That's... strange. Iovetra tilts her head a little, confused about... how she can sort of understand this woman, in what is clearly a weird magic way? The magic here is so weird. It's fascinating, but doing such - unexpected things.

Anyway, she's not going to interrupt Kitten's explanation. She'll just uh. Be here. Not burning to death in the sunlight, but being pretty blinded by it.

Eventually, Kit mentions — well, acts out — Iovetra (point with tail!) as a rat (squished up, feet very close to body, long tail, scurrying).

She can, can she? Back all those years ago, when Numair was a hawk...

Point to Iovetra, point to Kit's (not incredible) rat impression. "You can that?"

"Oh. Yes. I - will it help your strange translation effect if I were a rat? I suppose that makes sense. Okay, one moment, I need to make sure I'm not going to lose the necklace in the shift first..."

Pardon her, she's just going to draw blood via application of a finger to one of her fangs, she's got a blood binding to make on the necklace.

Seems like an entirely normal way to magically connect to an object. She's most likely not going to make the necklace suddenly think like a human. Daine has no room to object.

Iovetra has no idea that is even in the space of possible things that can happen! She's just going to carefully draw on the necklace in her own blood, and murmur, "This is mine, as my fingers are mine, as my bones are mine, while it is with me, it is part of me," as she wills the essence of the blood into the necklace itself. It disappears, and Iovetra looks satisfied with this result.

Then she takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and gets to shifting.

Vampires are shapeshifters, but they have to work at acquiring new forms. It's not as simple as just eating a couple, or a couple dozen, instances of that creature, and then poof, they can turn into a rat, or a wolf, or a bird, or whatever they want to be. They have to understand the creature, how it thinks, how it lives, what it wants, and have to be able to see themselves as if they were that creature. They have to feel, viscerally in their soul, that it would be good to be that creature, that it is a natural extension of their self, a normal way for them to be. Something they want to be, sincerely and without self deception.

She likes rats. They're clean, and sweet, and caring, and remarkably social, if sometimes shy with strangers, which makes perfect sense to Iovetra, really. They form strong bonds with others in their colonies; rats should not be kept alone. They're inquisitive, curious, and playful, and make the most adorable little nests, and they have such an incredible will to live, a will to figure things out, a will to try and understand how they can survive in this new place, and what's going on, and what they can do with it, and it's not, actually, hard to get into the headspace of wanting to be like that. She is in a strange place, with strange people, and it's all a lot and she feels very small and out of her depth, but she can have soft whiskers and a sharp nose and the stubbornness to nibble her way through anything that might get in her way, and really, that would be pretty great to be, wouldn't it?

The humans present might be able to see, the subtle building of magic present before the comparatively fast shift. It's not quite wild, but it's... also not quite unwild, either.

Anyway, now Iovetra is a little red rat. With glowing teal eyes.

She gives a little 'All done,' squeak, on general principle. Look, they're dealing with strange magic, it seems smart to announce when Magic Thing Done.

That looks like how changing works. It's right similar to her own changing. If she wants to do this right, it'll be best with a good starting point...

The woman collapses down into a rat as well.

Hello! What are you? For sure you're something new, and if the gods are letting immortals out of the Realms of the Gods again we need to plan for it.

Gods: apparently exist, and apparently... aren't that threatening? The sense Iovetra gets of gods is that they're powerful but not so powerful she wouldn't go yell at them if they deserved it.

Immortals: things that think in human ways but aren't human! Almost always only die if they are killed, with no fear of age and only becoming hungry and thirsty to a point.

The Realms of the Gods: where gods and immortals are supposed to be.

Hello! I'm a vampire. I - don't think I'm from the Realms of the Gods in particular? she 'replies,' followed by a general squeak of being impressed that this method of communicating has such a high bandwidth.

She is in fact a little surprised that gods... exist. The closest concept she has to a god is someone called the Immortal King, who figured out how to turn humans into vampires and then proceeded to conquer and rule the world with them, but Iovetra doesn't think he's a god, exactly. Just the sort of very powerful person that Iovetra kind of does not ever want to get the attention of. (But wants to bite anyway. He deserves it.)

