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It Was A Dark And Stormy Night
Permalink Mark Unread

And since, despite the world's admitted tendency towards situations best left in the more dramatic varieties of literature, it wasn't literally a stereotypical gothic novel, Kanimir didn't expect anything in particular to happen. If nothing else, there were far more storms that happened to happen at night than there were potentially literature-worthy shenanigans. So it's completely reasonable for him to be curled up in his grand library, enjoying a book on magical theory.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is a soft flare of light, and a petite girl in a red sundress appears a short distance away, stepping through a rectangular pane of glow that fades away as soon as she emerges.

She looks around in mounting confusion and alarm.

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Kanimir looks at her for several seconds. "Hello. I believe you might be lost," he says.

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She blinks at him and responds in a totally unfamiliar language.

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Of course. "Urashinvol," he enunciates. "Alright, do you understand me now?"

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"Yes..." she says cautiously.

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"How did you get here?"

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"...Through a Door," she says. "But... it's..." She trails off, shaking her head slowly.

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He murmurs several words under his breath, then purses his lips. "I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with the meaning of "door" in this context."

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"One of the Door's portals," she clarifies, somewhat unhelpfully.

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"That doesn't clarify the matter for me. I suspect I lack significant underlying context which you are used to taking for granted."

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"Where... am I?"

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"My home, in the state of Pennsylvania, in the country the United States of America, on the planet Earth, in the Milky Way galaxy, but I suspect that at least some of that shall be as opaque to you as your explanation of how you came here was to me."

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"...well, I'm still on a planet," she murmurs. "That's something."

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"Apparently. What are door portals?"

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"The Door was a person who could create portals that lead from one place to another. I went through an out-of-the-way one, and now I am here."

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"When did this person live? I feel quite certain that nothing like this has happened since I acquired this residence."

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"He died a few hundred years ago, I think."

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"Do you have an idea of how many hundred?"

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"Two or three?"

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"Probably he was dead before I came here. Do you know if this particular portal has been used since?"

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"No..."

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"So it seems possible, if potentially unlikely, that it merely sat here dormant for all this time."

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She frowns slightly, dissatisfied with this analysis but not sure how to voice her concerns.

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"Or, alternately, I might be misreading things due to my unfamiliarity with the underlying paradigm."

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"It's very, very strange that you haven't heard of the Door. Everyone's heard of the Door. I can't imagine how far away I must have gone to find someone who hasn't heard of the Door."

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"I thought we had established that you were from far enough away that basic cultural assumptions wouldn't be shared."

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"Basic cultural assumptions are one thing, but basic magic... what else is different here? Do things still fall if you drop them? Do people still eat and breathe and dream?"

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"They do these things, yes."

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"And there are still planets. Well, that's better than nothing."

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"Is this Door person the only known magic where you're from?"

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"No."

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"So it sounds to me as though that were a unique, innate ability, rather than a particular talent at translocation magic?"

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"Yes."

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"Innate abilities are far from unheard of, here, although unique ones are significantly rarer."

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"Well, everyone has a selfspace - at least on my planet - and some people, the magically talented, can do magic with theirs. Conjurors bring things from their selfspace into the real world; shapers change things in the real world the way you can change things in your selfspace; shifters change themselves in the real world the way you can change things in your selfspace. If you can make or change things in the real world so they're magical themselves, like the Door could, then you're a Legendary Talent. There's only one of those every fifty or a hundred years."

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"I have never heard of selfspace or any of the associated terms."

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"I was afraid of that," she sighs. "...How do you dream, with no selfspace?"

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"You hallucinate poorly-conceived and frequently disjointed scenarios that can frequently be traced back to things that happened in waking life."

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"...But then where do they go?"

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"They vanish when you awaken. Sometimes you can't even remember them."

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"That's unsettling."

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"We don't particularly have an alternative to hold against it and find it lacking."

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"I wouldn't have any idea how to even begin explaining what a selfspace is like. And I can't show you; I have no idea what happens if I try to make a sharespace with someone who has no selfspace of their own..."

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"Practical aspects of it can presumably be explained as they become relevant. For the moment, 'like dreams, but persistent' seems a sufficient representation."

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"I'm not sure what to do now," she admits. "The Door I used only goes one way. I have no idea how to get home."

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"That would appear to be a problem. Fortunately for you, you've landed in the home of the most skilled magic practitioner in the world."

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"Oh." She smiles tentatively.

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"Unfortunately, I don't currently have any spells that can breach dimensions, but I have several centuries of research and development experience. Can you move away from where the door was? I'd like to cast an analysis, in case there's any lingering trace, and a person within the boundary could confound the results."

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She moves away from where the door was, glancing back doubtfully at the lack of any visible trace whatsoever.

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He gets up and circles the spot where the door was, circumscribing the area more precisely with his hands and murmuring under his breath. When the circle is completed, he pulls out a quartz crystal, tilts his head, and runs a finger around one end. "There's something there," he reports. "It's hard to interpret, but that's not an unsurmountable obstacle."

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"I can't see anything there. What is it like?"

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"I expect you wouldn't understand the jargon if I tried to explain it. Do you want me to cast the analysis on you so you can perceive the sensory aspect, if not interpret it?"

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"...I'm not sure," she says. "Which... hmm."

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"Hm?"

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"I was going to ask a question and then I realized that you have no way of answering it even if you understood it, which you probably wouldn't."

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"Ah." Wryly: "The inherent limits of translation spells, it seems."

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"Yes."

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"If whatever question you had been about to ask would be incomprehensible to me, are you certain it would be relevant? Our magics seem to be different enough that it might not."

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"I think it would..."

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"In that case, perhaps it would be best to ask in any case. Even if I don't understand to begin with, it may be possible to explain."

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"Which..." She trails off again, frowning. "What is the analysis? What does it do? What is it like? How do you attach it to someone? Is it attached to you now?"

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"The analysis is a spell that examines magic and presents it in a form comprehensible to the human mind. It gives one a spatial awareness of the structure and type of magic, although what those mean is something that must be learned. It is a focused spell with a human or other sapient being as the target which confers on them the sensory perception of magic which the spell provides. I cast it with myself as the target. Separately, I could cast it with you as the target."

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"Does it detach when you stop using it? Or does it stay attached forever after you cast it on someone?"

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"It dissipates when you end it."

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"Hmm. Then okay, I'd like you to cast it on me please."

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He says several of the same words as before, and brushes his thumb across her forehead.

The effect is immediate.

The various magic she had already been able to perceive was slightly more detailed to this way of perceiving it, and other magic--old stuff, inactive stuff--became apparent as well.

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"Oh, that's very odd," she says. "I guess you already said you have to learn what everything means, but... that's very odd." And she closes her eyes and stands very still for a moment.

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Kanimir has had a long time to learn to be patient.

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"It isn't really attached at all," she says, opening her eyes again, "it's just sort of... hanging on."

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"In what manner is attachment different?"

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"It's not... part of you, I mean, it's just on you."

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"Ah. Yes. Is that abnormal, for your kind of magic?"

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"I've never seen magic be on things that way."

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"How else would they be?"

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"Attached, or just part of things without even being separate enough to attach."

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"So any magic that's done to someone ever just sticks to them?"

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"It's possible to detach things..."

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"Mm. Most spells that are applied to persons here either wear off after a set amount of time, or have a method for ending them as an integral part of the spell itself."

