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in which therapy comes highly recommended
lost epic in Fairyland
Permalink Mark Unread

He lands in rock. It is horribly uncomfortable and crushes the experimental worldleaper and would definitely be fatal if he weren't indestructible but he is so he just tries to teleport home.

 

It doesn't go.

 

He tries teleporting a million miles from here in an arbitrary direction, because he can figure out from there what's wrong about going home.

 

...he is still in rock.

 

What the -

 

 

 

He tries again, and again, and again, squishing and bruising himself as far as he can be squished and bruised every time, and then he concludes that it looks like he has found a dimension that is entirely made of rock and should go home only he can't go home -

- he teleports himself and all the rock around him to somewhere a million miles away. Then he goes back. There's a hole in the rock. Okay. He does that several times until he has a reasonable amount of space.

Now he can curl up and cry, so he does that, and he teleports rock away while he does. And puts in some air and some furnishings and makes it a pretty rock cave that he apparently can't get out of, because that's easy and sort of reassuring.

 

He tries again to go home. It doesn't work. Maybe this dimension prohibits a teleport out?

It's technically risky but doing it once isn't too risky ...he makes a worldleaper, jumps. Lands in vacuum, like normal. He beams at the vacuum. Vacuum is lovely. So much better than infinite rock. And can he teleport back to his rock cave?

...he can. And from his rock cave to the world with vacuum, and back - okay, so the problem isn't that this dimension prohibits a teleport out -

- the problem could be that he's not adjacent to Warp. Jumped twice, somehow, while playing around with the prototype worldleaper. 

He wants to light everything on fire. He makes gasoline everywhere in his rock cave and makes a match and strikes it and the cave doesn't even turn into an awesome fire because there's no air. 

 

He scowls and makes the cave bigger and does it again. Now everything is on fire. He feels better. 

 

It is a day later when he conjures for complete written works of endless-rock-universe's Bell.

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Here's some, not that much. Handwritten.

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How much doesn't matter, there's a Bell, there's a Bell, even if it's some kind of strange rock-dwelling Bell, everything's going to be okay. (He tries for a him. There isn't a him.) 

 

Scale model of Bell and Bell surroundings?

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She doesn't appear, but a cute little cottage in a garden by a waterfall does. It falls apart when conjured; maybe parts of it are magic.

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And no sign of endless rock? Maybe someone carved out a really big cavern in the endless rock but that doesn't explain the waterfall -

 

- invisible, inaudible, cottage -

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The cottage is cute. It is sized to be comfortable for people about Epic's height. There are people there, yea high or shorter. They've all got wings - bug wings or weirder, nothing with bones in. They are tending the garden.

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And no endless rock. He's delighted about the 'no endless rock'. 

Is the Bell visible?

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Nope, must be inside.

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...he walks inside.

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The door doesn't open.

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Then he teleports to the other side of the door.

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Then he is inside!

He can't hear anybody in here. Like, not even breathing.

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...is this a match for Bell surroundings? He makes a scale model in his hand. It'll be visible but there's apparently no one here.

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Yup, this is the place. The Bell must be in another room and not breathing. Or inaudible, like him.

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...he goes room to room -

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There she is! Her and another winged person and a lot of blood!

...It's definitely "inaudible".

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...he doesn't know how to safely drug this species - 

 

- pop he takes the other winged person to his rock-cavern thing pop back he touch-heals the Bell - we need to get out of here do you know a place we can go -

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No response.

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...the Bell is invisible and inaudible with him and - this place looked like it had sky - they're in the sky a ways higher - she's so light he can actually hold her and stay in the air, he flaps his wings and does that - 

 

- do you know a place we can go - 

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There's a twitch of her facial expression, that's all.

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okay he will worry about that later he needs to find a place to take them - a hundred miles over is a valley, the valley looks pretty, now they are in the valley - he should keep going, he doesn't know what he's in the middle of - a hundred miles from here is an impossible floating rock island, teleport, a hundred more miles to the edge of an ocean, teleport -

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She is very light in his arms and she trembles ever so slightly and the healing spell didn't do anything about the blood that was already out of her.

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Well he can make her a house with a bath once they're somewhere that is not entirely rock or a place where they torture Bells. Which he is exercising tremendous restraint in not feeding into a black hole, that would be wrong, the Bell would not be impressed with him, the Bell is going to be okay, the Bell is definitely going to be okay, except what if it's like Kib where the Bell needed other Bells to be okay -

 

 

- hop hop hop hop -

 

- he can't conjure for short winged people, they're too magic, so there's no way to check if there are any in the area except by looking, but he doesn't see any - 

 

- he will make a lot of soft Valian grass and set the Bell down.

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She doesn't move.

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He can't think how to cancel her inaudibility - it's probably a completely different kind of magic - 

 

- "Uh," he says, and then starts crying, and then takes a couple minutes to get it together. "Um. I swear I am not doing this and haven't done it and will teach you how to block it, but I can read minds. It - seems like you can't talk? Because of the evil magic? So if you can listen I can teach you how to block my mind reading, and then once you can block it you can send just things you want me to hear, and then you can tell me what is wrong with this place because we need to rescue everyone else, too -"

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"Well. I am going to try doing that." He hugs himself with his wings. "Okay, so the way to block my kind of mindreading is to come up with a metaphor in your head, for some thoughts being public and some being private. And then think about it a lot until you have a habit of it."

