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This is a weird thing.
"Are you sure it's not just artificed folded space?" Kayam asks again.
"I'm sure. It's not completely unlike it, but the flavor's different. I think there's an artifact around somewhere but it's not doing your thing, it's doing - something else. I think ravelers must have worked together on this..."
"...and none of them was a folder."
"None of them was a folder. I've never seen the thing this is before. There's got to be an artifice -"
Shara takes a step closer.
She trips.
"MILADY -"
And then Shara can't hear the rest of Kayam's scream, because she's somewhere else, too quick to reravel or even start to try.
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sweetclarity
"Yes, the- charm doesn't work on you if you're suspicious. And then I dropped it out of reflex."
She extends a hand gamely. "Sorry to, um, sorry to have made an ass of myself before we properly met. I'm Syl."
She extends a hand gamely. "Sorry to, um, sorry to have made an ass of myself before we properly met. I'm Syl."
sweetclarity
Syl looks pleased, and regulates her breathing a bit more with a mechanical-sounding whirr.
"So, you fell out of the sky as well? I'm beginning to think Aril may be under some kind of curse. Or blessing."
"So, you fell out of the sky as well? I'm beginning to think Aril may be under some kind of curse. Or blessing."
"I fell out of the sky. I was investigating something bizarre in my own world and I think I tripped."
sweetclarity
Syl winces. "Oh dear. I'd been chasing down a gremlin when I fell down a chimney, and the chimney led... very far away, as it turned out. And so I fell out of the sky. As well. Are you also going to want to go home?"
"Ideally. I mean, it seems like it might be really productive to have some kind of stable transit between worlds for trade and so on, but I haven't seen anything here that overrides my desire to live at home and reassure my loved ones if I do have to pick one place to stay full-time."
sweetclarity
"Well, if we can get you there once we can likely get you back and forth again, even if it's only on Calibration, or something. Which is still easily enough to trade some things - what kind of resources does your world have?"
"Ravelers. Um, I'm not sure we'll have anything else unique. What is Calibration?"
sweetclarity
"I'll trade you definitions, then! Calibration's the day when the walls between worlds get thinner, and it's easier to summon and banish and that sort of thing. Very useful for testing out magic. What's a raveler?"
"A small percentage of people, in our teens, get 'options' - a shortlist of the possible magical specialties we can choose. Raveling takes energy to do, sort of like going on a hike or playing chess might, but it takes it all at once, not over a long period. I'm a metaraveler; with very little energy expenditure I automatically see and understand magic around me - 'understand' is less automatic than 'see', I don't have much practice with local kinds yet - and I can also edit or destroy it, although this is more expensive for me than it is for whoever made it in the first place."
sweetclarity
"Hm. Fascinating! Depending on what the other ravelers do you might find demand for them here, but it'd have to be a long-term thing if we couldn't set up a permanent gate... That's a question for another day, though. Are you hungry? I know Aril is."
sweetclarity
With a gesture, Syl is abruptly surrounded by dozens of pots made out of golden light. She begins pulling various ingredients out of thin air and turning them into presumably delicious food, all at an obviously inhuman rate.
the-ending-of-the-words
"She loves cooking. I thought she'd make us a light lunch, or something, it'd take her thirty seconds with all her charms; this looks like a full banquet. She'll be out of her fugue in half an hour with the best meal you've ever had. Until then, you could set her on fire and she'd only do something if it looked like it'd burn her dessert."
He shrugs. "It's a Syl thing."
He shrugs. "It's a Syl thing."
"What exactly are charms? I mean, I can see them, but a verbal explanation will be faster than waiting for me to be able to disentangle their effects by looking."
the-ending-of-the-words
"They're... well, as Exalted we've got the power of the Unconquered Sun, as I mentioned. Charms are a way of exerting that power on the world around us and overruling the laws of nature. They can do practically anything. I tend to use them for things like dancing so beautifully that grown men weep, or decimating armies; Syl uses them for stuff like making enchanted swords for a thousand men in a day, or cooking things very quickly."
the-ending-of-the-words
Aril rubs his hands together, then conjures an illusory blackboard on which he diagrams things. "Alright. So. The Exalted are humans who have been imbued with divine power by one of a few different entities. Solars, like myself, are the children of the Sun; we are humanity amplified, performing feats that no mortal could do. Lunars are the hunters of the Moon; they can change their shapes and, similarly, perform inhuman feats. Sidereals are the helpers of the Fates, sneaking through the seams of reality to set the course of events right when they're out of joint. Abyssals are the twisted creations of dead gods who want to bring ruin to all Creation and slay every living thing in this universe, and Infernals are pretty much the same thing with a different paint job."
He thinks for a moment. "Oh, and there's Dragonblooded, but they're a bit pathetic. They crop up in the general population with elemental powers and work for the government. I can take a squadron of them with one arm cut off. Have, actually."
He thinks for a moment. "Oh, and there's Dragonblooded, but they're a bit pathetic. They crop up in the general population with elemental powers and work for the government. I can take a squadron of them with one arm cut off. Have, actually."
the-ending-of-the-words
"Mmm... acts of great heroism, for Solars, and in particular committing such heroic acts shortly after another Solar kicks the bucket, since her divine spark will still be floating around ready to imbue you. Believe that for Lunars it's an act of impossible survival, and for the rest who the hell knows? Probably for Sidereals it's whoever's already fated to Exalt, that's sort of how they operate. Why d'you ask?"
"Just curious. I was actually on a quest to acquire adventure-based approval when the portal thing ate me."
the-ending-of-the-words
"Huh! Would you like to tag along on a few of Syl's and my quests? We do rather a lot of glorious adventure, and all. Hard work, but it's nothing if not heroic. And I'll bet you she'd make you a million little magic widgets if you came along, she loves gifting people."
"I would love magic widgets, and it's entirely possible that your quests could serve the purpose I was after with my own too."