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

[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.

[alicornucopia]

Jensal goes and finds some volunteers.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda brings them all to the bottom of the world, and says "Natural forms, please."

[alicornucopia]

One of them does a check in the form of an owl to make sure there aren't any dragons around, and then they space out appropriately and shift.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda looks at the nearest one, and concentrates very hard on exactly what she wants to have happen - let her magic get dragged through and then make it stay and keep this person alive and not go anywhere.

"There, done, you can fly now," she says, after a couple of ticks, and she turns to the next shren.

[alicornucopia]

"...Wouldn't we have just contagioned him again?" asks a shren.

(The first cured is spreading his wings experimentally but doesn't try to take off without this question answered.)

[missnicegirl]

"No," says Matilda. "I put my magic in the place that has the problem and it is staying put."

[alicornucopia]

The cured one takes off.

The others watch enviously.

[missnicegirl]

"You too, go on," she says to the next one, and almost immediately "Now you," to the third. She is getting this down. Her magic is very definitely learning the trick.

[alicornucopia]

Up they go, one by one.

[missnicegirl]

"You've caught ialdae, by the way," says Matilda to Jensal when the last of the volunteers is in the air. "And so has that one," pointing to a flying shren. "People catch ialdae sometimes when it's used on them."

[alicornucopia]

"What does that mean?" Jensal asks.