"...In what way is that a planet?" asks a passing human, peering down at the pastry.

"The planets I'm familiar with are spherical," he says. "But I suppose that's what I get for making assumptions at Milliways."

"Sounds challenging to stand on. Which way is down?" inquires Kaylo around his bite of iced planet.

"Still sounds weird," says Kaylo. "Bar, can I get a nice white wine - no redreed necessary? I'll take your recommendation on it." He finishes his iced planet quickly and then starts sipping from the supplied glass, rather faster than might typically be advised.

The human gives him a curious look, but doesn't comment. Mm. Tea.

"You have a bunch of planets?" inquires Kaylo. "And they're all spheres? How large is large, are they larger than - you have no idea how big my moon is, do you."

"I certainly don't," he agrees. "But I would guess much, much larger. Large enough that surface-dwelling civilizations developed with the assumption that it was, in fact, flat."

"It boggles the mind that you wouldn't be able to tell. All it'd take would be ten minutes of altitude. Can't anybody fly where you're from?"

"Of species native to the planet, no, not without a vehicle of some kind. Although, having flown, I can say that it did not look especially rounder than usual from the air."

The red-eyed boy scrutinizes the entirely natural-looking color of the human's eyes. Then he says, "I think I had the wrong upper bound on how far this thing -" He waves at the entirety of Milliways - "was reaching for patrons."

"Meaning...?"

"Meaning, I walk into what's supposed to be my seminar on astronomy - funnily enough - and find this place, and it looks like a bar. It has tables and chairs and an inn upstairs and serves beverages, it isn't full of things for which I can discern no purpose. So I was figuring even if it's paying visits to multiple worlds, it's probably picking similar worlds, but I guess not all worlds that have tables and chairs have equally normal things like square planets and dragons."

"I wouldn't actually be confident in saying we don't have dragons in my world," he says, "but I've never personally met one there. I think mine might be closer to the local average than yours, if only because I've been coming here for a while and you're the first I've heard of square planets."

"A square planet," corrects Kaylo idly. "Unless you're counting the pastry kind. Why wouldn't you know if you had dragons?"

"Oh, someone's always discovering that a species previously assumed to be legendary has existed all along."

Kaylo snorts. "It'd be some weird dragons who hid like that."

He shrugs. "I can't comment on the motives of this hypothetical dragon."

"Well, I don't know, maybe your world is terrible and if I went there I would promptly go into hiding, too," shrugs Kaylo. "Is your world terrible? Would something uncivilized happen to me if I went there?" He gestures at his eyes, as though this is meaningful in some way.

"Very possibly," he says. "It's more than usually hazardous, as worlds go, I think. Discounting actual hell dimensions."

"Actual what now."

"Hell dimensions," he repeats. "What part of that do you need explained?"

"See, where I'm from, if somebody starts talking about any manner of hell, you can write them off as a member of one of several annoying religions, but in this context, given that you have not handed me any tracts advising me to convert to Salvationism, the word 'actual' followed by 'hell' is alarming me."

"Hell dimensions are alarming," he says dryly. "They're our most frequent source of potentially world-destroying events."

"I'm pretty thoroughly convinced not to emigrate, now," says the dragon dryly.

"I'm not surprised."

"Well, that and the fact that most of my magic won't work offworld. Kind of extremely annoying."

"Yes, that does seem to vary."

"I'd imagine. Although maybe just being a firebreathing dragon would give me a leg up where you're from if I'm ever, improbably, stuck there by mistake, it'd kind of put a damper on my education."

"And I wouldn't recommend learning our magic instead. It has its benefits, but also its hazards."

"Well, so has our sort, is yours worse?" inquires Kaylo.

"Possibility of addiction, possibility of exposure to miscellaneous corrupting influences, possibility of coming to the attention of various gods or godlike beings who may or may not be friendly..."

"Does it kill you if you get a big spell wrong or try one too big for you? That's basically the worst thing that can happen with the kind I'm learning."

"It can kill you, but not usually under those exact conditions, I don't think. Reading the wrong book or using the wrong magical artifact is a likelier cause."

