He recognises the questions even if he can't properly answer all of them. "Je parle français, oui, but English is my first language, hello there," he says in what he hopes of his most seductive tone of voice, not taking his eyes off the hot one for a second. Not even to blink.

Some of the demons, who apparently don't speak English, disengage from the conversation. There is a brief discussion of who is to take charge of the new guy - "we've got two flutes, Zoray, you take him" "what, no, lookit him eyefucking Cam" "and do you think Cam wants to be eyefucked?" "what's he going to do, put me over my recommended daily allowance?" and then Cam puts his violin down and motions Sadde away from the resumed jam session.

"I'll survive. So, welcome to Hell, how'd you die?"

"...that's a very, very unexpected question. I'm pretty sure I'm not dead." He's not eyefucking Cam, but he's definitely still eyeing him. "Did I accidentally end up in the afterlife? Should I be concerned it's called Hell? Is anyone going to try torturing me for eternity?"

"The pits of fire are not and have never been intended to contain people. You already speak some languages and you didn't come with your own set of wings, which, around here, generally means that you are a dead ex-human new demon as opposed to an ex nihilo new demon."

"Uh, when you were alive did you ever summon any form of daeva, even once, even if you didn't give them a task?"

"Yes, I am fairly certain the thing I am is a vampire. Look, try to squeeze me," he says, offering Cam a hand.

"That would seem to be the conclusion, assuming you are not completely having me on, since I'm pretty sure we don't have vampires. Although Hell isn't primarily an afterlife. Most demons didn't use to be humans, they just appear one day."

"I'm not completely having you on," he reassures this god amongst (im)mortals. "So, anyway, before I go any further, I think the most immediately relevant fact about my kind of vampire is that we have this magical soulmate thing going on where if I lay eyes on a person I'm mutually romantically compatible with I am instantly and magically in love with them forever. And that happened when I looked at you."

"Yes, I thought you would, given that you're the type of person I would fall in love with and who would fall in love with me."

"Do you have, like, a name."

"Sadde, that's S-a-d-d-e, yes pretty weird I know. I presume you're Cam, from the thing over there with the other, uh, demons."

"Yeah, I'm Cam. Yes, we are all demons here except apparently you. And yours is not the weirdest name one encounters in a society where fully grown adults appear with no language skills or preexisting social connections on a routine basis."

"That makes a lot of sense in hindsight," he comments. Also: he's not being immediately rejected by Cam! Ee. Eeeeee. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! "By the way, you don't seem surprised by the fact that you'd fall in love with a guy so I presume you're attracted to guys? Typically this magic soulmate thing selects for sexual compatibility but in my case I also have some extra magic that means I can shapeshift and I am often also female ssssooooo I didn't know how that'd interact." Is it obvious there's only one thing he can think about now?

"Uh, I'm bisexual, if that's what you mean..."

"Uh. Sure. So. There's three kinds of daeva, demons and angels and fairies. Demons make things, angels change things, fairies move things. All three can be summoned by humans in the mortal realm by drawing variously elaborate circular designs on the floor and then they can exchange goods and services for the hire of our cool magic powers. If a human summons somebody and then they die they become a daeva, exactly how it's determined which type is unclear but I suspect personality compatibility with the magic type; humans who die without having summoned anyone go to Limbo which is really boring and disappointing but not awful or anything. Daeva are indestructible and immortal and heal very rapidly from small injuries; Limboites actually get that too but no powers and their world doesn't have much in it to start out and unlike angels and demons they can't naturally fix that. We export a lot during the concordances, which are periods of smallish overlap between any pair of non-mortal worlds."

"Can you qualify that? Making things and changing things and moving things? Can daeva summon other daeva? Can anyone summon Limboites? And how indestructible are we talking, here? You felt pretty squeezable," and also like heaven, we should touch again, in fact we should touch a lot for a very long time.

Cam makes an M&M in the palm of his hand, displays it, and eats it. "Making things," he repeats. "Angels can shrink or transmute or grow or attach or detach - trained right they're good healers. Fairies are telekinetic. Daeva can't summon, no summoning Limboites, and very indestructible but only past a certain point, like, if you shot me I'd bleed and fall over but I wouldn't crack my skull."

"...that's cheating. That's really really cheating. What are the limitations on what you can make? Do you have to be seeing it? How much do you need to know about it?"

"No antimatter or anything created in motion, no, and depends if you're copying something or designing it."

"Can you copy something you've never seen? Could you make, say, a vial of vampire venom?"

"Oh, and no inherent magical properties. But yes, things can be copied sight unseen as long as they're specified well enough and in a non-cheaty way - yes title and author of book, no 'first book published in 2100 with a redheaded editor.'"

"...could you get a book from 2100 with more precise specification?"

