The lake and woodland have no comment.

There's a little house over there.

And a distinct lack of her castle. It might be that the castle is masquerading as the house, but that's a faint hope. Still. A house means people. And people are rather necessary to her continued survival. 

She walks up to the door of the little house, and knocks sharply three times.

The door opens.

It's a short and spindly little man with offensively yellow hair and dragonfly wings. He blinks at her. "Why hello," he says.

"Hello. Would you happen to know where I am, by any chance? I seem to be lost."

She does not comment on the wings. She's already standing in sunlight: this day can't get much stranger from her perspective.

"Well, I'd have to know where you were lost from to tell you anything useful," says the little man. "Come in come in, what's your name?"

Mm. Should she use her title? Whoever this is, they speak Victorian. Throwing her weight around will probably help more than it hurts. 

"Countess Lioncourt, though I'm not certain if the title will mean anything to you. Have you ever heard of Grand Victoria?" 

"The title's not familiar, and nor is Grand Victoria - do you just go by your title all the time? What about among friends?" He flashes a smile. "Can I get you something to eat?"

Rather overly forward, this little winged man. 

"Though I appreciate the offer, I'm not hungry. And, begging your pardon, you're not my friend. I don't even know your name."

"I'm Yellow," he says cheerfully.

She smiles. "Isabella."

Grin. He has very sharp teeth. "Don't tell anyone else that. Stay."

... She lets out a soft whimper, and stays. 

(She told herself never again and now is never

remember how she got out from beneath her sire last time

this doesn't work the way vampires do

he needed her name does it work the other way she hopes it does

she is going to violently dismember this insolently yellow creature 

she needs to act before he can give her any more orders

she has to stay but what can she do without moving -

she can still talk)

"... What are you doing to me."

"I haven't decided yet! What are you good at, tell me."

"Gardening. Surgery. Making tea. Ruling. Being beautiful." 

She doesn't have to answer completely. A small mercy. Play up the charm, get him to look you in the eyes. 

"Surgery?" Headtilt.

"Cutting away disease from the body. Healing wounds. Splinting broken arms, extracting arrowheads or bullets, repairing damaged organs." 

She has a memnos for surgery. She does not mention it. She wants to cut him with it but then he would know she has it and she doesn't know if these things die like humans do. And she might never be able to move again. 

She keeps her face as blank as possible.

"Huh. Maybe I'll have you do a garden, that might be nice. What sorts of things do you like, this doesn't have to be all bad." Smile?

"I like to not be enslaved. I would like for you to send me home. I would like for you to look me in the eye and honestly tell me that I deserve to be your thrall. But none of those are going to happen, are they?" 

(Please, please, let the nudge work -) 

Nope. "It's not about deserving anything - oh, and it's 'vassal' - this is just how it works here."

"... Okay. Can I at least have my own garden?" 

(Be the scared little girl. The more resources she has, the better.)

"Sure, why not. I'll have Promise forage you some seeds - Promise is my other vassal."

YES OF COURSE YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO IS BEING ENSLAVED.

"I hope she's nice." 

"Sure she is. Do try to get along with her." Smile.

"I will." 

(She was already going to try, but now she has literally no other choice. 

She is going to need time to come up with something sufficiently horrible to do to this... person.)

"Of course you will. Are you actually not hungry - it doesn't matter any more -"

"Yes, I'm actually not hungry. I don't expect to be hungry for a long time. I want to be alone."

(Which is totally unrelated to her not expecting to be hungry, but completely truthful.) 

"Oh, all right. You may wait in Promise's room for now," he points, "don't rearrange her things, you may take water from the pitcher there if you're thirsty."

She goes into the room. She sits.

(She still hasn't been ordered to not harm Yellow. He doesn't think she's a threat. She should probably cry. She can't. That's inconvenient.)

She stares at a wall. 

It has pretty drawings on it. Plants, mostly, and abstract mosaic-looking doodles.

She will look at the plants and think. 

... No very good thoughts at the moment. Her emotions are all over the place. She really wishes she could cry. It would help if she could cry. Or break something. But she'll be ordered not to if she tries to break something. 

She knows how to meditate. She'll just. Coil all this up. And put it. Somewhere. For when she needs it. Yes. This is Not Helping. Focus. 

