As he comes in to land, the closest people leave their work to come and greet him. They seem deferent and respectful, but not as scared as people back home would be of a skymage. One small child is delighted by his wings and wants to run up and stroke them, but is diverted by her mother with a "No, sweetie, we don't want to bother the Magister." Apparently they think he's one of the local type of mages. 

After a little back-and-forth between a few of the men, one of them - a tad reluctantly - steps forward as a spokesman. 

"Uh - welcome to Alfriston, Magister," he says, clutching his cap to his chest. "How may we help you?" 

The deference is concerning, but at least gives him some sort of social script to follow.

"No need for formality. I just making a quick stop on my way to London. If anything, is there anything I can do for Alfriston? I can do weather magic. I could improve the weather here for a week or two."

"Well, that would be very kind of you, sir," he replies uncertainly, "but, y'see, I'm afraid we won't be able to offer your normal fees..."

"Ah, sorry for being unclear my good man. I was already paid to do the weather in this area. They are trying this new plan of doing weather manipulation around London. I have enough leeway to personalize the specific regions at least for a short while."

"Oh, right, well then." He grins. "A few less storms wouldn't go amiss, if you please." 

Grin. "Of course!" He closes his eyes. The magic has visible effects on the clouds ahead instantly, but most of the work is not something one can sense without weather magic. It takes him maybe ten minutes.

"Thank you kindly, Magister," the spokesman says when Felix has opened his eyes again. 

The villagers are delighted and grateful and a tiny bit awestruck. He has more small children peering at his wings with fascination. 

The children can touch the wings if everyone is okay with it.

Some of the bolder kids will pet his wings!

"Are they real feathers?" one asks. 

"Yup, fully functional bird-like wings."

"Woooow!" The little ones are even more fascinated, but most of them are a little more gentle with the feathers now they know these are his actual wings that he uses to fly.

Some of the adults look dubious; a few start encouraging their children to run along and play and stop bothering the nice man. 

"I never heard of a mage who could do that," one woman comments.

"It's not really standard, no."

A few of them look as though they would quite like to ask more questions about the wings, but don't want to be rude to the powerful mage. 

Their designated spokesman clears his throat. "Will you...be staying long?" 

"I should be going. I have business in London. Thank you for your hospitality!"

Various villagers try to hide their relief, some more successfully than others. The children are persuaded to stop petting Felix's feathers and move back so he has space to take off. 

"Thank you for making the clouds go away!" a little boy calls as he is herded away by his mother.

Felix plasters a polite smile on his face. "You're welcome!"

He takes flight and flies very high to avoid being seen from the ground. Does he manage to reach London without problem?

He does. London is surprisingly recognisable, although some of the newer landmarks are missing. Any differences caused by the magic system are not of the kind visible from this height.

The dreamshard is below him, in...that area of the city, which a map will inform him is Mayfair. 

Okay, he will find the portal he made earlier. Get in his bit of pocket dimension and then open a portal to one of the new pocket dimensions.

He finds himself in an empty, gutted house. It looks like every stick of furniture and piece of fabric has been ripped out with violent force, leaving only splinters and rags scattered around the bare rooms. Half the roof has caved in, but the light that makes its way into the room is grey and stripped of all life. It does less than it should to illuminate the dark corners. A fine grey dust coats every surface. 

Outside the window, the other houses on the street seem to have suffered a similar fate: ruined, abandoned, stripped bare. Not a single living thing can be seen, or even a hint of colour amid the grey. Black smoke rolls low over the broken rooftops and seeps in through shattered windows. Nothing else stirs. 

Wow. Felix goes outside to investigate, see if there is any sign of activity or something dangerous, like a monster.

Once he's out on the street, the shadows are a little less oppressive, and the sense of destruction is less immediate. The house he was in is definitely among the worst hit; it looks like it's barely staying up. 

There's still no sign of life in the immediate area, but in a few places there are faint pawprints visible in the dust. There were some inside the house, too, now he's thinking about it. Whatever animal made them, it has paws the size of a human hand. It's hard to pick out, since they're so scattered and faint, but a diligent tracker could work out that the pawprints lead from the house away down the street. 

Felix follows ready to react in case the creature pounces on him.

Following the tracks is slow going. There are places where the dust has blown off the cobblestones, leaving no trace of the creature's passing, and he often has to double back after guessing wrong about its direction. 

After a while, he sees the first signs that he is going the right way: up ahead, at the end of the street, a building is burning. Smoke gathers thickly around it, filling the street and obscuring Felix's view. The roaring flames seem to be the only part of this dimension that has not been stripped of all colour.

Huh.

Felix tries to produce a small ball of fire above his hand.

He also snuffs out the burning building.

He is not prevented from making a fireball. 

The larger blaze gradually gutters and dies. This does nothing to clear the dark smoke, through which the darker shadow of a feline can be glimpsed, black on black. On silent paws, it attempts to circle around behind him. 

Huh. Felix takes flight and tries to disperse the rest of the smoke away.

There is sudden movement and a frustrated snarl from below him, as the big cat pounces on the place where he was standing and finds him gone.