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She still hasn't moved. One of her wings is bent weird under her; it looks uncomfortable.

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He will make more fluffy grass and then move the Bell around so she looks more comfortable.

 

Then he'll curl up and cry again.

 

Then he'll make his computer and compose a letter for home. It is - not the most coherent letter. There is a Bell and the Bell has been tortured and the Bell is not okay and the Bell can't talk - some kind of magic inaudibility thing - so he taught the Bell the private thoughts thing and then is going to try to communicate with her once he expects she's gotten it - if she's not too out-of-it to get the private thoughts thing down  - and in conclusion everything is horrible can they come find him.

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They do not seem to be able to come find him.

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Yeah.

 

 

He repeats his private thought instructions, just in case.

 

 

He makes himself food. Does she make any motions like she wants any?

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She looks at it but continues with the not moving thing.

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"Uh, how much movement do you have, can you twitch for yes and not-twitch for no?"

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There is no twitching.

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Sigh. 

 

"If you think you've figured it out you can try sending me thoughts by responding to -" this?

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What do you want

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Uh, you to be sufficiently okay that we can figure out how to stop all of the torture in your entire horrible world? Also to go home but I don't expect you can help with that part. 

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What's going on

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I'm Epic and I'm from another dimension and dimensions have alternate universe versions of people and I know a lot of you and one of you sort of adopted me and I'm lost but I have a lot of magic and it all still works and you're rescued and I didn't even feed that horrible place into a black hole but I was tempted.

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What does the magic do?

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Healing, teleport, illusions, there's a grace spell that's especially for Bells but I didn't sit still for it because they take forever but it's probably on the computer - and then I'm indestructible and can make arbitrary stuff because I'm a demon - I can give you the spells but I'd have to make you a necklace - or give you mine, I guess - and making a necklace takes a long time and I don't know anything about this world -

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Why are you here?

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Accident, like I said. And then I conjured to find the Bell in this universe and it was you. 

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Why "Bell" -

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All your names have 'bel' in them somewhere. Boots' name is Isabella and -

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stop

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...why -

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...suppose it doesn't matter anyway if they're mortals...

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...what are you talking about -

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I'm a fairy. Everybody from this world is a fairy. If a fairy knows your name, or just part of it if you're a mortal, they can give you orders.

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Oh. Yikes. That's horrible.

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She continues to lie motionless on the grass.

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Do you want me to make us a house or something -

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...why?

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...so we'd have a house? I haven't met any fairies before, I don't know what kinds of stuff fairies need.

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I live in a tree. When I'm home.

Probably isn't safe to go there, they'll check it.

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I could move it here? If they won't check here, I don't know if here's a safe place.

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...trees have roots. And I don't know where we are.

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Yeah I could grab all of the soil for a while around. And we're somewhere random, I just kept hopping, if there's somewhere you know that'd be better I could take us there. I landed in like at least a hundred lightyears of nothing but rock and I thought this world was really stupid and was all rock.

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I'm not allowed to communicate my name and usually I'd be allowed to take food but right now I can't move.

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- not allowed to communicate - 

 

...if, hypothetically, I found some other Bell under the orders you are under, what would you advise I do with them, are you allowed to answer that?

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My orders don't anticipate telepathy, they're just phrased thoroughly on the subject of names. You sort of already handed me all the Bells' names enough to work so if some fairy got one of them I could rescind their orders but I'm not a mortal so you'd need my whole name. Or to feed me.

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Do you want me to feed you?

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No but I don't want to lie here for all eternity either.

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I mean, there are other options? I'm not thinking of them right now but that's because I'm really upset - uh, I bet Warp has good mechanical exoskeletons for people with spinal injuries, or I could make a necklace for you and then you could try teleporting around everywhere?

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I'm under more orders than that.

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Are you under orders that'd make it a bad idea to make you a necklace, because I don't want to give you a necklace if you have orders to go back or something -

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You should definitely just rescind them all in one go that doesn't mean I'm going to like the part where I have to obey your every enforced command forever.

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I won't give you commands, I'm not evil. I don't think even the evil me'd do that. The evil Maitimo would, but I think the evil me just kind of kills people who get in his way?

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?

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Uh, there's a dimension where everything's even more horrible than usual and all the people who turn out evil if raised badly enough are evil? And that includes me and my kids, and the ruler of the planet is a Maitimo and he's evil and he kept his boyfriend as a mind-controlled prisoner for hundreds of years and so the orders thing sounds like the sort of thing he'd do? But the me from that planet isn't that kind of evil, he's the kind where if people annoy him he kills them because they're annoying. So I'm pretty sure he'd still leave you alone, not that it matters because Bells aren't supposed to go near him.

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The fairy Bell lies motionless on the grass.

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What kind of food do you like. I can just appear it in your mouth, I don't have to touch you.

