There appears a young man wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and some decorative loopy designs in fresh blood and fine soot drawn on his person. He promptly falls unconscious in the street.

...Seriously.

He's not being paid enough to deal with disease outbreak and random teleporting strangers with weird fashion senses. (Teleportation - suggests someone with usable magic, obviously, or someone who was recently interacting with magic... An Overlord, or someone loyal enough to be handed powers. Why here, though?)

He walks briskly over to the man, bending down a good distance away (no sense spreading the infection, even if someone magic's less likely to be affected) and calling out, "Hey! Can you hear me?"

Nope he's fully out.

Ugh. Probably not safe to leave in the street.

Though a sensible person would probably leave him there in case someone's chasing him. Esulri maybe encountered the concept of sense once as a small child.

He walks closer, visually and then physically checking the man for injuries.

He is not injured, so presumably none of the blood is his.

Magic backlash? The man doesn't look like he's been randomly mutated... He might have a brain bleed or something. Esulri's been a nurse for, like, a few days, and isn't sure how to ensure someone's safe to move...

He sighs and tries to pick up the man. Fails. Ends up sitting by him, head spinning, and wondering if he should go get water for them both...

Probably.

If he can stand.

Esulri squints at the sky, then staggers clumsily to his feet, moves the man into a more comfortable position, and goes to get water, returning after a few minutes with two full canteens. Has the man's condition changed at all?

He's starting to wake up! He props himself up on his elbows and says something.

...A foreign teleporter. Great.

Esulri sighs. He does have water, but can't inform the man that the water's possibly contaminated...

"I don't understand you," he says, slowly.

...Didn't that one girl have a universal translator?

The foreign teleporter does not understand him either. He gives an amused snort, looks at his own feet for some reason, and then starts peering around at his soot and blood marks, dabbing away stray soot that has smeared out of pattern.

Esulri looks around, and - yeah, one of the other carers (what's her name?) is watching them warily.

"Can you get that universal translator that - " uhhhhh names " - the mechanic's girl has?"

The other carer nods, calls out, "As long as you keep an eye on him," and turns to go fetch it. She at least seems to know where she's going. Probably less feverish than Esulri.

Absently, Esulri takes a sip from his canteen. He's extremely thirsty...

The visitor makes an inquisitive noise.

He has no idea how to pantomime 'the water is possibly contaminated' or 'look someone's getting a translation solution.'

Still, he tilts his head towards the visitor, raising an eyebrow.

He accepts the water, though instead of drinking any he rinses off his fingertip with which he was removing extraneous, non-pattern-compliant soot and blood from himself. He hands it back after his fingers are acceptably clean, which doesn't take more than a couple splashes.

Alright.

The other carer returns with the universal translator shortly thereafter, setting it on the ground near Esulri then backing away.

Esulri leans over to get it, and turns it on. It starts humming a bit, the prompt screen glowing. How to make this thing work... It's a better model, so probably fueled by some magic, so it'll translate even unknown languages...

He presses a few buttons, and - "Say something?"

"Hm?"

"Uh. More?" He presses another button on the translator, and it repeats his sentence in a language he recognizes as local. Ugh...

"I don't know what that thing is," says the visitor conversationally. "Let's see - I'm Cor -" He points at himself, then points inquiringly at Esulri.

It repeats his sentence in Esulri's language. Esulri makes a triumphant noise.

"I'm Esulri. It's a translator." It repeats that in the language Cor just used.

"- is it? Wow! That's so cool, we don't have those where I'm from."

"Where are you from?"

"That's kind of a long story! Do you want to hear my long story?"

"There's an infectious disease in town. You might not want to stick around for a long story."

"- oh! I can probably fix that?"

"You have healing magic?"

"Within, uh, limited domains, infections included."

...Eh, people'll be able to choose for themselves if potential ownership conflicts is worth healing.

"I'm one of the sick," he says, voice a bit flat.

"I need to know what the disease is like - symptoms, how fast it attacks - and I need a source of blood and fine ash. Or coarse ash ground up or something. I brought some of both but need what I have to get home."

"I can get you those. Livestock work?"

"Needs to be a mammal. And fresh."

"How much blood?"

"How many are sick over how much area?"

"Dozens, in a few clustered buildings. We've been quarantining. I don't think it's in outlying areas."

"I'm used to working in sheep. I can do that many people with three fresh sheep without killing the sheep."

"Do goats work?"

"Sure, they're mammals."

"We have some goats, then."

"I need them hobbled so they can't kick me for cutting them, and a clear surface to work on, and a bucket for the blood."

"Right."

He leads the way over to the goat pens, explaining that he found a magic user who can cure the disease but needs a non-lethal amount of goat blood to the person tending the goats. This seems to set her ill at ease, and she whispers something with Esulri - but they're allowed at the goats, and the girl helps them separate out a few healthier goats and get them secured while Esulri gets a bucket.

