Everyone pops in. All the Bells, all the Jokers - except for the Joker, who is missing for some reason - and the Bells immediately, without having to speak, divide their tasks amongst themselves. Stella and Angela and Pattern and Cam start brainstorming solutions - not implementing them, yet, just generating ideas that might work depending on what they're dealing with. Golden, as the one who's actually had her mind read by a loved one - albeit under more controlled circumstances - is working with Shell Bell, the other previously broken-beyond-recognition Bell, on coming up with a plan to help walk Isibel through recovery after they fix this somehow. Cam eventually folds into this conversation from the other since he's the one with a talking notebook; if they can find Isibel's old books they might be able to turn them into something that could help more actively. Rose is peering into Isibel's mindscape, looking for visible damage that she can just heal directly. Amariah's popping back into Milliways and forcing the door to the elf's world so she can drop a Janepoint in the cave to keep it temporally synced, then coming back and joining Juliet and Aegis in interrogating the demon and the waking dragon about what exactly they have done to Isibel.
"It's a Dragonbond," he says. "They happen through - fate, I suppose, or the Wild Magic. A unicorn came to Isibel, after she met me, and he told her that she must bond to my love - " he pets the dragon's folded wing " - to save the world. So she did, and she learned the elven magic that comes now only to those who bond with dragons, and we found who the world needed saving from and killed him."
"Well, I mean, there's still the part where we'd have to kill her. There would be a corpse. But then we could get her out like me, or Pattern, or Shell Bell - we all died, we're fine now. You don't have Cam's and Amariah's problem that they can't hook into Downside from their worlds, and it looks like Amariah didn't jump the gun on making her torchable so it's an option. Not a pretty option, but if it's as indelible as, like, vampire mate bonds - we know those don't survive a trip through Downside."
"Did... that work?" she asks hopefully.
The answer appears to be no.
"Who's already been looked over by the admin and wants to take Isibel there? I don't think we'd better wait around to find someone from her world to make torchable."
She offers up her love to her Bonded; there's not a lot else for her to do.
"What is it?" says Petaal, wrapping herself around Kas's neck and shoulders as a dark grey snake with pebbled skin.
The moment the wish was cast, the dragon's mind went away. Not sleeping, not unconscious - gone. Blank as empty air. There is nothing like a thought in him now, a fact which the demon is experiencing in sixfold clarity. He lives, but that is all he does. Magic still hums in his bones, his heart beats on, his lungs draw breath, but the part of him that does the thinking is a void. This is particularly obvious through Rose's contribution, because their shared mindscape - the island that was their home for ten thousand years - is full of ragged gaping holes.
"I can do it if I stop thinking at all," says the demon. "But it's hard. I can't stay that way for long. And when I'm thinking of nothing but how much I love her, then her mind is full of my thoughts and she can't do anything else."
Stella drops herself outside Lazarus's apartment and spends the triangle to wake him. [Lazarus. I remember giving you a no-need-to-sleep power, this is recreational, we have a disaster on our hands and I need you, please let Jane bring you to Atlantis to have a look at this elf Bell and her dragon.]
[We found an elf Bell. She is wrecked. She's got this bond thing that's like a cross between being daemons and being vampire mates and something else, with a dragon and a demonic Joker, and it makes them read her mind, and we have no prayer of getting her patched up if they can't stop, but we tried sending her through Downside and as soon as she woke up it was back, and we tried wishing it away outright but that broke the dragon.]
"Editing the bond to not incorporate mindreading, even with half a dozen backup channels between the demon and dragon, flips the dragon off like a lightswitch," says Juliet. "But if we could just incorporate some kind of - filter, gate, toggle, something to give control to Isibel - but we don't know how the bond works, that's what you're here for, we don't want to wreck the demon-dragon-unit again in the process of trying to help Isibel, she loves them."
"...It should be possible," says Lazarus. "But you'd have to be careful about it. Maybe I should be the one to make the wish. Everything in there," he gestures to the dragon's head, "is very - sensitive. Intricate. Tangly. This bond thing is fascinating, I'd be excited if it weren't so tragic."
