"We're just borrowing you for a few degrees to show Nemaar," says the blonde, "then we'll put you right back."

Isabella raises an eyebrow. "... You decided to grab me at random to demonstrate some form of new, involuntary summoning spell?"

"It's an old one actually," says the dark one. "And it's not like we're keeping you for long."

"He's in class right now," says the blonde. "We'll get him soon. He didn't have a thing to do with summoning you though."

"It's a summoning spell," says the blonde. "It couldn't duplicate you, that would be really different. And we summoned you from another world, so you shouldn't be expecting wizardry to work like what you're used to."

Isabella makes a little 'get on with it' circle with one hand. "Yes, yes, you screwed up, why am I not surprised. How? Also, I can see outside of the circle, you would just need to turn a few pages for me."

"So you can't send me back."

"Wait a second, you two. Can you bring specific people, or is it entirely random?"

"So let me out! I have some magic myself: if I can find the right location it's possible I might be able to send myself back."

"Oh no we can't let you out absolutely not," says Korulen. "I have to tell my mom and she can check you out but we can't."

"...and you are obeying this rule when you were so eager to break all those other ones, because...?"

"Not letting you out is a safety protocol," murmurs the brown girl, while Korulen closes her eyes.

"Hello. I assume you're these two's guardian, teacher, or some such?"

"I'm the school's headmaster's wife, and this one," she indicates Korulen, "is my daughter. They're correct that they cannot send you straight home; getting you out of the circle is another matter. May I have your consent for a minimally invasive scan of your mind to check that you aren't dangerous?"

Isabella bites her lip. "Nnnnn. I am opposed to having my mind read, in general. What specifically would you be looking at?" She blinks. "Oh, and I'm Isabella. Properly Lady Isabella, but my title is in another universe so I see no point in standing on formality."

"I can skip it, but if we can't confirm that you're at least relatively harmless, you need to stay behind your ward," the green-haired woman says. "I'd just be checking to see if you were inclined to harm anyone or break local laws in a way that would be more inconvenient to deal with than looking after you in the circle would be."

"Yes, I understand that that's the purpose of the check. I'm asking what specifically you would be looking at to determine that. Memories, personality traits? Does your spell report back a yes-no answer to you, or do you 'hear' my surface thoughts, or what? I care much more about you looking into my personal history than about you just skimming off the top of my brain."

"I won't be retrieving any of your episodic memory. This isn't a spell, it's a natural ability I have, and it's much more fine-grained than answers to binary questions. I won't see anything I'm not looking for."

Isabella eyes the green-haired woman speculatively. "Well, then. I suppose that I'm no worse off if you decide not to let me out because of what's in my mind than because I refuse to be tested. Go ahead, do the thing."

"Of course. If you think my name - it's 'Keo' - very hard, then I'll pick it up and we can talk. About that, or about any more immediately pressing needs you might have."

"I can get you a chair - an entire encyclopedia might crowd you; do you want it all at once?"

Isabella shrugs. "Well, if you can think of a better way to do a fast introduction to the local world, I'm all ears... Oh, there's a thought. How about an atlas? Oh, and before any of that, we need to get this spilt tea out of here." She nudges the overturned cup with one red-shoed foot.

"I'll have the girls set up circles for calling and pushing to move things in and out. Korulen's getting you an encyclopedia right now."

"That sounds excellent. How long would you expect it to take? Oh, and while we're modifying the circle, may I ask why you can't expand it beyond its current rather-cramped proportions?"

"You should have your books and chair, and be rid of your tea, within an angle, perhaps two. The ward isn't designed to be expansible. If we could break it with spellwork, we'd be able to break the spell on you entirely - this is still worth trying, but it's not likely to work - so it's stuck. We could in theory put a similar-quality ward around this entire room instead of the circle one, but that would make it very difficult to put anyone else close enough to the chalk to smudge it - the quality of ward in question would prevent someone who was pushed in from leaving by any means."

"Does it have to be a person who smudges the chalk? Is there an intent component? If not, why not just throw or otherwise transport a bucket of water onto the inner circle using these pushing and calling circles?"

"There's an intent component," confirms Keo.

Keo casts a spell, again with the gesture and some gibberish the translation doesn't catch. Numbers appear in the air. "This is a split, this is a tick, this is a degree, this is an angle. Five splits to a tick, twenty-five ticks to a degree, twenty-five degrees to an angle. Twenty-five angles in a day."

"Sounds like I'll be waiting a little while then. Enough time to get in some reading, listen to some local music... Though I'm unsure where you'd find a band, under these unusual circumstances."

"We have recorded music."