When they've found him ashes, and told him symptoms, he starts drawing. Ash first, then he bleeds the goats and slowly shuffles on his knees around the shapes he made, painting quickly and efficiently. When he's done, he starts chanting. If the translator is still in use anyone attending to it will hear that he's going on about destroying the infection, burning it out, making it cease to exist, etcetera. There is an un-flash, darkness radiating for an eyeblink for several meters around his workspace.

"That won't get everyone up and about immediately," he cautions. "But nobody new will get it and sick people should start getting better within the day."

"Thanks," Esulri says, sounding - tense and kind of exhausted, really.

Also: Cor's now loosely aware of a buzzing beneath his skin, an odd, restless energy; the vague locations of several dozen... Sources? Of further buzzing; and that those several dozen sources are far more deeply connected to someone a long ways away.

"Uh, is this a good time to ask why I might now be.... buzzing?"

"...Magic? Feels like that?"

"Mine doesn't."

"Excess energy is - buzzy, I guess. Here."

"I had not explained this part yet because it seemed like everyone was reasonably distracted by the disease and it would have been bad if I'd caught it anyway, but, uh, I'm from another universe? My planet is collapsing and I need a place to evacuate to? Magic there is... as you saw. And not this buzzy thing. Please explain the buzzy thing."

" - Everything makes magic. People the most. It's - energy. It does stuff. Random, if it's not controlled. The amount one person makes is too little to control, but if you have a lot it's easier. You draw magic from anything you have a claim on. Changing stuff is a big claim. Almost everything is already claimed by someone, but sometimes who's claiming something can be shifted. Everyone here knows that."

"And now I have... some kind of 'claim' on all the infected people's energy?"

"Probably?"

"Can I... give it back to them or something?"

"Uh. Equal claims on each other cancel out... Heard a rumor of an overlord who allows emigration so there's maybe an easier way to just - reject someone or something..."

"Is there a good way to set up an equal claim in the opposite direction? Or look up how the rejection thing is done? I didn't come here and cure your disease to swipe people's magical energy, I didn't even know it would do that."

"Gift giving is normal - taking things from people's a claim."

"We can't use it normally though, anyways. We're all owned by Overlord Imara."

"That sounds... concerningly phrased?"

"...Why?"

"...diverting your magical energy to somebody in concentrated enough form that it can be used for something would make sense? Given what little I know. Describing yourselves as being owned less so."

He makes a complicated face. "Usually it's - powerful people deciding who and where and what they want to own. And then getting more powerful."

"...eugh. Okay. Uh, unfortunately I have other priorities, I need to go tell my people that my shot in the dark worked or they'll think I'm dead. I need a place to evacuate about a billion people, and I need a planet that nobody is using for anything, can I get either of those here?"

"There's a lot of planets. Most of them are either owned by someone or constantly exploding. Imara's a dick but not all Overlords are. You could probably make a deal with one, especially if you have weird magic, and some of them are probably even set up to accept a planet of refugees."

"Constantly... exploding?"

"...Oh, lots of uncontrolled magic causes - sort of explosions."

"Is there a safety protocol for how to prevent my buzzy stuff from exploding?"

"They don't really teach us that. Lots of self control is the rumor?"

"Where will it explode if it does?"

"Usually right around you, sometimes down the chain if your self control's bad or whoever's on top dies without their magic being claimed - so, right around whoever you're claiming, and whoever they're claiming if their control's bad or they die."

"Well this sucks."

"Yeah. Whole thing does."

"I can't afford a lot of investment into fixing it right now because I need to tell my people my spell worked but once I've done that I can... come back? And try to disentangle the - thing? In addition to looking into good places to dump magic byproducts or refugees."

"Right. Back to here?"

"Unless you have a better idea."

"No."

"Okay. Then... I'll be back in a... few hours probably?"

"Okay. That works." Gives him time to regather his thoughts then talk to people.

Cor refreshes the designs on himself with the ash he brought along, nicks his elbow to redo the blood designs, and chants.

And he's gone.

He sits, and thinks, and then goes to tell the village that the weird foreign mage claims he fixed the disease and definitely did something, since ownership shifted, and people find this fairly alarming but less than dying of a terrible wasting illness (so far), especially since Esulri tells them Cor doesn't want to start a fight with their Overlord and is willing to rebalance ownership. (That is... The best easy to explain gloss he really has for 'hates the system.')

He then goes to sit where he can keep an eye both on where Cor originally came in and where he vanished from.

Cor is back four hours later, where he vanished from, this time with an overnight bag packed.

Esulri stands up and waves. He still has the translation machine.

"Hi. Other mages are looking for other worlds now, but this one does have the advantage of definitely and obviously not instantly killing people who land here, which, since nobody else came back right away, might be an unusual distinction, so I'm here to see if we can come here for what we need. One or maybe even both things, since you said there's lots of planets."