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"I wonder why."

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"Most spells that you could cast on someone aren't things that one would prefer to be stuck with forever when the alternative is readily available."

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"Hmmm..."

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"Hm?"

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"...I don't know. It's probably not important."

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"Mm." He continues to study the quartz. "Is this 'selfspace' inherently magical, so far as you know, or merely a substrate for magic?"

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"How would I tell the difference?"

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"I don't know," he says absently. "It might have been apparent for some reason that I would have been aware of. Can you--do something with it, go into it, while I circumscribe the area? If it were possible to examine more of your world's magic than just this," he gestures to the area where the portal was with the quartz, "that could be immensely helpful."

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"Yes."

She closes her eyes again.

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Kanimir does the same circling-gesturing-muttering thing, and when she opens her eyes again can be found examining another chunk of quartz, this one a smoky variety in contrast to the original clear one.

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"What does the rock do?"

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"Oh, here--" he hands them to her.

The clear chunk contains a pattern identical to the fading residue from the portal, and the smoky chunk contains a completely unfamiliar pattern.

"The circumscription imprints the stone with a replica of the magic inside the circle, so that it can be examined at one's leisure, unlike the original which will fade over time."

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"Oh. That's clever."

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"Thank you."

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She smiles.

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"...So, besides the Door, what Legendaries have there been?"

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"The Architect made floating castles and things like that; she's the second most famous. The Healer was the most recent one, about seventy years ago."

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"So there have only been three? How long has this been going on?"

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"No, there have been more than that, I just don't remember them all. The Door and the Architect are the ones everyone knows about. They've been happening for as long as there have been people."

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"That makes significantly more sense."

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"Yes."

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"In that case, why would not having heard of the Door necessarily mean that magic was completely different? It does appear to be, but we could have had the same magic and different individuals."

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"I've just never been anywhere there weren't Doors before."

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"Ah. Well, even if I do manage to solve this puzzle, which I suspect I shall, it won't be immediately. Would you like one of the guest rooms made up?"

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"Yes, please."

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So he leads her down several hallways to a hall filled with doors with numbers on them. "Fifteen, three and seventeen are occupied for the moment, but pick whichever of the others you want and I'll set it up."

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She goes a little ways down the hall and then says, "I think I like number ten best."

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So he leans in and utters a short, glottal set of syllables. A small amount of dust rises from various surfaces and disperses, various linens rearrange themselves, and a handful of other changes take place.

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"How does your magic work? It's so... odd."

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"What you see is not the rawest form of magic, but rather a condensation of intricate rituals which correspond directly to functional arcane aspects."

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"It's nothing like any kind of magic I've ever heard of before. I'm almost surprised they use the same word. For that matter, there's never been a Translator talent, and I have no idea how one would work if there was..."

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"Perhaps it is merely that they use similar energies. After all, your door left residue that my analysis recognized as magic."

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"I'm not sure if that makes any sense either. They're so different."

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"How much do you actually know about the theory of your magic?"

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"I'm not sure what you mean..."

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"Why it does what it does."

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"I'm not sure anyone knows why."

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"Perhaps I should have said, how it does what it does," he amends.

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"I'm not a scholar of selfspace," she says, shaking her head. "I only know what most everybody does."

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"Well, suffice to say that things which appear extremely dissimilar on the surface may share underlying principles."

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"Like what?"

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"Fungi are taxonomically closer to animals than to plants."

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"I've never looked that closely at a mushroom."

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"Most of the relevant characteristics are too small for the human eye to see."

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"Then I definitely haven't looked that closely at a mushroom."

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"It is possible, with certain machines."

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"Hmm."

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"Hm?"

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"...My selfspace doesn't work right," she says. "It shows me things about the world instead of being full of things I put in it. That's why I have opinions about what your magic looks like even from before you put the spell on me. And I'm wondering if I'd know things about mushrooms if I'd ever paid attention."

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"Ah. Would you like some mushrooms?"

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"Maybe not right now."

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"Yes. What would you prefer to do while not interacting with me in the short-term future? I'll be spending a considerable quantity of time doing theoretical research and experimentation that does not lend itself well to simultaneous human interaction."

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"You have a lot of books. Can I read them?"

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"...Yes. Although I'll have to ask you to stay out of several sections of the library, especially to start with; I have a great deal of personal and/or dangerous material."

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She nods. "Okay."

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"But first--I have spare garments, assorted nonperishable foods, and miscellaneous other supplies that you can use since you arrived here with nothing but the clothes on your back."

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"Thank you," she says. "That's very nice of you."

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"I don't generally consider myself to be exceptionally nice, but it would be both exceedingly heartless and exceedingly wasteful not to help someone who had fallen into one's sphere of influence through no fault of their own with neither material possessions nor the basic cultural knowledge that a local homeless person would possess who presents an interesting magical problem when I have so many resources to do it with."

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"I guess."

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He eyes doors fifteen, three and seventeen. "For the record, because it could become extremely awkward for you to discover this by accident later, not that I expect you to know what this means, but--I'm a vampire."

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"What's that?"

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"It means I don't age--I'm over seven hundred years old, at this point--inclined to be nocturnal in the same way that humans are inclined to be diurnal, burn more easily than even the fairest-skinned human in the sun, have heightened senses, cannot consume solids and must consume human blood. That's why I have ready preparations for guests, and why three other rooms are occupied right now. I find humans who require something--a place to stay for a while, a debt paid off, to evade a given person, or something else--and do not object to, in exchange, staying in my home for a prearranged period of time having blood safely and hygienically removed at prearranged intervals. I hasten to clarify, in case clarification is needed, that I do not expect you to act as such a donor as a result of staying here. Your purpose for being here is entirely different."

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"...That explains some things about your reflection."

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"My what?"

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"In my selfspace. How I see magic and things. You look - well, I wasn't sure, all the magic here is so strange, but it makes more sense now."

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"Oh. That makes much more sense. A common misconception about vampires is that we don't reflect in mirrors or mirrorlike surfaces," he explains.

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"I haven't heard of vampires before, so I wouldn't know."

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"No, I wouldn't expect you to. But that was the first thing that came to mind when you mentioned there being something odd about my reflection as a result of being a vampire."

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She nods.

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"So how did I look? I promise not to be offended."

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"What do you mean? Your reflection? It mostly looks just like you, but... with things."

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"I'm curious about what sorts of things. If you'd rather not answer, for whatever reason, of course you needn't."

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"I could just show you if you had a selfspace... I'm not sure how to describe it otherwise."

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"So it's not, say, physical objects like fangs or blood?"

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"Well - sort of. It's... like your reflection is glowing, except not quite, and there are parts of it that look like they have magic tucked away in them, and now that I know some of what the magic does I can tell where it keeps those parts." She pauses consideringly, then adds, "It does have fangs, now that I look, but they're not out right now."

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"Ah. Yes. ...Another magical feature of vampires is that we can be...influenced by the blood we drink. The effect is entirely additive; drinking the blood of a genius may temporarily boost one's cognition, but drinking the blood of a dullard will not impair it. However, animals are sufficiently different that any additive effect has...unpredictable results, which is why the blood of humans--and relevantly humanlike creatures--is necessary."

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"...What sorts of things does drinking the blood of animals do?"

