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Grendyne groans and starts pulling on her boots when the alarm goes off. Again. She quick-marches to the broom hangar, sits on her machine and is handed a plethora of loaded weapons by attentive corporals.
"Two flyers in one day? They're getting way too common."
"It's worse," the commander informs them, "South Karlsland got hit with three at once. We're taking Lytee's express and sleeping there. You can sit out if you absolutely need to, but Freya's still recovering so we could use you as a comms relay."
"No, I'll come. I just reserve the right to complain about it."
The 42nd United Forces Witch Wing takes off, bracing to fight yet another city-destroying monster, and assembles into a perfect synchronized formation as Lytee charges her teleport power.
...This is not South Karlsland wilderness.
Near the Golden Coven capital, in Aurum
Near Savarasse, in Thilanushinyel
Near Whately Academy
With Unbitwise
+ Show First Post
witchwatcher
witchwatcher
"I suppose how useful I can be depends on how much mana other things cost. What else will I be attempting to copy for you, your majesty? I could probably keep the communication thing you first talked to me with if I met its owner, and I already have a really well optimized whisper spell I can use as a base so I bet it'll cost just a squeak more than that."
luminous_regnant
"Copying Dwi - the communicator - would be useful too, and we have a teleporter, and according to some theories of how Alice works you might be able to get around her blind spots... What exactly do you need to be able to copy something?"
witchwatcher
"I'm not sure. A lot of strike witch specials come with multiple parts. Lytee can teleport small objects, and herself, and large objects, and other people. By line of sight, to previously visited locations, to specific people, to arbitrary well-specified coordinates. I can only manage the first two in each category, and it costs me a lot more mana and it takes a lot more focus from me than her. I have literally never run into magic I could not copy at all until today."
luminous_regnant
"I was wondering if you could copy magic belonging to dead people, specifically. It probably wouldn't be safe for you to use Aro's power with a human brain, and Chelsea's is very low on ethical uses, but they're only the most obvious dead witches..."
witchwatcher
"...Do you have their body? Or at the very least, something that smells like them? I doubt I can manage it, anyway, I can't copy dead strike witches."
luminous_regnant
"There are some ashes, and old clothes, but if it doesn't work it doesn't work."
witchwatcher
"I'm willing to try."
But when she looks at the ashes, "I think I can tell that they were witches. Though maybe that's just because I was expecting them to be. I can't copy them at any rate, the magic's gone."
But when she looks at the ashes, "I think I can tell that they were witches. Though maybe that's just because I was expecting them to be. I can't copy them at any rate, the magic's gone."
witchwatcher
A quick tour of other commonly-used and relatively innocuous witches reveals that she can copy all of them with varying difficulty, with the lowest mana cost being on Dwi, Renata, and Jasper.
luminous_regnant
Some of Bella's relatives suggest that she could stop going without a bodyguard as frequently as she does in order to give Renata time off. Bella does not have a good explanation for why she doesn't need to do this, but nobody makes a big deal of it. Instead she tells Dwi that he can have some time off-call. (He's seldom needed, only when someone can't be reached by phone; but when he is needed it's sometimes urgent, and it's inefficient to have Addy borrow his power while he goes and takes an uninterruptible break, and having her show up to borrow his power on short notice would belie the uninterruptibility of said break.)
"It's also possible we should put you in a room with Maggie, who has a similar arrangement. She's a lie detector, less invasive than Edward and works over the phone. But she lives in Ireland."
"It's also possible we should put you in a room with Maggie, who has a similar arrangement. She's a lie detector, less invasive than Edward and works over the phone. But she lives in Ireland."
witchwatcher
"There's also the matter of I haven't exactly negotiated a wage or working conditions yet. I can deal with emergency short-notice work, especially if it doesn't involve combat this time, but my pay needs to be almost as good per-hour as it was at home. Different currencies - A nice shirt costs 40 Svalten." She names a figure that will work out to roughly $8000 a month.
luminous_regnant
"That's actually low for specialized magic work, so for the first while I'll throw in a dedicated native guide on top of the wage and after you don't need them any more you can negotiate a raise, does that sound good?"
luminous_regnant
"She lives in Ireland. Some people find they can't sleep on airplanes, and I imagine you don't know if you can or not, so you might want to fly already rested. And with your native guide picked out to accompany you so you don't get lost in the airport. It's probably best to find you someone from among the werewolves; they can go in public more easily than we can, they're all already in the know, and some of them don't have much of anything to do at the moment. I can probably offer a selection, although it narrows if you don't want to risk meeting an unimprinted male werewolf... Wolves do a thing where occasionally they see a female human and fall in extremely irrevocable all-consuming love. Alice can't predict it because she can't see events involving wolves. I can still probably find you a female werewolf, though."
witchwatcher
"That sounds... Unpleasant for the werewolves involved. If they are okay with the risk of this happening then I am, I suppose. Ireland is where Brittania is and we're not even in Europe... Are airplanes faster than two hundred twenty miles per hour? That's my top sustained airspeed on my trusty old model 1336 Steelwing."
her_imperial_radiance
"It's not intrinsically unpleasant. I have a wolf and it worked out. It often does; a lot of them want to imprint, especially the children who grew up with imprinted fathers. It can get unpleasant if for whatever reason the imprint doesn't want an eternally devoted werewolf companion, such as if she's gay or married or spooked by the entire concept. And yes, airplanes are much faster than that, although it will still take hours to get across the Atlantic Ocean."
witchwatcher
"I am not those things, except very slightly the last one. This is working out far better than I would have guessed if you told me this morning I'd be teleported to a random dimension. Let's go find a werewolf, then."
her_imperial_radiance
"If you don't mind going among unimprinted male werewolves you could have dinner in the wolf village and Jake, my wolf, can announce that you need an escort. Anyone who's not willing to risk it will eat in their homes."
witchwatcher
"I'm willing to risk it... And dinner sounds very nice right about now."
her_imperial_radiance
"All right, this way. The wolf village is a ways away from the coven part of the compound because vampires and wolves dislike each others' smells, and because not all the wolves want Dad reading their minds."
witchwatcher
She follows. "Mind reading is a bit of a loop. But again, only surface thoughts, and I'm not thinking anything particularly private right now."
her_imperial_radiance
"A lot of people don't feel like they have enough control over their thoughts to avoid thinking private or embarrassing things."
her_imperial_radiance
There is an underground tunnel between the coven and the village. Elspeth sticks to a human walking pace.