Forest on the left, utter emptiness on the right.

The land here just ends, abruptly, leaving space straight down for... Quite a long distance that fades into a deep blue. Off to the right is empty sky, nothing to have a horizon on.

He is a vampire. He can see quite a ways away. He—really should not be having trouble seeing the bottom of this, this...

He touches the key to his right thigh, shifting some room to absorb it, then zips to the very edge of the land, grabs a rock, and throws it.

The rock obeys the will of gravity, tumbling into the abyss.

Still falling.

It might be fading from view faster than it ought to, but then again it might not.

Okay. Okay this is. This is an. An actual bottomless pit. Like it actually does not have a bottom. It. It is literally. Bottomless. That is. That should. Not be possible. Like even if the bottom was very very deep it. Should er. That is not the thing that should have happened.

Just where the heck is he.

If the trees know, they aren't telling.

There's an unlikely-looking flying thing approaching from thataway. It should be falling out of the sky right now, what with being rather slow and not having wings.

Flight isn't impossible, as far as he knows of witchcraft, but out in the open like this...

What exactly is the flying thing?

It looks a lot like a flying wooden house, complete with chimney. Only a little concession to ship-ness, two little spars with engines and propellers and a glass walled control room(?) where someone is standing.

It's at least ten miles away right now.

Can he, er, run and leap that way? Or is it too high up?

Does he have wings? It's over the abyss.

He could make wings...

...

.......

He could make wings. He's in a place with an abyss and a flying house, they probably won't bat an eye at the wings.

Well he might not ever need them, no need to make them now, if the house's flying towards him.

(Is it?)

Towards the land, at least. He'll have to do some running to meet it.

He can do some running. It's one of his favourite activities, as a vampire.

This forest is a prime example of uninhabited wilderness, none of the signs or scents of people.

It abruptly ends after about three miles and is replaced by a swamp.

...that is not how geography works. That is very much not how geography works.

Just how straight is the dividing line between these two... things...?

Perfectly. Only disturbed by where a few animals have crossed it recently. Older animal scent trails don't have any break. It must... Reset? Or something.

Okay now that is just bizarre.

He will try to go meet that house and see if the person knows what's going on here.

Swamp turns to lake at around the spot it will probably arrive. Water pours continually into the abyss.

There are hills that rapidly turn into a steep, angular mountain about a mile behind him. Is he going to do anything in particular to get the house's attention?

Yes. Yes he is. The thing he is going to do is push a twenty-metre-tall pole made of ivory from his right palm and wave it.

The pilot sees it and flashes some colored lights in return. Obviously some kind of code, but Sadde doesn't know it.

Sadde does indeed not know it, nor does he have the means to flash some. He does, however, have the means to cover the ivory pole with vampire skin, which will, naturally, sparkle.

The flying house turns right slightly, so as to pass over swamp and not lake. It's still a couple minutes out though.

Sadde can wait, and retract his protrusion as he does.

An alligator regards him sucpiciously.

Has he noticed that there are multiple suns yet? Only one close-in, the rest almost seem like unusually bright stars, but still.

He has noticed this, yes, but he is filing that in his "things to ask strange house person about" mental drawer.

(He also wonders how long the alligator will take to decide to be terrified of him. Alligators in this world probably didn't evolve the innate fear of vampires his world's have.)

It's regarding him from a healthy distance, so there's that.

The ship's groaning engines start spooling down. It descends to fly about thirty feet off the ground and comes to a slow, slow stop.

That guy yells a question in some language that really likes L sounds.

"I didn't actually understand a word of that," he says, and then jumps up into the air to indicate how high he can do it. "Can I board?" he asks, pointing at himself and then the house.

He makes considering noises, then shakes his head. With a 'wait a sec' motion, he does some things in the control room before tossing down a rope ladder and climbing out.

Sadde zips that way and waits for him to finish getting down.

He lets go and falls the last ten feet or so, letting his boots catch him with a soft blue glow.

...cooool.

He points at himself and says, "Sadde." Points at the man...?

"Nils."

He tries a bunch of other languages.

That's a surprisingly regular-sounding name, for an alien!

Sadde indicates having no knowledge of any of those languages, and wishes he could express how eidetic his memory is. Oh well.

Nils names a few things, demonstrates basic grammar, then asks if Sadde something something to something... He holds both arms up, referencing the giant horn he used to wave the ship down.

Sadde repeats the things perfectly, and when he sees Nick-of-the-held-arms holds his right hand palm up and starts producing it again, from there. It looks like his skin solidifies into bone and then said bone starts pushing out of it.

Clap clap clap. That's an interesting, useful seeming thing for a Fair Folk to have.

He has paper, and starts drawing.

Points to himself, says a word. Draws a human figure, says the same word and writes it in a strange alphabet. Draws a... Mermaid? Head, two arms, fish tail. And gives it a different word. Then a human figure with sparkles, and he looks at Sadde questioningly.

"Vampire," he says in English.

This language doesn't like loanwords much, apparently, since he returns with "van-kire" and writes it down as such.

...What now? Nils doesn't seem to know how to ask his next question.

Well, Sadde doesn't know what Nils' next question is, so instead he'll try to get the concept of an eidetic memory across. He mimes writing, and tries to convey that he'd like to use Nils' writing implement.

Sure, here you go.

He writes all ten numerals, speaks them out loud while counting with his fingers, then points at Nils and at the numbers.

Nils takes the paper back, then recites and draws the version of numbers he's familiar with.

Sadde repeats them, nods, then takes the paper back and writes a string of ten digits at random, in Nils' script. He looks at them, then points at himself, closes his eyes, and recites them. Then he points at Nils, at the paper, and at himself.

He's still confused, but he writes a long string of digits anyway.

He looks at them, closes his eyes, turns around, and recites them again by heart, twice.

Clap clap clap again.

Alphabet. Then he goes back up the ladder and waves Sadde to follow.

Sadde follows!

This is, in fact, a control room.

He idly starts building Sadde's vocabulary as they walk though what does end up looking a lot like a flying house to a study/library sort of thing.

This: Is a nine volume five-language dictionary that includes surprisingly detailed little illustrations as one of the languages.