 Some of the smoke is blown away, briefly increasing visibility and allowing him to get a glimpse of the panther, but more quickly rolls in to obscure the view again. The smoke doesn't seem to want to be dispersed. 

What the hell? What if he tries harder? Where did the panther go?

Visibility-obscuring coils of black smoke continue to insist that they are a Feature Of The Landscape at the moment, please try again later.

The panther is circling around in confusion, and then thinks to look up. Felix himself may not be very visible through the smoke, but his little fireball is much easier to spot. The big cat rumbles up at him and lashes its tail. It is very clear - possibly magically so - that it is annoyed at him being out of its reach.

Yeah that is weird. "Hello? Can you understand me? I'm here to help."

The panther's stance shifts from 'hostile' to 'wary'. 

Why don't you come down here, then, it 'says' with a tail-flick.

"Okay, since that I'm immortal that won't be a problem for me. It might be a problem for whoever is dreaming this pocket dimension into existence."

Curiosity, and a desire for elaboration.

Also, the panther would like to express the opinion that Felix is failing to see what is right in front of him. 

"I don't know exactly how it happened, but I'm from a different world with a different kind of magic. That allows one to create a pocket dimension that is overlapping but separate from normal space. The magic is called dreamshaping and when someone first gets it they can't wake up on their own unless their projected avatars leave the pocket dimension."

This results in sceptical tail-lashing.

Then, with the feline equivalent of a shrug, the panther motions with one of its front paws for Felix to lead the way. 

"Once you're through the portal you're going to wake up." Felix leads. "There is another person that got the power too and I'm going to need to rescue them as well."

The panther takes one last look at the burnt-out building, then turns away and pads silently after Felix.

It is alarmed by the news that a second person is also in need of rescue! It speeds up to a bounding run, glancing over one shoulder at Felix to make sure he can keep up.

The portal isn't very far. Felix watches to e sure the panther is going to disappear once it goes through.

The panther looks at him hesitantly for a second...

...then steps through the portal, vanishing between one footfall and the next. 

Cat wakes up with a jolt. He takes a moment to recognize his surroundings.

...oh. He fell asleep in his sister's room, with Rae herself curled around him. Neither of them has been sleeping well these last few weeks, but right now she's fast asleep. 

A little shard of grey quartz rolls off her shoulder and lands in the space opened up between them by his movement. 

Time to investigate pocket dimension #2.

He finds himself standing on a rugged, windswept moor. The morning mist is beginning to clear, revealing a hilly landscape dotted with bare, scrubby trees. The hillside falls away down into a valley, through which flows a river. 

Half hidden behind a ridge, further along the valley, is a large, rather gloomy-looking house, half in the shadow of the crags that rise above it. It fits perfectly into the landscape, almost as if it grew in place rather than being built. 

In the sky above, a few birds are circling.

Felix joins the birds in the sky, circling around to see any signs of intelligent life.

There don't seem to be any people visible from the air.

...one of the birds seems to be - not quite following him, but circling in a way that means they are always in the same part of the sky. 

Another animal projection? Well, Felix looks meaningfully at the bird. "Hello? God, I'm going to feel so silly if you're not the dreamer."

"Dreamer," it croaks. It might just be mimicking him. 

The raven laughs, long and loud and cackling, and starts circling lower. 

"If you're this place's dreamshaper you won't wake up unless you go through a portal. I'm here to rescue the dreamshaper."

The raven perches in a tree, settling itself with a ruffle of feathers.

It looks up at him expectantly.

"Uh, do you have any evidence that you're at least sapient and the dreamer? This pocket dimension grows the longer the dreamshaper sleeps."

Without another word, the raven takes off and starts flying towards the place Felix entered the dimension, completely ignoring his question. 

Felix takes flight and follows but does not stop the raven.

At the portal, the raven lands and struts around investigating the edges, trying to figure out how it behaves. It takes off again briefly to get a closer look at the top edge, then lands to examine the back of the portal. 

The edge is blurry and grayish when she squints at it. The back looks like a weird patch of fog, which shows her the scene in both dimensions. The other side of the portal opens to a luxuriously decorated room.

"If you cross over you're going to wake up."

She hesitates, but - she can always come back here and investigate some more, can't she?

Circling back round to the front of the portal, she steps through. 

Raven blinks awake next to her brother. 

That was an unusually vivid dream, if it was a dream...

He's looking at her strangely. "Cat? Are you alright?" 

Cat breathes a lot easier once Raven is awake.

"Rae...did you just have a dream where a man with wings came to rescue you and said you had magic?"

"Yes, why?" 

Now she's properly awake. She sits up in bed to look at him. "...did you have one too?"

Maybe it wasn't a dream, or wasn't only a dream. They won't know unless the winged man turns up again, or if something strange happens the next time they dream...

Okay, with that out of the way, Felix tries to identify the two dreamshapers location and knock at their door.

The building they're in is one of a long row of terraced houses. If he imagines it ruined and devastated, it might remind him of the house he found in the first dreamshaper's dimension.

