"Well. Okay, you're looking for other versions of us, right?"

"Yes?"

"But, sometimes we don't look the same."

"Correct. Please tell me you have something more to do than stating the obvious to me?"

"Well! You should look for other versions of me. Since I'm a special snowflake so far. Bet you can also find my twin like that, too."

"That... Is a good idea."

"Isn't it?" Pause. "Also I need a fuckbuddy, none of the girl-me's are takers for obvious reasons."

Prime sighs. "Of course you do."

"It's a problem! All of the other me's get kickass hot chicks to fuck, and I don't have any matching men!"

"Your priorities are delightful."

"Fun, too. C'mon, c'mon, do the scrying thing, old and cranky Edarial! I want to meet a man me!"

"Okay, cool, maybe send one of these mirrors with the letter? In case this one is fresh out of some harrowing adventures and trigger-happy? We didn't attack you but it was kind of a near thing, the mirror will allow non-attacky communication."

"I can dig up a spare set. Somewhere."

"Er. Problem. We just went to Medallion, I don't know about you but I'm still not topped off on mana."

"Yeah, why were you alt-hunting this soon?"

"Turtle - Zevros, whichever - asked -"

In the background of Rain and Katydid's mirror, there is a maniacal cackling.

"FUCK YES!"

"Congratulations, Zevros. Now you get to wait for several days while the mages collect more mana before you get to meet your new alt. I'm sure you'll be very patient."

"Damn it."

"... We do have siblings," points out Prime. "If you could convince your alts to help you get to another male you, then it could be sooner."

"But mirror and making sure he and anyone else around him is not inclined to stab or ensorcel visitors, first," says Spring. "Especially if all the mages are going to be empty, including the emergency backup mages."

"Right, that's the smart thing to do. I mean, it's been a few days, Prime and I could probably manage the mirror on our own by now."

"Go team."

"So what's this one like, anyway, any immediately visible fun quirks?"

"Oh, he has wings," shrugs Prime.

"Just wings? No delicate little deer feet?"

"My feet are majestic, thank you very much."

"No deer feet, majestic or otherwise."

Phix kisses her boyfriend's cheek.

"Wings is cool, though. Boring humans are welcome to the club, but positive-sum contributions are better and wings are a good sign."

"Agreed. Prime, meet at Pantheon so we can send the care package? Actually, it might be best if we just all went to Pantheon."

"So we can crowd around the mirror?" snorts Katydid. "Sure."

"Joy. Crowding around a tiny mirror will certainly help with bonding."

"We can always take turns. Pass around the tiny mirror."

"Dibs on being first."

"Yes, yes, delightful banter, the mirrors are annoying to talk through with this relay, go to your portals now."

"Mhmm." Prime holds up a mirror pair.

"Are we being invaded?" asks a confused Idania, painting her toenails from three feet off of the ground in the portal room. The paintings are pretty, don't judge her. "Do I need to break out the fiery explosives? I totally can, I've got 'em."

"Prime found a male Zev' with wings and they're going to send him a mirror," says Spring. "Why do you have explosives? Do you keep them near my house? Please do not keep explosives near my house."

"I have explosives because they are a useful thing to have in case of invasions. And of course I don't keep them near your house. I know my explosive safety. Sort of."

"... How useful."

"If you get yourself blown up with bad explosives safety I might be tempted to extort your deity before resurrecting you again," remarks Ice. "Anyway."

Idania snickers.

"Who's writing the letter?"

"It's going to a Zev', right, not a Bell or an Adarin? Zevros could write it as long as it contains the basics, and if there's some of us around we can explain the sorts of things relevant to Bells and Adarins by mirrors."

"Eeeeee!" giggles Turtle. "I'll do it, I'll so do it, it'll be great!"

"... That's terrifying."

"It'll be fine!"

"We'll read it first in case it's really egregious, but I agree with Katydid."

"I do, too, but - terrifying."

"Do we know the language we're writing in?"

"I can check, but there were a lot of languages on the plane."

"Isn't there any written material in his house?"

"No. There's some - technological things, but I couldn't find any books or newspapers around, and it's not like I could turn on something through a scry."

"Technological things to the complete exclusion of paper and also wings. Huh."

"I am really excited," giggles Max.