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"In mild cases--extraneous instincts. In more dramatic cases--overwhelming compulsion to follow those instincts, and occasionally physical transformations."

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"That sounds really inconvenient."

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"Hence why we try to avoid it, yes."

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Nod.

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And here is the "supplies for visiting humans" room.

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It contains so many supplies! She stands still and looks at them.

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"Take whatever you want, within reason. If there's anything you don't know what it is, feel free to ask."

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She nods absently, gazing at the things. There are many things. (It's easier to inspect their reflections than the things themselves.)

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Well, if she's going to be doing that, Kanimir studies the quartz crystals some more.

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Eventually she goes around and collects some objects which she bundles up carefully to take back to her room.

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"If you are hungry or wish to freshen up now, I'll leave you to that. Otherwise, I should probably show you which sections of the library are off-limits sooner rather than later."

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"I can look at the library now," she says.

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Alright. Back to the library!

The sections she's not permitted to access are mostly contiguous, but there's a bookshelf she's allowed in the middle of them. She isn't forbidden from entering the restricted areas, just reading from them.

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She looks around and takes careful note of which shelves are and are not allowed, then nods. "Okay, I'll remember."

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It shouldn't be hard--there's active magic on each not-allowed shelf.

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She gets distracted trying to figure out what the magic does.

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The shelves themselves--do not want to allow the books on them to be removed, except by their owner and specified other person(s). The books, likewise and separately, do not wish to allow their contents to be accessed by any means except by their owner and specified other person(s).

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...That's interesting. Once she realizes what that part of the magic on the shelves is for, she picks a reflection-book off a reflection-shelf just to see what it does, then peers at the cover to figure out that part too. But she did agree not to read any of these, so she puts the reflection back without trying to open it.

Meanwhile, in the real world, she's just sort of standing there.

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This is an entirely reasonable response to being surrounded by a large number of books.

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And once the reflection-book is back on its reflection-shelf, she blinks and looks at her host and smiles.

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Tentative smile. Most of seven hundred years of general misanthropy has not done a great deal of good for Kanimir's social skills but he thinks you're probably supposed to smile back when someone smiles at you. Anyway. He pulls out a polished cabochon of some kind of pale blue stone and hands it to her. "If you need me for anything else, tap it four times like this," he raps his hand against the side of a shelf in a two-iamb rap-rap, rap-rap pattern, "and speak into it after approximately ten seconds. If for some reason there's an emergency for which this is too much of a delay, tap it three times in close succession and speak into it immediately."

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"Okay," she says, accepting the stone. "Your magic must be really useful if it lets just anybody make things like this."

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"It doesn't. It's highly skill-intensive. I'm the most powerful magician in the world because I'm the only one who's spent the equivalent of several human lifetimes studying it. A trinket like this is well within the reach of a normal magician, but even they would have to spend years or even decades of study to do so."

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"That's still more than one person per century making useful magic things." She reviews this statement, then amends it to, "Well, probably."

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"Many of us create magic items; few of us create large-scale magic items."

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"Then I guess I don't know whether it's more convenient for most people than the way things work on my planet."

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"...Well, most people don't know that magic exists. I don't know how that started, but no one's wanted to be the first one to change it."

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"...How do they manage not to notice?"

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"Well, no one has selfspaces..."

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"...I guess that would be a way not to notice. And if most of your magic doesn't look like much unless it's doing things..."

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"Unless you have an analysis spell active, the only visible part of magic is what it's doing," he confirms.

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"Then I guess it makes sense that some people might not notice."

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"And--oh," he says, making a brief face of distaste. "My name is Kanimir. I should have introduced myself properly sooner."

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"My name is Riya," she says.

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"I'm glad to be actually introduced to you. Now, I think I'm going to compare the patterns of your world's magic with some other impressions I've taken over the years."

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"Okay. I'll sit and read books," says Riya.

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"Alright." And Kanimir goes and studies a large number of diversely-colored chunks of quartz.

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Riya perches in a chair and reads the reflections of books.

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There are lots of those. Books on the foundations of magic, books on math, science and history, books on more advanced magic, a handful of novels, books on really advanced magic...

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Well, that's sure a theme.

She picks one of the books on the foundations of magic, first.

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Magic, in this universe, exists in the form of innate powers held by several different categories of being, and in the form of complex rituals which can be condensed down into manageable actions and phrases. Rituals have many distinct components that can show up in different rituals and correspond to fundamental aspects of magic.

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How interesting! Why are the rituals the way that they are?

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Some components are obvious; others less so. If she wants to be able to cast a spell where she knows why every bit of it works the way it does, she can do that; if she wants to know how every bit of all her spells work, she can't.

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She has no particular intention of casting any spells but quite likes the idea of figuring out exactly how and why some particular spell is put together. Investigate investigate.

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That's something she can occupy herself with for a good while. Magic theory is complicated.

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Then she can happily spend a long time reading (and get hungry and retreat to her room to eat a snack and then go back to reading).

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After an...amount of time...Kanimir finds her again. (It's probably been at least a few days, maybe a week.) "I think I might have something--an avenue of research, not a potential spell," he clarifies. "But I think it would help to see you doing your kind of magic again, under slightly different circumstances." He holds out a book. It's magicked to tell him when it's been read, and how much and what specifically. "Can you read this only in your selfspace?"

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Riya nods. "Yes, I can do that."

Her inner self takes the reflection of the book from Kanimir's reflected hand and opens it.

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After he's recorded what he wants to record, he examines the crystals closely, frowning. "The fact that you were reading the book didn't register at all," he reports.

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"Is that bad?" she wonders.

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"It's information."

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"Okay."

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"Your kind of magic works in a fundamentally different way from mine, so far as I can tell, but after extended poking and prodding I've been able to compare its transport function to some magic with similar results from here. I...think that if I could get an appropriate spell drawn up, I could use some of the information entangled with the door's residue to target where you came from."

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"That sounds like good news..."

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"And, in case we needed it--we have confirmation that you are from very, very far away. If I'm making any sense of what I'm detangling, you're from farther away than Fairyland, along the same axis."

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"Well, I don't know where Fairyland is. Is it far?"

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"Fairyland is a separate dimension."

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"Oh."

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"Luckily I already have quartz impressions of fey gates."

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"And that will help?"

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"It has a better chance of helping than anything else that readily comes to mind."

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Nod nod.

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"How have you been keeping thus far?"

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"I really like your library."

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"I've had a very long time to compile and curate it."

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"It's a good library."

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"Thank you."

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Smile.

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"Perhaps it would be useful to show you some relevantly magical things, and see what your method of detection gets out of them."

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Nod, nod. "Yes, that sounds like a good idea."

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Kanimir goes and pulls what looks like some kind of almanac down from one of the shelves she's allowed to read from. "Any given fey gate isn't always open, but almost all of them have trackable conditions for when they are and aren't," he explains, flipping through it.

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"What made them, do you know?" she wonders.

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"Fey mages, who work with a completely different system of magic. I know...very little about how it works, which is still more than nearly any other non-fairy."

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She looks slightly intrigued.

"A completely different system of magic? What do you know about it?"

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"While the kind of magic I practice involves the manipulation of external arcane energies, fairy mages work with power that their bodies naturally produce. Also--" and he explains a handful of technical details that he's had the opportunity to observe over the years.

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"That's really interesting."