"...yyyyyes? Uh, what year is it where you're from."

"Uh, 2012, is this also the future."

"Welcome to 2159."

"Yep, it's the future, I presume from that that you can't in fact make stuff from the future."

"Nope, no form of daeva gets precognition of any kind."

"The shadow government where I'm from employs someone who can see possible futures. Our kinds of magic are really different." Can we stop talking now and start making out?

"The shadow government. I see. Well, that would be the sort of asset a shadow government would want to have."

"Yup! They took over, uh, last year, relatively speaking. The previous shadow government was very terrible, but the new one's great, they're slowly peeling the Masquerade and making sure vampires don't kill humans and figuring out a way to make artificial blood that doesn't taste like death the way non-human blood does and their long-term goals seem to be making everyone who wants to one form or another of immortal."

"This does sound like a good set of goals. Demons can provide ethically sourced blood."

"There's another problem with that, though, which is that vampires on human blood are less civilised and have less self-control. It's better in general for vampires to only consume animal blood so that we're more sociable and less likely to think of humans as snacks."

"Oh. Well, demons can produce ethically sourced animal blood too."

"Yup! And so can I, in fact, due to my personal type of magic, and I was in fact on my way to one of their capitals to offer my services when I stumbled upon the key," and this time he shows it to Cam. "Decided to test, created magic portal, saw you, fell in love, and here I am."

"Here you are. What is your personal type of magic exactly?"

"Personal biokinesis plus endless generation of biological matter from my body. The shapeshifting thing is that. The matter generation is strictly less powerful than demon magic, apparently, as is the changing-stuff part compared to angel magic."

"Well, you might be faster or better able to work without knowing what you're doing than an angel is."

"More or less? My power fills in some blanks, but I have to at least have an idea of what the end result should be like. But yes I can do it pretty fast due to my vampire superpowers."

"Which are, besides being made of rock...?"

"Superspeed, superstrength, don't need to breathe, don't need to sleep, don't age, unless someone can disable me and set me on fire I'm pretty indestructible, supersenses, incredibly enhanced cognition, perfect recall, very fine precision over every movement, never needing to actually sit down or rest at all, being preternaturally beautiful."

"Please don't try to flirt with me until I've had longer to think over the magical vampire love thing."

"I mean, no offense - I just - don't know you that well. To want to go full speed ahead on that or for that matter to expect with implicit trust that you're telling me the truth."

"Right. Of course. That's entirely reasonable. I'm not totally in control of my emotions right now, the lots of extra room in my brain and the unfamiliarity of the mate bond are a bit hard to process. What the not-in-love-with-you me would've said, I think, would be that of course we shouldn't go full speed ahead, and you have all the time in the world to think it over, and you're naturally free to say no and decide it's not for you."

"I appreciate that. Uh, I don't know how this works, would you rather I contemplate this somewhere where I'm not, I don't know, tantalizing you, or do you want to come to my house where nobody will be startled if you demonstrate undemony traits in public?"

"...I would very much prefer to be around you as much as possible. Also—" And his skin becomes slightly less pale, more like when he was human. "Vampires sparkle under sunlight, this was my personal magic at work to make me look less vampirey. I didn't list that 'cause I don't exactly see it as an unqualified superpower."

"You might get someone stopping you to ask for your cosmetic secrets if you do that around here and they'll expect you to be able to tell them exactly what to embed in their skin," Cam says.

"Well, that and - we've got an equilibrium here that involves everybody being really indestructible and all contests being evenly matched and no permanent harm being done if someone drops someone else in a black hole, I don't know that the reaction you'd get would be universally friendly."

"What kind of unfriendliness are we talking about, here? I would definitely not survive a black hole, and I'm not at all certain I'd get to any of the afterlives if I died."

"I mean, I've never been holed, and it'd take a real antisocial type to hole you here in the center of Hellish civilization where a lot of people are in the middle of doing things and wouldn't like to be interrupted by a black hole. But it's a thing now and then. I just don't recommend letting on that you aren't a demon. My shuttle's over there, let's just go hide you in my house."

"Okay," he says, having seriously conflicting emotions about visiting Cam in his house aaaaah while at the same time Cam is not in love with him aaaaaah.

Cam pilots the shuttle away from what proves to be a large rectangle with some irregular patches of gold between the cities and plantful areas.

"...um."

"What?"

"Hell looks really weird. That is so not a sentence I'd ever expected to ever utter."

"Hell is very tacky. We can all make anything on a whim and getting rid of it is a lot harder and there's no incentive to recycle. One day someone wanted to make an enormous plane of gold. Now a lot of demons hang out on it. There are some planets nearish by but mostly it's the plane of gold."

"Normally. There's math behind the plane of gold but I don't have it memorized."