"Most Overlords wouldn't want you destroying a planet they've claimed, but some might trade for one, or might have enough planets they're fine treating one as a cross-magic experiment. Overlords would probably be more eager about 'immigrants not owned by anyone else,' but your people might dislike the - system."

"It seems... bad. Arguably not as bad as dying while your planet ceases to exist underfoot but they probably have a couple months to look for a better place to go. We might wind up scattering, if there's no unambiguously better place."

"Maybe it's doable in a way that's less bad."

"Oh?"

Vague gesture. "I think you can establish ownership enough with - just taxing people - and get rid of it with enough gifts, and - people just obeying laws works for maintenance. That's slow and tedious and easy to contest so most people don't use - property exchange - when they're shifting an ownership bond around, they use torture or magic, like mind control. And you couldn't really enforce laws against Overlords hurting people, but Overlords don't usually age, so 'find one who's not a dick' is probably actually a - strategy. Well. Who isn't a dick and who doesn't lose wars. Overlords fight a lot."

This is something he's thought about a lot. Mostly with himself in the role of 'overthrow Overlord Imara, become the next local Overlord, don't be a dick even if being a dick is fast and easy.' Telling other people that strategy seems likely to get him neighbors who aren't assholes, too.

"There's mind control magic?"

"Yes. Don't know if it's common, or how resistible it is - you can oppose actions involving you, and that'll make ownership transfer less readily than if you didn't oppose it if it's an owning sort of action, and opposing magic sometimes makes the magic fail but not always. Opposing is sort of... Really not wanting a thing, and mental resistance, and verbal resistance, and taking actions to stop something?"

"Can you walk me through some worked examples of this whole business?"

" - Opposing actions?"

"Magic ownership and its inputs and outputs construed broadly."

He pauses to get his thoughts together.

"Alright, so..."

"Mothers shape their children before they're even born. You're born owned by your mother, so she has all your magic. If she raises you, she shapes your thoughts, and she gives you commands, and if you are an obedient child then she owns you more, and if you are an unruly child who obeys anyways, she owns you more but not as much as if you were obedient, and if you disobey she doesn't own you more and might own you less. If you disobey, she can just hit you, and that establishes a claim even if you resist, which more than cancels out the loss of ownership from you disobeying. If you hit her, that establishes a claim on her, which works to cancel out some of her claim on you since she owns you anyways. If you run away, you're still owned by her, but if you first steal a bunch of her things, and then run away, you'll be owned by her less."

"If you run away, and steal her things, and she doesn't oppose this or try to get you back, then the ownership becomes very tenuous. If you kill her, the ownership sort of - switches directions, so you don't get backlash from whoever owns you dying, but you're then owned by whoever owned her originally, since they owned you indirectly earlier. If she wasn't owned by anyone, you now own yourself, and need to exercise self control. If someone else kills her, then you might get backlash from her dying."

"If you don't kill her - most people don't kill their parents, even if they dislike being owned - then you can go to whoever owns her, or whoever owns whoever owns her, or so on, and appeal to be moved more directly into their ownership. They'll probably demand you give them everything you own, or obey a long list of petty commands, or else submit to torture - or, well, general 'having sensations inflicted on you,' they don't have to be pain, but negative ones are stronger - and they'll then evaluate if this transferred ownership, and keep escalating if it didn't, until your mother loses her ownership claim."

"If you don't like anyone in your mother's ownership chain, you can try to flee even farther and find someone - probably a foreign Overlord - who'll accept you. Breaking you entirely out of your current ownership chain is harder than moving you around within one, and would probably involve a lot of general submission for a while. But your new Overlord also gets a small ownership claim on your mother and everyone up the ownership chain from her, including her Overlord, since they stole you. If they make a habit of stealing people from your original Overlord, your original Overlord will probably declare war on them - they could just let it happen, but then they'll become a vassal."

"If you want to own yourself, you have to get rid of all ownership claims on you. The - typical - way to do that is lots of murder. Then you'll have no one funneling your magic, and you'll promptly explode if you have poor self control or no other magic being funneled into you. People who become self-owning usually do so by killing their Overlord, which if they do it right gives them ownership of everything the Overlord owned."

"This magic system is possibly worse than mine and mine is eating my entire planet.

Uh, I don't have very much stuff to conspicuously not object to people stealing."

"You could obey orders or something, especially since there's a lot of things that didn't get done with everyone sick, and your claim's pretty weak right now."

"Uh, tentatively fine assuming everyone's aware that I'm under some time constraints what with the aforementioned planet-eating situation. Does it ruin things if I vet the orders first so we don't run into scheduling or cultural problems or anything like that?"

"That'd make it slower, but I can vet things. Only problem you might run into - other than magic stuff - is ownership conflicts with Overlord Imara, and he hasn't teleported here yet or given any other reaction."

