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Cam is out flying. There's a decent cloud of atmosphere around the gold plane, now, millenia of demons making air around themselves for comfort and not sealing it up because why would you bother. There's a small forest, here - the effect is kind of ruined by the lamps it has to grow under, but it's still pretty.
He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -
Cam on Barrayar
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from_scratch
from_scratch
"Yes, frankly we'd be in more or less the same situation if my actual summoner were anyone else at all except that I'd be harder to get rid of."
greatcomposure
"Why don't you come sit down and explain from the beginning," Cordelia invites, gesturing at the door to the nearest sitting room.
from_scratch
Cam sits.
"I am," he says, "a magical demon, which means that I live in a place that is called Hell but really quite pleasant and I can create arbitrary matter given reasonable specifications. Where I'm from, it's the year 2159, everybody knows that you can summon demons and also angels and fairies who have different magical powers, and wormholes are not a thing or at least not a known thing. Miles summoned me by accident by fussing with a chalk drawing in a park. Normally when I'm summoned I show up unable to speak or act outside of my circle and a clearly defined task, but as of right now I am unrestricted, and you are all very lucky that my life ambition is 'terraform a planet' and not 'suck a planet into a black hole'."
"I am," he says, "a magical demon, which means that I live in a place that is called Hell but really quite pleasant and I can create arbitrary matter given reasonable specifications. Where I'm from, it's the year 2159, everybody knows that you can summon demons and also angels and fairies who have different magical powers, and wormholes are not a thing or at least not a known thing. Miles summoned me by accident by fussing with a chalk drawing in a park. Normally when I'm summoned I show up unable to speak or act outside of my circle and a clearly defined task, but as of right now I am unrestricted, and you are all very lucky that my life ambition is 'terraform a planet' and not 'suck a planet into a black hole'."
thisvorlunatic
"Count on it," says Miles. "And I've offered to let him stay in the house until we get him on a jumpship. If he likes it here. Do you like it here?"
greatcomposure
"I'm glad you think so. I'll call Gregor and invite him to lunch; that should simplify whatever intricate scheme they're concocting to get the two of you safely in communication."
from_scratch
"All right. This place seems... populated enough that you probably don't want me to make lunch on account of it would upset someone whose job description is 'cook'?"
thisvorlunatic
"If you make lunch for Gregor, with magic, it's likely to upset someone whose job description is 'bodyguard'," says Miles.
from_scratch
"Someone whose job description is 'bodyguard' and suspects me of wanting to poison Gregor should really get upset much earlier than that."
thisvorlunatic
"It's not about suspicion so much as procedure. Upsetting the established order of things. An established order which is designed to make it easy to verify that no one is poisoning Gregor."
from_scratch
"If someone suspects me of wanting to poison Gregor they should not let me near Gregor. I am not attached to the idea of making lunch, but, in principle, if the literal inability to poison Gregor is very important here, he should not be coming over for even perfectly ordinarily sourced lunch."
thisvorlunatic
"Yes. I know. This is not a system that was designed with magic in mind, and it is not going to handle the addition gracefully. In the interests of preserving your future access to Gregor, I suggest that you not bring up this line of reasoning around any actual bodyguards. I can figure it out, Illyan can figure it out, Gregor can figure it out, and that is as many people as need to know."
thisvorlunatic
"For the record, if any of us thought it was remotely likely that you might poison Gregor, we wouldn't be suggesting you meet him. But please don't poison Gregor. We've been doing so well with our lack of civil wars lately."
from_scratch
"Good, I'd hate to be unappreciated. What's for lunch? I haven't had lunch I didn't pick out in a hundred and fifty years."
thisvorlunatic
"I'm not sure. I don't even know when is for lunch. Gregor has a busy schedule. Mother?"
greatcomposure
"I'll go find out. But I suspect the answer to the second question is 'tomorrow', and the answer to the first question can be dictated within reason."
from_scratch
"Oh, Miles, there is something I should probably mention since you are my summoner."