"I could say the same to you," she replies.

"Did it," she says. "And what would normally have happened next?"

"Oh, I would have shown up in a circle, but the circle would not be made of ice and you would speak some different complement of languages - this one is like my first, enough that it could have been some strange dialect in some obscure location that gets little press, and one of 'em's like Latin, less explicable, and I haven't even got a guess about language the third. Also I usually wouldn't be allowed to talk and you would want me to make you something and you'd probably give me a list of books or movies for my trouble."

"I see," she says. "And on my end, I've cast many a frost spell before and none of them has ever resulted in any strange half-naked winged men appearing before me. What do we make of this pair of mysteries?"

"I can put on a shirt if you like," Cam says. "Do go on about frost spells and how you can do them."

"A frost spell is a spell which brings about frost. I can do them because I'm a mage. What sort of person are you that shows up in circles speaking all the same languages as nearby people?"

"Oh, I'm a demon."

"I can supply other strings of sounds in demonic languages if you like. Apsel? What are local ones like?"

"If you were a demon and not an apsel, you would be a spirit from the Fade, unable to take physical form in this physical realm without possessing a host. You would not naturally look like a perfectly ordinary human who happened to have wings and a tail."

"I do not possess people and have never been to this Fade place of which you speak and am thoroughly attached to my very own physical form here."

"Yes," she says. "It's very clear to me that you are not what I am used to calling a demon. Which is a good thing, because if I had brought a demon into the world even by accident I would be facing some uncomfortable questions from the templars."

"They don't sound like tons of fun. Who are the templars?"

"The templars are the people whose job it is to make sure that any mages who start communing with demons or practicing blood magic are discouraged from continuing. Fatally discouraged, most of the time."

"I am a friendly apsel. Look how friendly I am."

"And what are the properties of an apsel?"

"Apsels are indestructible immortal persons who look thus, modulo coloring and some other cosmetic this-and-that, who can magically create arbitrary matter."

"...Arbitrary matter?"

"Yeah. Not antimatter, nothing that breaks the laws of physics, no vacuums, nothing that starts in motion, but yeah."

"'Anti-matter'. That sounds... disquieting."

"I can't make it, so... don't be disquieted about that in particular."

"I suspect I'm not going to be short on things to be disquieted about. For example, if one apsel has appeared accidentally, does that mean there might be more?"

"Appearing apsels requires circles on the ground with specific properties. You appear to have stumbled on them with your frost. As long as we're in the realm of accidents you're equally likely to get - are the words 'angel' and 'fairy' okay?"

"They don't describe things whose appearance in this room could get me killed. Go on."

"They're equally easy to summon. So if people routinely make circles on the ground that have words in some language around them, you could also find yourself with appearing angels and fairies, but I doubt very much that accidents of this nature are at all common. You could also do it on purpose if I told you how. But since this is a weird alternate universe and I don't even know if I can go home, I don't recommend summoning any more anythings."

"I don't intend to summon any more anythings. One anything is quite enough for me."

"I mean, us anythings are useful."

"Arbitrary matter. So you said. What do the other sorts of anythings do?"

"Angels change things, fairies move things."

"'Change' seems broad, define 'change'."

"Transmute. Shrink or grow. Condense or expand. They're good for healing."

"I see. And fairies move things? By magic? At least that's fairly ordinary."

"People use them to rearrange furniture, power generators, or launch things into space!"

"...I understand what rearranging furniture means..."

"...No electricity? Where are you guys on astronomy? Do you have any moons."

"There is a moon. What do you mean, where are we on astronomy? There is such a thing as astronomy."

"Okay. Unless things work very differently here in this alternate universe, the moon is a large rock, and in my world there is also a moon and some people live on it. Fairies handle the commute."

"No one lives on the moon that I know of."

"No, I wouldn't expect you to, for one thing there probably isn't any air on it, it's not practical without very high tech or daeva, ideally both. That's just why I was talking about fairies launching stuff into space."

"'Space' being the sky?"

"...Yes. Space being the sky. You know how if you go really high up a mountain the air thins out? It keeps getting thinner until there is none. Space is the part where there is none, and there's other planets, and other suns, and other moons, and they're mostly ludicrously far away in planetary terms, but you can get there if you sit in the right kinda vehicle and a fairy helps or you have a lot of fuel to burn. Again, this all only applies here if things are, you know, basically normal except for frost spells and the like."

"Which you don't know because you haven't been able to examine the sky, I suppose. Yes. I want to drag you immediately to a library and get all the differences between our worlds worked out as fast as possible, but I think instead of doing that I should be finding some way to conceal you. People who suddenly appear in the tower without having been let in by the templars are going to cause some alarm regardless of details, and the wings and tail are unlikely to help."

