delta v over delta t when there is no t

[ertia]

In a bar, there is a girl.

She looks like she has saved up all of her decadent and slothful impulses for a solid decade and is indulging them all at once. She is sprawled on a couch with a book she's only half-reading, and an ice cream sundae, and smiiiiiiling.

Comments

[first_and_final]

"If I'm going to be resurrecting dragons all day I might prefer to do it in your world, since otherwise it could get a little crowded out here," he says. "Barring that practical objection I'm happy to help."

[alicornucopia]

"Do you want me to go in first so your friend can look at me but not necessarily at all of these other dragons?" Kiaver asks.

[first_and_final]

"Yes, please," says Milan.

[ertia]

So Kiaver goes in - it's really something to watch her go through that door, which otherwise looks pretty human-sized - and then comes out and says Kithabel doesn't find her mesmerizingly beautiful but is willing to behold other dragons under the same conditions. It wasn't like she agreed to try Kiaver due to longstanding personal friendship therewith.

Dragons march past Kithabel into their own world.

Kithabel does not find them mesmerizingly beautiful. Pretty, yes, but not mesmerizing.

[first_and_final]

Milan waits by the front door for most of the dragons to go through, and then asks Sirofael (the smallest by far out of this bunch) to hold it for him while he steps through and quickly resurrects any dragon that any of them is able to name. She wedges the door open with a claw and waits patiently. The sky fills with colourful flying reptiles of varying sizes, most of them confused.

[alicornucopia]

Kiaver takes on the job of explaining things to them! Things are explained. Dragons are alive. Lots of dragons.

[first_and_final]

So many dragons.

Milan does not find any of them mesmerizingly beautiful.

(He plays with some rocks in various intricate ways with a tiny fraction of his attention. Can't start letting himself slide.)

When these dragons start naming their dead Bondmates, Milan explains that the way his magic works means that he needs to do some big impressive things other than resurrections soon, and he's sorry for their loss and will happily do another round if they catch him in Milliways again but doesn't think he can get into resurrecting non-dragons at this time. He brings back ten more dragons and then steps back into the bar. Sirofael goes out to join the crowd.

[ertia]

Kithabel stops Sirofael before the door is closed all the way, asks for a written list, and points out that the Bondmates won't present nearly as much of a crowding problem within Milliways and its momentum-pausing environs as the dragons themselves did. They just need to have the sorcerers well away from the door and send someone in with a list.

[first_and_final]

"Um, well," says Sirofael, "if you say so..." and she asks someone who asks someone who asks someone who goes to wake up their Bonded who is sleeping nearby and has writing materials and the ability to use them.

Sirofael patiently holds the door open while someone's Bonded listens to the crowd of dragons name their dead Bondmates and argue worriedly over what will happen to the ones who have multiple of those.

Milan observes these proceedings and fake-elven-whispers to Kithabel, "Not that I object to resurrecting a bunch more people, but most of these dead Bondmates are going to have dead friends or family members, who will go on to have dead friends or family members of their own, and I would have preferred to rest on the mysterious-workings-of-my-magic excuse rather than explain to these people that I have to cut them off at a few thousand total unless someone gives me a tour of the country and a solid proposal for how they're going to integrate the sudden population boom."

Meanwhile outside the door:

"No one whose Bondmate went to the Dark is getting them back," says a crimson dragon with a golden tinge.

"Saravasse, you're biased," says a different dragon who happened to be nearby.

"Mine came back from the Dark before he died and I'm still not asking for him," says, apparently, Saravasse. "We're not risking it."

"But she loved me!" says a bereft resurrectee.

"She was your Bonded, that's what Bonded do," sighs Saravasse. "Love does not prevent stupid decisions, unfortunately."

[ertia]

"I think we can cut them off later more defensibly than we can cut them off now. I'll explain for you. ...And tell off Kiaver for being the second person not to mention that their cheaty power boost comes with a love thing."

Kithabel goes and does that: there are only so many dragons here who will have had only so many Bonded, but it does need to be self-contained and since she and Milan are outsiders to the whole Dark situation they're going to let anybody veto anybody else's resurrection requests, e.g. Saravasse's "no Dark" policy seems sound.

Kiaver does not seem to understand why she is being chastened. Was Kithabel under the impression that this sort of partnership would be sustainable without a good solid mutual affection underlying it? It sometimes doesn't work out that well even with.

Kithabel is annoyed. But she collects the list for Milan to fulfill far enough away from the door that its timeflow doesn't affect his momentum.

[first_and_final]

The list grows. Some people who've been around for a while under the new order of multiple Bonded want all their dead Bondmates back, whereas some only want one or two because they're worried about collisions.

"We're testing this," says Saravasse firmly. "Atuona, go ask the nice man for your first five Bondmates."

Atuona goes to Milan and names five individuals.

"Sure," says Milan. He turns up and concentrates. Two elves and three humans appear, confused.

"Well, none of you are dropping dead again immediately, that's a good sign," says Saravasse.

"Saravasse," grumbles Atuona. She retrieves her resurrected Bondmates to explain what's going on and check that they're all definitely okay. It comes out that not all of them are currently her Bondmates. Apparently only one example of each type of magic may be Bonded to a particular dragon at a time, and priority goes to whoever happens to be resurrected first.

