Wherever she was trying to get, this place probably isn't it. It's dark out, and the moon is a waxing gibbous overhead through the leaves of the trees.

She expected some place a bit more settled but she did say "at random". That said... It's dark out? It's was the middle of the day! Where did the sun go?

Not here, apparently.

There is a faint glimmer of light off in the distance.

It should be the middle of the day everywhere. That's how days work.

Light could mean people or it could mean horrible monsters, but horrible monsters come in the dark too and Lotus has the dreadful night vision endemic to humankind so she will gamble on the light being a good thing. Walk walk.

There is a house! More of a mansion, really. It's large. Light blazes from several of the windows, despite curtains being drawn over most of them.

A mansion could mean people, or it could mean horrifying monsters. She's leaning a bit more towards "people" now, though. She casts Tongues and finds the front door and knocks. She is still holding a stack of stolen books but they won't all fit in her bag and she has nowhere better to put them just now.

After a few moments a young woman with dark hair opens the door. "--Ah, hello," she says, blinking in surprise.

"Hello, I'm terribly sorry, I seem to have gotten a bit lost. Very lost, actually. I saw the lights..."

The language is unfamiliar, which would suggest she wound up teleporting way farther than planned. Not that that is new information given the part where it's inexplicably night time.

"Oh, of course. Uh, you can probably use one of the empty guest rooms for the night, it's awfully late. Do you want to use a phone? Or the guest wifi?"

The what or the what now. This spell was working a moment ago...

"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that last bit?"

"...If you want to borrow someone's phone or connect to the internet to contact someone to pick you up, you can."

"I... don't think I know what those are. A phone. Or the internet? I'm not from around here..."

"...You speak English very well."

"...No I don't, at least not on my own. I'm cheating."

"Cheating?"

"I cast tongues before I came to the door? I was studying magic. That's how I got lost."

"You got lost by--okay, I think you want Kanimir Kozlov."

"Oh, I'm not actually looking for another wizard right now. I just don't know what a phone or an internet is, because I'm foreign."

"...I can't think of anywhere where they wouldn't have heard of phone or the internet."

"Well, it is nighttime here, I'm obviously pretty lost. Uh, it isn't, where I'm from. I'm from" - uh, somewhere that wasn't just attacked by a dragon, in case someone comes looking for a book thief - "Armehil, in Ostrea. Maybe there are phones and internets in Ostrea and I've just never heard of them? I spend a lot of time studying, an internet sounds like some sort of fishing thing so it's maybe a bit outside of my experience?"

This person lives in a mansion, why has she heard of fishing things? If that's what they are.

"...The internet is a global communications network. You wouldn't just have to be from another time zone to not have heard of it, you'd have to be from another time period."

Oh, networked scrying orbs. That's really neat! "Global" wouldn't be her first choice of adjective for that - nor "internet" her first choice of name - but these people can call it whatever they want, she's not here to judge.

"Oh, I see, that's a really clever idea! Time travel isn't really possible and I would be really shocked if I had just stumbled upon it by accident, so it's probably not that, but... what is a "time zone"? I guess if there are places time naturally runs differently and I teleported into one of those that could explain how it's night..."

"...A time zone is a segment of the planet where it's this time instead of however many hours earlier or later."

"It's... a different time? In different places? How does that work?"

"...I mean it's still, like, now, just morning or afternoon or whatever instead of the middle of the night."

"That still doesn't make sense. If it's day somewhere that means the sun is in the sky which means it's day everywhere."

This seems to be an utterly baffling concept. The woman stares for a moment, then says "...So you're from before people figured out the world was round?"

"...I think I am more lost than I thought. The world is not round."

"It definitely is."

"Sorry, I misspoke. This world is probably round. The one I came from definitely wasn't, someone would have noticed and said something."

"...Alright. So, uh, what do you want if not the use of a phone?"

"Well, the guest room sounded really nice, actually. If you are still offering it given that I'm apparently really lost and also an apprentice wizard."

"Kozlov's definitely going to want to know about a wizard staying in his house."

"Oh, is it his house? I guess I can ask him but if he's asleep..."

"No, he's pretty nocturnal."

"Very well. Should I wait here while you let him know, then?" She glances out into the dark.

"...You can probably come in, just, wait here in the vestibule."

"Thanks!"

She does so.

The woman leaves.

A few minutes later a man with long blond hair sweeps in. He raises an eyebrow slightly. "Hello. My name is Kanimir Kozlov. I was informed as to the nature of your--misplacement."

She gives a half-bow. "Lotus. No last name, that's not the custom for most people where I'm from. If you have any insights into how that might have happened, I would appreciate it, but I expect I will figure it out on my own given enough time. All I ask of you is that you will share your roof with me tonight."

"I have plenty of guest rooms. I would be fascinated to attempt to study how you got here."

"I would be happy to help so much as I can, though I have my own research which I would prioritize right now."

"What are you researching?"

"Um. Immortality. Living immortality, not becoming an undead or anything like that." He probably cannot read Ostrean and hasn't been looking that closely at her books and so most likely cannot tell that one of the books in her arms is titled A History of Lichdom from Acererak to Vecna. She is not lying, per se, but it seems imprudent to mention that lichdom is her fallback plan.

He laughs softly. "I'm hardly one to complain about the undead."

Blink. Um. Sometimes lights means horrible monsters, right. "You look, ah. Remarkably alive." She starts backing towards the door.

"I haven't drunk from someone who wasn't a consenting volunteer in well over a century, I assure you."