...oooooh!

Okay this will speed things up by a lot.

That's the idea, yes. Nils watches him rapidly flip pages with amusement.

It is very rapid! He tries to sound out some words whose pronunciation he's not sure of, and the more he does that the more accurate he gets, and then he starts saying full sentences for grammar checks.

"Welcome to my ship. Now that we can talk, do you want to buy passage out of the middle of nowhere?"

"Maybe! But I don't have money, exactly, I think. If you use money here. I think I come from very far away."

"Your - thing will suffice for that. Particularly if it's versatile."

"My 'thing'?"

"Every fair folk has a thing, I've never heard of van-kire before, but strong bone is something I can sell, you can use it to pay me."

"Oh! I'm not fair folk, I'm not sure you have my kind of thing here. Closest thing I found in that dictionary was a 'vampire' but it's not the same thing."

"Well, you cannot have my blood. And this is not a threat, but if you tried my security system would fire."

"I'm not gonna try to take your blood, don't worry. For one, it's illegal to eat people where I'm from, and we can survive on animal blood. For two, I can actually generate an endless supply of it myself via my 'thing,' that being fairly extensive, er, I couldn't find a word for this, but I can change and create biological things attached to me."

"That was subtle bragging... And that's an impressive magic. Gives you about a couple thousand other options for things to sell. Lucky you."

"Yeah, I got pretty rich off it before I was turned into a vampire. How does your security system work, anyway? Vampires are pretty overpowered, it is very hard to kill or even slightly inconvenience one of us."

"I'm not gonna give away all my secrets, but suffice to say you would end up travelling away from me at high speed, minimum."

"I'll totally give away all my secrets, though, I don't actually want to attack you, I'm just really curious. Because, see, where I'm from, people live in a giant sphere—that's called a planet in my language—and I noticed with my incredibly enhanced vision that the land down there is. Flat. There is no subtle curvature of the planet anywhere, and there is a huge gaping abyss at the edges."

"How would a sphere even - you'd fall off if you tried to live on the bottom! The world is flat because it comes in triangles, which the Fates make and attach to each other... Don't go into the abyss, it starts dissolving things if you get too far below the tile plane."

"—in my world all matter attracts all other matter, except it's a very weak force unless there is a lot of matter together. Planets have enough matter together to attract people and things to their core about as strongly as, erm, 'gravity' here does. So on planets, down is towards the centre."

"What else has it got that we don't?"

"That is kind of a difficult question to answer armed only with the knowledge a dictionary could provide! Flying houses don't exist, though, and vampires and magic are secret. We don't have 'Fates' the same way you do, our magic is much more individualised and localised than that, like, mine. I don't actually know what a Fate is, by the by."

"They're-" A different language has a word for 'god'. "Almost gods. The closest we get. Immortal to most things, they will reappear if you manage to kill one body. Vastly powerful, ability to create new land and the source of all the land in the world, generally stubborn and temperamental, best avoided. Anyone can learn magic here, with diligence and skill."

"...so where did the first tile of land come from?"

"The Elder Six or one of them, perhaps. They won't say. Penelope, Catoblepas, Barnacles, Ragnarosa, Fortuna, and Hogweed."

"And where did they come from?"

"If you believe Penelope, she came from nothing and the rest of them came from her. If you believe Fortuna, not a one of them remembers."

"And where did all the, er, non-Fate people come from?"

"I don't think I need to explain sex to you? ...I jest. Same story there. Not many records survived the cataclysm."

He giggles. "Cataclysm?"

"What it sounds like. Like one of Ragnarosa's rampages, but everywhere."

"Was it 'cause of Fates fighting?"

He shrugs. "Not a historian. This was some forty thousand years ago. It could have been."

"—ah. Okay. I'm kinda generally curious, now, about literally everything, and I'll wanna figure out what the heck the everything here."

He gestures at the room around them. "I have a library. It could be a good starting point. I'm headed to Windvale, it's a big intercontinental trade hub, ships to just about everywhere from there."

"I don't really know what 'everywhere' is, here," he points out. "Any place is as good as any other, modulo having access to information. I'd probably eventually want to come back to where you found me, though. My world would love some more magic, I'll bet."

"...I suggest this because I may or may not have been accused of paranoia in the past, but if I were you I would make absolutely sure I can return home before exploring around here."

"Erm, fair, I guess. Is this place not visited very often?"

"It's the edge, and it's new land. Last decade or so. Not particularly inhabited yet, but I wouldn't bet on nobody ever coming by. Why do you ask?"

"I'm just not sure what the paranoia would be about, in this case?"

"You're from a different world, and I've never heard of cross-world magic before, do you know if you can go back?"

"Oh. I—expect so? But I mean, if I can't go back, then figuring that out now rather than later doesn't change a lot. Except how hard I should look for ways to come back, I suppose."

"Our minds work in different ways. I don't usually take passengers, they tend to be irritating, but it sounds like you need a native guide for at least a little while."

"I could get off your hair if you'd rather. I haven't shown off yet, have I." He's across the room from Nils now, then back. "I can run really fast, if you'd rather dump me I could probably find civilisation on my own after enough time."

"If you start being annoying instead of interesting and potentially profitable then I'll ask that. For now I have no objection."

"I do try my best to be interesting." Pause. "So, would your security system be able to get me, given my speed?"

"...Probably but not with absolute certainty. Never tested it against something quite like you, it's handled things moving fast enough to make thundercracks, and things with more force behind them than an adult going that fast. The combination might be different but I don't think so. And I'm confident enough of my threat assessment algorithms to think you can't easily sneak around them without first learning exactly how they work."

"Fair enough. But this does make me really curious about your magic system—I presume your system's magical?—and I should probably come up with a sensible order in which to ask questions."

"Yes, it's magical. Mostly. You can work on that while we discuss fare - you can run to Windvale yourself but if you're going to stick around and ask questions I want some biological products."

"Just name 'em."

He... Fetches blueprints. "Been planning an extension. More rooms added to the back, extend cargo bay, knock out some walls here add a few more there, two new engine spars. Mostly wood construction because it channels enchantments well. Having the materials in the right size already will save weeks and tens or hundreds of thousands of Kava."