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It doesn't matter. I don't think I can swallow, in my mouth might not do it.

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I could also make it in your throat? I can tap you with the healing spell right after if I accidentally choke you or something.

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I can heal myself once I can do anything don't touch me.

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...okay.

 

He wraps himself in his wings and makes a little bit of sugar in her throat and says "I rescind all your orders?"

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And now she can curl up more comfortably on the grass. She didn't choke so she doesn't have to heal herself.

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"The person who was hurting you, I put them in a rock enclosure millions of miles underground. Were they ordered too? Should I go and get them?"

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"He doesn't run the court so he was under some orders but he didn't get that job at random."

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"Okay. Is he going to suffocate down there?"

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"His kind of fairy doesn't have to breathe and if he did he would already have gotten very uncomfortable in the time since you put him away."

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"Okay." Flop.

 

"Do you know anyone here who I can - go talk to - who is nice and not you?"

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Headshake.

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Sigh. 

 

"I am guessing I can't have a hug."

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Shiver.

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"Do you want more food to eat?"

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"I guess it can't make anything worse, now... I don't know what you need to know about stuff to make it."

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"I can't make 'a meal like the one this Bell most recently ate' or 'a typical fairy meal', need a bit more than that -"

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"I just want haws from my tree - were you going to get my tree -"

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"I can get your tree." ...does he get anything if he tries for models of her tree - "you might need to send me what it looks like -"

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A huge shady hawthorn tree -

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He teleports there. He takes out a giant scoop of land around it, to make absolutely sure the tree will be fine. He comes back and teleports away with a similarly sized scoop of dirt and then 'plants' the tree.

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There is a brief pause, and then she flies straight at the tree trunk and it opens to admit her and closes behind her.

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Okay.

 

That's okay.

 

He curls up and makes himself a very heavy very fuzzy blanket and tries to sleep.

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Nothing tries to stop him.

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Yeah but he's not good at sleeping. Boots usually helps him sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

After a really long time he does anyway.

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In the morning the Bell is still in her tree.

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That's okay. Everything is okay.

 

He writes a letter home.

 

 

...he goes back to the village where he got the Bell.

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Continues to be occupied by winged people.

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Yeah, evil horrible winged people. He goes uninvisible. He lands.

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Evil horrible winged people look at him! They are confused.

"Hello," one says, "what's your name?"

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"Who's in charge here? I want to talk to them."

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"Here? Me."

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"Okay. You have to stop torturing people. Immediately. Why are you doing it, what do you get out of it, I might just be able to give you that thing directly -"

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"...beg pardon?"

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"Stop. Torturing. People."

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"I'm not torturing anyone," smiles the fairy. "What did you say your name was?"

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"Epic. If you're not torturing anybody then stopping shouldn't be a problem."

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"Sure. What's your real name?"

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"I don't like your orders thing very much and I think you're lying about not torturing people so I'm not going to tell you. If I can talk to all the people here and they all agree it was just a misunderstanding and you don't torture people, then I'll tell you if you want."

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"I'll round everybody up then, shall I," says a nonplussed fairy.

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"Thank you!"

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The fairy goes and talks to other fairies, who all line up and tell Epic that this fairy does not torture people.

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...yeah. And if he puts sugar in their throats and osanwës them I rescind all your orders -

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Instant chaos. Things catch fire! Fairies rocket into the air in all directions! The fairy in charge shouts at them and most of them turn around when commanded!

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...oh, right, he can probably also give them orders -

He will just stand here chanting I rescind all your orders, that seems like the thing to do.

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Fairies make aggregate progress away from the little compound. More things catch fire; surprisingly few of those things are fairies.

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That's good he really didn't want to kill anyone he is going to try to burn this entire stupid world to the ground without killing anyone. If anyone looks badly injured he will teleport over and heal them.

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Nope, the only fairy who caught fire has healed herself by the time he notices.

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Okay. And the fairy who insisted he didn't torture anyone, what's he doing?

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Also flying away, actually.

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Come back here.

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He turns around.

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"If you don't torture people why are all of these people running away setting things on fire?"

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No answer.

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"I'm worried that if I let you leave you'll go torture more people. I could ask the Bell what to do with you? ...I think I'll do that."

 

And he teleports them both to his underground rock thing where he dropped the fairy who was torturing the Bell earlier. Is that one still here?

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Yup.

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Well. Now there are two of them. "Don't give each other any orders," he says, and he makes them a box of food and some grass and flowers on the ground and a stunted space Silmaril to keep them alive. 

 

And he goes back to the Bell's tree.

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It is still there and still a tree.

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Flop.

 

 

I made that particular village of fairies stop torturing people, he says. But I guess there are probably other ones.

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The trunk opens and she peeks out. She's cleaned up and put on a dress made of leaves. "...what did you do?"