Oh, sure, she'll believe that. But, vampire, OK, what does she know about vampires? Drink blood, duh, not helping, hate sunlight, wow she sure is coming up with useful facts, can't enter private dwellings without permission but it's his house come on something useful, hypnotic gaze - 

She looks away. Not completely away because that also seems pretty dangerous, but off to his side instead of at his face.

"What, exactly, is your standard of consent?"

"Fully informed, free to leave whenever they wish, and maintained to a standard of care in the meanwhile that leaves them of the opinion they made an unambiguously good choice.

I also haven't drunk directly from the vein since the technology to safely and reliably extract and store blood became available. It's quite hygienic."

"I notice that 'not being mind-controlled' did not make the list. I am not sure why you are mentioning hygiene are you trying to make a sales pitch?" If she gets outside of the house she will not actually be any safer, vampire night vision is not deficient at all and he knows the area. She stops backing away. She does not look directly at him.

"No, of course not. I merely have standards. I wasn't aware that mind control was a relevant concern; it's mostly not, here, unless demons are involved. My standards for consent do involve 'of their own free will, uncoerced, and not mind controlled'."

"I am not sure I believe you. Vampires - which is what I am assuming you are - on my plane can dominate minds with a glance and it seems incredibly unlikely that this plane has beings that are similar in all respects but that one."

"...That is definitely not a thing I can do."

"I still don't believe you." She sighs. "I am not going to run because if you are not hostile I'm safe here and if you are hostile I'm safer where I can see you. I will help you research how I wound up here as promised, but I won't go within arm's reach of you or look you in the eye and I hope if you are sincere about your friendliness you will forgive me."

"I'm not friendly; I don't like people. But I'm not what you believe me to be and have no reason to object to your precautions."

"Friendly is a relative term. I don't imagine I'll need to sleep tonight, it was the middle of the day on my plane, we can get started now if you want?"

"Certainly. Where did you arrive?"

"Less than an hour ago, I think. A dragon attacked the city I was in, I fled. I used a spell on the teleportation circle out so it would send me somewhere at random that couldn't be traced. It seems to have been more random than expected, and also more powerful if this is another plane. Give me a moment, I can - " She pulls of her bag and feels through it for her spellbook (eyes fixed a foot to Kozlov's right) and flips to the right page. " - here, this is the spell if you want to look at it."

He studies it for a moment.

"Your magic and mine are very dissimilar," he says after a moment.

"I have my own diagramming style, it's a bit more efficient for me but it does make collaboration harder. I could copy it in a more standard style if you have the inks, but we probably don't know the same standards... Or do you mean there is a more fundamental difference?"

"Fundamental difference."

"Hm. I study my spellbook each morning, decide which of the spells in it to memorize and once I've studied them enough they kind of click and stay there until I sleep. Then during the day I can direct magic along them, and the instructions imprint themselves on the magic and then I release it and it carries out those instructions. I'm mainly limited by the number and complexity of spells I can memorize and how much energy I have to spend on them. Do you know if other people here do magic like I do? How does yours work?"

"I have never heard of someone doing magic like you. Magic here is composed of rituals which one performs until one is intimately familiar with them, then abridges with personalized shortcuts until one can perform a spell with a word or a phrase."

"We have rituals too, for things too big or complicated to fit into a spell. They usually involve multiple spells, and the magic circles and incense and chanting that people associate with ritual magic is just tying the spells together, showing them how to work with each other. We do have that sort of refinement system - most newly developed spells are rituals - but the shortcuts aren't personalized. We have other kinds of magic-users but none that sound exactly like what you've described. Hm. Usually different kinds of magic do different things better, mine is best at - I guess it's kind of the generalist approach, it's very flexible. Magic music does subtle things, mind-affecting usually, sometimes illusions. Divine magic is best at things related to life and death - healing, raising the dead, and so on. That would have been the best way to go about immortality if I could muster sufficient piety, but, alas. Also I think immortality-seeking might be a bit impious on its own."

"Divine magic?"

"So, sometimes, if one is particularly devoted to one of the gods - you do know about the gods, right? They're not native to my plane, divine magic works when travelling across planes, so they probably have a presence everywhere - they will occasionally grant minor miracles for you on demand. As long as you're not too demanding. The actual mechanism is unclear because the so-blessed won't let anyone study them, something-something profaning the divine, something something mortal minds not meant to know, yada yada yada."

"--I am familiar with a god, whose existence I was not best pleased to confirm."

"...Just one? Which one?

She assumes one of the nasty ones, from that comment, but she doesn't know this guy particularly well and he is a vampire so it could be Pelor or something...

"If I say 'the Abrahamic one' I suspect you will not know what I mean. Um. Their name doesn't have any vowels?"

No vowels???

"...Oooh kaaay. That does not sound like any god I know of. Maybe it's a pseudonym. What are they the god of?"

"Everything, apparently."

"...everything? I guess maybe if this is their plane that makes a bit more sense, but wow. No...theme?"

"Uh. Is the god of this entire plane one of the nice ones or..."

"Better than most of their followers, from what I've gathered."

"Impeccably high standards for virtue or poor communication skills?"

"The latter, from what I've gathered."

"Could be worse, I suppose. What is your magic good at?"

"Physical effects more than metaphysical ones, though the latter is not beyond reach. Not expending a resource to perform seems to be the main advantage compared to the other kinds I've heard of now."