Cypress pats Max's shoulder. "Planning on laughing maniacally again?"

"I might, if it's cool!"

Phix fluffs her wings into existence and puts one around him.

Max grins, and shifts in his wings, too. Wingsnuggles!

Edarial smiles, just a little. It's cute.

Turtle finishes the letter (in two languages, with expressive pictures) and then the mages collaborate and it arrives in the new Zev's house. Where it can't be missed.

Cam answers the door. "Yeah?"

Zane holds up the letter and mirror. "I got a thing. It's a confusing thing, I can barely read it. But uh - something about multiple versions of us? Also a magic mirror that got transported to my house?" Pause. "I'm extremely confused."

"Uh, okay, I'll read it I suppose?" Cam takes the letter and peers at it.

"We can get my sister."

"Yes. So, ah, thank you." Cam peers at the instructions for the mirror, and fiddles with it, muttering, "If I'm greeted with a live feed of your alternate universe self's junk I will be annoyed..."

"That would be the funniest thing," cackles Zane.

"No it would n- hi?"

"That's not a Zev. Hi, whoever you are, where's the person who originally received the mirror?"

"He's right here - Zane, here."

"Hey, hot stuff. I'm responsible for this, you're fucking welcome," says Turtle.

"Nevermind who was responsible for all of the magic involved."

"We're slackers, really."

"... Cool. Uh. I have no idea how you're doing this, but shit, I'm sold. Can you grab my sister?"

"Please," adds Cam.

"Ooh, this Zev has a sister."

"Yeeees? Are you not going to summon her?"

"No, no, we're going to, but uh..."

"What's your sister's name? Out of curiosity."

"Adana?"

"Most of your alts have brothers," says Ice. "Most of you are girls, except for Zevros here, but you're the only one who has a sister. These are Adarin, another Adarin, Edarial, and Darren, don't worry, we have nicknames."

"What's the holdup on summoning Adana exactly? We miss her."

"Low mana in the people who can do that sort of thing," says Katydid. "Who're you?"

"Cam. I'm her boyfriend. Uh, and -" he peers at the mirror, judges the odds that it was made with demon magic or parlor tricks low, and continues, "And we are all three of us dead and she wound up in a different afterlife than me and Zane did."

Prime is polite enough to stop laughing at this point.

"... Wow. An afterlife? Prime - we should get our sisters, who knows how long they've been separated."

"Bit more than a year," volunteers Cam.

"Campbell."

"Campbell Mark Swan, why?"

"Huh. Wow."

"Well. I can't say I'm surprised, ever since we found Zevros..."

"Right, but - a boy Bella. And a girl us!"

Softly, Edarial says, "Cypress... Your sister?"

"Right, sorry." He kisses his wife goodbye, and goes off to retrieve her.

"We'll want to get Rae to check, but it looks that way. Rae can tell - you'll notice I don't look like the other Bells."

"- This is all really weird and I'm not sure I'm following one hundred percent, but I have a question. We're all daeva, can't you just summon us? With a circle and such instead of - mana?"

".... Ooo, summoning mechanics, spill, we love cheating systems."

"I don't know if it'll work from all the way over there, but here's what circles for me and Zane and Adana would look like," says Cam, producing a piece of paper and holding it up to the mirror. "Is the resolution on this thing good enough for you to get the detail?"

Max squints. "I think I can do that. Let me find an open spot and try it. Unless anyone's got objections?"

"Do these need to be drawn in any special way, with any special material, at any special size, or accompanied by an incantation or anything?"

"Leave closing the circle part for last, any material will do from blood to crayon to projected light, has to be on a floor or the ground and big enough for us to stand in, and that's all."

"Well, good news, I have my trusty magic marker."

"You are my favorite complete dork."

"No, if you drew anything even sort of close to what I gave you you should have gotten a non-'nothing' result. I even gave you one with a binding in case you screwed up on getting one of the three of us and got somebody unfriendly. It was a long shot that it'd work from that far away. The thing you used to send us the mirror works on people, though? You're all in one place and not daeva except for maybe those two?" He gestures at Phix and Max.

"I don't know what a daeva is, but I'm a sphinx and he's a peryton and we can shapeshift for convenience and opposable thumbs."

"Peryton?"

"I'm a magic flying deer. Hi! Opposable thumbs are the best."