The door is answered by a servant dressed in black, who manages to mostly conceal her surprise at the wings. 

"Sorry, I lost the letter and only barely managed to find this place. But I was told to meet someone here. They should be able to recognize someone with my description." He makes a good case of presenting himself for being bashful over losing the letter.

She nods, taking this in stride.

"Might I ask your name, please, sir, and the name of the person you are here to see?" 

"My name is Felix Dalkaila." Bashful, bashful. "I lost the letter before I could read. I was supposed to meet two people in this address and they should recognize me by the red-orange wings."

She looks dubious. "If you'll wait here, Mr Dalkaila, I'll send someone to ask."

She calls another black-clad servant over and sends her running off. 

Polite smile. "Of course." He waits.

After ten or fifteen minutes, Cat comes down the stairs, closely followed by Raven. They are both impeccably dressed, in the black of mourning like the servants; if Felix didn't know for a fact they were both asleep twenty minutes ago, he'd never be able to guess. 

Cat takes one look at Felix and nods, instantly recognizing him.

"Mr Dalkaila." Unlike the maids, he doesn't appear surprised at all by Felix's appearance. He has a lot of practice not looking surprised. Also, his emotions aren't working properly this week.

"...thank you for coming," he continues deliberately, coming to the door to shake Felix's hand. "Michael Haldane. Please call me Michael; Mr Haldane was my father." He doesn't falter on the 'was', but it's an effort. 

Handshake. "Ah, of course. I don't know if you got the warning that I was coming. I had to... depart very suddenly, too much smoke in the area. Ah, call me Felix."

"Of course. And this is my sister, Isabella." Smile. Fake smile, but a very good one.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Felix. Won't you come this way..." He leads Felix to the parlour, Raven trailing them. The study would be better for privacy, but he's not ready to set foot in that room just yet. None of them are. 

Once they're in the room with the door shut and no servants watching or listening, the smile drops off his face.

"I would like an explanation." 

"Me too, from my perspective I found myself in this universe less than a day ago. Then when I went to sleep and I noticed two other dreamshapers and came this way to rescue them."

"Well, first of all, what is a dreamshaper?" Raven asks. 

"That might be useful to know, since apparently I am one." 

"Of course, which were you? The panther or the raven? A dreamshaper is someone with the ability to expand a pocket dimension while they are dreaming. They have some control over how the dimension expands, but often can't change things they already create. They can also open portals to and from it. The dreamshapers needed rescuing because when someone first receives the power they can't wake up and can't control the dreamshaping until their projected dream-avatar leaves the dimension." Pause. "Did you happen to see a piece of gray quartz around where you slept?"

"Uh, I was the raven," she answers.

"...panther?" She looks at Cat. "You didn't tell me that part." 

"Yes, a panther. European, I think."

He focuses back on Felix. "I did notice a piece of quartz, I think, when we first woke up; I don't remember it being there last night. Does it belong to you?" 

"Sort of. It would be more accurate to say that me and my brother," there is a brief flash of pain there. "keep it safe from misuse. Or at least we tried to."

"Misuse? Is it magical?" Raven wonders. 

"...is it the reason we became dreamshapers?" 

She seems to be taking this a lot better than her brother: she's more animated, more excited by the idea of suddenly having magic. He's mostly blank. 

"The previous owner used it horribly. And if it is the dreamshard, then it should be. Where is it?"

"On Isabella's bed where I left it, most likely," Cat tells him, sounding unconcerned.

His emotions still don't seem to be working properly. It would be getting annoying, except that would be an emotional reaction. 

"I doubt any of the servants would move it." 

"Please, retrieve it right away. It... it can be dangerous."

Oh, good, something to do. 

"Of course." He stands up and heads for the stairs.

"Would you like to come with me?" 

Nod. "If it's no trouble." He follows.

Through the hallway and up the stairs and along the corridor to Raven's room. 

The door is open. They didn't leave it open.

The crystal isn't where he left it. He searches the bed, and the floor around it. Nothing. 

Felix actually needs to lean on the wall a bit. "Okay, any chance a servant did move it?"

"Unlikely," Cat judges. "They know not to meddle with mysterious objects left lying around in this house."

He runs through a mental list of the people with access to this room, and stops when he reaches...

"...Eliza. That would be my best guess."

He starts to send her a tap over the pack bond, but then remembers it's not working right. They'll have to find her the long way instead. At this hour, she's likely to be in her room, down the hall; he heads that way. 

"Eliza?"

"My father's ward," he explains distractedly as they walk.

"I don't actually know what her legal status is, now..." 

Eliza's room is the furthest away from Raven's. He isn't sure why Eliza would have been going anywhere near Raven's room; it isn't on the way to anywhere. There is a vague awareness that he would usually be able to figure it out, with how well he knows her. 

Eliza is, conveniently, in her room. Unlike the way she left Raven's, the door is closed; Cat knocks and waits for permission before entering.

"Good morning," she greets Cat lazily, not bothering to get up when he walks in. "Ooo, who's your friend?" 