"Our most minor spells are free, or may as well be free, I'm not sure if anyone has spent all day casting cantrips to see if that uses up noticeable amounts of energy. It's probably free, energy costs aren't really continuous. What kinds of physical effects? What magnitudes? Uhm - earthquakes, weather, creating something from nothing, transmutation, teleportation, flight, deflecting projectiles, shapechanging - these are all things my style of magic can do, approximately in descending order of difficulty."

"Probably it can do earthquakes; I've never tried. The others are all possible, but not in the same order; shapeshifting is more difficult than teleportation."

"Shapeshifting is generally hard, but I was ordering those by "easiest thing that could count" and the easiest shapeshifting is mostly cosmetic, humanoid forms only, limited duration. Hm. I wonder if I unpack one of my spells and describe what it's doing you'll be able to contextualize it like one of your rituals. Or vice versa I suppose."

"That would be an interesting experiment."

"OK! So, this is a spell for making an object glow, it's a fairly simple example and doesn't involve interfacing with an existing enchantment like the circle scrambler..." and she proceeds to do her best to explain a light cantrip. "Simple example" is obviously a relative term, but a lot of her explanation is explaining terminology that probably generalizes to other spells.

He follows along, fascinated.

"...and that's about it. I don't think you'd be able to cast it without more explanation - probably just spell diagrams 101 and then a more standard diagram to prepare from but I think I covered everything you need to understand what it's doing and how it's doing it, any questions?"

He shakes his head. "It doesn't seem to be the same thing as one of my rituals at all, but it's fascinating."

"You could probably learn it, though it's generally accepted wisdom that devoting yourself to a single style of magic is more efficient than picking up two or more. It's not so much that they interfere with each other, just that one only has finite time and memory and attention and will be able to accomplish more through focused study of a single technique than through dabbling in many. For now. Would you care to explain one of your rituals?"

"I do not have finite time and memory and attention and would be happy to exchange thaumaturgical knowledge. Would you care to move this conversation to the library?"

"Gladly. Do you have the thing that people have when they are young that makes it easier to learn things? That's important, might be a limiting factor even if you have all the time in the world."

"I was turned at twenty-three and haven't aged since, physically or mentally."

She shoots him an envious glance before remembering that that's extremely dangerous.

"I will need to make sure my immortality includes that feature. I imagine that's the sort of metaphysical thing your magic is bad at?"

"I expect so. Vampirism being transmissible I haven't put as much effort into it as some things."

"Vampires are supposedly under the control of the one who turned them, though I expect you'll deny that that applies to you. At any rate, it's insufficiently immortal for my purposes. What have you been putting your effort into?"

"I do indeed deny that applies to me. I spend most of my effort on theoretical undertakings, I spend much of my energy on defense, analysis and proactive security measures I decline to detail to anyone I trust less than my sister."

"Of course. If I had an assortment of personal defenses I probably wouldn't even mention that they exist." She plops down onto a library chair. "So, do you care to share any of your theoretical insights?"

"The fact that I have defenses can probably be inferred from the fact that I'm not dead by now," he says. "I suppose you wouldn't know that I'm nearly nine hundred years old, but it's not uncommon knowledge in magician circles." He totally has theoretical insights! How much sense they make when she's never performed a ritual is debatable.

"What about you makes you especially likely to die violently, is it the vampirism or the magic or something else? And, um, maybe some more basic theory first would help, remember that I have not only never done this but also not even heard of it before tonight."

"Yes, it's the vampirism. And the lack of tact, I am not a very tactful person. My sister describes me as an 'obstinate misanthrope.' Does your translation spell work on books?"

"This is one of the reasons I am looking into non-undeath forms of immortality, having lots of people wanting me dead and terrified I will eat their children sounds inconvenient. This is also why I don't usually mention that lichdom is my backup plan. The spell I prepare every day does understanding and producing speech, I have one that does understanding speech and writing but that would have to wait until after I've slept."

"Alright, then I'll start from the beginning--" and he describes some basic theory, including a very simple ritual that's recommended to start with.

Well as long as that seems safe to do around someone who may or may not be thinking of you as a midnight snack - wait - 

"It occurs to me that if you do in fact have a supply of stored blood around here being able to see that would be pretty convincing evidence that you did not just make that up and have another source and are less likely to try to eat me the first chance you get."

"That seems logical," he says, standing up from his chair and heading for a different door than the one they entered the library through.

She follows.

There are hallways, which he takes miscellaneous turns down before coming to a kitcheny thing, if a kitchen lacked most of the things that make it a kitchen like a stove and spices and ingredients and so on. But it contains a sink, and a dishwasher, and some cupboards, and a large refrigerator, the latter of which he opens and retrieves a plastic bag filled with blood. He opens a cupboard, takes out a tall glass, rips open a corner of the bag and pours in the blood, and then drains the glass.

"Wow, what is - what are all of these?"

"--Which? That's a refrigerator, it keeps food cold. That's a dishwasher, it washes dishes."

"...That seems like a rather elaborate contraption for washing dishes but I guess your magic is different than mine. I'm assuming the thing above the basin is for water but it doesn't seem to have a pump, is it magical? Also whatever cloth that bag is made out of, we don't have that."

"None of this is magic."

"...How do you have a cold-generating box without magic? How do you have a - a - pumpless pump without magic? ... Wait, are the lights nonmagical? Is this entire house nonmagical? I think I would like some more explanations. Your servant never did get around to telling me what a phone was."