"This is - obviously - less of a problem when she's asleep than when she's awake - but she should not, so to speak, 'talk in her sleep' - the actual talking doesn't matter, if she does it at all -" Isibel has in fact been quiet in her sleep for moonturns now - "but she shouldn't broadcast dreams unintentionally."
"This might be a little much to install in one wish, and it's not as fundamentally essential as getting them to quit reading her all the damn time, but it would be good if there were no chain reaction type possibilities - anyone spying on her bondmates should not be able to get at her through them even if she is somehow deceived about whether there is anybody spying like that."
"Maybe something a little off-standard for her? We don't have all the automatic-ness of ordinary memory attached - we have recall, not extra connection to what we recall - if she's as wrecked as she looks maybe something easier that will prompt her a little? Mental assistive device."
"Does this sound good, Isibel? It'll be easy to remember everything," murmurs Cam. "You'll be able to think what you thought about things back before you broke. And you can use that until you know how to make new thoughts again. Does that sound good?" He murmurs gently, like she's young or sick or - broken.
Show-and-tell is over. She can just stop. She can! She can cease to show them what she's thinking and it works, she can tell. She could just cry. Or laugh. She's not sure which and it's not her highest priority right now.
She unhugs so she can sit up and look at the other ten of her.
"Thank you," she says.
"I do not much mind being asked questions, anymore; I doubt they will ever feel intrusive to me again," says Isibel. "And - well, I have never been much good at this kind of delicacy, but you can state that you do not know something, or that it would please you to hear it, as a simple workaround."
"Yeah, I bet it would. Oh man, if she can't ask questions I bet we could all just sit here staring at her cryptically and drive her nuts. That'd be mean, let's not do that. Hi, Magania, we're versions of Isibel here from ten other worlds. We helped fix her. She's gonna get better."
"Oh, yeah, sure. So, we're mostly named Isabella -" Stella, Golden, Amariah, Angela, Juliet, Aegis, and Pattern all raise their hands - "and some of us prefer Bella -" Amariah and Angela drop their hands - "and then there's Bell and Belle and Campbell -" The named individuals wave when named - "and when we're all hanging out together it gets really confusing, so we have nicknames. Mine is Stella."
"We are super helpful," agrees Amariah. "My boyfriend was the one who found her, he was so sad over her - he's one of her demon-and-dragon like we're ones of her - and he called me in and we all met up at Shell Bell's to figure out what to do. It was the obvious thing, I mean, she was broken, we had to fix her, she'd do the same for us if it was one of us and we needed her."
"Oh, the worldhopping is technically not magic!" exclaims Aegis merrily, twirling. "That's from my world, explaining in actual useful detail would require explaining computers and that would take a long time, I am definitely not getting a has-computers vibe from this world here, but basically there is someone from my world who can see out of our jewelry -" she pauses briefly in her moon-gravity dance and indicates her earpiece - "and out of things like the thing you were looking at in the cave, and when she can see someone she wants to move and someplace she wants to put them, she can."
Sarion blinks, takes the glowy silver square, and thinks as they walk. Eventually she appears on her right middle finger a ring with red cabochons, one large central one that will suffice to hold the miniaturized Jane hardware and trails of smaller ones twisting forward up to her second knuckle and spiraling around the first one onto her hand, all held in place with delicate white-metal webbing.
They arrive at a large clearing, which contains many smooth rocks and worn tree stumps that look as though they would make comfortable seats. Through no detectable work of any intelligent creature, all these seemingly natural objects are arranged in a pattern that is both convenient and visually pleasing.
Magania fetches a small, attractive bag from where it leans unobtrusively against a tree and begins setting up a tea-brazier on a flat stone in the middle of the clearing.
"My daughter," Golden says to Magania, "has a bit of her own individual magic, which allows her to transmit a great deal of information very quickly. Would - perhaps you would like to meet her and receive your explanation more swiftly than we're likely to be able to manage without inquiries to guide us."