Her silk nightgown has ridden up to expose most of her legs. She is making no effort to cover herself up, with a strange man in her bedroom.

Felix is from a future Earth and the twin of someone that does not like clothes. He is completely desensitized towards too much leg skin.

"I'm Felix Dalkaila." He says looking around the room for the dreamshard.

"Aww, not even a blink?" She sits up and holds out a hand for him to shake, grinning. "Elizabeth Ryan. It's a pleasure."

She's eyeing his wings with obvious interest. 

"Eliza," Cat interrupts.

"We're looking for an item that belongs to Felix, but was left in this house by mistake earlier," he explains. 

"Have you seen a piece of gray quartz lying around, maybe in Raven's room?" They don't use the nicknames in front of outsiders; he's communicating to her that he trusts Felix. 

"And why would I be in Raven's room?" she deflects. 

  "Eliza." 

"Alright, keep yer hair on. Yes, I've seen it." 

"Where is it?" Felix asks like it's all one word or all one syllable.

Her grin turns mischievous. 

"What's it worth to you?" she asks slyly, rubbing the finger and thumb of one hand together in the - apparently multiversal - symbol for money. 

"Eliza. It belonged to his brother." 

Perfectly true, but it'll give her the impression that said brother is dead, rather than currently inaccessible for other reasons, and that the main value of the item is sentimental.

"Just give it back, please." With an undertone of stop making me look bad in front of a guest. Who needs telepathy anyway? 

"Please, it's a serious matter."

Eliza bursts out laughing. "Oh, Lord, your faces!" 

Going over to a drawer, she pulls out the dreamshard and holds it out to Felix, dangling it in two fingers. 

"Here you are, then. Try not to lose it next time," she adds with a wink. 

Felix snatches the dreamshard (not violently, but very quickly) and then holds it much in the same way someone might hold a grenade. He stares at it and ignores Eliza's attempt at humor.

"Thank you," Cat tells her on Felix's behalf.

He herds Felix out of the room and back downstairs to where they left Raven.

"What will you do with it now?" he asks on the way. 

Felix keeps an iron-like grip on the thing the entire time. "I don't know yet. Figure out a way so it doesn't escape again, if that is something the local magic can do."

"Well, I'm afraid I won't be of any help to you in that area," Cat says.

"I'm not a mage. I do know several, if you would find introductions useful." 

Polite smile. "Yes, I would be very grateful. ...I should spend the next while helping you figure out your dreamshaping abilities and how your Earth works - I'm from an eerily similar planet, but we have pocket dimensions and is 2017."

Well. That's...something.

They should probably limit how much they say where the servants could hear; he waits until they're back in the parlour before speaking again. 

"We found the dreamshard. Eliza had it," he tells Raven. "Felix says he comes from another Earth where the year is 2017 and...everyone has pocket dimensions like ours?"

"Not everyone has pocket dimensions," Felix corrects, "but they exist and as far we can tell all our magic is somehow derived from them one way or another."

"How many people do have pocket dimensions?" Raven asks.

"Mages here are close to one per hundred people." 

"Currently thirty... out of less than four hundred in all history."

She blinks. 

"Why so few? Are there drawbacks you neglected to mention?"

"Ah, dreamshaping is not publicly known. And the only way to wake up is to find a portal so most dreamshapers never do. Portals are invisible while closed and only open on specific conditions that vary per portal."

"But why would you not make this publically known?" she presses.

"Would that not reduce the death rate, if potential dreamshapers knew to have another on standby to rescue them? 

"Ah, we only took possession of the dreamshard less than a year ago. The previous owner kidnapped people and turned them into dreamshapers." His grip tightens around the dreamshard, which is remarkable given how tight it was. "I don't know why no one before him made it public. Presumably they didn't want to share the power or were afraid it could be used unethically, which the previous owner proved it could happen. We were afraid someone could start a fight and the surviving dreamshapers are by and large not in... a good condition to deal with something as difficult as going public with that sort of thing. So we are waiting so everyone could get their bearings, organize and investigate what we could do. Also, pocket dimensions are personality-based but it's hard to guess what a person might get. Their dimensions could create monsters or people."

"Wait." Cat, who has been watching quietly as Raven bombarded Felix with questions, leans forward.

"Neither of our dimensions created monsters or people without our knowledge, did they? Rae said there were birds in hers..." 

"I don't know if you did before I rescued you, but it won't happen again by accident. You can find out next time once you fall asleep your dimension's traits. From now on you two are unable to sleep or dream normally instead it's going to let you dreamshape and it comes with something akin to a proprioception. Sorry, I should've thought of a better explanation."

"There's no need to apologize," Cat reassures him. 

"After all, you did rescue us. And if there haven't been many dreamshapers in need of rescue before now, you can't have had much of a chance to practice explaining." 

"Besides, I can simply keep asking questions until I have learned all I wish to know about dreamshaping," Raven adds. 

Cat snorts.

She rolls her eyes at him. "Correction: I shall continue asking questions until I have learned enough about dreamshaping that I can use it safely, and then we shall move on to other priorities." 