"I can cut off the wings and tail if necessary, but I can't turn invisible. I suppose if you don't need an apsel for anything you could try dismissing me but since this is a weird alternate universe I don't know if it'll even work."

"If it does work, would you be amenable to being retrieved later under less dangerous conditions? And is that possible to safely do?"

"I am amenable, and yes, people do it every day. I don't think you have time to receive an entire eight-credit course on bindings and tasks, though, so I can just leave you instructions on how to get me in particular, loose like I am now, rather than taking your chances with random apsels."

"Yes, that's what I want. The eight-credit course can come later. Hopefully."

"Sure. Do you want it in some language unrelated to your three so that you don't have to go writing that unfortunate word on the floor? I can pick one with fairly distinct glyphs so handwriting won't be a huge issue."

"Possibly. Or - how would you translate it into Tevinter or dwarvish? Dwarvish doesn't have a single word for demon, since they didn't have much direct contact with them when the language was still in common use; they called them 'Fade-monsters', which you certainly aren't."

"...Dwarvish suggests maker?" says Cam. "So there's that."

"Much less alarming. How would I go about summoning you in dwarvish, then?"

Cam thinks about it, then makes a piece of paper with a circle surrounded by the Dwarvish words I summon the maker and then Cam's full name in English. "I could transliterate my name but that's sometimes iffy and you know this alphabet, so. Draw this on a floor with enough room for me in it, close the circle only after you write all of the words."

"Easy enough to remember," she says. "All right. And how do I dismiss you?"

"Concentrate on wanting me shooed for about a minute. When should I expect to be recalled?"

"I can't really say. It depends on how easily I can get out of the tower to somewhere less closely supervised. Not more than a month, I hope."

"Okay. In that case I might not answer immediately, if you catch me in the shower or something, but I shouldn't be more than a few minutes."

"Reasonable."

"I like to think I am that."

"It's a good quality to have. Anything else I should know before I try to dismiss you?"

"Mm - that's the basics all covered, I think."

He stands there, swishing his tail, until he is sent home. Poof.

"Not a thing. They do not sound fun."

"Darkspawn are horrible creatures that come from deep underground and kill anyone they see. My country is currently being invaded by them, and it looks like it might turn out to be a Blight, which is when a darkspawn-tainted dragon called an 'archdemon' leads an army of darkspawn to try to take over the world and destroy all life."

"...Not at all fun. Are they killable?"

"Yes. Well, ordinary darkspawn are. I get the impression that archdemons are more difficult, and not necessarily just because they're enormous dragons. But I'm not a Grey Warden - the people whose job it specifically is to deal with darkspawn and darkspawn-related things - so I don't know the details."

"Can the enormous dragons be restrained? Or, just as a for instance, launched into space, I can get you boilerplate summons for fairies."

"I'm not sure launching one into space would particularly help. Their ability to control darkspawn doesn't seem to be substantially limited by distance, although from what I can gather they prefer to personally accompany their armies at least most of the time. The same problems apply to restraining one."

"And how are darkspawn in general killable?"

"In the ordinary ways any person or animal can be killed. But their blood and bodies carry the taint, so don't get any on you. I would not like to find out by experiment whether or not apsels can become ghouls."

"What are ghouls, and how exactly is taint passed?"

"It's known to happen if you eat darkspawn, or get their blood in your blood. I think certain magical artifacts can also spread it, but that's much rarer and may only be a baseless rumour. A ghoul is a tainted person; they lose their minds, become obsessed with darkspawn, and eventually run away to serve them. Or die. Many tainted people just die."

"I can't die, as far as I know, unless local magical effects can kill me, and I wouldn't want to bet on it. I don't know if I can become a ghoul either, but I don't want to test it. If a ghoul-me could also use my magic, me becoming one would be sufficiently awful that I should probably engage with darkspawn only with the help of binoculars, if at all."

"At what distance and speed can you create arbitrary matter? How quickly could you destroy an army of darkspawn from a comfortable distance?"

"Distance is basically immaterial for these purposes - I could put stuff on the moon from here - but I have to know where to put it, which means seeing or having extremely detailed maps of where things are going. Assuming I can destroy darkspawn in some relatively straightforward way, such as by filling their abdominal cavities with liquid nitrogen - uh, very very cold partial air? - then I can handle any army I can see roughly as fast as I can look at them, and I don't know if you've invented binoculars yet but I can see things from quite a long way away with a pair and I can make them myself. I'd want to be very sure that I could distinguish darkspawn from non-darkspawn without fail, how easily recognizable are these things, are we talking forty legs and poison dart frog color schemes or, like, zombies?"

