"Hmm, there's two, ah, sets of magics I have I guess? One every member of my kind has, the other only I do. My personal magic is generalised biokinesis, including the ability to generate endless biological matter; my kind magic is agelessness, enhanced durability, physical abilities, and senses, an eidetic memory, general prettiness, cannot sleep, but has the downside that we need to consume blood to survive. Also we aren't born or created, but rather turned from baseline humans."

She nods pensively. "A powerful combination. Pray not to turn more than one or two a decade. Oh, if you encounter interesting engineering projects you can send them my way starting in a month or so." She starts flying off.

Fates are bloody fast.

Off as in away from him or just off in general?

Off in general. She's heading back into the continent. He has about ten more seconds to shout things if he wants to do that.

If she's clearly leaving his presence and not waiting for him he can just fly on, back towards the continent and to Suvak.

He gets a call on his networked crystal.

It's Clara, from Empire Imports. "Sadde we've had a leak. Our competitors may try to contact you, hire you, try to get information out of you. I need to remind you that discussing the details of your activities last Friday is punishable under the nondisclosure agreement you signed. I need to clean up this mess so can't talk much so if you can't recall what exactly is covered under it ask now. You're free to talk to them as long as you don't tell them anything about our labs or discuss what we paid you for in specific terms, more or less."

"Eidetic memory, I remember all of it. Do you know how it was leaked?"

"Not yet. We're going to find out though."

"What exactly leaked?"

"Draft of your second contract, some other things, the rest's secret to you for now. Look, I have to go. I was just letting you know."

"Okay. Good luck."

"Yeah, good luck."

He clicks, and flies on. He takes pictures of places that might appeal to the Tall Shadow people, and then decides to call Terel.

"Aha. Hello Sadde, how's the trip so far?"

"Not great, er... Okay so first thing is apparently the portal is closed."

"...Ow. Welp. That's that."

"That is, indeed, that. But..." And he relates everything else about the trip, including the World Tree and the Tall Shadows and Mountain and the leak.

"Uh, probably shouldn't have told me the last part, actually... But Mountain sounds pretty great! And the Tall Shadows are good news."

"Erm. No, I shouldn't have."

"It's just a general rule, gossip about big business is a no. Think Mountain will help us with computers after that month is up? She's probably the 'mountain' the centaur saw we'd need, even."

"Yeah it just—" He sighs. "I'm terrible at keeping secrets from you, I knew I'd be terrible at keeping secrets from you, I just need to work on it. Anyway, yeah, I thought the same. Not sure how she could help us with computers, though. And interestingly enough, although she looked human, even had a heartbeat, she was definitely not even remotely human. No blood to speak of, for one."

"...Huh. They say Fates can't have kids..."

"Yeah, wouldn't surprise me, that biology is way different."

"I should probably honestly think about it before declaring that never having kids is worth becoming a Fate if we never get your world's medical technology replicated here."

"I... think it's quite unlikely that we won't be able to replicate it. As far as I can tell, you're biologically just as human as I was, so that part should work the same."