alicornutopia | delta v over delta t when there is no t

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

"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..."

"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.

"What in the world for?" asks Sirofael.

"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."

"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.

"So, that'll work, I guess."

"It sure does look like that'll work," Milan agrees.

Kithabel asks the nearest dragon if there are any other side effects of the Bond besides the love thing, creepy thought sharing business for a few minutes, linked-up proneness to death, and omnipotence.

"Co-Bonded always find that they are able to understand each other unusually well, especially when it comes to using magic, even after the creepy thought sharing business has been and gone," says Saravasse. "Not that miscommunications become impossible, but cooperating does become very easy. The dragon is included but for our purposes it matters less since dragons can't do magic. Oh, and of course there is the part where the Bonded can force the dragon to obey their will by wishing it so."

"Excuse me?!" says Milan.

"Why! Do people! Not! Mention! All of that sort of thing up front!"

"I imagine most of us don't like to think about it," snorts Saravasse.

"I wouldn't either, but that's no excuse," says Milan.

"On the other hand, I think you'll be pleased to hear that losing one's last Bonded is not literally immediately fatal," says Saravasse. "It takes a few seconds, and if there's another Dragonbond Mage or two around and they're quick about it, the dying dragon can be saved before they're all the way gone and hang on until they find another Bondmate. But you have to be very quick, and this method was discovered at the same time as co-Bonding, which is a much more reliable way to keep dragons alive when our Bonded die."

"Oh, well, convenient that we can resurrect the dead, then."

"I thought so!" says Saravasse.

"What else?" says Milan.

"...If I were you, as the only dragon in your universe, I would be very worried about accumulating more Bondmates," says Saravasse. "Are you very, very sure that you have only the one type of magic?"

"In Kithabel's world, yes," says Milan. "Mine has... more than that."

"Then if you return to your world - or hang around Milliways - and acquire any new Bondmates, I advise you to kill them immediately at the first sign of trouble," says Saravasse. "Considering that you can resurrect the dead, this should only be a minor inconvenience for them if it turns out that they weren't so bad after all and you feel safe bringing them back, but if they happen to be colossal idiots like my Bisochim they could do an enormous amount of damage before you found a less drastic solution."

"...I'll take that under advisement," says Milan.

"You do that."

"Does the control mechanism do anything useful like, say, let me forbid adding extraneous Bondmates he doesn't even want, or is it just creepy and horrible."

"It won't do a thing about forming more Bonds," says Saravasse. "It is mostly just as you say. I suppose if he does acquire another Bondmate and they try to force him to do things you can play keep-away."

"What a delightful mental image," mutters Milan.

"I also advise consulting a unicorn if you're going to continue doing these sorts of experiments," says Saravasse. "A unicorn might be able to tell you things such as what happens if your Bondmates start playing keep-away with your free will."

"By all means, do send someone to fetch me a unicorn," says Milan.

"Please," agrees Kithabel emphatically. "A unicorn who can tell us such information seems like just the thing."

Saravasse turns to the rest of the dragons. "One of you fetch me a unicorn!" she calls.

"Why?"

"Where am I going to find a unicorn?"

"Oh, I'll do it," sighs Atuona, and she takes off.

"Thank you," says Milan.

"I would prefer to avoid you causing some sort of horrible disaster," says Saravasse.

"So would we all, I'm sure."

"I hate horrible disasters."

Atuona returns, with a unicorn. Everyone makes way for the unicorn to come to the door.

"Hello," says the unicorn. "The Wild Magic says thank you for all these dragons."

"The Wild Magic is welcome. What's the Wild Magic?"

"It's like gods but better," says the unicorn.

"For those of us who didn't grow up with gods?"

"It knows a lot and it wants to help people but it can't do very many things so it needs to get unicorns and Wildmages to get things done for it."

"That's not a lot like gods," says Milan.

"Gods know fewer things than the Wild Magic, but can do more," says the unicorn.

"Okay, fair."

"So can you assuage our various worries about our possible course of action?"

"What are your worries?"

"How likely am I to end up with an extra Bondmate I'll regret if I turn into a dragon? How horribly will it turn out if I do and Kithabel has to rescue me from them? What is up with the mental sharing thing? Will I in fact be able to resurrect Kithabel on the spot before succumbing to Bondmate loss myself if she ever dies? Is there anything else we don't know about and should?"

"That is a lot of worries. Just a moment," says the unicorn. He swishes his tail and closes his eyes and thinks hard for a bit, and then he says:

"You only Bond to people you're going to like and get along with and mostly you are only going to like and get along with people who aren't the sort of people who you'd need rescuing from because you are lucky and perceptive. It would be pretty horrible if she had to rescue you but it would probably turn out okay unless there was some other kind of magic involved that the Wild Magic has never heard of. You'd be a really young dragon so you won't do hardly any mental sharing at all. You are very fast and won't have trouble resurrecting your Bonded. You should talk to a unicorn before trying to do most things you might think of to do with this world's magic, but resurrecting dragons is fine and turning people into dragons is fine too. Once somebody is a dragon they can't not be a dragon ever again no matter what, so you should be really sure you want to be a dragon before you try turning into one."

The unicorn pauses for breath, then adds, "You can only be the thing that's like a Dragonbond but has to do with being sparkly while you are the thing that is why you are sparkly, but you're right that anyone who has a sparkly Dragonbond would get a real Dragonbond if someone involved turned into a dragon."

"...Noted," says Milan.

Kithabel giggles at this description of mate bonds. "But he doesn't want to be a dragon forever. I mean, I assume. And we just turned a dragon into a human and back again..."

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