"Erg," is the response Idania makes. It's enough to make her flip back right side up and land. "Yikes, okay then."

"I guess one disadvantage of do-your-own-detail-work magic is going to be - unexpected side effects. We don't have ghosts, do we?"

"I mean like, superstitious people sometimes talk about it, but they've got dandruff and bits of string as proof, so - no. I'm going with no."

"When a magic user of my type dies," sighs Prime, "they leave a ghost, basically the manifestation of the part of them with magic. And, of course, only mages can see or hear them."

"That... is interesting."

"In an academic sense, fascinating, but in the personal sense - somewhat distressing."

"Yyyyes. We woke up without our magic, too, but - got it back pretty quickly."

"Yeah," sighs Prime. "It's - there's a method to fix it, apparently. But it can't be done here or at my home, so I needed to make a portal here."

"Weren't they - oh - got it," says Spring. "How do you accidentally kill your alt?"

"Thirty-seven hours with no sleep and an absurdly complicated shield. Also five centuries worth of paranoia."

"... Uh that's about half of an answer, but okay. You were paranoid, trapped him, and messed up on a thing doing that and that killed him?" clarifies Idania.

"Yes," sighs Prime. "That."

"I can see why Isabella would be nettled, then. Well. Welcome to Pantheon, although I'm not actually from here originally."

"I am, though. I found her in a magic bar."

"I was surprised, although not flabbergasted. My original world's magic is unpredictable and there isn't a known limit to what it can do."

"... Directionless, or can you aim it?"

"It's locations, called 'magics'. Things that go in them get randomly magicked. It's not something you do to yourself unless you're suicidally desperate, since it is many times more likely to turn you into something you'd sooner not be than to do anything more useful, let alone unambiguously useful. I was extremely lucky. The people I was with when I fell in were not."

"You are unlikely to fall into any magics here. You'd have to go to Tayane."

"I figured," he agrees. "But they continue to exist and people get - randomly magicked. That in itself is horrifying."

"Yeah, also it has slavery and is basically terrible."

"There's fences around the magics. I'm less concerned with the fact that maybe five people a year get magicked than with the fact that larger numbers of them suffer from diseases that I could now heal with a touch, among other things. So eventually I want a portal back there to shake some things up and possibly install some Perinixu holy water and see if it takes."

"Would you like me to look for it, when I have not recently made a portal and have mana to work with?"