Nod. "It's generally not dangerous to use it if you are aiming for something non-interfere, but you only will know by sleeping. I'm glad to answer questions. Ideally, I would like some help navigating your universe."

"Right, yes, that should probably take priority," she agrees, shaking her head.

"Cat, this seems like your area..." 

He shouldn't need the prompt, under normal circumstances, but these aren't normal circumstances. The pack bond is still flickering in and out, or she'd have used that to prompt him without Felix hearing.

"Yes, of course."

He starts thinking. Felix's world doesn't have their kind of magic, and he hasn't mentioned anything about shifters...

"First of all, do you need a place to stay, or can you live comfortably in your own dimension?" 

"I'm entirely comfortable there. I'm not entirely sure if people would notice if I used my portals outdoors too much, but I can make it very comfortable to live in."

"If the one I saw earlier was a typical example, your portals look like nothing that is possible with this world's magic," is Raven's assessment. 

"Perhaps you should look into private or secluded locations in which to use them."

"I would say you should have one in this house," Cat puts in, "but I cannot guarantee that we will still be living here in a few months' time." 

He is running through his mental map of the city to find useful points for portals. 

"Is there a limit to how far apart your portals can be?" 

Smile. "There is no limit to how far apart they can be. Once set they stay put, but one needs to be asleep to set them up. They can be destroyed too."

"So, could one use portals to travel thousands of miles in a few steps?" Raven asks.

"By stepping through one portal, and then through another that is a few feet away in the dream dimension but thousands of miles away in this world?" 

Felix shakes his head. "They are portals to and from the pocket dimension which sort of overlaps regular space... typically if you enter in a dimension, move a distance and then walk out, you will find yourself moved the same distance and direction."

"I see." She nods.

"...what is your dimension like? It would be good to expand my sample size from...'two'."

"Ah, mine is... it's pretty versatile in terms of creating non-magical things, but has a tendency to over-decorate which I find puzzling. By default, fire does not harm people there unless a pyrokinetic is telling it to. It also does not like to make... a form of light-producing technology that is the default source of light in my Earth..."

"...it can make people."

"...what are the constraints on 'making people?" Raven has an interesting look on her face.

"Could you create a copy of a specific real person, with all of their memories intact?"

Cat goes utterly still, not even breathing.

"I can't none of the living dreamshapers can. It does not feel theoretically impossible though. Some of the dreamborn people came with full-if-fictional episodic memories."

He breathes again. It doesn't, quite, come out as a sigh; he has better control than that. 

"Perhaps one of us will stumble upon the ability," he suggests neutrally. 

"...if we did, do you think your brother would mind having a copy of himself in this world?"

He would normally have thought of it faster, but for a long, terrible moment all he could think of was his own grief. 

"I... I don't think I could do that to him. I don't know if the magic could reach that far either."

Pause.

"But thank you for the offer."

"If I were stranded alone in a strange world, I would like to have my sister with me," Cat says with a shrug.

"And if my sister were in that position I would want her to have me." 

He and Raven share an indecipherable look. 

...they should probably change the subject.

"Can you create essentially arbitrary non-magical objects, then?" Raven asks Felix.

"If so, you could sell them in the city and acquire funds with which to, say, hire mages."

"Yes. I actually find it easier to make luxury items than not. And I have future technology, but that one should wait until I can secure the dreamshard."

Raven visibly restrains herself from asking about the future technology. 

"Secure it how? What would you consider adequate security?" 

"Well, that also depends on the local magic. It also needs to factor the fact that it can apparently move between universes."

"Well, I doubt local magic will be able to prevent it from doing that, since we didn't even know other universes existed before today," Raven muses.

"Ice magic might be able to manage something, though...um, how much do you know about this world's magic already?" 

"Elemental division with some elemental associations, appears to be something you're born with. Weather magic like mine is too expensive for small towns to pay for and the wings don't look very common."

"You have weather magic?" she asks automatically before remembering that it's her turn to explain things to Felix. 

"Alright. Magic is divided into seven elements, or six plus Aether: Fire, Air, Water, Ice, Stone and Nature. Weather working would be Air, Water, or both. Most mages have a natural talent for one or two, and find it more difficult to work with the rest. Around one in every hundred humans is born a mage, but they need to be taught how to use their powers, and can't use magic at all until they reach puberty. Are you following so far?" 

"Yes, I do. The wings are part of the package, which also includes fire. And yes I am."

"Good."

She pauses, thinking about what to say next.

"...this is possibly the point at which I should introduce shapeshifters, and vampires. Do you know anything about either of those yet?" 

"No, I probably have books about them, but I didn't have a lot of time to read."

Now, how to summarise three hundred years of history in a few sentences...

"Shapeshifters are a species who can...shapeshift," she starts. "Every 'shifter has one human form and one animal form. The child of a human and a shifter is a shifter, not that that's a common occurrence. There are fewer shifters than there are mages, and it is impossible to be both." 

Felix nods along. "Any idea why the two things would be incompatible? Are you sure is not a problem with sample size? What sort of animal forms?"