"He's - more curious than anything. Bet he'd be willing to write off the entire village for a really foreign book. Probably a science book. ...Maybe multiple books so the magic balances."

"I can bring some books next time I make a trip, though I'd like to keep trips to a minimum till we have another site to dump byproduct into since every spell does some."

"Yeah. You might be able to get one from Imara if you promise him something shiny. Might be a better bet to try with someone who's less - like him - but he controls this planet. Not any other inhabitable ones, but he does have some uninhabited ones for mining or research."

"Uninhabited but with enough atmosphere somebody can stand on it for a few minutes and be fine afterwards would be ideal."

"...I don't really know how common that is."

"Because people live on everything with an atmosphere or for some other reason?"

"Because I haven't studied astronomy," he clarifies.

"Right. Uh, if I wanted to talk to your... overlord... how would I do that, and how would I talk to a different one if I wanted to do that instead?"

"There should be a - way to say you're a visiting mage and want to meet, probably by physically going to the palace? And visiting different ones would involve leaving the planet. There's ports where that's easier, though, and they'd have rumors about other overlords more than here does. You can probably find a ship willing to take you to a relevant border and announce it's on a diplomatic mission?"

"Okay. Uh, you seem like you don't really know, which is totally reasonable to be clear, but do you know how I'd make sure?"

"Yeah. There's a city around the palace, and the guards there or at the palace gate should be able to tell you more about how to talk to the Overlord. For leaving entirely - there's bars and stuff where people meet."

"And how worried should I be about, at some point, no longer being able to freely opt to do this or not do it?"

"...Imara tends to try to control interesting people. Fairly worried if he notices you."

"I can get to other planets with more applications of my transportation spell, if that's safer. There are not an infinite number of mages back home and we're going to need a lot to haul everybody wherever we wind up evacuating to so I should try pretty hard not to die or anything."

"Probably safer but it might be harder to get an audience on - good terms? With some foreign overlords if you intentionally teleport into their territory. But even those might have border planets they'd be less controlling of."

"- to teleport onto or to trade me for?"

"Teleporting onto. Imara doesn't but some Overlords really control their territory."

"Okay, but, again, how would I learn which planets are good prospects?"

"Probably talking to people who travel internationally, which probably means a port city..."

"Okay. What kind of travel time are we looking at there?"

" - Valley's in quarantine right now and will be for... A while, probably. If we can get past that... Maybe a few hours? At most? City's about thirty minutes away, should have transit to the nearest port."

"...and I guess you can't just say 'a mage came by and took care of the disease, it's gone now' about the quarantine, can you. How long a while, I told people to expect me within the next few days."

"Don't know. They'd want to do tests and all. Might be longer than a few days, though."

"How is the quarantine enforced?"

"Roads are blocked. It's technically possible to walk out around those."

"Are they going to, like, shoot us if they catch us, or just go 'hey, in your feverish delirium you seem to have gotten lost, go back'."

"Probably the latter. Kind of depends on the guard, though."

"That's a really wide spread of policy."

"Not so much policy as Imara not really caring what his guards get up to. 'Tell people to turn around' is policy."

"I guess. Ugh. Unfortunately nobody has figured out how to use magic to turn invisible and this is not the time for experiments."

"Our magic can do invisibility, pretty easily I think, but I don't know much about how it's learned."

"Probably not time for even that grade of magical experiment."

"Yeah."

"Ugh. I need an empty planet first thing, after I have that I can be much more profligate with magic. In your estimation, what odds does circumventing the quarantine and poking around a city taking the temperature about getting off planet or seeing Imara as a diplomatic visitor and then doing whichever of those sounds better get me?"

"I'd give it ninety percent odds at least that we can get out of the quarantine undetected, though it might be slow going. That we can get to somewhere on the rail lines, and get a train, not get too questioned during this, and make decent time... Probably seventy to eighty percent? My ID has where I live and will flag that I'm from a quarantine zone, but I know a suburb train station that doesn't have a mandatory ID check - you can't get off the train in the city itself if you didn't swipe in properly, but we can get a connection just fine, get to the port city, and there's a station there that's had broken ID checking machines for a while - probably sixty to seventy percent odds they still haven't fixed that."

"I don't know what a train is."

"...Uh, how do people cross large distances where you're from?"

"We have magic gates, but they require you to get between the two places first on, like, a horse or boat or whatever."

"So a train is... There's a special type of road called train tracks. A train is a series of specially shaped boxes, like a carriage, but that hook to each other and don't need horses to pull them. The train floats wherever there's tracks, and there's - a way it interacts with the tracks that makes it speed up or slow down at specific points, and each train is long and thin and goes in only one direction. There's stations where the train stops, and people can get on or off. - It isn't magic or anything."

"Like... with steam power?"