"The two Adarins who left are retrieving their sisters who have the ability to send or summon people. So it will still work out all right," assures Rain. He is entirely aware of the results of accidentally flippant alts.

"Okay. I need to apologize to her for not being paranoid enough and for not thinking straight..."

"... If she's one of us, it's likely that she's not going to be upset with you in the slightest."

"I could have saved her, and even after I'd screwed up doing that I could have maybe gotten ahold of her dad or Zane and told them to summon her, and I screwed that up too."

"It happens," says Rain, gently. He looks very sad, when he says that.

"Well, no offense, but I'm going to apologize to her and not to - extra-extraplanar white-haired people in Renaissance Faire garb who think they might be alternate versions of her."

"No offense taken."

"He's awkwardly flailing at you socially! We're really good at that. In that we are all hilariously bad at it."

"Anyway, so you're a boy, and a - daeva?"

"I am a boy and a daeva. A demon, specifically. I think Adana's an angel - magic deer, was her circle the first you tried? If I'm wrong and she's a fairy, or even if we've managed to miss her here, it wouldn't have worked as written."

"Didn't think so, but I'd've kicked myself if we'd been held up because I was wrong about what species she is."

"Yeah, fair."

"Found my sister," calls Cypress. "She was here." Pause. "With yours, Max."

"Aaaaaah bad thoughts bad thoughts!"

"Well I was having fun."

"Awww, little mini Adarin, it's okay. We're in clothes and everything!"

"Anyway, Zevros had Prime looking for more Zevs who match him instead of you and we found the Genderbent Universe. Far as we can tell, that's a Bell," point, "and that's a Zev," point, "and the Zev has a sister who is dating the Bell."

"Hey," says Zeviana, brightly, waving. "Cool, Turtle found a fuckbuddy. And also a female Ada! That sounds fun."

Zane snorts, amused. "If this is for realsies and I'm not having a strange dream - this is the best day."

"Turtle? I understand the need for nicknames, but why Turtle?"

"His spirit animal is a turtle. And he lost the fight so now he has to be called it."

"I hated that stupid turtle and I don't even remember why."

"... Wait, are you two on entirely different planes?"

"Yyyyes? We are demons and we are in Hell, and she's probably an angel and if so is in Heaven, or maybe a fairy and Fairyland, and then there's the mortal world and Limbo, and these places are not contiguous. If all I had to do was traverse space to find her I would either be there already or in some kind of vehicle, believe you me."

"That will make it more difficult to work with, we're dealing with a renewable but finite resource to transport people."

"Not if we're smart. Where can daeva be summoned to? Just your mortal world?"

"Yeah. By humans. Well, by non-daeva, I don't know if sphinxes and magic deer can do it. So - show up someplace nice and quiet on our Earth and draw circles?"

"If that's not particularly dangerous, yes."

"Can I go? I would love to go!"

"It's not especially dangerous, I don't think. Just land in some wilderness in the middle of - I think Wyoming is still sparsely populated? Land somewhere in Wyoming that doesn't have much going on."

"Okay. That's pretty doable. Safety precautions, though, can we pick people who can defend themselves? Sorry, paranoid."

"The most dangerous things likely are loose unfriendly demons. If you get a loose unfriendly demon, the planet you are standing on will be sucked into a black hole. Loose unfriendly angels aren't a whole lot better. Can any of you deal with that?"

Darren makes a squeaky sound.

"... I mean, we could recover from it. My wife can resurrect the dead. But directly combat a black hole? No."

"This isn't at all likely, mind you, you will notice I suggested going to Wyoming, Wyoming still exists. I'm just not sure that 'ability to defend yourselves' is what you should be selecting for here."

"Prime's expendable, let's send him."

"That's mean."

"He killed you!"

"Sure. Ada, magic notes, go."

"Going," sighs Cypress, and he breaks out the book of cheat sheets to get to writing his sister notes on magic.

And that's when Prime returns. Sister in tow.

"Hey, fossil. You're sendin' us, I'm making a portal back, Max's drawing shit. Cool with you?"

"Adaaaaaa?"

"How did you and Girl Adarin meet, Cam?"

"Oh, she summoned me to make a space station for her to put refugees from badly managed lunar stations in."

"2160, why?"