"...black hole inside it?" he guesses.

"Yup! I don't like having close neighbors who can suddenly make architectural additions at any scale." Cam lets him in. The house is cozy and attractive and not tacky at all.

"Your house is pretty cozy and attractive and not tacky at all," he comments.

"Thank you. Er, if vampires need toilets please let me know and I'll hook something up; daeva do not."

"Vampires do not, either. I should add that to my mental bucket list of vampire superpowers."

Snort. "Make yourself comfy. Can I get you some blood or anything?"

"Nope, I can generate mine and tend to keep myself full enough to slosh, especially when I expect to be around humans."

"Is being around humans a particular issue?"

"Disadvantage number one or two, depending on how you're counting it, of being a vampire is that humans smell, look, and taste appetising enough to turn otherwise upstanding people into serial murderers. The other disadvantage number one or two is that the turning process consists in three days of pure agony that would be enough to kill a human, and that agony doesn't even disappear from your throat and flares whenever you smell human. You eventually get used to it, especially on an animal diet, but the first year's tough."

"...Do I smell like a human?"

"Er, I had my sense of smell turned off, but," sniff, "not quite. Subtle difference, I think supersenses may be necessary to notice it."

"Do I smell appetizing?"

"Um. Yeah. But the thought of even trying to do anything that could constitute hurting you makes me want to go hide in a black hole or something."

"Please do not crawl into my garbage chute."

"I'll refrain from doing so. Futures where I spend time around you are definitely preferable to futures where I'm part of a singularity."

"...Speaking of, do vampires suffer from radiation poisoning?"

"Nope, not unless there's enough radiation to actually set us on fire, why?"

"'Cause there's enough shielding around my black hole not to interfere with electronics but not enough that it would be a great idea for a human to be here for long periods. But you don't seem to be catching fire so you're fine, apparently."

"Apparently!" He beams.

"Can I interest you in, I don't know, future media of some kind, while I do some thinking?"

"Books, I suppose? History books would be interesting, actually, I wanna know how different our worlds are."

There appears in the air in front of Sadde a thick book titled The Twenty-First Century: Revelation to Martian Independence.

And Cam sits in another room with a futuristic computer he seems to be controlling with his brain. Thinking.

Sadde does not interrupt him for more books, and just sits very still and does not breathe and tries to get used to being completely in love with someone he met not an hour ago.

Cam does notice a little after he's done with the book. "Do you want more books?"

He draws in breath to say, "Yeah. Just throw whatever you have at me. Several whatevers, if possible."

"Quite a bit."

Eventually Cam plops down next to him on the couch to watch the third act.

"Okay. And is the nature of the beast such that it would be better for me to be really fucking sure before starting anything or is it basically impossible to get to a state less pleasant modulo vampire mating thing than 'not actively kissing me right now' or what?"

"...it is very possible to get to much worse states than that. The fact that you're more immortal than I am is a pretty huge advantage, most vampires don't really survive the death of their mates, and the ones who do tend to not be functional members of society. Erm. And in the spirit of full disclosure, if you asked me to go away forever and never see you again I would but I might just bury myself somewhere and stay there, maybe give you the address if you ever changed your mind. That said, you rejecting me now would not be substantially better or worse, I think, than you rejecting me in a week or something. And also given the nature of the beast, if you do start anything you're very unlikely to regret it."

"How does that even work? Where did your weird vampire love magic get information on my romanceability?"

Shrug. "The Empress Regnant's magic is such that she has complete immunity to mind magic and she has a mate. And I'm pretty sure her mate was a vampire and mated on her while she was human. Mate bonds are cheating."

"That doesn't really answer the question!"

"No, the shrug was the answer to the question, the rest was just qualifying it."

"Okay, so you don't know. What facts do you think you can derive from the fact that the magic picked me out?"

"...that you're likely to be thoughtful, smart, good, probably quite ambitious, probably tolerant of weird things like switching genders, confident, er, I never really stopped to think about what my soulmate would look like given that I'd just instantly know. There are a few more specific things, like I'd expect my soulmate to be the kind of person who'd take kindly to my talking a lot and disclosing a lot of information and who'd want to be informed of the soulmate thing soon probably."

"...Okay, and you were confident enough of all this that you didn't really have a plan for, I don't know, 'evil soulmate' contingencies or anything? Even though apparently you are from a world where upstanding people routinely become serial killers."

"Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I'm pretty certain I wouldn't mate on a non-vegetarian—that's how we call vampires who subsist on animal blood, vegetarians. And just like I could go away if you asked me to, I," imperceptible vampire pause, "think I'd go away if I knew my mate wasn't vegetarian and didn't want to change. And actually when I turned I had been planning on overthrowing the previous evil shadow government but then stuff happened and someone else did first and now being a serial murderer is a crime."