"Like - magnets and electricity? I think early trains were steam power, and I think you can use steam power to make electricity, and electricity to make magnets... There's also faster stuff, like flying vehicles, but those are harder to get on without ID."

"If you say so. Uh, if we try this plan are you okay with escorting me as my native guide even though my backup plan is going to have to be magicking myself out without you?"

"Sure."

"Okay. I should undo all the creepy ownership stuff first ideally."

"That might make the local magic around you harder to control, but sure - also I'd like to not be owned by Imara just in general."

"- make the local magic around me harder to - I can't currently do anything with it!"

"Yeah, which is - a way of controlling it."

"Are you saying I should keep - shares of everybody who got sick?"

"Dunno how good your self control is, but if no one owns you that's - the normal way to keep magic controlled."

"I have great self control but you have not been able to tell me what I'd be self-controlling myself not to do and that can't possibly help."

"I've never had my own magic, and Imara doesn't want to encourage people to try to own themselves so there's not, like, primers lying around."

"I guess if it doesn't make a practical difference to the people who I now dubiously 'own' and also it's safer this way I don't have to do the cancelling part."

"Doesn't - directly. Might if Imara objected, but he's not - as possessive as some."

"I'd offer to say I did it without permission but that would seem to create more problems than it solves."

Shrug. "Don't think either way would actually make him angry at anyone."

"No? Not his style?"

"He's easily bored and finds most things amusing."

"Are you actually the person best suited to be a native guide, here, nobody else is volunteering but you don't seem all that into it."

" - I really do not want to continue living on this planet and have thought more than most people in this village about how to get out and how being an Overlord would work."

"Am I going to wind up triggering your rise to power, because that would make me feel kind of responsible for what you did with it."

"...Probably you won't actually enable me that much."

"Under the circumstances I suppose I'll take it. What's the best way to convey, uh, 'I'm in kind of a hurry and for safety reasons it might behoove me to temporarily own parts of those of you who were sick, but I'm not from this cultural situation and don't plan to do anything skeevy to you, and if it's important to any of you particularly I will make reasonably unintrusive efforts to disown you in particular'?"

"Probably... There's people who are - sort of community leaders. You could convey that to them, they can convey it to everyone else concerned, and they'd also be able to contact me if something changed here after we left."

"How would they do that?"

"...There's communication technology."

"Sounds important. I will want to know more about it." He writes this down; he's been writing a lot of things down.

"I can describe how to use it but I don't know how it works."

"A user-level knowledge will be fine for now."

"Okay. Is later alright? Or now?"

"Later's all right. I don't know if you're all recovered yet, different stuff takes different amounts of time to fully clear once the infection's been killed."

He shrugs.

"Does the translator work on writing?"

"It has a setting for that, yeah, though it can be a bit slower."

"I'm willing to get my context from books if you can recommend one."

"...Yeah, there's writings on technology and stuff. That'd be a reasonable thing to work with on the train ride, too."

"If we can walk off with the books uncomplicatedly sure."

"Wouldn't be physical books. There's - technology that can act like a book. I'd connect mine to the translator, and it'd display anything loaded on it or accessed from - sort of a shared library - in your language."

"...huh, cool. If we can walk off with it."

"We should be able to."

"Where do we get a techno-book?"

"I've got one at my house."

"Can I see?"

"Sure."

He leads the way. His house is pretty small, on its own bit of land separate from the rest of town.

Cor looks curiously at anything interestingly technological they pass.

There's a few things obvious even without too many people around. Street lights, lights inside homes, vehicles on the outskirts...

"What's the deal with the lights?"

"How they work, or why people use them?"

"If people use them for something other than to see by I want to know that too but I meant how they work."

"Electricity. Like - static electricity, or lightning. Just - controlled."

"Huh! How about that."

"Electricity's the base for a lot of stuff."

"What else?"

"Ways to talk to people across the world. Sometimes on other planets. Ways to get information. Music. Transportation. Heating and cooling food. Heating and cooling buildings. This translation device. Manufacturing things. Machines that think. A - lot of stuff."

"Machines that think?"

"I don't know how they work. It's - debated if any are actually people, since they can be owned but can't own anything or anyone else. But - simple ones can do math. Really complex ones can control space ships, or monitor really wide areas for stuff that's changing."

"Is the translator thinking?" he asks.

"Kind of? It can only think about words and languages, though."

"That's a lot of stuff to say 'only' about! That's complicated!"

"I guess so."

"Will it talk back or - just translate?"

"Just translate."

"Huh.

How far's your house?"

"Close. Just over there." He gestures at a house down the lane. It's a bit run down, not near any others, but the yard around it's not being cultivated or anything. Just clover and brambles.

"Cool." Walk walk walk.

He's content to walk the rest of the way in silence, and it appears he lives alone. His 'technological book' is in the main room - flat, thin, with a screen that lights up and buttons along one side. It looks worn and well used. The basic interface for selecting books and turning pages is fairly simple, at least, though changing things like brightness and font size and color is harder.

