That is how a modest castle, barely larger than a particularly nice house, covered in green vines with red roses, arrives in another world.

Follow shortly by its mistress, who arrives in her coffin in a burst of smoke, rises to the heart chamber of her home to consult the living castle itself for specifics of what happened, then says, to no one in particular:

"... Well that was very rude!!"

The castle, and incidentally its mistress, find themselves in rather the opposite of their prior residence. Where it was a forest, here there is almost no greenery in sight. Where it was cool and dark and gloomy, here the sun pounds down harsh and relentless. Where it was full of creatures hungry, angry, and otherwise highly interested in ensuring at most one of they and she would survive and encounter, here the only visibly moving things within ten miles are grains of sand blown in the wind.

In short, she finds herself in the middle of a desert in midday. About how far can she see?

In the middle of the day? In a desert?? In these conditions, her visual range is less than a human's, not that she personally has any kind of feel for what that is anymore; it's all bright burning light and yellow glare, even through her tinted windows.

... She's going to go tell her castle to put up some kind of shade over the garden, this kind of heat and sun is not going to be good for anything in it. She'll need to prioritize getting some kind of water reserves, as well, because it's not like she kept particularly large ones, what with living next to a swamp.

The sun does not object to her castle's shade.

There is an oasis slightly over ten miles that way, if she has some way to detect it. There are no other water sources nearby.

Yeah, no, she's got no idea of what the outside world is like besides 'desert' and 'full of sunlight that will literally burn her to ashes.' This vampire is staying indoors until it's a more reasonable hour, and then she will be properly investigating the local area. Until then, she'll. Just kind of hang out in her castle. Maybe fret a bit about the status of her roses; the poor things are going to suffer so much in this heat...

The heat is relentless!

...Until eventually it is not. She seems to have arrived in the middle of the afternoon, or otherwise only four or so hours from dusk. The dunes begin to cast shadows, and from the shadows emerge some squirming and scuttling creatures desperate enough for a meal to risk the remaining heat. The shadows lengthen, and a pack of hyenas cross slowly into view. If she can track them, they point the way to the nearby oasis. Longer and longer they grow, gradually and then the sun sinks beneath the horizon and they rapidly cover all there is to see. The temperature plummets from its previous heights down to... not cold enough to freeze water, but it might feel that way from sheer contrast. The desert at night is no less perilous than the day to a human.

Of course, she is no human.

She really isn't. Once she's free of the danger of the sun, there is nothing stopping her from going out to explore. The cold isn't even mildly uncomfortable, though it does incite another round of fretting about the state of her garden. She's going to have to move so many plants inside, or possibly just - encase the whole garden. Probably in glass - it's not like she's going to be hurting for sand for the glass, not here...

The hyenas are promising, and she stalks them (just a little) to get a feel for where their territory is, and where the prey and resources they rely upon are. She's not particularly thirsty, and these hyena seem more... sane and normal than the maddened animals she's used to. She doesn't need to kill any of them, so she doesn't. They have a perfectly polite and nonthreatening vampiric stalker, smelling of flowers and chemicals and the chill of death, eyes glowing unnaturally in the dark. Not that they'll realize she's there until it's too late, but, you know, for when they smell that they'd been stalked later.

She locates the oasis, sets up a beacon so she can easily find it again, and is accordingly perfectly content to spend the rest of the night on logistics of dealing with her unwanted relocation. She digs up half a dune, then feeds it to her castle to glass production, has it make a large container to hold water in, before having it get to glass panels to encase her garden. This complete, her time until dawn will (ideally) be spent laboriously carrying stores of water back to her castle. Ten miles, both ways, one half carrying large stores of water, is a little boring, but perfectly doable. She can always find her way home, and with the beacon set up, locating the oasis is similarly straightforward.

The 'beacon,' as she calls it, looks like a simple torch, and burns almost like one, too. The fire it burns is an eerie shade of teal, faint and flickering in the night, but to someone with an eye for magic, is very obvious indeed. Not destructive, or alarming, just obvious and easy to track.

There are other people around the oasis! The desert is not densely populated, but water sources are rare and important and they do not go unused. Ten or fifteen humans rest here overnight, their tents woven to retain what residual daytime heat they can. None of them are looking out for a vampire sneaking up on them, but one is tending a fire. The hyenas seem to have settled down nearby, the humans staying a healthy distance off but not visibly trying to drive them off or anything.

.... oh no. Humans. On one hand: she's glad there are some around, being alive and living what are probably happy little human lives, she was starting to get worried that they'd all died off. Good for them, being alive, and probably not even enslaved by vampires as blood cattle. On the other hand: oh no, humans, they will probably want to set her on fire for being a vampire. How reasonable of them. She'll have to avoid them, and maybe try to figure out how to hide her castle. Or possibly move it, moving it sounds better and more likely to get her to a location that is not actively unfriendly to her plants.

Unfortunately, the humans are inconveniently sitting on the stores of water, and she needs some. Fortunately, that human seems to have absolutely ruined their night vision by staring at a fire, so she's really not going to be all that noticeable as she sets up her beacon out of sight (read: behind a rock) and then gets to gathering water.

Just one trip for the water, then. And she'll try to cover her tracks a bit and make it not look incredibly obvious that some strange woman with super strength showed up in the middle of the night, and carried an inhuman amount of water off without any kind of assistance. Much as that is.... admittedly hard to disguise, considering. Sorry, humans, please don't freak out and try to burn her for this, she just wants to make sure her garden doesn't die.

The humans aren't the first to notice her! The first change she hears is in the hyenas. One of them sniffs at the air, then... sniffs some more... sneezes... and it wakes from its drowsy napping. Its fellows are not long in following suit.

How would Iovetra like a pack of hyenas nosing around her curiously? It doesn't matter! She's getting one anyway.

Bemused?? She is bemused. In her experience, animals want to avoid her when they realize she's there. Having them realize she's there and then not either fleeing for their lives, or trying to kill her immediately is... novel. It's novel.

She is accordingly distracted from gathering water in favor of looking at them curiously. They're not going to do something stupid, like try to hunt her, are they? They're just curious?

At first they nose at her as if... expecting... something? It is not entirely clear what they think is going to happen here but they certainly seem to think something will happen.

...... do. do the hyenas want pets???

She can provide them scritches if they want????????

Pets are good! Yay pets from the smelly death lady. And treats? Are there treats to be had?

Um. She doesn't have any of those, sorry. Just pets. They're pretty good pets, though, she has long nails and knows to scritch behind the ears and everything.

(She thinks the last time she pet a living animal was when she kept rats, from before her long slumber? It took several generations of rat to get them to stop fleeing in terror from her...)

Sad hyenas.

One of the later-arriving members of the pack sniffs her harder and cuffs the sneezing one. It yelps, and she snarls something back. ...there was definitely some communication there, possibly more than Iovetra expects to see between hyenas. 

(She should try the rats here.)

Eep??? Iovetra doesn't flinch teleport away, but it's a near thing. As it is, she just jumps a little. Violence still seems to not be happening, but there's always time, and it's what she's used to.

"... Sorry, I didn't mean to offend??" she murmurs, in a language native to another world. Humans?? What humans, clearly hyenas take priority right now. Followed by her garden, which she still needs to fetch water for.

Humans!

Specifically, the human on fire duty. He hears the hyenas shifting and scuffling, and looks up to see—

A woman with the intangible aura of death stands on the other side of the lake, hyenas resting at her feet. She scratches them and they look up at her, tongues lolling out, panting happily. She shakes her head and they bat at each other. A new one trots up to her immediate presence. 

His face turns ashen-pale, as much as that's visible in the firelight. He suddenly smells of a strange mix of awe and terror. He stumbles as he walks over, kneels, and says... 

Something.

Ack. She's been spotted. Stealth is so hard in a desert environment, even if the animals are much more friendly. Time to take her water and go, then.

"It was lovely meeting you, I'll try to bring treats if I return later. Thank you for helping me find the oasis."

She hefts her water container (not fully filled, but it'll have to do) and then turns to leave.

The human continues to look terrified! A few other humans will crawl out of their tents, apparently awoken by something, and see her before she goes. Nobody will prevent her from departing.

She is so bad at being stealthy in a desert. It's the lack of trees to hide behind. She was spoiled by the forest she lived in, clearly. Also, easily distracted by cute animals that for some reason don't hate her. Terrible. She'll probably be set on fire for her choices, including, but not limited to, 'following her castle to a strange world so that it wouldn't be abandoned.'

Iovetra doesn't regret them, exactly, just. She's aware they'll probably get her killed.

Anyway. Can the rest of her night be spent with garden saving logistics? Please? Pretty please?? Nothing weird happening, no mobs with torches and pitchforks?

Nothing weird happens! Any mobs with torches and pitchforks would have a hard time with the cold anyway, but none are evident within the remaining hours of the night.

Good, good. Then by morning, she has encased her garden in glass to make a greenhouse, and hopefully her plants haven't been too badly hurt by the heat, and then cold, snap. Not to mention the complete lack of humidity! She'll need to mist the mourning lilies in particular down, they do not like these kinds of conditions...

Her day will be spent cowering from the sun inside. She misses having trees she could hide under. ... Thought, while she's here, and without anything in particular to do, she can maybe see if she can figure out how to make treats a hyena might like. She has some spare bones lying around, they would probably like the marrow, especially if she adds something from her next meal. Though if she's going that route, she maybe should just make jerky or something, it's not like it would be difficult to cure in these conditions.

At the very least, she is capable of amusing herself until nightfall returns.

If she watches the desert during the day, she may notice the humans walking on from the oasis, in the direction from which she departed it. She may notice them observing her castle from a distance. She may notice them exclaiming over it, whispering quietly to each other, their voices getting louder as they gesture evocatively. She may notice one of them leading the group onwards, being sure to leave the castle a respectful distance. She may notice the hyena pack eventually trot along much closer to the castle, breathing in a way even more like laughter than typical.

Or she may notice none of this. The sun continues upon its path. In time, the shadows once more lengthen and darken, the wildlife of the desert once more comes out as the water-stealing heat diminishes, the temperature once more drops, and at last the final rays of sunlight once more fade until the next day.

She notices none of this. Daytime is even more unpleasant for a vampire than it usually is in these conditions, and mostly what she sees if she looks out is burning yellow and lots of sand. So she doesn't really do that. Instead, she's amusing herself inside, figuring out if she can synthesize hyena treats from her current stockpiles, and intermittently checking on her garden to make sure everything inside is still alive. (It is. The mourning lilies are in fact complaining, but the fireblossoms have apparently had a fantastic time, and might need to sometimes get put outside in the desert to soak up ambient heat for their enrichment.)

The next night she'll go hunting, though. Not the humans, obviously, she has yet to taste human blood and sees no reason to stop now. Also not the hyenas, she now feels affection for them, some other desert creature. Are there any edible animals that contain a reasonable amount of blood available? She could theoretically live off of eating a bunch of tiny rodents or something, but she'd really rather her meals minimize the amount of casual killing she commits.

Most animals around here are small. The lack of water and constant heat pushes in that direction. Most, however, is not all. Iovetra will first sense a caravan, which presumably contains some animals as well as humans. Does she wish to stop there or would she rather keep looking?

She'll keep looking, she's not going after caravan animals. That's the sort of thing that will earn her torches and pitchforks, she's pretty sure. Though, at this point, the time investment for searching for her meal is adding up to 'not worth it.' She's not one of the animal eating vampires that has ever felt much urge to track down and drain a large and mighty beast, laden with the power and knowledge of age and experience to make their blood more delicious. She's more of an opportunist, and a bit lazy about her meals, besides. As such, she'll instead give this up as a bad job, in favor of ripping rodents and the like out of their burrows. Lone ones, preferably, she feels weird about killing off entire families of desert creature.

Draining creatures of their blood also imparts the vampire with some knowledge from the victim - what sorts of things do the creatures of this desert know?

She will spot some ostriches nearby as she goes about her rodent consumption. If she wants something larger, they do exist.

