He twitches in alarm, then soothes himself and smiles and waves widely when the door opens.

A vaguely humanoid creature, with great silver-and-rainbow butterfly wings, and a golden slightly insectoid face - with purple shadows at subtly wrong angles, and a dark symbol burnt into her forehead - strides through the door, and then stops immediately in surprise.

This abandoned building is... full of friendly people? Warm and inviting? Decorated for a winter festival?

Did she just die and not realise it?

She looks behind her - no, that's a perfectly normal stretch of burnt-out forest.

Oh well. It wasn't a very interesting stretch of burnt-out forest, and nobody is trying to kill her straight off.

She closes the door politely behind her, in case this is some kind of shielded dome, although nobody is shouting at her to do that.

"Greetings," she says to the waving person, somewhat imperiously. "Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?"

"I am Binder Nico, the binder of Whitecliff demesne. Though Milliways, this place, is not my demesne - it's a wonder, somewhere entirely separate, and welcome to all. Welcome, you look like you need the break! What interesting person have I met here?"

"I am Apharanta," she replies.

Hmm. He looks human, but humans get everywhere these days. Binder isn't a title she recognises, but 'the binder of Whitecliff demense' could be 'the builder-theurge responsible for the magical defences at Whitecliff'. That and his general demeanour, and the likelihood of Whitecliff being a coastal settlement, kind of suggest Known World forces, but appearances can be deceptive. She'll wait and see if she can get him to offer a little more information before deciding which set of allegiances to claim.

"Welcome to all?" she enquires, just so she doesn't come across as completely impolite.

He looks at her inquisitively, then chuckles. "Milliways is a liminal place. Connected to everywhere, at times. Let me guess that iridescence, dragonstorms, and the use of beads of crystal magic as a currency are unfamiliar? No, I've found my world isn't much like the others. But come, apparently it's a holiday. Peace and joy to all." He spreads his arms wide. "And the bar is a person, and offering free drinks."

"I have, at times, been known as the Iridescent Butterfly," replies Apharanta. "And we do have mana crystals, although not exactly in such profusion as to constitute a practical currency. And I can imagine someone calling the great magical storms 'dragonstorms'.

Perhaps this will be more revealing - by what names do you know the gods, and how many do you recognise?"

She doesn't usually just ask straight out - it's not great for the general sense of mystique and angelic all-knowing-ness - but this is not exactly a usual situation.

If this last gambit doesn't work out, well, at least it seems like she can score a free drink. It's not like she needs to eat or drink, but she has rather missed it.

"Ah, well that depends on who you ask, no? Some worship the four magics. The whisperer, the deadspeaker, the horotract, and the mentalist. Some worship the dungeons. Some worship the dragons, or think the iridescence is a god. Some have weirder ideas like Treehold's insistence that all the living things of the world collectively form a god called Gaia, like the cells of her body. I don't do any of that."

She takes a moment to think. So the four magics, that sounds like - theurge, necromancer, sorcerer, herbalist. And they've got dryads. But no actual contact with the gods.

Oh well. Taking people at face value has always worked out terribly for her, but that doesn't mean she's figured out any alternative strategies. Probably she actually can't. It's not that bad a trade for being immortal, she supposes.

"That sounds like you have no contact with the gods at all," she replies. "Neither the pantheon led by the Weaver - the Teacher, the Smith, the Huntress, the Merchant - nor that of the New World - the Serpent, the Ant, the Basilisk, the Jaguar, the Coyote.

I am their angel," deliberately ambiguous, she hasn't spoken to everyone in the room yet and she doesn't know who's overhearing her, "and I can teach you to pray, if you like, although I am not currently blessed to initiate.

Assuming you have a soul, they should hear you; it sounds like you have theurges, necromancy and dryads, so it seems likely that you do."

"You are correct that we have no contact with your gods. As I said, milliways connects different worlds, some wildly different. I would hesitate to compare things directly. 'Theurge' is translating strangely, and we don't have any plant women unless a deadspeaker has a specific fetish... Which they might, come to think. I will decline to learn prayer at this time, though perhaps you should sit down, have a drink, and tell me more."

She nods, and glances at the bar. It appears somewhat deserted.

