"Hello, Kiribel... Lady Ardelay... whatever. I'm told you'll want to make sure that I'm not going to do unpleasant things to your nice shiny kingdom?"

"That would be nice, yes."

Leo steps up cheerfully.

You couldn't call him nice, at least not with a straight face, on any relevant scale. But he knows what's good for him, and what's good for him is not fucking up Kiribel's nice shiny kingdom while she's around to turn him into a scorchmark on her lovely floors. And it's not like there's anything nasty in particular he's made a habit of doing. He just won't turn down an opportunity for something good for him and bad for everybody else if it's on offer. And won't get him incinerated.

"Well, that will - suffice. I'm very curious about your magic, Aleko was right about that."

Leo removes the tissue from his ear. "It's not without its costs, but it's versatile. I'm not all that powerful, but I know... a lot. Mostly courtesy of Milliways. As you can see, I've brought a metric shitload of spell components, mostly the ones that'd be good for, say, public works projects or blessings or things, as opposed to giving your enemies heart attacks and such. Though I do have enough ingredients for something along those lines for one person. I'm told there's such a candidate."

"I'm not positive I'm ready to endorse regicide. I'll want to consult with some people first. Apparently you fixed Aleko's teeth; what can you do that couldn't be accomplished by a properly aimed prime? 'Ko, you could've just asked Ekador, I don't think he'd have minded."

"Could've, didn't, wanted a demo."

"I didn't actually fix his teeth, just put an illusion over him. If you want them fixed you'll want to ask Ecuador, yes. Magic things I can do... range widely. A lot of the larger-scale stuff I couldn't do without human sacrifice, so weather control and such is out, but I could set up to ward a location or construct a building or enchant a talisman to do any number of things. Or do various things to a person, such as make them fast strong pretty no longer need sleep etcetera, but that stuff tends to have side effects."

"Side effects like what?" Kiri has a notebook on her; she is writing things down. "Wards against what, talismans to do what?"

"Wards can do things like prevent people from committing violent acts in a place, though I don't think I can actually do that one, I'd need a sacrifice to get past the species barrier. But fire suppression, general physical shield bubble, lightning rod enchantment, that flavor of thing. Talismans, as I said, can do any number of things. Sword that cuts through anything, shield that can't be cut, dagger of instant death, tongue stud that translates languages, etcetera."

"Does it have to be a tongue stud? The thing you're doing won't work indefinitely?"

"It doesn't have to be, but it helps if it's symbolic. And the pearl only lasts a couple of hours, I'm going to have to do a longer-term enchantment on myself. Oh, yeah, and the side effects on the physical improvement thing, if I recall: strength makes you angry, beauty makes you get sick easier, speed is really painful after a while, and removing the need for sleep summons a horrible rage monster that you have to find and kill before it eviscerates you."

"Are horrible rage monsters unobtrusive or fireproof?"

"Very unobtrusive. Possibly not fireproof. What, you want to try your luck with that one? I think it's in one of the less pleasant books I brought, it usually takes some specialized machinery but I might be able to throw something together with enough moonstone."

"I would like to not need sleep, but not if it might actually kill me. Or anybody else. I can just go around constantly on fire for awhile, including while I sleep, if that would help, but if that won't cut it I will go on sleeping at night."

"Nah, wait, it's- now I remember. It doesn't want to kill you, it wants to kill people you're angry at. So that regicide would probably be on the table. It's impervious to physical harm, not sure how well that extends to preposterous amounts of fire, I'll check the tome and all if you want."

"What would happen if I let it kill the king? I'm not angry at anyone else."

"It'd stick around until you got angry again, then-" Leo makes a demonstrative evisceration gesture. "Schlrk. I think the threshold would get lower and lower the longer you went without sleep, until it just went around slaughtering everyone you got irritated at. It starts out with a pretty high threshold, so you'd have some time to find it, but I don't know how finding the king minus his vital organs instead of just keeled over dead would affect your political situation, and he's definitely above the initial threshold."

"So, probably a no on the unobtrusive rage monster. Pity, sleep is a waste of time. Can you attach a shield bubble to a talisman so it can be carried around?"

"...Theoretically, yes. It would be very much like an invisible unbreakable glass ball. Not... particularly useful, I don't think."

"They don't toggle on and off? I wasn't imagining the ward as a permanent hermitage in the stationary version."

"Oh, no, that's- okay, yeah. I was thinking of the bubble around the talisman for some reason. That'd be weird. No, yeah, I can do that. You'd have to activate it as needed, and it wouldn't run for more than a few minutes on any talisman smaller than a mountain-climbing backpack, but it could work."

"Wouldn't run more than a few minutes at a time or total?"

"That would be very convenient. I can also do temperature directly. Are you sure we have ambient energy of the right kind, given that Aleko couldn't cast a spell?"