The rodents here know a surprising amount! Their thoughts are certainly clearer than she would expect from a rodent. Each one has an impressively organized map of the area (especially water sources, food, predator ranges, and other helpful rodents), and an extensive list of other rodents by name, a few distinguishing traits, and time since they were last heard from. (These eventually drift off to probably dead.) Each has a sense of time until the sun rises, and a finely tuned feel for not just whether it is thirsty — they are all thirsty, always — but exactly how thirsty it is. She also may acquire various memories of important moments: a near-death brush with an owl, a hyena nipping off a tail, a desperate escape from a running ostrich. Is there anything in particular she wants to know?

... Interesting. She doesn't remember animals being this - rich. It's strange. Admittedly, it's been a while since she's had animals that aren't driven mad by ambient cursed magic, but. Still. She doesn't think the animals were this... this where she came from.

Iovetra's not sure how she feels about it. Having feelings is hard. Mostly what she's thinking is what it's like to be on the other side of this - it's survivable, if the vampire is careful, and dealing with something with a lot more body mass. Pulling this off with rodents is difficult, and would take a bloodletting setup more complicated than teeth.

She doesn't want to know anything in particular, though. Or, to be more specific, doesn't want to learn anything more by this method of knowledge acquisition. ... She'll maybe try to keep track of the rodents in the area that were/are considered non-helpful and or assholes, though, as stated by the rodents she's already eaten. But. No further (stolen) knowledge, thank you. Maybe next time she'll go for some ostriches. For now, she returns with the bodies of her kills to her lair, to neatly channel leftover life essence to feed her castle, and prepare the rodents to become hyena treats. Then, she's free to do whatever else she likes.

There was a caravan, wasn't there? Where is this caravan going? Can she slip ahead of them and find instances of human civilization before sunrise?

There are some rodents remembered as vaguely annoying, as thieves, or as prone to provoking predators and getting anyone nearby eaten. Sometimes the lists even overlap! She will not encounter any rodents remembered as liars or untrustworthy; whether she finds this unusual or only to be expected among rodents is up to her.

There was indeed a caravan! If she tries to guess where it was going... about how far can she travel before turning around to get back to her castle? The caravan does not seem to expect to reach civilization today, but she can move much faster.

As long as she's not carrying anything important, she can just wander freely until sunrise. Her clothes and her crossbow are bound to follow her when she returns to her coffin, so she will be cheating to get home, just as she cheated to follow where her castle got banished.

That will certainly help. It takes her somewhere between five days and a week of normal human travel speed to reach a more static village. This seems to be built along a narrow but fast-flowing river. The sand fades to more fertile ground nearby, and then shades into stone outcroppings and heights. She might find a true mountain range if she continued far enough.

There's nothing stopping a vampire from running at full speed for literal hours, so. She does that, and makes it to the village just before sunrise. ... Hm. Is there a good place to camp out from the sun and people watch? Where she's unlikely to be spotted. It'll mean braving the sunlight, and her vision's going to be a bit shit, but, well. She's very curious, and wants to make sure the humans are okay, and hopefully not horribly enslaved.

The hills have nooks and crannies ranging from just large enough for a toe to caves large enough for a human to live and sleep in. She can find somewhere without trouble, as long as looking out over the village from above works for her. If she wants somewhere closer by... she could try crouching in the crops the village is growing? Those provide some cover.

She'll take the spot above; hiding in crops sounds like a recipe for catching herself, and more importantly their food supply, on fire. Humans starve if they have nothing to eat, after all. Being on fire is a solvable problem for her, she's got a coffin to retreat to.

Her hearing will probably be better than her sight, during the day, at least in the desert. But she can watch a bit, before the sun gets too bright. She'll just kind of hang out, and listen to how the humans are doing. Are they doing okay?

The sun eventually rises, and the humans with it. She watches as they go about their day...

It's hard work. Farming is not an easy endeavor, and if the fertile soil and available water of the river mitigate that, the pounding sun and endless thirst of the nearby desert push back the other way. The fields must be tended, the animals kept in check, the children cared for, the flax spun into thread and woven to cloth, the food prepared, and of course water must constantly be fetched from the river. Iovetra sees nobody stationary with nothing to do. Some people rest between tasks, some set down their work to stop and talk, but everyone she sees is clearly doing something. (Of course, if they weren't, perhaps they would not be outside in the draining desert heat.)

For all that, there are no obvious signs of terror. There might be some fighting, some quarrels and disagreements, some grudges kept alive beyond any hint of use, but the people don't seem cowed or unwillingly forced into their work. She can't actually... understand anything they say... but the collective tone and mood seems that of peasants making their way without too much difficulty. If she listens closely and has some way to get general emotional tones, she might even detect that this year seems better than last, and perhaps that they expect the next year to be better still.

Awww. That's good. She's glad. Maybe she can figure out ways to help them out in their lives - she's pretty sure she can make some kind of fertilizer, something to help their plants grow. She has some magic going spare, and a lot of practice with plants in particular.

She is content to watch and listen, while they go about their day. Her castle will inform her if she has a visitor trying to get in, or something. For now, it's just. Kind of nice to see humans doing normal human things. Or, well, mostly listen, the bright and burning sun is still handicapping her ability to see properly by quite a lot.

Nothing prompts her castle to notify her. Eventually the sun falls low and the villagers begin to return to their warm houses, eat, and get to sleep. The moon is perhaps half-full, and Iovetra might be able to detect a few boys still outside by the light of the moon, but it gets dark enough that human vision should be unable to spot her from a distance.

She'll leave the little humans be, in favor of sneakily investigating their fields. What crops are they growing, how well are they doing, any strange diseases or nutrient deficiencies they're having?

Grain seems to be the main food crop, alongside flax for both fiber and consumption, but there are a variety of other crops for field rotation and other purposes. They keep many chickens, along with a few lambs (for wool or meat, presumably?) and goats mainly for milk. There are almost certainly some nutrient deficiencies in their rather constrained diet, if Iovetra has ways to determine what exactly they are lacking. The crops seem mostly healthy. One of the goats smells slightly off — perhaps it is sick.

Interesting trivia! Iovetra's primary 'job,' when she had one of those from her once master, was care for his humans. Admittedly, those were mostly the blood cattle he kept in his dungeon, but regardless, the skillset does carry over. Diet mainly of grains, with some dairy and protein via eggs. Most likely nutrient deficiency is iron, she thinks, but she'd have to creep into their bedrooms at night to sniff at their life essence to say for sure. Which: pass. Little bit too risky, for her tastes. She notes how the crops are doing, and comes up with a short list of tonics to sneakily sprinkle their crops with to help improve their health and output. And maybe help with their iron intake a bit.

The goat...

Hmmmmm. Hmmmm. On one hand: she bets she can help a sick goat. On the other hand: the goat will probably freak out at having a vampire show up to investigate it, hyenas liking her for some reason or not. She can instead peek at it from afar. Does it look like it's pregnant, which would explain why it smells off, or is it still unclear what's going on with it?

The goat does not seem visibly pregnant.

HMMMMMM.

Yeah, okay, she can't resist.

She'll wait until the goat and its neighbors are asleep, and then sneak in to creepily sniff it. What's up with its health, inquiring vampires with a magical sense for the particulars of living, blooded things (that they could then eat) want to know.

This goat's pen is locked, but she will not have much trouble working around it. This goat is ill. Its neighbors were not obviously so from afar, but from closer up they do appear to have the beginnings of a fever. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have spread past this pen.

Ah! Okay! This is a solvable problem. She does admittedly need her castle's resources to solve it, and this will mean running all the way back here with the - probably it'll need to be a tonic, to slip into the goat's water or food. Direct administration would be better, but she's slightly handicapped by being a vampire, and thus anathema to animals. (Animals that are not hyenas, or rats that have been systematically bred for friendliness to the undead.)

She finishes her circuit of the area, to make sure she's not missing anything that might be threatening the health and happiness of the human denizens. Mostly just the nutritional deficiency and the goat? Does she have that right?

Some of the humans continue to toss rocks outside, and she overhears an argument. There might be a pregnant human in the village? There are many people here, she can't be entirely certain.

She absolutely wants to investigate the pregnant human to make sure she is okay, pregnancy is a very dangerous time, for both mother and child. She's worried for them both. ... Now that it's presented in front of her to jog her latent and suppressed memories, she thinks she might've done something related to this when she was alive? She vaguely remembers assisting with several births, and in particular is wondering how far along the pregnancy is, and if they're dealing with a likely breach birth or not. ... One of the ones she helped with was one of those, she thinks, and it seems like it went badly, because she does not want it to happen again, with an intensity that is somewhat surprising to her.

But, she is a vampire, and probably vampires would not be accepted as midwives. It's - fine. She can do other things. It's nice to have remembered literally anything about her life before - before. This is good. Hurting a little from the loss of something is better than feeling nothing at all.

On that cheerful note, she returns home. She has a tonic for a sick goat to make, and fertilizer, and maybe nutritional supplements if she can think of a clever way to get them into the humans without their realizing. Her day will be very busy, as she prepares for the next night. And with the heat of the sun and the day of being left alone, the jerky for the hyenas might be ready.

The first few days set the tone for the next several weeks. The hyenas come back to the oasis, and collect their due of scritches and treats. Nomadic desert inhabitants and caravans are the only things to come anywhere near Iovetra's castle. She most often encounters them at the oasis, but about a month after her arrival she spots a caravan traveling towards the oasis and running low on water. They... might have enough water for someone to reach the oasis and fetch more for the rest, but it wouldn't be guaranteed.

The villagers are relieved by the sickness clearing up, and the nighttime wanderers might have been guarding as much as they were playing? They mostly stop stalking out the village overnight once that's finished. This is more relevant two weeks in, when the moon is full might provide enough light for even human eyes to see her from a distance. That night, the pregnant woman goes into labor. If Iovetra has any way to detect this, she will find that the new mother is giving birth in what appears to be a maze of twisting passages within the mountains. It's impressively echoey and the airflow is confusing — her senses will have a hard time finding a way through the place.

It's nice here, even with the lack of foliage or shelter from the burning sun in the day, and the blinding desert sand everywhere. She wishes her castle were put somewhere a bit greener, but it's admittedly nice not having to deal with a constantly hostile environment all the time. The roses growing on the side of her castle wilt a bit, before she figures out feeding them a complicated sun-resistant alchemical mixture that lets them avoid withering away entirely. She really, really cannot disguise her castle in its current location, and at this point, she'd rather preserve the things she likes about it while maybe figuring out how to move it somewhere that is a bit more suited towards greenery.

She gets a feel for how the caravans function over time, and how much water they need for their travels (carefully observed so that she doesn't take too much from the nearby oasis, and thereby screw over anyone and everyone else that might need the water contained therein) and - yeah, that one is traveling kind of light. When she sneaks close, she can smell their worry and fear, and doesn't like it. So, clearly, the thing to do is assist. This caravan gets a large (tinted) glass container filled with water, placed directly in front of their camp, with only enough stealth to conceal that she's the one who put it there in the middle of the night. This will be inexplicable for them, but she suspects that her castle has already been spotted, what with how there is literally zero cover for miles around, so. She might as well be inexplicably nice, and hope that this maybe avoids trouble in the future. ... Also, mostly, she doesn't want them to die.

The pregnant woman giving birth in a maze of twisting passages is. Why. Why would you do that. Is she alone there, is it just her??? By herself??? In the middle of a maze in the mountains?????

The caravan successfully reaches the oasis! Any further consequences of her actions will go undetected by Iovetra, occurring as they are ten miles away from her in full sunlight.

The mother definitely seems to be alone. As for why she is doing this, well, perhaps Iovetra could ask if she knew the local language. And where said expectant mother is. Unfortunately, she currently knows neither.

mrhmrhmrhhhhhhhh Iovetra does not like this, it is bad and dangerous, fuck it, if she burns in the sunlight trying to find this woman, she burns in the sunlight, where is the mother exactly, and is she okay.

Is Iovetra:

- A mother?

- Soon to be a mother?

- A dragon, or otherwise capable of sensing and manipulating arbitrary active spells?

In order:

- No.

- Definitely not.

