"People's choices can throw me off and she's not bad at exploiting that, and I have blind spots that Addy sometimes has legitimate reasons to pass through."

"Some of the people nearby are only all right with me reading their minds because they know me personally," the mindreader remarks.

"I can certainly try to copy him. My primary limit is mana - using too much magic at once will knock me down, and using too much in one day makes me literally not able to do any more. How long I can do anesthetize people depends largely on how expensive it ends up being."

"Even if all you can do is give him a break so he doesn't have to stand in one place for three days straight every time we turn a batch, it'd be very useful. Addy can do that too, but she's useful elsewhere too."

"I see. Do you want me to try copying him?"

"Are there any circumstances under which you could affect his power while it's in use? If so, you should wait until he's between batches."

"No. I copy, I don't steal. It's theoretically possible to disrupt powers if I try to use it on the same area or person as him, but I just won't do that."

"Okay then. ...The place might be disturbing to look at. Everybody's conscious but not of their bodies, and we do the batches with as many people as can fit in his area at a time for efficiency, which means stacking them up so they just barely have a way to breathe. They can't feel it, and we have someone showing them illusions of subtitled movies to pass the time, but it'll look weird."

"If it doesn't turn out his power is an elaborate lie, I promise not to freak out and think you're mistreating them like how they used to stack up slave ships going to Liberion."

"Alec's power is as described," says Elspeth helpfully.

"I didn't think it wasn't." Walk, walk, walk. "This place is built weird."

"Most of it was put together by a witch who can manipulate the classical elements. My mother-in-law designed it. And it's intended for principally vampire occupants, and we don't need things like chairs. What's strange about it to you?" asks Bella. She and Elspeth fall into step with Grendyne and lead her down a few flights of stairs into a basement.

"All this perfectly flat glass. Light without lanterns. And no chairs or anything, but you just explained that part."

"The glass and electric lighting are common. Maybe you're lower tech in your world? ...Vampires don't need the light either but it's easier to go fetch a chair for a human visitor than it is to wire the place new every time one shows up, so we have them. And Elspeth does need it."

"If my tech level is in doubt, here's some of our recent inventions: Steam trains. Penicillin. Morphine. Printing press. Telegraphs. All invented in the last thirty-one years since the Neuroi obliterated Greece and Ostmark."

"...Well, that's a very compressed technological advance timeline, some of those things were hundreds of years apart here, but it is well behind us."

"There's no war between countries anymore, no angry Church spitting blood and fire at anyone who dares to ask questions. Everybody's too scared of the Neuroi, everybody's trying to cobble together anything that can possibly give us an advantage. Maybe that's why."

"I'm not sure how that would help with penicillin, which here was discovered by accident, but it makes at least some sense as an explanation, wars can be very motivating. What are the Neuroi?"

"Giant black and red things, sometimes walking but mostly flying. They're faster than trains, but not Witches. They... Shoot red beams of light, except it's not really light, but they still destroy things. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, almost always unique. They regenerate in less than a minute from anything short of destruction of their core. The biggest Neuroi I ever fought destroyed 27 ships in less than ten minutes, before the lead striker on the 39th wing finished it off. They're exceedingly nasty."

"Did they come from the sky, or, say, a magic portal, or do they just show up from nowhere in particular...?"

"The first time anyone saw a Neuroi, they were coming out from the giant hurricane that appeared over Ostmark with no warning. Presumably they got here somehow but now they come from the permanent climate-disrupting large weather feature."

"Where is Ostmark? We have a Greece, but not an Ostmark. Or a Liberion."