"She's not my servant, she's one of my blood donors. The house is heavily warded, but nothing you'll have seen so far is magical, including the lights. A phone is a device that lets you speak to someone far away who also has a phone."

"I am not sure how you have all of this stuff work without magic but it's pretty great. Anyways, now that I'm not worried you'll eat me if I look away for a second, I'd like to try that beginning ritual, is this a good place for it?"

"It is adequate."

Then she will do the ritual!

It takes about an hour and she has a little bobbing light at the end of it.

"Wow. That took a while. How fast would it have been for you?"

"Savk."

Small bobbing light.

"And how long did that take?"

"Oh, a few weeks."

"Oh that's so much faster than I was imagining. I wonder if there's a way to get my rituals to talk to yours, I could maybe get around a lot of energy roadblocks that way. Can we do some tests?"

"Absolutely."

"OK so the first and simplest test is if my magic can detect yours without needing a spell specialized for it, next would be to see if mine can directly affect yours, I can do both of those tonight but my test for the second is trying to dispel one of your effects which depending on how your wards are set up we should maybe do outside. I'll do the first one now, though - " And she casts detect magic.

There is a hell of a lot of magic around.

"It worked! Oh, wow that's a lot. We should definitely go outside for the next test, dispel will probably work if detect does, relative power of the casters matters but in the sense of how much energy gets put into the spell or the dispel attempt. It's possible that since your magic doesn't cost anything to cast it might not be very durable. And if that's the case I could probably really mess up your wards if I target wrong and that seems un-guestlike."

"I built them in a way that ought to avoid that but I quite agree that it would be better not to risk it."

Then she will dismiss her detect - it's pretty appallingly rude to closely examine someone's wards if you're not a trusted friend - and wait for him to lead her to a place with fewer breakables.

He brings her outside, and a ways away from the house.

"We're not out of range of all the wards, that would be prohibitive, but enough that recasting them would be minimally annoying."

Are both of their light thingies still around?

Yes.

Then she will attempt to dispel her own, then if that works his.

They wink out.

aaand now it's dark, she will cast her magic's version of dancing lights.

"OK, third experiment is if I can use dispel to counter your spell as you cast it - " She readies it "- Would you?"

He does.

The counterspell fails, the light ignites.

"Well, that's good to know. It suggests your rituals won't integrate seamlessly with mine but they can probably be worked out to talk to each other. This is great, this has probably shaved a year or two off immortality. Shall we head back in?"

"Certainly."

"Oh, should have asked this a while ago, I would be so annoyed if I'd forgotten entirely. Can your magic do healing?"

"Oh, of course."

She breaks into a grin, which settles into a smug smile. "Five years. At least."

"Does yours not?"

"No. It should be possible but nobody's figured out how. Divine magic can do it and with enough time we should be able to figure it out by observation but when I asked a cleric he told me that having it widely available would diminish the perceived majesty of the gods."

"Eugh."

"He was a jerk, it's entirely possible that that is not the orthodox position. And yet. That guy's probably going to wind up in Heaven or Elysium or something while probably-better people are screaming in hell."

"Perhaps you ought talk to an angel."

"My gods would probably not be overjoyed to hear me spouting heresies, nor would their messengers. Is your god different?"

"...I expect our god has policies more in line with your opinions than yours do."

"OK, so how does one get a hold of someone working for Mixter Unpronounceable?"

"...I probably should stop thinking of them by that name."

He laughs softly. "Not-magic. There's a--thing--happening, several of them are on Earth, and I have one's email address because I was invoked as a source of magic theory."

"Is this a thing related to your internet which I now gather is probably not made of scrying spheres?"

"Yes."

"That is such a great thing, who invented it?"

"I wasn't paying attention, but I don't think it was a single individual."

"Oh well. In general, your world just seems really nice, there's all this technology, it sounds like things like phones and internets are really common, your god is benign and there's only one, and in all my time here I've only run into one horrifying monster and he politely declined to eat me."

"How long have you been here?"

"Uh, probably only a few hours? But if I had found myself teleported to a random bit of wilderness in the middle of the night on my world, having run into only one monster by now would be a bit surprising."

"That's alarming."

"People try not to go wandering after dark. Or, for that matter during the day. Cities are mostly safe, farms are mostly safe. Actual wilderness is lethal to most, merely dangerous if you know what you're doing. I probably could have handled most things that I would have run into wandering the wilderness. You're scarier than them."

"True. There are things you wouldn't want to run into at night, here, but they are less plentiful than you imply is the case in your world."

"I can't see in the dark. I'd be carrying a light, which tends to attract attention. Still, this plane seems much safer overall and I'm in no particular rush to get back."

He nods.

And they're back at the house. Angel? Email?

Yes. He gets out a laptop to send the email with.

"You're going to tell me that's not magical either and I'm even more confused about this than the refrigerator."

"It's not magical."

"Is there a book on this stuff? That I could read tomorrow and understand how all this stuff that you keep saying is nonmagical works?"

"Understand to what degree? This isn't magic, but it requires a similar level of study to understand."

"I need to know how it all works. A high-level overview might be good but so far all I have is 'not magic' and that's not enough. And I don't want to pester you with questions every time I run into something new."

"There exist things which you can read tomorrow to improve your understanding."

"You say that in a way that implies it's another mysterious technology thing rather than a book. But you had books in your library. If it was something that was in most respects like a book you probably would have said something like 'e-book' in the same way you said 'e-mail' to refer to internet mail. So it's either a non-internet technology thing or substantially different from a book such that it has a different name. Is 'e' the first letter in 'internet'? It doesn't sound like it but maybe English had a vowel shift that didn't change the names of the letters? How am I doing?"