Cam nods, and regards Sadde thoughtfully.

And then Cam leans over and kisses him.

And Sadde uses biokinesis to drain some of his strength away and is also squishy and there are fireworks and bells and whatever other metaphors and Sadde very carefully starts tentatively wrapping his arms around Cam if that's okay?

Mmmmkiss.

"Uh," says Cam, "is that, like, turned-on growling, or predatory growling?"

"Turned-on. Definitely turned-on. I preemptively deactivated my own senses of smell and taste."

"Okay then, just checking." Kiss.

More kissing, more random noises of pleasure and turned-on-ness and growling, and Sadde's hands might start exploring the exposed expanses of Cam's back.

Cam's back: exists. ...Has flight muscles.

...Sadde really appreciates those flight muscles. And sure, vampire memory means he only needs one pass at them all to memorise the entire topology, but who cares, there'll be several passes, and a whole lot of kissing.

Cam can't really growl but he can make sounds! Appreciative sounds. He is mostly going with the wing-plastering model of embrace but his hands have a little room under the canopy of navy blue to wander around, mostly in the chest area.

Sadde has the kind of body you'd expect from a somewhat narcissistic vampire with biokinesis.

How interesting.

"Hm?"

"How far am I allowed to go here?"

Shrug. "I am without maidenly virtue to sully? Don't haul me around or literally move very fast and if you have oddball kinks, run them by me beforehand."

"Kinks can wait, I mostly want to be alone with you without wearing any clothes for a week straight, at least, but I understand if that's a bit too long for you."

"I will need coffee breaks if you want me awake for this period of time."

Kisses!

Yes, lots of those! And since he got what he's interpreting as carte blanche, he soon kicks his shoes and socks off, and stops doing the wandering hands thing to start getting rid of his trousers. He doesn't fumble with them because that'd imply less than perfect control over his movements and awareness of his body and environments, but their current position does make it somewhat awkward so he soon growls in frustration and just rips them off—not by strength alone, since he's pretty much reduced his to human levels, but rather by using his witchcraft to produce tiny barbs on his legs that'd do the job for him. It's reduced to tatters after he's done.

"Uh, do you often come over all shark-skinned?" wonders Cam.

"Only when I'm very displeased about how fast I'm removing my clothes and have hacked myself out of superstrength so I can't just pull and tear it off."

"Okay, because that would definitely qualify as oddball, FYI." And Cam removes his own pants in an entirely nonsupernatural fashion.

"Um," says Cam, and then he is occupied with kiss and does not finish his question.

"Mmmmnotnearlythatgoodatmultitasking," gasps Cam.

He pulls away from the neck, grinning. "I could stop..." he lies through his teeth, and then resumes the neck nibbling while his hands start trying to pull Cam's underwear off, gently.

Cam lets him. On the subject of his neck there may be active encouragement and flailing tail movements.

Well that's just adorable. Sadde will continue doing the thing with the neck for a bit, since it seems to be causing the reason for his existence such pleasure.

It is, it is. Also wing-plastering, that has resumed.

Did he want louder and less coherent whimpering? Because that's what he's getting.

Well he didn't exactly have firm specific wants, but his vague and unspecific ones are definitely being satisfied by louder and less coherent whimpering! He will continue the exploitation phase of this process for a while longer, they have a lot of time for exploration.

Loud incoherent wimpering, wings wrapped around his back and a tail wrapped around his thigh, trembly happy Cam: these are things Sadde has now.

All very good things to have! And, supposing Sadde feels adventurous enough again such that his nibbling and kissing start making their way south?

Well, this will reduce immediate loudness and incoherency of whimpering but will get him a highly anticipatory look.

Is that so? But, well, Sadde's hands haven't stopped, and he certainly has a lot of skin to cover before reaching his final destination.

Sorry, Sadde, the neck is definitely the major non-glaringly-obvious destination for nibbles on this particular person, but he is still enjoying himself.

Oh, that's alright, then. After Sadde has determined this to be the case, he makes his way down way faster, and then goes on to demonstrate just what he meant by 'very fine control over pretty much everything.'

"Ohfuck," squeaks Cam, tail going still.

Sadde pulls back a bit and lets his hands continue doing the job so he can properly look up at Cam and ask, "Hmm? Should I stop?"

"That was positive profanity," insists Cam.

"Good," he says, and resumes. So now he has mouth and a hand, the other hand's a bit idle... How adventurous should he be with it?

Cam is not going to produce words unless words are the only way to make Sadde continue doing the thing he's doing. He's just sort of going to be sprawled on this couch moaning.

Then Sadde thinks he's going to be adventurous, then. Just one finger, to start with, making its way somewhere...

