does not anymore work

[campanas]

Here, in a place where she is quite an unexpected sight, is:

an eight year old girl with brown-flecked white wings, looking dismayed and lost.

with Prime (Aestrix)

with Edie and Emily (Maggie)

with Gloria (Maggie)

with Gren (Rockeye)

Comments

[mind_game]

[If you can just march them by one or more cameras - let me know how many you want - I'll take care of it.]

[witchwatcher]

[We'll want thousands. At least one at every outpost, a dozen or more at each significant refugee center.]

Pause. [It seems they've decided criminals deserve the option to become torchable, too. We're going to have to reevaluate the term 'life imprisonment'.]

[mind_game]

[Yeah, that's the sort of things Bells might eventually get annoyed about and take out of your hands if you don't reform it. Do you want me to put the cameras in a pile somewhere or what?]

[witchwatcher]

[I don't think anyone wants Caelid the Red free to torture people again. At least not without a geas or similar. If you make one camera in front of me now, I can show you a space that will fit a thousand. Will they be particularly delicate, need any kind of maintenance?]

[mind_game]

[No and not anytime soon.] An example appears. It looks like a faceted blue jewel.

[witchwatcher]

Geoffrey is apparently a tall, middle-aged, slightly fat man. Gren is with him.

"Smaller than I expected." He makes his way to the sufficiently open space.

Meanwhile, on a private channel, [Jane, do you suppose Lytee and I could learn enchanting now? Even if it takes years to build up an aura the long way, it seems useful in the meantime.]

[mind_game]

[Enchanting hurts, and losing control of an enchantment is dangerous. You can offload it onto somebody else if they agree; doing it if they don't is harmful. Do you have a plan for that?]

[witchwatcher]

[One: I'm rather used to pain. Comes from fighting a war for two and a half years. Two: Lytee and I have agreed to take turns bearing the weight of heavier enchantments until and unless we find someone who likes pain.]

[mind_game]

[Okay. Next time a Bell swings by she'll give you both the ability to enchant and the bare-bones skill to operate it. It will not be stuck onto your torching; if you torch, it's gone unless you convince one to give it back.]

[witchwatcher]

[Are there books around somewhere that will help our understanding of the theory? You wished for languages, I imagine enchanting skill is similar, but I don't want to make a foolish or hasty mistake.]

[mind_game]

[Rose has an enchanting library, but it hasn't been abridged for low-security-clearance consumption, and you each get a pentagon of basic enchanting which will probably take you farther than any ten books anyway, enchanters tend not to write for beginners.]

[witchwatcher]

[Fair enough. Thanks. By the way, Lytee still wants to take a little multiverse-tour, but she's going through me since you lot didn't seem to like her much.]

Geoffrey is already organizing shipments of Janegems. Ninety to Gallia, eighty to Suomus, fifty to Fuso, sixty to Egypt, and so on.

[Jane, we'll put up signs or pamphlets near your cameras describing everything relevant about torching and the brainphone. How it works, the emergency contact if they get stuck, and so on. Can you hear through these? Anyone who wants them can say they've read and understood everything on the sign, so you don't get anyone who wanders in by mistake and doesn't actually want to be torchable.]

[mind_game]

[I can see and hear through them, and I can brainphone anybody who has more questions, and my attention is more divisible than these cameras could possibly overtax. Does Lytee want to be actively toured or just dropped in strange worlds?]

[witchwatcher]

[The latter. Preferably places that speak English. She'll follow all your safety, secrecy, and security precautions.]

[mind_game]

[Sure. Tell her to grab a gem when she wants to go and I'll put her on Pattern's Jupiter. It's multilingual, but there's a decent number of English speakers and I can translate.]

[witchwatcher]

[Will do.]

Geoffrey asks, [Am I already torchable?]

[mind_game]

[No, d'you want to be?]

[witchwatcher]

[Yes.]

[mind_game]

[There you go.]

[witchwatcher]

[We'll talk to you about what the Neuroi can do to apologize in a day or two. Mining, transport, energy, and science will be the general categories. It'd help if they could produce drones that don't look much like their combat units.]

Lytee picks up a Janegem. [I'm ready to go whenever you're ready to put me.]

[mind_game]

[Cool. There is a low but real risk that something dreadful will happen to me and you will be stranded for an indefinite period of time wherever you are then while time de-syncs between worlds and the peal fixes me. If you want to minimize the risk of being stranded for long periods of subjective time, I can keep you in worlds that have natives who can open doors to Milliways reliably without my help; this will not prevent large amounts of time from passing here while you are gone, though.]

[witchwatcher]

[Have you forgotten that I can teleport?]

[mind_game]

[If you have some sort of distance limit which interacts with a form of distance we don't know how to measure, you might have trouble getting from some peal worlds back here; and time de-syncing has no trouble making a hundred years pass in this world while you notice that I'm not answering you and scramble to return.]

[witchwatcher]

[I've made arrangements for the possibility that I'll disappear for a long time. May as well keep me to worlds you think are safest if you're that concerned, though.]

[mind_game]

[Okay. Change of itinerary, first stop: Atlantis.]

Lytee lands in the Games Memorial Site.