"Yours is the third Earth, and mine's a little ahead of Phix's at 2015. The others are from lower-tech situations. I have an alien robot army, but it's not exactly human-optimized tech."

"... Trying really, really hard not to laugh maniacally, you have no idea. All that technology..."

"Oh, well, you'll really like the part where as demons me and Zane can just make whatever you want from nothing, hence the summoning me to make a space station thing. Demons make stuff."

And that's when Darren starts laughing maniacally.

Edarial grins. "Literally anything?"

"We can't make stuff that is itself intrinsically magical. Otherwise yes. ...And we're better at doing things we have templates for, so I'm not sure how well the limit on intrinsically magical things will hold up if you have some for us to look at... I'd try copying the mirror but I only have one of it here and I get the impression they need to be paired."

"They need to be paired," agrees Rain, as the only functioning Adarin at the moment. Max is still laughing maniacally, and both Cypress and Prime are busy with magic. "When the portal's made you'll just be able to travel to our hub world, so you'll have plenty of chances to try."

"Awesome. But Adana first please. How's that coming?"

"Working on it. Ana?" Prime holds up magic notes.

"Give me a bit, let me cram this shit all into my head..."

"So, 2160," muses Ice. "When were you born?"

"1987. I died young though, I was murdered when I was 22."

"So you're older than Spring, but not as old as Prime, and I'm the odd one out for Bell birth years."

"Ah yes, my title remains unchallenged. I can keep being the old and cranky person."

"Done!" proclaims Cypress. He hands the notes to his sister.

Darren is still cackling uncontrollably.

"Down, megalomaniac." She pats his shoulder.

"But he's so cute when he's megalomaniacal."

"But he might forget to breathe and then where would we be?"

"I can breathe!" declares Max, giggling. "Sorry, sorry. Cam, I will tackle you later about your 'make anything' magic. I have things I would like you to make, if you're willing."

"Yes, no problem, but first I really have to apologize to my girlfriend."

"Yeah, we're just waiting on -"

"Got it. Okay, clump up, before I forget all of the things ever." She motions at her younger alt and Max. "Go on!"

"Here, I'll draw most of it for you, I just can't finish it -" Here is a circle to summon Adana done in tidy chalk on the ground, with a little gap, and a piece of chalk in Cam's hand to finish it with. Cam offers Max the chalk. And thrashes his tail.

Max takes it, and then finishes the circle.

Cam flops delightedly to the ground and sneaks his wings under her own and hugs her and oh does he ever kiss her.

Max blushes, and then gets to drawing the third circle on his own.

"Why," laughs Adana, "would I be mad at you?"

Kiss. His tail coils around her leg. "Because I didn't save you and - well, I suppose you wouldn't know how fantastically I made a hash of it when your murderer summoned me, but there was that too - and because I thought if you weren't mad at me you'd probably have been able to get someone to let you talk to your dad and have him summon me."

"Please. I was the idiot that died - did you know how few people employ angels that have no idea how to do anything more complicated than making tunnels? Not to mention - all of my summoners were from Earth. Dad's on the moon. Comm access isn't - that easy." Kiss. "Most of my time was spent figuring out how to be an angel, because no one would let me at a comm that would get me Luna without me being able to mend bones or fix nerves or - I have been doing so much studying, you have no idea."

"Well, you can take a break," Cam beams. "Plot twist, the demons found friendly summoners."

Adana giggles, and looks at Max. "Hey, summoner! Thanks! Wait - did he give you wings?"

"Angel darling, these are alternate universe versions of you, and your brother. There are mes, too. We are the weird genderbent universe."

Snnnnnnuggle.

Ice follows her husband. "Hullo strange opposite-sex winged versions of us!"

"Hi, strange opposite-sex version of my boyfriend. And other version of me with the - funky hair?"

"Ha! Ha, I'm not the only brunette now, ha!" Pause. "Also, incoming, brother."

Cue Phix coming through and going to stand near her own Adarin. "Welcome to the people-with-wings club," she says, flumphing one of hers around Max.

Katydid comes through too, smiling tentatively.

So does Spring. "So this is the fabled Wyoming," she says. "Welcome to the peal of Bells, Cam."

"I feel so welcome. And out of place. But all suffused with everlasting gratitude and all, I will make you things, gimme a shopping list after I am topped off on angelic reunion time."