"I should probably figure out the economics of this place to make sure you aren't cheating me."

"Oh, I'll pay you too, this is more than a trip and a few hours of advice's worth."

"I was mostly joking, I can generate endless biological matter of practically infinite variety, the only thing I'm really selling here is my time and attention plus there's the opportunity cost but let's be real I wouldn't be doing anything more valuable with my time otherwise."

"You probably don't have magical currency where you're from. Kavased are a magically counted fiat currency issued by the Empire of Kava, closely regulated. The creation of them is a viciously guarded secret that has stayed that for over eight centuries, so they're good in a the vast majority of the known world by now. Fifteen Kavased buys a good meal in a restaurant for a human."

"Currency in most countries of my world is fiat and backed by the governments but it's not magical. By the way, if these Fates of yours can make new triangles—is this world infinite?"

"Er, yes? As far as anyone can tell at any rate. There was a project to go so far above the suns and stars you get to vacuum and build a giant telescope a while ago, and they think it's empty forever. So a government bought it and used it to spy on other governments, then it got blown up."

Pause. "I'll ask about that later, but back to the point I was going to make, if there's arbitrary amounts of matter being created all the time, why would you need me to provide you with biological matter? How are there scarce materials at all?"

"Scarce materials mostly aren't a thing, you're right. Penelope provides her favorite kingdom with nigh-endless amounts of coal and oil. However, Fates are rare, something like a dozen per continent at most, and they only work so fast. They can't make an entire continent with a wave of a hand. And they have categories that they can't go beyond. And most of them are not particularly helpful."

"I could gather the wood and bones and other things I need to do this myself in a week or two. It would take months or years to process it all. Finished products are what I'm after from you here. Wood already grown to a specified size that nobody has to fell trees, strip, measure, cut. Chunks of bone I don't have to clean and carve down. Herbs already gathered and cut."

"I can do pretty arbitrarily fancy biological stuff, so yeah. What's a continent, even, with an arbitrary number of squares like that?"

"A continent is any contiguous group of squares surrounded on all sides, or mostly surrounded, by void."

"...right, of course, how did I not guess this. Okay, anyway, what and how much bio matter do you want for me to grill you on stuff?"

"About ten tons total, most of the bulk various pieces of wood. Most of this will be materials, a little's restocking my medicine cabinet and I have examples to work from for those if you need it... Hold on, let me get the ship moving again then I'll clear a spot in the cargo hold."

"Sure."

He watches and waits.

"Feel free to ask questions."

The ship hovers magically, but its forward motive force is only partially magic. Once he gets the engines humming again it jumps from about twenty miles an hour to about fifty.

"Okay, so the first thing I'm curious about is Fates. What exactly are they?"

"Beyond 'powerful'? Magic itself, some say. You can turn into one by being stubborn enough to invent a new principle of magic - a new basic action magic can do. There's a lot of theory on what this actually means, seems to be at least partially idiosyncratic... I tried it. Didn't get anywhere."

"Ooookay I am so trying this. So they're all people-shaped?"

"Yeah. Well, except Barnacles and Catoblepas. And Hogweed is sort of a centaur. All of them since the Cataclysm look like kinds of people there are anyway. And, good luck with that."

"Is Barnacles, er, made of barnacles or something? How about Catoblepas?"

"He's some kind of strange molluscoid thing. He just calls himself barnacles. Very keen on the health of sea life. Catoblepas is a giant cat about the size of my ship, made of magma and gemstones. Pretty far out as fair folk go but if there were more of him they're extinct."

"Okay, so, some Fates used to be people but maybe not all of them—except I presume all since the Cataclysm? What are fair folk?"

"All of them were probably ordinary people except maybe the Six I mentioned... Fair folk are a broad category of anything that's not human and not merfolk. Everything from centaurs to fire-eaters-" Which are basically dragons, according to the picture in the dictionary, "to dryads to astels. Every sentient being that has innate magic is one of the fair folk. All known sentient life is human, mer, or fair."

"Did that dictionary contain all known species of fair folk? Do new ones appear? Is natural selection a concept here?"

"As of nine years ago mostly, yes but rarely and suddenly and generally where nobody can study it happening, I heard of that in college, something about species changing over time."

"Hmm, if new species appear where no one—wait did no one ever ask them how they showed up? Or do they appear far enough away from other species that by the time they meet they've forgotten?"

"Most fair folk have, er, non-traditional methods of reproduction, and the stories humans have been able to get out of them say the first few of those just appeared in their favored method. Almost all fair folk are incredibly closed-mouthed about their species traits, though."

"What methods are there? Why are they closed-mouthed? Would I be able to pass as one of those and inquire?"

"Plenty. No clue. No clue."

"What are a couple of examples?"

"Fire-eaters lay eggs in volcano tiles once every millennium or so and they share traits of all fire-eaters who helped take care of the egg, of either gender. Two dryads spend a decade carefully crafting a child tree. Ophorians are some kind of fungus, spores are involved, we don't know the details. Pixies we know a lot about because they're much more talkative than average, they go into a breeding season and sometimes two adult pixies in the right situation, suddenly become three adult pixies."

"That is a bit weird, although I guess 'have vampire venom injected into your blood stream and spend seventy-two hours in terrible agony' is a fairly weird reproduction method, too."

"Oh, that reminds me, ramusals- They need to eat a human whole to reproduce. They don't get to do it much on civilized continents."

"Wow that is. Pretty awful, too."

"Yep. There are a few others like that, most more benign - more like a three day sex marathon than being eaten, I'd have to look them up, and I'm ready to be done talking about this." They're at the cargo bay.

"I'm not particularly curious about the specifics of the reproduction of all known species, just wanted to have a general idea of the range. Your world's magic is really different than mine's."

"Sure sounds like it! What are some other examples of your super individualized magic?"

"The Empress has a pretty fully general mental shield, the Emperor can read minds, the Princess can project thoughts and every true thing she says is immediately obviously true, there's a teleporter, a precog, the vampire who turned me could get a copy of another person's magic by touching them—that was involuntary and displaced the previous power..."