"I don't know what a zombie is. Darkspawn are... very obviously not the same as ordinary people, but they have the same number of limbs as the rest of us, and I suppose you might not even know what all the kinds of ordinary people are. Humans, dwarves, elves, qunari?"

"...Are dwarves and elves respectively short compact humanoids and humanoids with pointy ears? No idea what a qunari is."

"Elves are also shorter than humans but taller than dwarves. Qunari are large humanoids with horns and greyish skin. Darkspawn also come in four varieties: hurlocks, genlocks, shrieks, and ogres. They seem to correspond to the kinds of people, but I haven't been able to find out why. Hurlocks are similar to humans, genlocks to dwarves, shrieks are similar to elves but with longer limbs, and ogres are similar to qunari but much, much bigger. All darkspawn have sharp pointed teeth."

"I might need to look at at least a competently drawn picture of these things before I know exactly how close I have to be to pick out adequate distinguishing features. I can produce the picture if you can specify one that already exists sufficiently."

"The clearest illustrations of darkspawn I've seen were in a book called History of the Blight that I read back at the tower. Is that specific enough?"

"Who wrote it?"

"It was a collaboration between groups of scholars from several different kingdoms and species. No one put down their individual name on it."

"Uh, what year was it published? I can almost never do title alone."

"8:60 Blessed."

"...Let's see if I can use that despite total unfamiliarity with the local calendar..." Cam holds out his hand. Now there's a book in it. "This look right?"

"Okay, I can probably distinguish these from the air with binoculars from way beyond the range of arterial spray."

"There are no ordinary people with faces like that," his summoner affirms.

"By the way, what's your name, I'm Cam."

"Metella."

"Okay. Is there a darkspawn army some known place for me to go slaughter right now or did you choose this moment to summon me for other reasons?"

"We're expecting one within the next few days."

"From a direction I could fly towards until I spot 'em, or via nondirectional intel?"

"Nondirectional. They are currently out in the woods in large numbers, not assembled into an army. They are expected to attack us soon."

"Okay. Can I help with anything in the meantime? Are we besieged? I can do food."

"Not exactly besieged, but food would help. I haven't summoned you on anything like an official basis, though, so there's a limit to what you can do openly. People who can do magic without authorization are not well thought of, and the fact that you can do new inexplicable impossible magic won't help anything. Unless we dress you up as some sort of miracle-working prophet, I suppose, but false prophet is probably not that much safer than apostate as careers go."

"I can get rid of the wings and tail if there's a good place to burn them, and I don't have to be visibly paying attention to a place to appear food in it as long as I know the layout, but maybe people wouldn't eat spontaneous bacon or whatever?"

"Not if they saw it appear. It could probably be snuck into existing supplies without provoking too many questions, though. Something that travels better than bacon."

"Crackers. Fudge. Peanuts. ...Well, some people are violently allergic to peanuts, are peanuts a known food here, if they're not I'm going to have to give you epi-pens or something."

"I can't say that I've heard of them. Why don't we avoid the hazardous unknown foods?"

"They're delicious, if you're not allergic, but yeah, I should probably just duplicate whatever you've got locally. At least ingredient-wise."

"How about you get rid of your wings and tail and acquire reasonable clothes and I show you what's in the food stockpiles and you make more of it? People are less likely to notice that there's more food today than there was yesterday if it comes in the form of a few extra sacks of flour than if it comes in the form of fudge."

"Sure. Can I just set them on fire here? I assume a pile of ash will bother people less than disembodied appendages."

"Yes, you can just set them on fire here."

Cam grits his teeth slightly and wires off both wings at once, then the tail. They flop. Gauze appears where it needs to; when he peels it off his back is unmarked. He adds the gauze to the heap and some plasma and fuel and it all goes up.

"How convenient it must be to be an apsel."

"I like it. What should I be wearing?"

"That depends on what you want to pass yourself off as, I suppose. If we're mostly going to be interacting with non-mages, you could pretend to be one of the Tranquil by not talking much and keeping your face and voice very calm, and people wouldn't think much of you; I know less about what you'd need to do to pass for a common soldier. The robes of the Tranquil are much like mine, but not so well decorated."

"Especially without the wings, I don't have good enough balance to pass as a soldier for longer than thirty seconds. I will fall on something and it will be clear I could not have survived being handed a sword. Are you going to be around to give me cues if I pretend to be a 'Tranquil'? What is a Tranquil?"