- Not really, not of this type. Vampires specialize in life (and death) based magic, not arbitrary wards over a location. She can tell the direction of the life she's looking for, and can - sort of reach towards her, almost get close to her, in her brief period of being immaterial when she teleports - but then it's not close enough, and the minute she has a physical form again, she's snapped back. Even if she tries very hard (and she does), she does not manage to make it closer.

This finally proven to her, she hisses in frustration, stomps her foot, and declares angrily to the world, "I would just like to help her give birth safely."

This is not likely to get her past the magic barrier that is clearly up, but. Well. Neither did just trying to go there.

This place has not shifted in a thousand years, and will not for a thousand more. In all that time its caster has not woken. It cannot hear her pleas, nor would it listen if it could. These caves, it said silently, are sanctuary for those who wish to rest undisturbed. You, you who come seeking a mother who wishes to stay secret, you are not welcome here. You will find no passage. 

Being immaterial does surprise it, but all that surprise leads to is Iovetra finding more rock behind the rock which blocked the latest path she thought had a chance. However hard she searches, she cannot find a way through.

This is maddening, women die if they go through this alone. They sometimes die even with all of the help possible!!! It is one of the most dangerous things any human can do in their entire lives!!! Doing it without any kind of help is ludicrously risky and likely to result in tragedy!!!

She hisses again, mostly out of petulance, then - sees a way she might be able to help even without being able to enter. She's started carrying various alchemical concoctions, on her trips to visit the village - fertilizer, nutritional supplements, some easy cures for simple ills, and, importantly here: painkillers. There are some concerns about dosing, so she will be very careful with how much she tries to send through, but. She can stuff a capsule of one into an empty vial and roll it in the direction of where she knows that woman is. Maybe, just maybe, she can help reduce that woman's pain as she gives birth by herself in a magic cave.

And then she can mutter expletives and leave, grouchily. Terrible. No respect for medical professionals.

The vial will vanish seamlessly into the wall.

And eventually, if she listens, she does hear the wail of a newborn, and she smells the scent of blood and fire and then no more blood, and she hears the wails cease as if something was put in the baby's mouth.

She is not listening, thank you, she is stalking off into the night, and, and, what's a useful thing she can do with this energy, are there obvious menial tasks that need doing around in the village? Preferably something that she can use her vampiric strength on.

There are always irrigation ditches which need reinforcement and rebuilding. Farming land this fertile may be rewarding but it still isn't easy.

She is so happy to dig and reinforce some ditches. Or, well, she's actually incredibly irritated, but being able to dig and reinforce ditches about it helps a lot, so she's going to be doing it so efficiently and effectively. Angry vampires are so great at menial labor, or at least this one is.

Ugh. She'll stop before she's caught by someone or the sun comes up, but. Ugh.

... She'll stick around nearby to make sure the woman makes it safely out of the insanely risky magic cave that she gave birth in by herself like some kind of crazy person. Is she okay?

She doesn't leave the cave that night! 

...thinking back, Iovetra may remember signs consistent with someone living in that cave? For some reason? Nothing clear, but she has sensed a person over that way late at night sometimes. That wasn't particularly interesting back when she thought that place was a wall, but, well.

Well then she hopes it was a well maintained and hygienic cave!!!! That someone is living in!!!! And then someone giving birth in!!!!! For some reason!!!!!!!!! Hope there was a skilled midwife of some kind so that all went smoothly and with minimal risk.

She's. She's just going to go home now. She makes a little cache for the stuff she brought over, then after it's reasonably well hidden: back to her coffin she goes. Hissing angrily to herself about risk factors.

She'll need to pet some hyenas over this tomorrow night, for sure. So upsetting.

Fortunately for her, the hyenas are consistent and unrelenting in their love of pets and scritches and treats.

If she keeps looking, Iovetra may notice a young woman sneaking through the village some nights, stealing from the garbage pile and vanishing back towards the caves.

It's so nice having some animals that don't hate her existence in the slightest.

Now that she's watching for her - yes! Yes, she does notice this!!! What the fuck are you doing, sneaking around at night, don't you know it's dark and dangerous and contains at least one powerful and magical immortal??? What if there were a second!

Is this young woman perhaps recently pregnant. Has she been living in a cave by herself and stealing food to survive? Is that what is happening here. Tell her that this is not what is happening here.

Nothing Iovetra observes will show that this isn't true!

Why are you making these choices, ma'am, the local vampire is very concerned for your welfare!!!

Fine. Fine. She will accept the available evidence if she must, however much she dislikes it. This woman is living in a cave, with her newborn child, which she also gave birth to, in that cave, and is stealing food to survive. Instead of getting literally any help from anyone else. Clearly there is some kind of inter-human drama going on here that led to these circumstances. She does not understand, and probably wouldn't even if she spoke the local language.

But no, seriously, stealing food from the garbage is - is - it's not going to stand, okay? Iovetra will not let that shit stand. She is a predator herself, and a damn good one at that. If she has to dig up half a dozen rodents, drain them dry of blood, and leave them neatly as close inside the cave as she can get in order to make sure this woman who, she must again stress, just gave birth eats, then she will. She absolutely will. And then she will fret about nutritional balance and see about foraging up other things that are edible, and probably something suitable for firekeeping, and while she'd prefer not to steal, this set of hens really gives off an absurd number of eggs that the local owners keep needing to get rid of, so the cave lady can have some of those, too. Are you happy, cave lady. Are you alive and flourishing. Because you'd better be.

The day after the first time she tries providing decent-quality food to the presumed new mother and associated infant, she will smell traces of vomit mixed in with the bouquet of scents she has learned to identify with the mother.

.... that's concerning, and she's concerned. The most reassuring thing it could be is that the woman showed yet more instances of being a dumbass besides giving birth in a cave, and ate too much until she threw up. But it might be something else. It might be something life threatening, to the mother or to her child.

She was already kind of stalking this woman, but she can up the stalking game a bit more. Iovetra knows where she sleeps. This woman comes out at night? She can wait nearby, near but not visible to where she leaves tonight's offering of food. In perfect stillness and silence. For literal hours.

No, she doesn't have a problem, this cave lady has a problem, and Iovetra will figure out what it is, and then solve it, damn it.

A wave of pale blue fire outlined in green passes over the food. Was any magical effect applied to this? Is it poisoned?

There is no ongoing magical effect on the food, and it is not poisoned. The meat offering of the day (another rodent, they're really quite common if you can track them to their burrows and rip them out of the ground) was killed via a somewhat magical effect, however. The life was drained out of it, along with its blood, if that matters at all to the pale blue fire.

Iovetra watches the wave of pale blue fire with a critical eye. Okay, so, cave lady does at least have one (1) way to defend herself, probably, that's nice. Good for her. Now, will she come out to get the food, so that the friendly neighborhood vampire can figure out what is wrong with her, on both a literal 'why did she throw up' level, and on a metaphorical 'why is she hiding in a cave away from civilization, the greatest strength humans collectively have' level.

How close an eye is Iovetra keeping on the apparently nondescript stone cliff-face?

She is not, she is looking at the place she put the food. Very patiently. Come out, little cave lady, it's time for your health checkup...

In that case, the cliff-face has no objections to this course of events.

A young woman creeps slowly into Iovetra's field of view. She looks around as she goes, clearly wary of a trap.

Unfortunately for her paranoia, the person who set the (friendly!!!!) trap is an untiring vampire who is hanging silently from a perch no human could hold onto for literal hours at a time. In the dark. She's even quieted her eye glow to the reflective sheen that's more appropriate for hunting. So. Does she also look up?

She does not. She walks up to the food without once looking in the direction of Iovetra.

Good.

Okay: from closer than she's managed before, perfectly still from her vantage point above this woman: what is going on with her. Is she sick? Is she malnourished? Does she seem to be recovering from her childbirth well enough? Does anything smell weird about her lifeforce?

She is definitely incredibly malnourished! Eating garbage is... not good for you. Unsurprising. Her lifeforce looks like she has eaten poorly and inconsistently for the past while while pregnant and then had a baby who needs to nurse, which is to say it seems not great. Is there any additional illness in there? ...Maybe? There is definitely something strange, but Iovetra can't easily determine what exactly it is.

Hmmmm. Worse than she'd hoped, but frankly, not as bad as she feared. Iovetra thinks that she likely did overeat after her long period of starvation, and thereby cause herself to throw up. Which is not great, but it's probably the best of some bad options. Well, it might've been the child throwing up instead, but that would have had more of a milk-vomit smell than a proper vomit smell, she thinks. So. Overeating was the likely cause.

She thinks it's safe to stuff this woman with a mild healing potion, though. Something gentle, that won't overstress her already extremely stressed system, and instead help it recover from the period of starvation. She can make one of those, she'd had to for when her master got overzealous about his meals. And... calcium supplements, probably? A cooking pot, to cook in? And more water, one cannot go wrong doing the labor of dragging heavy water for humans that do not have vampiric strength. She can probably throw in a bedroll and blanket or something, she has no idea what this woman's sleeping situation is like, but probably it has room for improvement...

Anyway, Iovetra is not going to come down from her perch to scare this woman. She has gotten what she wanted from this interaction. In fact, she's just going to head straight home, and start putting together a proper care kit.

The next night, the 'trap' has, along with its offering of food:

- One cooking pot
- One set of wooden eating utensils
- Two large (clay) jugs, both filled with (clean) water, at a size that a human could probably manage to carry.
- One bedroll (spider silk and cotton blend)
- Three blankets (cotton)
- A single vial of red liquid, that is magic. (Iovetra added the calcium supplement directly to the healing potion, and is not giving this woman more than one per night, thank you very much. Drinking too many at once is bad, and Iovetra no longer trusts this woman to understand what sensible portioning is.)

Iovetra will creepily watch from her vantage point to see how this night's offering is taken.

She is not at all sensible about proper portioning.

Today's fire catches on the vial and stays there for a moment, before flashing and vanishing.

The woman walks out into the open and calls out... something. Unfortunately, Iovetra continues to not speak this language.

She sure doesn't. Iovetra might be able to sneakily drink from enough of the local population to learn it, but, well, she doesn't want to. If the woman doesn't want to trust the strange being that is feeding her, fine. The cave lady doesn't have to drink the magic healing potion, it'd just make her life better.

She calls out again, them sketches a shape in the air with her finger. Glowing blue-and-green light follows behind it. Does Iovetra wish to do anything before this figure is complete?

Nnnnnno? She doesn't know what it does, if it's a tracking spell of some kind, well, oops, but. For now she'll stay where she is.

The shape finishes! A pulse of fire expands from her fingertips, limning the crags, the cliffs, and Iovetra, who finds the glow painless. It fades from the crags and cliffs. It does not fade from Iovetra.

The woman looks around, and finally thinks to glance upwards. Her quick gasp and widening eyes at the sight of an apparent human clinging motionless to the rock above her head are as communicative as her words were not.

Ah. Well. This was in retrospect predictable.

Upon closer inspection, though: this is not a human. Her face is too perfect, unmarred by blemishes or scars or imperfections. The colors are all off, too, even in this lighting; her skin is too pale, her hair too red in a strange and unnatural sort of way. Her ears are delicately pointed, and her eyes glow with an unnatural teal light. She is hanging from the rock by blood red claws, perched carefully as if she belongs up there and finds staying up no trouble at all.

Iovetra suspects that the least threatening thing she could do is stay right where she is, make an apologetic face, and say, "I'm afraid there's a language barrier."

Not a human.

...not going to eat her or her baby?

Saying something she doesn't understand. Fine. Good enough. She nods to Iovetra, gives a quizzical look, and gestures to the food and supplies.

Okay. This is - good, probably. She's not freaking out and trying to set the vampire on fire, which is genuinely surprising. Iovetra will, she supposes, come down from her perch. (She lands with an unearthly grace, and her clawed fingers return to more normal nails, if the same unnatural blood red as her hair and lips.)

"I'm not sure what question you're asking," she says carefully, but she attempts a reply by motioning that the food and supplies are in fact for this woman. Yes, she is giving these to her, please live safely in that magic cave of yours?

Good enough. She grabs the food and carries it back to —

The stone wall, firm and resolute in being nothing more than any other wall in this maze of nooks and crannies.

Iovetra's eyes stutter and the woman vanishes.