"How does one go about claiming one's free drinks?" she asks. "And are there any limitations? Given the surroundings, I must confess that I am daydreaming of hot chocolate with warm winter spices..."

A napkin suddenly appears on the bar. Along with a steaming mug of hot chocolate.

Well, that's - one way of doing it, she supposes!

Her estimation that this is in fact actually some kind of bizarre Maelstrom pocket to which she has been transported as, probably, some kind of practical joke has markedly increased... but that does look like some good hot chocolate.

She touches the handle of the mug very gingerly to check its temperature, then leans her halberd against the wall - it's not exactly a practical weapon in these close quarters anyway - and picks up the napkin in her other hand in case she feels the need to steady the drink before it's cooled down.

The nakpin has writing on it.

Welcome to Milliways. Enjoy this on the house, and do note that violence is forbidden outside of private rooms. I assure you that our Security is highly effective. I hope you enjoy the holiday!

The handle is cool, though the drink is warm and smells wonderful.

That... no. She is going to sit down. And have a nice drink. And talk to the nice person. And... probably not talk too much more religion, unless someone asks.

She looks around for a backless seat that isn't going to interfere too much with the wings. She is absolutely not in the mood to take the wings off right now.

There are backless barstools!

"So, you're an angel? How does that work?"

"I am sent by the gods to do their bidding in the world. We were created at the beginning of all things, and -" she breaks off for a moment, closes her eyes for a second or two. "And most of us will see the end of them," she finishes, slightly more uncertainly.

She blows on the surface of the drink, tests the temperature with a gentle touch, then blows on it again. The aroma is lovely, but she doesn't know how long this body has to last, and it would be a terrible pity to burn her mouth just now.

"Oh, agelessness. Lovely. Rare and coveted perk for us, that is. Of course, it means that Dungeon Binders tend to die by violence..."

"Yes, what is a Binder? I had assumed some kind of theurge-builder, as you have a demesne, but 'dungeon' appears to be doing rather a lot more work as a word than I'd generally expect..."

"So, demesnes form around cores. They protect from iridation, making it safe for human life. The area of a demesne is centered on that core, and it must be protected. Furthermore, it's a sphere, so most of that area is sky or rock. Sky, you can build up into. Rock, you can dig down into, and people do, extensively. Helped by the fact that a dungeon binder - the one who owns the core - has effectively infinite magical power within their demesne and can shift tons of rock with a thought, if they know whispering. Lots of underground construction, safe and sturdy shelter from dragons. Thus, dungeons, dungeon binders."

"But - do you build the core yourself, or do you just - find one that someone else created?"

Sounds a lot like a Dome of the Maelstrom, with advanced sorcery to reshape the rock, and advanced theurgy to let them tap into more of the power... and apparently dragons are a problem, again?

Everything certainly lines up for 'this person is from the future' - if he wasn't human, she'd also be tempted by the hypothesis 'deeper into the continent', but she's fairly sure humans couldn't have got so far to have this level of magic be normal to them.

"You build the core, yes. Or find one whose binder died. Or murder a binder for one."

"I think we call these things 'domes of the Maelstrom'," explains Apharanta. "They're relatively new to - where I just came from, but I know further into the continent they've had magic for longer." Or in the future, she does not say. "They start off as just a shield against external magic, but there's no reason you couldn't unlock the full power of - well, of here. A Maelstrom pocket, where you can create anything you can imagine.

At least, I'm assuming from the magically appearing hot chocolate and other convenient properties of the location."

"Once again, this is milliways, not my demesne. I-"

Whatever. Not worth arguing about.

"Whatever. Not worth arguing about. Being a Dungeon Binder is a very good gig, though Whitecliff as a whole is still fairly tenuous. Were you stuck in this 'maelstrom'?"

"Oh, yes, I was assuming that this was someone else's pocket." Certainly not speculating about whose pocket or who might have decided to scoop her up from the middle of nowhere. If she doesn't have any expectations, she can't be disappointed.

"Define 'stuck'. I haven't been actually stuck for a while, although there was a little while there where everything was somewhat - out of balance." Phew, just about avoided making it clear she's here by the grace of the Weaver. A lot of the gods have some kind of concern about some kind of balance, and the Weaver doesn't mind her lying to people as long as it's funny useful to Her ends.

