She is slower than the mirror-faced snake, and for some reason it is choosing to chase her, and she is not in dense enough forest to lose it by going up a tree or between a couple too narrowly spaced for it. So it catches her before emergency services can turn up.
And then she is somewhere else, in a not particularly attractive room next to a person who looks sort of off somehow.
"Excuse me," she says, taking a step out of his personal space.
"Damn, I was hoping they'd stop once we solved it," a man says in her language. Several guards charge towards her with swords drawn.
"She's Amentan," says another person sharply, standing up. " - I recognize the style of clothes. - and looks like Mirelótë, see, this is mine -"
"I've never seen her before in my life, I don't even know if we're from the same country. But she's not going to have magic she can use to blow up the planet, you can call off your guards."
"It's not a movie set," Aitim Neli says unhappily. "They're actually just like this. Do we have a - do we have a written summary for new people at this point -"
"For the last four hours, people have been appearing out of thin air in the palace of the pharaoh of Osirion. His society is preindustrial, but has magic, which they can use to do things including drop people from other universes, but they say they're not doing it. His society also has magically powerful entities that style themselves gods, and can grant power to their followers; one of these, the patron of Osirion named Abadar, appoints its rulers and is really in charge of the place, though you shouldn't say that around the pharaoh while he's feeling twitchy and Abadar doesn't concern himself with the country's day to day affairs anyway. They have been apprised of the wonders of vaccination and birth control. They are holding one of the guests in antimagic holding cells just outside the palace."
"Sort of. So the first person to appear was named Mirelótë Ambela, who looks like you except that she's of a species called Quendi. Quendi are immortal, have backup chips in their heads, and have some gods of their own. She looks just like you. There are other commonalities, harder to describe. Personality similarities. Some of the other people to show up afterwards had the personality similarities too, though they don't look like the two of you. The other two people to show up - me and him - instead had strikingly similar personalities and life histories to those of the pharaoh of Osirion.
We are sure we're supposed to have some takeaway but we don't know what yet. But we can sort of answer the question of why you're here: because you're a member of the personality-cluster that started with Mirelótë, and they're getting dragged here for some reason."
She passes along the written notes, which have more details on each person and their worlds.
"Do... most of these people have more of a connection than me and a blue I wrote maybe three articles about?"
"Yep. In one case they dated and in another they are family friends and in the third they conducted a war together."
"On the bright side, Anaander's world and Cam's have faster-than-light travel. So we've just got to - stay out of trouble and go home."
"We can try a plane shift but I wouldn't expect it to work if we can't successfully scry your plane, they usually go together."
"Looked for your husband. Didn't work. Are you, like him, going to not want to leave the palace once you learn that not everywhere has indoor plumbing," he asks Pelape.
"...do you have a magical alternative or do you just sort of not."
"Okay. Do you want to go meet your - personality cluster - they're outside the palace because we are holding the planet-destroying one in an antimagic field."
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
