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Bella's not sure where she has wandered. She thought she was about to walk into a shop, but this appears to be an unattended bar. With none of the windows associated with the shop she thought she was entering. It could be an elaborate psychic assault of some kind, but it doesn't feel very... assault-y... and she was in the middle of a town and doesn't think any humans want to sic their 'mon on her. It's strange. She approaches the bar, looking around warily, hand hovering near her belt.
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"Huh. I don't really consider niceness my defining feature. My sister's better with people than I am. The other ones you met here, the bar says they're my alts, did you talk to them enough to guess if they're hers?... I'm assuming althood is transitive. Bar?"
Ordinary forms of althood, yes. More exotic forms of parallelism exist but are not at play in what I've observed here.
Ordinary forms of althood, yes. More exotic forms of parallelism exist but are not at play in what I've observed here.
"There seems to be a certain commonality," he says. "I don't think niceness is a defining feature of Maurabel's either; I think it's a product of her environment."
"I don't have a personal name. You can just call me Earth," he says with a slight shrug. "In my world, humans can capture elementals and force us to do magic for them. There are entire industries built on the practice. Maurabel is one of the few humans around who sees something wrong with it. I don't think I'd consider her unusually nice if it weren't for the contrast."
"Most people don't see anything wrong with that? Where I'm from slavery's been illegal for a long time."
"They don't call it slavery when it's elementals. They don't call it anything in particular. It's just how things are done. It's what we're considered to be for," he says, shrugging again.
"Yes," agrees Earth. "Maurabel has just about the same reaction, but she can't do much about it except treat us as much like people as she possibly can."
"I'm sure she is. She hasn't told me if she's thought of anything specific, besides buying an elemental from the university when she graduates."
"We start out free. Many of us still are. Humans find us in the wild and capture us and bind us to amulets. It's possible to break an amulet, but I've only ever heard of it happening by accident."
"Breaking an amulet is considered a very dangerous thing to do. I don't know if there are any of us that she trusts enough to be sure they wouldn't kill her and everyone else in sight and then flee, which has historically been what happened whenever an elemental got loose by accident."
"I'm under the impression that would be difficult to arrange," he says. "For one thing, she's not in town right now."
"Yeah, maybe I can't. Alas. I mean, at least you can be here instead of - who owns you or are you a free one?"
"The university. They have a little collection - at least a few of every element - for the magic students to borrow."
"Humans are born with different levels of affinity for different elements. Elementals aren't born at all, we coaelsce, but we come in varying power levels too. Not all humans can do magic, but it's pretty common."