This does not count as an oddball kink and is met principally with slightly different moaning and some repositioning and a tailtwitch.

Good! Sadde will continue doing that, eventually introducing a second finger to the situation, probably. And of course, he'll vary it up a bit here and there within the constraints of what he's actually doing. Sometimes doing this, sometimes that...

Sadde might notice that there is more lube in this situation than there was a moment ago.

"Oh god what for I can't get sick," says Cam breathlessly. "Or have kids if you're about to do a magic trick and make that salient."

"Terribly good points! I'm not feeling very female at the moment and even if I did I'd need some several editing to even be capable of conceiving. But that being the case..." He gives his current object of affections a goodbye with his tongue and then makes his way back up so he's nibbling on Cam's neck again.

Eeeeeee.

And he pulls back from that, too, so that he can position Cam's legs up so his knees are over Sadde's shoulder, like so. He starts teasing Cam a little bit but not actually... doing anything more... yet.

Is he trying to get Cam to become impatient and take over? Because that might be what he is getting.

And he will get lovely moaning noises for his trouble. Moaning noises and motion and kisses.

Great things, all of those! His own noises aren't completely human, and include things such as growling and moaning and calling Cam's name as he continues doing that thing.

So, about the whole indestructibility thing, it has some uses. Daeva don't get very hungry... or very tired... or very refractory...

Really? Then they can in fact continue doing this more-or-less uninterruptedly for quite a long time, can't they?

Yeah. Eventually Cam might want to move to his actual bed, which he uses seldom but does actually have.

It's okay if they spend a while on the sofa first but if Sadde attempts to ravish Cam in a hallway or on a floor he will call a stop to that until they've moved to the bedroom.

Fffiiiine, they can move to the bedroom, then, and Sadde can wait those very long seconds feasting on the glory that is Cam's naked form with his eyes.

"I don't know that I've ever been ogled quite this much."

"...I can stop?"

"I didn't say that."

"Good. Because you're absurdly gorgeous and I'd really like to continue looking at you and doing various things to your body."

Cam flops on his bed. "Be my guest."

Cam does need a coffee break eventually, unless Sadde thinks distractedly yawning is hot.

Coffee breaks can happen, he supposes. And actually if Cam does want to take a nap, Sadde will not object to spooning him or serving as a pillow or whatever. He'd probably have to be the little spoon, though, due to wings.

Then coffee breaks will be the only breaks they'll be having!

Cam adulterates his coffee with enough cream and sugar not to need separate meal breaks, so yep!

Cam does not see it as urgent to bring up again in that time.

"I am pretty vanilla, honestly, left to my own devices, but that doesn't necessarily mean I can't play along."

"I'll definitely not do anything you don't want to do, of course," he's quick to reassure this angel from Heaven—er, demon from Hell. "Aaand from our interactions so far I would expect you to prefer tying me up as opposed to the other way around?"

"I mean, if you're really keen to tie me up I don't mind, per se, I just can't promise I won't find the entire thing inherently silly in a way that I might not necessarily find the reverse."

"And you'll raise your eyebrow at me if I do, won't you."

"Probably? Why?"

"Because it's unbearably sexy and would also send me into subspace faster than it'd take for you to actually finish the expression."

"Really."

"Yeeeeees, really," he says, melting a little bit.

"And now I assume you want me to tie you up."

"That'd be a nice start," she says.

"Oh, so I shouldn't just attach you to the bed and go watch the third act of Atriama you distracted me from a week ago?"

"Hmm, well, that wouldn't be quite in the spirit of the game. There are a few adaptations that could be made to that plan."

"Oh?"

"Well, see, if I were tied up and then you went ahead and let me watch you," and she reaches down to demonstrate what exactly she'd be watching him do, "that's one fun possibility. Edging is a personal favourite, and there are seeeeveral ways to do it."

That is a fun fact! Sadde's having fun. She's perfectly okay giving Cam suggestions about several things he can do with the power to appear anything he wants.

Cam's suggestible. And he can sure raise one eyebrow independently, lookit him go.

Yes, that's a great thing about him, she really approves of it. With this and some more added spice, Sadde can definitely occupy the rest of the month if Cam wants to.

Oh well, can't have everything. And given Cam's disposition so far, before they actually really know each other, Sadde's hopeful about the future of this relationship!

Cam is mildly apologetic when he puts pants on and goes to make himself some non-coffee food, but only mildly. "Two weeks is a lot of marathon," he remarks. "If I had more going on in life I would have had to cut you off sooner."

"Must you?" she pouts a bit when he puts trousers on.

"I normally wear pants and do not wear a shirt. Beware of making me self-conscious about this."