Cor wishes to be taught to use the technological book and will then be absorbed in writing for the foreseeable future. What is there to read?

Esulri does that, then wanders off elsewhere into the small house.

To read: a lot. Esulri apparently mostly collects nonfiction and a few small poetry collections. A good number of histories, political science, philosophy texts, descriptions of other empires, travelogues, comparative law, quite a few collections of news articles. Much of it's annotated by Esulri, though Cor can hide the notes so they don't clutter the screen. There's not much in the way of science or technological texts, except some things titled 'basic primers' for assorted 'grades' that seem to have not been opened in ten or more years, going by the timestamp.

Cor would really like to know more about magic but if he doesn't have any books on magic he will take travelogues and histories and news and empire descriptions and poli sci!

Histories seem to mention magic as the sort of thing that Overlords sometimes do; the best bet there's actually an analysis of warfare, though there's some general sense of what people expect on a daily basis in the news. (There was a huge war where several Overlords actually banded together, a few centuries ago, against an Overlord who had planet-destroying powers and was apparently insane enough to use them, despite general wisdom-of-warfare that that's stupid, you want intact infrastructure more than terror or quick victories.) Many powerful Overlords don't die of old age on appreciable scales, and some can (or do) empower their underlings; some of those underlings are also long lived. Constant war and conquest is pretty normal, though 'polite' Overlords keep it to trying to establish ownership claims on each other, which is usually minimally destructive to civilian populations. Most Overlords aren't very polite.

There's a somewhat recent but apparently still current empire that's gained most of its territory via the Overlord, The Demon Queen, teleporting into other Overlords' armories and treasury vaults and stealing all their stuff (as well as most of their slaves and prisoners) as an opening move, with minimal actual warfare following. This is for some reason considered more unnerving by the other Overlords than throwing very big armies at each other. The description of the Demon Queen's empire mentions she's one of the only ones who allows immigrants, and the biggest of the maybe two or three empires who allows people to leave. News of her empire's banned most places (Esulri seems to have some of these books illicitly), but at least the propaganda she puts out seems to emphasize good, stable living conditions. Esulri has really extensive annotations about considering investigating her and trying to get her to overthrow the local Overlord.

The neighbors of the empire Cor's currently in are smaller, more unstable. Still, there's a big one nearby that was aggressively expanding and had a reputation as war mongers for a while then stopped and closed their borders entirely; they're suspected to have had an change in leadership. There's another that's one of the technological innovation capitals of the region - also aggressive expansionists, but they usually start with trying peaceful annexation before war. The news mentions one empire that's suspected to be in its death throes; people are worried about some of its holdings becoming Wild Space.

Poli sci has a lot on the philosophy of governance. A lot of Esulri's annotations cross reference history books, with more than a few notes of 'has anyone actually tried this?'. There's also some about the politics of warfare - political scientists, or at least the ones Esulri reads, generally seem to think the current status quo involves going to war too often for poorly considered reasons ('if you ask 'how can I solve this with my army' of all your problems, you have already failed' one notes in the middle of tearing apart some technically victorious battles that lost wars, and wars that worked against political goals. Esulri has that highlighted but not commented on).

Wild Space?

That takes some digging since this is apparently common knowledge, but one of the basic primers (almost certainly for kids) has the answer - Wild Space is what happens when no one owns an entire region! Rather than just exploding everywhere, you get large scale random magical effects, with the local coherency of things like cause and effect decreasing over time. There's a picture of a reclaimed bit of Wild Space with trees made of bones and soil made of jelly. Sometimes monsters wander out of Wild Space.

Gosh! Are new planets generally wild-type? Also how does space travel work.

Newly discovered planets usually are, though some have an uncontacted population that owns it and keeps it stable (sometimes people who left to go colonize and dropped out of contact, but rarely also the chaos spontaneously makes people who can claim things).

Esulri doesn't seem to own any books more complicated than 'aimed at children' about space travel, but generally only the personal ships of Overlords run on magic; everything else runs on technology, using either wormholes (probably made by ancient magic; they're pretty much giant portals across huge distances) or hyperspace (slower than wormholes but doable with technology; the book describes it as 'like folded space' with a sense that's actually a horrible oversimplification) to go really far distances, like between stars. Wormholes are a lot cheaper, safer, and faster, since proper lightspeed ships are expensive and get lost in hyperspace a lot.

Whoa, spontaneously made people. Are they humans or are they weird magic people?

How physically large are non-magical spaceships. What kind of passenger capacity are they looking at. How do they find where it would be a good idea to go.

Mostly apparently weird magic people, but you're more likely to get humans even if you're less likely to get people at all in marginal Wild Space (which is close to owned areas, especially owned populated areas).