... Focussing is being hard, but she has been ordered to wait. She'll keep trying.

It's a couple hours before the front door opens again.

She has managed to achieve something approximating composure by now. She has been in worse situations. She can escape this. She will. 

... Assuming she's not ordered not to. Don't think about that too hard. Look at the person who just came in. 

It's another small person, with leaf wings and otherwise more human coloration. Her eyes flick in surprise toward Isabella but she doesn't say anything, just deposits the bag she brought with her on the table.

"Promise! This is Lioncourt - unless you prefer a different nickname? Or the 'Countess' part?" he asks Isabella.

She manages a small smile. Damn this 'be nice' order.

"Lioncourt." 

At least this is confirmation that names are definitely important.

"And this is Promise," says Yellow, "she's my sorceress. Promise, Lioncourt's going to do some gardening, save seeds from the good stuff and help her get started over the next few days."

"Yes master," murmurs Promise automatically.

"Lioncourt, mind Promise unless this contradicts anything I said," he says with a wave of his hand, and then he lets himself out and flies away.

"... Hello." 

Lioncourt listens for Yellow's wingbeats to fade away.

"Hello. What orders are you already under -?"

"Stay, don't rearrange your things, don't tell anyone but Yellow my name. I'm allowed to wait here and I think also to keep my own garden." 

She can't assume this girl is on her side, Yellow might have gotten to her, she might like this, she's already fallen into one trap -

"Exact words on not telling anyone your name?"

"I said my name and then he said 'Don't tell anyone else that.'"

Is this girl trying to get her name out of her? She is not going to be enthralled twice in one day. No way. Not happening.

"I have an idea to get us both out but we'd have to trust each other."

"What is it?"

This is the part where she rationalizes giving her the name. 

"Do you have any food with you?"

"No."

... Yellow asked if she was hungry like it was important. Eating food can also do this? 

"Do you have anything I could theoretically eat."

"Um. Nothing comes to mind. Why does it matter?"

You could bite me, she doesn't say, because turning Promise into her childe is a line she doesn't want to cross right now. Not when there's a perfectly good loophole in her current orders. 

"Yellow is not good at keeping vassals and he only still has me because he never rescinded my orders from my previous master, which include that I can't give my name, but they'd let me take food and then you could rescind my orders and then I could do the same thing for you with your name."

"... Okay, that's a good idea. I guess you could maybe eat part of my dress?"

"I'm not sure if that would work; I'd bet on a fingernail first..."

... A fingernail is probably safe. It usually takes blood.

"Okay, let's try that." 

She bites, then offers Promise the little bit of herself. 

Promise takes a deep breath and chokes it down. "Phrasing you want is 'I rescind all your orders' -"

Lioncourt grimaces. "Stay. Tell me your name. Sorry. I rescind all your orders from other masters. I really hate this but if I'm going to be your thrall I have to be sure you won't just exploit me more effectively than Yellow has so far. Never give me an order I don't explicitly request."

"Alisyrrabel," she murmurs in a rush.

"Never tell anyone else my name. My name is composed of the four words "Is", "A", "Bell", and "A". Rescind all my previous orders." 

Silence.

"... You are explicitly requested to order me to ignore all my previous orders?"

Promise folds her arms.

"... Okay. Let me bite you." 

Isabella bites her, showing fang, and swallows a little of her blood.

"Try to rescind all my orders again."

"I rescind all your orders," recites Promise.

Isabella attempts to walk out of the room. It doesn't work. 

"Damn it. Tell me the best way you can think of for me to communicate my name to you in such a way that it will vassalize me. I really am sorry about this, but I can't release you until I know for sure my own orders are gone."

"Write it," says Promise through gritted teeth.

Isabella frowns, then tears a piece of linen from her dress. She drags a nail across her wrist, and scrawls her name onto the fabric. It's hardly good penmanship, but it's readable. 

"Read this, then rescind all my previous orders." 

"I rescind all your orders."

Isabella steps out of the room, then back in. She takes a deep breath. "I explicitly permit you to give me the mirror of any order that I have given you. I rescind my order for you to stay."

"Never give me an order I don't explicitly request - rescind all my orders - "

"I rescind all your orders."