"...Reading books will sometimes kill you?" He shakes his head and utters a word that declines to translate.

"Yes, if for example the book is binding a demon and reading it allows the demon to achieve physical form."

"That doesn't seem like a very good way to go about binding them, then, does it?"

"I suppose if I summoned, say, you, all I'd have to do to let you out to do whatever you liked would be smudge the chalk, but I could ward the chalk," says the dragon.

"And I am not a demon," he feels compelled to point out.

"It'd be the same if I summoned one of your demons," shrugs Kaylo, "but I wouldn't know how to aim at one of those, as I have, thankfully, never met one."

"I wouldn't assume that no demon you might summon from my world could break whatever binding you might impose. As long as you never plan to test the theory, however, feel free."

"Ostensibly, literally no offworlder can get out of a summoning circle without someone outside it smudging the chalk," says Kaylo. "Which has been tested, but probably not on the exact species you have in mind, here."

"I don't have an exact species in mind. This is just long years of experience with demons as a whole speaking. I might bet on your wards against a common Fyarl or even a master vampire, but not against a hell-god. And there are any number of species who can, for example, eat magic, or subvert any power or force that is turned against them except under very narrow circumstances. Or move through any surface in which their image is reflected. Or command the mind and soul of any who hear their true name."

"If I did not value my life I'd probably want to come check out all these fascinating - things," says Kaylo. "Maybe if I hit three thousand and have most of my list of study topics whittled down."

"Well, none of the above has managed to kill me yet. You're free to take that as a reassuring sign."

"You're probably a third my age," snorts Kaylo. "Forgive me if I'm a little more cautious."

"Naturally. No, in all seriousness, not visiting my world is a wise decision. I could recommend some demonology texts if you want to learn the details from a safe distance. Guaranteed one hundred percent demon-free."

"How well-substantiated are those guarantees?" Kaylo inquires.

"I have personally read all of these books, and no demons emerged. I do know the difference between a book of binding and one of the more ordinary sort."

"And these aren't liable to be picky demons that will sit tight in their books if they don't like the look of you or something?"

"No."

"Let's see... there's the Keys Collated and Revised, in seven volumes, for a general introduction. The most comprehensive available source on vampires is simply titled Vampyr, but its unofficial title is the Leaden Brick for reasons that I'm sure will become obvious the first time you try to pick it up. Magic-eaters, mirror-walkers, and several varieties of usurper all appear in Journeys of the Damned. Demons who possess or command under unusual conditions are the main subject of Goetia Esoterica. I think that's everything I mentioned. Oh, and the Fyarl have their own page in Twelve Hundred Demonic Mercenaries, which contains only one thousand and fifty-eight species."

Kaylo writes all this down. "I think you may have a few too many kinds of demon."

He snorts.

"And none of them can fly? Or the ones that can all get to your planet from other planets?"

"The vast majority of demons originate from hell dimensions, if you go back far enough. Humans, and technically vampires, are the only intelligent species living on Earth who verifiably started out there. But yes, apart from that, very few demons can fly."

"Our vampires can fly," remarks Kaylo.

"Ours can't. Well, one can, but Dracula is a special case in many respects."

"Why, how does he do it?"

"He is a shapeshifter. Turns into, among other things, mist and bats. Or possibly one bat. Reports vary on the number and size of the bat or bats."

"...How in the name of all shapeshifting logic ever would one vampire turn into several bats?"

"I don't believe logic was consulted on the matter."

Kaylo gives him a withering look.

He shrugs and sips his tea.

"Our vampires turn into one bat. Apiece. It's not a specialized skill, even baby vampires can do it."

"...'Baby'...?"

"You... do have babies where you're from, right? Do you not have babies? Am I actually something like ten times your age?"

"We do have babies. We don't have baby vampires. Vampire reproduction is a complicated and unpleasant subject."

"...Why would you not have baby vampires? I'm confused."

"Vampires make more vampires by feeding humans their blood and then killing them. The human's departed soul is replaced by a demonic spirit, and their body rises from the grave as a vampire, with all the memories of their human life but usually a vastly different personality."