"Hold that thought," says Adana, and she gives Cam a quick goodbye kiss before getting off of him. "... Zane? Uh. Did you die?"

"Sort of, yeah."

"Didn't occur to him to summon me and find out what had happened, perhaps understandable considering the non-amicability of our previous interaction, but he did take out the lady who shot you. And then did, ah, poorly, in prison."

"But I got kickass magic powers out of the deal, and me and Cam had bonding time!"

"That's - dad's got to be a wreck right now."

"It's been a while but, yes, probably, if you want to vanish applicable wings or come up with a cover story I can fix us up with a ship and we can all go to Luna? Probably easier than getting someone to let total strangers on a comm by walking to the nearest Wyoming habitation."

"Vanishing applicable wings seems easiest, you - two, Zane's apparently a demon? - can put them back no problem."

"Zane is a demon. He found the notices I had up in various population centers about you for just-in-case and came knocking and, wonder of wonders, didn't punch me in the face this time."

"I said I was sorry!"

"... Wait, why did you punch him in the face?"

"I thought he was raping my sister."

"You didn't even ask, you just assumed and jumped straight to punching!"

"I said I was sorry! I know better now!"

"Demons have a bad reputation," sighs Cam.

"Bad enough that the first time he saw you the only explanation he could think of was that you were raping his sister?"

"Yeah, pretty much. It's not like we get a chance to contradict it most of the time. Most summoners call us up with bindings that don't let us talk. And there are demons like that, just, not all of us."

"Which I figured out, after I summoned him. And then he made me things and we dated."

"Awww."

"And then somebody shot her, all very legal, loose bindings on demons are a kill-on-sight offense because that's the quickest way to get rid of us, and I was just out of earshot of the conversation and didn't get something between Adana and the gun in time," sighs Cam, wings drooping. "...Magic deer kid, I should probably have mentioned this earlier, but in our afterlife system, which I don't think you have because some of you seem to have been dead in the past and you don't know what daeva are and I've never heard of a magic deer person before, anyway in our system the deal is you become a daeva after you die if you were a summoner before that."

Adana hugs Cam. "I'm okay, Cam, I didn't see it coming either, and I really should have."

"... I mean if my afterlife is now 'magic powers' and I can be retrieved by Bella or something... That's really not terrible! I'm okay with this. If it works, anyway, I kind of don't want to check, especially with the problems Cypress had with his resurrection."

"It also gives immortality. If that was a problem?"

"How good's the immortality?"

"Unproblematic," asserts Cam, prompting an "oooh" in near-unison from all his alts. "Non-daeva get the same immortality deal, they just don't have magic powers or show up in interesting places to be."

"Her species," Spring says, pointing at Ice, "is unaging, but not invulnerable or anything. She can cast a version of it on regular people, though. And resurrect, though that's sometimes glitchy."

"It was only glitchy when coupled with my magic's - whatever thing with the afterlife. It's not her fault," says Cypress, loyally.

"Whatever thing?"

"When mages die they leave ghosts. But the ghosts are also our magic, so when I first got resurrected I was brought back without it and there was still a ghost-me running around."

Snuggle snuggle. "That glitch is resolved, I hope?"

"Yes, but he had to die over again."

Cypress scoops his wife up into a hug, snuggling her. "I'm all right."

"... Has anyone else died? Besides the - obvious."

"Spring's introduction to all of this was being resurrected based off of commentary from a god."

"When you say 'god'..."

"A literal one." Pause. "We've gotten him to take a group photo of us."

"The world I live in - it's actually not my original, but there doesn't seem to be any way to deliberately replicate the mechanism by which I got there - has gods. Practical literal talkative gods. The ones most likely to be relevant to your life are mine, Perinixu, who is a healing goddess of the highland springs and has supplied me with relevant magic powers, and Raezenoth, Rae for short, god of the desert wind and freedom and so on, who is my best friend's god and is much more likely to hang around the vicinity of the portal hub and socialize. They can understand all languages via a mechanism which, as a side effect, allows them to identify alts in cases of uncertainty by hearing us talk."

"Your other circumstances are awfully suggestive all by themselves, but yes, Rae is how it gets confirmed."

"What are the commonalities, besides, apparently, names?"