"The leading theory is that shifters are incapable of magic in the same way as animals, by virtue of lacking the necessary - intelligence, theory of mind, whatever it is one believes separates people from beasts," Raven says, a hint of something sharp creeping into her tone towards the end. 

"In three hundred years, there has never been a documented case of a shapeshifter mage, to the best of my knowledge," she continues, more evenly. "The vast majority of shifters are mammals, with a large proportion of those being canines and felines. Next most common is birds, followed by reptiles, fish, insects, and invertebrates.The allocation of forms seems to be hereditary, with children likely to take after one or the other parent in general if not in the specific form; the child of a wolf and a bear might be a fox, say." 

"That conclusion about shifters being unable to do magic sounds... very suspicious for the sensibilities of my Earth and era. Unless shifters have something going on about their intelectual capabilities - and that sounds like something you would mention in this context - I would guess that the explanation would have a biological component such that it's physically impossible to be both or that both shifting and mages draw from the same source to form their powers."

Cat is still, technically, present in the room.

He is no longer paying attention to the conversation, or he would have picked up on Felix's comment about sensibilities and been encouraged by it. 

"Oh, there are, clearly, biological differences between humans and shifters," Raven clarifies. "It is impossible for one to become the other on any level beyond superficial appearance. And, personally, I believe the root of the difference lies in that field. But we digress."

Where were they...

"Vampires are, in some respects, easier to explain. They are humans - never shifters, so there is another difference - who are drained of blood by a vampire and fed the vampire's own blood in return. This gives them the ability to live forever, so long as they regularly drink from humans to replenish their lifespan. The cost is threefold: no vampire can sire or bear a child, those who were mages find their mana - that is, the measure of how much magic they are able to perform in a short time - depleted to approximately half its former levels, and all vampires are burned by the touch of sunlight." 

"We have modern folklore with similar features, but they are not real. Do you think those are all the species in the world?"

"Unless someone discovers that cats are smarter than all of us," she says dryly. 

"More seriously, humans, vampires, and shifters are the only sapient species of which I am aware." 

Cat resumes paying attention to the conversation when he hears the word "cats". 

Oh, good, Raven seems to have finished explaining shifters, it's safe to listen again.

"If there is any doubt I should be able to check. Depending how you count, my world has dozens, actually if we used your definitions I think each kind of mageborn might be a different species and then we end up with two hundred or so."

"That," she observes after a second, "is a very large number of sapient species for one world to have. Are humans the majority, or merely one among many?" 

"Well, yes. Maybe there is a bit of confusion here because by my world's cultural standards most people would think of shifters as humans, just... a sub-category of mageborn human. And to me it sounds like skymages like myself might not be considered human and that might extend to lightweavers or something."

"I do not think it would be a productive use of our time to argue over the definition of the word 'species'," Raven says carefully. 

"If we were to instead refer to 'kinds of people', each with their own distinct hereditary abilities and weaknesses, would you find that a more comfortable discussion? This world, then, has three kinds of people, and yours has...many more than three whichever way they are counted, from the sound of it." 

"It's okay. I should adjust to the local standards." Felix says apologetically. "Species is okay, I just might have a delay while mentally translating."

"Alright," she says agreeably. 

"So...what else would you like to know?"

"Perhaps we should mention how these categories relate to Felix?" Cat suggests.

"People will most likely predict that you are human and the local kind of mage, especially if you are visibly performing magic. Mages will assume you gave yourself wings, which would make you an unusually powerful Nature mage. I don't know how you would appear to magesight, but most people don't make a habit of using it."

Raven nods. 

"It will help, for the - looking powerful - that you can duplicate magic from the opposite end of the elemental spectrum," she adds, grinning slightly. "That implies, by local standards, that you have mastered all of them."

"I stopped by a village on my way here and they did look... worringly deferential, but I don't know if it was just for being magical in general." He muses. "Do you need to learn the magic in a specific order here? I don't suppose there is a safe way to test if I show up to magesight?"

"Well, it's not quite so much a specific order as that some things are simply more difficult to achieve with magic than others, and therefore require more practice and more time spent in mastering the techniques..." 

Cat looks at Raven. She stops babbling. 

"I do know several mages," he says thoughtfully. "The question is which of them can be trusted to keep this to themself, and not ask too many questions..."

Magister Attwater is out on the first count; he may be perfectly trustworthy but Cat hasn't had enough time to determine that yet. Journeyman Darcy fails the second test - he'd want to know everything, and he and Raven would get drawn into an excitable spiral of knowledge acquisition. 

"Katherine would do it, I think." His instincts say Katherine is reliable, but he's not as certain as he would normally be; this is an unusual situation. 

He nods. "Are there magic detecting artifacts? What exactly does the Nature element do? Or Aether for that matter?"

"There are," Raven answers, "but I would be very surprised if there existed an artifact that could duplicate magesight proper. It is more than a simple binary of 'this person has magic, this person does not' - magesight, properly trained, can distinguish an apprentice from a master on sight, or an Air mage from a Fire mage. Shifters and vampires show up differently to magesight, too." 