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"I don't find it as interesting as magic which I am capable of practicing, but if I didn't think it interesting at all I would not have risked significant ire in order to learn it."

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"How do they end up naturally producing magic...? I guess if you knew you would probably have said already."

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He shrugs. "It's an innate ability of their species."

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"I wonder if it's the sort of thing I could find out."

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"Perhaps. There are a few gates which human visitors can pass through without serious risk so long as they know what they're doing."

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"I'd be really interested to find out what their reflections look like."

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"It's possible that the reflections of different kinds of fae would be very different, and I don't think I have a safe way to see to it that you meet many different kinds."

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"I'd be interested to find out what even one of their reflections looks like. What kinds are there?"

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"It would be hard to say precisely, since the lines between varieties aren't very clearly drawn. The most that I can say for sure are that the nobility are their own kind if any are, and that some have wings and others don't. But there is a startling diversity of physical characteristics within the population."

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"Hmm..."

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"Hm?"

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"Oh. I was just wondering if maybe - it probably isn't right, but maybe a lot of them were shifters once. Sometimes if shifters change themselves in odd ways their children keep the changes."

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"Ah. It does seem unlikely, under the circumstances."

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"Yes..."

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"It is possible that they may have similar powers under their own magic, however."

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Thoughtful nod.

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"How long do you anticipate wanting to stay?" he asks, flipping through the book.

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"I'm not sure... what do you mean?"

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"We could make a short trip of a few hours, or a trip of a few days in which it would hopefully be possible for you to meet more fairies."

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"I guess I would like a few days better, then."

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"Alright. I don't believe there are any gates open for that long, but I can teleport us, and there should be gates open that long from each other."

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"Okay."

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He's going to be poring over this almanac thing for the next little while, if she had any questions or wants to go back to her reading.

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She goes back to her reading. She's very fond of this library.

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He's proud of it.

Eventually, he says, "There's a good window in a bit more than a week."

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"Okay."

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That settled, he pulls out a different book and sits down in one of the squashy, comfortable chairs to read.

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Books are so good.

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They definitely are! Unlike people, they don't require complicated social interaction or attempt to murder your loved ones.

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They... do have those features, yes.

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Yeah, there's a reason he lives by himself in the middle of nowhere. And why he has to be careful where in Fairyland he shows his face.

But there are plenty of places in Fairyland where he can show his face, and it is to a gate to one of these that he brings Riya a bit more than a week later.

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The gate is really interesting.

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"You might want to stare at that from the other side, so that we'll be where we want to be when it closes," Kanimir comments, stepping through.

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Riya steps through also.

...Fairyland is really interesting.

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Isn't it just? Nearly everything in view is magical, in one way or another.

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She might just. Stand here. And look at all the things.

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That's fine. Kanimir brought books, and they're not in a hurry.

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There are so many things! What do they all do?

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Well, the plants: grow in ways more convenient for...someone...(the magic in the plants is very decidedly connected to a person not present) but in a way determined to maintain a "wild grasslands and forest" aesthetic. The land is likewise connected to a (probably the same) person, but in an almost opposite manner; it strengthens and supports them. Those ungulates over there are unnaturally long-lived and have healing magic, mostly but not entirely concentrated in their horns.

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The ungulates are pretty and their magic is interesting. She pokes at its reflection in her selfspace.

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These are basically horses! They had magic done to them a long, long time ago, many generations ago in fact, and now they are extremely magic themselves. The healing and the longevity are separate things, although if she tries to copy the former she may be hampered by the lack of a horn to put it in.

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Not if she doesn't copy it exactly...

She fiddles with a unicorn's reflection, makes a mess of it, starts over with a different unicorn, isolates something she's willing to take, realizes she could do even better than that, waits for a third unicorn to wander into her range, and finally pulls together what she wants: combining the touch-healing ability with the lingering remnants of the lifespan-lengthening effect to get the property of healing-and-extending-lifespan at a touch. It doesn't come through nearly as powerfully as the original, though. The first unicorn wanders back into range, refreshing its reflection, and she tries again to see if she can do it better.

By this point she has spent quite an inordinate amount of time gazing distantly at unicorns.

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Well, that sort of thing is literally what they're there for.

It's not long before the unicorns' caretaker wanders into range.

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Oh, a person! That's distracting. She is distracted. She examines the person.

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He has something that's a lot like the unicorns' lifespan magic, except instead of giving him "some lifespan" it gives him all of the lifespan. This Is Not a person who's going to die of old age. He also has a property that makes food that he meaningfully gives to someone tastier and a property that allows him to alter the colors of things and something that's like the implied other end of the magic on the plants but weaker.

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Riya abandons her work on the unicorn and starts trying to isolate this person's lifespan property instead. It goes much quicker; she doesn't need to fuss with it nearly as much.

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Yes, it's much less vestigial and much more active. It's weakly attached to making peoples' ears pointy, but it can be separated from that.

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Taking parts of things is easier than taking whole things. There, now she has it. Without the pointy ears part.

This world has so many more magic things than hers, with so much more useful properties.

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Yes, it's convenient like that.

A bird flies into range that's very, very resistant to fire. And can make it as a self-defense tactic.

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...She stares at the bird. Someone made that bird?

"Why did someone make that bird?" she asks Kanimir.

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"Hm? Which bird?"

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She points. "That bird. The one that fire."

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"I believe that bird is called a Lesser Phoenix. I wasn't aware they were artificial."

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"The magic is... I don't know. Maybe magic just grows like that sometimes. But it looks made to me. And I don't know why anyone would make that bird."

On the other hand, fire resistance sounds useful... She pulls apart the reflection to see how much of that property she can take. It comes away much more nicely than the unicorns. Unicorns are tricky.

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That they are.

"It's possible someone created them just to prove that they could, or because they thought birds that were on fire sounded pretty."

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"I guess..."

She goes back to trying to figure out unicorns.

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It's significantly less obvious than the other things, but there is also a bit of magic ensuring that the unicorns are extra-pretty--making sure their coats luster well, is one of the largest parts.

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Oh, what a cute little bit of magic. And it's small enough and tidy enough that once she finds it she can just... scoop!

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"...Did your hair just get shinier?"

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"Yes."

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"Is that...?" he looks between her and the unicorns.

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"They're pretty."

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"Did you copy them?"

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"Yes."

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"Is that a general ability?"

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"I guess so... I don't know how to talk about it."

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"That seems to be a common thread in our discourse on magic," Kanimir comments dryly. "Would you mind if I circumscribed an imprintation circle so that I can get a record of it, next time?"

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"Okay," she says. "You can watch me try to figure out unicorns some more if you want. They're tricky."

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He nods, circumscribes some area, and then begins peering intently at chunks of crystal.

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Using her selfspace still looks pretty much like using her selfspace. Same old, same old.

But she also has several new additions. Like for example her entire body being sort of a cheap knockoff unicorn's horn. That's new. As is the infinite lifespan she copied from the unicorn tender. And the fire resistance she got from the bird.

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"...You just immortalized yourself," he says slowly. "I very much wish I had been able to observe that."

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"I could try detaching it and putting it back, but I've never done that before. Maybe I'll try it with the shiny hair..."

She tries it with the shiny hair. The shiny hair escapes. She sighs.

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He purses his lips and nods at the crystals. "Can you copy it straight from the unicorns again?"

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"Yes."