"I'm assuming not on paper. I had heard of some devices capable of such a thing starting to be manufactured, but they're highly exclusive and rare on my world as of yet." She half-smiles. "At least there are some benefits to this situation."

Keo smiles a little. "Not on paper. Audible. Although I don't know if you'll like what's locally available."

Isabella shrugs. "It will be an adventure." She hides a smile. "Though I'm not certain more adventures are really what I need today."

"Understood. Oh, also - it's entirely possible to summon your belongings from your home, if you want those in addition to local objects."

"My adolescent daughter and her twelve-year-old roommate summoned you," Keo points out.

"I was not within my castle, I was out on the balcony. That said, your magic is interesting and foreign, and I've already been wrong about it multiple times. I suppose you could try..."

"You would have to specify the items in sufficiently unique detail, and I'd want to check you regarding their safety, of course."

"Well, let's try something simple to start. I have a potted rose I keep on my desk in the conservatory; I should be able to remember it in sufficently precise detail. You have permission to grab your search image from my mind."

"And the safety scan?" inquires Keo.

Isabella waves a hand. "Yes, yes, of course."

"I am also concerned about unforseen interactions," remarks Keo a moment later.

"As I said, my residence is not your average castle." She hides another smile - the motion has a little upward shift to it that suggests she's most used to doing it with a fan.

"I'll talk it over with research types and get back to you; it doesn't sound like you urgently need anything from home."

"You'll be able to hear music even without the crystals being in the circle with you; I'll go get a selection." Keo casts a spell and vanishes.

Isabella waits patiently for the crystals, neglecting to breathe and have a heartbeat while Keo is gone. It gets tiring to have to look alive all the time.

Keo comes back a degree later with a boxful of long crystals. "We can put these in the circle with you later but for now I'll have to operate them." She picks one up and strokes one of its facets. Music plays.

Isabella listens. She's really remarkably still when she wants to be.

"Is this one all right or should I put on another?"

Keo plays brief samples of a few other crystals.

"The school's responsible for you," Keo says. "And my daughter was one of the summoners."

"True enough. Still, I would have expected many people to delegate such things rather than attend to them personally."

"I'm uniquely able to do safety checks as necessary," shrugs Keo, "and the school employees are teachers and librarians and even less qualified to handle a circled offworlder."

"Makes sense. Some things you have to do yourself if you want them done right." Isabella's fingers slide along the faded paper of the parasol in her lap.

"Anything else you need while you think and the encyclopedia and chair are on the way??"

Keo nods acknowledgment and teleports away.

And after a while a chair, and then a stack of encyclopedia volumes as tall as she is, appear.

The index includes a lot of things, many of which are listed, handwritten, in the index as proper nouns unexplained except via their subsections (for instance, "Oridaan" is next to "Oridaanlan history" and "Oridaanlan physical geography" and "Oridaanlan dialects" and may be assumed to be a political unit). The world has rabbits and chocolate and wine and clouds and a moon and oceans. It has merfolk and elves and dragons and vampires and wolfriders. It has several unrelated kinds of magic.

Isabella is happy that this world includes chocolate! She checks to see if it has tea as well before flipping to the section on the local vampires. The various other magical races can wait: for the moment, she needs to see what her hosts' reactions would be to her asking if she can bite people. She can go without for quite some time, but it would not be comfortable, and if she's really stuck here for a year then she would risk sliding into torpor and that would be rather problematic.

There is a window. The curtains are closed; most of the light in the room is from the glowing ceiling.

Wait, what? Square? Does that mean that there's edges? Isabella investigates: is this a flat world, or is it a cube or something else that would require even more interesting gravity?

The world is about ten miles thick (this measurement brought to you by he middle of the ocean; the parts with mountains are thicker). It is only inhabited - by anything, including plants - on the top, but if you go to the edge you can step off and swing around to the side and walk to the bottom.

So gravity points 'down' while simultaneously causing orbits. Or maybe the orbits are done by something different, after all this is a crazy world with only half a moon. Why doesn't anything live on the underside of the world, since apparently the reason isn't "it'll fall off?"

The encyclopedia coughs up a summary of colonization attempts. Apparently nobody wants to live there because looking at an expanse of flat nothingness is depressing and you need to import topsoil to grow anything. No projects have accumulated sufficient stable populations to warrant putting in a teleportation circle.

Sure. What species are you?

Offworld Vampire. Have a moment to drop in? Even if I do have mental powers myself, talking to you in my mind when you're nowhere near me is unsettling.

"It is. So you're going to need blood? Perhaps under different constraints than local vampires?"