She frowns in sudden comprehension as she catches up with Cat's train of thought. "That is why we should ask Katherine to look at you. She isn't an expert, but she knows how to recognize shifters and vampires, and will be able to tell us whether you might be mistaken for either of those." 

"Or maybe even something new, which is probably not a great idea either."

"Yes," she agrees.

"Humanity does not have a history of reacting well to the discovery of new types of magical being."

"I'll—" 

Oh, right, the pack bond is still nonfunctional. He can't reach out telepathically. "I'll send one of the servants with a message for Katherine," Cat says instead, more decisively than he feels. 

One never knows how much one relies on something until it is...taken away... He resolutely ends that train of thought before it can move on to what (who) else is missing. 

"Thank you. If there is anything I can to repay?"

"If you teach my sister to use magic, I think both of us will consider that payment enough." 

He summons one of the maids and has her fetch Katherine. It's a good thing this happened while she was still living with them; she's moving out to live with her new mentor in the next day or so, and fetching her without letting Attwater know why would have been almost impossible after that point. 

"I will have to learn it myself. Unless you're talking about pointers on how to dreamshape properly instead of witchcraft. The former I will be more than glad to teach. The latter... well, I never learned because I was still sharing a planet with the people that didn't want to teach it to everyone else."

"Yes, I meant dreamshaping, sorry," Cat clarifies. "I wouldn't dream of asking you to teach a discipline you were not yourself familiar with." 

He winces slightly. "Ah—you should probably not say 'witchcraft' or...related words...while you are in this world unless you are obviously referring to otherworldly magic. It has insulting connotations, left over from the persecutions a few centuries ago." 

Nod. "Sorry, the word has a complicated history back at my universe too, but it's currently used to refer to 'the magic of the Witch-Queens' more or less."

Cat nods.

"There is a difference," he says carefully, "between the words one chooses to describe oneself, and the words chosen by others to describe you. The Witch-Queens, I take it, would be the former case?" 

"Absolutely." Felix says in the tones of someone who never ever considered the possibility that the Witch-Queens would stand for being called anything but exactly what they wanted.

If Cat was currently having emotional reactions he would have one of some kind to that. 

"Good." 

There's a knock at the door; he answers it. 

"Um, hi." 

A blonde girl, about the same age as Cat and Raven or maybe a year or so younger, stands in the hallway, peering into the room. Like everyone else in this house, she is dressed from head to toe in unrelieved black. She jumps slightly when she notices Felix. 

Felix smiles in the most friendly way he can and says. "Hello."

"Felix, allow me to introduce my late father's apprentice, Miss Katherine Dyer," Cat says, guiding her into the room.

"Katherine, this is Mr Felix Dalkaila, a guest." 

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr Dalkaila." 

Like most people, she doesn't quite have the knack of making social pleasantries sound spontaneous and genuine, but she does give Felix a shy smile. 

Felix fumbles a bit at the realization that there are Social Rules Going On and he has no idea what is the proper etiquette. But he does smile wider. "The pleasure is all mine, Miss Katherine Dyer."

He has an American accent; they'll excuse him a few minor lapses in etiquette. Americans. 

"Katherine, Mr Dalkaila is in possession of some rather unusual magic," Cat explains. "We were hoping you could take a look at it with magesight." 

American from an alternative future Earth. He doesn't think the British are still that formal.

"If it isn't too much to ask, of course."

"No, it's fine, I can do that," she assures him. 

"Um...whenever you're ready?" 

"Go ahead... Unless I need to do something? I'm... being passively magical right now, but I could do something actively magical if that is required."

"Both would...probably be useful? I'll start by seeing what you look like when you aren't doing any magic?" 

Katherine brushes her hair out of her face and stares at Felix, squinting in concentration. It doesn't look like she's doing anything other than staring in the normal way, but there's presumably magic going on. 

"Um, well, it doesn't seem like you have an elemental affinity? I don't think that really counts as unique, though; I know more than one person in my classes with an Aether affinity..." 

Felix nods noncommittally. "I could show you what I look like when I'm actively using magic then?"

And assuming there are no objections, Felix will create a candle-sized flame above the palm of his hand.

Startled blink.

"...do that again?" 

Okay. He does that again.

She watches very very closely. 

"It doesn't look like you're using Fire magic at all, how are you doing that?" 

"Uh... I don't know the underlining mechanisms. I'm... just doing it."

"Do you notice anything else strange when he isn't actively using magic?" Cat checks. 

She squints again quickly. 

"Hmm...oh, um. I know how to tell whether someone is a shifter or a vampire, and you're. Neither of those. Obviously. That's...about all. I'm sorry, I don't know how to check for very much beyond that." 

"Thank you for your help." Felix says earnestly.

"Yes, thank you, Katherine," Cat agrees. "You've been most helpful."

It's a clear dismissal, and he's maybe being a tiny bit short with her, but he's running out of the energy required to achieve the same goal more subtly.

"You're welcome! I'm sorry I couldn't tell you any more than the basics." 

She takes the hint and leaves, with a little curtsey in Felix's direction. 