"I would prefer you wearing nothing, but shirtless is pretty good. I won't say two weeks of uninterrupted you is enough but it's definitely a good start," she says, grinning and going after him, completely naked herself. "So, this is the part where we actually get to know each other, right?"

"Definitely a thing that should eventually happen. I mean, I've had anonymous sex but only when I was literally incapable of speech. So. Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"

"I've told you my name. I'm a vampire, and I'm in your house because I'm magically in love with you and you decided that being a vampire in Hell was probably not going to be good for me, and also you wanted to think about what to do with a vampire who's magically in love with you. What were your conclusions?"

"...Honestly, my conclusions were that I didn't have enough information to decide if you're relationship material but your obvious intense lust was really distracting from figuring that out and I didn't have a principled objection to shuffling the old-fashioned order of operations. I'm not sure I have worn it down to a non-distracting level, though. You may be some kind of lust vampire."

"Hmm, well, I wouldn't be surprised if I was lustier than most other vampires, given that when I was a human I think I had a pretty high sex drive, relatively speaking. But two weeks of uninterrupted lewdness doesn't sound too excessive for when two vampires mate on each other, from what I've gathered."

"Well... I'm not a vampire. I'm a demon. So. I live in this house, occasionally I go to the plane of gold to do random social things like the music assembly you dropped in on, and frequently, I take summons, which have me out of Hell altogether for hours or days. What do you see yourself doing inserted into this lifestyle?"

"...doing things with you and whining a lot when you take summons, probably. How do summons work? Is there a way for me to come with you? What do you do when you're summoned?"

"Summoners draw circles soliciting a random demon because they don't know one who has the skills or disposition they're looking for, first to grab it gets it and vanishes from Hell and appears in the circle. No passengers. Variety of things. Put out forest fires, build space stations, make houses. I really want to terraform Mars but so far nobody will let me."

"Why won't they let you? Is there no other way out of Hell than being summoned?"

"People are wary with summoned demons and won't let me talk so all I get are deals they propose. And that is indeed it, although I guess your key might still work."

"Won't let you talk? How and why?" She rests one hand on her right thigh, and then she's holding the key, which she'd embedded inside her femur a few days back. "...and it just occurred to me that I left an open portal back where we met."

"Summonings can have bindings. They're an important safety precaution - you don't want to summon a random demon, find that you got a sociopath, and have them suck the Earth into a black hole - but the gag's there so we don't talk them out of their souls, even though we can't actually collect. Aaaand is that how it works? Open portals? We should probably go do something about that."

"I didn't get much chance to actually test it, I was in the middle of doing that when soulmate magic hit me in the forehead and it kinda slipped my mind, but yes, we should. Why do they think you'd talk them out of their souls? How can you talk someone out of their soul?"

Cam heads for his shuttle. "When daeva are summoned it's generally to agree to a task and a payment. Traditionally you can pay a demon with your soul. A task/binding pair only gets set if the summoner and daeva agree on it."

She follows him but says, "Um," and gestures at her nakedness.

Cam hands her clothes. "Change on the way. You are very nimble, I believe in your ability to put on clothes in a shuttle."

She giggles. "Anyway, you were saying about people traditionally paying demons with their souls?"

"It's never actually happened. We can't take them. But a certain sort of demon thinks it's fun to mess with mortals like that."

She starts putting clothes on. "And simultaneously give everyone else a bad name and make it impossible for you to terraform Mars." Pause. "Should I maybe have wings and a tail?"

"Yeah, possibly, but I'd rather discuss design when we're not worrying about a two-week-old portal in a well-trafficked park. Tail's more optional than the wings. If anybody asks you can't decide on a color."

"Okay, so either this is very promising and your key does not leave portals standing open or someone else has already closed it in a way that hopefully didn't include wandering through."

"When I opened it—I think it's easier for me to show you, let's go back to your shuttle."

"Okay. ...And back to my house, in case the portals are absolute in space, or something."

"Yeah, sure. I just wanted to show you how I made one disappear when I was testing, that only takes a few seconds."

"Sure." Back to his house.

So she uses the key, chooses a random spot to open a door, and unlocks. There's the door, shimmering. She locks it again, and it's gone.

"Okay. So maybe they wear off after an amount of time or something."

"Or maybe someone else found another key and locked it? That sounds improbable. We should test the wearing-off part, though."

"Yeah. Put one in the swimming pool room or something where we won't accidentally blunder into it."

She runs over to the swimming pool room and creates a door there.

Cam sticks a camera to the wall to watch it so they don't have to.

"...so I'm now stuck until I find a door back to my world, I guess."

"You can't make them to wherever you want?"

"I'm not sure. The key feels like stuff, depending on where it is, but it's a really vague feeling—I'm not sure if it's vaguer for non-vampires or just the same for everyone—and I haven't tested what this feeling means but my hunch is that it somehow correlates with what world the door will open to. Like I said, I didn't really test it much." She offers it to him.