"'Maelstrom' denotes several quite different phenomena, albeit related, so I suppose I should be clear about the distinctions.

There are the great storms in the midst of the ocean, which separate the continents of the world, which did briefly have a traversable gap but now, I believe, are quite closed once more.

Then there is the world beyond the world, which is what I will normally be referring to when I use the word, especially regarding 'pockets' or 'domes'.

Neither of which are where I directly entered this place from, which was an unremarkable stretch of countryside in the Southern Continent - save that it had recently been visited by the magma kraken."

"Stuck- Be or remain in a specified place or situation, typically one perceived as tedious or unpleasant. Oh, magma kraken, that sounds like a singularly unpleasant dragon. Lots of fun magic in your world, it sounds like. For all that binders are able to use all four kinds of magic, actually doing so has proven... Let's say 'unintuitive'. Born a whisperer, still barely enough deadspeaking to seal up scrapes and cuts."

"I sometimes remain in various pockets of the Maelstrom if nothing is urgently requiring my attention," although not nearly as much as some of those slackers, she definitely doesn't say, given who might be running the place.

Okay, necromancy and deadspeaking, not quite the same, unless the targets of his ministrations are all undead. Or maybe it's an advanced technique, but if whispering is sorcery, it should have been easier for him to pick up sorcerous healing.

"I wouldn't classify a magma kraken as a dragon - to me, a dragon is a particular species of sentient being, probably mutated from Ophidian stock from overuse of herb lore many centuries ago - whereas a magma kraken is a sorcerous phenomenon that devastates an area."

Probably best not to talk about necromancy too much. You never know who's going to be extra touchy about it or start ratting her out to the gods for even daring to mention it. If it's not the same thing, no need to invite trouble by bringing it up.

"Oh, no. To me, dragons are titanic living storms of magic that fly across the world as they please, leaving all sorts of chaos and ruin in their wake. A dragon encounter is a natural disaster, not a meeting with a hostile enemy. Rain of stones and fire and acid, transmuted materials, poisoned air, twisted abominations, incorporeal horrors. You name it, a dragon can unleash it on an unsuspecting or unprepared demesne."

"Ah. That sounds a lot more like the Maelstrom - the storm version, although essentially it is an incursion - a bleed - between the world beyond and the physical realm.

Perhaps there are roaming shards of it elsewhere." Or elsewhen - perhaps when it finally breaks down entirely, parts of it go wandering.

"You also mentioned iridescence as a significant phenomenon. My understanding of it is only as a method of producing colour from light." She ruffles her wings slightly; the outer side displays this property in a shimmering rainbow.

"A bleed between worlds, hmm? Perhaps that's where magic ultimately comes from for us - though that's about the biggest unanswered question of all, where magic comes from. Harmless, pretty colors, no? No. Everywhere, as far as we can tell, outside of a demesne, everything accumulates iridescence, crystallized magic in highly colorful reflections. Practically anything other than water and glass will serve as a seed for the growths. Some life has adapted to it, tolerating the pain of the colors burrowing into flesh and bone and brain, growing anyway despite all the strain. But not humans, no- It's deadly to us, and experiments forbidden. The exact mechanics and interactions are not really known, but travellers must contend with it, washing regularly and managing themselves and their possessions slowly becoming irridated, killing the flesh and breaking down anything else. Except glass. Which is exceptionally expensive."

"We're fairly sure exactly where magic came from," replies Apharanta. "Have you ever heard of a darkpowder mill? Or - pistols, muskets, cannon - weapons that take a black powder and use it to propel a metal ball at great speed?"

Magic just leaking out everywhere is definitely one of the possible failure states of the world. And, theoretically, one of the success states, but she's fairly sure that in that case it doesn't cause humans to die in searing agony.

"Not really. Chemical fires? That sounds like a phenomenally dangerous thing to do when much more convenient bound weapons are available. Including ways to fling things with whispering or mentalism if things absolutely must be flung."

Bound... weapons? Only one weapon talisman would work for a person at once, sure, but there was no real binding involved...

"What is a 'bound weapon'?" she asks. "We have talismanic weapons - imbued with magical powers - but what prevents more than one from simultaneous usage is interference, not 'binding'."