"I will be around to give you cues. The Tranquil are... something that can be done to mages. They are cut off from the Fade, which means they don't have dreams, emotions, or magic."

"That... will be a challenge to my acting skills and also what the fuck?"

"Mages are very vulnerable to possession by demons; Tranquil are completely immune to it. I believe that was the original justification for inventing the process. But Tranquil are also very useful - they can perform certain kinds of valuable work that are hazardous to anyone with a connection to the Fade, and they are almost impossible to distract and don't really form their own goals. So even if safety dictates that some mages should be made Tranquil, the number of mages actually being made Tranquil is definitely more than that. It's a problem."

"Eugh. I'm not sure I'm a good enough actor, in any event. Nobody else I could plausibly be?"

"Not that I can think of. The advantage of pretending to be Tranquil is that most people who know anything about them find them at least a little bit creepy and won't try to talk to you much. Anyone in this camp is either a mage, a Tranquil, some kind of soldier, or with the Chantry. You can't do the right kind of magic, you've said you can't pass for a soldier, and I don't think I can explain enough religion to you in a short enough time for you to plausibly pass as a Chantry brother."

"Ugh. Tranquil it is. Downscale version of your outfit? Can it go over the jeans or do I need to toss them on the fire?"

"The robe should cover your weird trousers just fine."

Cam holds out his arms and is in a plainer, browner version of what Metella's wearing. "Cozy. Is Cam an acceptable name or should I adopt a local pseudonym?"

"Cam's not remarkable. You should be fine. Calm face, calm voice, if you don't know how to respond to something you can come over all 'I'm not sure what you mean' and no one will think twice."

Cam composes himself. "What class of emergency," he wonders smoothly, "should it take to permit me to break character if I must do so in order to deal with the emergency?"

"Yes, that's the right attitude, well done. I suggest you not budge for anything short of a sudden darkspawn attack or perhaps someone trying to kill me."

"So, if things catch fire, do not dump water on it?"

"I'm a mage. If things catch fire, I will handle it."

"Okay." Cam clasps his hands behind his back and looks around with affected disinterest.

Metella leads him to a food stockpile. At this late hour, no one is even watching it. There are sacks of flour, and stacks of preserved meat, and herbs and spices, and some mildly distressed vegetables.

Cam (tranquilly) adds to everything. His vegetables are less distressed, although he allows them some cosmetic discoloration so they won't stand out.

"Good. That should help hold us out if the darkspawn don't show up this week."

"Great. Anything else? How is the water quality in this vaguely sword-and-sorcery setting? Do you have any amputees lying around, or people with diseases not related to darkspawn, I am a fully qualified medical apsel."

"Vaguely what?"

"There is a genre of fiction that I'm acquainted with in which people have adventures and there is magic of the sort my universe doesn't have and castles and knights and kings and things that have fallen out of fashion in the last six or seven centuries."

"Apartment buildings and cops and democratically elected presidents, respectively, as a massive oversimplification."

"Well, that's not very explanatory."

"Castles are less useful as fortifications when military technology advances and less fun to have as residences when it's no longer useful to have dozens of servants per single high-status family. Knights became obsolete too. And a lot of countries with kings more or less violently overthrew them and switched to a system of voting for representatives to generate their legislation and do their international diplomacy with less crown-wearing and more adherence to pre-designed constitutions of checks on their power."

"That's much more explanatory!"

"Incidentally, I don't have to sleep, if I take enough stimulants. Should I be planning to do so anyway?"

"It might be boring to stay up all night, but then you can conjure arbitrary books, so perhaps not."

"Usually I do my reading on a device that I expect would be terribly conspicuous, but yes. Where should I stay if I'm going to do that? Do you have book recommendations to get me up to speed on the local this-and-that? Do Tranquil read?"

"I can recommend many books. Tranquil do read. No one will think anything of it if you sit out here with a stack of books and a candle. How long a list would you like, and on what topics? History? Geography? Astronomy? Magic? History of the Blight will certainly tell you all about darkspawn..."

"I'll start with that, I guess, and I'll take your recommendations on magic and history."

"Hmm. The Arcane in Principle and Practice, by First Enchanter Lilian around 8:12 Blessed, and for history Ancient Days and Ages Past by Angus Wren - usually found in the two respective volumes - and When We Held the Roads by Ordon Tethras. You really need to go to a dwarven source to even begin to understand dwarven history, and he's a very accessible writer."

"Okay, thanks." Cam conjures up his stack of books. And a lit candle. "Where should I go with this?"

"Here will do. You can keep an eye out for darkspawn." She gestures out past the half-broken crenellations at the forest far below.

Cam nods, and sits, and places his candle, and starts reading.