Shiny hair, shiny hair, where are you keeping your shiny hair...? It's good that there are so many unicorns. There, now she's got it.

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Kanimir captures this event with interest!

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From an external perspective, it's very sudden: she's accessing her inscrutable inner world as inscrutably as ever, and then between one moment and the next, she gains more magic.

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Even if he can't examine the method, the abrupt difference between lack-of-thing and thing is very, very good for isolating the properties of thing from its surroundings.

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That's convenient.

She goes back to examining unicorns, which just looks like inscrutably accessing her selfspace some more.

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Kanimir's patient, and at the moment it seems more convenient to keep scrutinizing her for a while than to ask her to warn him when she was about to do anything interesting.

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Unicorns, unicorns...

"I wonder if I could put the unicorn touching-healing thing together with the immortal thing," she muses. "But I can't copy that person's immortal thing again, I already took it out of their reflection and they haven't gone away and come back."

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"Well, we were already planning to meet other fae."

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"Will there be unicorns where the other fae are?"

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"Possibly not. Well, I could teleport us away and back."

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"That might work..."

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He holds out his hand.

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Okay: hand.

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Teleport! Teleport!

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"Teleporting is very odd," she observes. "But it did work."

She sits down on the ground so she won't have to think about standing while she pokes the unicorn. Combining pieces of different things is much harder than combining different pieces of one thing. But she thinks she can probably do it. Maybe.

After ten minutes of hard work totally indecipherable to external observers, she says, "I messed up the reflection."

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"How so?"

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"I was trying to put the reflection of how the unicorn horn does things when it touches things together with the reflection of how the person is going to live forever, but I didn't put them together right and now I have a mess instead of magic that works."

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"Do you want me to teleport us again?"

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"Yes, that would be good."

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Teleport! Teleport!

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Sit.

Magic magic magic.

 

Her unicorn-like healing power disappears. A few seconds later, she gains a similarly structured power to bestow infinite lifespan at a touch.

"It worked but now I need to make the other part separately," she says.

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Kanimir has been industriously recording this!

"Do you need me to teleport you again to do that?"

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"No, there are enough unicorns."

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"Alright then."

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Sit. Magic magic magic.

 

Now she has a touch-healing power that fits in neatly alongside her touch-life-extension power, and is much tidier than the first version.

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And Kanimir has many crystals full of magical imprints. "Is there some other attribute in particular you might like to find?"

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"I don't know. What things are there?"

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"Unicorns are fairly universal. Different fairies have different kinds of magic. There are Greater Phoenixes, of no taxonomical connection to Lesser Phoenixes, that may or may not have the ability to regenerate instead of dying. There are birds that can sing any melody as produced by any instrument. There are many more things than just that, but it would take a very long time to simply recite every item of potential interest without some knowledge of your preferences to guide me."

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"I want to see lots of things," she says. "Greater Phoenixes sound like they might be useful..."

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"Hmm. Alright. I think I have a place in mind. Do you want to go now?"

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Nod nod.

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Teleport!

This place is a forest. A very well-populated forest. Describing all of the things there would take a good long while.

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!

Things!

But what if she wants to look at all the things?

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Well, then she can spend a good long while doing it.

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Then that is what she will do.

What are the things in this forest? Which ones have new and interesting properties?

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Almost all of them have new properties! Which ones are interesting is up to her. This species of bird has feathers that change color in response to temperature, and this flower has nectar that will do positive things to your larynx if you consume it, and that tree has sap that will make a syrup that tastes like anything you want if you put a tiny pinch of the anything in the sap while you're boiling it, and that small fluffy thing (it is so fluffy) has fluff that will keep you very warm if you're cold and pleasantly cool if it's too hot.

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Aww, fluff! She does not want the fluff, but she respects the fluff. It is good fluff.

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If she likes fluff, that fluffy thing over there is magic to be extremely soft. Also those flowers over there have supernaturally vivid colors, and those butterflies over there have translucent, jewel-like wings, and those moths asleep over there have wings that glow (not all the time, that would be evolutionary suicide, but as an action just the same as flapping them) and those songbirds can repeat any sound they hear, and those songbirds will repeat melodies they hear as birdsong, and those birds over there can change their size.

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"There are a lot of magic things here," she says, examining the fluff and the butterflies and the moths and the birds. "Glowing moths! That looks fun."

She attempts to extract the glowableness of the moth wings and attach it to her hair. It takes four tries, because moths are tiny and it's hard to work at that scale, but eventually she manages it. Glow. Un-glow. Glow. Un-glow.

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"Fairyland is extremely magical."

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"I like that about it."

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"It's its best feature."

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"Yes."

Maybe she can combine the moths' optional glowing with something else... the moths are so tiny, though. If she had an entire herd of unicorns here and an entire whatever-you-call-it of moths, and several immortal people, she might be able to put together an optional version of her touch-healing and touch-life-extension. But she does not have a herd of unicorns and several immortal people. Well, what else is there around here that might be neat to have an optional version of? Are there any more creatures with optional properties that are bigger and easier to work with than moths?

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Those snakes over there are optionally invisible! ...They're also quite venomous. Who thought that was a good combination?

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"Why are there invisible venomous snakes," says Riya.

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"...There are what."

Upon closer inspection the snakes are strongly disinclined to bite humanoids...unless someone spells them to bite a specific person. Which they are remarkably susceptible to.

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"There are invisible venomous snakes. Over there. They don't want to bite people unless someone magics them to bite a specific person but they're really easy to magic to bite a specific person. These are wrong snakes," she asserts.

...optional invisibility is kind of cool, though. And much easier to take than the moths' optional glow. She messes up the reflection of the first snake she tries, but manages to copy everything she wants from the second.

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"That sounds very much like something someone invented as an assassination tool which then escaped."

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"I don't like the snakes."

But she takes their optional invisibility anyway. Now she too can be optionally invisible.

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Kanimir shrugs. "They can't help how they're made. At least if they're out here they're presumably not being used to kill someone."

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"I don't like that someone made the snakes," she clarifies.

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"Yes, that's entirely reasonable."

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"But they have useful magic, anyway."

Hmm, what else can she combine with this optionalness...?

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Pretty much anything! The optionalness is very agreeable about being combined with things.

For example, that rodent's metabolism--burns fat and glycogen almost as efficiently and accessibly as glucose. Or that perfectly inoffensive snake's ability to appear to be made solidly of one or more translucent colors. Or that bird's weight reduction (wow that's a large bird). Or that flying reptile's ability to breathe fire. Or that fish's ability to breathe air. Or that lizard's ability to breathe water. Or that bush's ability to grow berries that look like gemstones. Or that fern's tendency to curl harmlessly but startlingly around the ankles of passersby.

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Well, then...

She does not want to be a grabby plant, but she kind of likes the idea of breathing water. She will take one breathing water and one weight reduction (perhaps it will be useful later if she acquires the ability to fly), and she will optionalize them both, and then she will be out of available Optional Snakes.

"There are a lot of magic things here. It is good."

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"I can't get nearly as much use out of them, but I'm glad you can."

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"They're really interesting."

Things! More things! So many things!

