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 usually goes along with figuring out how to fix things. I figured out plenty of things about dragons in the course of fixing all those dragon-related problems!"

[alicornucopia]

"Do tell."

[missnicegirl]

"Well, the thing that happens when a dragon dies of old age is that all their magic spontaneously evaporates," she says. "And the thing that happens when a baby dragon dies for seemingly no reason is that they never had any to begin with. Dragon magic comes in a bunch of different sections, and one of them has the job of keeping the dragon alive, and that's the one that loses magic first if there's any magic missing. I learned how to replace that section with ialdae first, because that's how I cured shrens; their problem was that their stay-alive sections weren't quite full and their magic was pulling all the strength out of their wings to make up for it. But then one of the cured people had all his dragon magic vanish because he was old, so all he had left was the ialdae in the stay-alive section, and I had to figure out how to replace the rest so he could talk and shapeshift and breathe fire and so forth again."

[alicornucopia]

"Huh." Kaylo begins furiously note-taking. "That explains the weird memos from the council."

[missnicegirl]

"There were weird memos?"

[alicornucopia]

"I'm not particularly important in the eyes of the dragon council so I didn't get a lot of details. Basically, 'infant mortality and old age and shrens have been cured; if you know anyone who may benefit from this contact your line rep'."

[missnicegirl]

"Well, I did cure shrens and old age and infant mortality, in that order. I only heard about the infant mortality problem once I had started on old age."

[alicornucopia]

"It doesn't get talked about very much. Makes people sad."

[missnicegirl]

"It makes me sad too, but I wish I'd heard about it sooner."

[alicornucopia]

"Well, now there's an enormous dragon baby boom, I guess."

[missnicegirl]

"Yeah. Dragon babies are very cute."

[alicornucopia]

"And there's going to be a lot of them this year and the next and then fewer and then I guess it'll stabilize, although clutch sizes probably mean a steady population increase if they all live..."

[missnicegirl]

"That makes sense, yes... anyway, we were figuring out CC. I haven't really had wizard magic explained to me yet. The wizard in Linnip who summoned me doesn't quite realize that I can understand things, so when I ask her about wizardry she doesn't explain it very well. What sorts of things are known about how CC and wizardry generally work?"

[alicornucopia]

"A wizard in Linnip summoned you?" blinks Kaylo.

[missnicegirl]

"She said she was researching magic in different worlds. Everyone seems very surprised when I say that. What's surprising about it, exactly?"

[alicornucopia]

"Well," says Kaylo, "there's been nothing published about it whatsoever, which kind of screams 'secret project'."

[missnicegirl]

"Well," says Matilda, "they didn't tell me it was a secret project."

[alicornucopia]

"Why would they? If they summoned you they expected to be able to control where you went, and now they can't, and if they say 'by the way don't do that' they don't get to look all friendly."

[missnicegirl]

"...hmm," she says. "I see what you mean... and Thiies, the vampire who works in Parliament, seemed sort of alarmed when I told him I'd been summoned by Linnipese researchers..."

[alicornucopia]

"Well, yeah. Esmaar is completely demilitarized. If you can get around wizard wards and they can teach their soldiers to do it we'd be very easy to conquer."

[missnicegirl]

"...I can ialdically teleport, and I've taught two of them how to do that, and I don't know whether or not it can get around wards but I wouldn't be surprised..."

She frowns.

[alicornucopia]

"Well, easy to check. Go in the hall and then try to get into this room, I'll put the ward up."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay."

Blink, she's in the hall - a tick - blink, she's back in the room.

"Oh dear."

[alicornucopia]

"Oh dear is right," says Kaylo. "Now, it is not totally impossible that you were summoned by independently wealthy nice research wizards with the best of intentions and no connection to Mystic Forces, and it's possible that you have equipped an invasion force."

[missnicegirl]

"If I've equipped an invasion force I am going to be annoyed."