"Nothing like what you can do, but we have certain talents," laughs Sarion. "I can - manipulate the elements, or living things, or search for things I wish to find. And before I was properly a sarion I was a practitioner of the small magics; that is how I made my ribbons."
"You'll be able to do what we do," says Amariah. "Well, not all of it - my magic's not transmissible, neither is Cam's, although you can learn his magic language, just not do magic with it, and we can't replicate native-quality mental opacity, unfortunately - but you'll be an enchantress and a mint just like us, you have a Janegem now and she'll help you just like us, because you are one of us."
"Okay, I'll go human-speed then," says Elspeth. And she pokes along a piecemeal summary of how minting, enchanting, wizarding, witching, Slaying, angels, Milliways, worlds, and Jane work. It's from and for the perspective of someone who's not going to do any of the above herself, on an overview sort of level, without going into detail about things like coins being made of pain or enchanting involving much of same or Jane being sort of Aegis and Sue's kid. And she throws in a nice pamphlet-sized history synopsis of how the peal came to be a peal instead of a lot of separate Bells.
When he's well within earshot but still out of sight, Liselen yells, "The Wild Magic has a message for you, and I really hope that at least one of you is a virgin, because I really don't want to have this conversation at the top of my lungs or while itching out of my skin!"
[How were you going to copy it, that doesn't make any sense either!] exclaims Liselen. [You know what, first person who talked to me who sounds weirdly like Isibel, absolutely fix the virgin thing, maybe if I can actually talk to you people face to face instead of through this other weird magic thing I also don't understand then you'll start making more sense.]
"...Whoa," he says. "That's... that's new."
He looks around at all the assembled Bells, particularly Amariah and Cam, and then he walks between the artistically arranged seats and sits down next to Cam, folding his legs neatly under him. His sleek black fur gleams; his pearly white hooves and horn shine; the golden socks on two forelegs and one rear leg nearly glow. He is, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing in the clearing.
"'Itching' is a metaphor," says Liselen, leaning into Cam's hand a little. "'Bones melting' is also a metaphor. I don't think other species have the right senses to ever invent proper words for what being around nonvirgins - used to feel like, and doesn't anymore, because somebody here is really great, thank you, one of Isibel's mysterious and variously specied twins! Um, right, the elf magic thing."
"Vampires can't get pregnant without magic that we didn't have back then, but before Mama turned into one she had some eggs taken out and I was conceived in a dish and kept frozen till she found a human friend who was willing to gestate me," volunteers Elspeth.
He twitches his tail again. "I was trying to think about it, but then you distracted me! It's hard to translate these things, I think when the Wild Magic calls on unicorns to be messengers it's usually not so directly. But I'll try. Um... you're not supposed to take elven magic because if you do, there'll be less for the elves. They already don't have very much of it at all. If you take enough elven magic to make one of you a proper Elven Mage like there were in the old days, without bonding to a dragon, there won't be any elves born with any magic for a really long time, not even the little stuff they've had since the time of Vairindiel."
"It's not that kind of a thing at all. It can't talk to you unless you're - well, it can't talk to any of you, except using me as a messenger. And fixing that is also something you could get wrong in various horrible ways," he adds, "a lot of them, apparently, depending on how exactly you tried, I don't have a list or anything."
"So, no throwing around serious magic in Thilanushinyel till we have a better idea what's going on - maybe Lazarus will want to have a look at the place - but fixing unicorns' virgin thing is safe," says Stella, "is what we have learned today. Also that elves don't like questions for some reason."
"A question is a demand for information," says Magania, "and is therefore considered rude. Except in times of great need or urgency, a civilized person does not demand, only suggest. But of course," she continues with a slight smile, "the elven way to be civilized is only one such way, and it is known to me that other folk find our indirection as maddening as we find their impatience. I am also pleased to announce that the tea is ready," she adds. "Perhaps if those who wish to drink it would create cups, I could pour for them."