It definitely feels like she must have simply lost track of whoever this is, distracted by some sudden motion nearby. Is that what happened? ...well, no, but there's no reason for Iovetra to know that.

Unpleasant and unnecessary, Iovetra is aware that the rock wall there is made of magic and bullshit. It doesn't need to also rub it in by messing with her eyes and/or mind, and in fact she's a little offended if it did mess with her mind. Don't make her come over there and smash your entire cave system to rubble just to prove that she can. But, sure, fine, she won't look at it when it's doing its bullshit, she guesses.

She'll give the new mother some space. She is getting what she wanted, which is making sure that the two of them are cared for, and also not eating garbage. The vampire returns to her coffin, turning into what looks like smoke, and fading away into the air.

Once she's back home, she'll tend to her garden, and think of other things that someone might need if they were living in a cave. ... Soap. How could she have forgotten soap, she's an idiot. That'll have to be tomorrow night...

The next night:

More food. Also, soap. And another healing potion, though Iovetra isn't entirely sure if the lady of the cave has had the first one. She should be able to tell if she has or not, once she's gotten closer.

Iovetra does not hide herself this time. She'll perch nearby, perfectly visible, writing her observations of the local flora into a book, and carefully sketching images of them onto the pages. In the dark. It is actually much more interesting than waiting in perfect stillness and silence, much as her vampiric instincts lend themselves to this kind of inhuman patience.

Cave lady is sort of expecting Iovetra this time. She still spooks a bit on seeing the vampire, but less so.

The decent food is starting to make inroads on her prior starvation, though the newborn pulls in the other direction. She does seem to have eventually taken the potion? Unless it was marked somehow, this isn't obvious. She seemed incredibly healthy for her situation last time. It will take Iovetra some work to figure out how quickly she naturally heals, especially under the constant exhaustion of tending a newborn.

After recovering from her surprise, she nods to Iovetra, takes the food and soap, and returns to her wall.

The vampire is trying to be as nonthreatening as possible, and mostly is concerned about writing in her book, watching cave lady only out of the corner of her (now openly glowing) eyes. She returns the nod, but otherwise is just hanging out, writing notes to herself, and building trust.

Okay, then this woman can in fact have a second healing potion. But only one per night, vampire's orders. There is clearly some kind of weird magic thing going on with her, possibly related to healing. Whatever it is, it's clear that she's working with a different type of magic than either the vampiric version, or the more indirect alchemic one Iovetra managed when she still had a heartbeat. A human directly doing magic is something she hasn't seen before. (Then again, she didn't get out much. She's not exactly an expert on the abilities of humans.)

Anyway. The mystery of this woman's weird human magic is interesting, and she's curious, but Iovetra's priority is making sure she is properly taken care of. As such: food deliveries and water refills are going to become nightly. More complicated stuff like 'potions' and 'blankets' and 'soap' and the like, that require the assistance of her castle to produce, will be more spaced out. After all, her castle is a fair distance away, even for an untiring vampire. Making the trip literally every night just after sunset is metaphorically, if not literally, tiresome. It would be so much easier to make sure this woman and her child were safe and healthy if Iovetra could just take her back to her castle, but, well. That's not happening anytime soon. Trust must be built up, and newborns need time to become a bit more sturdy for travel. They're very fragile, she remembers.

(Her master had some sort of magical something to directly deposit humans from afar into his dungeon, but, well. He hadn't told her the secrets of how that worked, and Iovetra is hardly going to use a new mother and her child as test subjects to figure it out from first principles.)

Iovetra is content to let things keep on as they are. Though, she will probably stop personally hanging around the care packages, only showing up occasionally to check on the cave lady's health. It's not like they can currently talk. (Iovetra could fix this by draining the local villagers, but as previously mentioned: she does not want to.)

Staying around the village more often, Iovetra might notice: A small group of bandits some distance into the hills, far enough out that they have shifted into actual mountains, ambushing caravans which come through! The riverbed the village relies on narrowing a little as weeds grow through the riverbed, slowing the water and shifting some of it elsewhere! Fewer hyenas! (There are more than zero hyenas, but the oasis has a pack every night or two, while she might spot a pack clustered around the river to drink only once a week.)

Bandits are genuinely confusing to Iovetra as a concept. There was some human infighting, when she was serving her once-master, but it was almost always because of resource scarcity or meddling from their vampiric overlords. And humans genuinely tended to view vampires as their enemy, to give them something of a unifying force. Anyone could have their lives ruined by a vampire's casual sadism, so human society was prepared to absorb strays without trouble, at least compared to what is... going on here. She's terribly curious, and kind of wants to ask them their reasons for stealing from their fellow man, especially when there's clearly abundance around them, but, well. She doesn't speak the language. (And learning to speak the language would be uncomfortable. At least via the traditional vampiric method. Maybe she could just... study the language like a normal person? Hm.) She will keep an eye on them, but otherwise not interfere unless it looks like they're going to do some murders.

The river's shifting is less confusing. Does the river seem to be shifting in an unwanted direction that might cause flooding towards either farmland or housing? Yes? Okay, then those weeds can stop that. As in, get burned through with cold spirit-fire that is anathema to life itself, and is not put out by petty things such as 'water.' Performing weeding services is perhaps a bit below the stereotypical vampire's dignity, but that doesn't mean she's not very good at it. She collects the remnants of the weeds, for returning to her castle for study and potential use in... something. She doesn't know what. Compost, if she can't figure out anything interesting to do with the scraps.

The lower number of hyenas for pets is kind of sad. She does make a point of finding some often enough, and giving pets and scritches and treats to the good boys and girls.

The bandits do not do any murders overnight while Iovetra is looking. 

Weeds: burn! They are absolutely average rooted weeds. Their remains are useful for anything she wants burnt river weeds for. The river clears and flows more rapidly, and the irrigation channels again fill with water.

The cave woman becomes more comfortable with Iovetra over the next few weeks. The food is clearly doing her good, though nursing the baby not so much. She eventually starts trying to get a few basic words across — her name is "Afra", the cliffs are "cliffs", the fire is "Gift", and so on.

Good for the bandits, but: she's watching you guys. Consider getting some goats to herd in the mountains, like real humans that are contributing to their own maintenance, instead of whatever this is.

See, but the weeds could have had some neat latent properties that she could tease out with careful application of vampiric magic! You never know unless you check!! Admittedly it would have been better to check before she killed them with her vampiric powers, but, you know, still.

Iovetra is amenable to learning the language the hard way! She gives her own name (Iovetra), and then with the help of some stick figure drawings to get her point across, what her species is. (Vampire. She's a vampire.) Otherwise, yeah, she'll be the one to learn Afra's language instead of the other way around, the woman has kind of enough to deal with without 'also learn a foreign language' being added to that list. This doesn't mean Iovetra's language lessons are particularly fast or get very far, in those next few weeks; she's both not very impatient to learn the language, and busy doing other things. But it does mean she can speak and understand a couple words, like "Hello," or "Goodbye" or various small numbers.

The caravan breaks down, and she assists them. Hyenas come and go to the oasis. The moon waxes and wanes and starts to wax once more.

The baby grows. Iovetra never gets to see it, but Afra does attempt to get across that his name is Uday.

And eventually, about six weeks after she arrived, Iovetra will note that something has changed in the village! It's not immediately clear what exactly it is that has happened, of course. Her gradually improving grasp of the basics of the language does not suffice to figure out what everyone here is saying. There's definitely something happening, though, and the villagers are clearly a mix of worried and enthusiastic.

... Concerning? But if the villagers are enthusiastic along with worried, then, well. Okay? She hopes it works out for them?

Anyway, she's got a tiny cave family to feed, so while she's concerned and attentive about the Something that is Happening, she has bigger priorities. Like acquiring food for a human without overhunting the local rodent population, stealing enough eggs to be noticed and missed, or neglecting important nutrients valuable to a mother who is breastfeeding. And she can only do any of this foraging at night, because otherwise she'll burn to death in the sun, with this comparative complete lack of cover! Look, she's a busy vampire, okay, if the Something that is Happening wants her to care about it, it'll have to make itself more apparent than ambient village anxiety.

And about a week later it does, from an unexpected angle. Are there any animals within Iovetra's castle? What is the nearby desert wildlife's impression of that area?

There are no animals within, no - which is admittedly rather strange, it'd make such a good hiding place from the sun, and there's an entire garden of potential food, right there, near the outside, only contained in a glass garden. There are even vines of what look to be some kind of rose, growing on the outside, perfectly available for something to nibble on, but they're untouched. The opinion of the local herbivores is that there is something odd about those plants, something that might be poison, and none of them have worked up the bravery to venture to that particular lair.

The desert wildlife thinks there's a new predator in the area. It has a wide hunting ground, and is faster than any hawks they've ever heard of, and it rips its prey out of the ground from its burrows. It leaves only the smell of a strange, clean death, and no bones for scavengers to pick through. Traces of blood aren't even left, the prey is just gone. A ghost of the night, is the consensus, for it is entirely nocturnal.

Also, the castle itself is alive, and can be touched by Daine's wild magic, if that's relevant. It's a strange living thing, its mind echoing through the stone walls and veins pumping with some kind of strange magic, but it was a wolf, once.

That is interesting! Is the castle happy with its lot? Any objections to being a castle? She can share the feeling of the wind in its fur and the moonlight on its back, and she offers to spin that into a dream for it to revisit whenever it wants. Even if it is happy, it might miss being a wolf sometimes.

There is a ponderous pause, like the slow grinding of gears. The mind that comes is strange, and the voice that matches it is stranger - it doesn't have the power of the divine behind it, but it is not a living thing of flesh. It does not seem unhappy with its lot, and there's no longing for something else, and no response to the offer of the wolf-dream.

"... You are not my mistress," is the reply that comes.

It's a little confused by the offer (why would it wish to be something it no longer is?), and the strongest emotion is a sort of - guarded nature, a wariness towards the unknown. There's a feeling that it failed, before, and it will not fail to strange magic again. "I will not let you inside my walls."

Well. If it says so.

An hour passes before the next oddity.

Chirp! Chirp! Roughly how does the outermost level of magic on the castle work?

Well, you see, it is a living magical creature, and its walls are strengthened magically, and can move as muscles on a stone beast. They're not moving right now, though, they're braced and prepared for repelling hostile magic, entry, or some other attack.

Also?

"MOOOOOM."

(The castle does not literally say 'mom.' But this is the flavor of its alert to its mistress.)

Hmmm. Fine. No poking that way.

...are there any illusions on the castle? Is there anything invisible?

There are no illusions on the outside of the castle. Nothing outside is invisible, either.

Anything inside the castle is NONE OF HER BUSINESS, thank you.

Elsewhere, a vampire abruptly stops where she was listening to the village. She returns to her coffin, and gets to asking her castle what, exactly, is happening.

"IDK something's poking at my walls and I don't like it!!!!!!"

Poor castle. She pats one of its walls, soothes it by telling it that it's doing great, and then goes to look out a window in the directed location to see what exactly is poking at her castle's walls.

A thirty-inch-long... baby lizard with a crocodile head?... sits on a curled-up tail, whistling and chirping at the walls of the castle. Nothing visible seems to be happening.

"Make it stooooooop, I don't like it!!!!!"

She's working on it, it'll be okay, if this creature continues upsetting you, she will threaten it with violence. Pat, pat, you're a good castle, she loves you very much.

These windows can, in fact, open. Her castle is understandably hesitant to open the window very far, what with there being a strange thing outside poking at it, but Iovetra reasonably points out that it doesn't have to open a window far enough for the little - creature? - to get through.

"Hello!" calls Iovetra, through the tiny crack in the window, carefully staying out of the ray of sunlight. She is using some of the few words she knows in the native language. "Stop!"

She'd say please, but, well. She doesn't know the word please in this language yet.

...fine. The lizard-thing grumbles grumpily at her and then stops making noise.

"Thank you!"

She knows how to say that just fine.

"..... I don't speak the local language and burst into flames in direct sunlight, so I'm a little handicapped with my ability to communicate with you right now. I would appreciate it if you didn't upset my castle by poking it with - whatever that was, it's still sore about being banished to another dimension."

