There are lots of nonhuman species. Some of them can't use the magic that allows them to pretend to be human, and those hide, in case humans would be startled and hostile to notice them.

People get startled and hostile regrettably often about that sort of thing.

It's so regrettable.

Many of the nonhuman species have magic of their own, but some, and humans, do not. Everyone can learn a fiddly complicated kind of magic, and everyone can use artifacts made with it, but it's significantly a lost art, and one thing we don't know how to do any more is the magic that lets people seem human - that passes on to children without separate artifacts, but then to stop seeming human they need one of the ancient artifacts. They're scarce now.

Sounds tough for - well, most everybody.

Yup. Also, most of them are species-specific, so they can't even slosh around to accommodate things that are more common now instead of species that have gone extinct.

Ouch.

Yup. So there's a shrinking population of people who can move around in global society and also turn into whatever they actually are, and growing populations of humans, people who might as well be or outright think they are humans, and 'monsters', the mildly impolite term for people who can't use ancient artifacts at all which has no politer equivalent.

Complicated. Does nobody have an angle on figuring out the transformation artifacts again?

Oh, I do, but I seem to have accidentally transported myself here.

Unfortunate. In theory it's possible to send you back, but portals are stupidly dangerous if you don't get them exactly right.

Dangerous how?

Oh—okay, quick elven magical theory lesson. Portals are a branch of illusioncraft - the hardest branch, one step past conjuration. To conjure something, you first make an illusion of it and then make the illusion real; to make a portal, you make an illusion of a sort of door or window to a place, and you make it even more real than you'd need if you were just conjuring it, and if you did it right you have a portal to the place. If you didn't do it right, you have a portal to an illusory place that looks exactly like the place you were trying to reach, and the first time you close the portal everything on the other side is lost forever.

Well that's really unfortunate. What is the distinction between doing it right versus not?

We're not totally sure, which is part of what's so terrifying about portals! The only person in the world who I know for sure can make a working portal is the Emperor and, uh, it would be a bad idea on a number of levels to try to have a chat with him about magical theory. Even though I bet it would be fascinating if I could get him to sit still for it.

Yeah, I didn't get the impression of a culture run by a really admirable sort.

He's, um... a very mixed bag. There's actually a lot less infighting in the court these days, which is good because when elven nobles fight they do it by buying trained slaves and making them kill each other, but on the other hand he personally kills something like two or three a week in his own bedroom, and his example has encouraged a bunch of other people with similar interests. On top of that he is also just not very good at running an empire and has to rely a lot on the higher ranks of the nobility to keep order for him. Apparently his father was much better in nearly every respect but was hugely unpopular because he cared about reducing mistreatment of humans and most elves are strongly in favour of continuing to mistreat humans.

Do they have some less sadistic sounding reason on top of that? Like, Earth humans have enslaved each other before, but usually at least had economic pressure or flimsy religious justifications.

Elven culture is just kind of... like that. I think if they didn't have humans to pick on they'd be doing it to each other. Which may be a substantial part of why they're so keen on the current setup. Nenassa was actually founded by a group of elves who were so desperate to flee their own world that they opened a portal to a new one without any idea of where they'd end up and then ran through it, although the story goes that they did take the sensible precaution of tossing a captured prisoner through and closing and reopening it to see if the prisoner vanished.

I guess that is a sensible precaution. Your elf parent is special because...?

My father's father was the unusually progressive dead emperor's best friend. And my mother is... her own long complicated slightly incredible story.

I won't say I have nothing scheduled but I'll say I wasn't going to be on time anyway.

Fair enough. This one's an even bigger secret than the halfblood thing, though. Nobody outside my family knows I'm a halfblood but they at least know halfbloods are real. It would be very bad news for a whole lot of people if word got out that my mother is a dragon.

May turns into a dragon.

Imra bursts into a fit of hysterical giggles.

She turns back.