Non-magical spaceships come in a lot of different capacities but several of the ones mentioned have minimum crew in the hundreds. There's not really statistics but there seems to be a sense you could fit a city in the biggest spaceships, though ones you're sending to lightspeed instead of through wormholes usually are very small, a few dozen passengers at most. Lightspeed ships need to be carrying someone capable of interfacing with the magic system, for some reason, but sublight ships are usually run by computers.

Usually figuring out where to go happens through some combination of telescopes (which can tell you what something very far was like many years ago), small lightspeed scouting ships with minimal crew, and sometimes Overlords with far-viewing powers taking an active role in exploration.

Well, that makes obtaining a spaceship or several and hauling them to his world to be loaded up with evacuees for in-world transit seem less plausible.

Wow he's been reading for a really long time and he's hungry. "Esulri?"

"Yeah?" Esulri calls out, coming back into view.

"How should I go about getting something to eat?"

"I have food."

"Where is it and does it need preparation?"

"Kitchen. Some does, some doesn't." He gestures for Cor to follow him into another room.

Cor will follow Esuri's lead on food. "Unfortunately all my cooking skills are from another universe's magic system and also heavily rationed right now."

"Yeah. That makes sense. Don't use magic to cook, here..."

He makes simple foods - assembles a sandwich from existing cut bread and cheese and then some slightly wilted lettuce and tomatoes and condiments. Drinks are just existing bottles that were in the fridge. (He's somewhat too tired to actually cook.) His pantry seems pretty bare, overall, though.

Sandwiches are fine, and anyway there's approximately a famine going on at home. Cor does not complain.

"Find what you wanted in the books?"

"Much of it, yeah. It doesn't seem like it will make sense given the kind of deadline I'm working with to steal a spaceship to put evacuees or even scouts on, though."

"Yeah... Maybe a big station? That might be hard to move. But they get pretty huge, even if they can't go anywhere fast."

"Do they ever land? I have to be able to make marks on or around whatever I want to bring along and if they're floating in the sky at all times I can't."

"...The big ones don't usually I don't think."

"Then it seems like it might be difficult to paint one." Sigh.

"I also dunno if there's any less assholeish Overlords who can help... Though that'd be maybe high impact, from our side."

"It seems like they have a lot of power to throw around, just, uh, not in a consistently helpful way."

"Yeah."

"It'd be better than waiting for everybody on my planet to get sucked into disappearance but somebody else might find a better universe so I don't want to commit to it till I hear how they're getting on."

"And if you just want something else to disappear, that should be easier to get..."

"Yeah, we need somewhere to settle and somewhere to dump magic into so that trying to settle it doesn't eat everybody who's later in the queue ahead of schedule."

"If you can target the magic dump into Wild Space, I'm not sure anyone'd notice."

"I can try it. It does have to be safe enough for mages to come and go occasionally, we need to access disappearance points to connect to them."

"Maybe somewhere marginally claimed with a Wild buffer..."

"If it's on the same planet as someplace inhabited it'll eventually be a problem, but 'eventually' can be a pretty long time."

"Using it as a magic dump might count as claiming it? Since you'd be altering it."

"Which implies... being able to keep people off it?"

"Implies you get the magic from it, and can decide what happens to it. There's supposed to be planets with nothing on them in Wild Space - or, things that're close enough to planets."

"I am still not clear on what I do with magic that I find myself in possession of besides buzz and have awkward social interactions."

"You'd probably have to ask an Overlord for stuff that isn't - rumors."

"...I think the thing where most people don't know how magic works is maybe intentional, though, since it makes breaking free feel dangerous."

"Yeah, it seems like it might be functional ignorance." Sigh. "I'm probably going to have to talk to an overlord eventually, aren't I. And they aren't going to know anything about my magic so I can't threaten them effectively by carrying a sack of ashes."

"I would not recommend starting with the local one."

"I take that recommendation very seriously," agrees Cor.

"For who to start with..." Shrug. "There's - a thing where we don't know much true about our neighbors, since it's hard to talk to them, and there's not a lot of movement of people. So most information we get is local official propaganda - which doesn't tend to be bothered with much - and foreign official propaganda. So whatever I know about a foreign Overlord is - at best the image they want to project?"

"...Which can actually be a lot. Someone whose projected image is 'we're a very nice place to live and way better than your Overlord' is - someone who probably has fundamentally different goals from someone projecting 'I am all mighty and you should never defy me because of the punishment you'll get.'"

"Yeah, I get that."

"Which, combined with 'who accepts immigrants' is... A somewhat less risky place to start."

"My friends are under instructions that if they can't find me in good condition and able to explain the situation they should not pursue colonization here unless they're really, really squeezed for alternatives."

"...Probably a good precaution."

"It won't help if someone manages to produce me in the semblance of good condition and we don't know if they can do that but this universe has.... air... and we don't know how rare that is yet."