That is, obviously, in her native language, but, well. She can't not talk to the strange thing, and this will get across that there's a language barrier.

Language barrier? What's a language barrier?

Inquisitive chirp. She bounce-walks over to the window and croaks, and the sun momentarily dims around them.

????? what.

Iovetra pokes her head towards the window opening, to behold the dimming of the sun.

"Wait, do you understand me? Even in this language?"

Approving chirp!

"Oh! Okay! Well, hello properly, then! I'm Iovetra, and this is my castle. Um, this is a bit of an awkward way to have a conversation -"

Is her castle willing to -?

:(

Got it, letting the strange scary thing that poked it inside would be asking a bit much of it, yes castle, sorry for asking, castle.

.... Would the garden be okay? Since there are still the walls-that-were-outside between the now greenhouse and the rest of the castle?

:(

"........... I guess."

Is it sure, she can have the conversation awkwardly through the window if her castle feels it's safer -

...

Well, see, if it lets the little pokey thing into the garden with its mistress, out of the sunlight, then maybe its mistress could make it be dead. This would be very nice, in this castle's humble opinion.

So. Yeah okay.

She is probably not going to make the little pokey thing be dead, but having that as an option available to them is indeed reassuring!

This whole 'conversation' didn't take very much time at all, but there was still a noticeable pause.

"- So would you be okay heading down to the greenhouse for a conversation? I'll have my castle shade things a bit more so I won't catch on fire. It'll give you a door to enter through."

Bounce chirp.

She doesn't immediately travel to the greenhouse, instead wandering off towards the other humans in the area. (If Iovetra is watching, she may notice that they don't seem to understand what the lizard is saying either, or at least not as well as they would if they spoke its language.) She spends a little bit of time with them before bouncing over to the greenhouse.

That's fine, the windows in the garden need to be covered, so that the local vampire does not burst into flames inside. This takes time.

Are the humans visible to vampiric eyesight-in-daylight, such that Iovetra can be aware that they are also there?

The humans are camped out in a large group of tents and platforms. They are far enough from the door that it is easy for a human to exit the castle without feeling like they are trespassing on the camp, but close enough to be easily seen by a human. None of this is adapted for, or in fact designed with any knowledge of, daylight vampire vision.

Then she can, with much squinting, tell that there's something there! A human something. A large group of human somethings, camped out in front of her castle. In the middle of the day, when she is at her weakest and most vulnerable. In a desert, where there is really not any kind of cover to protect her from bursting into flames immediately if she goes outside. Ha. Hahaha. That's terrifying.

... They do not seem to be trying to lay siege to her castle, at least not yet? Tiny lizard thing doing strange things to her castle's walls notwithstanding, but the tiny lizard thing did stop when asked. So, uh. Maybe this'll go okay??? Maybe she won't be set on fire??? This seems like a big ask, but Afra did not seem to know what a vampire even was. The local hyenas are weirdly friendly towards vampires, maybe... humans might be, too? Possibly??? Or maybe she's just lying to herself and final death for herself and her castle at the hands of an angry mob is imminent.

There will accordingly be an anxious vampire fussing over her flowers, in the garden. The flowers do not by any stretch of the imagination need to be fussed over at this time, but she can do it, so she is.

And eventually, chirp! Chirp chirp inquisitive whistle.

(And is anything in here an illusion or invisible, or does she directly enter the area of any magic? She doesn't even need to poke for those, they just happen automatically.)

The door is sized for her, and set with a little flap of cloth instead of a proper door.

Nothing in here is an illusion or invisible! There is magic available, but it's in the walls and in the plants and in this red-haired, fanged woman who is (anxiously) misting down some flowers. Spritz, spritz, these flowers are getting properly hydrated.

"Hello. Uh, you seem to have a lot of humans camped outside, are they... just curious, or...?"

Whistle-TRILL and a current of wind rustles over some of the yet to be hydrated flowers. A few droplets of water are caught in the wind and drift along, spreading out between several roses. 

The lizard stands up on her hind legs! She hunches over and puts out one of her foreclaws as if holding a cane, and hobbles forward for a moment.

Next she curls up into a little ball, her tail as long as her body, and somehow sticks her legs out just far enough for a quick scurry across the floor. She squeaks a few times, and this time the tone is one Iovetra may recognize as similar to rodent squeaking.

Finally, she uncurls, streeeeetches her body out forward and back, and trots on limbs extended as far as they will go. She sniffs at the air, then snaps with the sort of crushing force that shatters bones. Her tail flicks lazily behind her. Some of this body language is recognizable from the hyenas Iovetra has been petting.

Finally the lizard points her tail at the vampire and quirks her head. Cheep?

She is absolutely certain she didn't understand most of that.

"I - don't think I understand what you're getting at? Though from context you seem friendly, or at least non-hostile, enough? Thank you for helping to water my flowers. Uh - it seems like you and your humans are curious about me, and - something about an old person, something about rats - I've kept rats in the past, but I don't have any around currently? - and - yes the hyenas have been remarkably friendly, though I don't know why."

......well in that case this is hopeless.

She points to the wall with her tail. A steady whistle conjures a wavering haze in the air in front of her. She walks up to it and presses her foreclaws against it, as if it was a solid object. (If anyone tests it, it is not.) Another tone makes the haze begin vibrating, and she pushes, pushes, and slips through as it is pulled thin. A second whistle, this time two-toned, calls up a new haze, and again she sets it to vibrate but this time she hits a second layer and flinches back instead of pushing through. Point to the wall again. Perk up! Inquisitive trill? Droop depressedly. Inquisitive trill?

"... I don't think I understand, sorry? Please don't break through the walls of my castle, it would be deeply unhappy with that state of affairs. My castle was forcefully evicted from the place we were previously in, and I followed it here. I'm not entirely sure how far we were shunted? I apologize if we've arrived somewhere we are not wanted?"

The small lizard thing is highly animated and deeply confusing.

Grumble grumble this is why she need to be older so she can talk to people oh well. 

Hmmm. Are there stones or other loose objects nearby she could use as props?

There's a cute stone pathway through the garden that she could in theory rip out of the ground, but loose stones are not really an available thing, no. Iovetra has put down the water spray bottle, if that counts.

Speaking of, Iovetra, being the one present able to directly use language, sees it as her job to talk instead of leaving her guest to continue doing charades.

"- I think you might have the wrong idea of how much I understand of the current state of the world, its inhabitants, and what is going on? Because I was asleep in a box for what was at least literal centuries, and I woke up in the woods entirely alone." In the desiccated bones of things she built herself, but who's mentioning that. "Before then, I was - not in much position to get out much, either, shall we say. And this is all before we even get into being evicted by who-knows-what for who-knows-why, which has not helped with my ambient confusion. I'm a vampire - am I correct in that vampires are not existent in this area, or have long died off?"

That does not count. She will not be able to illustrate her point with those tools. Oh well.

Evicted? How? Papa Numair can't push a castle into the middle of the desert from even the closest woods, and he is one of the greatest mages in the world! ...not existent or have long since died off...

Chirp! Nod nod. Draw in the dirt: one blob! Tail-jab at Iovetra. Arrow to this one, with a little castle sketched in it. A second blob under the first! This one has a flat horizon with some bumpy bits and then added dunes and a sun in the sky.

Whistle, and a haze forms over the castle. She draws an arrow down, and then the castle sketch on the desert sketch. Hop over to the first castle place. Look in every direction. Shrug  Hop to the second place. Look in every direction. Shrug. Whistle, and a haze appears between the two blobs. Jump across it! Shake her head.

Chirp?

"The first place I was at was a forest, high in ambient magic and hostile monsters - there was some kind of... magical something or other that was driving the nearby animals mad, and making the trees and flora try to get people lost and die in it. It was also pretty haunted, but I'm not sure if that was related to what was going on with it on a large scale. If that describes anywhere you know, then maybe I'm not too far off? But according to my castle it was a very long trip, and it thinks we might've moved to another dimension or something." She squints at the charades.

"Are you asking if... I'd like to go back? I think as a place for a vampire to live in, forest is better than desert by a large amount, on account of the cover from sunlight and how I just generally like plants. I also kind of liked attempting to combat the cursed nature of the forest and make it behave itself and stop driving things mad, though possibly that is what got me evicted. Having animals that don't hate me is nice, though."

Actually she was mostly trying to get the different dimension thing across, but that works too. Numair might know the spells for banishing things back to their previous location. If nothing else, Mama Daine can maybe get the attention of some gods. Immortals aren't supposed to be coming into the mortal realms any more, after all.

Nod and bounce at the 'another dimension' bit. If she likes forests, the closest forest is not nearby. (Also rainforests are all wet. Not like proper pine at all.) But Numair could probably make a spell to keep her in shade if that was important, and she looks like a human enough to travel with them.

Back to the first blob. Around the castle: a sketch of a pine tree, cone-shaped and with quick strokes of lines along its branches? A blobbier oak tree, its leaves billowing out in an oval,a quickly doodled oak leaf among them? A tall baobab, sprouting a thin and wide layer of leaves only at the top of the trunk, drawing in a five-pointed star shape of the pointed ovals a baobab leaf is shaped like? 

Interrogative trill. Point, point, point?

Ah! A question about plants! She is so incredibly equipped to answer this!

"So the tree type was more like the oak than anything else you've shown, but oak itself is not quite right - some pines were present in the upper altitudes, but were generally outcompeted everywhere else. The land was swampy and more temperate than tropical, but above average humidity, it was not inaccurate to say I lived in a swamp, though I was careful to place my castle on firmer ground and was therefore just near the swamp -"

She pauses as she realizes this is not what the little creature was asking about. What could it have been instead...?

"... Or, are you asking me about my preferred relocation options? Because if I had to choose, probably somewhere colder with high ambient rain and cloud cover? Pine trees over oak or baobab."

The creature was actually following along enthusiastically as she described plants! But a nod and chirp at that. Gesture at the castle? Claw on the drawing, and she walks over and acts as if she's puuuuulling before collapsing back in apparent exhaustion?

"I think I can move my castle elsewhere, actually, now that I've seen it done? I would need to be on the other end, and it'd be a bit of a production, but the mechanics are very straightforward. It's - like how vampires move, but on a castle scale. Bringing along a little part of it to put somewhere else, and then having the rest of it join itself, is the principle. It doesn't like being in the desert much, either."

It's all exposed, and the foundation is all - sandy!!!! Barely firm at all!! It liked the trees better!!!!!!

Yes dear, sorry dear, we're talking about getting you to a non-desert location.

(Iovetra absently pats a wall, without explanation.)

There are definitely places where a castle would fit in Tortall! She likes solving problems!

...Tortall is far away. And if she can't be out in the sunlight she needs to travel with Papa, and Papa is doing this tour right now. But maybe there will be somewhere later she also likes! Or some way to get her to Tortall fast!

Whistle chirp. Tail-point in the general direction of the other humans, and a claw-drawing of tents. Can she find her way out and back from here?

"Are you asking if you can go back to the tents? Because the answer to that is that I'm not going to keep you from leaving and you don't need my permission. If you're asking me to go to the tents - I don't think I can make it across that stretch of space in direct sunlight without burning to death? Which is rather avoid. But if you have something for handling that, then I am amenable."

If she can find her way out, she indeed does not need permission! Off she goes.

And eventually she returns, accompanied by a tall man perhaps in his mid-thirties. He knocks politely at the wall.

Oh. Accompanied by a tall person that cannot fit through the door her last visitor fit in through. Right, okay.

One of the glass panels of the greenhouse attachment swings open inward. It is quite large enough for even a very tall person to go through.

Iovetra gives a nervous wave, from inside her garden. "Hello," she adds, heavily accented in the local language.

It is, to its credit, a very pretty, and also very magical, garden. She's kind of regretting not putting a table and chairs out here, though, she'd thought about it.

He walks in. "Hello!" And then something incomprehensible — maybe inquiring about how much she understands of the local language?

Headshake.

"I have a few scattered words, but approximately no grammar or complicated concepts."

Tweedle! Descending chirp. Back up a tone, and then stop.

Something incomprehensible. Gesture to himself— "Numair. Human." To the lizard thing— "Kitten. Dragon." To the drawing of tents, adding some stick figures— "Human, human. Humans." Point to Iovetra?