Immortals: yeah, sounds like she's one of those? Though she does think she could die of thirst-in-particular. And sunlight. But she's not going to age or grow ill or anything, so those parts check out. Her castle also sounds similar, though it will definitely starve to death if it's not fed, so maybe not. (There's an aching pain of loss, there, but the vampire doesn't linger on it.)

Iovetra is pretty sure she wasn't living in any Realms of the Gods. It had humans in it, before she went into hibernation, and after she awoke, it had signs of humanity having existed and been around, and there weren't only immortals around. She kind of suspects, knowing what she knows about The Immortal (asshole) King, that, if he fits in this cosmology, he stole this knowledge from these gods, and ran off to conquer the world with it. It sounds like something he'd do, and she is - vaguely aware that he had some kind of connection to some other realm. She doesn't know the specifics, on account of how she's never met him.

Well it wouldn't be very useful if she had to explain every bit with words, would it. The People don't know two-legger words anyway. Showing them ideas is the only way to do anything much.

A different place? Do you know Chaos? And she passes along what she understands of Chaos more deliberately. Chaos: a strange realm which she has never been to, but which should be sealed off quite strictly. Contains such things which don't work right — the Skinners, rippling bipedal masses of exposed muscle which tear the flesh from anything they touch and wear it themselves for a moment, leaving the flayed corpse behind, are what she thinks of here — and ruled by Uusoae, an amalgam of shifting mismatched pieces of beings called the Queen of Chaos. And currently bound in a cage of dead matter and starfire. If Iovetra is from there, either this will be enough to recognize it or it won't, but Daine is happy to never have been there and has no plans to go.

Oh, Iovetra sees the value, just. This magic is very neat, and it's doing stuff she wouldn't expect. It's a delightful surprise, and don't think she's complaining.

No. Chaos doesn't sound anything like where I've come from, and I don't know anything about a Queen of Chaos. Which sounds like it's a really good thing for all involved? Hooray, Chaos is contained, as far as Iovetra's knowledge implies? (Though, if the Immortal King made a bargain with this Queen, that also sounds plausible. Iovetra herself will be furious and, as mentioned, would bite him. This is just clearly not a being you want to make deals with!)

I suppose that means we don't need to prepare for another war. Do you know how you got here? Most of the immortals came through when mages on this side called 'em, but I don't think anyone called you out there in the middle of the desert.

Unless the Graveyard Hag did. Iovetra does smell like death but move like she's alive, and she does take the form of a rat. The Hag did want other things for humans to be afraid of, and vampires seem like a good choice.

My castle was banished from where it was. I'm not sure how, or why it landed here in particular.

She could have not followed her castle here, let it be abandoned in whatever place it has been dumped in. She would have been okay. But, you see, she could also decide to chew off one of her own limbs at any time, and that is both more appealing and more likely.

Graveyard Hag? Is that what Kitten was asking me about, earlier? The dragon seemed to think she might be the Graveyard Hag, which. No. Absolutely not. And in fact Iovetra kind of want to go apologize to the Hag for even accidentally masquerading as her, on general principle.

Yes. The Graveyard Hag is the patron of Carthak, hyenas, and rats, and she's the only god who can pull things back from the Peaceful Realms. You feel like her, and the wanderers who saw you feeding the hyenas thought you were the Hag herself. We came here with the dried flowers because Kaddar wanted to make an offering just in case. She likes him, but it doesn't do to rely on that with gods.

Peaceful Realms: Where souls go when they die. Mostly.

Vardoran certainly isn't peaceful, so she doesn't think she's from there, either.

The Graveyard Hag likes flowers? Iovetra will remember this, and - mourning lilies, she should make sure mourning lilies grow for her. They're a type of flower that grows, typically in graveyards. They're said to be what's left when a soul gives up what kept them tethered to the world, and moved on somewhere better. The Peaceful Realms, maybe.

