So he says.

One of the featherheads raises a hand. "Yes, he does sparkle."

She raises an eyebrow. "I was not, in fact, doubting it, but how do you know?"

"I can sense mineral structures. He is kinda crystalline in nature."

"I see."

"I understand you're sceptical?"

"The thought has crossed my mind that this is rather unlikely."

He nods. "I can open you doors to other worlds if that would help—but now that I think about it it's actually not unlikely you'll be unable to see anything there, if you've evolved to perceive magic rather than light."

"Convenient."

We could test anyway and if it fails, someone could try to rig some special sort of perception magic.

"Ker Ullak should do it."

As long he shares how it works so we can be sure this is not an elaborate ruse. There might be a touch of irony in the message.

"Commendable paranoia," she says without a hint of sarcasm.

Anyway, the immediate plan is to share a lot about galactic culture with Sparkles so he knows how to best help us.

"I could leave a door to another world open so Ker Ullak can do their thing while I do mine."

"Temperance is going to want to... I am pretty sure she is going to want to take a look at all of the magic everything you have, but I suppose she could work on something else while Ker Ullak works on the door."

And Lord is going to want biological samples. I suppose there is no harm in parallelizing some of the simpler things.

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna go fetch Temperance."

Temperance's reaction to hearing the news is just about as excited as one might expect.

"He's very, extremely depressing, though," Sadde warns.

"Okay? I will try not to bounce... for that and for general reasons."

She does have a spring in her step though.

When they get there, Sparkles is reading a book and talking to two people at the same time about different things. He looks up at the newcomers and smiles, but doesn't miss what's being said by whom nor where he is in the book.

A glasswinged butterfly pokes out of his hair and moves its wings in a rather expressive gesture reminiscent of a nod.

And both the Captain and a small humanoid with absolutely no hair whatsoever and mole-like eyes—the dwarf, Ker Ullak—are staring intently at a human-sized rectangle of pure and complete blackness, still in the air like a door into oblivion. Every now and then, the Ker does something with one of the several runes he's drawn on the floor and a momentary echo of light is visible through the door, but it's too quick for them to actually see anything.

Temperance asks if they have tried different non-perception magics through the door (might or might not yield results that are relevant to their investigation, but it would be interesting to know regardless). That said she is more curious about extradimensional magic systems and sorcery in particular.

Lord also shows up and ask for biological samples of various things (plants mostly, to see if they adapt to the local environment.)