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The grass: is incredibly green! Various flowers also have incredibly vivid shades magically written into them. One species of tree is very, very hard to break. That tree has leaves that chime like glass when rustled by the wind (it is not currently windy). That round foxish raccoonish thing can project an illusion of a much larger version of itself as a self-defense measure, has a tendency to imprint on small children and be loyal pets, and incredibly sleek, soft fur. Sleeker and softer than a unicorns, though not as shiny. That catlike thing over there has biologically-improbably-large retractable claws.

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...Riya thinks she will copy some of that extreme sleekness and softness for herself. Yoink.

She kind of likes the idea of being magically durable, but she can't quite figure out how to make it fit. Ponder fiddle ponder.

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Well, the kind of durable that it is would probably go best on her bones.

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Yes... hmm. She fiddles with it a little bit more. Now she has durable bones. If she wants the rest of her to be durable she will need a different source item.

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Durable might or might not be the best word, but that frog over there has enough elasticity and firmness in their soft tissues that things like hard impacts are less likely to do damage.

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Hmm... she considers this option for a while, poking at the reflection of the frog. Are there going to be side effects if she just takes it? She should figure that out.

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Well, if someone pokes her or squeezes her arm or something it might make her feel weird. ...Might feel a little weird just from the inside.

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Yes. She might not like that. Perhaps she will not copy the frog.

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Oh hey what's that large extremely magic bird that just entered her range?

Well, if it suffers lethal damage it'll go up in flames and regenerate is what it is.

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"Oh! A phoenix!"

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"Where?"

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She points in its direction, though it is not currently visible. "That way. I like it. I want to copy its magic."

Now, can she copy its magic with only one phoenix to go on...? One way to find out.

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It is possible she will screw up. If she does, she can just ask to be teleported away and back.

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That turns out to happen.

"I messed up the reflection again. Can we go away and come back so I can try again?"

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"Sure." Port! Port!

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She tries again.

 

This time it works. Hooray!

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"Can you copy magical features onto anyone other than yourself?"

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"I don't think so. I wouldn't know how to try," she says. "When I change a reflection it doesn't change the reflected thing."

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"But it's different if you change your reflection?"

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"Yes..."

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"Hm. I wouldn't know where to go from there either."

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"It would be strange if I was a shifter and a shaper... but..." She trails off contemplatively. "I guess I am probably a Legendary Talent. This is the sort of thing Legendary Talents do. But I am only a shifter one so far."

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"Ah. That hadn't been clear."

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"I wasn't really thinking about it. I don't feel very legendary."

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"I suppose that makes sense."

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Nod.

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"Although becoming immortal might tend to remind you of it."

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"Hm?"

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"You said you copied a fairy's lifespan."

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"Yes..."

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"Fairies can still be killed by malice or accident, but are often referred to as immortal because of their indefinite lifespans."

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"I have the phoenix thing too now," she says. "If I had a lot of phoenixes and a lot of fairies and a lot of unicorns in front of me... and maybe some of those moths or those snakes... then I could put together a way to make lots of people really immortal just by touching them."

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"Hmm. For what particular reasons would it have to be a large number of each?"

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"Sometimes if I mess up the reflection I can use a bit of another reflection of the same kind of thing and not have to go away and start over. If I only had one of each I would have to go away and start over a lot."

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"Ah. This sounds potentially doable, but also like a significant project."

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"Maybe yes."

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"...Can you do anything with magic recorded inside quartz crystals?"

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"I don't think so... the quartz crystals have the magic of remembering what some other magic looked like. It's not the same as having the magic itself."

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"Oh, well. It was an idea."

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"I don't know how to do a thing that catches reflections the way quartz crystals catch what magic looks like. There might not be a thing like that."

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"I suppose it's not possible to give yourself the ability using the reflections of the crystals."

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"I wouldn't know how."

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"I may come up with similar suggestions in the future since I'm imperfectly comprehensive of how your magic works."

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"Okay."

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"Is the method you use for manipulating reflections similar to holding onto them? If for some reason you were teleported away while working with a reflection, could you potentially keep ahold of it or would you automatically lose it?"

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"It's a lot like holding them... I'm not sure, but I think I might keep the part I was holding right then. Not the rest though."

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Kanimir nods and takes a small notebook out and notes this down. "Unicorn herds are common, and I imagine those snakes are less so but most likely they wouldn't be difficult to find or contain once you know about them and bring magic to bear on the problem, and I seriously doubt anyone would object to their sudden absence, and there are fairy cities--but trying to get large numbers of phoenixes in one place sounds...difficult."

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"I might only need a few phoenixes, if I had lots of everything else..."

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"That makes it easier, but still not totally trivial."

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"Yes."

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He scribbles some more things down on his notepad.

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Riya examines some more things. (There are so many things.)

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There are! Some plants with really large sugar-sink roots that are charmed to be exceedingly nutritious and some berries that have a gamut of flavors from sugary-sweet to lemon-sour depending on the temperature, and a water bird that has a really large liver for some reason, and a kind of moss that leeches harmful substances from the air, and a kind of tree that, if it grows large enough (which it will not do without the application of a little extra magic of the type that one fairy and whoever was connected to the grass had) will form an internal hollow accessible only by the person who fed it the magic.

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What an interesting tree. It would be neat if she could make these sorts of things. Maybe if she goes near the right sort of fairy.

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Well, that one fairy back with the unicorn herd was that sort of fairy...

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Well, then maybe she will see one again. It seems likely. But right now she is more interested in finding out about the many delightful things in this forest.

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That shrub over there blooms polychromatic flowers after it's rained. That evergreen over there has little hollows in its branches that will close if you put something in them and grow much more aggressive needles around the area, only relaxing the spines and re-opening when the original person who placed the object reaches for it. That catlike thing over there is gravid. That songbird has twelve different songs corresponding to the twelve hours of the a.m., and singing one of them to it in the evening will make it sing the same one at the correct hour of the morning.

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Gravid cats are not very interesting. The rest of those things are reasonably interesting!

"This forest looks like it is full of made things."

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"Most forests in Fairyland are."

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"Fairies make a lot of things, it seems like."

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"The ability to create interesting things with magic is considered an essential skill for the fey nobility. In many cases, where the nobles have relevant magic, this means creating new life-forms."

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"It would be interesting to have that."

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"Potentially doable."

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She smiles.

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"It might or might not require subterfuge. I'd have to think about whether it was preferable to risk attack by someone whose enmity I had already earned or to risk alienating someone I hadn't."

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"Subterfuge? Why?"

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"If we attempted to get you in copying range of one of the fae who have in the past attempted to kill me and/or my sister it would be wise to be invisible and as otherwise imperceptible as magic will allow."

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"... oh," she says. "Yes. But why those ones in particular? Aren't there other fairies?"

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"There are. But the question of whether they'd be enthusiastic about a random mortal deriving large amounts of power from them...isn't guaranteed to go in our favor. Politics, if nothing else," he says, wrinkling his nose.

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"Oh..."

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"Many fairies don't think very highly of humans."

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"Hm," she says, somewhat disapprovingly.

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"There is one fairy noble that I've heard good things about who has the relevant abilities, but I haven't met her and arriving in her territory unannounced and asking for things is perhaps not the best plan of action."

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Riya considers.

"If I have enough unicorns, I can copy things so I can move them around, not just copy them for myself. Maybe she would like it better if we moved some things around for her?"

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"Quite possibly. I do think it would be better if I asked around some first to see if I could arrange an introduction."

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"Okay."