Felix distractedly gives her a little bow. "Well, that was informative. I was curious if she could notice if there was any difference when I was doing other kinds of skymagery or more powerful magic."

"I think any magic you perform will be perceived as unusual," Raven says, "unless you are deliberately attempting to mimic the local system." 

She frowns. "That is slightly limiting...but at least it could be worse. You read as human, at least to someone with very little training in magesight, and may be able to completely pass for a native while not actively using magic." 

"Well, a native with wings... Is there magic to illusion them?"

"There is, but Katherine isn't good enough with illusions to cast one that would stick, and anyone else we asked would want to know why." 

Pay no attention to the invisible (massive, gaping, bleeding) silences where they talk around the fact that their father could have done it—

"It would be more suspicious to have an imperfect illusion than none at all, since trying to hide the wings suggests that there is a reason to hide them, whereas wearing them openly, while unusual, is not so much so that someone's first thought will be 'ah, yes, this must be a visitor from another world with strange magic'." 

The gaping silence is barely a moment of hesitation from Felix's perspective.

"I'm mostly concerned with increased attention and more magesight scrutiny. Granted, I might invariably get that by just being obviously foreign and fail at fitting in with the time period." Pause. "Are people going to assume I'm a magical guinea pig?"

There is an odd effect to the words "guinea pig" such that they understand both as meaning "a species of animal" and also "test subject".

Interesting idiom. He has a feeling he'd be fascinated by that if he could muster the energy.

"It's...possible, but incredibly unlikely. They're most likely to think that you created the wings yourself, making you a magister, or that you paid an exorbitant sum for them, making you a wealthy eccentric. Neither is a particularly dangerous assumption, so far as I can see." 

"Okay. That sounds satisfactory, and wealthy eccentric sounds like the exact sort of thing I should come off as."

"Yes. Quite convenient, that." 

Hmm, they had a goal here...he pulls his scattered thoughts together and remembers. "Would you still like to enlist the help of a local mage to protect the dreamshard? I can investigate a few of Father's contacts." 

Nod nod. "You would know better than I, but do you think they need to see the dreamshard? Maybe we can just commission a magical safe..."

"With the most secure forms of magical safe, it's impossible to take anything out or put anything inside without the mage's cooperation," Raven contributes. "Ice magic can freeze an area in time so that nothing inside it can change or move, which means nothing can go in or out."

Cat nods. He's broken into more than one of those in the past, and it wasn't easy. "That shouldn't present too much of a problem unless you're likely to need access to it in a hurry. We can find a box or something to put the dreamshard inside, so they can't see it directly, and then the box will go in the safe."

"Impressive." Time magic is one of his few weakness. "And it should work. Thank you."

"You're welcome." 

Cat writes to one of the names in their father's address book, an Ice mage who Father hired last time he needed something put in a safe. He gives the letter to a runner and tells the boy he'll tip extra if he waits for a reply.

While they wait, perhaps Felix could teach them some more about dreamshaping? 

Raven gets out paper and pen so she can take notes, already noting down from memory what Felix has told them so far. 

Right. Back from the top. They are dreamshapers now, this means that every time they fall asleep they will get access to their dreamshaping. Which can be used to expand their pocket dimensions and create portals. It's possible to watch passively as your pocket dimension expands without your input, or take direct control over it. Pocket dimensions exist overlapping or "adjacent" to regular space. When someone places a portal, the portal will connect the two bits of corresponding space in both worlds.

Details vary per dimension, but typically one can't change portions of pocket dimension that already exists. What can be created varies, but one will usually be able to recreate things and patterns they've done in the past.

Raven, of course, takes notes on everything.

"Did your pocket dimension travel with you when you arrived here," she wonders, "or is there still a part of it in your world?" 

"It stayed back in my universe... I couldn't expand it from here. The bits of dimension I've created here are entirely new."

"It's a pity they aren't connected, or you could use that to go home." She writes this down, too.

"Can you tell what's happening in the old part of your dimension?"

He deflates minutely before steeling himself.

"It felt like someone's else dimension."

"Can we detect dimensions belonging to others, then?"

Nod. "You feel where they overlap relative to yours. And you can create portals between yours and them."

"Can you teach us how to do that now, or do we have to wait until we fall asleep?" 

"It's not very complicated, but actually learning does require you to sleep. The best help I can give you is that it feels like digging a tunnel... Except it's in four dimensions and you can pick the conditions in which it will open or close."

"What kind of conditions?" 

"Varies. A lot. Each dreamshaper has a theme. Mine is fire or warmth. I can make Keys be things like 'move a flame in a circle' or 'rub your hands until they warm up' or 'skymage writes with fire'. Other themes include various weather conditions, things done to shadows, emotions, family relations, doing math problems, and so on. It makes it hard to guess."

"Must the key be related to the dreamshaper's theme?" Raven asks. "Or could you have a key that was completely unrelated to fire?" 

"It must," he confirms. "Flexibility varies per dreamshaper. I can't make a key unrelated to fire, even it's something like making fire go out."