"Fair folk of one kind or another can do all that except the copying, the mindreading, and the shield."

"I think no two witches have the same power. Oh, how many people are there, that you know?"

He waves a hand. "Estimates vary quite a bit, decent guess is about one trillion."

He whistles. "My world's about six and a half billion, how long's this one been around?"

"At least 40,000 years, as that's about when the Cataclysm was."

"Hey, time for you to get to work making my new stuff 'cause in a about half an hour I'll be within Windvale jurisdiction and the bureaucrats say having a scry-window to the front viewport isn't safe enough. I'll need to go up front and properly pilot." He starts listing things.

He starts making the things, apparently not paying attention at all.

"You got up to a trillion in forty thousand years? I guess the appearing species help but wow."

"It's more the massive sprawl of available land and resources I think? And magic. Magic really boomed in the last ten thousand years, makes things easy."

"Oh? What happened?"

(He continues to make things without paying attention.)

"No one thing- Maybe crystals, maybe reliable flight. But suddenly more and more humans were becoming Fates and the number of things magic can do started increasing a lot faster. Still going - A Fate calling herself Mountain invented a new way for magic to reference locations about forty years ago. Or maybe it was a hundred. Makes certain things a lot easier to implement, anyway."

"Now I really want to become a Fate. I wonder if people from my world can even do it."

"I suspect you'll only find out if you spend a decade or two, or a century or two, working on it."

"Vampires are also immortal, unaging, and have very cool brain architecture even in addition to the eidetic memory."

"Sure. I'm still skeptical. A lot of fair folk are immortal and smart and they don't have that much a higher rate of Fates, given the population distribution."

"Well, maybe the brain architecture isn't that much of an advantage, but the 'immortal' part means I don't really mind taking a couple of centuries to do it."

"Almost makes me want to get in on this whole vampire thing."

"The horrible pain that lasts three days is very horrible. Plus humans smell and taste delicious enough that before the Empress took over and made killing people illegal most vampires, who are all formerly-human, became serial killers. On the other hand, eidetic memory, think much faster, all senses are ridiculously improved, super speed, strength, and durability, only way to kill you is by dismembering you and then setting you on fire, you get prettier, if you weren't a witch before you can sometimes become one, you sparkle in the sun—I should remind myself to ask you about the suns here actually—and there's this arguably bad part where if you see someone you'd be romantically compatible with you know it instantly and monogamously mate on them for life and it's reciprocal if they're a vampire and the bond is strong enough mind magic can't touch it."

"I did say almost. The mate thing in particular is sort of disturbing. There's also the matter that I only have your word for it."

"True. I heartily recommend it on the immortality part alone, but I don't have a good way to convince you I'm telling the truth nor the government behind me with all the helpful pamphlets."

"If you were wondering, lie-detecting is not a known thing for magic in general. I seem to remember a fair folk species that can do it... I might want to hire one of them and point them at you, if I decide vampirism as described appeals after all."

"Hmmm, would inventing that be enough to make me a Fate, do you think?"

"Almost certainly. I can think of a few ways to try already, if I go ahead and wildly invent new primitive actions. I should qualify, reliable lie detecting. Polygraphs exist."

"This place is fun. I'm not sure how to meaningfully ask you what the tech level around is, so instead I'll ask, what's up with the suns? As in, what are they."

"They aaaare, flying balls of fire. Energy from nowhere. They're not made of anything, they're just regions of space that produce large amounts of heat and light on a schedule. New ones happen over continents, when the nearest other sun is too far away. The stars are the same thing but flipped schedule so they're only on at night and also much smaller and dimmer."

"—I don't want to waste time expressing a lot of surprise over that, there's too much to learn. But er. Where I'm from the sun and the stars are, yes, the same thing, which is a gigantic sphere of nuclear fusion —the sun itself is almost two hundred and ten thousand tiles in diameter, some stars are bigger, some are smaller, all are varying definitions of terribly far away."

The dictionary didn't show any atoms, so that just came across as 'fusion'. "That is incredibly fucking huge. One sun twice as wide around as the entire known world."

"And our sun is fairly small as far as stars go. My planet is only about thirty-eight hundred tiles in diameter, though, and only about thirty percent of the surface area is land, not all of it habitable."

"That's a dozen or so continents' worth. So which one of us ought to be more impressed, I wonder?"

"Me, I think. As far as anyone knows no one made my planet, it just happened, whereas your world has someone to thank for."

"You were talking about technology before - I'm not quite entirely sure what you mean by that? We have engines, they're a known quantity, some medicines, telescopes..."

"Catch-all term for stuff people make? When I say technological level I mostly mean what kinds of things the things people make can do."

"No, you used a strange word for it. Quality and quantity of shipbuilding is usually regarded as a good measure of a continent's technological level, and how many books get printed. Good public services too - especially grid water and heating or cooling."

"'Tech'? And the very presence of grid water is what I mean, as an example."

"That's better. The first word was sort of rude and dismissive, referring to mechanical things that use no magic and while I know this doesn't necessarily make something useless it's usually used to mean childrens' toys or something made by near-primitive tribes."

"That's... really interesting? I'd figured your flying house was magical but humans in my world totally have flying vehicles with no magic whatsoever."

"...Is this like gravity, somehow? Because if it's not that's really fascinating and I want to know how."

"Depends on what you mean by 'like gravity'? My world has, other than the magic, a steady set of mathematical laws of nature that everything follows all the time, and gravity's one of those laws."

"I mean how the rules are different. The only things that fly without magic that I know of are birds, and people have been trying to build fake birds here and there for a while."

"Hmm, I don't think it's about that? Your gravity feels just as strong as ours and your air doesn't seem to behave meaningfully differently?"

After the next batch of described products he glances at his pocket mirror-TV thing and- "Ah, there's the signal tower. I need to go up front now... We should start listing physical principles to each other to see if the worlds match decently well."

"I don't have a neat list, but I do have what was known of the laws of physics as formulae memorised."

Newton's laws, the ideal gas law, buoyancy all work the same. Nils is unfamiliar with electricity.