"Bound objects in general are magic items that accept beads to sustain their function." He pulls out a clear glassy sphere from a coat pocket and rolls it across the bar. "This looks like glass, but isn't. If I stick it into, say, a bound drill, and pull the trigger, the drill bit will turn rapidly and the bead will slowly be consumed to power it. There's different kinds of beads for different uses, but that's all technical details. The real trick is making beads from ambient magic power, which it turns out, yes, you do need to be a dungeon binder to do."

"Ah. We find that similar objects crystallise in what are called 'mana sites', or at least they did for a time - I believe nowadays only the current master of magic can cause them to coalesce, for as long as there is one.

It appears you have found a way around this involving local reality assertion powers."

Hmm. Perhaps a facet keyed to a dome around a mana site would be able to operate porphyritic spines installed on location. That is definitely worth letting someone know at the cathedral.

If she decides to return, that is. If she has the choice once more, she isn't sure yet which way she will choose.

"I have far too much work to do already or I'd be much more intensely curious about the strange magical traditions of a far-off world."

"Is it work that you can be helped with?" The remnant that had holed up in Draxholt were still there, but another attack and they would be gone; she'd been checking for potential sites they could lie low when the inevitable happened and the fortress was breached, but offering them something useful to do would be more likely to get them to leave in advance.

"Nothing major. Just keeping every major piece of infrastructure functional in Whitecliff. The ventilation system, the reservoir, the aqueduct, the underground farms, the desalination boiler, the lights, the hot water, five different complicated bindings for industry, the cold rooms, the bug-repellant, the ship engines, the backup ventilation system, the backup reservoir... I could go on. Oh, and people management though I do have Listra to help me with that. I complain, but I mostly chose this, brought it on myself really. Honestly, basic materials of various kinds would come in handy. Metal wire in particular would be wonderful. Though I'm told if you try to do bulk trading through milliways the landlords will get mad. More a place to meet interesting people and talk."

That doesn't sound like it could do with more people. A pity.

The... landlords. Hmm.

"Do you know anything else about the 'landlords'?" she finds herself saying, before she can stop it. There are twenty interesting things she could have asked about, but no, she has to pull on the thread that can get her in trouble.

"I don't know much more than what I've been told, which is what Bar has said on the matter. There are rules, hard ones like no violence in the bar and soft ones like not trying to use it as a market or cheat of some kind, and the landlords set the rules and control the door, and she doesn't know anything more about them than that the door tends to find interesting people."

'Interesting people', huh. Part of her wants to compete at being interesting people, and part of her wants to spite them by being the boringest person ever.

"Desalination - so Whitecliff is on the coast?" she settles on. She wishes she had someone here who could benefit from hearing about all the technical details of that infrastructure, but she knows that she's not going to retain it. "Does the door let other people out with you, if you open it to where you come from?"

"Yes, on the coast - or technically, a few taums upriver so that the edge of the demesne just reaches the coast. Seemed more efficient and less obvious to visitors, and a position of great potential if the frontier develops. And it was a beautiful spot. And the door does let you do that! If you wanted to immigrate - or visit, I suppose, since apparently people get repeat doors sometimes - I'd want to make sure you know what you're getting into and have some sort of useful skill first, mind."

"I don't know that I should. It's tempting to see new things, and the W... the gods would love it if I spread their reach to another world. But it's possible that I cannot, in fact, do that, and would simply be lost when my body expires, unable to reach back into the world without their help."

It's a fascinating and terrifying idea. She feels the moth in her drawn to the flame, once again. But she's not all that useful, without the guarantee of return, without there definitely being someone on the other end when she teaches them to pray.

"Hrmm. What do the gods do when you pray? Is it an economic transaction, a motion of fealty, just an ear to listen to your troubles...?"

"It's for information. People use it for all kinds of things, of course, but fundamentally, prayer is for passing information to the gods. It's possible for them to perceive the world directly if they want to, of course, but prayer helps draw their attention to things, to put them in context and explain them.

Also... angels cannot pray. You need a mortal soul to make the appropriate connection. Communication goes one way around the cycle - the mortals speak to the gods, the gods speak to the angels, the angels speak to the mortals.

