hell of a party | Glowfic Constellation

"She says if Ivan asks her himself she'll tell," Isabella relays.

washed-in-blood

"Bring me over there," says Little Miles to Bothari.

Bothari picks him up and brings him over to the bar and holds him where he could see any napkins that appeared at him.

"Are you hiding more weird stuff?" says Little Miles, scowling at Bar.

There is a pause, and then Bar says,

You're a unicorn.

Nika yelps, possibly in a pleased manner.

washed-in-blood

...Bothari leans back slightly to give Little Miles a dubious look, but doesn't drop him or make alarmed sounds or anything.

"How am I a unicorn?" asks Little Miles. "I'm not even like a unicorn! Not even a little bit!"

You are currently in human form, but your underlying species absent your transformative illusion is a unicorn.

"Am I a thing?" Nika demands.

Yes. You're a dragon.

"I'm a dragon!" crows Nika. "Come on, Ivan, find out what you are!"

Ivan debates with himself, then shuffles over to the bar and says, "What?"

Firebird, diagnoses the bar.

"Okay, so how do we get rid of our transform illusions?" asks Nika, clapping her hands.

That requires the application of magic objects I am unable to dispense.

"...Oh."

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"Well do you know where we can get them?" asks Little Miles. "Can you give us how to make them even if you can't make them for us?"

"M'lord..." murmurs Bothari.

"I wanna be a unicorn," says Little Miles. "...But only if I could turn back, though. I could turn back, right?"

If you retained possession of the magic object, yes. There are books on how to make such things.

"Magic books! I want all the magic books!" says Nika.

"Why," says Tiny Ivan, "are we things?"

I can't identify where you got it from without your biological parents present.

"...My birth parents are dragons?" concludes Nika.

At least one of them is or was, assuming nothing unusual is going on.

"...Da or Mama is a unicorn?"

Presumably.

washed-in-blood

"That's a lot of people who are stuff," says Little Miles. "...Is Bothari stuff? You don't have to look if you don't want to, Bothari. I won't yell about it or anything."

Bothari grunts noncommittally.

The bar declines to produce an identification of Bothari on the basis of a noncommittal grunt.

washed-in-blood

"You have to say she can tell or she won't," says Little Miles.

Bothari frowns slightly. "You can say. Ma'am."

He's a bugbear, napkins the bar, possibly grudging.

"I don't even know what that is," says Nika.

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"Me either," says Little Miles. He looks up to verify that Bothari has looked, and asks, "Do you know?"

Bothari shakes his head.

"What is it, then?" asks Little Miles.

The bar produces a book with a photograph on the cover, entitled A History of Bugbears (by M. E. Knight, published by the Drakontos Press Escobar).

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"And it's the same thing," says Little Miles, "with the magic transform thingy that you can't give us and all? Is everybody from our world stuff?"

Bothari looks at the picture.

I haven't looked at everyone from your world, says Bar reasonably. It seems that most people think there are also some humans.

The picture shows a bear. With scary eyes and ridiculously big claws.

"I want a dragons book," Nika says.

Bar gives her one. There are six different dragons photographed together on this cover, all different sizes and shapes and colors. This book is about three times as thick as the bugbears one and by the same publisher, though not the same author.

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"Can you tell us how to tell if somebody's stuff when they don't know for themselves?" asks Little Miles next.

Bothari is still looking at the picture.

I can't teach you to do it how I do it. I just do it by being a magic bar, says the bar. An advanced version of the magic objects that would remove your transformative illusions will detransform arbitrary species, though ordinary versions are species-specific.

"The bugbear in the picture looks soft," opines Nika. "And big, I bet you could ride one like a horse."

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"If you turned into one of those I'd go around on your shoulders all the time," says Little Miles, grinning up at Bothari.

Bothari smiles very slightly back.

"Are there books on how to make the magic thingies?" persists Little Miles.

Some.

"Well, give us the some, then," says Nika. "I am not learning to fly right now and that is not okay."

They're very advanced, but you could start here, replies Bar with handwriting that looks like it's trying to sigh, and there appears a textbook: Runecasting 1: Principles and Practices (Riddle Press, Tau Ceti).

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Linyabel Miriat ⍟ "Linya"

"I want," says Little Miles, "every single book I'd need, to learn how to make my own magic thing to be a unicorn. And then I'm gonna learn how and then I'm gonna do it. If I go home to where nobody even knows stuff is then I might never learn how."

(Bothari has that face he gets when Miles is being very Miles.)

isthisart

The stack of magic books multiplies alarmingly.

"You have a project, little one," Linyabel murmurs to Nika.

"I do! I have a project and am a dragon!" crows Nika.

It occurs to Linyabel to ask: "Does one need to be a... transformatively illusionable creature... to learn this kind of magic?"

The Bar is slow to answer, but says, No.

"Have these books been published in a nice electronic format?"

Most of them.

"I would like my own set."

Isabella T'Mir Ֆ "T'Mir"

warpfairy

"Me too, though I'll take the plastic kind."

Sets appear. Bar is pretty crowded.

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"I want something to carry all my books in, please," says Little Miles. "Bothari, can you carry the books and me?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"Good," says Little Miles. (He has caught on that Bothari is not going to put him down in the magic bar.)

"Are you not going to share? Do I have to get my own?" Nika asks her brother.

The intimidating stack vanishes and then reappears neatly arranged in a box.

washed-in-blood