So Sadde can explain the atomic model (with heavy warnings about how incorrect it is) and if Nils wants can do an overview of quantum mechanics.

This... Requires diagrams.

He has something like a drawing tablet.

He's already correcting their periodic table for new information.

Sadde would like to disclaim that they don't know for sure that their elements are the same.

(But they probably are, there's enough in common to be suspicious.)

The things Sadde's saying about chemistry make sense.

"This maybe is a distraction from your questions about the world though."

"Well as long as you answer mine after I've answered yours, I don't mind the order."

"Alright, just warning you I'm going to be busy once we get to Windvale and might ignore you for a few hours."

"I can deal with a few unsupervised hours. What're your plans there? And for that matter should I shift the sparkles away, would I be attracting too much attention?"

"I was originally going to refuel and make some of my deliveries and sell some things and buy others. Now I'm going to sell most of the contents of my hold except what you just made, and rent a shipyard and a lot of hired labor and rebuild the ship. You'll be taken as an obscure Fair Folk species, or possibly a regular human with strange aesthetics. You'll get looked at, you might get bothered by scholars or fair folk-lovers but not shopkeepers."

"Hmm, that doesn't sound too bad, think I'll keep the sparkles. What about feats of superhuman abilities?"

"Same deal - don't be too flashy and alarming though or the police might try to fine you for public nuisance."

"Hmm, alright. How easy is it to sell the kinda stuff I can produce?" he asks, making a small horse figurine in his palm out of ivory.

"I'll give you 2500 Kava straight for the materials - rent a street stall on Tower Avenue and put up a sign advertising custom stuff and you'll do great. Stalls there are rather expensive, but that's because that's where all the rich socialites and fashionistas live, they'll love things like ivory figurines or detailed woodcarvings."

"Would they be more expensive if they sparkle in the sun?" he asks, covering the horse with his skin. "I really like this world."

"I bet they would. You should probably let me focus now, they're guiding me into the airlane."

Sure enough, the sky around them is rather crowded with other flying ships now. Most are less house-like than Nick's, but most are around the same size or smaller. The town that's approaching from up ahead certainly does look busy. A series of stone towers is dwarfed by the gigantic floating ships lined up next to them. Flying platforms that seem to fill the role of cars float near street level but are apparently mostly forbidden up high, to make way for the heavy ship traffic. There are fireworks going off over the water at one edge of the town.

And even in the middle of the town, you can see the tile change. The architectural style suddenly shifts.

"Why do people change the way they build things when the tile changes?"

"Probably just a cultural thing."

"Huh. Alright, I guess."

"There is a widespread tradition to build major roads along tile boundaries. Eight-way intersections where the triangles meet are tricky, four's a little better."

"Are tiles shaped like that on purpose or is there just no way for them to be?"

"By all accounts from Fates, that's the only way for tiles to be. At least there's only four sides to match up, keeps the number of rifts down."

"Rifts being when tiles of different types meet?" he asks, recalling the dictionary. "Are they bad?"

"Yes - there's an actually quite tidy system of different categories of tiles. Twenty five, in a five by five grid of aspects. If two bordering tiles don't match in at least one aspect, you get a rift. Do not touch the rift. Do not approach the rift. Do not look directly at the rift. Especially if there's more than one in an area. I am being deadly serious on this."

"...why?"

"Well 'do not look directly at' is your own choice, but most people find it unnerving. They destabilize the area, make it easier for tiles to fall, causing earthquakes and nasty weather, and groups of them produce a steady supply of horrible monsters that wander around the neighboring tiles. Even messing with time and physics in the worst cases."

"I kinda do not have self-preservation instincts anymore and kinda wanna go poke that."

"Do everyone a favor and find one in a nice and uninhabited few dozen tiles before trying it?"

"Sure thing. Your world is very... neat."

"I'm getting that feeling. Compared to spheres for land and molten atoms for suns and so on."

"No, actually in that sense I'd say mine is neater. Other than the inexplicable personal magic, my world is very organised on a very low level. Yours is neat on a much higher level, what with tiles and stuff."

"Maybe you just don't know the neat, low-level rules this world has, if it does? I'll be the first to admit there are a lot of mysteries about how things work around here."

"Yeah. I have a hard time imagining what neat, low-level rules would produce tiles, though. Granted, I also have a hard time imagining how magic in my world emerges from physics and I'm actually pretty sure it doesn't."

"Something, somewhere... Is cheating."

"Yeah. I'd love to find it and be very annoyed at it and then show it how to properly design a universe."

"You'd rather have a properly designed universe than magic? Can't say I agree on that one, satisfying as it would be."

"I didn't say my properly designed universe wouldn't have magic, it would just be better-designed magic. And more utopic—this whole 'death' thing is pretty lame."

"Might as well add 'pain' and 'boredom' to that list. If you're going for maximum philosophical angst potential include 'evil'."

"I don't think I'd add pain and boredom, no. Well, maybe physical pain, but emotional pain seems... valuable? I... do not regret feeling sad that my mother died, I would prefer to be heartbroken when someone I love breaks up with me. And boredom's a very good incentive."

"And your thought process seems mostly human to me. Other kinds of people can have very strange to us thought processes and might ethically value different things. What about them?"

"Well if I were designing a universe I don't think I'd actually build in any, er, emotion limitations? Like that? I mean involuntary death's bad, I suppose if someone wants to be dead they can, and also I am not currently omnipotent nor do I see an avenue to become thus so I have not given much thought to what I'd actually do in such case."

"Aha. Nevermind then. What I was referencing, most merfolk don't really care if they die as long as their tribe doesn't, though usually dying is bad since then the group can do less work and has less skills."

"...weird, but okay, I guess."

His ship has by now fallen into a neat line with various other ships approaching Windvale. There is a flying platform with a woman wearing a very official-looking uniform in front of Nick, directing his ship's every slow move.

"You're not going to ask about how the magic works? I'm almost insulted, I made most of the ship myself."

"I figured learning from, like, a book would be more efficient and also that you might not want to waste your time teaching what's probably equivalent to pretty advanced engineering? But if you wanna talk about it I won't refuse to listen."