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"Uh, I went over and asked why he was torturing people, and said if he was doing it to get something I would just - give him that thing? And he could stop? And he said he wasn't torturing people and what was my name, and I said I thought the orders thing was scary but if he really wasn't torturing people I'd tell him my name if he wanted, so he got all the fairies to come say he wasn't torturing people? But then I did the sugar thing and rescinded their orders so they could tell the truth and then everything was on fire and they all ran away. And I asked him why they'd do that if he didn't torture people and he wasn't answering so I put him a hundred million miles underground in the rock cavern with the other fairy who was torturing you. I need a better containment solution, I don't know if there are enough plants in it for air for two people."

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"...I guess only air for one person, since you said the other one didn't need to breathe."

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"What could have possibly possessed you to assail a court when you don't know anything about how - anything - works -"

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"...they were torturing people? And I wanted that to stop now, not once you were better, I didn't know how long it'd take you to get better -"

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"You could have been vassalized! You! With! Your! Weird! Mortal! Magic!"

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"I mean, I wasn't going to tell him my name."

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"There are dart traps - if Sugar weren't at another site right now -"

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"What're dart traps?"

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"Traps with darts with juice in them, you don't have to swallow to be food-vassalized."

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"...okay, that's good to know. I won't go bother any more torturers."

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Sigh. "Who's in your - cave - now - the one who was torturing me and -"

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"The one who acted like he was in charge? Dunno if he actually was."

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"No, Thorn wasn't at that site."

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"Okay. What do I need to be protected against dart traps?"

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"Why do you ask."

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"....so I don't get dart trapped?"

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"Are you planning to go near dart traps? Again?"

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"There are apparently still people being tortured."

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"It will get worse if you do stupid things."

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"I am not sure it can get that much worse!!!"

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"Of course it can - they don't have everybody and you can teleport and read minds - if somebody gets you -"

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"I don't want to be gotten! That's why I'm asking how to avoid dart traps!"

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"And if the next court you go after has something I don't know to warn you about?"

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"...yeah, okay. That'd be bad. 

 

 

But it's not okay they're torturing people."

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"I know that!"

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"So we should figure out a safe way - if I'm invisible and inaudible and far enough away and put sugar in all of them before I get close what goes wrong -"

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"You are in way too much of a hurry and it's going to get you caught if you don't calm down."

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"I'm not going to do anything unless you say it's okay."

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"Okay." Deep breath. She sits down by the roots of her tree and a branch bends down and drops berries in her hand.

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He flops and makes himself a sandwich.

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Munch munch.

"Can you start over with your explanation from the beginning -?" She has paper now.

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"Yeah. There are lots of worlds. You can travel between them. They have different kinds of magic, I have lots of kinds from different worlds. I can teleport and heal and do illusions and invisibility and inaudibility and turn people into birds with Loki's magic, I can make arbitrary matter with demon magic, I'm indestructible because I'm kind of reckless and it seemed like a good idea, I can read minds because I'm an Elf and Elves can just do that. There are alternate universe versions of the same people in different worlds. That's how I knew to look for you, you're an alternate universe version of my Boots."

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"I can make gates but I'm not sure if they go where you're from. I think the mortals in the mortal world I know of don't have wings. Or magic."

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"I bet your gates obey adjacency but still, that'll be really useful once we find the peal. Do you know what languages they speak in the mortal world you know of -"

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"No idea, languages are weird."

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"...languages are weird?"

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"Yeah."

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"...what's weird about them? All of them? Including whatever we're currently speaking?"

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"I'm not speaking a language, I'm just plain speaking. I don't know why mortals use languages, they seem like a hassle."

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"- what do you mean 'just plain speaking' -"

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"...I'm just, talking? Without - encoding it."

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"...when you talk, you use your tongue to make sounds, right? How do you decide which sounds -"

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"I don't, I just decide what words."

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"...words are made out of sounds."

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"Except when they're made out of marks or gestures, sure."

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"...yeah, okay. So how do you say a word without saying any sounds -"

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"I'm making noise, you wouldn't be able to hear me talk if I were magically inaudible, but I'm not making coded noise."

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"So if I wanted to teach you a new word for a concept you were unfamiliar with, how would that work -"

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"...then I'd know how to express the concept."

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"I would say a collection of sounds. Would your ability to learn that collection of sounds be mediated by whether I understood it - or whether it actually truly meant that in some sense -"

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"I'm not really paying attention to what sounds you're using."

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"If I say the same word in different languages do you hear the same thing -"

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"Probably? I'm not sure I'd notice."

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He turns Allspeak off. He says 'computer' in every language he speaks and then looks up a few he doesn't and says it in those languages too. "Those all sound the same?"

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"Mostly, yeah."

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"Mostly? What are the exceptions? What about false cognates between languages -"

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"They're sort of nuanced differently - I think you could probably get most of the same effect with tone of voice alone, if you wanted? - what's a cognate?"

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The French for a mythological heroine after which a planet in Warp is named is the same as the Quenya for 'downfall'. He says both words.

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The Bell can tell which he's referring to because one of them is a name and the other one means "downfall".

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"They're the exact same set of sounds - the only difference is what I had in mind when I said them - what if I wrote them both down on pieces of paper and then mixed them up and then you read them, would you be able to tell which one I was thinking of when I wrote the characters even though the characters look identical -"

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"Probably? I don't pay attention to exact lines any more than exact sounds."