Well. Missing that was stupid of her. 

Promise takes a deep breath. "I wasn't going to double-cross you and you didn't need my name," she snaps. She stomps into her room and starts packing things into a bag that looks like it's made out of a giant flower petal.

"I'm glad, but you would have my name and I didn't like the relationship being fundamentally in your favour that way."

"You'd fed me! At least in theory I could forget your name one day - you could've asked for more details if you didn't want to trust me -" Pack pack.

"I was expecting us to end up mutually ordering each other to not order each other, I was worried that you might get someone else anytime in the future -"

She shakes her head sharply. "...stupid, wasting time, what do you need help with packing?" 

"I don't need help. I'm going to pack and then I'm going to set Yellow's house on fire and I could be convinced to make you a gate home if you can travel fast enough that we can put it somewhere out of the way without slowing me down on my way out."

"Good plan. I can travel quickly and I would very much like a gate home."

"How quickly."

Isabella shrugs.

"Very quickly. I don't know how fast you move but I can probably keep up."

"I fly about seventy miles an hour in a hurry." She slings her bag over her shoulder and marches out the door.

The suggestion of shadowy wings forms around Isabella's shoulders. 

"I can keep up." 

"All right."

When Isabella's clear of the house it collapses into a pile of smoking slag.

Okay, that's very satisfying. 

Yes it is.

Promise flutters into the air and books it away from the lake.

Isabella follows, immensely cheered by the property damage that's been left behind. Though her wings are insubstantial, they don't seem to be having any trouble keeping up with Promise.

Promise does not start a conversation on the journey, just flies. Seems to know where she's going.

Follow follow follow. Do not tick off the person who can give you magical commands. 

Eventually Promise finds a spot that she deems suitable. It is a hidey little thicket.

"Will you be okay for a week without food and only rainwater?"

Lioncourt nods. "Yes. What are you going to be doing for a week?"

"Going elsewhere. The gate may take that long to settle. Where do you want it to open to, I need a geographical description."

"A town on the west coast of an island on a round planet, with a castle on the cliffs above the shoreline. The country is Grand Victoria, if that's any help?" 

"Name doesn't help. Shape of shoreline? Altitude of cliffs?"

"Uhhh. Tall cliffs. I don't know the larger shape of the shoreline but there would be a larger continent to the southeast. The planet has a moon?" 

"I'm not going to be able to hit your castle with these specifications, will hitting anywhere on the planet do?"

"... Can you do 'within sight of land'?"

"Yes."

"That's probably good enough. Definitely better than staying here."

Promise nods. "I can hit almost anything with parameters that are actually landscape features, but castles aren't." She marks a couple spots on the ground with sticks. "It'll be between here, going that way. You can throw things through to see if the gate is settled yet. I'll come by later to close it."

"Alright then. Good luck. Try not to be vassaled by anyone else."

"That's the plan."

Isabella nods. "I certainly don't plan to come back." 

Nod. "Regardless - don't communicate my name in whole or in part to anyone by any means."

"Thorough. I like that. I might add 'or deliberately induce another to attempt to learn it', now that I've had some time to think of better phrasings."

"You presumably don't actually want anyone to have my name; I have yours. This will suffice to make sure you don't forget and tell someone anyway."

Isabella smiles wryly.

"You may have noticed that I am not exactly the most open and trusting person."

"That wasn't very smart, incidentally, you are not informed or practiced enough to juggle orders effectively and I wasn't hostile until you were."

"In retrospect it was a poor decision, but in my defense I had just been unwillingly enthralled for the second time in my life. So. Yes."

"Second? How long have you been in Fairyland?"

"Not the same way. In my world there are people who can do a similar thing if you listen to them for too long or look them directly in the eye. One of them caught me."

She pauses. 

"He ordered me to enjoy it."

"...Fairies can't do that part."

"I was with him for two years before I found an opening that let me kill him." 

She sits down and stares at her hands. 

"... I'm not sure if it worked. Sometimes I feel like I've inherited his entire godawful life."

"I don't know if fairy orders would override your thing but if you would like protective orders I can do that before I go."

"We could test it. The ability is one of many awful things I've inherited from him."