"Iovetra. Vampire." She can play this game: she points at one of the stick figures, says, "Human," then draws an arrow, and another stick figure with pointy ears and little fangs on its mouth. "Vampire."

She was a human once, but became a vampire. Is that properly communicated?

Nod nod. Sun drawing above Iovetra's stick figures?

She adds fire on the vampire one. The human stick figure is left alone.

She does, actually, know the native word for this one, and says it. "Fire."

That will make testing this harder. Does she know what it is about sunlight that matters? The University has recently done some very impressive work on isolating national properties of—

She will understand exactly none of that. Another vampire, this time holding a parasol over its head. Sun directly overhead?

She makes an 'Ehhhhh,' sound, tilting one of her hands back and forth.

There is a longer answer that she can't really explain to him. She'll say part of it out loud as she tries to explain it, in case Kitten can communicate with him better than she can.

"So vampires are just highly flammable in general -" She uses the few words she has to try to explain, "Vampire fire," with a vampire next to a little stylized fire and it spreading to the vampire. Which is to say: she is just very extremely flammable. Then she continues in her native tongue: "Exposure to non-reflected sunlight heats up my form until it catches fire. Things that reflect sunlight well can also be dangerous at close range, such as, for example, sand." She draws a representation of the ground, then draws a line from the sun to it, then back up to the vampire. Which then is given flames around it.

"So it's not entirely direct sunlight, and I will be heating up until I burst into flames the more of it I'm exposed to, and a desert in particular is magnifying risk factors on several different axes."

Being near fire is bad... but what does that have to do with sunlight? If—

Trill! Chirp chirp trill chirp. Grab a bit of paper out of Numair's pocket and put it on the ground inside a circle. Stand up on hind legs, curl front claw like she's holding a spear, and croak in a low, booming voice. 

The paper bursts into flame.

Another piece of paper! This time she arranges the ground a little bit, making something of a divot for the paper. She reaches for Iovetra's watering can and gives an inquiring quork?

Yeah, go ahead. Actually, maybe it would help to have her castle bring over a spare tinted window, to show what a proper shield against the thing-that-burns-vampires looks like.

In the meantime, she tries to explain to Numair how she is more flammable than the paper. Little square, tiny fire. Vampire stick figure? Big fire. Watering can, pointed to paper-on-fire - fire goes out. Watering can goes on vampire-on-fire - bigger fire. Do not try to put her out with water, it would not go well for anyone involved.

Nod nod. Yes, he got that from before (except the water thing, that's new). What is this about sunlight though?

New bit of paper! This one is near one of the flowers. Up, pose, croak — a scattering of light appears around where a cone from Kit's mouth would touch solid objects. They glow for a moment before fading. Croak — again the paper goes up in flames, but nothing else in the area.

Watering can! A dribble of water on the divot of earth, until it's more like clay than dirt, and then she squishes it down back into shape. A trill and the water fwooshes out, leaving behind a hastily-baked clay bowl-like object. The watering can goes down, partially covering the paper. Croak of light, and the bowl shines but the paper does not. Another croak and the edges of the paper burst into flame, followed quickly by the rest.

Ah. Hmm. And yes of course a little bit of fire will spread, he didn't think of that.

Numair closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them he opens them to the arcane as well as the physical. Can he see anything special about this window?

Well, magically, it's sort of part of the castle, but in the same way the glass panels around the greenhouse are. By how they have been covered by blankets from the inside: that doesn't do it. The property that protects the vampire from the harmful-to-them parts of sunlight (UV radiation, for those following along at home, though vampires know it as 'sunlight-that-burns.' This is, of course, one word in their native language.) is entirely physical, and a marvel of vampiric chemistry instead of vampiric sorcery.

Iovetra will demonstrably show (via asking a blanket to scootch a bit to let one tiny ray of sunlight down) that under the glass she will not catch fire! There is light touching her very pale skin, and everything.

It's not doing anything magical, so there's no convenient structure to try to copy. Definitely some component of the sunlight which can be filtered out, though. ...and if it's anything besides the sunburn spell, which has been useful enough in the desert that he knows it by heart now. he will need to ask Kaddar to fetch him the relevant books, he can't reconstruct anything on the spot. 

Well, it would need testing either way. Vampire stick figure. Person stick figure throws something at vampire. Vampire with an oval outline. Campusy with oval outline with the sun overhead! Two branching paths: in the first, lines from the sun touch the outline and bounce off. In the second, they go through, and the vampire is on fire. 

Numair taps himself and the person figure. He then taps the arrows and shrugs. Tap the fire doodle — sad face.

And he says something to Kit, which Iovetra of course cannot understand.

Does that get a useful response?

"I can recover from being set on fire, and we can test with just me sticking my arm out into the sunlight," she says, motioning to her left arm, and then outside. She thinks she understood what he was getting at? He might have a way to keep her from burning to death in the sunlight, and wants to test it, but obviously does not want this to kill her. Not that killing her would stick, with her coffin still intact, but she is not bringing that up because she has at least one iota of self preservation inside her.

Chirp! Tailpoint to Iovetra, nod nod.

...she is an acceptable test subject? Really? O...kay...

First things first. He flicks a finger at Iovetra and a burst of black flame with white sparkles flies towards her. If it touches her, it expands painlessly into a bubble before fading to a near-invisible glimmer. He gestures to the entrance.

She lets it touch her. She did just consent to being a test subject, so.

Yeah, okay, she can go stick her arm outside, into the sunlight. Does it begin heating up, such that she needs to pull it back inside immediately before it bursts into flames?

About 5% of the normal amount of ultraviolet light touches her skin, mainly in the 370-400nm range. (Drawing a precise line was hard, so the spell kind of fades out after it passes the visible spectrum. It blocks enough light to minimize sunburns, and that's all it's really for anyway.)

... Huh! Surprisingly effective. She can still feel a bit, tingling at her skin, and thoughtfully leaves her arm out to see how quickly it begins heating up. It is, but much, much slower than usual. She might be able to manage with it, but, well. Desert.

"Very effective, but not perfectly so!" she says, removing her arm from the sunlight. That was so straightforward and easy??? That's very surprising, if it had been easy to fix with vampiric magic, well. Her life after death would look much different. "It's missing catching some of the sunlight-that-burns, but it's getting most of it. I could maybe manage if I shifted into a rat and hid in a pocket, but I think I'd prefer to refine it further."

Ooh Mama might be able to talk to a rat! Maybe later.

Whistle whistle. LOUD whistle and then quieter. Chirp! Quiet and then quieter again?

She needs a stronger version? He will need some more time to think about that, or... he says something to Kit.

Kit grabs something off his chest and holds it up — a necklace, holding a stone of some sort. Points to the stone, points to the castle. Interrogative chirp?

"I'm sorry, I don't think I understand? Is the stone... for something...? Do you want me to put on the necklace for some reason? You want... the castle to study it, maybe? Your magic is deeply strange to me, and I have no idea how any of it works."

Tap the stone, draw one on the ground. Vampire! Oval! Lines from the sun! Most bounce off, but some go through. Draw two stones, another vampire with another oval. This time almost all the lines bounce off.

"The stone magnifies the magic? Huh. Then that might help, yeah. But you only have the one of the stone, and want to know if my castle might be able to make another?"

The manufacturing capabilities of her castle are pretty impressive... It might be possible, but she'd need to know what the stone is made of, and try to find the raw materials for it.

Nod nod!

Opals are a hydrated amorphous form of silica composed of 150-300nm spheres forming a hexagonal or cubic close packed lattice. Black opals, as this one is, contain mostly very small silica spheres which rapidly diffract light, causing an interplay of colors filtered by various trace impurities...

The most important discovery Iovetra will make is that this gemstone seems to be composed of much the same basic components as glass, with the difference almost entirely in the form of very fine structural components. She has (almost) all the materials she should need right here. There are some trace impurities, if she can detect them, which are not immediately present in the sand, but the part which is essentially ash is easy to construct and she needs very little of the other, more metallic, traces (mostly iron-based). If she fails to replicate those impurities, the resulting gem will look very different.

This is of course mostly figured out by Iovetra's castle, not by her directly.

Iovetra returns Numair's stone once it's studied, then listens to her castle's diagnosis for if it could make this thing.

"- Okay, so, yes, my castle can make more of them. The way we'll do it right now will be kind of expensive magically, but I have been keeping my castle very well fed lately, so it shouldn't be a problem for just a couple. I do think we should make several test opals to properly figure out the parameters we're aiming for before refining the process to something less magically expensive, neither I nor my castle understand what precisely is assisting with the magic, here. Is there any reason for me to not just start making things now? I have everything on hand already." It helps that she's a packrat. And also literally in a desert. That is composed of silica.

The desert is very much composed of silica! Also a surprisingly large amount of iron, so the impurities aren't that much harder to find the necessary materials for.

Nod nod! Tap the two opals and a mostly protected vampire picture again. Two should really be enough.

Okay, two would be enough, but Iovetra is a woman of scientific testing, thank you very much. She was an alchemist before she was a vampire, this is in fact what got her into this mess. Which is to say:

She's totally going to make like, five. In varying arrangements of silica lattice, with a perfect copy of the original opal as the control, and then the four others in slightly different arrangements from the control. The result is five black opals, but slightly different.

'Making' the opals involves the castle delivering her a heap of sand (from her stores), and Iovetra spritzing it with her watering can, and then her... sitting quietly with it, doing magic at it. There's a little heat and pressure from the floating globules of moistened sand, but mostly it's just politely arranging itself at her castle's command. In cases like this, where they haven't figured out a template for the castle to follow, Iovetra needs to personally help her castle put this thing together, with it providing an interface and following her instructions.

Anyway, here are some opals! "Do you know which one of these is best for magical purposes?" she asks, because she is incorrigible when it comes to this kind of testing.

Numair could do this, of course. That would be the easy and careful way to do it.

But that's no fun.

Chirrup! The opals glow, the perfect copy just as much as the original, the rest in varying shades. ...it's all indistinguishable at this level.

Grumble grumble. Chirr-tweet. Another glow, that same perfect copy, but now the rest are of visibly different brightness. Three of the new ones are distinctly dimmer, but the last is a little bit brighter.

Ooooo~

Okay so that one was with a smaller and more regular lattice, but interestingly enough it did need just the right amount of impurities, or that one on the left would have been just as bright as this one -

She's going to make some more. Four more, specifically. Testing types of, and concentration of, the impurities.

The precise ratio and distribution of impurities does turn out to be quite important. She won't have a perfect sense of what makes for even a local optimum of opal design — everything she tries still has some inconsistency, even as controlled as she can manage it — but a few more iterations will get her opals which consistently glow brighter than Numair's original necklace gem under Kit's whistle.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of sand or traces of iron in the immediate vicinity.

Numair does his best to follow along and explain a little bit of what he feels in the opals to Kit and draw a sense in the dirt on the ground. This isn't exactly the most efficient method of communicating, but it's better than blind iteration.

Eventually he remembers they had an objective, though. He takes a couple test opals and reaches into a pouch with a finger, drawing it out  now coated in a vaguely herb-scented oil. He draws symbols in oil and that black fire over the opals and in a circle around them, gestures, and with a lazy flick of his hands the oil burns away and the fire flows inwards, sucked into the gems. He offers them to Iovetra.

Tap the ground with the drawings. Vampire: oval! Sun overhead, line bounces off. A line ahead of the sun, going down below the ground and then back up, and another beam of light: bounces off, but a much lighter line goes through. Down and up again: more gets through this time. A third cycle, and now the beam of light is mostly getting through. He taps the four sun drawings and shrugs, waves a hand.

He gestures to his necklace, then pulls at the material of his cloak and gestures around Iovetra's neck. He says something in a questioning tone.

Oh, right. An objective. Yes. That.

"I am guessing I am to also turn this into a necklace. Can do, one moment."

She has been collecting the skins of the very many creatures she's been murdering lately! It wasn't for literally this purpose, but they can be used for this purpose! She soon enough has a braided leather cord, upon which goes the opal. Necklace then goes onto neck. "Sufficient for the magic to work? Am I good to test it?"

