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]

"Firebreathing, then. That seems pretty easy."

Matilda looks at the part of his patchily refilled magic container that is supposed to govern firebreathing. It seems reasonably simple. She fills it with ialdae, and reminds the magic of its job, which is giving Virac the ability to breathe diamondy fire.

"For the colour group thing, I might want to see someone else from the right colour group so I know for sure exactly what goes there," she says. "Jensal, can you find someone who can come and sit with us? It shouldn't take much more than a degree."

[alicornucopia]

"I'll get Ludei."

She vanishes with a twinkle. She and Ludei appear with a pair of twinkles.

[missnicegirl]

"Thanks, Ludei," says Matilda. She peers at him. She studies his colour-group magic, how it makes him better at flying.

Ialdae seems to be getting the hang of doing dragon magic's job. She hardly has to concentrate at all before it just springs into place.

"There, that part's done too. Now the kids thing, I guess."

She has two dragon examples to go on there, and it doesn't seem to vary much. She finds that empty spot in Virac's magic and puts ialdae there.

"That was easy. Okay. I think I got everything, and it should all work fine. Do we have any idea why your magic all ran away, though?"

[alicornucopia]

Virac shakes his head.

Jensal, however, says slowly: "If he weren't a cured ex-shren... it doing that would have killed him, if I'm not mistaken."

"What do you mean?" Ludei asks.

"I mean, if there weren't ialdae placeholding in the top - compartment - then it would have looked like he just died for no reason. Of old age."

[missnicegirl]

"...is that what dragons dying of old age looks like?" wonders Matilda. "Then... oh, that's no good. Imagine if he'd been shifted, and in a building or something. When you lose a form, you shift back, right? If this happens to everybody eventually..."

[alicornucopia]

"Usually when a dragon or a shren dies of old age they don't shift," says Ludei. "There are a few forms of death that will leave a body in whatever shape the deceased was occupying at the time; that's one of them."

"Except Virac didn't die," says Jensal. "He was already in natural form at the time, but if he'd suddenly lost the ability to shapeshift and not died and he'd been in another form, possibly indoors? I don't know what would have happened but it could have been very bad."

[missnicegirl]

"So what do we do to make sure that doesn't happen to anyone else?"

[alicornucopia]

"Round up all the dragons we've fixed over or approaching the age of two thousand and give them full magic transplants, I guess," says Jensal. "We might need to see you do it again before we can take over."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay," says Matilda.

[alicornucopia]

"Both Ludei and I are over two thousand," Jensal adds. "Can you transplant the magic without it having fled of its own accord?"

[missnicegirl]

"I think so... you should probably be in natural form when I do the shapeshifting part, in case something funny happens," she says.

[alicornucopia]

They stand back. They shift.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda looks at Ludei first.

"Firebreathing," she says. Ialdae jumps into the container. "White-group magic." Ialdae takes that too. "Shapeshifting." More ialdae. "The kids thing." Ialdae. "Your name." Ialdae. "And language." Ialdae. There are now little bits of leftover dragon magic hanging around in between the dense blobs of ialdae, especially in parts of the filled form slots, but for the most part, the contents of his magic container have been completely replaced. "It's way easier to do it when there's already magic in there," she adds.

[alicornucopia]

"What's the dragon magic doing?" wonders Jensal. "Is it going to have any effects lingering like that?"

[missnicegirl]

"Um... I think the tiny little leftover bits aren't doing anything, and the big leftover bits are in places that weren't even doing anything before. I guess you need more magic to pick a form than to keep one, and after you're done picking the form for that space it just kind of sits around?"

[alicornucopia]

"That makes sense, considering how thudias and vampires work," says Ludei.

[missnicegirl]

"I don't know how thudias and vampires work," says Matilda. "How do they work?"

[alicornucopia]

"Thudias are half-dragons, who don't turn out to be dragons themselves. They're born normally for the other parent's species, and eventually learn to turn into a smaller version of the relevant dragon color," says Jensal. "Vampires have a humanoid shape and a bat shape."

[missnicegirl]

"And that makes sense if it takes less magic to have a form than to pick one, right," says Matilda. "Okay then. Jensal, your turn." She names the parts of the magic as she replaces them. "Firebreathing, shapeshifting, kids, language, name. All done. You don't have separate colour-group magic doing a different thing like the white-groups do, your shapeshifting section is just bigger."

[alicornucopia]

"Makes sense," says Jensal. "Should we find you examples of the other color groups to transplant before we start trying to do this ourselves?"

[missnicegirl]

"Yes, I think that would be a good idea."

[alicornucopia]

So they get the (copper) leader of the Corentan house, and the (amethyst) leader of the iceberg house, and then they find an elderly garnet miracle and an elderly black opal miracle to round out the set.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda spends a few ticks peering at each of them, and then replaces their firebreathing and shapeshifting and colour-group magic and reproductive magic and language magic and name magic. Everything works just fine. Everyone's used form slots retain splashes of dragon magic.

[alicornucopia]

Jensal and Ludei then each try it on other elderly miracles, and succeed without any disaster.

[missnicegirl]

Magic transplants are distributed. Hooray!



It occurs to Matilda to ask Jensal, "Why did you need to make sure the people taking care of the babies were fixed first out of the grown-ups?"