You've Got Mail

[darkest_evening]

There is a lot of time spent making portals to various places. Pantheon starts as the unofficial hub, and then essentially becomes the official one. Prime makes a portal to Iobel's and Edarial's world, and then he gets to checking out the various new planes he has access to. One, in particular. It's really rather minor, in comparison to the others, but he considers it important.

Few people have the chance to - go back, do something again. But the other version of Kystle is a very specific exception. He knows what's in store for it if he doesn't do anything. Genocide for the invaders (Lynn would call it justified, he just thinks murder is murder), a second invasion of New Kystle, immortal psychopaths with sharp weaponry running around - not the kinds of things he wants. So Prime is thinking of ways to circumvent the problem.

It's unfortunately humbling when he finds no moral solution knocking at his door. There are plenty of immoral ones, but he doesn't touch those. Certainly, he could throw the out of work demon hunters at the plane, tell them to kill things, but that hardly solves the underlying problem. Even he, with all his power, can't save an entire planet. His sister couldn't, either. Not even both of them together.

Obviously, he needs more resources. He didn't deal much in other planes, not when the risks were so great. But now - now he knows that there are other versions of him, other versions of Bells. With various types of magic. Prime isn't a greedy man, but he knows new possible resources when he sees hints of them, and he wants them. He can fix - not his mistake in particular, but his mother's, the second bloodline's.

He spends some time scrying, and then he sighs and snaps his eyes shut. Yeah, that's definitely something. He did not need to see a younger version of himself having sex. Ever. Annoying how his alts seem to come in pairs with 'Bells,' it leads to awkward situations like this. Mirrors are retrieved, and then Prime informs everyone of what he's found - another Adarin, another Bell, together and obviously with some kind of magic.

Since Pantheon seems to be their impromptu central base, he retrieves a recent creation of his, and off he goes to meet with Spring. They're going to write a letter.

Comments

[namesthesky]

Spring is excited! She confers with her alts about the content of the letter, finds out from Prime what language it ought to be in, and then writes.

To the local Bell and Adarin,

There are alternate universe versions of both of you and we have interuniverse transit abilities! This is exactly as exciting as it sounds. We have a variety of kinds of resources and we want to share. Because of past issues with visit recipients being startled by their visitors, we're not just dropping in. Please write on the reverse when it would be convenient for some of us to come by and if there's anything in particular we should bring if we can.

Sincerely, "Spring" (Ayabel)

[darkest_evening]

Prime picks up the letter, seals it, and then on a whim gives it an illusion that'll activate when opened, and sends it. A nice, hard-to-miss location that they'll find nice and quickly.

Then he looks at Spring, and says, "I finished the flying trinket. What's your opinion of jewelry?"

[namesthesky]

"As long as it doesn't require piercings and it's within my dress code I like it fine."

[darkest_evening]

"It's a necklace." Then - behold. Necklace.

[namesthesky]

Flat wooden almost-rectangles, distorted just enough to form a crescent all neatly together, polished. "Oh, I like that, very understated. Thank you! How do I work it?" she asks, holding out her hands.

[darkest_evening]

"You're welcome. There are multiple ways to make it work, but one of those requires me poking it and making it only work for you by thought. Some people find that one disconcerting because they are worried the necklace can read minds. It can't, if you're curious, it's a necklace. Not even close to being sentient. The other methods are reasonably intuitive, but not as fast."

[namesthesky]

"I don't mind if a non-sentient necklace can tell what I want it to do," says Spring, "but, yes, I probably would have asked. You can't read minds, can you?"

[darkest_evening]

"No. Useful as it would be to have, alas, morality." He pokes the necklace. "There you are, think flighty thoughts at it and it will work."

[namesthesky]

Aya concentrates.

And floats.

"What's my top speed?"

[darkest_evening]

"I could tell you, in a measurement system that you don't use, or you could test it and I could time you and we use yours."

[namesthesky]

"You've seen Idania fly, am I as fast as her?"

[darkest_evening]

"Almost."

[namesthesky]

"Cool. Thank you!"

[darkest_evening]

"You're welcome," he replies, almost brightly. For him.

Prime has his staff. He twirls it, a bit, because it's fun and it lets him fly. He's grown fond of it. His mind absently goes back to the Kystle problem, and if these new alts can help solve it, and it leads him to wonder how other people deal with similar problems.

"What was your original plane like?" he asks Aya, curiously.

[namesthesky]

"No controllable magic, no gods, no non-human sapients. Low tech - lower than here, as of the time I moved, though I suppose they could have caught up since. And - I suppose this isn't really about the world, but about Eseo in particular, the country I lived in - bit of a problem with slavery."

She scratches her heel. Unmarked since she was resurrected. There's a line in the poem about "comfortable skin".

[darkest_evening]

"Do you know how the slavery system works? I am making it one of my multiple projects to make it shoo, it's always helpful to know more about it." Pause. "So I can make it stop."

[namesthesky]

"It may have changed since I was there. People can be sentenced to it for crimes; children of slaves," she raises a hand, "inherit the status, and if it's one slave parent and one free parent, the free parent gets to decide if their child's going to be free or belong to them. It was ambiguously legal to actually kill us, but pretty much everything else was fair game."

[darkest_evening]

Carefully, Prime asks, "You were born into slavery?"

[namesthesky]

"Yes. That didn't already filter its way to you?"

[darkest_evening]

"No." He pauses. "What a tremendously horrific waste of talent."

[namesthesky]

"I was not completely wasted between the ages of six and seventeen. But thank you."

[darkest_evening]

Prime nods.

[namesthesky]

"I don't have any hangups about discussing it, at this stage of my life," she mentions. "If you're curious."

[darkest_evening]

"Not really, it has little to no bearing on who you are now, I think. Unless there's leftover trauma that I can help with?"

[namesthesky]

"Nope. All taken care of well before I turned twenty."