He looks down at his feet. "One of the features of my species is a form of—magical love, called mating. If a vampire ever lays eyes on someone they're mutually romantically compatible with, and the mutually is important, then they're in irrevocable hypermonogamous love with them, forever. If the other person is a vampire or is turned into one—and humans, at least my kind, can be turned into vampires—then this relationship is symmetrical. And it also happens that if a vampire sees multiple people that fit the criterion, simultaneously, then they mate on all of them. I mated on alts of the three of you, and an alt of myself, and someone named Katur."

He closes his eyes. "And then our worlds got separated. And I have not seen them in hundreds of years, although time has probably passed differently for them."

Felix hugs Sadde again, tighter. You got here somehow. Are you capable of finding them? Maybe there is something the local magic can do.

"Maybe. I can find them using a magic aura I have, which shows me where to open a door to the next universe. ...something tells me the fact that I've found alts here means I'm close, and that makes me want to skip to the next world already but that wouldn't—wouldn't be—right—"

Meanwhile the other Sadde has finished working out the implications of what Sadde's just said. He opens his mouth to say something, thinks better of it...

"That probably means you and these three would work out together, yes, and it also means I'm not going to—do anything that way, with any of you."

We had strong suspicions of our compatibility within the hour of first meeting Sadde. We should continue the explanation, the faster we get over with it, the faster we will know what to do. Even if we can't help you, it sounded like you wouldn't continue your journey until you shared resources with us.

"Wait, what? And you never told me?"

"If you had a daemon we would be able to pursue this parallel thread of discussion."

He nods, but continues: "I got stranded in my world due to a portal mishap. I spent several years there. Then I found this key." And he shows them the small key he used. "It opens doors to other worlds. So I started looking. And... I've been looking for a long, long time. As of the time I arrived here, you all should be able to use a new type of magic called sorcery, although it might interact oddly with how you all do biology, it doesn't seem to be the same way I do it. I have a couple of other trinkets, but this is the main thing."

Things have been busy and complicated. And we have absolutely no romantic experience. ...We had decided to wait for a couple of days after arriving here, Felix tells their Sadde.

Do you know if there is a safe way to test if sorcery still works? What other trinkets?

"Uh... How does the key work? Y-you obviously can't just pick your mates' world, but maybe we could use it to go somewhere else here? We have people to free..."

I don't have a ton of romantic experience, either! I have, like, two romantic experience.

"The key only opens doors to other worlds. It's one-way only, in the sense that while the door is open anyone can go from either world to the other but once it's closed it can only be reopened from the world I came from. Each location in space is associated with a world, and it took me decades to understand how to translate the small differences between how different locations feel to things like 'this world contains life' and 'this world is full of lava.'

"As for other trinkets, there's my ring of translation, a bag that's bigger on the inside which I made and which contains dust that when exposed to sunlight coalesces into magic rocks you can wish on, a few books, a couple of other less useful magical artefacts. As for sorcery—I'm not sure there's a thoroughly safe way to test it, if your biology is sufficiently different casting a spell could mess with it in unpredictable ways, but that said I don't expect that to happen."

(Well, it couldn't be that easy.)

"If you need a volunteer, you have one."

Part of the reason we decided to wait, is that currently your faction is dependent on ours to survive. We were hoping that in a few days we could've established the colony well enough that the associated power dynamics wouldn't be a problem or at least less of one.

Thank you for the offer, Henry. But Lord might figure out sorcery without putting anyone in danger. How does the wishing work?

You should know that we are currently on the run from a galactic government. The plan is to colonize the planet below us.

I guess that makes sense, he sends dubiously. Anyway, enough sidetracking.

"Larger rocks can have larger effects. You hold it, and it must be touching your skin but nothing more, and you make your wish. If it fits in the rock, it turns to dust and your wish is granted. The bag was made with it. It can't do anything interdimensionally, and it can alter properties of things or create things, but not grant literally any wishes.

"I expect if you're fleeing from a government it's probably not a very nice one."

The Federation is reportedly tolerable according to the people that live in it, but forbids several kinds of research, controls trade routes and has an iron grip on everything. The problem is that a spaceship accidentally stumbled upon a planet that was home to an ancient, powerful and possibly dead civilization with kinds of magic previously unknown to the current Galaxy civilization. The Federation could not be trusted with that kind of power, so the spaceship decided to mutiny and set up a colony there. Our Sadde and a man named Isra - who was born in this station - were in that spaceship. However, they were betrayed and the Federation managed to sneak up on them, and many including Isra were captured. They managed to create a portal and evacuate to this station. We then made some further preparations and then moved the station to this star system.

Also, separately, this station was initially founded by an apocalyptic cult. They had the plan to create a race "pure" from evil and then they would kill the "corrupt" people from their planet by creating a mass extinction event. They hired a human man called Lord that was secretly the greatest biological expert in all known history and who had been alive for centuries. He liked the challenge of creating people like the cult wanted and took it. Then said people rebelled against the original cult and took over the station because they opposed to the idea of genocide, putting Lord in charge. We were also his creations; our function is to lead and we are just too proactive to let Lord live alone in the peace and quiet he wanted, so he kept us dormant until Sadde and his group came knocking. Lord decided the tradeoffs were such that it was better to he wake us up and put us in charge.

"We sure do seem to lead interesting lives. What's your plan now?"

"Colonise this planet, build a resource base, rescue the people captured, become an independent polity other people can join if they so desire."

"...well I can help at least with the first three things."