"E is for electric. Electricity is what these things run on. There exist books on how these things work, but I don't own any; someone can show you how to look for relevant sources on the internet."

"That... sounds dangerous. The electricity, not relevant sources. I am sure it is safe, and I will look forward to learning how tomorrow. Speaking of which, it probably makes sense for me to catch some sleep tonight so I can reprepare, unless you expect a response from the angel tonight?"

"I don't expect it, no.

Electricity is artificial lightning."

"Yes, my magic can produce electricity, the word translated. I assume your thingy uses a more, um, tame version. Which you also undoubtedly produce without magic, it's very impressive. Could you direct me to a guest room or should I try to track down your - donor?"

"She'll be asleep again by now, I can show you the way."

Follow follow.

He leads her to the wing where his human guests stay and shows her an empty room.

And she will put her books down and alarm the room and the door and the window and then undress and sleep.

In the morning there are faint sounds of people moving about.

She prestidigitates herself and the bed and her clothes and her teeth clean and gets dressed and wanders in the direction of movement.

There are a handful of people of assorted genders and ethnicities having breakfast in a kitchen area.

...she forgot that she doesn't speak the local language. She will creep back to her room and grab her spellbook and - no need to prepare everything now, she'll just do tongues and comprehend languages then cast the former and head back to the kitchen.

"Hi."

"Hello!" says a cheerful looking young woman with very dark skin.

"Hello. I'm Lotus, I appeared out of the blue last night. May I share some of your food?"

"Sure, of course," she says.

She eats quickly and mechanically, pausing occasionally for conversation. "Do you have a name?"

"Kendra. Yours?"

"...Lotus. You, um - feed? - Kanimir? What is that like, what makes you decide to. um. do that?"

"...Well, he houses and feeds us."

"...And that's it? He's not teaching you magic or anything?"

"No, why?"

"Just curious. It sounds like a bit of a one-sided arrangement."

"...Well, it really isn't. Why does it seem that way?"

"It might just be that I'm unused to consensual vampirism arrangements. But - room and board just doesn't seem like enough compensation for having your blood drained regularly. Nevermind, I suppose it's not important."

"I was living on the streets before I got here. I didn't know where I was going to get my next meal."

"I suppose that makes this an improvement. How did that happen?"

"I couldn't get a job because I didn't have an address."

"That sounds backwards."

She shrugs.

"I guess where I'm from maybe has some advantages over here."

"Kanimir mentioned someone could teach me how to find information on the internet?"

"...Uh, yeah, sure, do you already have a device or do I need to go get one?"

"I don't have a device. All of this is new to me."

"...Okay."

She goes and grabs a laptop and explains Google.

Google is great! She is probably going to have to learn English to use it to its full potential - She doesn't have English writing but she can try saying words with tongues active and then trying to spell them out phonetically. It's slow but it mostly works.

She finds Wikipedia. She'll be at that until something interrupts her.

People mostly don't interrupt her. Will she notice when she gets hungry?

She does not.

Then she can use the Internet until the sun goes down, at least.

Sometime after sundown she does notice that a combination of dehydration, hunger, and LED displays have given her quite the headache. "Ow."

"You okay?"

"...Is it nighttime already or did something weird happen with time and/or space again? Don't answer that, the answer is that nothing is magical here except for the magic and I just spent twelvish hours learning how refrigerators work. Among other things." She starts opening and closing cabinets - "I need water, where are the cups? Nevermind, found them." She pours herself a glass of water, downs it - "I don't suppose modern medicine has a convenient headache cure?" She is talking really fast.

"...There's aspirin."

"Do you have any? This is worse than with books, I bet it's something about the LED screen, if I was staring at the sun for twelve hours I'd have a hell of a headache." She downs more water.

"Yeah I can go grab some." She comes back after a moment with a bottle of little pills.

"Thankyou"  she squints at the directions, takes one, screws her eyes shut, shakes her head. Another glass of water. She looks back at the laptop and closes it reluctantly.

"It says to take with food, are there things in the - fridge - that I may eat?"

"Yeah, sure, anything without someone's name on it."

"Thanks." She grabs some things from the fridge that have no names on them, makes a sandwich. Takes a bite. Frowns. "Figuring out what everything here tastes like and what goes together should not be a priority." She eats the rest of her sandwich.

"What did you put on that sandwich?"

"Pickles, pastrami, ketchup, peanut butter, cheese - there were a lot of different cheeses, I picked two - tobasco sauce."

"Oh. Yeah, that's--yeah."

"I will be a bit less adventurous next time. One new ingredient at a time. What do you usually do all day? I meant to find that out through observation but I may have been a bit distracted."

"I take online classes."

"Oh, what in?"

"Library science!"

"I love that this world has so much knowledge commonly available that there's an entire discipline devoted to organizing it."

"...Do you not have libraries?"

"Not public ones. Private collections, sometimes associated with a school, but usually each collection is organized differently. There's certainly no formal field of 'library science' and I'd be surprised if there was much of an informal one."

"Wow. That's awful."

"The place has worse features."

"Objectively, sure."

"Is it the lack of standard organization or the lack of public access you're offended about?"

"Mostly the latter."

"...Most people aren't literate. Public access would not do much."

"Ouch."