Cam takes it and examines it.

It's fairly obvious that the key is magic the instant Cam takes it, and even moving it from Sadde's hand to a spot closer to his eyes is enough to trigger the "feeling," as impossible to explain as sight to one born blind. It's golden, small enough to fit in a child's hand, and, other than the ineffable feeling, completely ordinary.

"This thing is weird," he murmurs. He moves it around to various points in the air.

There are a few candidates, but the first pair he finds that are completely indistinguishable as far as he can tell are about four feet apart, the one on the left a couple of inches higher than the other one.

Cam marks each with a little red dot. "Can you check if these two feel alike to you?"

"Yeah." She takes the key and checks. "Mmhm. Identical as far as I can tell. Want me to try to open them?"

"How sure are you this key doesn't lead to - lava pits or Cthuloid horrors or anything?"

"I am completely one hundred percent not sure at all."

"Should have thought of that before you opened one in my pool. Let's go make sure that one's not Lovecrafting the place up."

Sadde zips over there with vampire speed. "No Lovecraftian horrors that I can see," she calls, then opens the door. "Huge fall, though."

"Okay. Well. As long as we're waiting for results on that, do you have design opinions on a set of wings or want to look at a catalog or what?"

She closes the door then zips back to where Cam is. "Will people be prejudiced against me if I go with feathers?"

"Eh, if they're black it will probably be pretty restrained but maybe."

"I'll take a look at a catalog, then. ...can we snuggle while I do it?"

"Okay. You probably want to de-vampire as much as you can, I don't know how these will attach to a sculptureperson."

"Alright. I think I could pull off making these on my own but it'd probably take some trial and error to get them fully functional. I'm also already pretty non-vampire due to not wanting to squish you, it won't be too hard..." Pause. "Everything but nerves and blood vessels is human, now."

"Your wings will want a blood supply, can you do that?"

"I can generate blood, yeah, but I'll turn them vampire soon enough, they'll run on venom then."

"Okay, they should be okay for a second or two. I'll make them without nerves in the joints so you can chop 'em off if you want a new kind later, like mine, unless you have objections?"

"If they'll be a part of me I can make the nerves disappear at will. Should I get a tail, too?"

"It's up to you. I like mine, but not everybody gets one, they're not as useful as being able to fly. You can pick one later if you want. Ready?"

"Yeah, sure."

Wings!

"Sadde - Sadde? - what's wrong -?" Cam asks, scrambling to the floor beside her and hovering his hands over her, not sure whether to touch her or not.

She's turned her body human enough that she actually starts crying, and she tries contorting her way towards Cam without actually uncurling. She's not very successful, so she just reaches out for him with her arms, trying to pull him into a hug or, or something. "Didn't—didn't—think," she sobs.

Cam scoops her up into his lap and holds her. "Didn't think of what? What's wrong, can I help, I don't know if normal painkillers would work on you, is that even the problem -"

She whimpers and moans and sobs a bit. "Pain- I don't—turning, the venom's—!" She scrunches her eyes shut and tries to snuggle up, tries to make herself small, make herself disappear in Cam's arms. "Vampire venom—turning is—three days, pain, burns—" He might get an idea of just how much it hurts from the fact that it's enough to turn someone with a whole vampire's worth of brain into a sobbing incoherent mess.

"Do you want me to take the wings off?" he asks desperately.

"I—yes," she pleads.

Cam interpolates the joints with water, still cradling her.

Sadde helps along with biokinesis, and the wings fall off, and she lets out a breath she'd been holding—being partially human is weird—and slowly calms down, enough to explain: "Turning is a very painful process. It lasts three days, the venom reforms our whole body. I—should've expected this to happen, once the venom got into contact with it." She says it all in a small monotone.

"But this doesn't happen when you just - squish or desquish yourself..." Hug hug hug.

Hug! Cling. "I guess I'm not turning really human? I don't know, I don't actually know what's going on on a biological level, my power's awareness of what's going on is less specific than that. Maybe it's because my blood vessels are already dealing with the venom, maybe I'm just mimicking a human body, I don't know."

Pet pet. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine now. I might want to try my hand at designing my own pair of wings, though. And if that fails, um, can I ask you to hug me throughout the process?"

"Of course. It's three days?"

"Turning the whole way, yeah. If it's just the wings, I think a few hours, from the way it started and their size. I can grow a tail myself, though, I've done that before."

"You don't have to have wings. It'll be a bold fashion statement."

"I'll try growing a pair anyway and see what I can do." She looks at the severed pair and hmms. "I wonder if I could turn the wings separately and then just—attach them to myself?"