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"This may be tricky, since the magician who told me of her died some decades ago. Still, I do have fey acquaintances, and she is a noblewoman, and an introduction is a much less perilous favor to ask than to greatly empower a human with unfamiliar magic..."

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"Okay."

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"Would you rather come with me, or continue to examine this forest while I arrange things?"

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"I'd like to stay in the forest. I like this forest."

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"It's a nice forest."

teleport!

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Forest forest forest.

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There is a poppy that releases an overwhelming soporific if plucked and several fungi that are actually not magic at all and a tree bearing a fruit that, if you touch it for long enough without plucking it, will adjust its nutrient content to perfectly match your body's needs at the moment.

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What a fascinating fruit. Riya does not want to become the sort of thing that makes fruits, but if she did, she would want to make that fruit.

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Well theoretically she could just take the nutrition part and have her body's biochemistry adjust to meet the nutritional needs of anyone who touched her for long enough but that is a significantly worse idea than becoming the sort of thing that makes fruits.

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That would be terrible. She will not do that.

...She wonders if she could turn it around so that whatever food she touches becomes just the sort of thing she should eat. She'd need a unicorn, possibly. And an optionalizer. And possibly something else too but she isn't even sure what.

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Well, the magic stays on the fruits when they're picked, it just goes dormant, so if she wanted to she could pick some fruits and take them with her.

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It takes her a little more time to theorize that they might do that, but once she thinks of it, she picks a fruit. And then picks several more fruits, just in case. Many fruits.

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And then Kanimir is back. He raises an eyebrow at the fruits.

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"They have an interesting magic," she explains. "And they keep it if I pick them. So I want to carry them around in case I can use it for something later."

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"Ah. That makes sense. Would you like me to carry them for you?" He's been pulling his crystals and stuff from places that are unlikely to contain that volume of crystal, so he probably has some kind of extradimensional storage space. Also: his pockets are really definitely extradimensional storage space.

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"Yes, please," says Riya.

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He murmurs little flickers of preservation spells over each of them so they don't squish each other and turn his pockets into a gooey mess and sticks them inside.

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"Did you find out about talking to a person?"

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"I talked to multiple persons, including the fairy noblewoman I had been hoping to be introduced to subsequent to someone who was able to introduce me to her. It is fortunate that we did not attempt to visit her uninvited; she now lives in an area completely different from the one she had been when I became aware of her."

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"Oh. Well, can we visit her now?"

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"Yes. However, she is actually relatively busy at the moment, and has acquired a daughter in the intervening decades, and has suggested that we solicit her child's assistance with this project instead of requiring her to take time from her duties."

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"That makes sense..."

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"Shall we go, then?"

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Nod nod.

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Teleport!

...In this new place, there is an enormous dome overhead, so clear that it might be difficult to tell it was there at this distance if it weren't magical. The magic keeps the heat in, basically; it's dreadfully cold outside. Inside is a similarly magically lush environment to the forest, if somewhat more cultivated and less random. No escaped assassin snakes here.

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It's good that there are no escaped assassin snakes. What other things might there be?

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There is a hive of honeybees that make music with their buzzing and honey with any number of convenient linguistic properties, grass that photosynthesizes at an accelerated rate, those same flowers from before with the larynx nectar, some of those lesser phoenixes from earlier, and several unicorns, including one right in front of them mounted by a girl who looks to be in her late teens or early twenties who has the same immortality as the man with the unicorn herd, as well as a much greater version of his plant abilities, something similar with animals, and some more magic that would take a bit longer to puzzle out.

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Magic!

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"Hello! My name is Alcallah far Rannsi vai ten Drask Uraeh"--the name is superimposed, somehow, with the translation--Alcallah out of Rannsi of the Deep South--"and Mother says you have a magic project I'm to help you with!"

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"Oh." She smiles. "Hello. My name is Riya. I want to do things with magic."

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"Doing things with magic is great! What things do you want to do with magic how?"

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...She looks at Kanimir, hoping he can explain better.

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"She has magic which can copy other forms of magic. Since arriving in Fairyland she has acquired immortality from a fairy, a healing touch from a unicorn, regeneration from a Greater Phoenix, and miscellaneous other effects from miscellaneous other organisms. She wishes to duplicate your talents, and potentially your assistance could be useful for a project to distribute immortality to humans."

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"Wow. Okay, do I need to do anything?"

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"Do you have more unicorns? And maybe a Greater Phoenix? And anything that has a magic that's optional, like the pretty glowing moths or the terrible invisible snakes?"

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"...Terrible invisible snakes?"

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"In that other forest there were invisible venomous snakes. But only sometimes invisible. They could be invisible when they felt like it. It was a useful thing to copy but I don't like that there are those snakes."

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"There are not any of those snakes here. We have a few phoenixes, though. You might have to elaborate more on the 'only sometimes' requirement."

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...She looks at Kanimir again. Does Kanimir know what she's talking about?

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"She wants something that can be voluntarily activated and deactivated, as opposed to being reliant upon outside conditions or time passing to change."

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"Okay, um, we probably have something like that but I might have to think about it for a minute..."

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"It's useful to have that because I might not want to make everyone I ever touch be healed and very immortal," says Riya. "Oh - I wonder if you have things that would be better than unicorns for this? Unicorns do healing when they touch someone with their horns, but if you have something that can do a thing from farther away, that might work better. And if it's from farther away then I might not need to add in the optionalness part separately because it might be already optional."

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"...Could you use my ability to do stuff with plants?"

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"Hm?"

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"You were going to copy my botanical talent, right? It's purely voluntary, and a doing-things-to-things kind of thing."

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"Oh - that's clever," she says. "It might be harder because it's not very simple, and I'd be trying to copy your fairy immortality too... but it might still be easier than trying to put the thing together from unicorns and an optionalizer."

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"What's a unicorn's magic like?"

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"It's... like itself. They have magic to make their fur shiny and to make them heal anyone they touch with their horns. But the healing isn't just in the horns, it's in the rest of the unicorn too, it just sort of goes... through the horn."

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"That makes sense. Do I have to do anything to let you copy me, or just--sit here?"

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"You would just have to sit there. But if I was going to do the whole thing with being able to heal people and make them immortal from far away I would need you and a unicorn and a Greater Phoenix all together. And I might need to go away and come back a few times to refresh the reflections."

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"Okay. I'll see if I can find one." She pops a lozenge that appears to be made of the magic voice honey into her mouth, sucks on it for a bit, and begins muttering under her breath. Magically speaking, she's talking to people who aren't there.

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What interesting magic voice honey that is!

In the meantime, Riya tries to copy the ability to do things with plants. It's almost - no. Maybe if she - no. But at least she didn't mess up the part of the reflection that's important for combining with other things. If she puts that together with the unicorn's healing, can she get a distance-healing power that is usable at will?

She can!

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Alcallah is oblivious to this! She is still talking to people.

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If Kanimir is looking at her with seeing-magic on, he will be able to tell when she suddenly has a distance-unicornization power.

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Kanimir is totally doing that. He smiles approvingly.

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She smiles back.

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"It's a good thing I brought so many crystals."

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Smile. Nod.

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Eventually Alcallah ascertains the location of a Phoenix. Well, several, but only one that's in the same dome as them at the moment.

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That's promising!

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"The Phoenix is in that direction," she says, pointing. "...Um, you guys aren't mounted..."