"I could lecture you on how to make a simple, useless wand as a demonstration exercise. But this would be a waste of both our time. Magic as I am referring to is anything that does something simple physical principles cannot explain and is not innate like Fair Folks' magic. At its core magic is creatively arranging the different principles. Long, long chains of them with confusing interactions in some cases, a lot of the time confusing refusals to interact properly since most of the pieces have irritating requirements that aren't entirely clear even with analysis. But when you get to the end of it all anything humans can make is just different words written with about twenty five thousand tiny letters. I already explained this, but there is exactly one 'letter' for every Fate that ever existed. They can die, you see, it's just rare."

"You 'say' the letters with certain physical actions which sometimes sound ridiculous on the face of it. For example to bind two things with a dog-tag, called that because one then 'follows' the other like a dog and its master, you place the 'master' directly on top of the 'dog' and then hitting them with something made of silver. One of the most popular ways to add 'remove thermal energy' requires snuffing out and destroying a candle. There's entire dictionaries full of these and how to chain them together."

"This... sounds very cheatable with an eidetic memory."

"Quite so. If there were magic that interacts with minds much at all, I'm sure memory amulets would be a hot item. There's a sort of intuition to it if you practice enough, but you get that with most things."

"So there are twenty five thousand basic actions, which you chain together in order to make magic things?"

"Twenty five thousand or so, yes. A lot of them are redundant to each other, or very niche, it's not a well-designed system since it gets added to one piece at a time by particularly stubborn individuals of different species."

"So you can invent redundant pieces of magic? They don't have to be all new?"

"Redundant in purpose, not redundant and identical in all detail. But yes."

"Is there a specific process these stubborn individuals have to work at for a very long time to do it, or do you just have to stubbornly figure it out?"

"I'm not entirely sure, never having done it myself. The relatively few books written by Fates on the subject seem to indicate the latter."

"What joy. Do you have a book in your neat library with all the twenty-five thousand little words? Or, books, I guess?

"Definitely plural. No, I have a bunch of overviews of my favorite subjects, not a comprehensive listing."

"D'you know where I could find one?"

"I'm fairly sure it doesn't exist. Magical intellectual property law can be a bit... Fierce."

"...what, seriously? How do people even do magic, then?"

"It mostly limits the spreading. Printing proprietary processes or teaching them to others especially for money. It's not quite so draconian as to come after you if you happen to come up with something near-identical on your own, or to try and enforce secrecy on centuries-old techniques. I think it's a cultural leftover from times when Fair Folk did ninety percent of all magical innovation."

"Hmm... Okay that's kinda annoying. I wanna read lots of books on magic and figure it all out."

"Go to the vaunted Suvak Academy, enroll in some classes, they're supposedly one of the best in the world."

"Hmm. Sounds more time-consuming than merely reading a book but okay, I suppose."

"I'll let you read my legacy texts and run through a couple examples to get you on the right track if you like, anyway."

"Thanks! I'd love that."

"...After docking, that is, the harbormasters are starting to give me the stink-eye for chatting already."

He shifts his lips away, eyes crinkling with amusement.

Well, that's a thing.

He guides the ship into a berth under the uniformed woman's guidance without further comment.

"Now for customs to come through and decide how much metaphorical blood the taxman wants today."

Sadde shrugs, mouthlessly.

The customs inspection is mercifully brief. They charge Nick a 1960 Kava docking fee and 2412.47 Kava import tax.

"Not terrible, for a major hub."

He shifts his lips back. "Didn't you say fifteen Kava bought you a meal?"

"Yes. Ships are expensive. Shipyards are expensive. Dockyards and harbormasters are expensive. Taxes are inevitable."

"I wasn't imagining it to be quite this expensive, but alright, I guess. Hope I've made you significantly richer than that."

"Not ridiculously so, but definitely up there. Time for your promised demonstration? I'll make a little toy that hovers and follows whatever activated it, that's probably a good balance between relatively quick and showing a lot of the concepts."

"Yes, please!"

He brings the necessary materials out of the workshop (or asks them to be made) and into the high-stacked cargo bay rather than invite Sadde in.

He states what each step is supposed to do and how it fits into the whole thing's (relatively simple) architecture. He's definitely not slowing down for the beginner though, that's probably not a setting he even has.

It involves arranging things in particular ways, mixing things, lighting one thing on fire, and at one point a minute of chanting. The process does make sense... Sort of... Even if the individual steps are almost arbitrary.

"Are all of your magical effects enchanted objects like that?" he asks while he watches the process.

"All magical things humans can do are objects of one variety or another, yes. Enchantment refers to a particular subset of them, though."

"What subset?"

"Things that have a consistent effect forever and don't need recharging or get consumed, and aren't golems."

"Cool. Okay, carry on."

It only takes another five minutes, for about twenty minutes total. The last step is to 'seal' the magic by saying an equivalent of 'so mote it be' in a sufficiently serious tone, in any language.

"Here we are. Testing." He taps it and wants it to follow him, then steps away. It does. "You try. Tap and want it to follow you, or want it to turn off. No memory or user-recognizing features, very very simple implementation."

Sadde taps it and wants it to follow him.

It does follow him. His center of mass, specifically.

It has a pretty low max speed, and zero collision avoidance ability.

It's still really cute. "I'm going to learn everything."

"Best of luck. I'll be here for a couple of weeks, maybe months - though in one of the rental shipyards by tomorrow. Here's the money I promised for your street-stall fund."

It's a very regular, six-sided blue-tinted but otherwise clear crystal that says 2500 on it.

Sadde accepts it. "How does this work?"

"Same as the toy in concept, you touch two crystals together and want to transfer however much. It only works if there are people touching both crystals and they agree on the amount. Different crystals have different maximums - that's a 10000-max."

"Gotcha. This is really cool. Do you want me to make you anything else? I really don't mind making you whatever, we're not the two of us gonna crash any markets."

"You sure? In that case..."

Quite a few more things, with particular attention to samples of rare creatures or plants.

If they're creatures or plants Sadde knows of, Nils can have 'em.