"There are humans. Saasnil's a human, for instance. I don't know that we'll want to summon people for you while you yourself are still confined to ward but we can send your servants a letter and summon blood they draw for you, if local humans won't do. What kind of quantity on what kind of schedule? Are you hungry now?"

"I'm not hungry currently. Weekly for comfort, monthly for... Not exactly survival, as my local type of vampire I'm immortal unless I die in very specific circumstances, but for me to continue functioning. If I don't eat for much longer than that, I will begin to uncannily resemble a corpse, up until someone with a pulse strays too close to me, at which point we will both regret the situation."

"We'll try you on some of Saasnil's blood. Will a measure -" Keo looks around and picks up a drinking glass from Korulen's desk. "This glass would hold about five measures, full - will a measure be enough to tell if you'll do all right on local humans?"

"Yes, likely. Animal blood tastes disgusting to me; I'd expect local blood to taste the same if it doesn't work."

"Okay. Saasnil's gone to the light's office to draw it; the pushing diagram's already set up and she'll send it in that way. A cup will do? Local vampires need pressurized containers."

"A cup will do. I'm uncertain why you would need a pressurized container- do local vampires process blood with their stomachs, or is there some biological oddity there?"

"They don't really have stomachs, and they suck it up through their fangs," says Keo, "which don't exert very much suction on their own."

"What are the risks?" inquires Keo.

"About a month between light feedings is safe; closer than that will cause a loss of sense of self, then amnesia, then loss of intelligence, then intense depression and suicidal tendencies, in that order in ninety-nine point nine nine percent of cases. I stress that these are effects of chronic exposure, and for an acute exposure I would have to actually bite someone, rather than drink drawn blood."

"She says she feels fine. Should she be checking anything else?"

"Nothing springs immediately to mind that I haven't already mentioned. If your magic is exceedingly strange she might possibly experience a sudden fondness for me, which would be the result if she had drank my blood, but I don't know of any reason why it would be reversed like that."

"She has not experienced this result," says Keo dryly. "So we're going to need to summon blood from your servants? Do you want to write the letter to them explaining the situation?"

"That sounds like a good plan, but is significantly complicated by the fact that said servants are in the interdimensional castle. Since I can survive for at least a few more days without discomfort, I would rather hear what your experimental wizards have to say first before attempting to contact any of them."

"Sending a letter suggesting that they leave the interdimensional castle to place containers of blood at pickup points seems likely safe."

"Well, you're the one who's world is at risk, so if you feel it's safe then I won't argue, given how convenient for me it would be if it worked."

"It would probably be safer yet if the letter could be dropped somewhere that is not within the castle where they'd find it, if you can suggest such a place."

"Ah. Well, we'll do some research, but I don't know how much we'll turn up. I'll have the girls send you some writing materials so you can compose a letter."

"I'd be happy to talk to a few of your researchers about my castle, if they would like more details. In the meantime, I suppose I'll do some writing... A desk won't fit in here, but I can use the back of one of these encyclopedias, they're certainly thick enough."

"Of course. Anything else you need?"

"Nothing at the moment, thank you. We'll have to discuss possibilities for circle expansion or wanderings about at a later date... Oh, wait, sorry, is it possible for you to either get my teacup and this stain out of the circle, or send me some cleaning supplies?"

"Korulen's working on the diagram to remove things right now. She'll get rid of the teacup and stain when it's done."

Isabella nods. "Alright, in that case I have no further requests." She settles back into her chair and starts paging idly through the encyclopedia.

Isabella is glad of this: she has little enough room without spilled tea taking up a quarter of it. Now then, time to continue her education on how this world -Elcenia, right- works. Let's see, what about spirits? Surely there's something on the local deities and how magic works. Hmm, probably the magical overview first: she's less concerned with local culture.

Keo is significant enough to have her own entry in an encyclopedia? How intriguing! Isabella looks at the page, then sighs. Well, she knows what to ask for next time Keo turns up: bookmarks. Rather than go on to read more about some specific kinds of magic or dog-ear the page, (shudder) she quickly skims Keo's entry.

Keo, as of the encyclopedia's publication, is the only living green-group unique dragon. This gives her more or less unlimited mental powers. Her predecessor died when she was a young (for a dragon) child.

There are fire, earth, air, and water mages. The procedure to almost die and become an air mage is the least unpleasant because you don't have to actually hit the ground when falling from your designated height. Mages have near absolute control over their element, to the point of ignoring some standard wards. Fire mages are a core part of most Elcenian firefighting arrangements. Air mages can fly. Water mages can breathe underwater. Earth mages can breathe underground.

