...Though speaking of poking it, Gift, if you would be so kind as to drop the common-knowledge power and pick up a magic-perception one?

Sure!

A delicate tracery of golden lines reveals itself to her vision. Actually, it's not just golden lines — Wonder Woman glows with lines the color of the earth, and her armor glows with lines the color of the forge — but the overwhelming golden glow from the tower drowns them out somewhat. Contrary to Wonder Woman's lines, which flow in naturalistic swoops and curves, the magic of the tower is straight, linear, repetitive, and organized.

Entirely unsurprising since Nabu is a Lord of Order and Kent Nelson learned from him.

...What does she look like?  If she can 'see' herself.

The power in question cannot see itsself, for the same reason you cannot peer at your own eyeball. But looking down at their body reveals a set of pale flowing rivers of color, intertwined with each other and growing from a central base. She might very well be able to pick out a particular network of color as more 'her' than 'them'. The whole thing is less ... directed, than Wonder Woman's. They seem to be tugging on the lines of orderly spellwork and gaining tiny flecks of gold to match.

...Huh!

What can the Gift say about what's going on in there?

Souls are the mechanism through which the immaterial directs the material? And they have one?

It wasn't really the same kind of thing as local souls, although it was similar enough that both kinds fit into the gift's interface. But now they are here and doing magic in the context of this universe, and that means having a soul the border of which touches on the energies of magic, which is what she's seeing here.

At that point the door opens, and there's a flare of golden light in the shape of perfectly interlocking ankhs and gears, and now the magic-detection power is completely failing to recognize anything magical about this tower or its occupant.

"Hasn't anyone ever told you that it's rude to stare, young lady?" an older man with salt-and-pepper hair asks.

"Firstly, no, actually, I do not know wizard etiquette, sorry - I've been in this universe for all of - three to six hours, now? - and secondly, I am mostly trying to look at myself at this point.  And thirdly, you must surely be looking at me to know that I can be looking at you, hm?  But really, my apologies.  I meant no offense.  My only other contact with local magicians was with the reason I feel like I need to talk with the helmet, and there wasn't exactly room for etiquette when it came down to bribe-threatening the Witch Boy into being an equal opportunity problem."

...She is not going to turn it off and back on again...

"Actually, if you can see what I'm doing, I've been wondering if it's possible to hold on to these..."

Gift, please eject the magic sight power, it's not going to do her much good if there's tampering anyway.

The power drifts out of their internal awareness ...

And Mr. Nelson darts out a hand, snagging something from the air. Golden light reaches out to form a cage over his palm, and floating within it is a dim red spark, visible for the first time in the outside world.

"Detecting magic isn't like detecting light. It's more like touch ... What is that?"

He peers at the spark cupped in his hand.

"Yes. Yes, you should come in. Enter of your own free will and be welcome in my home."

He steps back out of the doorway, revealing an old-fashioned receiving room.

Oh, wow.

"I have almost no idea!  Except that whoever made the power that made it was probably not from my universe, we did not have sufficiently advanced technology - nor known-replicable mystical workings at all despite occasional anecdote and the commonalities of several world religions to this locale," she says, now over the threshold, "and that given some of the Reasons This Power Can't Do That I've run into, its creators seem to have been decent people.  ...It was a gift.  Given freely and with no obligation.  One I can simply pass to another, if I do not want it - though I do want it, despite that it means I am rather compelled by my own ethics to get involved with all of this.  Oh, and, ah.  Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Nelson.  I'd introduce myself by name, given that I know yours, but at present I fear that trying would be somewhat dishonest of me.  Give it a minute, I suppose; I'm not going to be talking to - ahem.  You know who.  Given that his opposite number doesn't want me saying his name I don't particularly want to risk it.  ...But anyway, as I was saying - I don't know if we'd get along very well, as despite my tendency to appreciate rules, well, I'm like this - always wanting to poke things - and considering that even incidental, accidental, disrespect to a sufficiently powerful entity can prove fatal, I'd rather not run the risk.  Certainly he's not usually like that but considering what else has been happening...  Mmnh."

"A gift, you say? How curious ..."