That rather limits things, but plenty of profit can still be had. Nick will even toss Sadde another 7500 to max out that crystal. Fair's fair, and it's not like he's getting a bad deal.

Sadde doesn't have much of an idea how much everything he's making is worth, but eh, whatever.

Nick is honest that he isn't giving Sadde a terribly big fraction of what it's all worth, but this is most of his cash-on-hand. How about a set of magic tools to satisfy Nick's sense of fairness? Getting them here is faster than shopping elsewhere and also has the benefit of being selected by someone who tinkers with magic as a hobby - everything useful and none of the useless junk that'd be included in a kit designed for amateurs and people without eidetic memory.

He's honestly fine, he can generate endless matter, he used that to make himself rich long ago, he can do it again.

"Okay, I'll shut up and take your money then."

He laughs. "Please do. When I become a Fate I can even help you with some magic, too, if you like."

"They don't have an innate advantage in magic-craft, you know, just massive intuitive power in a fairly narrow domain. Various kinds of making things sort of like your biokinesis. Earth, plants, wind and a little bit of animals, water and a little bit of wind, fire and a little bit of stone."

"I was actually thinking of finding other Fates and seeing if I can learn more magic from them."

"I wouldn't know if that would get you anything or not, but I suspect not. I advise you not to ask Ragnarosa, her temperament is legendary non-academic."

"Duly noted. I will try to find more academically-minded Fates."

"And I do mean legendarily. There are legends about her."

"Legends about people wanting to ask her things and failing to get answers?"

"More like legends of her fighting armies and winning. But that too."

"Yeowch, is that the kind of power a Fate gets?"

"Older ones are even more powerful than the young ones. But yes."

"They get more powerful with age? Is that the only thing that makes a Fate more powerful?"

"We're getting back into 'rumor and supposition' territory now but having followers, people who look up to them and praise them, is also supposed to do it - but less permanently."

"Hm. Okay. Guess I'm gonna have to become a really nice god."

"Good luck with that."

"Thanks!"

"I'll thank you to clear off my ship unless you have any more burning questions, so I can make my deliveries and lock up. I'll be finding a shipyard and arranging to sell all these things and hiring temp work for most of the rest of today."

"Nah, I'm cool. Seeya."

Off he goes!

Into a maze of service corridors and freight holding bays and dockworkers' offices. A passenger terminal this ain't.

That's alright, he can probably follow sounds and smells and, especially, signs to an exit.

By smell, the trash collection rooms are more obvious than any particular sign of fresh air. Those usually need to open to somewhere, right?

Or he could follow a few people chatting about their plans for the day now that their shift's over.

There's an idea!

But instead of being creepy, he'll ask, "Excuse me?"

"Huh, what's this? You lost, sir?"

"Quite! Could you point me to the nearest exit?"

"Passenger exit? You probably want, hm... Follow us to the elevator and go to ground floor instead of the bus station, then follow signs for delivery processing, and the main concourse where I figure you probably want to be is obvious from there."

"Okay, thanks!" He starts following them and: "So do you work here?"

"Yup. White Sun United dock crew at your service. If you've ever ordered something from out-continent, chances are good we loaded or unloaded it."

"I haven't, actually! I'm from a different universe, ended up here by accident."

They pretty clearly don't believe him.

"Is that where new fair species come from?"

"Not sure, haven't met any other nonhumans yet. Probably not? Given how they apparently say they just appeared via their preferred method of reproduction, and I was very human until I was turned into a" (imperceptible pause) "van-kire in my home universe."

"Huh... Anyway, welcome to Windvale, the Lake Quarter is quite a sight if you want something to visit."

"Thanks! But I think I wanna find the Suvak Academy, first, do you know where it is?"

"That's, eh, a bit of a trip. Though you're in the right place for an airship ride to Suvak."

"Oh I thought it was here. Well, alright, d'you know how much it would cost?"

"About... Four hundred? Six? That sound right to you, Valk? I mean, it's almost two hundred tiles."

"More or less. Express would definitely be more."

"Cool, thank you! Think I'll do some sightseeing first, though."

There's the elevator. They tap a button, just like on Earth. "What kind of sights are you a fan of?"

"Probably ones I wouldn't have found on my world, but if I knew what those were I'd just go to them. Might start with that Lake Quarter you mentioned."

"It's a pretty sight! Don't dump anything into the water, the Lakers hate that."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Ding. The pair of dockworkers get off and head to a bus station, waving a pass at a gate guard.

The elevator continues on to the delivery bay. It's a long row of counters with clerks and a giant board showing whose packages are ready. There's a big sign for 'MAIN CONCOURSE -->'

To the main concourse he zips!

He is almost immediately asked to slow down by a voice without an immediately obvious owner.

That guy in a glass-walled room hanging from the ceiling projected it at him with a magic megaphone, apparently.

He slows down almost immediately, then, a bit bummed out.

Ticket counter - there. Local boarding there. Intercontinental boarding there. Shopping complex and restaurants that way. Exit to Beaver Street to your left.

Exit to Beaver Street it is, he'll remember how to come back.

This: Is a city! Beaver street is obviously on a tile dividing line. Everything is dominated by red brickwork on one side and dark-colored wood on the other. Even the road changes right in the middle.

There's a big plaza with a few maps in front of the place. This is clearly this world's equivalent of a reasonably sized international airport, built surprisingly compactly above a city that continued to grow around it. There are even signs for free shuttle platforms to parking lots A and B.

Can he run quickly outside?

Yes... If he's willing to demonstrate van-kire dexterity to the first trio of police that stop him and wait for them to tell their compatriots that the sparkly guy is not running recklessly.

Sure, he can do that, he likes being a van-kire and likes showing off his van-kire abilities.

As long as they're reasonably sure he's not an accident waiting to happen, sure.

Anyone with private property can still tell him to slow down, and he should be respectful in not disorienting or alarming people if possible and walking inside all government and Royal buildings.

Sure. He's not planning on being slow enough that most people will even notice him actually passing by. He'll check out the map and go visit the pretty lake place.

The southern half of pretty lake place is apparently a big tourism sector.