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He makes sheets of paper with both in the tengwar and both in the Roman alphabet and offers them to her.

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She can in fact distinguish them.

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"So your translation magic encodes meaning at the time of creation and gives you that - what if someone else tells me the word and I write it down without knowing which they mean, and then you read it -"

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"I don't know, I - last talked to a mortal years ago and we didn't try that."

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"Do you know where that mortal is?"

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"Probably dead by now if she's lucky."

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"Can you send me a mental image -"

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The mortal looked like so. Human. Maybe 1930s Earth if Epic knows that much about Earth history of fashion.

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Epic does not know that! He sort of notices the hairstyle but looks away because inappropriate. 

 

He tries conjuring for a scale model of Promise's mortal.

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Promise's mortal was lucky, apparently.

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"We can do resurrection. Once the peal finds us."

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"Okay. It really is better she died, though, Thorn had her too."

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"I believe you. Is it better not to resurrect her, too -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's probably fine to resurrect her."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. ...we don't have anyone to do language experiments with, though -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...is this important?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...uh. I guess not."

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Sigh. "Can we work out how to stop all the torture, now?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fairyland is infinite. You can probably take over any court you like if you're smart about it but you have to wait on 'all the torture'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are there in fact infinitely many fairies -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think so but we're very spread out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That doesn't really matter, with the teleport. ...I'd have to figure out how to find them but I can find your houses and things, just not you directly -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"But you need to specify, you said."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can do a scale model of all fairy-made stuff and then go after it one by one, I need to specify if I want to narrow from there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...okay, but that would still take a long time to find you all the fairies. And you have to be very good at orders to keep smart fairies under control."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't want to give orders - I want everyone to stop giving orders."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...how are you planning to get that to happen?"

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"I don't know!! If needed I can put them all on different planets!!!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't have those."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can make them."

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"...I'm not sure planets, uh, work, here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Your laws of physics are admittedly really weird but it looks like that direction's vacuum? Eventually?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wouldn't know, I can't fly that high, but planets are big round rocks, right? A planet you put up in the sky would fall."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Gravity follows an inverse square law, even with the infinite-rock-plane thing you've got set up there's somewhere far enough away it'd be irrelevant - I think -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I wouldn't know but I'd expect a planet to fall."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are your expectations really good at physics?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, but I think the physics that makes planets work is probably not the same here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I guess normally an infinite plane of rock would exert more than approximately-Earth-gravity amounts of force..."

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"I might go try it, seems interesting."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...dropping a rock on Fairyland?"

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"No, teleporting a hundred million lightyears into the vacuum from here and checking whether there's gravity pulling down."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Want to come?"

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"I really prefer to have air."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can make air."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"You can teleport me without touching me?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, easy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

Now they are a hundred trillion lightyears vacuumwards of here. He makes air and then makes a spaceship. Is there gravity here?

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Yep. Down is that way.

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...wow. Okay. "So, yes, you've got gravity. Gosh, this world is - sort of like Ardas but in a different way -"

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"Ardas?"

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"The kind of world I'm from. The gods made it flat because they didn't know it was supposed to be round, they put up fake stars because they didn't have time to get the real ones to move properly relative to their fake planet - this world is like someone knew people were supposed to live on top of dirt and beneath air and that gravity was supposed to be a certain thing but they just - hard-coded those, instead of coming up with laws of physics that would let them arise naturally - and the languages -"

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"You're very hung up on languages."

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"Your translation magic is really really bizarre!!"

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"I don't think I'd call it translation magic. I'm not translating from or to anything, I'm just skipping the thing with the codes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Your way of talking is indescribably more complicated than any anywhere else in the multiverse."

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"...really?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes!!!!!" Bounce bounce for emphasis.

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"If you say so. It seems simple to me."

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"When someone communicates in any way, your universe apparently encodes 'what they actually meant' on the level of words - we haven't checked if it behaves the same way with extremely agglutinative languages, we should - and then when you interact with their communication you get the 'what they actually meant' not just in addition to the content but in some way that makes it really hard to parse the actual content! That's not simple at all, that's - what you get if you're trying for conformity with high-level rules about how things should work instead of low-level laws of physics - does it have an adjacency limit, can you read things on my computer in languages I don't speak written several dimensions over -"

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"...I don't know, obviously, but I pretty much expect to be able to read no matter what..."

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He makes a computer with a languages program he's been rationing himself on because he can't spend all his time on languages, pulls up a paragraph in something he doesn't speak.

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She can read it.

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"How about something that's ciphered - how about something that's encrypted -" here are paragraphs of each -

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They are gibberish.

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...what if it's a really dumb cipher, like rotating all of the letters by three -

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Still gibberish.

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...what if it's English except with the vowels rotated to the next vowel -

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Gibberish.

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...can her very clever language thingamagig handle misspellings -

Permalink Mark Unread

To a point. A pretty arbitrary point.

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Weird. 

 

"Yeah, definitely most complicated translation system in the world."

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"It's not a translation system."

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"Is too."

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"What makes it a translation system?"

