Chris Daniel had been stranded in Psychedelia for eleven months, and he still couldn't cast a straight spell here. Back home, chaos magic obeyed him. Here it slid sideways the moment he reached for it. He needed to fix that. If he was going to carve out a corner of this dimension and call it his — a fallback home, since the real one kept moving like a fish — he had to learn how chaos actually behaved under Psychedelia's rules. So he walked up the yellow-striped steps of the jester's tower and knocked. The door opened on its own. Notim sat cross-legged on the floor inside, sorting glowing marbles into piles that kept rearranging themselves. Chris had met the jester twice before, both times at portal markers, both times left with more questions than answers. Notim was the only local who admitted to knowing chaos work. That made them the only teacher available. "You came for the recipe," Notim said, not looking up. "Chaos here tastes like copper and regret. Back home it tastes like what, mage?" "Like nothing. Like a tool." Chris sat across from them. "I tried casting a shaping spell yesterday. I lost an hour and woke up in a bush." Notim laughed and clapped once. "Blind casting! Delicious! Between you and the void, that bush is still screaming." They slid a battered kraft-paper sketchbook across the floor. Stickers, crayon scrawl, sigils drawn over sigils. "Read. Don't cast. Read first, or your mind unspools before the spell forms." Chris opened it. The pages held diagrams he half-recognized, notes in three alphabets, and a warning underlined four times: chaos in Psychedelia is not raw. It is already shaped by every other mind touching it. Cast blind and it uses you as the shape. "So I need a container," Chris said. "A cauldron. A lens. A leash." Notim reached behind them and produced two objects. First, a staff carved with dragon scales, a glass eye set in the head. "Anchors your intent. Chaos looks back at you through it, so you can't lie about what you want." Second, a small faceted cauldron that folded light into itself. "Twelve directions. Pour the spell in. It sorts what breaks you out from what breaks you." Chris weighed the staff. It was heavy in a way that felt honest. He thought about the chair he'd left behind, the floors he'd slept on since, and did not say either thing out loud. "Price?" he asked. "You owe me a favor. Undefined. Payable in a crisis of my choosing." Notim grinned. "Bargain." Chris signed nothing. He just nodded. Notim clapped again, delighted. He left the tower with the sketchbook under his arm, the staff in his hand, and the crucible clipped at his belt. He could feel Psychedelia's chaos now — pressing against the staff's eye, waiting to be shaped instead of shaping him. He had tools. He had a debt. He had a way in.