"...Hi! Yes. Yes I am."

"Welcome to Milliways, then. The Bar at the End of the Universe, accept no substitutes. Pull up a barstool, the first drink's free."

So Cayra sits. "End of the universe?"

Harry gestures to the window of exploding stars. "Supposedly that's what it looks like when the universe dies. Lots of pretty fireworks. I approve on principle. I'm Harry, by the way."

"That's a weird name. I'm Kimbelcayra. Cayra for short."

"Hey, you didn't even hear the weird parts of my name! Besides, we're from different universes, naming conventions can't even stay consistent over the course of a couple of decades."

Blink. Blink. "You mean this in some way that isn't just 'this is an alucine with a door'?"

"...Probably? Your universe might have interdimensional travel magic, but you seem a lot more surprised than you would be if that was a thing that was going on."

"Nnnno, not really. There's - ostimancers, oneiromancers, but that doesn't seem like what you're talking about?"

"Yeah, probably not. Welcome to the multiverse, I guess. Also, nice flower. Very glowy."

"Speakflower. Do you not have those, in your... universe?"

"Nope. But if you use them to talk to people in different places, we do have that. Just not with flowers."

"What have you got then?"

"...Very complicated things. It's kind of like... you know what, I'm not equipped to explain technology, I've never had a working phone that wasn't made of Bakelite. You may have to trust me on this one."

"Who else is going to explain it, then?"

Harry shrugs helplessly. "I can tell you about magic, if you want, it's just that I am really, really not able to explain cellular signals. Maybe you could ask Bar?"

"Speakflowers are better than that. You can do the phone thing with them, but I mostly use them for my chatcircle and personal petals."

"...so, the Internet. Or so I have heard."

"Do I need Bar to explain that to me too?"

"Almost certainly. She do words good."

"Very fun, or so I'm told. I can't use it myself because the internet access box would explode. Downsides of wizardry."

"That's... a weird vice."

"Vice?"

"Downside to learning magic?"

"Guess you could call it that. Though if you've got magic in the first place, you're going to get some hexing whether you learn proper wizardry or not."

"Hexing is - the thing where phones and internets don't like you?"

"Yep. Wizards release little bits of uncontrolled magic into the air, and they futz with whatever high-tech junk happens to be around."

"That sounds inconvenient. Probably not as bad as being an oneiromancer or a pyromancer."

"What happens to them? I really hope pyromancers don't randomly catch fire, that would just be awful for everyone."

"Oh, no, pyromancers just lose emotional regulation. They're like toddlers, which doesn't really work well with the pyromancy. Oneiromancers lose receptive language."

"Gah. That... might be worse, really. Today I have learned to be thankful for my wizardry, and the fact that I can set things on fire without turning into a small child."

"Lots of vices are okay. At least in smallish doses. Almost everyone has at least a little antheomancy. I'm working on automancy."

"Good for you not being technically a pyromancer."

Harry peers at her. "Was that sass? That sounded suspiciously like sass."

Hee hee.

"So, what other mancies are there? You're doing automancy and antheomancy, the first of which seems pretty self-explanatory... I'm intrigued."

"There's a bunch. Automancy will let me shapeshift and stuff. I can do color changes now -" She turns her hair white and then back. "The vice is self-centeredness but I think I'll cope. I'd better, because antheomancy is finesse with networked flowers, and the vice is extroversion."

"Yeah, I can imagine better combinations. There's worse, too, though. And it sounds like you know what you're doing."

"I really, really want automancy, but the vice freaks me out, to be honest. I wound up with more antheomancy than I meant to because without flowers I'd be bored out of my skull. Before even touching automancy I solicited lots of advice on how to manage vices."

"Yyyyeah. I mean, really, a little bit of automancy might help me out some, I've been told I have a martyr complex. But I sure as hell wouldn't want more than a little bit. And really, I'd rather go for something like... I don't know, boredom. Keep me from getting so angry. Something like that, where it's just good for everyone involved."

"Lithomancers get calm. It's not as unambiguously good as it sounds."

"It never is."

"It's not awful, as vices go. And they get protective magic."

"Oh, that would be pretty nice. Hey, is there some way for people who aren't from your world to get their hands on some of this magic? I don't like to mix business and pleasure and all, but there's kind of a lot of evil things that want me dead, and it's always nice to have something unexpected under my belt."

"Well, I don't know how this different worlds stuff interacts with that, but in general all you need to do to pick up the discipline of your choice is a knowflower. The one I have on me is a speakflower..." She unscrews its vial. "...And its networking isn't functioning right, I thought it was healthy but maybe I was wrong."

"...Possibly relevant: your world is kind of frozen while you're in here. You could try opening the door, that'll unpause things as long as you hold it."

"Oh. Well, that might fix the speakflower's networking, but I don't think I can reach any knowflowers from the door I came in."

