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]

"I do not have time for games, child."

[missnicegirl]

"...I'm not sure what you mean," says Matilda. "I'm serious."

[alicornucopia]

"I particularly do not have time to explain the difference between fantasy and reality. If you are done playing with my daughter you may go home."

[missnicegirl]

"...If you want to find out about the kinds of things ialdae can do, you can probably ask just about any dragon by now and they'll have heard of me," she says. "But you're not going to die of old age anytime soon and neither are your kids, so I guess I don't have to convince you right away."

On consideration, she adds, "Thank you for having me over. It was really nice talking to Leekath. I like her a lot. Goodbye."

Then she pops back out to the street where she met the family. Time to see if she can find out where Esmaar keeps its Parliament. Maybe if she can find a library...

[alicornucopia]

And then she is in a dorm room being peered at by a red-eyed adolescent boy.

"Got you," he says.

[missnicegirl]

"...Apparently so," says Matilda. "Why have you got me? You don't need a magic transplant yourself; do you know someone who does?"

[alicornucopia]

"No," says the boy, "I need an explanation. What in every invented vista of creative madness are you?"

[missnicegirl]

"I'm a human from another world who has a kind of magic that's also from another world and can do a lot of things," says Matilda. "My name is Matilda. What's yours?"

[alicornucopia]

"Kaylo. I do apologize about the unannounced calling but nobody I knew how to get ahold of knew how to get ahold of you."

[missnicegirl]

"Well, please don't do it again, but luckily I wasn't in the middle of anything important just then," she says. "What exactly do you want explained? The biggest mysteries of ialdae are why some people catch it more or faster than others and how it manages to learn things, and I haven't figured out either of those very well because I've been busy with other things like curing shrens and making people immortal."

[alicornucopia]

"Which I appreciate very much. I'm a theoretician. I want to get a really good look at your magic and figure out how it's doing all that and what else it could do."

[missnicegirl]

"Well, there's a wizardry analysis that sees ialdae but it's not very good and the wizard who invented it wouldn't tell me anything about how it worked," she says. "Ialdae can see itself much better. You're a dragon, so you could probably catch ialdae yourself, and then I could probably teach you how to see magic with it, if you want."

[alicornucopia]

"Yes."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay... the usual way dragons catch ialdae is by getting magic transplants, and you don't need one right now but I could give you one anyway, it's perfectly safe," she says. "Otherwise I'd have to figure out a different way to get a lot of ialdae on you. Levitating people for a long time works but I think it might not work as fast."

[alicornucopia]

"The magic transplant is the same thing the old people are getting? I think I'd rather hold off on that until I know to my satisfaction what it is besides perfectly safe; at the rate you and your friends have been going there won't be any dragon magic left even as a museum piece soon."

[missnicegirl]

"The spare magic from your used-up form slots sticks around, presumably until you get old and it evaporates, but okay," she says. "I'll levitate you instead."

Kaylo floats upward by a few inches.

[alicornucopia]

"Do you know the incantation and pull for the ialdae analysis?"

[missnicegirl]

She shakes her head. "I haven't seen it cast very often or very recently. Where are we, anyway?"

[alicornucopia]

"Esmaar."

[missnicegirl]

"I was in Esmaar before you called me, too. Do you happen to know where Parliament is? I met a nice vampire who works there, and I want to offer to make him immortal now that I know how to do that for vampires."

[alicornucopia]

"...Parliament's in Daasen. Are you just going down a list of species?"

[missnicegirl]

"Vampires were the next obvious one after dragons because their lifespans are obviously determined by magic," she says. "I think I'll have to invent something different and more general for everyone else, because I don't think lifespan is that simple for most species. And I think it might be hard to tell if something I try has worked, depending on what it is exactly. When there's magic directly involved then I can just see what's happening, but plain biology is much trickier, I'm not at all sure how to teach ialdae to see that."

[alicornucopia]

"There's biology analyses but I don't know how they interact with what you do."

[missnicegirl]

"I don't know either, but I should probably find out. If you're a theoretician are you the sort of person who'd be interested to know that some vampires have a kind of magic that lets them hear objects talking? I found that out today."

[alicornucopia]

"Vampiric inanimate audition? That's psych stuff, I'm not particularly into psych stuff."