"Most people don't need it, it's not a useful skill outside of academia and government, and books are too expensive for pleasure reading. For the masses at least. A better overall standard of living is on the list, if people are prosperous and safe maybe they'll read more."

"And books get way less expensive when you invent the printing press."

She glances at the laptop. "...I feel like I need to look up something else on Wikipedia. Or if you have the short version?"

"It's a machine where you can insert stamps shaped like letters into a frame, ink all the letter-stamps, and print the same page over and over."

"Oh, what a great idea! Hm, I bet you can even figure out a way to do multiple colors efficiently, mass-produce spellbooks... That might not be wise."

"Printing presses are kinda obsolete now but I'm sure they'd be easier to build from a preindustrial start than computers and printers."

"Now that I have been exposed to the concept, industrialization is also on the list."

"List?"

"Of things to do when I rule the world. Well, things to do in general, rule the world is number two on the list because it gives leverage on the others. Number one is to become immortal and unkillable because almost everything else on the list is really dangerous."

"Heh. Good luck," she says cheerfully.

"...You know, that should really be number two, maybe number one but I think immortality is the easier project... I guess ruling the world is number three now. I really should get a familiar for note-taking purposes."

"A familiar?"

"Small animal, bonded to my soul, gets almost personlike intelligence, follows me around and does what I want? Like a really loyal personal aide who also happens to be a snake or something. Occasionally useful for magic things."

"If you want one for note-taking I assume the snake part isn't literal."

"Mental notes, rather, supposedly they have really good memories. And there's probably a spell that lets them write, which I have not bothered to look into, not having one."

"Oh, huh."

Yawn. "Eugh, who knew sitting still could be so exhausting. I should probably talk to Kanimir before I turn in tonight though, technically I don't think it's been said if my offer of hospitality extends past last night. And ask if he has books on magic I could borrow now that I can read English. And for less endorsed reasons."

"Less endorsed reasons?"

"Uhm. He's very pretty. You're all very pretty, probably has to do with having heard of hygiene and nutrition ever, but he is unreasonably so. I imagine it's a magic vampire thing."

"Oh. No idea. I've met his sister, though, and she's pretty too. And also a vampire. Not magic, but if it's magic he could've done for her."

"Apparently politicians do better if they're attractive, so if there's easy magic to become prettier it would be very useful in taking over my world. Which sounds like a very convenient reason to ask him why he's so pretty and so maybe shouldn't really be trusted."

"Being pretty is an advantage but not a huge one on the scale of taking over the world, I bet."

"It can help with first steps, I imagine. Getting the first country or two and leveraging those into the world. And my world is less connected than yours, it is plausible that I could semi-legitimately wind up in charge of many countries before anyone caught on and I had to switch to conquest and mind control."

"...I advise going heavy on the conquest and light on the mind control."

"Are you concerned I will have trouble maintaining it or do you think it is better for ten thousand to die in a war than for twenty to lose their wills?"

"...I think it's more a matter of misunderstanding what you meant when you said mind control."

"Oh, I wouldn't try to do an entire populace. That would be horrible. Also a logistical nightmare. But mostly horrible."

"I don't know enough about magic to have any idea what the logistics would be like but the horrible part was apparent."

"I would have to do each person more-or-less individually and refresh it personally every couple of weeks. And I actually just can't, I wouldn't have the energy for all of them. Maybe it's doable over a wide area with some big elaborate ritual, but that wouldn't be total mind control, probably just inspiring loyalty and community-mindedness and cooperation."

"Seems like it would have knock-on effects."

"It might. And patching those with more mind control would probably not be a great plan. And eventually I'd want to transition to a mind-control-free society, so it would need to be gracefully removable. If I ever did it I'd do it much more carefully than 'Oh I think these traits would be good in a population.' "

"Yeah, definitely."

"Speaking of mind control, I really should talk to Kanimir about the duration of my stay if nothing else. Do you know if he's up yet or the best way to talk to him without interrupting anything important?"

"He usually gets up at around sunset, he's okay to bother if he's just sitting in the library reading and if he's not he probably isn't."

"OK, thanks, I'll check if he's there." Library?

Yep.

"Hi. I realize I asked for one night's hospitality and then after that night I spent all day reading Wikipedia and now it's night again. And I should probably check whether or not you are actually willing to host an interplanar vagrant medium-long term and if not figure out other accommodations. I'd also like to know if you've heard back from the angel?"

"Ah--yes, you have a fascinating magic system and I have abundant resources with which to house people with human needs. You're quite welcome to stay arbitrarily long. The angel did reply, she's interested in coming and meeting you."

"Delightful. I would be happy to continue trading magical knowledge with you, if you have the means to acquire lots of inks - I think of them as mostly pretty expensive but it's possible they are less so now - I can try diagramming some spells for you and we can see if you pick them up. And you mentioned there were books I could learn your magic from?"

"Yes, I can show you where. What kinds of inks?"

"The ones I know the precise composition of use powdered gold and silver for the pigments. And one uses pearls I think, but I don't have many spells that use that and they're all advanced. Other than that it's a dark red and a light blue and an orange and a violet. I am pretty sure any inks of those colors will do, but the color has to be pretty close, it can't be off by too much. I can probably look at a computer and get you hex codes or something. Paints might work too."

"Specific colors shouldn't be a problem. Gold and silver are non-trivial but well within my means. Pearl falls into either the former or latter category depending on if there are any requirements as to what kind of pearl."