"Also most people don't kill themselves, so - that might not be a good heuristic but. Lots of people would rather live here than not exist."

"You're confident everyone remains able to kill themselves? That's promising because I can explode."

"There's anyone who can't - people not physically able, mostly, but if exploding is a mental action, you'd probably be safer there?"

"I have to talk but not much."

"So don't let anyone know you need to, then."

"Noted."

"So I've talked to the community leaders, and they said it's alright if you keep weak ownership claims. They're more worried about what'll happen if your magic breaks than about annoying Overlord Imara."

"I've also checked some stuff, and - I think our chances of getting to the city alright are a bit higher than I'd guessed at first. It'll still take a few hours, but I also now know where to go once we get there. Someone I talked to goes to the port city a lot. So we should be able to get a ship fairly quickly..."

"What do we need to do?"

He pulls up a map on a screen. "This's the best way to walk out, without getting seen from the road... We can cut over to this suburb over here - they've got a train station that doesn't check people's identification. Then we'll quietly sit on the train for a little bit, and get off over here..." He gives the name of the station. "Which is supposed to check identification but can't, because their infrastructure for it's broken. Then over here is the bar someone recommended - probably it'll be more expensive to get passage on a ship there, but my friend said the people willing to take unofficial passengers are less skeevy here than somewhere cheaper... Mostly we need to keep our heads down, though."

"I can do my best."

"Sure. Are you ready to go tonight?"

"I think so."

"I don't have much more to get ready... I should be good in half an hour."

"Thank you again for helping me out here."

Awkward shrug. "It's no problem."

Cor reads more while waiting for Esulri to get ready.

He reemerges soon enough, carrying a backpack and wearing a jacket with a lot of pockets. "Okay, I'm good."

"Is it going to be cold, should I borrow a coat?"

He stops to consider. "Probably it won't get bad, but it won't hurt for me to bring an extra in case..."

"I do not know how to build a fire without magic because before I always had magic, see."

"Don't think it'll get that cold? And there's fire starter stuff I have. But I'm not - really anticipating camping, I was planning to push through some if it gets dark."

"I'm very clumsy and that's worse in the dark. I'll chance it if we aren't going along cliffs or through thorns, but will need to be careful."

"I'll carry a light..."

"Okay, I can probably manage. But no cliffs please."

"Don't think there's any."

Then Cor has no further objections to setting out.

Esulri gets him a walking stick and flashlight, and hooks a bright lantern to his backpack so it's illuminating Cor's path in case he drops the flashlight to steady himself.

There's a road for a good bit of it, nice and smooth, and then various side paths that are increasingly low-integrity. Nothing with branches sticking out, though, and Esulri's willing to walk slowly and point out tripping hazards. (He's exceptionally quiet, though - mostly because he's recharging mentally, but also he doesn't want sound to carry too much.)

Cor is not especially good at walking quietly but he tries, and at least isn't making conversation.

They get out of the valley with no issue.

It's very dark when they get to the little outskirts town. Esulri says he can find a motel for the rest of the night that's not inclined to ask questions; there's probably trains before the morning, but it's not like they're being pursued, and they need to sleep some even if they're on a mild time crunch. (Esulri doesn't seem very tired himself, though.)

"I could sleep."

Nod. (He gets them a motel room - small, two beds in the same room, a tiny bathroom attached and smaller closet. Smells musty, mostly.)

"When should I wake you?"

"Uh, I'll probably wake up on my own when I've had enough sleep, but if it'd be better to leave earlier go ahead and shove me before that."

Shrug. "I'm not on a time crunch."

"So don't wake me, I guess."

Cor talks in his sleep.

Esulri sleeps only lightly, and not much - still, he rests enough.

He doesn't really pay any attention at all to what Cor's saying, just goes quietly about his morning when the sun rises.

Cor's up a little after sunrise. Wants breakfast and to get moving again.

Breakfast options are 'granola bars' and 'oatmeal'. And Esulri's found the train schedule; there's a good morning train they can take.

Oatmeal's good. The train is really neat but Cor tries not to look too stunned and excited about it.

Most people seem half asleep, and there's not too many; it's still a good few hours before people will be going in for work.

No one stops them, and the station at the end is broken and run down - and the ID machines in fact continue not working, and no one's set up manual checks.

Esulri leads them out into the street, looking around, and then asks if Cor has a preference about who does the talking when trying to get a ship.

"I guess I've been envisioning you doing it with me supplementing as necessary."

"Alright."

Cor follows along quietly so as not to be conspicuously foreign to any onlookers.

He gets them passage on a ship easily enough, at least. It'll leave in a few hours; Esulri makes a few cash purchases of supplies in the mean time, but mostly wants to hang out and lay low. It's probably a good time for Cor to read or ask questions...

Cor will read, if Esulri doesn't seem talkative. What else has he got on his reading list here?