"...Okay, so that's... about six reasons why I'm confused that I want to translate the word you're saying into various Elcenian words referring to the species I mentioned that turns into bats and has babies. Huh."

"They also drink blood," he mentions, "which I think is the strongest point of commonality between worlds I've found. Ours and yours are not the only kinds of vampire."

"Yeah, ours drink blood too. They don't have their own, how does that make sense? Why would they need to drink it if they had plenty?"

"There are perfectly ordinary nonmagical species of bat that have blood of their own and still subsist by drinking it," he says.

"Not where I'm from there aren't."

He shrugs.

"Also, vampires - of the kind I'm familiar with - do not drink at all when they are bats. They sleep only as bats, feed only while humanoid."

"How odd."

"They are not much like most other humanoids. Depending on how you weigh it they might be more like most humanoids than, say, me, or a fairy or a merperson, but yeah."

"Are you unusual in ways other than being a fire-breathing dragon?" he inquires.

"...No, but, you know, dragons aren't humanoid? We are quadrupedal and winged and so on?" says Kaylo. He is not any of those things right now.

"Clearly not all of the time."

"Well, no, shapeshifting is handy for things like," Kaylo lifts his temporarily neglected wine, downs it, "interacting with objects, fitting into architecture. Downright essential for casting spells, all the gestures are designed for people with hands. But this is just an assumed form." He glances around the bar, assessing its ability to hold him if he were to shift.

"And I am just a little too big to politely demonstrate here, although I'll impolitely demonstrate for a couple of seconds if you want."

"You may as well."

"I see," says the human. "Both quadrupedal and winged, yes."

"Thank you," he says, not having read the note.

"I am actually pretty sure I could avoid setting the place on fire, but I am nothing if not - no, actually I would remain lots of things if I were not courteous, but I am anyway, so."

He laughs.

"Do you have a name, by the way? I'm Kaylo." Kaylo pauses. "Oh, and for a dragon I'm about as mature as I look and I call my teachers Aar this and Aaral that all day long, so if you prefer to be Mister Something I will not be offended in spite of the probably-three-times-your-age thing."

"It would be Mr. Giles, but you're welcome to drop the Mister, in the tradition of every other adolescent I know."

Kaylo laughs. "Nice to meet you, then, Giles."

"Likewise."

"Has your world got a name? Mine's called Elcenia."

"Not as far as I know. The planet, yes, but not the world as a whole. How did yours get one?"

"Draconic," says Kaylo. "It's a language, basically. It does that."

"Does being 'basically' a language imply that there is some way in which it isn't?"

"It is a language, it just doesn't have all the - dependence on its speakers that other languages do. It will produce words without help. If you show me a selection of magical artifacts from your world that no dragon has ever seen before, I will have words for them, and I will be able to go home and talk about them to other dragons using those words, and those other dragons will have some idea of what I am referring to."

"That sounds... useful," he says thoughtfully.

"So that's where 'Elcenia' came from. Dragons wanted to talk about our world as opposed to others, and the name was there," shrugs Kaylo. "Most other languages in the world have obvious etymological relationships to it for their own words for the world."

"Hmm. I wonder if one of our more well-travelled species of demon might have done something similar," he says.

"Couldn't tell you. I'd need more to go on than having met you to see if Draconic has the information tucked away in it for your world too."

"I wouldn't expect you to. I can look up the likely sources myself if I become sufficiently curious."

Kaylo nods. "I wonder if this place can translate Draconic," he says idly. "Does this sentence make sense to you?"

"Yes. Do other magical translators usually fail on that language?"

"Like you didn't even cast anything," says Kaylo. "You can be under a sophisticated enough spell that you can listen to crystals in Alteisec and write a letter in Kandaph and speak Sengo and dance Flytwirl and figure out your taxes in Verian glyphs all at the same time and Draconic would be so much nonsense."

Giles shrugs. "Milliways."

"Apparently!" says Kaylo. "Whatever, your language is interesting, I'll go on speaking it."

"Interesting how?"

"Bigger vocabulary than most. Good aesthetics. I never spoke it before."

He grins. "I am unjustifiably proud."

Kaylo laughs.