"Where did you come in - east of Windvale somewhere, if Nils was coming from off continent? That's a full-day trip minimum. Um. Checking tomorrow doesn't make much practical difference than checking right now, so please calm down."

"It... doesn't..." he says, trying to convince himself.

"There's no massive rush here. I's suggest, go to that tax appointment, then head to check it out after. You'll already be close to Windvale if they call you tomorrow that way."

"Yeah... I guess this is probably worth spending over a day away from you."

"Your choice there, but we did have all weekend and most of today."

"Boy are you in for a surprise when you do turn and get your half of the mate bond."

"Hmm. Probably good to get a little way in that direction as a human, which is in fact happening."

"I'm trying to be as—authentic as I possibly can, even though my first instinct here is being exactly whatever you want me to be."

"Authentic is good. It would be- A bad punch to the gut if it turned out you've been pretending for a few months or a year."

"Yes. I mean, the kind of pretending here is sort of self-effacing? Sort of, like, act exactly the way that would make you happiest and I can't even get rid of it completely. I don't think I'd be actually doing anything differently, if I hadn't met you, I'd still be looking into getting rich and enrolling and taking over the world, but the things that involve you are more about making you the absolute happiest person you could be and my priorities got somewhat reshuffled, at least on an emotional level."

"We'll both be fine and happy once I turn, even if the brain-change still sort of skeeves me out, the fact that we're more or less guaranteed to have liked each other anyway- Yeah."

"Yeah. Anyhow, suppose I'm going to the portal tomorrow to figure out whether it's still open and I promise I won't whine too much about it and for now we can play Kings."

"It'll really stink if it turns out it's not still open and you can't get it back - so much to gain from cooperation, there, even if I'm leery about your empress. Anyway, yes, Kings."

He goes and borrows one of the library's Kings boards and sets up and lists off the rules.

Which Sadde memorises—" This game should be the least affected by vankire brain improvements, I can think faster and more and have an eidetic memory but those things don't really make me a strategic genius upon learning the game."

"Well, let's see..."

His early moves are designed to set up for control of the center later.

Sadde—can predict quite a few more moves ahead than a human can. He doesn't grasp this game yet, needs to explore the full tree of possibilities at least a couple of steps ahead and has zero pruning discernment, but with his full attention on this and a few seconds thinking makes his first move. He doesn't want to spend too long thinking yet, so it may not be the optimal move.

Terel is actually taking advantage of his unfamiliarity, by trying to use moves that have wide potential outcomes and uses.

Twenty turns in Terel has the advantage but Sadde is familiar with all the basic tactics.

Okay so he'll try to recover by dedicating some thirty seconds per move.

He's playing near-perfect tactics. Terel just has to beat him on stratagems, plans that take ten or more turns to do anything.

Pretty much, yeah. Sadde has started to learn how to prune the decision tree, though, so he can sometimes go a bit deeper.

Terel pressures him hard, but he doesn't think that deeply about his own decisions - it'd take forever - so ultimately perfect tactical-level gameplay wins. "Not even once, curses."

"I wasn't actually expecting to win," he remarks.

"Either I'm not as good as I thought, or long run strategies don't count for as much as I thought."

"Well by the end there I was thinking a few steps ahead, the hardest part is deciding which branches of the decision tree not to look at so I don't waste time on them."

"Well, we'll just have to see if you can still beat me when I turn."