"Hello. I'm Ani. It's good to meet you."

"This is Ruby, my girlfriend. The one that looks like me but isn't me is El, and that's her sister Bellona. And those two are Ellisaria and Brisingr. They're actually dragons but as this home was designed by humans and dwarves they don't fit in their natural state so they have very graciously chosen to look like humans. And over there is Ashes, and Luka and Leya and September."

"It sounds like you all have rather interesting stories..." she says. (She's not - overwhelmed. But, well, this is a lot of new people at once.) "Thank you all for helping me find Elesse."

"That was mostly El and Bellona."

To El and Bellona, "Extra thanks to you both, then."

"Ah, we were happy to help. Getting split up's sad."

"No fun for anyone."

Serious nod. "It was - an unpleasant year, yes."

"I'm glad we could help end it."

"Same, yeah."

"So it sounds like there's at least three pairs of us with your group?"

"Unless there's someone wandering around out there who hasn't promoted herself to our attention, yeah."

She nods. "Alts tend to show up sooner or later..."

"What about the orc?" Ellisaria asks.

"Oh yeah, we thought she might be an alt, didn't we... Not sure where she is, right now, unless you guys have a way of searching a whole continent for someone?"

"Not efficiently, personally, but we have some scryers."

"Huh. What do you need to scry?"

"Knowledge of or some sort of connection with the subject, generally."

"Does 'an alt in this world' work?"

"Most likely."

"If it's not hard... Might be good to run that on worlds you know about? Like, one at a time even. In case there's alts who haven't been revealed by narrative convenience."

"I believe we do, most of the time."

She nods. "Makes sense, yeah."

"Have you guys figured out any cool ways magic can combine yet?"

"One of our number requires blood to work her magic away from her native world, and another can summon blood from nothing. One is a ritualist whose magic is conceptual in nature, and with preparation she can enhance others well beyond their normal capabilities."

She hums and nods. "Making something from nothing would help alchemy, if it gives us new things to exchange... Though I haven't figured out all the weird ins and outs of alchemy focused on more conceptual things, like knowledge or souls..."