"Well, that sounds interestingly familiar," says Esarkan.

"Yes. Now, the thing is, there are two ways to do magic where I'm from. The first way is the natural power every person has, which is about enough to do this much," she makes a little candleflame over one finger, "although it doesn't have to be fire; it'll heal a papercut and other piddly little tricks like that. Mostly the non-trivial use people get out of it is getting together and spending hours or weeks pooling magic to make artifacts. The other way to do magic, that most people don't know about, is to fuel it with pain." With one hand she touches her soul, calls up the necessary pain, and over the other hand generates a much larger amount of fire, careful not to let it actually set anything alight. She lets it die down after a moment. "The Last Emperor's son used pain magic in his attempted usurpation, and when it failed he fucked off to a mountain to make a pretty magic castle and abduct someone every few years to fuel it. Most people don't know that the Lord of the Howling Mountain is the son of the Last Emperor; there's stories where he is, but no better substantiated than the ones where he's some kind of god."

"'Lord of the Howling Mountain'. Yes, that sounds exactly like something Tekhesin Seofar would call himself if he lived on a mountain and tortured people there."

"Shut the fuck up about my soulname," grumbles Seofar.

"He didn't actually pick the name. The Lord of the Howling Mountain, I mean, not Seofar."

"Oh? Good for him," says Esarkan, amused.

"Funnily enough, when your primary interaction with the outside world is to show up in the capital of one country one night every few years and abduct someone, you don't necessarily have that much control over what people call you."

At that, he actually snickers.

Siva feels so accomplished.

"So after my mother died, I moved to the capital, and someone convinced me to come to a party, and I was just internally bemoaning the fact that not a single person there was more interesting than the free alcohol when guess who decides to crash."

"I can't imagine," he says dryly.

"Well, he wasn't boring. And he noticed that I wasn't actually 'quavering rodent' levels of terrified of him like everyone else, and asked me to dance, and I decided that if I was going to be kidnapped and tortured I might as well have a little fun first, and said yes, and he took me up into the sky to dance on a floor of hardened air to music played by the wind. Most glorious thing that had ever happened to me. And he was impressed that I hadn't been scared of him and danced with him willingly and he asked me if I wanted to see his castle and I asked him if he was actually asking or if he was just messing with me because if it was the latter I don't appreciate when people do that. And he said that it was a question that, whatever else, he wanted to know the answer to. I responded with something else witty, he clarified something relevant, and I said yes. The castle was amazing, however it runs. Biggest library in the world. And he decided he'd rather make me happy than torture me, and I told him the two weren't mutually exclusive, and...one thing led to another. He's the boyfriend-back-home I mentioned earlier."

"Does this charming young man have a name?"

"Yeah, but I don't know if the thing he set up so I can call for him reaches across worlds, and it's triggered by his name, and this is a private conversation. Seofar, you can say it, the spell isn't on you."

"Serik Tanaikon," he says.

"And he has the biggest library in the world," he says musingly. "Now there's a surprise."

Seofar rolls his eyes.

"Well. That was mostly his daughter Irikaino."

"Oh?"

"Well, she's at least the one who organizes it. I dunno, I haven't actually talked to her all that much, she's not always there and I haven't run into her anywhere else. She has a very...distinct bearing, though, what prompted the round of explanations and counter-explanations with Kelora was how strongly she reminded me of her."

"I see. Yes, Kelora is a very distinctive girl."

Nod. "I really appreciate what she tried to do for me."

"I imagine you would, yes."

"I mean. I'm glad things worked out the way they did. But neither of us had any real reason to expect they would, so."

"Indeed."

She hugs Seofar. "I can't think of anything else relevant in particular."