Huh. That was. Very bright! And - not so bad. The feeling reminds her of Groth and the plants in a way that has to be magic. Or she could be imagining it. She waits to be told to open her eyes.

"Okay, we're done now, I hope that wasn't too unpleasant? We have to make sure we don't trail anything indoors, this whole area is quite... intense," Aelea lets her know. "Hopefully someone's here to meet us, otherwise I'll drop you off in the cafeteria with a couple of these reprobates and go and find someone responsible to take over."

She moves forwards and opens the door at the end of the small corridor, which leads out into another baffling white-stone space; there is a distinct lack of windows or anything that would be helpful in orientation. Also, in here, the corridor and doors and ceilings are very wide and high - much larger than the humans actually appear to need... and totally deserted.

"Yeah, let's get you to the canteen and I'll see what is happening," says Aelea, not sounding too surprised about this.

Tollee has, sometimes, when food was abundant, spent entire days off to herself painstakingly excavating social insect dwellings for fun and catharsis.

Once, she managed to split open a particularly silty nest-rock of groundwasps exactly down the middle. Despite herself, she'd been horrified - not pleasantly horrified at the grotesquerie of ten thousand tiny little groundwasps crawling all over each other in mindless dreadful chaos like she'd expected, but horrified by the sight of the alien: the nest, it turned out, wasn't an empty cavern simply filled with groundwasps like she'd expected. It was like the drained flesh of an animal, arteries and counter-arteries, only more orderly, more clean, and the thousands of groundwasps marching themselves in evenly-spaced little lines through the veins unbotheredly. She'd mulled it over later, not quite of her own accord, what that would be like, to live your entire life knowing nothing but the narrow blind halls your ancestors had built (groundwasps didn't live long enough to do all that in one lifetime, right?) and the guidance of the wasps in front of you. She thought, she could never be quite sure, but she thought she'd seen chambers filled with little white grubs - nurseries - before she'd snapped out of it and jumped into the river to evade the stings. 

Well, it's different when the groundwasps have something you want, and they want something from you.

Tollee shows no hesitation in following Aelea to the "canteen", which evidently means something like watering-place-but-in-a-cavern.

It does indeed! It's another white stone room, dominated by long tables with cushioned bench seating, which are probably quite comfortable if you happen to be human shaped. Along one side is another table full of covered containers of food, bowls and eating/serving utensils, glasses and jugs of water and juices.

"Uh, I'm not sure if you're going to find it comfortable to sit here," Aelea apologises. "Domicia, will you wait here with our guest while we go and find out what's going on?"

Domicia shrugs in acquiescence and takes a seat. Aelea smiles one more apologetic smile in Tollee's direction and then herds the rest of the unit out down one of the huge corridors.

Ah. Domicia. The honest one. No nagging questions from Tollee right this second. 

She drinks everything in. Are there any other people in the canteen?

There weren't when they came in, but a minute or two later, a tall human with strange green veins - in a rather crumpled set of off-white robes, and with one arm considerably bandaged - stumbles in and immediately goes to the food table, apparently entirely oblivious to Tollee's presence.

Hm. Green veins is, apparently, within the range of human variation.

Tollee waits unobtrusively. It is, for all her scrappiness, a well-developed skill.

Then the distracted mage will put together a plateful of noodles and sauce, stumble to an unoccupied table, and start inhaling them as if he hasn't eaten for a week.

Domicia looks kind of nervous. "Normally I'd introduce you, but, uh, we don't bother him, especially when he's like this," she explains, in a quiet voice presumably calculated not to be likely to attract attention.

"Like this?"

Tollee is such a harmless prospective co-gossiper!

"Stargazer-y. Squats in his lab for a week and throws things at anyone who tries to bring him food and then if we're lucky he snaps out of it enough to come out and eat something, and if we aren't lucky the ushabti carries him out and the physicks are busy again."

They need him to eat, but they can't just tell him to and make him obey. How to put it . . .

"He does important work, then?"

"He thinks he does, anyway. And the Arbiter indulges him. He was very close to the old Arbiter, even went to Anvil with him; I don't think anyone has the heart to do anything but tolerate whatever he wants to do."

Bingo!

Tollee didn't just think that! For all she knows they have mindreading. She didn't just think that!

"What's his name?" So, so casually!

"Auralius," she replies.

"I can hear you," the man says between mouthfuls, without looking up or notably slowing down. "I'm not deaf. Or stupid. Despite appearances."

Domicia winces.

FUCK.

Well, Tollee didn't say anything anti-Auralius, that she remembers.

"Hi, Auralius," she says without missing a beat. "I'm Tollee, I'm from not-Chesinea, I may be staying here for a while, and I'm looking for someone to tell me random arbitrary facts about magic in exchange for me doing whatever work a ferryshaft, of which I am one, can best do. Any chance you like this deal?"

She can smell smoke rising from her brain, she's pretty sure.

"You," he says, "should be careful what you wish for.

When I am finished with this bowl of noodles I am going to ask you so many questions; I expect I will intersperse them with random arbitrary facts about magic if that's what will secure your cooperation."

Domicia does not look at all happy about this situation. Not least because it's not clear that Auralius has slept for a week either, and he has a disturbingly manic look around the eyes.

"Deal."

Domicia is pretty sure that Auralius should not, in fact, be making deals with strange creatures in this state, especially not when they make facial expressions like that about it, but also she's not exactly about to stop him; there's a reason she's not one of the magi and today has been Firmly Above Her Pay Grade.

Hopefully Aelea, or whoever she dredges up, will sort it out. Especially if who she dredges up is Auralius' wife, the one person who can kind of talk sense into him occasionally.

Auralius finishes his meal extremely quickly; generally this would have been inadvisable after starving for a week, but he seems to cope with it just fine.

"I'm sure you've given this to someone already or you wouldn't be here, but quick summary of who you are, where you came from, your intentions? The colour green is often associated with the Spring realm because of its predominance in plants and appearance in Briars."

"I'm from Lidian, that's an island you can reach from here through the Sea Between Worlds, we have various intelligent species, some history with humans but they're gone now, and I'm - I'm looking for opportunities for my species to exchange advantages with humans such that both peoples benefit." That - really doesn't sound like enough - 

"Er, my sincere apologies to both of you, but, Domicia, he's not on a lower clearance level or something, right, I can tell him what I told the patrolling party?"

Domicia just about holds back a disbelieving laugh, although it's somewhat evident on her face. "He outranks basically everyone who isn't the Arbiter and I'm not even sure about that, tell him whatever you feel like."

"What are your species' advantages, and how do you reach the Sea Between Worlds? The Summer realm is not all warm, nor is the Winter realm all cold; for instance, the icy mountains of Cathan Canae's domain are of Summer."

Tollee should have seen this coming ah well even though she didn't evaluate this far ahead before making her decision it's still worth it

but what to do, what to say

well, Auralius didn't swear her to tell everything she knew, just to answer his questions

"The humans used to ride us, we're smart and fast and able to handle difficult terrain although not as well as a cliff sheep, and I think we helped with hunting, too.

My friend brought me here, we have an allied species that can travel the Sea" - please don't let her be revealing this too early and to the exact wrong person - "but we ourselves don't accompany them, ever, really, my being here is wildly out of the ordinary and for all I know this is the first time any member of my species has ever left Lidian.

To answer your question about my purpose here, my people have been in a state of subjugation under another species for the last few generations - puppet leader, yearly population culls, enforced illiteracy and ignorance - and I'm offering our help on behalf of us to whoever wants to help us re-attain independence."

What did he say? Summer Realm not all cold, Winter not all warm, she'll remember that, that's strange. And before that, Spring green. Got it.