exploratory kidnapping

[alicornucopia]

In this room are two women, one gray and sixty years old, one just thirty and red-haired, both wearing elaborate outfits. The younger casts a spell.

In this room is now also a third person. (On whom the elder woman promptly also casts a spell, which she had at the ready.)

Comments

[missnicegirl]

"That makes sense," Matilda agrees. "My teleportation can go anywhere I know about, even if I don't know very much. It took me to the top of a mountain I'd only heard named and hadn't even seen on a map. Why?"

[alicornucopia]

"I'm going to go put him back," says Jensal, cradling the baby, "and tell some people what's going on, and then we can go to the bottom of the world and you can test your idea on me."

[missnicegirl]

Matilda nods. "Okay."

[alicornucopia]

Jensal puts the baby back and talks to some people. She then returns to her office.

[missnicegirl]

"Anywhere in particular on the bottom of the world?" asks Matilda. "The place that's opposite us now, maybe?"

[alicornucopia]

"That will do."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay."

Now they are on the bottom of the world, flicker-poof.

[alicornucopia]

"Just a moment, I'm going to confirm the area's clear."

Jensal turns into a peregrine falcon, gets altitude, and circles. She descends again, landing a ways away from Matilda, and resumes human shape.

"Will I need to be in natural form for you to try anything?"

[missnicegirl]

"I think so. You'll need to be in natural form to test if anything I do works, and I think giving your wings strength might be harder when they're not here anyway."

[alicornucopia]

Jensal nods.

Jensal looks around again, though her peregrine eyes certainly caught more than her human eyes can.

And she shifts, in a clatter of turquoise scales.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda looks at her. Concentrate. Concentrate. Understand. She can see the flow of power.

"Okay, I'm going to try fixing your wings."

[alicornucopia]

Jensal nods her enormous head.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda tells her magic to fix this.

Now she is continually pouring ialdae into Jensal. And it's going right through, but on its way it replaces her wings' lost strength.

"Try flying," she says.

[alicornucopia]

Jensal spreads her wings and blots out the sun and flaps.

[missnicegirl]

Jensal's wings work perfectly. Matilda smiles.

...But something weird has happened. The amount of magic she's pouring in is growing... She frowns.

"It did something weird," she says. "Come back down?"

[alicornucopia]

Jensal lands. "Weird?" she asks. "Of course it's weird. I'm a flying shren."

[missnicegirl]

"I mean something besides that. It's pulling lots of magic out of me and just throwing it away," she says. "I'm not going to run out - it doesn't go very far and I can pick it back up again right away - but it's weird and I don't know what would happen if I stopped. So I want to try really hard to find out."

[alicornucopia]

Jensal folds her wings. "Is there anything I need to do to help?"

[missnicegirl]

"Not particularly..."

Matilda contemplates this problem. Around and around and around goes the magic.

Understand, she tells herself. Properly.

The place the magic is going has a different kind of magic already there, the kind of magic that shrens and dragons have. But there's a part of it that's empty, and that part is pulling desperately on her magic to fill itself, but it can't keep anything it steals, it just flings it all right back out.

The empty part of the magic is the part that keeps Jensal alive.

That's no good.

But it can function on stolen power, it's just the fact that it keeps flinging it everywhere that's a problem. If it could just learn to keep her magic then it could use that instead of what it's missing and there would be no more problem at all.

Understand. Understand. Understand. Will it work?

Yes.

"The weird thing it's doing is because some of your magic is missing and it was stealing from your wings to make up for that but now it's stealing from my magic instead, and the missing part is the part that keeps you alive, so I shouldn't stop giving it magic, but I can make it stop throwing the magic away and then it'll be fine and it won't need to steal anything and your wings will work and you won't die," she says. "So I'm going to do that."

[alicornucopia]

"...All right."

[missnicegirl]

Matilda very sternly tells her magic to behave. Go into the empty magic place and fill it up and then stay there, you belong there now, you have a new job and it is making Jensal not die, it's very important and you need to keep doing it no matter what and not let anything interfere.

Her magic does as it is told. The flow stops.

"There," she says. "It's fixed, your wings work, I don't have to keep magicking you, they will just go on working. And you're really definitely not going to die of not enough magic where the keeping-alive magic goes."

[alicornucopia]

Jensal takes off very briefly, just to make sure, then lands again and shifts human.

"Thank you," she murmurs, solemn, approaching reverent.

[missnicegirl]

"I think," says Matilda, "because of the part where I'm messing with the magic that keeps you alive, I should practice some more on people who understand what's going on and volunteer for it. But then once I'm sure I know what I'm doing, I think I can probably do it for everyone."

[alicornucopia]

"There will be no shortage of volunteers," says Jensal. "I will find you some if you take me back to the house."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay."

Now they are back in the house.