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"We aren't," says Riya.

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"Unicorns are faster than human legs, and I'm not sure how your teleportation works so I'm not sure if you can pinpoint the spot well enough."

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That sounds like a question Kanimir might be able to answer. She looks at Kanimir.

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"I will be capable of teleporting to your location. If you go, and give some reasonable span of time in which to arrive there, we can then join you in the phoenix's area."

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"That works."

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"Okay."

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So the fairy rides off on her unicorn.

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And Riya waits.

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Does she examine the scenery while she waits?

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Of course!

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Those trees over there have a faint rainbow sheen to their bark. That one has fruits where if you pluck one, concentrate on a flavor and give it to someone else, the fruit acquires the flavor you were thinking of (it will be tasteless if you eat it yourself). Those grains in that field over there are intensely cold-resistant, just in case.

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Ooh, intense cold-resistance. Yoink.

(And if she had an optionalizer she could rainbow-sheen her hair...)

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Perhaps she can get to that later.

There are flowers that glow in the dark, flowers that glow in low light, trees with soft bark that gives off a pleasant planty musk sort of thing when you crush it a little bit...

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It's all very pretty, but she does not wish to give off a pleasant planty musk when crushed.

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Her counterfactual planty musk will go so well with her counterfactual personalized hypernutrition.

There is a weasel that will bite you if you try to attack the beehives and a beetle with a counter-camouflage shell that turns the chromatic *opposite* of whatever's behind it, and some reeds that are particularly open to tweaking such that when rustled by the wind they would seem to be whispering some programmed phrase.

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These are such cleverly made things. And there are no invisible venomous snakes anywhere. This is good. This is a good place.

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To be fair, it was not that forest's fault that invisible venomous snakes had escaped into it! But yes it is.

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It wasn't that forest's fault but it did sort of make the forest less nice anyway. It is good for a location to lack invisible venomous snakes.

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True.

There is a moss that releases pleasant-smelling oils to complement your natural skin chemistry if you rub it on yourself, and another with a stunning array of vitamins and minerals, and a sort of grasslike thing that in the presence of soil toxins will draw them up its stalk and encase them in little pearl-like things and a moss under a tree designed to be a shock absorber if you fall out of the tree.

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What nice things these are.

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Presumably that is the intention.

And when a reasonable span of time has elapsed they teleport. There is Alcallah and multiple unicorns and a phoenix.

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Riya smiles.

She sits down and attempts to put together: this piece from Alcallah which is immortality of the lifespan variety, and this piece from the phoenix which is immortality of a more aggressive kind, and this piece from Alcallah which is the doing of things to things at a distance and on purpose.

 

"I messed it up, I need to go away and come back and try again," she announces after a few minutes.

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Kanimir isn't going to get fed up with teleporting. She goes away and comes back.

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And tries again!

And: "Now I have the thing for healing someone and making them really immortal but I want to go away and come back and try to get the actual thing for doing things to plants too. It's neat."

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"Sure!"

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More teleporting. It's a good thing he's a human magician and not a fey mage, one of those would eventually get tired and have to take a break.

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Trying, trying...

"It's really hard to copy this without losing any bits," she says. "I messed it up again just now."

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"Can't say I'm surprised."

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Teleportation!

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Fiddle poke poke fiddle fuss...

...

"...I messed it up again," she sighs. "This is hard."

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"Lots of things worth doing are."

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More teleporting. And he is starting to get slightly bored of teleporting so while Riya's playing with magic he'll be poking at possibilities for a magic item that will let her teleport herself.

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"...I sort of got it," she announces after this round. "It's not as good as yours but it's okay. Thank you for letting me copy your things. ...Do you want to be immortal like a phoenix? I can do that now."

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"That would be great."

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She does that.

"There, I did that."

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She does a silly little victory dance.

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Riya giggles.

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"I am not planning on testing this but if you could do it to, like, everyone in the Deep South colony that would be flipping fantastic."

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"I could do that if I could be near enough to them all... if you put people in front of me I can make them really immortal. And heal them of things. But you have unicorns already so you probably don't need to be unicorned very much."

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"...Would you like to get on my unicorn with me and gallop around the inside of this dome immortalizing any fairy we come in range of?"

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"Okay."

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"D'you know how to mount one or d'you need some help up?"

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"I do not know how to do anything with a unicorn except copy their magic and I can't even do that very well."

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"Humans, have, what're they called, horses, right? Have you ever ridden one of those? The principle's supposed to be the same!"

It may at this time be worth noting that Alcallah is riding bareback.

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"I haven't ever ridden a horse, no."

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"Okay, well--" and she assists the other woman onto the unicorn's back in a way that someone who is familiar with how equines are ridden without a saddle would do.

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Okay. This animal is acceptable to sit upon. Riya can sit upon it.

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If unicorns were not acceptable to sit upon fairies would have fixed that!

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That does seem to be how fairies.

Anyway, she can be taken around to immortalize a bunch of people now.

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Excellent plan.

"Hold on tight to my waist so you don't fall off!"

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Okay. She does that.

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On they go! This is indeed pretty fast. Fairies begin entering Riya's range.

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Boop. Boop. Boop.

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A palacelike structure approaches in the distance! It has a lot of fairies in it, including one that's probably Alcallah's mom from how similar some parts of their magic look.

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Riya does not immediately scrutinize all of the fairies in the palacelike structure, but she does eventually notice that that one is probably Alcallah's mom. (Boop boop boop.)

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And eventually all the fairies in that dome are even more immortal!

"This is the largest habitat, but there are some others--do you think your friend's teleportation would be faster than the existing portal network or vice-versa?"

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"I don't know."

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"Enh, nearest portal's closer than he is. Unless you'd rather check in with him first?"

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"I don't mind."

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"Don't mind checking in or don't mind not checking in?"

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"Either."

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"Okay then!"

She guides them to a portal, and then there are more domes full of fairies to immortalize.

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Boop.

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Plenty of booping! If Riya had any particular insight as to why people were giving them slightly odd looks, it might provide some insight into the general makeup of the colony that the fact that the Lady's daughter was riding a unicorn at top speed and occasionally shrieking with joy was considered less strange than the fact that she was bringing a mortal with her to do it.

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Riya has no idea why they are being given weird looks, and it's actually sort of disconcerting, but Alcallah seems to be fine, so. Onwards to booping.

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This takes a while, even though the unicorn's healing powers apply reflexively enough that it doesn't have to deal with exhaustion and slow down like a horse would. Riya may get hungry by the time they've finally finished.

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Yes... but does that mean she has to say so? To a person? That sounds hard. Maybe she will just wait.

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Would any of her copied magics prevent her stomach from growling?

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No, but she's not hungry enough to make sounds yet.

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Well, okay then. They can just finish their rounds and then skedaddle back to Kanimir.

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Yes.

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Kanimir is sitting on a magically-comfy-for-sitting on rock and doing miscellaneous things with quartz.

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That seems like a Kanimirish sort of activity, yes.

"Hello."

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"Hello. How did it go?"

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"I made lots of people really immortal. Now I'm hungry."

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"I brought food." He produces some pastries with tomato bread filled with dried meats and vegetables.

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"Thank you."

Nom.

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And Kanimir, who had been too deep in studying fugue to think about such things, brings out a carefully opaque water bottle with a sports cap and drinks.