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"It's magic, it functions by taking languages as inputs and turning them into information in a form that the user can understand -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most of the time I have talked in my life I have not been talking to mortals. All fairies have plain speech."

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"Can you give me the title of a book -"

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"...'Nine and the Island'?"

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He makes it. What do the words look like?

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Well, to him they rather resemble tengwar.

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"Can you copy this page?"

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"Yeah, why?"

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"I'm curious if a copy you make looks the same to you as a copy I make and which if any have the 'author's meaning is stored in addition to content' thing -"

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"I assume we'll have different handwriting."

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"Looks like it's in the same language, I mean. I'm going to take a picture for the peal and I wonder what it'll look like to them, too -"

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"I'll copy it over if that's useful."

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"Can you try copying the letters or do you have to copy by word -"

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"...I'm not sure I understand what letters are -"

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"...you said names don't do this thing?"

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"Don't do what thing?"

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"The thing where you're unable to parse the actual shape on the page and can only see the meaning!"

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"I can tell what the shapes on the page are if I try, it's just, why would I do that if I want to read it."

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"I'm curious what happens if you try copying the shapes on the page."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay..."

So she carefully copies out all the lines, and they have a carefully identical page of text.

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And he takes pictures. Does the text look the same in the pictures -

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Yup.

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He writes a peal a description of the weird translation thing and instructions on how to conjure for it and check it out.

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"...can they get your letter somehow?"

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"Yeah. I'm kind of only mostly a demon so I can't get theirs but they can get mine, I've been sending updates. If things went horribly and I got caught I bet they'd wish up a way to find us and be here really soon but since it's not really an emergency they might take a bit."

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"I can try gates in case they can go all the way to where you need to be."

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"You can try. I bet gates obey adjacency, everything does. They're still gonna be a really big deal, though."

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"Are we moving, right now? Gates hold still, you're not supposed to put them on floating islands that travel..."

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"We're probably technically falling in the dimension your world considers down. I could add rockets, cancel that out - or we could go back to the surface -"

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"Near the tree probably makes the most sense. I think I forgot to thank you for the tree, thank you for my tree, I needed my tree so much -"

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Pop, next to the tree. "It's okay. I'm glad you're okay. I was worried you were going to be like Kib and I couldn't fix you."

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"Kib?"

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"He's a Bell who got horribly tortured by his Arda's Melkor and he was worried the Melkor could read his mind - can't - so he stopped having thoughts - and his friends and husband weren't able to get him to have thoughts again but the Bells did it when they found him by saying what he would be thinking, which they knew because Bells, so he realized there wasn't any point in not thinking. And if you were like that I couldn't fix it since I'm not a Bell."

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"...well, as far as I know there aren't any kinds of fairies who can read minds. Orders can get close but not - not quite that close."

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"I'm glad? Since you're more functional than Kib. Though he thought it was - protective, sort of - Boots is a therapist, she can help. If you wanted help."

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"How would she help?"

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"I don't know. Confidentiality. I know she helped lots of people. Including a Bell."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean in general how do therapists help, it sounds like probably not time travel so -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, subtle artists do things like making negative associations less salient and making nightmares go away and panic attacks and stuff?"

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"What happened to the Bell she helped?"

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"Melkor. I told you."

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"You didn't specify that it was Kib she helped."

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"It was Kib. Usually Bells don't need it because, Bells. There's a Bell who killed millions and millions of people but he doesn't need therapy about it, he just kind of has Loki run interference so other people aren't uncomfortable?"

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"...why'd he do that?"

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"Melkors. They really suck. ...I doubt your torture-dude is a Melkor alt but I should probably check, he'd love this place -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"How would you check."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can conjure for written works, unless he's never written anything, and then I could probably do it by 'artifacts created by' -"

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"So you don't have to go near him?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nope." Written works of Melkor and Sauron alts in Fairyland?

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N/A.

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"If they exist they've never written anything." Things created by same -

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Nothing.

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"So probably not. Which is good. ...I can move your guy from a hundred miles off, probably -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That wouldn't dismantle his court."

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"So how do we do that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you can't remove the vassalization system from fairies entire it will have to involve giving some orders or they'll just collapse back into a court again as soon as anything's disrupted, albeit maybe a nicer one if Thorn were out of the picture."

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"I can't, no. Once the peal finds us we can probably teleport everyone over to near Wish and wish it away but until then - we could just order everyone never to give anyone any orders?"

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"This collapses the instant someone vassalizes them and rescinds or excepts that."

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"Ugh. What works?'

Permalink Mark Unread

"Courts work - mostly, until someone like you shows up. Courts don't have to be miserable but they have to be secure and maintained."

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"I could move people who are ordered not to get any vassals or give any orders over to some other continent, so they won't be around anyone who'll rescind them?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You have personally participated in a voluntary vassalization to get unwanted orders rescinded. Recently."

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"Yes but if I had orders not to do that then I couldn't have done that, right?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If they were airtight. Are you going to vassalize everyone on the continent so they won't vassalize whoever you banish there?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was thinking of finding an empty one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"For everyone?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Everyone who thinks that sounds nicer than the current arrangement?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You want to individually interview and then place in solitary exile every fairy."