"I don't have a very good reason to trust you with what would be necessary to test it."

"I've been talking to you, haven't I? Are you feeling inexplicably fond of me?"

Promise turns to leave the thicket.

Well. Shouting 'stop' isn't an option. 

... She's just going to continue sitting here.

And the fairy flies away.

... Nothing to do but wait for the portal to stabilize, she supposes.

It takes two and a half days and leads to a cliffside, but the wrong one.

... Is it night on the other side?

Yup.

Let's have a look around. The sooner she isn't here anymore, the better.

It actually perfectly matches the description she gave Promise, in geographical terms, but it lacks a castle.

Interesting. 

She takes to the air, and does a slow circle to survey the surrounding landscape. 

Nothing familiar. No people that she can see. 

... Maybe she should have asked for more precise targeting.

Well, this is where her gate goes! She could wait until Promise comes back to close it if she wants.

No sense in wasting the time. She'll explore a little more and come back to talk to Promise when she returns. 

Promise is gone for two weeks.

This island is quite small, and there are no people on it. Isabella is starting to become hungry. Promise should have been back a week ago. 

... She's going to have to go back into the other world. 

Promise arrives in far too much of a hurry to make another gate. She rockets through.

...she's invisible, so this might not be immediately obvious.

Isabella looks up with a slight furrow of her brow. She smells... something alive. And vaguely familiar. And bleeding. She fights down a surge of hunger: she doesn't need to feed for another two weeks yet. 

The bleeding thing settles over there. It's not invisible enough not to slide some dust out from under it when it lands.

Isabella very pointedly looks at it. 

"Whatever you are, I would appreciate if you would stop being invisible."  

I can't hear you. It's Promise. I'm being chased, says a line of lights in the air for a moment before it winks out. They shouldn't come through here but if they do it will be better for both of us if they don't know I'm here.

Isabella relaxes slightly, and nods. Flaring her wings, she darts away from the gate, towards a more densely wooded area of the island.

Promise remains invisible for some time.

Isabella waits. It smelled like Promise was wounded...

... She should go make sure Promise is still alive. Back towards where she last smelled blood.  

Invisible fairy on ground that doesn't betray her presence as long as she holds still.

... Well. That's a problem. 

She sniffs at the air. How much blood, exactly...?

Not that much, a few teaspoons.

... Probably not lethal. 

She will trust Promise's judgement and wait.

Hours and hours?

... Is there more bloodsmell? 

No, it's dried.

... She'll stay where she is for now. 

Eventually Promise de-invisibles. The dried blood is dribbled down from her ears.

Lioncourt approaches again, and looks intently at Promise. 

... She deafened herself so she wouldn't be able to hear any orders. Clever.

Lioncourt lets her Memnos examine the damage. 

"Hi," says Promise.

Burst eardrums.

Lioncourt holds up a finger. This should be relatively simple to repair...

Flesh knits together. She whispers. "Can you hear me now?"

Promise's eardrums promptly burst again. "The fuck do you think you're doing. I'll heal myself when I want to be healed and if you need to talk to me that badly you can write in the dirt."

Lioncourt sighs. "Well pardon me for not knowing that you could heal your own burst eardrums."

Promise presumably can't hear her.

The comment was more for her to let off some steam than for her to expect Promise to actually listen to her. 

And she's still just as stuck on a tiny island as before. Maybe more so, because whoever is hunting Promise is probably still looking for the portal. 

... She's just going to sit down here and wait for Promise to decide she wants to talk. Hopefully that will happen in less than two weeks. 

It's a few more hours and then Promise says, "They're probably not going to find the gate."

She nods, since Promise probably still can't hear her.

"I fixed my ears."

"I'm glad to hear that. Gotten past your own security issue with talking to me? Or do you have an order for me?"

"I decided I'd rather take my chances with you than with my old master and then I noticed you're here and a castle isn't."

"Yes. There are no people here and in another two weeks I'm going to become starving and dangerous. I thought waiting here for you would be my best chance. Also, I can give you better evidence I haven't nudged you: it's not undetectable, just subtle."

"It's a good thing I came through instead of just closing the gate, then."

