:- What, really? What does that even mean - what's different about it?: Enara is glancing around now, spots Wood. :Oh, hello! I'm Enara: 

Wood waves.

:We have different magic. People with wings, like him, are elementals, and there are twelve basic kinds plus hybrids, and there are human mages, who have smaller amounts of three or more elements, which we use to do various things. We don't have the kinds of magic you do. Or intelligent horses:

:Most places in our world don't have intelligent horses either! Just Valdemar, and there are less than two hundred of us, all told. Jisa told you about Heralds, right?: 

:...no?:

:Jiiiisa: She sounds gently exasperated. :I guess I have some explaining to do– er, is it safe to stay here a bit or should we relocate?: 

:Should be safe:

:All right: She settles down on the forest floor next to Jisa, nuzzling her. 

Jisa lifts her head a bit, blinking. :...Sorry...: 

:Shhh, you: Enara turns her eyes back to Maurabel. :So, anyway. The kingdom we're from is called Valdemar. It was founded about eight hundred years ago when a baron fled from a corrupt empire to the east, and - well, legends say that when he was an old man, and thinking about handing off the throne to his son, he started to worry about the longer-term future of the kingdom, and the risk that it would fall into corruption too. And that he prayed to every god he'd ever heard of, and also cast a spell - the histories say he was a powerful mage - and then, well, we showed up. We're magic, we Choose and bond to promising children and they're trained to become Heralds. We're supposed to be incorruptible, ourselves, and we help them stay that way too. The monarch always needs to be a Herald. Jisa is the King's daughter, but she's a bastard, so she's not in the line of succession: 

Pause. :She is, however, lifebonded to the current heir, Treven. Which complicates things substantially: 

:She didn't mention any of this!:

Enara gives a heavy sigh, somehow both mental and physical at the same time. :Great. Um, what has she explained to you? I'll try to fill in the gaps and lecture her about it later: 

:Magic works differently in her world - I don't have the background or the magic senses for the technical stuff, but she can do stuff we can't and vice versa, though she can pass as one of us if she's careful. Um. Most elementals - of the kind we have here not the kind that are cute lizards and stuff like that - are kept enslaved, and for reasons we do not understand freeing them is fatal to the mage who does it, but she's able to do it without being the right kind of mage and without killing the elemental's master. So mostly we've been talking about that:

:Oh. That - makes more sense of why she wanted me to come across. She's freed some of these slaves already?: 

:She killed two people before she figured out how to do it safely, and one got recaptured right away, but some, yeah. Wood's free, he's helping her earn money and translate the language while she learns:

:She killed people? Oh no! ...Er, is she in trouble with the law here: 

:They don't know it was her, she was invisible or illusioned or something. She didn't know - well, the first time she didn't know, I'm not sure what she was thinking the second time - we don't have any idea why freeing elementals usually kills you:

:Well, I can't tell you what she was thinking– I guess I could ask her: 

Enara nudges her Chosen, who's still very groggy, but apparently awake enough to have a brief Mindspeech exchange. 

:- She says it's the elementals who do it, with their magic. They lash out reflexively or something, the ones she talked to thought it might not even be a conscious choice. At first she thought it was just the amulet, and she shielded it enough to stop it from killing the owner if it exploded, but she wasn't taking into account the elemental's part in it, which I guess is how she managed to murder a second person: 

:That makes sense. Anyway, she can stop them, now that she knows how, but it's still tricky. I've been putting her up in my room and feeding her while we think what to do:

:And she did the Gate back in hopes of getting reinforcements from Valdemar, I'm guessing: 

:I don't think the plan about what to do with getting in touch was that specific, but yes:

:Unfortunately we're NOT in a great position to send off an expedition to free another world's slaves, we've got some problems of our own. But - I'm not at all surprised that Jisa decided this was her problem anyway: She whuffles affectionately at Jisa's hair. 

:What's going on over by you?:

:It's, um. Pretty sensitive. Even Jisa isn't cleared to know it. But - the short version is that we're maybe expecting a war with someone very powerful and scary. Or maybe not. It's very up in the air: 

:Well, if I were you I would consider smuggling elementals to a safe universe and suggesting to some of them that they consider joining the army a wise decision under those circumstances:

:Hmm. Is it - feasible, for Jisa to just keep freeing them the way she has been? Or is she increasing the risk of getting caught every time she tries it?: