It’s clearly ruined. I’ll just clear it off and,”

“Clear it off?” Kaz yelped,

flinging himself between her and the scorched sigils

with the urgency of someone diving in front of a runaway carriage.

“You can’t just erase it!”

She raised the other eyebrow,

because repetition was for peasants,

and gave herself a silent ovation for artistic innovation…

“Can’t I? It’s an affront to the very concept of shapes.”

“It’s got character!” Kaz insisted, spreading his arms wide as if he were about to embrace it.

“Look at it! All wobbly lines and misplaced runes,

this thing’s practically a work of art.”

“It’s a work of something,” Leonor muttered.

Kaz ignored her.

“I’m serious! It deserves a second chance.”

“A second chance?” she echoed, disbelief etched into every syllable.

Kaz’s grin widened.

“Of course. Maybe it’s a bit rough around the edges.

Maybe it did teleport a grown man into the ocean against his will,

and yes, maybe the stabilizer rune looks like someone sneezed during the incantation,

but it’s trying.”

Leonor flinched, just barely, not enough for most to notice.

But Kaz did.

She folded her arms and eyed him skeptically.

“You’re telling me you feel sorry for a teleportation circle?”

“Not sorry,” Kaz corrected. “Hopeful.”

He knelt down, brushing ash and what might have been part of a rat’s breakfast off one of the outer runes.

“This is just a rough draft. And rough drafts…”

He looked up at her, eyes glimmering with that infuriating, unbreakable optimism.

“Well, rough drafts deserve a shot at becoming something better.”

Leonor stared at him for a long moment, and Kaz could almost hear the gears grinding behind her eyes,

like she was recalibrating him into her worldview, slotting him between “dangerous idiot” and “possible lunatic.”

He supposed that was fair.

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“You can’t be serious,” she said at last.

Kaz straightened, brushing soot from his trousers like he was dusting off a royal decree.

“I’m always serious. Just mostly about ridiculous things.”

He looked back at the circle, hands on his hips.

“I say we give it a bit of a makeover. Tidy it up, spruce the thing into something functional.

It’s a fixer-upper, sure, but I’ve worked with worse.”

“You’ve worked with teleportation circles before?” Leonor asked, suspicion practically dripping off the words.

Kaz considered this.

“Well... I’ve walked through them. Does that count?”

Leonor pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Not even slightly.”

Kaz beamed, entirely unbothered.

“I thought not. Still, I think we can make this work.

You’ve got the magic; I’ve got…”

He waggled his fingers mysteriously.

“...the vision.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“It shouldn’t be.”

He fished a piece of chalk out of his pocket.

It was suspiciously pristine, like it had never been used for actual learning.

“Right! We’re going to start here,” he crouched low, scribbling nonsense with all the confidence of someone who’d never been told ‘no’ firmly enough,

“,and I’m thinking we fix the circle first. It’s got a bit of a... wobble.”

“A bit of a wobble?” Leonor repeated incredulously.

“It looks like it’s about to faint.”

“Not with the right touch!” Kaz winked.

“It just needs some encouragement. Rough drafts are like that, you know.

Messy, raw, but with just enough madness to make them... perfect.”

“Or explode,” Leonor replied dryly.

He didn’t stop scribbling.

“Well, sometimes that’s perfect too.”

Kaz clapped his hands together with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for street magicians and bad ideas.

“Right! So it’s settled,we’re keeping it, then. Bit of a fixer-upper, sure,”

“…but it’s got character.”

He leaned back, eyeing the mildly improved scorched remains of the teleportation circle like a landlord assessing a particularly egregious mold problem.

“Sort of like you, Miss Flowerpot.”

Leonor’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“I am nothing like that monstrosity.”

Kaz just grinned, patting the singed stones with the fondness of someone who’d grown attached to particularly stubborn weeds.

“Give it time,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll see.”

He dusted off his hands and straightened his coat, looking absurdly pleased with himself.

The circle crackled faintly beneath his feet, a sound halfway between static and sulking.

It was the sort of noise that suggested it would absolutely catch fire again if it weren’t too busy smoldering.

Leonor crossed her arms, eyebrow arched so high it could have applied for a zoning permit.

“If it explodes, I’m blaming you.”

“Absolutely,” Kaz agreed, with the easy confidence of someone who had long ago made peace with his own poor decisions.

“Blame me, blame fate, blame whoever wrote the building codes for this city. We’ll spread it around.”

Leonor stared at him like she was recalculating something very important.

Perhaps his sanity.

Perhaps her own.

Finally, she knelt down beside him, fingers brushing the edges of the battered runes.

The circle hissed under her touch, spitting out embers like an angry cat.

She ignored it.

Kaz watched her work, hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels like he was waiting for the show to start.

“See?” he said, voice softening just a touch.

“Not so different after all.”

Leonor’s fingers paused over a particularly jagged rune, her glare sharp enough to shave with.

“Again, I must assure you, I am nothing like this… this botched summoning attempt.”

Kaz only smiled wider, the sort of grin that suggested he knew exactly which buttons to press and had every intention of pressing them repeatedly.

“If you say so,” he replied, unflappable. “But between you and me, I’ve always had a soft spot for lost causes.”

Leonor scoffed, but her hands were still moving, tracing the lines with careful precision.

And for just a flicker of time, the two of them knelt side by side over the mangled circle,

conspirators of fate and chaos, chalk-stained hands sketching dreams into broken stone.

Maybe she couldn’t see it.

Maybe he wouldn’t admit it.

But something took root that day in the Drisden alley,

between the ashes and the jagged lines,

tangled in half-sketched magic and ridiculous hope.

A connection.

Impossible to define.

Impossible to deny.

No silver tongue could explain it.

No clever mind could escape it.

But it was real, in the way only stories can be.

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System Trivia:

The city of Ferenwyld is famously laced with teleportation circles the way some cities are laced with rats, which is to say: thoroughly, mysteriously, and occasionally in someone’s soup. You can’t throw a brick in Ferenwyld without accidentally sending it to District 7, which is why throwing bricks is discouraged, unless you really dislike District 7.

Every district,except Brindleward, of course,has at least one teleportation circle. Brindleward does not. Brindleward will not. Brindleward had a meeting about it. Several, actually, all of them ending with someone shouting, “Not in my ward!” and someone else coughing meaningfully about “magical contamination.” The ward remains proudly, stubbornly analog.

The system is brilliantly efficient, magically redundant, and supposedly foolproof. Which is all very comforting, unless you’ve ever met a fool.

Now, hypothetically,hypothetically,if the system were to ever fail, or misfire, or (heaven forbid) be hijacked for a coordinated strike, it is estimated that Ferenwyld would experience a level of chaos somewhere between “the Mayor’s birthday party” and “the Siege of 809,” possibly at the same time, in the same room, via six overlapping teleportation loops and one very confused goat.

Experts estimate the total energy bound in the circle network could, if misdirected, boil a sea. Or a bureaucracy. But probably just boil the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But that would never happen, right?

There’s no way anyone,especially the system,would allow it.