Prayer is heard more readily when the mortal soul is initiated to the deity, but in exceptional circumstances they can also hear non-initiates."

"And here's the part where you tell me all the wonderful things they do for people and how they're so nice and also won't disrupt the existing balance of power and laws or start any wars or anything."

"You sound like you've had some bad experiences," replies Apharanta. "Does deadspeaking include actually raising people from the dead to serve as your undead minions? They tend to get a bit excitable about that kind of thing."

"I just know how people are. Deadspeaking can't preserve minds... At the very most, it can bring back basic instincts like grabbing or biting things. Though the most common uses are healing and bodyshaping and bloodshaping."

"Oh, I don't think they'd be worried about constructs, it's the part where it traps and degrades the soul that's the problem.

The gods are not very much like people, although obviously people make that mistake a lot. They're a lot more like... philosophies. Philosophies that have opinions and act on them, but still.

Some of those philosophies absolutely would upset an existing balance of power they disagreed with, or laws they considered unjust. What is your existing balance of power, and who keeps it? You did say that murdering a binder was one way of obtaining a core, which suggests everything is not exactly paradise..."

"The big demesnes on the old continent have whole libraries' worth of treaties and agreements and mutual defense pacts and fealty agreements from outlying binders, and there hasn't been a really big war, the kind that gives people titles like 'The Terrible', in a good couple centuries. Just some smaller binders pulling shit on each other. Though the discovery of the new world might be changing that. A whole continent, free for the taking, and not stuck in a hundred thousand ancient agreements to leave this or that valley unclaimed or allow trade through a pass for balance of power reasons. It's going to get messy in twenty, thirty years. Which is why I'm trying to build up Whitecliff."

"Oh - you have a New World?" There must be a million questions that are suitable here. And maybe some advice that would save them all the strife that the colonists have been through. "Do you know if it's already inhabited at all? Something very similar happened to us, just over a decade ago. I'm... sure there are lessons that could be learned from it.

...is it to the north, or the south?"

"People are learning as they go, yes. It's to the west, and uninhabited."

"You're sure about that? The first setters on the Southern Continent thought it was uninhabited too. Then they thought the locals were just like talking parrots. Neither of those things turned out to be accurate."

"Point even ignoring the fact that hardly any of the continent is known thus far. If there are any sentient beings that can tolerate the presence of iridescence I haven't heard of them. Nor of, say, any particularly cunning-seeming varieties of beasts or fursh or bugs."

"Yes, the settlers thought that about the high levels of magic in some places; it turned out that mana crystals sometimes gain sentience, as do talismantic rock formations, and some trees. Or possibly all trees, if you believe the dryads, and we're just not very good at communicating with the remainder."

"...Have you any suggestions for how we could check for such things in our world?"

"They would... hmm. Actually, if you aren't familiar with angels - or perhaps you call us eidolons? Then, how is it that you're speaking the Holy Language?"

"Oh, no, that's Milliways' doing. We don't have anything recognizable as gods or any magic that's not the same kind everyone can develop the potential for."

"How did you end up with language, then? We had to bring language as the first blessing. Is it possible you had contact with the gods a long time ago, and then lost contact? Language could have drifted after that - one of the things we do is prevent linguistic drift, so it might have set in if you've somehow fallen out of touch."

"I have no idea, but there are, indeed, dozens of languages and hundreds of dialects and more whenever people separate enough. Focus on the sounds I am making and you'll see. Tree. Grass. Whispering. Rock. Food."

"That's... immensely bizarre," replies the angel. "I feel like I should be trying to correct your pronunciation, and also like I have no idea where to even start!

That's going to make it harder to identify if anything speaks, I suppose - that's what should have given it away to us, everything that speaks has a soul."

Oops, 'us' kind of lets the cat out of the bag about what side she came from. It probably doesn't matter, though, if everyone here is from some weird distant place rather than in the middle of a huge, intense war over the remains of the continent.

"The problem they had is that they were looking for material civilisation - cities, ships, that kind of thing - but the place they landed was mostly inhabited by nomadic tribes and people who dug into the hills and mountains, not city-builders. And then they made the mistake of underestimating them, which also didn't work out really well for anyone."