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The dragon is kept as comfortable as can be safely arranged. The mages regain mana; Ice goes to Prime's house to put him under. The dragon is eventually needled into revealing that he used a small invisible monster from his "monster bin" to spy on the sphinx and learn the password to the mysterious portal. The small invisible monster is caught and caged and fed millet and offered to Idania to poke at. The dragon is mirrored, on his medallion and his eye both, and allowed to shift from out of his restraints and go home. He makes a perfunctory request to use Phix and Max's bathroom first and doesn't stop to wait for their reply before he does so, then leaves without further ado. Cam makes some additions to the robot army, less their network connections; an existing robot comes to the Belfry, describes the parts it needs to add the new ones to the network, receives same, installs them, and takes the new additions home except for one that is set to watch over twin surveillance mirrors in a disused Belfry corner.
And then Phix asks:
"So, what could be done to portals to make them less vulnerable to small invisible monster spies?"
from_scratch
darkest_evening
"Well," says Prime, present for obvious reasons, "there are a few methods we could go with. Something that gives off a magical signal's the most obvious, but hardly the only one. I could key it to let only us through, no one else, or I could have it let people in who are holding certain unique items, or only open from the side of Pantheon so you'd have to mirror ahead to have someone else open it."
from_scratch
"Having somebody have to be on call all the time to get to and from has obvious drawbacks. And physical keys could probably be stolen, unless I, like, make them come to exist subcutaneously in everybody who we want to have regular access or something?"
darkest_evening
"That would be fine. The downside to that it would be difficult to easily remove them from people we don't like, but that's hardly a problem with all of us."
from_scratch
"This won't, of course, help if we ever make portals to Hell, or Heaven. But I suppose that they're not urgent. I do want to go to Limbo, but I'm not exactly expected for lunch on Tuesday... As for removal, Adana can turn them into saline if need be."
darkest_evening
"Yes, but if someone were, say, attacking us and they had one of those in them and we needed to get it out of them as quickly as possible, how easily could she manage that under pressure?"
prodigal_miser
"But! On the bright side," chimes in Cypress, who is here for the same reason Prime is, "If we are really specific about what we put in the microchip, to the point where there is nothing else like it in all of the multiverse, scrying each other becomes a breeze."
from_scratch
"I could wreck a chip under pressure, but I can't promise I wouldn't injure the person in so doing."
ask_nicely
"Same. It's easy to wreck it, but wrecking it harmlessly's difficult under pressure."
from_scratch
"It's a good idea anyway, the dragon would never have qualified for a chip."
darkest_evening
"Technically," offers Prime, "We can also put magical markers on the chips - that's bad for large-scale, because of the mana and mage requirement, but that might be good for your set of planes just so you can go there yourself."
from_scratch
"That'd be very nice, yes. Prevent invading demons and angels. And fairies, for that matter."
ask_nicely
"Yeah. Uh - are there any problems we could have with having microchips in us?"
prodigal_miser
"If we make them easily-scryable, that doesn't just apply to Prime and I, that's all mages. So if they know we have them, and know what to look for, they can easily find us."
from_scratch
"Get Ice to ward them? I don't know if she can do that if I materialize them inside people's abdominal cavities though. Or if she can make it selective as to who it hedges out."
prodigal_miser
"I'll ask. That would be nice, certainly, I like being paranoid."
Wedding rings! Useful things, his especially. He can just call his wife where she is at home.
"Love, do you have a minute?"
Wedding rings! Useful things, his especially. He can just call his wife where she is at home.
"Love, do you have a minute?"
dark_light
"Yes, but just barely, the accountant'll show up for the appointment any minute, what is it, love?"
prodigal_miser
"We are thinking of putting easily-scryable microchips in us that would also work as keys to portals. The problem, there, is that if mages found out they could easily scry for any of us. Do you have a witchy solution?"
dark_light
"Consulting alethiometer... Wards not discriminate watcher. That sounds like a no, no best of both worlds. Sorry."
prodigal_miser
"I love you, too."
He looks at everyone else assembled.
"Well. You heard her."
He looks at everyone else assembled.
"Well. You heard her."
from_scratch
"How likely are you guys to need to be able to scry on us when you can't find us just from having met us?"