"In the case of Bells - names, personality, notebooking, we think we have matching parents but Spring doesn't remember hers well, we all look at least sort of like each other - you look like you could be our brother, Spring is almost just a palette swap of us three - and the ones of us who are from Earth seem to have been all born in the same town and the name of the town I was born in is suspiciously alike."

"For Adarins - names, personality, a twin, matching birth parents and a usually present adopted father - there's only been one exception to that so far." He glances at Edarial, then continues. "We also tend to be surrounded by terrible people, and we do the - math thing. Our scales are also the same, it's wonderfully charming and makes it easier to compare notes."

"Tend to be surrounded by terrible people...?"

"I thought I was the exception, and then I remembered, a dragon is trying to kill my girlfriend. So, yeah, surrounded by terrible people, all of us. Except for Bells, obviously." Pause. "And our twins. And dads. But that's it, everyone else is fair game for being terrible."

"Especially the birth parents."

"The other random people can be pretty damn terrible too."

Cypress pets his wife's hair.

"Oh, also - our moms are all universally crazy. So there's that, too."

"... Yay."

"Anyway, we can fly to Luna and have the rest of this conversation there," says Cam, snuggling his angel and starting to make a shuttle with sufficient passenger room.

"How long does a trip to Luna take? Iobel and I sort of - have a country. To run."

"Not all day or I'd have said, but a while, you should probably nip back to run your country. Also, good for you, running a country."

"Thank you. It was a - heartache to get."

"Long story," sighs Katydid, turning back towards the portal.

"I might sit the rest of this excursion out too, I have class in an hour."

"I - don't think you can get to Luna and back in an hour, yeah."

"I'm off today, want me to tag along and take notes for you? Or something?"

"Yes please, I love you."

"I love you, too. I'll take copious notes and maybe tackle one of the demons to try medallion experiments."

"You realize you could try asking politely before graduating directly to the invasion of personal space?"

Phix kisses Max goodbye and heads home.

"I refer to it as 'tackling' because I can get very thorough with my questions. But yeah, obviously I'd ask politely, first."

"Anyway, all aboard," says Cam, producing a remote control for the ship and popping the canopy to let everyone in.

All Adarins pile in, with Adana sticking close to Cam and snuggling.

"He's probably still on Antarios, but he might have moved. We should check, first."

"Right. Not right now, since I'm using 'em, but please do remember to get rid of my wings and tail for me when anybody's going to be looking."

"Yup!"

"Gaaah," says Max. "It's really freaky, talking so casually about removing your wings. I mean, I shoo mine, but you're actually making yours disappear."

"If she does it, it'll be clean and painless. Heck, if I had to do it myself, it'd still be painless, I made them without any pain-sensing nerves near the joins in case I ever wanted to saw them off. Zane, you did that too, right?"

"... Oops."

"Okay my head wants to be filled with screaming about the sentence 'sawing your own wings off.'"

"Zane, next time you make a set of wings, just copy mine wholesale," sighs Cam, "tweak the color if you want - lucky we have Adana here - and magic deer kid, it's okay, there will be no sawing today, because my angel can just turn them into air, poof."

"Sure thing," he shrugs. "Think I'll make them black, though."

"... Nnng, it's like making your arm go poof. I need to find a magical solution for you guys to shift away your wings like I do with mine, so no more - sawing or making wings turn to air."

"Magic? What kind of magic?"

"Oh! Oh, right, I forgot - my magic's the only transferable one we've found yet. Except maybe this one, but - yeah, you can learn runecasting for sure."

"Are you sure anybody can do it? We can't summon anymore."

"I was the test case for whether it worked for non-natives of Medallion, and it worked for me, but I'm just a human, albeit a previously dead acolyte human."

"Either one, I'm fluent in sixty-eight languages and they're both on the list."

"Sixty-eight is a lot, even with as old as you are."

"Daeva get the languages of our summoners automatically, which conveniently sidesteps the problem of how to negotiate task and price while one of you only speaks Chinese and the other doesn't know any languages because she started to exist as a non-ex-human daeva fifteen minutes ago. I only learned English, some of the Spanish, and half-a-dozen demon-only languages the long way around. Sixty-eight is still a lot, but for a while a linguistics department which had found a different relatively friendly demon to teach them demon languages used to summon me to confirm that she wasn't lying to them about what words meant what things - I didn't talk, but they'd have me confirm translations. And they were linguists, so."