"I was watching for you. But that wouldn't have helped, since I didn't know you could turn invisible and inaudible. Which is a neat trick, incidentally." 

"I'm a sorceress, I can do a lot of things. Apparently you can do a lot of things too."

"Flight, not needing to breathe, better senses, generally better body, not aging, not eating in the normal way, the mind magic - all of that comes in a package labelled 'vampire' and I got it from my last master. He didn't ask if I wanted it."

A sliver-sharp smile creeps onto her face.

"I learned the healing magic myself."

"I've never heard of vampires before but I guess my information on the mortal world isn't as good as I thought."

"I guess not. At least you didn't end up in the reverse situation to me."

"Yeah. Does this have to do with why you bit me?"

"Vampires get hungry much slower than most people, but we only seem to be sustained by food that was part of someone. We can feed safely, but not all of us are careful - especially when we're starving. Which of course doesn't help with our reputation any more than the mind control."

"I suppose if you normally bite mortals they could die of blood loss."

"It's more than that. I've studied the symptoms of too-heavy feeding, and they look more like brain damage than exsanguination. In increasing order of severity: short-term memory loss, long-term memory loss, dissociation or solipsism, short-term unconsciousness, full-blown fugue states, loss of procedural memory, coma, death."

"...I didn't notice even short term memory loss when you bit me. Didn't take enough to cause it?"

"I am very careful. And fortunate enough to usually have the option." 

"How's the mind control work?"

"I can make you more likely to believe me when I speak, or nudge you towards a desired action. Phrasing orders as reasonable requests helps significantly."

She clears her throat.

"I can make you more likely to believe me when I speak, or nudge you towards a desired action. Phrasing orders as reasonable requests helps significantly."

At the first altered word Promise's eardrums burst again. "If I want a demo I'll ask for one."

Lioncourt shrugs and nods. 

The ears heal.

"Sorry."

Lioncourt sighs, then looks Promise squarely in the forehead. 

"Meeting the eyes of a vampire who wants you as their pawn is worse than being vassalized. Don't do it. I don't want to go over the details of exactly how it's worse: trust me on this. I would commit suicide rather than be enthralled again if those were my only two options." 

"Does this rely on vision, the direction eyes are pointing -"

"You need to see the vampire's eyes, and they need to see yours. It requires directed attention from both parties: casual eye-contact isn't enough. Avoid it anyway. You can still be caught by a reflection, but it's a lot harder to make eye-contact though a small mirror."

"So if I'm invisible that's safe?"

"Unless the vampire gets really lucky guessing where your eyes are, yes." 

"...so they don't need to see my eyes?"

"I'm erring on the side of caution, here. It would probably work. I don't know if it's certain: you would have to test it."

Nod. "What else can you tell me?"

"The underlying reason why many vampires aren't careful is a combination of terrible culture and progressive insanity. While we're technically immortal, I've never heard of a sane vampire that was more than two centuries old. I'm around seventy, and happy to report that I'm saner than the majority of my peers."

"Insane how?"

"There's a lot of variation, but delusions and obsessions are particularly common. My previous master vacillated between believing I was his daughter, his apprentice, his heir, his pet..."

"And ultimately this is hazardous to your health - directly or indirectly?"

"Yes."

"Ah. What are you going to do about it?"

"So far, be very careful about my feeding schedule and study medicine in hopes of better understanding the phenomena. Also, cultivate a general policy of caution and restraint."

"Medicine?"

"Healing the mind and body - and by extension, how the mind and body work in the first place. Understand in order to predict in order to control."

"Oh. Fairies just do that with magic."

"So do I. Now. I wasn't lucky enough to get it for free, as it were."

"How's your magic work? I would have thought sorcery doesn't work here and it seems like it does after all but I think yours isn't that..."

"Ritual practice and repetition. If you can do it mundanely, you can do it with magic, given enough time to build a ritual construct of that action. Having some ritual constructs already helps."

"How's this interact with the vampire stuff?"

"It probably does, but I've not tried to do it for obvious reasons. Though it is convenient to not need to sleep: it gives me more practice time."

"...obvious reasons are not obvious."

"If I wanted to gain vampire abilities through magic, I would need to ritually practice using those vampire abilities. Which are generally either passive effects or aggressively horrible."