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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
"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."
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."
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?"
namesthesky
"I think being findable to help is more important than being slightly harder to find for people who probably won't even know how to find us in the first place."
darkest_evening
"I'm inclined to agree, especially if we make whatever it is obscure and really specific. We can have certain locations warded, if that helps?"
from_scratch
Cam makes a whiteboard attached to an empty area of wall. "We can make Ice a to-do list."
from_scratch
These items appear on the whiteboard. "And I can microchip everybody once we have a design and the portals can be modified to make it worthwhile."