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"Do you have a better idea?"

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"...I need a clearer idea of what you can do - we can test the gates, I need geographical descriptions of where to aim."

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"I can send you mental images." Their city in Warp! A distinctive place on their planet in case the city doesn't count. "There are two hundred worlds but that'd be the one to start, if you can do it past adjacency -"

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"Doesn't work."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can't make a gate or you need more or different information -"

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"First thing, the picture ought to have done it."

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"Yeah, adjacency. It's okay."

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"I can try more."

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So he sends more!

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None of the worlds he can provide mental images about afford a gating.

"I could try from the mortal world but sorcery doesn't work there."

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"What's 'the mortal world' - is it adjacent -"

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"...I can gate to it. It's a world with mortals in, sometimes they come here or fairies go there but not often."

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"Humans?"

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"Yeah."

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"A human world'd be a good place to go, they're easier to help than fairies with my powers."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. There's already a gate there I can open not too far from where you got my tree. Faster than waiting for a new one to settle."

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"It's safe for us to go back there?"

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"I'll want to put my ears out but if we're invisible and inaudible and don't stay long it should be all right. It's pretty unlikely they'd expect me to come back now that my tree's been moved."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Now?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We're not in a hurry but now is as good a time as any."

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"Okay." Invisible inaudible. Should I go around deaf too -

Permalink Mark Unread

"You definitely didn't tell anyone your name?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I said 'Epic'. That doesn't count, right -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Doesn't count, everybody uses nicknames. ...I'm Promise. And are you sure you haven't eaten, been injected with, inhaled, or otherwise had introduced to your body any fairy substances?"

Permalink Mark Unread

...he can conjure for fairy substances that have been introduced into his body?

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Nothing! Assuming fairy substances are not magic!

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...he can conjure for fairy foods to check that.

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He can conjure Promise's haws.

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That's something. "I'm pretty sure I'm okay."

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"Then you don't have to go deaf but you might as well since you can heal yourself. Or I can."

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"...okay."

 

So they will go invisible and inaudible and deaf to near her tree.

Permalink Mark Unread

And she osanwës him directions to a gate, and they go through and then they're in the mortal world. Promise heals her ears shortly before going through the gate, since sorcery doesn't work there. Loki's spell holds up fine.

Permalink Mark Unread

And what is the local tech level?

Permalink Mark Unread

Looks very early 21st century Earth. They're up on a hill overlooking a small city.

Permalink Mark Unread

Do you know what to do here first?

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I've never been here before. The point of coming here is to see if it's adjacent to something.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah, checking - he runs through attempted teleports - but while we're here we could solve all their problems, probably. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Really?

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Humans - die of a lot of stuff? I have cures for most of it. And they have people who go hungry and stuff -

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh. That sounds good if you know how, I don't know hardly anything about the mortal world, I only made this portal for the mortal I found a long time ago.

Permalink Mark Unread

Not all humans are alike and not all human worlds have the same problems but this one looks pretty advanced and is plausibly advanced enough I can just teach them a lot of science and cure cancer and malaria and the like?

Permalink Mark Unread

Maybe you should check if it's adjacent to anywhere you know first.

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I'm checking. He's about halfway through.

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Promise waits.

Permalink Mark Unread

They are not adjacent to anywhere in the peal. Should we stay here and fix stuff while we think of better ways to fix your home world?

Permalink Mark Unread

...we can commute to my tree, right?

Permalink Mark Unread

Of course.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sounds good.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cool. Scale model of the world - oh, it's an Earth, that'll make it even easier - especially if it's a no-magic Earth -

Permalink Mark Unread

How does that help?

Permalink Mark Unread

I know, like, which countries have basically decent governments and which problems will need solving and stuff - also Earths often have Bells, let me check -

 

this Earth does not have a Bell -

 

- nope - none of us, either - but we can go put everything on the Internet if we don't want to be disruptive or go land a spaceship on the White House lawn if we want to be disruptive and basically expect people will put the knowledge to good use.

Permalink Mark Unread

I don't know what the Internet or spaceships or White House are.

Permalink Mark Unread

Internet is a way for everyone in the world to talk and put books and other things they know so everyone can access them. Spaceships fly through space between worlds; if we land in a spaceship the humans will assume we are aliens from another planet in their dimension and there are various social assumptions about what to do about aliens so they'd probably give us a parade and be excited to have our technology. The White House is the place where the economically biggest country on Earth houses their government. We can also bypass all the grownups and just do everything.

Permalink Mark Unread

...grownups?

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...people who've reached developmental maturity? Do fairies just start out grownup like new Arda species or something?

Permalink Mark Unread

Most kinds of fairies do. I know what a grownup is but I think I probably qualify as one and it seemed like a strange category to refer to there.

Permalink Mark Unread

Bypass governments, then.

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How do those work, anyway?

Permalink Mark Unread

Everyone decides who should be in charge and then those people get together and run things? Ardas are usually monarchies - that means you decide once and then that family's in charge forever - and Earths are mostly democracies - that means you decide again every few Earth years -

Permalink Mark Unread

Fairyland has a Queen but she's the Queen because she knows everyone's names.