"... I think you still need the translation spell," observes Cypress. "Even with - sixty-eight languages already."

Max shrugs, and hands a scroll over to Cam. "It has to be in a non-native language, but the chant's written down for you in both languages."

"What happens if it turns out my summoning-acquired languages count as native for this purpose?"

"It'll still work, but - do weird things. If you want to be safe, Cypress, Prime, Spring? You have languages he hasn't learned, should we use those?"

"Or I could just translate this into one of the demon languages," says Cam. He peers at the incantation and then utters a rendering of it in such a language.

A little globe of light appears, floating politely in the air.

"Yes we do!" He can take a moment away from attention to the ship controls to kiss her once. Okay, three times.

Make that four!

"I guess the first takers at the 'better than Dumbledore' school of runecasting run by Phix and I will be alts of ourselves," snorts Max.

"You have a school? The class she ran off to, is she teaching it?"

"No, we're planning to start a school, we're in college for useful things but it's rapidly looking more and more pointless."

"That happens. I skipped college, since I found out about summoning when I was seventeen, learned to do it, spilled the beans, got killed for it, and have been demoning it up ever since."

"Ouch. Um. I'm sorry."

"It was a hundred and fifty years ago, Hell is really comfy, and my remaining dissatisfaction about the situations is on track to being brilliantly solved, assuming you folks can make portals to other places later. I can see my parents again and don't have to wait indefinitely to see Adana again and I can interact with the mortal world!"

"Hell is really comfy, huh?"

"The lakes of fire are not and have never been intended to contain people."

Cypress snorts. "Okay then. Well - yes, we can make portals to various places, though with how powerful daeva are I think we'll have to be very careful about it. But you can definitely see your parents again."

"Are the portals permanent? Sticking one in a tree doesn't seem like 'permanent portal' behavior, but maybe I'm wrong? Since it's pretty straightforward to get specific non-dangerous daeva out of their realms, all that's really necessary is for me and Adana and Zane to, ideally, have non-summoned status so we don't go poof if our summoner dies, and then portals between the mortal world and Limbo."

"The portals are permanent as long as the item that they're in isn't damaged," says Cypress.

"That particular portal was a bit less permanent than others, but it'll stay for quite a long time, even so."

"And they can be destroyed at the maker's whim."

"So - reunite Adana and Zane with their dad, fly back to random tree portal in Wyoming, go sightseeing in some other worlds, I think I heard something about mana, so wait for your little real-life videogame mechanic to fill up again and then - unsummon us, put portals in my house and Adana's so we can just walk here without being technically on a summon, break 'em, proceed with safer portal configurations summoning daeva to consult as necessary. Unless you've been making lots of friends in Heaven, angel darling?"

"They're reasonably nice people, but - nope. I'm fine with ditching them."

"Oh my god," laughs Max. "I hadn't even realized it was like a video game mechanic, that's hilarious! It takes a bit longer, but - still. Hilarious!"

"Sweetie, are you secretly a video game character?" inquires Ice.

Cypress snickers. "How do I tell? I haven't noticed any video game mechanics in my day to day life, but how can I be really sure?"

"Well, let's see, you acquired a new inseparable companion to accompany you in a new world you visited when you were going bizarrely long distances to fetch tea, you recharge mana, you would make a very recognizable pixel sprite," hairfluff, "you've died, twice, and are still running around doing things, I think you might be a video game character, love."

"My entire life is a lie," he drawls. "Will there be a boss fight, later? Or is that death itself?"

"Spoilers!" trills Ice.

Cypress laughs and kisses his wife. "I love you."

"So are we always in sets?"

"Prime and I do not constitute a set, and Katydid and Rain, with the country to run, are complicated."

"I believe they're trying very hard to become a set now," says Cypress. "Rain and Katydid, anyway."

Prime does not bring up how Ice and Cypress seem to be shipping him with Spring. That will just be politely ignored.

"It's really cute," laughs Savannah, "how they keep showing up in sets."

"And we're the fifth set, if the sets were all sets, which they are not - am I waiting on Katydid and Rain to provide me their own story for reasons?"