"Aw. Don't worry about it too much, I hold my own. It's amazing what a bunch of fire can do, pointed at the right people."

"All that and you don't even have to deal with pyromancy's emotional disregulation. Nice gig if you can get it."

"Yeah, magic's pretty nice. Plus I get to live for a few hundred years, as long as nobody shoots me first. Or, well, actually people have shot me, but if they shoot me... better, I guess?"

"I'm gonna be immortal."

"Well, la di dah. These Mancies just get better and better, huh."

"Yeah. I mean, by the time I'm immortal I will probably have a meaningfully difficult time wresting my attention from whatever's caught my personal attention to pay attention to someone else dangling from a cliff, but I think if I'm very careful I will just be able to direct my personal attention where it ought to be, just for unconventional reasons."

"Best of luck on that. I haven't necessarily had the best track record with that kind of thing, but impulse control has never been my strong suit."

"Sounds like stories."

"Well, the magic I have isn't the only kind around, and some of them do things to your head. Like the charmingly named 'Hellfire', which is a potent magic source that destroys things very nicely, but makes you angrier and more impulsive. I ended up... relying on it, a bit. It didn't turn out very well."

"But you can put it down again after you pick it up?"

"Well, if you give it up completely, which is pretty hard. It was mostly only possible because I'd taken a tiny fraction of the power I could've had. If I'd gone the full package deal, I'd probably be kicking puppies on a professional basis by now."

"Professional puppy-kicking. I don't think my world has that. Unfortunately for 'mancers it's the learning, not the using, that causes the vice, and you can't unlearn whatever you decide to learn."

"That sucks. Some people think it's that way on my world too. That if it ever happened, you're stained for good. I tend to disagree, and fortunately there are people who agree with me."

"Lucky you. 'Stained' is a weird way to talk about it though."

"I mean, it's kind of literal. We've got this... magic... vision thing. If you've used the kind of magic that does nasty things to your brain, it's like a black stain all over your soul. Or sometimes something more symbolic, but it leaves a mark."

"I can check, if you like. It's like... seeing how someone would be described in the introduction to their book, or something. Lots of symbols of what they're like and who they are. But I can't use it in here, so I'd rather you stand just outside the door if we're going to do this; the bar's full of magic, it hurts my head."

"What else will you pick up if you do this?"

"If you've got any secrets you're really guilty about, it might give me some weird hints about them. Murder especially, I definitely recommend against it if you kill people. Hmm... I'll probably get some outline of your personality and your values, but it's all pretty vague. There's a version with more detail, but I don't really do it as a party trick because they get the same view, and it upsets people. Speaking of which, don't look into my eyes, I avoid people's eyes as a habit but you might as well be forewarned. But, like, usually I'll See someone as a guardian angel with a fiery sword, or I'll See blood dripping from their hands, or there'll be holes in their skull, or something. That kind of thing."

"I've never killed anybody. Thanks for the eyes warning. Hmm, I think your cultural references might be lost on me - the thing with the sword in particular. What would the perforated skull mean, for that matter?"

"The guardian angel, that's sort of- a divine figure, who protects people and fights evil. She's a good friend of mine. The skull thing was in the case of a man who had had some really nasty mind magic done to him that basically turned him into a vegetable. Really awful."

"Eugh. Okay, I think I'm more curious than I am freaked out, so assuming that's the extent of the detail I'll go stand just outside the bar and you can do the thing."

"Sure. It won't look like much of anything, I'll just be looking at you. Then I'll either look away, or look away while grabbing my head and making angry painful noises."

"Uh, I don't want to hurt you."

Harry waves a hand negligently. "It's not likely you'll hurt my head, I'm just including the option in case it happens and you freak out. You'd have to be a lot more powerful than you've mentioned for that."

"So if I were a fully realized automancer, immortal and bioluminescent and sprouting extra limbs at my convenience and that sort of thing, then you'd get the headache, but since I can only do little stuff," she develops a case of interesting golden tiger stripes for two seconds, "you'll be okay?"

"Yep. Honestly, even full automancy probably wouldn't hurt my head that badly, the headachey tier is usually able to break cities."

"A full automancer could do that if they really wanted," Cayra says, "just not as trivially as some of the others." She goes to the door and opens it and stands just beyond the threshold.

"It's not even noticeable from the inside until I do serious self-inspection. A lot of people can't even figure it out that way, they have to wait for their friends to tell them when they seem noticeably more vicious."

"Eesh. I'm glad you've got more of a science to it. And it's not obvious, but it definitely shows up on casual inspection. Though ordinarily I'd dismiss it as, like, 'bad breakup' or 'missing home' or some other personal thing. Those twist up the soul for a while too."

"I have been away from home for a while but I don't strongly miss the place. My parents are pretty good about leaving speakflower messages."

"Yeah. And nobody to break up with, so I'm good there too."

"Lucky me." She lets herself back in to the bar.