Anyway, she fed the hyenas because they liked her. Most animals don't.

And the hyenas liked her because she would feed them, be mistaken for the Graveyard Hag, and send off rumors of the Hag intervening personally! Rumors which would reach Kaddar's ears, and she couldn't see what would happen then but it wasn't that much of a surprise all in all. Convenient how well that worked out isn't it.

Iovetra is still the sort of person who feels bad about accidentally masquerading as someone she doesn't know, who seems to have been perfectly nice to her. Therefore: Graveyard Hag is getting some flowers. She just needs to figure out.... where to put them... Maybe she can ask the hyenas.

And look, a little bit of extra prayer, with a new and unique flavor to it! Everyone comes away happy. 

Kit said something about you wanting to travel, but you can probably explain better than she can. What were you looking to do?

Ah, okay, so - neither I nor my castle like our current location.

Respectively: she is a vampire in a desert, a dangerous proposition that could have her burst into flames at the slightest prompting, and she deals in plants besides. It has been kind of an uphill battle just to keep her garden alive. Her castle could in theory handle this change better than she can, but it's started associating the desert with being put somewhere it didn't want to go, lacking a strong foundation and cover from sight, and more recently, being poked by people. It also wants her to be happy, and can tell that she is dissatisfied with the current living situation.

I think I can move my castle somewhere else with a bit of preparation, and being on the other side of the relocation. So I'd like to do that, and stop being a walking fire hazard with no cover. But she does think travelling in their giant caravan during the day, for an extended period of time like Kitten seems to want, is a bad idea and probably not happening. She has a castle to feed, absolutely refuses to neglect it by leaving it entirely alone, and currently has some other time sensitive responsibilities to attend to.

(She feels it would be a betrayal of the time sensitive responsibilities to clarify this further, considering the circumstances surrounding it. Rest assured, it is not hurting any humans (quite the opposite). While it has meant she's needed to hunt more often, she has been careful to both not overhunt in a specific area, and not causing undue suffering in those she predates.)

So instead, she'd like directions to a better place that no one would have a problem with her putting a castle in and living at peacefully. Travelling at human caravan speed (and almost entirely during the day, in the desert) seems like an inefficient and frankly uncomfortable way to accomplish this; she will be significantly faster on her own, with directions and a letter of recommendation or something.

How far are you thinking? It's a ways to the closest jungle or prairie. If mountains will do, there should be some about one or two hundred miles that way. Iovetra will recognize this from past  experience as the mountains she's been visiting. The north of Carthak isn't much full of space where a castle would fit, not if you don't want more desert. More north is Tortall if you cross the Narrow Sea. That means a ship, are you fine with ships? South five hundred miles at least before you reach the big cat ranges.

I think I want somewhere colder and greener in the long term, but I might test moving my castle to the mountains before I go further afield. Colder and greener would be more north, correct?

Both colder and greener would be the north of Tortall. If you just want green, the Copper Isles aren't much for friendly but there's space, or you can go south and out of the desert.

Numair has reached the platform at this point, and one of the other humans is trying one of the test opals with that same sort of magical fire, this time a deep red. They look surprised in a happy way — it's probably working.

I think I'd prefer friendly over not. And cold over not - vampires aren't hurt by cold at all, but heat can be a bit dangerous, or lead to dangerous situations in the future. Though she might want to make a trip south to go looking for neat tropical plants. Probably she should do that before she relocates out of the area.

I don't expect being on a ship to be unpleasant for me, as long as they don't mind me staying below deck during the day. If it's a long voyage I would need to figure out feeding solutions? But that is a solvable problem as long as I have accurate time estimates for sea voyages. Of course, she could also just. Feed from the crew. Which would remove the entire necessity of storing blood for drinking later, or diving off the ship to go hunting things in the water. But she doesn't want to do that, thank you, even if she would obviously leave them alive and have permission first.

Daine can feel the unease with the idea of feeding on humans, even though she. Would be really surprisingly adept at making it safe, actually.