Nod. (The working will be weaker with only one opal, and this is a somewhat on-the-spot modification to more aggressively cover things and handle the leakage with raw power. Even so, a single opal should do a bit better than his previous spell, and with both of them he expects it will be as good as that with an additional layer overhead.)

Okay! Then she will stick her arm outside. How complete is this sunlight protection?

With one opal: she loses a little bit of her ability to see purple colors, but perhaps half as much UV gets through. With both of them: Purple colors in general are very dull, and ultraviolet light is heavily blocked. Maybe half a percent is getting through, or less if the opals are kept in close proximity.

She relays this to Kitten. Clearly there are some diminishing returns with this opal system, but: yeah okay, she can go with two opals. For safety, though, she's also going to wear her hooded cloak and gloves, which she already had on hand for when her castle was not in a desert. Warding off sunlight is literally what these are designed for, and a mix of the magical solution and a mechanical one seems the best for keeping her from being on fire.

Of course, she tests this, by going outside in the burning sun. ... Yeah, this'll work. She beams, delighted.

"Thank you!!" she says cheerfully, twirling in the sunlight for the first time in centuries.

Throwing more power at a spell is not usually a good solution to problems! Catching everything there with a spell is not easy, and the second opal is as much to support the spell's duration as it is to empower the actual effect. Numair is unsurprised by this outcome.

He bows, smiling, at her evident delight.

Some chirping to pass along the message, and then Kit would like to pull Iovetra towards the tents. She can turn into a rat! She can talk to Daine! She can meet Kaddar and he can be very confused about whether or not she is the Graveyard Hag, especially if she turns into a rat in front of him! It will be great! Come ooooooon!

Oh? She - will consent to being tugged towards the tents, though she's a little nervous and doesn't keep it off her face. "I can keep this necklace, right, it's mine now? Are there care instructions I need to worry about, is this going to last forever, or only a limited duration...?"

Limited duration? Yes, didn't Numair explain this. Nod nod! Point to the sun. Very quiet whistle. Claw goes around! Up, down, up, down, up, down. Her whistle grows with each cycle, staying mostly quiet but growing in volume. Up, down. Louder still, and Iovetra might notice a patch of sand in front of them starting to shimmer with head. Up, down. Loud! And with this whistle, the sand is giving off a clear heat shimmer and starting to change color, becoming faintly reddish amidst the typical yellow sand.

Warning croak. Don't be that sand.

"Ah, okay, so it does need to be renewed. I should be able to tell when it's starting to lose power. I make a point of trying to avoid being on fire, don't worry."

Agreeable chirp! And back to over there over there over there.

The camp consists of a collection of tents on a dune, raised above a platform covered in beautifully woven carpets and decorated with pillows of all shapes and sizes. Globes are set around the platform, glowing for no clear reason. There are stone circles set atop it, scorch marks in the middle indicating them as locations for fires to stave off the night chill.

Humans bustle about on the platform, preparing food, setting out wood for the fires, tending to the animals, and so on. One sits in the middle. Iovetra may note when he starts to get up and do something a few times, before glancing at someone nearby and instead sitting back. He holds a bouquet of dried flowers.

Kit is not tugging her towards them. Kit is tugging her towards a perhaps twenty-year-old woman standing atop a dune. looking worriedly back at the castle until she recognizes Kit and Numair walking out towards her.

Social anxiiiiiety, please do not all descend upon her with torches and pitchforks, that would go poorly and also hurt a bunch. Also it's so bright out here, it's extremely hard to see anything when she's directly in the sunlight, she might need to make some kind of tinted eye protection to protect her eyes. She can see a little, though, with the help of hiding under the hood.

She doesn't know what the dried flowers are about? They're not for her, are they? That seems strange and weird??? Unless they've figured out she's an alchemist, which, the giant garden and castle covered in blood roses probably gave her away, but, still. She's. Just going to keep being tugged along by a tiny dragon.

If a rat squeaked at her with intent to communicate for some reason, would Iovetra understand what it was saying?

Ssssssort of? She could make some guesses from context and her understanding of rat body language and communication styles, but it would be very fuzzy guess, not definitive understanding.

When the woman speaks, it feels... a bit like that. Iovetra has oddly strong guesses about what she's saying, guesses which don't seem obvious from context if she thinks about them

She says something, and Iovetra would guess this is noting something slightly surprising about her. Not an unpleasant surprise, just something unexpected. Then she turns to Kit and starts talking.

Kit gleefully chirps and whistles and acts out her responses.

Numair follows behind, but he stayed back to gather some of the opals for inspection by other mages. He will be a few minutes catching up.

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.

It's a two-day journey if you just want to cross. That's why it's called the Narrow Sea. Carthak to Corus might be ten days or so, depending on the winds. East from Corus you can find all the cold forests you want. Daine has run in those forests, and has fond memories of them. I'm not King Jonathan, but Kit thought Numair would ask him to give you a place, and he'll find somewhere. The immortals have broken up a lot of fiefs. And therefore, implicitly, he has many nobles or noble-adjacent knights looking for land and he can offer it on good terms, like putting up with a vampire's castle nearby.

Oh, two days is easy, if she drinks beforehand she wouldn't even need to worry about it on the trip itself.

Though she's a bit concerned about being dragged into... stuff? Political in-fighting, specifically, the major comparison to which is the in-fighting between vampires and their clans. Is that likely to be a thing? She does not want that to be a thing, she just wants to garden and output healing potions and other pro-social alchemy stuff and not get involved about people fighting over who sits in the big chair.

Everywhere she suggested has infighting. Everywhere she knows about has infighting. Carthak's new emperor, Kaddar over there, took power in... circumstances (Daine is slightly self-conscious about this), and not everyone is happy with that. Tortall is still roiling from the Immortal War, and the two threatening attempts to overthrow the king she knows about in the past decade are probably not alone. Scanra is unstable at the best of times, and it was just on the losing side of the Immortal War, so now is not the best of times. Galla is an even easier raid target than Tortall, and with no Dominion Jewel their nobles are even more prone to uprisings. (Also she has some bad memories in Galla.) The Copper Isles has a mad king. The Yamani Isles have wyverns roosting in their mountains. She can keep going. 

Tortall has some treaties with Immortal residents who are not to be pulled in to succession disputes or war. She negotiated some of them. Carthak might do the same. Beyond that, Iovetra will need to ask someone else who is better acquainted with the politics of other countries.

Infighting is - well, she supposes normal, it's being forcibly dragged into it that she takes issue with. Tortall has had some treaties of the leave them alone variety negotiated? That sounds promising, then. So, probably Tortall? Since it also has green and cold and was on her shortlist, anyway. Is Daine willing to help her make a treaty of some kind for 'please at least ask before dragging me into your conflicts'?

Making treaties like this is about half of what Daine spends her time doing for Tortall! She can definitely give advice on how to handle such a thing. ...Iovetra can talk with her mouth and other humans can understand her, and Daine is currently accompanying Kaddar. Her personally handling the negotiation may be difficult and she is not prepared or empowered to make that sort of deal right now, with very little available context. She can write out a standard sort of phrasing and explain it as best she can, and Iovetra can try to negotiate from there? It doesn't sound like there will be very much negotiation but a castle does need to physically be somewhere.

Or she can shift into a goose and fly back if Iovetra needs her around. That would take her two to four days, depending on the wind. She can't abandon Kaddar when they're stopping by a village —they need her talent with animals — but the desert is sparse and she sometimes has the time for that.

I don't actually speak the language, specifies Iovetra. She could learn it, granted, and has started, but learning a language takes time.

Except she could cheat via human blood drinking. She... kind of doesn't want to at all, but acknowledges that it's tactically smart. Even if it makes her feel kind of sick.

That is a problem. She can—

Numair walks up to them! He says something to Kit,

Kit tweedles up at him and tail-points to the rats (to one of the rats, maybe?),

and Daine expands and unfolds back into human shape. She speaks the same language as the other humans, but while in rat shape Iovetra finds she can still understand it perfectly well.

"So what d'you have for us? She says she wants to find a cold and foresty place for her castle and a deal like the griffins where nobody's going to pull her into any two-legger wars all of a sudden. The problem is she can't talk to people without me, and I can't just fly off whenever."

If Iovetra has anything to say directly(ish) to Numair, she suddenly has an available translator.

Please tell him thank you, again, for the sun protection amulet. What sorts of things I should do to make it last? Is there anything I should know about its upkeep?

"She says thank you for the amulet, and she wants to know how to keep it working. Did you spin her a lasting spell in a few hours? Numair, you're supposed to be resting after that wurm a few days ago! —Yes, listening is rather what I'm talking for, if it teaches you to talk on your own I won't complain one bit."

Numair's response is less comprehensible, but it contains some mention of spells and amulets. Probably. The words at least sound similar.

.... Yeaaaah she didn't get most of that. Help, please, for a translation?

"The amulet will hold for three to five days, he's not full sure. He'll need to get some books to set it solid, and it happens we're in Carthak so the best books will be about laying slave collars, Numair! And it would be hard but whatever you did to make black opals will make it fair simple, he just needs to look back at his books. If you need to keep that one up he can poke it with his Gift to refill it, or perhaps a different mage can do it if they're good, but he says good he means maybe a master at the University wouldn't mess it up trying. Don't look at me like that, you know you do."

Iovetra gives a little rat snort, because the banter is genuinely very cute, but:

Slave collars? That's a thing here???

Daine will get her HORROR AND DISGUST. Behold! She has a visceral reaction to slavery as a thing, and the visceral reaction is the desire to get the fuck out of this country as soon as physically possible, and maybe burn it down on her way out. She doesn't endorse the urge to burn it down, but she has it.

"Yes, I know, but Kaddar says it would beggar the Empire and his nobles would rebel aside. And his soldiers. He handled the Banjiku fair enough, but if you know how to get rid of slavery all at once I'd be right happy to hear it."

I don't, I got out of mine by outliving my master.

Best thing he ever did for her, forgetting her in a box somewhere and then going off and dying.

But, yes, this is in fact extremely personal for this vampire in particular, and if anyone attempts to enslave her it will go extremely poorly for them.

"Best avoid the Copper Isles then. They're much worse about it than Carthak."

But definitely no slavery in Tortall? she confirms.

"Not legally."

This is acceptable. She might be involved in a politic if someone does a slavery in front of her in a place where it is definitely illegal. In that she will be on the side of 'no slavery.' Very strongly.

Anyway moving on from ways where she is anything more than being perfectly harmless and nonthreatening to all.

So I think the thing to do is just to be a small adorable rat on your shoulder as you talk to people, and get a better feel for the local language? Does your caravan need healing potions or something? ... What are the opals going to be used for, are they just good for stopping sunlight's burn?

"Numair did you have her make you black opals without explaining anything."

Reply! Gesture to Kit! More reply!

"I suppose. Yes, black opals are power stones. They can hold a spell, or you can fill them with power and draw on it to strengthen one. Numair says he's using yours to force more power into the sunburn spell? And to set it to stay on you for a time without him needing to keep it up. Without them, he'd need longer, and much more of his Gift, to stick it stable to your amulet."

Ah, so. She and her castle have basically offered vampiric cheat codes to break this magic system. And can therefore be leveraged for power struggles. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since she is an actor in this and could presumably lean on their desire for black opals to get what she wants, just. It sure is a thing. It's ultimately worth acquiring something to literally walk in the sun, and she has definitely made herself obviously valuable, but that comes with some degree of danger that she might've preferred being aware of before she went and made, uh. Like ten of the things. Some of which were better than the one they already had on hand. That she just let them keep.

Interacting with people again is nice, but also: she kind of wishes she'd had something just a smidge lower stakes where she could actually talk to someone. (It's her own fault, really.)

To Daine, what she sends is: Oh, I see. Then - are the black opals I made enough to pay for working on making a permanent anti-sun charm? Would that be an acceptable trade?

"Yes, he says they're a more than fair price and he was going to provide it or give you back the opals once he knew how they worked. He's not sure about the permanent, mind you, but he'll do what he can. And be sure to bring it up when you're dealing with the King, he has one black opal mine but there's no need to give him a second for free." Is this slightly treasonous? Probably. Is anyone going to tell the Wildmage to not ask a fair price on behalf of whoever she's bargaining with? No.