Permalink Mark Unread

How does she do that?

Permalink Mark Unread

Every kind of fairy has some sort of magic. She's a one of a kind and that's hers. - It's only fairy names, not mortals.

Permalink Mark Unread

...good. What are all the kind magics, does anyone know -

Permalink Mark Unread

There's a lot, and some kinds are very rare even if they're not one-offs.

Permalink Mark Unread

Okay. Mortal world'll definitely be easier. Do stuff openly or no?

Permalink Mark Unread

I know less about it than you - have both been tried, what happened -

Permalink Mark Unread

Uh, if I'm guessing the time period right, Cam - that's a Bell - took his world's magic - which is demons, the kind I have - public and that was good except he got killed which we won't have to deal with, Butterfly went public about aliens and that went really well, Golden's taking it slow for humans, Gem announced everything but she had absurdly powerful magic already. Mitros and Iobel have been introducing tons of stuff and not explaining where exactly they got it, Warp's sort of doing the same. It's working okay everywhere but I don't know how they picked.

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Maybe they wrote it down.

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Yeah possibly - unless it's in the Bell-only stuff I can get it and you can read it?

Permalink Mark Unread

?

Permalink Mark Unread

There's Bell only stuff but most stuff isn't and so I can make it and then you could read what they wrote about it.

Permalink Mark Unread

I need more context than that, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Permalink Mark Unread

I can make the stuff that has been written about the multiverse? Because I can make arbitrary matter, and that counts. And then you could read it. And have more information.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sounds useful. Why can't you make some of it?

Permalink Mark Unread

We use a kind of computer that demons can't make, because we have lots of secrets from demons and also Bells just care about privacy. I can make mine, and I can take the content on it and put it in a format you can read, but anything that's not accessible to me - like, the Bells-only stuff - I can't give you. I don't know if there's important stuff there or not - might be that if people were complaining about my alts they wouldn't let me see it, it'd make me super sad -

Permalink Mark Unread

 

I don't know what a computer is. I'm not sure you understand the extent to which my life has consisted of living in a tree and then being tortured a lot but it really is mostly that and I don't know a lot of things you take for granted.

Permalink Mark Unread

He makes a piece of metal and plastic that is very shiny and about a foot long. This is a computer. It has all the written works of this world and fairyland on it. Very small. It lets you look at things.

Permalink Mark Unread

...how's it work?

Permalink Mark Unread

Now it has a screen! Do you mean 'how do you use it' or 'how would you build it' or 'what's the underlying principle' -

Permalink Mark Unread

...mostly the first thing.

Permalink Mark Unread

This one's chiplocked, since you're not human I'm not sure if it'd be safe for fairies, but I can get the information you want on paper if you don't want to get one?

Permalink Mark Unread

Unsafe how?

Permalink Mark Unread

You put a little chip in your brain to control it. If it goes in an essential place in your brain it could cause brain damage or something.

Permalink Mark Unread

Does your spell work on that?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah. If it doesn't kill you instantly or something.

Permalink Mark Unread

I'm not a mortal.

Permalink Mark Unread

Neither am I but we don't have a way of doing reembodiments handy either.

Permalink Mark Unread

I don't know what you're talking about.

Permalink Mark Unread

....uh, if you damage Elves too much their body stops working and you have to make them a new one. What happens if you damage fairies that badly?

Permalink Mark Unread

It's really unpleasant.

Permalink Mark Unread

But, like, what if you dropped a fairy in a black hole or something -

Permalink Mark Unread

I don't know what that is.

Permalink Mark Unread

...I wonder if they even work in your universe, what with gravity not existing. What if you completely destroyed a fairy's body so there was nothing left to heal.

Permalink Mark Unread

I don't know exactly, I've never been left on fire that long, but I wouldn't die.

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

Fairies are really really immortal.

Permalink Mark Unread

So are we but if whatever happens leaves you irretrievable that doesn't help much.

Permalink Mark Unread

I don't know what you mean by irretrievable.

Permalink Mark Unread

If you get disembodied like Elves or something.

Permalink Mark Unread

I don't think so. But my source of information is never having heard of that happening and the vague common knowledge I started with.

Permalink Mark Unread

A chip is probably safe, though.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah.

Permalink Mark Unread

Chip - 

- computer - 

 

you have to train it to respond to your thoughts, takes a couple minutes...

Permalink Mark Unread

So she does that.

Takes longer than usual around the text input parts.

Permalink Mark Unread

Because of her stupid ridiculous translation magic. He waits very patiently (bounce bounce.)

Permalink Mark Unread

 

She and this computer's concept of text may have irreconcilable differences.

Permalink Mark Unread

That's kind of hilarious. He'll just make the standard 'welcome to the multiverse' writeup on paper.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's perfectly navigable that way.

Permalink Mark Unread

Her translation magic is so silly. He will bounce around while she reads about the multiverse.

Permalink Mark Unread

It is interesting and lengthy reading.

Permalink Mark Unread

It really is!!