"It was not a particularly elegant compromise. Rania sometimes chides me for baldly stating that I do not know things. Perhaps I would have eventually learned the layers of indirection that are considered more seemly, but I cannot imagine that spending much time in the company of other Bells will lend itself to this development."
"Okay, so, the jewelry we have, the Janegems," says Aegis, "hooks us up to my sort-of-a-daughter, Jane, who does interdimensional travel, and one of the dimensions we can get at is an afterlife, which doesn't work for everybody," she points one finger each at Amariah and Cam, "but works for other places, either they were already like that when we got there or we've added them since, and we didn't like how the afterlife was being run, so we went and got the administrator to let us and Jane take over, and now we can get dead people from, y'know, participating worlds, whenever we want."
"About a thousand years. Unicorns sometimes a little longer. Dragons and demons - forever, unless killed, but the death of a Bonded kills - if my dragon died it would kill me and my demon; the other way around does not necessarily kill if there are two non-dragons in the Bond. Centaurs and so on - I do not have memorized."
"She was practically dead already, being mindread is bad stuff for us," says Juliet. "And two and a half of us were already dead. I got murdered, Pattern got hit by a car, Shell Bell got assassinated. We're all fine now. Angela took her Downside and did it quick and painless and clean and then woke her again and look, she's fine."
"I'm the half," Shell Bell says, taking pity on No Questions Elf. "My girlfriend resurrected me after I died, but then instead of removing me from the afterlife it just made there be two of me, one in and one out. After this was discovered I glued myself back together again."
"I wonder if Petaal or Ivy could be unicorns," muses Amariah. "I'm so tempted to interrupt my sweeties and suggest that they try it. Although unless the virgin problem was patched in advance, there could be a problem. Although since I'm sure they'd quite enjoy feeling as though they were melting perhaps not so much."
"Oh, come on, you decided to announce Golden's lack of childbearing history in front of everybody including a near-stranger, you didn't know that the child she did not bear was going to be right with you in the indiscretion department," says Pattern, "now you won't even explain how this sense you currently have trained on all of us even works?"
He hangs his head dejectedly. A dejected unicorn is quite a sight.
"Well," says Elspeth helpfully, and all the Bells turns in her direction because that helpful voice means she's about to pull information from nowhere (and Sarion's following along), "it is a function of both physical history and mindset, neither feature discriminates by gender, sex, orientation or specific act, and consent is contributory towards the mindset part sliding in the non-virgin direction but many forms of related trauma and the resulting attitudes can do the same thing and on average it shakes out about the same. While your opacities are interfering a little bit here and now, in the paradigmatic case a unicorn can discern approximate sex drive and get a fuzzy coarse-grained feel for attitude towards the subject too; the paradigmatic case of a virgin isn't someone who's simply never had sex, especially if it's for lack of opportunity, but rather someone who doesn't think about it at all, like a small child. Somebody who was completely ace like Addy would probably also be relatively comfortable for a unicorn to be around even though she doesn't absolutely physically qualify. And unicorns themselves don't count and neither do nonsapient animals."
"Used to be Golden and Stella met occasionally, and then I met Shell Bell and we set up a thing in the interdimensional hub to collect more of us," says Amariah. "It's worked pretty well, I guess Sarion didn't get gotten that way because she never went up to the bar."
[Shell Bell's aura does Milliways doors, turns out,] says Jane. [Sarion couldn't force it, but Shell Bell got it to take her to the world they had in mind without a coin. They're waiting for the new Bell to disentangle herself from her Charlie and some friend of hers now. You want to all go congregate on the planet they're waiting on?]
"Well then," says Angela. "Shall we? Oh, and Magania - please don't disturb the object you were looking at in the cave. It's not exactly easy to break, but if it broke anyway, time would not pass at the same rate here as in the other worlds we look at, and by the time we came back it could've been any number of years and that would be inconvenient for Sarion."