"Well before this instant I did not know that there was such a thing as kinds of pearls, so maybe get some of the former and if everything else is working I can test it out?"

"There are tiny round pearls and there are large irregularly-shaped ones."

"If they are made of the same stuff they are probably interchangeable as far as inks are concerned. Some spells require you to consume or destroy materials as part of their casting, I think those would actually care which kind of pearl."

"Why?"

"Not particularly well-understood. A lot of material components are symbolic, but why the symbolism of swallowing pearl dust and a live carp cares whether the dust came from one or many pearls is a mystery. Actually, it's possible in that particular case it doesn't, everyone experimenting on a more pleasant and convenient identify spell seems to fixate on the live carp."

"Reasonable priorities."

"Conspiracy theorists - by which I mean one conspiracy theorist with whom I was personally acquainted - claim that dragons are actually incredibly intelligent beings secretly guiding the path of mortal civilization, rather than being giant fire-breathing magpies as common wisdom suggests. His evidence for this is that dragons often destroy libraries to hinder technological progress and our understanding of magic. This does happen, but I think it's because major libraries tend to be in prosperous cities. All of which I say to explain why there's a lot of magical theory we don't understand and a lot of good things within our reach that we haven't accomplished."

"That sounds...frustrating."

"Very. I'm going to fix it."

"Good."

"Kendra seemed to think I was being overly ambitious when I said I would take over the world. You are either humoring me or find it much more plausible than most would."

"I didn't survive for nine centuries by making assumptions about what people can't do."

"...Purely hypothetically, if I threatened to destroy you right now if you didn't make some costly concession, would you? I'm not going to, I like you and I'd have to be much more confident that I could actually win a fight with you and I'd have to actually have something I need from you that would necessitate that, but..."

"I also didn't survive to nine centuries by taking everyone at their word."

"Fair enough. Uh, change of topic - I swear I am not hitting on you, you're forty times my age and I'd like to think I'm more sensible than that - how are you so pretty? Is it genes or vampirism or magic, because if it's the latter I'm going to want that spell, apparently it's easier to take over countries if you're attractive."

"Genes, sadly."

"Damn. Those sound harder to acquire. I am sure if it ever seems sufficiently useful I can figure out magically-induced prettiness. In the meantime, shall we go over more magical theory? I can't actually teach you any spells until I have ink, but I can do diagramming 101 so that will go faster, or more pure theory stuff. And I'd like to learn more of your magic though if you'd rather direct me to your books and go off and be introverted and misanthropic that works too, I just don't have any introductory books on me and I suspect language is not one of the things your magic does well."

"It does not do it well. Fortunately I've been practicing for over eight centuries so I can do it anyway."

"Regardless, I lack introductory material. Should I cover diagramming now or would you rather wait until I have a more readable example?"

"It might be more efficient for you to study my magic system for the moment."

"Excellent, I suspect I am not the world's best teacher and I prefer studying anyways. Do you want to teach me, or be misanthropic and introverted and point me at books?"

"The latter."

"Enjoy!" She follows him to books and then takes them elsewhere and pores over them.

And he introverts misanthropically.

After a few hours one of the blood donors interrupts them with the news that the angel showed up.

She marks her page and prestidigitates herself more presentable in case angels care about that and goes to meet an angel.

"Hello!"

She gives a deeper half-bow than she did on meeting Kanimir.

"...Hello. I am not entirely sure how to address an angel. Kanimir said that you and the god you represent are less likely to find me heretical than the angels and gods where I am from?" That was probably not the smartest opening line, nice going Lotus.

"I don't know what the gods where you're from are like but we're not likely to mind any miscellaneous heresy."

"...That is a very confusing position for an angel to take. OK then. Um. The afterlife situation kind of sucks? Having multiple planes devoted to torturing so-called evildoers seems a little excessive. And terrible. And the torturers leak and that's a pretty awful design feature. Although it just now occurs to me that this plane might have an entirely different afterlife setup in which case I guess I am directing my complaints at an uninvolved party. Though those complaints where what prompted Kanimir to say I should talk to an angel..."

"We have two afterlife planes. One of them is in fact torturous and periodically leaks. God didn't do it, at least not on purpose, and we're trying to fix it."

"...Two? Are they split along the good/evil axis? Where do the neutral people go?"

"Almost everyone goes to Heaven. That's the non-torturous one. Very few people are evil enough to get into Hell, less than one a year."

"Oh, you have managed splendidly by comparison, congratulations. One more point in favor of your world. I don't suppose you have an angle on your hell in mind already? Supposedly the evil afterlives for my plane exist because there are evil gods who desire their continued existence, I am guessing your world with it's - " don't say 'supposedly' - "single good god has different reasons."

"We think it was an unanticipated side-effect of something else but we really don't know for sure. We, ah, do have a plan in motion to some degree, but it's--very odd, to explain from the beginning."

"Odd as in unpleasant or just unusual? I would like to hear your plan, I intend to put an end to my own plane's atrocities and it might be adaptable."

"I don't think so. You see, there's this--room-like--thing in interdimensional space, and certain entities have the ability to access it, and it contains information about different worlds and certain--themes--that crop up across them, and gives the option to add these themes to one's own world. Ability to access the space is not transmissible; we've tried. So these themes are often personalities, and some were rated highly for world improvement, but most were unavailable for some reason, so she picked the likeliest-looking of the lot, which oddly enough was a superposition of personalities already extent here, and instantiated her as a sort of being who subsumes a fraction of God's own power into themself."