Some dragons start frantically prioritizing. Others decide they don't need their entire list of dead Bondmates; some decide that actually maybe they could use a few more if this is how it's going to work out. The overworked secretary has to scrap his whole list and start over.

[ertia]

Well, they can present whatever list they like within the constraints. Kithabel and Milan were hanging out in Milliways anyway and they can do that while interrupted by occasional resurrection jobs. (Kithabel tries one. It doesn't work.)

[first_and_final]

"So I don't know about you, but none of those dragons seemed especially mesmerizingly beautiful to me," comments Milan while they await the list. "Although maybe that's because my magic-love-thing quota has already been filled. For that matter, I wouldn't necessarily expect Addy to know even if we'd thought to ask her, but given what she implied about how mating works I wonder if your magic love thing quota has also been filled by some sort of vampire magic convenience factor that exists to prevent multiple vampires getting stuck on the same human and having to pursue some sort of awkward compromise and/or violent confrontation."

[ertia]

"I suppose that doesn't sound impossible, but I don't have the impression that everybody has a dragon that is right for them necessarily at all, and it could also just be sorcery not working right for it."

[first_and_final]

"Yeah, we really don't have enough information. I suppose we could go fetch some other sorcerers whom we might want to make omnipotent. Are there any sorcerers we want to make omnipotent besides you? Is there anyone we want to make omnipotent - even if they've never been to your world we can bring one of the dragons or their Bonded into Milliways for a bit so we don't lose the connection, send someone into your world long enough to pick up nonzero momentum, then pull them back into Milliways and introduce them to the crowd. Now is the time to mention if you know the Milliways room number of someone whom you would just love to make omnipotent."

[ertia]

"6779," says Kithabel. It is her own room number. "I don't know, a lot of the mechanisms that make sorcery such a friendly sort of magic disappear with actual omnipotence, and I'd trust me but I'd have to think long and hard about anybody else, you know?"

[first_and_final]

"I think I'm more willing to trust my own reading of arbitrary Milliways patrons from gods know where than you are, but yeah, I take your point. I mean, since it has been established that I can successfully create dragons..."

He stops. He pauses noticeably.

Then he says, "I was going to say that we can wait around and see if there's anyone we want to try out for a long apprenticeship as our junior sorcerer and then once we know them well enough we vampire them, wait until they find a mate, and dragon the mate and see if that works since at least one magical love thing will already have cleared the connection, but actually there's a much shorter route to a similar setup."

[ertia]

"Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

[first_and_final]

"I'm pretty sure I am," he says. "But to avoid hilarious communicative mishaps, the thing I'm thinking is that I could turn into a dragon."

[ertia]

"Presumably you wouldn't be a vampire anymore..."

[first_and_final]

"Sure, but I'd still have the primary advantage of having ever turned into a vampire, I can't see anything about turning into a dragon that would eliminate my fairy curse," he says. "It might do away with my witchcraft power but I've never actually used my witchcraft power except to mitigate one of the flaws of vampirism, and anyway once I am a dragon I can experiment with turning back into a mostly-human and then back into a vampire from there, I don't especially want to spend the rest of my life enormous and quadrupedal. I have no idea what ceasing to be a vampire will do to my magical vampire crush on you, but if it gets immediately replaced by a Dragonbond, well, that presumably won't be so different. We could test ahead on a few of these things by seeing if any of those dragons want to be temporarily turned into humans and find out what that does to their Bonds..."

[ertia]

"Testing sounds like a plan." Kithabel goes and asks some dragons if any of them want to volunteer for an experiment that involves turning into a human temporarily.

[pythbox]

"What in the world for?" asks Sirofael.

[ertia]

"We're considering turning Milan into a dragon to see if I can Bond to him and want to know what happens if he does not prefer to stay a dragon after that."

[first_and_final]

"Well, I'll do it, sure," says Sirofael.

"I haven't resurrected any Bondmates for you in particular, have I?" says Milan.

"No, does that matter?"

"It might," says Milan.

"Okay then, um, um, her name was Elora Carter and she was a Wildmage from Ysterialpoerin—"

There appears a Wildmage. She, like so many others today, is confused.

"Hello just a minute I can explain everything but first the resurrection man wants to try something," says Sirofael.

"Any cosmetic preferences for your human form?" says Milan.

"Oh, well, I guess I want hair the colour of my scales and I want to keep my eye colour, since you're asking..."

Sirofael turns into a human. She is tall and has long pale lavender hair and black eyes. She looks very pretty, particularly to Elora.

"Oh, how do you balance," she complains, wobbling on her insufficient quantity of feet. (Elora catches her.) "Have I been human for long enough, can I turn back now?"

"Are you still Bonded?"

"Yes, definitely," says Sirofael.

"I have no idea what's going on," says Elora.

"Please make me a dragon again," says Sirofael. "This feels very weird. Elora, do some magic to show you're still my Bonded."

Elora sighs and looks around and pours out a bit of salt from a saltshaker on a nearby table and grows a grain of it into a block of salt the size of her head.

"I'll trust you that that's appropriate evidence," says Milan, and then Sirofael is once again a dragon. Sirofael and Elora go back out the door where the least bewildered of Atuona's resurrected Bondmates is holding it.