"Maybe? I mean, they're probably dead now."

"Can you make new ones attached to, I don't know, a circulatory system or something that will keep them alive for long enough for the venom to turn them? They should have my DNA for me to be able to properly attach them to myself but—I should probably just try making my own before anything."

"I could attach them to a basement-dweller of you..."

"Attach them to a what now?"

"Oh, uh, demons can't make minds but we can make bodies. Result is kind of creepy, so if that's the sort of thing you have lying around you keep them in the basement if guests come over."

"Okay one, that sounds useful for this particular problem, but two, why can you not make minds?"

"No idea, just seems to be a hard magical limit, but I'm kind of glad we can't, can you imagine? Right now the equilibrium in Hell is that everyone is indestructible and has fantastic magical powers and can instantly replace anything of theirs you destroy. Imagine if anybody who felt like it could make an army of second-class citizens."

"Well, but, suppose you actually specify a brain in all its details, down to the cellular level, or maybe even molecular if that's necessary. Would that fail to have a mind?"

"There are no detectable flaws in the copy when we copy a human brain. We just get a basement dweller. It affects animals too, anything smarter than like a snail will be pretty clearly stupider than it's supposed to be. And fortunately at least in humans there's enough mind/body interaction that we also can't get female basement dwellers to carry to term and get Hell-dwelling humans that way, although we can get, like, cats, so there are cats."

"Hmm, I'd suggest something relating to souls but if even cats have basement-dweller problems... Do cats go to Limbo?"

"Not usually. When a person goes to Limbo, they get approximately their favorite thing, and that's sometimes a pet. Those have roughly normal intelligence for the species, it seems to these people like the pet has continuity with the live version if applicable, and they get indestructibility too - stuff in Limbo in general does in a kind of cool way, like, if your Limbo thing is a house you can give away everything in your fridge and find bacon there the next morning, run the water constantly with no real plumbing, etcetera."

"Hmm, can you make quantum computers? Can you copy quantum information?"

"Uh, our computer science didn't wind up going that direction to any significant degree..."

"When I'm from they're mostly speculative too, but there's people who think brains might be quantum computers and there's a theorem called the no-cloning theorem which says you can't create a device that can copy arbitrary quantum information."

"I suppose that could be it."

"I'd definitely want to tell a physicist about it."

"Once you have cannibalized a set of wings from a basement dweller of yourself you will be able to pass well enough to go visit demon physicists. I'd be surprised if the idea were completely novel to the world but I haven't studied that kinda thing very much so far."

"Fair. What have you studied?"

"I have my medical and engineering quals up to the highest levels available in organized demonic education, and I play the violin, and I have learned several languages the long way, and I can program, and I keep up with media, mostly human some demon smatterings of angel and fairy and Limboite."

"It's kinda weird that your universe's afterlife isn't actually an afterlife and just happens to sometimes collect dead humans and also has its own functioning society and such."

"I mean, Limbo only collects dead humans and it has a society too. You show up in Limbo and you have to learn the local weird pidgin language and learn how you're supposed to get water and, if available, food rations."

"Yes, that is weird as well. And it's even weirder that there are only humans, does that mean your entire universe is devoid of other sapient life?"

"Not necessarily. But if there are aliens, then they either don't go to limbo or the daeva realms, or they do it so unfathomably far away that we haven't run into 'em here nor there."

"Huh, yeah that's actually pretty reasonable, if all of those universes are infinite."

"They seem to be."

"Mmhm. Well anyway, how about that basement-dweller pair of wings?"

"Yeah, sure. I don't actually have a basement. Uh, do you actually still run on a genome?"

"A twenty-six chromosome genome, yes."

"Okay, if you want a genetic match - do you know your chromosomal sex?"

"XY, and yes a genetic match is ideal, vampire venom tends to burn other vampires, I assume that's got something to do with genetics and who knows how wings without my DNA would react, my body might just end up melting them."

"Okay, so I'll make a male basement dweller in case it's complicated in some way, anything else I should know?"

"I don't think so."

"Okay. Lacking a basement I will just stash it in the closet." Cam goes to his closet, makes a squishified vampiric winged male Sadde basement dweller curled up in it, and leaves it there.

"It has venom, right?"

"Yeah, unless it turns out that's an inherently magical property."

"...it might be. See if you can appear a vial of my venom? Glass, venom doesn't corrode glass."

Cam makes one. "This doesn't necessarily mean there's nothing irreducibly magical about it, just that its existence as a substance isn't magic," he observes.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, if I try to make a magic rock, and I try in an insufficiently conditional way, I might wind up with a rock, just not a magic one."

"Oh. Hmmm. Well, I guess it doesn't hurt to be sure. Can you make me a syringe?"

He hands her a glass syringe.