"That was not a very good summary and I am feeling rather confused, would you mind giving a longer version?"

"Okay, so one day a few decades ago God encountered something we will for the purposes of this conversation call a room. This room is accessible by at most one person per world, invariably people who are in some way strongly connected to their world."

"So within this room one can, apparently, acquire 'templates,' which are essentially a kind-of-person that one can then cause to come to exist within the world one is connected to. There are reviews available so one can make informed choices."

"...That's weird, but go on..."

"Some of the templates are recommended for improving worlds. Many of those were unavailable for some reason, but one that was available was a sort of--personality composite--of two templates that had unrelatedly spontaneously occurred here."

"...OK this is the part where I interrupt. Unavailable? How? Why? These things spontaneously occur? They spontaneously occur - what, in the same person?"

"I don't understand the nature of the unavailability myself. The two personalities that the templates represent belong to two individuals who came into existence here hundreds of years before God ever ran across the concept."

Gosh who could that possibly be, a pair of centuries-old people with world-changing tendencies. Lotus wonder's if she's on the list.

"So she instantiated her as a sort of divine human."

She follows so far. She thinks.

"And we're seeing how that goes. There have been some improvements so far, and she's only seventeen, so."

"Divine human does what exactly?" is their plan literally just 'make someone powerful and well-intentioned and hope she fixes it' because while that might work it's not much of a plan.

"I have never had to explain this to someone for whom 'the Second Coming of Christ' didn't cover it."

"Well as far as I know it's not like you had reason to expect an extraplanar visitor for whom the phrase 'the Second Coming of Christ' explains nothing. And is in fact actively confusing, this happened before?" If it didn't fix anything then why do they expect it to work this time.

"Yes, two thousand and some years ago."

"Did it help then?"

"Oh, yes. It got everyone out of Hell who was in at the time and sped up God's recharge substantially."

"Recharge?"

"So God used to be next thing to omnipotent, but then she noticed that this one little planet, Earth, was evolving life, and she was alarmed by the idea of a person existing in an impermanent form, so she set up the soul system, but that took a lot out of her, and she's been trying to regain it ever since so she can fix things like poverty and disease and so on."

"Oh. Uh, the world seems pretty good on the poverty and disease front, too, not perfect but... Is that God's work or is that just people?"

"Mostly people, actually."

"This gives me hope for what industrialization will do to my world." She is not sure if angels are capable of compromise so she should probably not mention just how impactful it will be before she's figured out if it's best to import all of the knowledge now.

"Yes. Try to be careful, though, there were--rough patches. There still are."

That sounds pretty capable of compromise. "I imagine so. Read about some of them, but... My best estimate is that my world is technologically similar to your late classical or early medieval periods. Even if done poorly it would leave almost everyone better off, I think. The main problem would be if it makes it harder to break open hell etc. or if that takes a long time and the population boom just funnels more people there."

"Yes, quite. Especially if your Hell isn't as choosy."

"They are. One in ten, between them. As a lower bound."

She shudders.

"This is possibly not the best topic of conversation. I am going to fix it but it will take time and dwelling on how horrible it is will not make me more efficient. Solutions are better, you think this Christ person wouldn't be recreatable in my world? Because we have too many gods or just no-one who could access the 'room' or something else?"

"I don't know if your gods work the same way."

"They may not. At any rate I suppose active opposition from the evil gods would complicate it. My current plans are incomplete and very inelegant, if you had any ideas that were considered and rejected that might work better in a different world."

"Most of the ideas we came up with we tried. A lot of them turned out badly."

"What did you try?"

"So the thing is that human and near-human attention increases recharge rate, which is why religion is a thing. There were--things implemented to try to garner more attention. Some of them were, uh, unethical in retrospect."

"...I can see that. I think my gods work similarly in that respect, worship makes them stronger... Did it work, at least?"

"Mostly!"

"We have no sufficiently benevolent gods, so that's not on the table even if it could be done more ethically." Yet, she doesn't say. "Anything else?"

"Well, the previous Christ also issued a set of moral teachings intended to get people to behave better towards each other, but that...didn't stick as well as we hoped."

Didn't stick, really. This is her surprised face.

"We were expecting it to be less than universally followed! We were less expecting the holy wars!"

...and this is her actually surprised face. "You get holy wars by accident? As far as I know we only get holy wars when gods actually, you know, want them."

"We get people who want wars for other reasons using religion as an excuse."

"...You and your God must be much more constrained in your ability to communicate than my gods."

"Mhm."

"And yet here you are, talking to me. Has your communication ability improved or am I just that important?"

"Angels don't typically come to Earth because the transit is--risky. For reasons I forbear to mention because obviously the risk of a thing happening goes up when more people know it's possible. I don't have any particular reason to mistrust you, this is just a general policy. We're here on Earth now because of the new Christ."

"Risk only obviously increases if it's a thing people do, and wouldn't normally do by accident. If I were to speculate, I'd guess that angel parts - blood, feathers, hair, eyes - are magically useful or something. I am probably not going to cut you up for parts."

"I also can't think of anything productive you could do with the information. If I were to tell you, I would want past-scrying wards at least as good as Kanimir's and without the exception for him doing the past-scrying, which would be very difficult to attain."

"I am not expecting you to tell me but I may keep trying to find out because of who I am as a person. How does past-scrying work?"

"Depends on the spell you use for it, I'm given to understand."

"Does it require the caster to be in the place to be scried? If not, does it work across planes?"