Iovetra decides that she likes this woman.

I will, thank you. Do you live in Tortall? She'd be pretty happy to have her-in-particular as a neighbor. Kitten and Numair are adorable and really useful magically, respectively, but: this one, she likes.

"Most often, but I help out around. As you can see. We're in Carthak to help Kaddar's progress and show off that he has all the best mages, so you'd best settle down and listen. —Numair says that's impolite but there's nobody here that cares, so."

Snicker.

I appreciate the candor.

"Anyway. Numair can check the wind, and mayhap I'll be able to fly north to translate for you after the next village. He says he'll need at least a week to work out the permanent amulet anyway, so there's not much point in going faster. Numair, anything else you wanted to tell — you're name's not Sweetfall to anyone but the People, is it. Did I ever introduce myself? I'm Daine. Or Veralidaine Sarrasri if you have ten minutes."

I'm Iovetra. Pleasure to meet you. I've been given another name? Sweetfall referring to... how I smell like flowers and bring death? Iovetra is honestly kind of charmed.

"The People don't so much have names, so when I talk to them I get a kind of sense of what they're called. I suppose yours is what whoever you learned to be a rat from called you."

Oh. Then. It would have been the colony of rats before I hibernated that named me. This is making her feel some things, and she's not entirely sure what. I think I'm glad to have carried something from them, then. Sweetfall to the People sounds good to me.

She was, of course, forced to leave the rats she'd lovingly spent years raising, when her sire told her to go make the place he'd planned to escape to. She remembers, for some reason, how she asked him to please bring her pets once he joined her, and he'd agreed to 'If he has the chance.' Which, upon reflection with eyes unclouded by forced adoration... was just never going to happen. He'd have never wasted his time and energy on something so insignificant-to-him.

Yep. She's definitely feeling some kind of way about this.

"They liked you, you know. Whoever you learned from."

Numair makes an indecipherable comment, but given that it contains "Iovetra", he's probably telling Daine her more human-language name.

I liked them, too, agrees Iovetra softly.

Rats don't cry, at least not in the way humans do. This is convenient for her in particular, though Daine can pick up on the subtle rat body language of grief and sorrow.

Numair says something.

"Really?"

Something else.

"I guess so. Numair says he can prepare a spell for the language too, if you give him some time. The opals'll cover it easy. Another three or four days, thereabouts. That way you can talk yourself and not have to ask me for everything."

Oh. That'd be good, thank you. Though - weren't you just chastising him for using his magic? Is this going to injure him in some way?

"If he won't take a rest he'll never recover, but if he sits for the next week reading every book he can reach about stable spells, he should be fine to cast a big working at the end. You will, you know how you get."

And the language spell would be a big working? ... I'm not sure it's worth it, then.

"I'm not one to complain at Numair doing less. That's a thank you but no, dear."

Anything else before she goes off to update Kaddar and his attendants on the state of things?

Iovetra needs to learn the language quickly. There are clearly large nations at play, and magic that can let vampires walk in the sun. She has accidentally tripped into containing something just as groundbreaking for them as if she'd walked into Vardoran during the clan wars with the ability to walk in daylight. Time spent orienting is time spent not acting, and one of the greatest strengths of vampirism is the ability to understand. She - thinks of the ridiculous cave woman, and how she does not even understand why someone would ever do that, but maybe the stakes are that high. She's getting the impression that she really, really needs to get over herself, and use what she has to catch up.

She drinks from animals all the time. Actually, now that she's acknowledging creatures that mattered to her before they were taken away, she even drank from her rat colony - rats don't live long lives. The bite of a vampire is more merciful than the ravages of body failure. Humans are, really, just another animal. Isn't it better, if no one needs to die, and no one needs to suffer? She knows what it's like on the other side of that bite, and it's really not bad. Pain from the bite (but she can douse the bite location in an anesthetic), fatigue from blood loss, the vague feeling that you have had your soul touched and stared at by something strange and alien.

... I - do have a way, to learn your language quickly. But I'll need to - consensually, nonlethally! - drink from a couple of willing humans that are willing to lend me their knowledge of the language. I might get other things besides the language, though. And it's fine if no one will, I don't, it's not - no one has to. It'd just help me a lot."

"You need to drink blood? Well, best you don't try mine, there's no knowing what it'll do. Language and some other things they know... Numair?"

Numair says something.

"He wouldn't. Come, we can ask Kaddar. I'm fair sure one or two of his guards will offer some blood for the Hag, and an opal won't hurt."

I'm - really not the Hag, says Iovetra, but also her only ability to speak to anyone going through Daine, who is admittedly very charming, but perhaps not best suited for translating things to fully sapient individuals. But I would be willing to pay in opals, yes.

Kind of makes her feel icky, but it is better than people letting her drink from them because she's someone she's not.

"Paying also works. I can translate."

Over to the platform. "Kaddar!" She beckons him over and gives a short explanation of the situation — Iovetra is not in fact the Graveyard Hag, she's an immortal from somewhere strange, she can't speak the language, she needs to drink some blood from a guard to learn it, she might get other things the donor knows.

"Lady Iovetra! My thanks for the assistance you have provided to my subjects. If you require a donation of blood safely drawn, the blood unspilled for your efforts will more than make up for it."

He's gotten more poetic.

"Are there any requirements more precise than simply being a speaker of the common tongue?"

Her silent translation is only slightly abridged.

Goodness. That is very poetic.

No requirements more precise, just - please make sure the subjects themselves consent, and do not feel pressured into accepting by a higher power. Also if they change their mind right before, or midway through, that is completely fine and I will stop immediately."

Somewhere between her and Daine's expression, Kaddar apparently decides to tone down the poetry somewhat.

"I shall find a willing subject fully informed of your requests." He waves for one of his guards, mutters something, and in not too long two of his men are kneeling before his chair. Daine doesn't bother to translate what he says to them, but it sounds similar to her translation of Iovetra's terms.

They nod. "These two have volunteered, please. Zaimid will heal them afterwards."

.... Okay. I am happy to provide healing instead, but understand if they trust methods they know. (The kneeling makes her uncomfortable.) Then I need a bit to get an anesthetic and some disinfectant. If I'm doing this, I'm doing this right. One moment please.

The little red rat fades away into smoke, reforming in her native form back inside her castle. She notes that she possibly should have warned them before she did that, but she was kind of too nervous, and walking all the way back in the sun seems silly. Oops.

Topical anesthetic is pretty straightforward, she remembers the recipe for it and has everything on hand, and she already had some disinfectant suited for this purpose, for 'Concern for the cave lady' reasons. It's only a few minutes before she emerges from the front door of her castle, carrying a little satchel.

When she gets back, she finds the same two men sitting on the edge of the platform. One of them is holding out his arm, his hand angled down to display his wrist.

Oh, good! She was going to request an arm.

"I actually need a bit further up to avoid hitting anything important," she says, kneeling beside him and tapping a spot on his forearm, below the elbow. Yes? This is fine?

He doesn't seem to understand what she said, but the tapping suffices. He rotates his arm to expose that location more.

Yeah, she didn't expect him to understand it, just. She's talking out loud out of a mixture of nerves, and leftover habits of being on her own, really.

Okay! Then first: topical anesthetic. Second, she holds up a finger marking 'wait,' because it takes a bit for it to get working, even when it's magically enhanced to work faster and deeper than a purely chemical anesthetic would. Then: she'll give a little pinch of the spot she anesthetized. No pain? And he doesn't pull away at all during this process?

He looks strangely at the pinched spot, but no apparent reaction beyond that.

(The healer, hovering nearby, suddenly looks interested.)

Yeah, see, this is why she wants to be able to speak for herself!!! She has topical anesthetic and is perfectly happy to share how to make it with people! ... Admittedly they couldn't do all of the steps that require being a vampire with magic, but, still. Better than none at all.

Anyway, this done: disinfectant. It is going everywhere involved in this process. The spot on his arm first, then her mouth, which tastes terrible, but an infection would be worse. She could fix it, but prevention is the better cure in all cases. Then she carefully lines up her fangs with the spot, and checks before she actually bites down - yes? he still consents?

This mysterious substance is more mysterious than the previous, but he has no objection.

Nod.

Okay. Then, very gently and very carefully, she bites.

Her fangs don't hurt - he can feel that something is happening there, a sort of pulling, maybe - but there is no pain to go with them.

There is a general feeling that - he's being watched. Observed. It is like he is being held in the palm of this strange woman's hand, tiny and insignificant, for all that she is very politely drinking from him while giving him ample room to pull away. She is being very gentle and careful with it, and this is obvious too, but. It's also obvious that she doesn't have to. This almost-gentle, aimed touch, looking for language over anything personal, it could just be aimed at everything. She could just drink the entirety of him, memory and knowledge and all, and kill him, right here, and there is nothing anyone could do to save him.

It's over very quickly, despite that. A cursory affair - walking into the library of his self, finding what she is looking for with ruthless speed and efficiency, and taking it off the shelf and departing. She has not left him with less, except in the sense that he contains a little less blood now.

On the one hand: aaaaaaaa

On the other: he volunteered for this duty because he heard they would be accompanying Veralidaine Sarrasri, the one who the Hag used to tear down the old palace. He was disappointed at the lack of anything like that, and then they heard rumors of the Graveyard Hag herself here. And then he hears that she's actually just someone who looks like the Graveyard Hag and has a relationship with hyenas and rats like the Graveyard Hag and now apparently she can touch souls between life and death like the Graveyard Hag? It's comforting as much as it is terrifying, feeling himself in her hand like this.

And then it's over, and he reels back at the return to his skin and the certainty that death has passed over him once more. The healer rushes in and curls a long-fingered, delicate hand around his arm, closing his eyes to concentrate.

He similarly has a vampire who is carefully and efficiently re-cleaning the bitten spot, and then putting gentle pressure and a bandage over the bite mark to staunch the bleeding. She moves with the same speed as the healer, the same practiced efficiency at dealing with things that are life and death and could just bleed out if handled too poorly.

"Nothing - heavy for at least two days," she orders, in an accented but intelligible version of the local language, as she finishes this work. Integration of the knowledge is taking a bit, she doesn't quite have the feel for how to properly speak this language down, and is missing a lot of vocabulary, besides. "Thank you - are you - okay?"

His life-force restores itself with startling speed! The healer seems quite effective. (She will not be impressed at avoiding infection because there is no infection to avoid, but he could.) By the time the bandage is wrapped, it's almost unnecessary. 

"Yes, Gr— milady."

She nods, then backs off, giving the man space. "Thank you," she repeats. Then she looks at the healer.

"The... no-pain... water," she says, a little awkwardly. She doesn't have the word for potion, and can't quite figure out how to say liquid instead. "Do you want?"

In retrospect, she made kind of a bigger batch than she needed to. It was the nerves. Her nerves, specifically. But she has some words now, and she can use them to communicate her willingness to share resources!!!

"Me? No, no. Pain is a trick of the Gift and no more to banish. The Emperor's hospital project, though... Madame Veralidaine said these were your creations, and perhaps they take immortal magic, but if a minor hedgewitch with enough Gift could make it, there is much which could be done were a few procedures painless. Tooth extractions are necessary and easily healed, but the howling and shrieking is such that a healer who pulls teeth will soon have no willing patients, for that or any other that needs doing."

She did not quite get all of that, but she understood the majority.

"Vampire magic helps with..." she doesn't have the word for potency. "Stronger. Better? But creation from plants and stuff put together. Grow plants, get stuff, put together, no pain. Uh - outer pain, for putting on outside, not for drinking."

Having the ability to speak at all is so great! So, so great!!

"We have some herbs for pain, but nothing strong enough for that. Even a trickle of the Gift can empower them with time. If this holds your magic better than the ingredients, perhaps it will hold ours as well. Or it may prove useless! Many paths do. But the Hag never gave a gift without a throw of dice."

"I wish. Mayhap this is better, but it'd be nice even so." Daine is apparently impressively quiet when she's not trying to get attention.

"Ah— only the saying, you see." That is the sound of someone suddenly remembering important history.