He looks up, and then gestures everyone toward a semicircle of chairs.

"And 'Fate' is a pseudonym; I don't actually know his real name. I think anyone who did is long since dead. I'm ordinarily quite reluctant to wear him again, but it sounds like you may indeed have a worthy cause. Perhaps we could start at the beginning and you could tell me the whole story? Would you like some tea?"

"...That's definitely not his name, no.  But it might be that I don't know the name of this version of the entity that inhabits the helmet, and instead some other universe's version.  Still not going to say it.  And part of why I jumped on an opportunity to speak with him - which I am most certainly not going to ask you to put on the helmet for, unless it's actually necessary - I won't ask you to take a risk I wouldn't - is that I hope I might be able to find a better solution to..."  She waves a hand at him, and then upwards in a hopefully vaguely helmetwards direction, "the current labor dispute, if I'm accurately informed that one exists."

Mr. Nelson's greying eyebrows climb his forehead with an alacrity that belies his age.

"You might know his name? Well! That might actually just solve everything. Yes, there certainly is a 'labor dispute', heh. I was not particularly keen to spend any more of my life being little more than a puppet and a conduit for arcane power. If I could rebind him to have more equal control ..."

He shakes his head.

"Anyway, wearing the helmet is not necessary to speak to him, but it is necessary if you wanted him to use any magic, including exercising his powers as a Lord of Order, which I assumed was why you would wish to speak to him specifically. You mentioned Fate's opposite number — I take it you've gotten tangled up with a Lord of Chaos?"

"Yes, though I don't think there's anything lingering that would need N- stop saying names, me, for goodness sakes... - that would need his attention directly.  It's more that he said some concerning things that I think yours might need to know about.  Including 'Everyone else is landing in Central City', when you may note that I'm the only new variable here as in this universe so far - oh, I should see if...  Anyway.  He followed that up by negotiating with what I can only describe as - if my current actions are being narrativized, which I suspect is happening somewhere, then, a coauthor - who was not me, the symbology was wrong - for continued narrative relevance in the event that he accepted the bargain I was offering."

Gift, dear, how hard would it be for you to do - a message-in-a-bottle, say, to another Giftee?  Out of curiosity.

Hmm. The sparks spin in thought.

Yes, it could do that! It could do a power for producing stable magical structures encoding a message or thought. It could also do a power for producing stable physical crystals that contain a message or thought in the same way, but physical objects seem less like what they want, here.

Actually getting the message to another giftee would be another matter — although they could just let the messages-in-a-bottle float around in the local multiverse without needing another power for it.

Other methods of direct communication to people mostly require some established association or connection to operate over ... It could do a power that would broadcast to anyone in the local multiverse who had used their own gift to create a compatible receiver, if that would help?

Perhaps!  Not right now, but could you remind her in a bit?  If she doesn't remember, herself.

Would you need a separate receiver and broadcaster?

The gift gives the matter some thought. It's difficult to make it fit, but ...

It could do broadcaster and receiver in a single spark at the expense of range, maybe? The resulting power would still only be able to do one of those things at once, though. It would be more easily blocked or disrupted than dedicated powers, too.

But yeah! It can remind her in a little while.

"I'm ... not sure that Fate is going to be able to help with narrative concerns, exactly. Lords of Chaos are generally capable of very strange things; that is the advantage of Chaos, just as organization is the advantage of Order. But he will definitely want to keep track of what his opposite number is getting up to."

Mr. Nelson sits back, steepling his fingers.

"There's also the possibility, of course, that anyone else showing up in Central City just hasn't come to your attention."

Wonder Woman shakes her head.

"We thought of that. Zatara was busy, but I asked The Question to look into it, and he didn't find anyone in Central City who didn't belong there."

"There are plenty of ways to hide, but I take your point. Hmmm..."

A clockwork figure in the shape of a knight steps into the room and sets a tea service on the table, before opening the door and stepping out again. Past it, a large number of stairs are visible against a background of stars.

Ooooh that's pretty.

"I didn't, really, expect him to natively have the capacity.  I don't have the capacity, just far too much thinking about similar situations.  I just thought he should know.  Wouldn't be - fair, otherwise."