There are no less than four museums, three parks, two shopping malls, four miniature beaches, and what must be hundreds of shops of various sorts built up on wide bridgeways between hundreds or thousands of sea stacks in a chaotic web. How there are sea stacks in a lake is a question for the Fates.

The water below teems with mer. If the south end of Lake District is a tourist trap, most of the rest is the merfolk equivalent of Chinatown. Live fish being sold in stalls, signs in the swirly language that the dictionary helped cover, glassy murals depicting merfolk hunting and killing sea life.

Ooh! Pretty! He'll spend a while touring the place (at a more sedate pace) before going to visit someplace with actual live merfolk.

Will he actually go underwater or just swim around the surface? The merfolk have a whole underwater complex.

We-ell.

Do people here have nudity taboos? If so he'll purchase whatever they have for a swimsuit here, otherwise just strip naked and go underwater to see these complexes.

Merfolk don't have a nudity taboo, but the humans do. As a 'vankire' he might be able to get away with it but that's usually reserved for less humanoid fair folk.

The swimsuits here are really really baggy.

He can probably move fast enough no human will actually notice he's naked but whatever, he'll get one of those baggy suits and lose it if it becomes too annoying underwater.

Somewhere he can stash his clothes to dry?

Dryer service: 6 Kava per item.

Shoes, socks, jeans, underwear, T-shirt, and then he goes under.

Make sure to keep this magic numbered tag to match up with his stuff again later.

Luckily the swimsuits have button pockets, for some reason.

This is definitely the merfolk equivalent of chinatown. Mazes of underwater stone constructions, kelp forests, and so on. Major open areas have arrays of mirrors on the surface directing nice light down. There are merfolk buskers and street performers - the language is a lot prettier underwater, it doesn't sound like choking anymore.

Can he speak it with his van-kire throat?

...Mostly. Two sounds he can't quite manage but he should be intelligible.

Do they have books or something like that with a diagram of what their throat looks like from the inside?

Merfolk mostly don't do books. He could probably work something to make that weird click and low warble on his own though.

He tries something. Does it work?

Close enough to be in 'weird accent' range.

Cool, he'll take it, and tour around some more, asking questions about architectural styles and economic activities and art and science and music and...

Merfolk have all these things in various flavors.

The common theme is being very communal and rather hunter-gatherer, culturally. Merfolk architecture wouldn't work above sea but they can fake the same style like so... Would he like to buy some souvenirs, obvious tourist that he is? Perhaps authentic mer cuisine?

Unfortunately he does not eat, but he might want some souvenirs! He's curious about how other tourists visit, though, and he's especially intrigued by the differences in psychology.

Water-breathing amulets. 10 Kava an hour rental. None of these merfolk are psychologists, so he might have to ask specific questions.

Well, he's curious about stuff like child rearing, toys, games, economic activities, jobs, social structures, religious views, political structures, hobbies...

Merfolk infants don't know who their genetic parents are. They live in a nursery and mer who would be good to take care of them and teach them something suited to their talents start taking care of them more often as they get older and start working. They tend to end up doing what they're best at as work even if they don't like it, for the good of the group.

They don't seem to like complicated or individual toys, preferring big playground equipment type things. Most games are cooperative, competitions between two large teams or a race to finish some big task against the clock.

They are more hesitant to talk about politics and religion. There is almost no class divide. The greatest aspiration is being recognized as the best at something, or a leader of one's tribe. On the other hand, tribes in close proximity such as in this strange human city tend to fight occasionally. 

They are bemused by humans' individuality and even more bemused by the idea of hereditary monarchy. As for hobbies... Sparring, making murals, dancing, music, magic, swim races, telling stories...

They are a fascinating people and Sadde agrees humans are very strange! He hopes he did not offend them asking these things, he does not mean to treat them like "exotic foreigners" or something like that, he is just very curious about how different species' native psychology works! He will purchase a couple of souvenirs.

What kind of souvenirs? Artful glass spheres with detailed scenes inside? A magic tambourine-like thing that promises to sound the same out of water? Kelp derived slick waterproof t-shirt?

The glass spheres sound cool, but—do they have interesting music-making things that only work underwater? Those would be pretty interesting to have.

Sure, he can buy water instruments. Proper ones are a bit expensive.

How about a thing humans would call a water-flute? A set of streamers with finger toggles you drag behind you that change tune when you speed up or turn? Almost a swimming piano, sort of.

Oooh! That looks cool, and he bets he can have more fun with it than humans can.

Probably, yes.

A cheap one made of carved shells and string is 850. A quality one made from whale ivory and shark teeth, and a couple of enchantments against wear, is more like 3000. There are options in between, too, and he can try the cheapish ones out.

Are there any structural differences between the cheap ones and the more expensive ones, or is it just materials and enchantments?

The expensive ones have more keys, 14 compared to 10.

Are the structural differences from ten to fourteen a straightforward extension?

With some reinforcement to make it tougher, yes. One lower and one higher key for each hand. Beginners should start with a 10-key. One per finger, you see?

Yeah, but he's confident he can figure the 14-keyed one fairly quickly once someone shows him how, probably.

He is currently talking to the right mermaid to get a music lesson. For free even, because merfolk culture expects you to teach whoever is interested.

Oh, cool! Yes he'd like to learn how to play this instrument please.

She is happy to demonstrate, then guide him though using it himself. You have to be moving a bit to get it to play, but then pressing the keys lets water flow through just the right way to make sound. What sounds are produced vary a lot with speed, and while both sides are identical making slow banking turns lets the streamers on one side play at a lower pitch than the ones on the other for a nice bi-tone effect.

Like this?

Good first try!

Make sure to do this and such......

He imitates her precisely.

And he's soon pretty good at playing this, especially for a split-tail.

Please forget she said that sorry sorry sorry.

He laughs. "That's a cute nickname. Accurate, too. I wonder..." He unceremoniously strips and sits on the ground to start morphing his legs together into something that at least outwardly resembles a mer tail.

"...Oh, cool. Shapeshifting is whatever you are's magic, huh?"

She inspects the tail. "We didn't expect something like that." We, presumably, because this language doesn't actually have a word for 'I'.