The index is pretty hard to navigate, actually, because it's in alphabetical order in the local language and the translation spell doesn't rearrange it. What she finds seems to be sections on religion.

Well, that makes some sense. Many of the larger spirits on her world have religions and customs built around them. What can the local priests do?

They don't seem to have any listed powers beyond the ceremonial, whatever they are unrelatedly born with or trained at, and things that the encyclopedia does not seem to believe are real.

You can't walk through the ward, Keo points out. What's this for?

I'm testing to see if thresholds exist on your world. If you revoke my status as a guest and they exist, I ought to feel that as the local spirits metaphysically 'weighing me down.'

How's, "You are no longer welcome within Binaaralav Academy"?

Feels exactly the same. My tentative hypothesis at this point is that spirits don't exist here, which ought to be impossible, but you people live on a cube and have only half a moon, so...

It's not thick enough to be a cube. Is your moon spherical?

Isabella waves. "Hello there." She takes a moment to fix in her mind that Sassnil is apparently this particular young woman, rather than the other one. "Would you mind getting the curtains for me?" She slings her parasol over her shoulder, opening it with the same motion, then twirls it, the pink petals dappled on the paper swirling prettily.

Saasnil nods and goes around the circle, to the window, and draws the curtains open.

Isabella looks at Saasnil and bites her lip. "If this goes badly, I could be on fire soon. Would you arrange to have a bucket of water ready to send?"

"Uh - yeah. Korulen's at the circle, I'll tell Keo to tell her."

Bucket ready.

"It burns local vampires," says Saasnil. "Unless they have a spell on, or clothes."

"Do... you need anything else?" asks Saasnil.

"I need your scary dragon lady of a mother to Geas me as soon as possible so I can get out of this circle and be in the sun, did you realize I have never been out on a really properly sunny day for decades?

"All right. How much do you want to know about it before I do it?"

"It'll take me less than a degree once I start unless your mind works in some very unexpected ways. I do not have psychic accidents, but if I find something I don't understand it could interact in a way I'm not expecting. I will be able to completely undo whatever I do, and I was also planning for the entire thing to snap on its own upon your return home in a loosely hypnotic fashion."

Isabella gets up, then realizes there's no room to pace and sits back down again. "Alright, okay. What sort of things are you likely to ban me from doing?"

"Biting people, exerting your own mental influence on anyone, performing your 'sorcery' on any person who doesn't know what they're doing and agree to it, committing things legally defined as assault in general."

"Do I get a self-defense clause? There do exist things and people in this universe capable of killing me if they attempted to, and I'd prefer not to die stupidly because I was incapable of fighting back. Or, for that matter, dominating them and thereby stopping them from hurting me without having to risk physically injuring them."

"There's some flex around self-defense. You're very unlikely to be attacked, if you stay within the country and don't harass people, but if it happens you can fight back if escape is implausible. You can also ping me for help, of course, I don't have a range limit."

"Alright. Also, can we agree that if by some accident I end up in any other universe other than this one, it'd probably be a good idea for the binding to disappear? I don't especially feel like living the rest of my life with a psychic block because I was unlucky enough to encounter two interdimensional transport accidents within a year."

"How about it will wear off automatically in three years," says Keo, "unless I renew it, which obviously I won't be able to do if you're in some third world."

She scatters a couple of children on her way. The door at the end of the hallway turns out to lead to a windowless closet.

The door on that end says Stairwell - Do Not Enter.

The enclosed room on the end of the hallway on the left as you leave Korulen and Saasnil's room is the lift. Tell it "front hall" and it'll take you there.

Isabella barrels into the lift, snaps out "Front Hall" and waits impatiently for it to do whatever it does.

It trundles downward and then to the side and then down some more. It opens.

Isabella flies out, then in whatever looks to be the most daywards direction.

There's a large front door. Beyond is sunny prairie, and farther off a city with very tall buildings.

The sun is very baskable.

It has been far too long since she could do this. She basks some more, then leisurely wings off towards the fields so that she doesn't make too much of a spectacle of herself.

There's plenty of empty space here. The locals have not heard of the concept of "suburbs". The city ends abruptly and then it's all greenbelt, some farms with little farmhouses.

Is there a tree she can perch in somewhere? Flying isn't very tiring for her, but she would rather not have to concentrate on not falling out of the sky.

There's some trees. Not all that many, but some.

She picks one that looks substantial enough to hold her weight and sets down in the top of it, sprawling out over a branch without caring much about the state of her dress.

The tree is supportive of her plan.

The tree is rather supportive, overall. Isabella settles in to bask some more. Maybe she will stay here long enough to see this world's weird hemispherical moon before heading back to the Academy.