Rrrgh learning Sanskrit is frustrating. Lucia isn’t going to whine about it, she’s not that obliviously petty, but she isn’t above pouting about it to herself in her room at night. 

She stands up and asks for the void for… something. Nobody ever gets translation magic or, like, time dilation to be able to study more, but MAYBE that’s just because it would cost way too much mana, and she can cheat at that. 

She wasn’t actually expecting that to work, but here she has this peculiar verse.

She might as well try it. She recited the poem and opens her door.

There is a boy there in the middle of trying to order a root beer float by speaking loudly and clearly like he fears the absent bartender might be hard of hearing due to not existing. "- SAID THE FIRST DRINK IS FREE. I WOULD LIKE A ROOT BEER FLOAT PLEASE. WITH BOBA IN IT WHICH MIGHT BE AWFUL BUT IT SOUNDS GOOD RIGHT NOW."

The root beer boba float appears complete with boba straw. He sips it contentedly. He's not really watching his six.

THAT GUY IS THE SHINIEST THING SHE HAS EVER SEEN, WHAT THE FUCK. 

On the other hand, he is, like, talking, and El is shiny, so there's no reason to start by drawing her sword on him. 

She will saunter cautiously over, Sanskrit textbook tucked against her side. 

"...Hi." 

"Hi." Wow, she's shiny. Why is she shiny. "Why are you shiny?"

"...You can see it?" 

"Uh. Kind of? Not exactly? Y'know what never mind."

"--No, I mean--I know it's not seeing exactly--you're shiny too." 

"Oh, uh, thanks!" Slurp.

"I'm shiny because I'm probably part mal, and my best friend is shiny probably because she's a prophesied dark sorceress, but I have no idea why you're shiny." 

"How do you be part mal?"

"Well, I don't know exactly, but my dad's a creepy maleficer and when I kill things I get their mana, and two plus two equals four." 

"Oh. I do that too but without my dad being a creepy maleficer."

"You--do? Uh--shit, if my dad has, like, side projects, that's--important, actually--I'm Lucia. By the way."

"I'm Orion."

What does she even say next. 

"...So how does the free drink work, exactly."

"Well, I just walked up to the bar and said what I wanted. I said it kind of loud but I don't know if that was important."

"Man, what do I want..." she walks up to the bar and taps her foot. "...Something strawberry-banana? I guess?" 

A smoothie appears!

"Wow." She picks up the smoothie and sips it. ...She likes it better in the Scholomance than just about anyone else, but, also, the food is shit and this is really good. 

"It is very nice to taste real food." 

"I know, right? This spell is great. Except the first drink is the only free one I think so I guess it could get expensive."

"--Why would you not have real food." She knows every name in the Scholomance and there is not an Orion. Also she would have noticed another shiny hyperpredator!

"...'cause they don't serve it in the Scholomance? But also I dunno where you'd get root bear floats with boba and it turns out those are awesome." Slurp chew chew.

"You can't be in the Scholomance, I'd've seen you from across the school you're so shiny." 

"Oh. Y'know, that's a good point, I'm lousy with faces but I'd probably remember you. I'm in the Scholomance though."

"I'm not good at faces either but I made flashcards with everybody's names on 'em and there's no 'Orion.' There cannot be two Scholomances, Shanghai hasn't even done their own yet and you're white."

"Last I checked, yeah. Weird."

"And you're...absolutely sure your dad is not a maleficer." 

"I dunno what you expect me to have tried to check!"

"Well--I dunno, I can't remember not knowing my dad was, I don't remember how I found out. And it's not that it's public knowledge, that'd be awkward, he's in line to be Dominus of New York." 

"My mom is in line to be the Domina of New York?"

"What's your mom's name?"

"O...phelia...? Why does that matter."

"My dad's name is Oleander Rhys, I was wondering if they, like, matched somehow."

"I guess the last name matches. She hyphenated though."

"My parents hyphenated my name but they each kept their own. Oleander Rhys, Lavinia Walsh, Lucia Walsh-Rhys." 

"Huh. My last name's just Lake."

A suspicious frown enters the bar.

Lucia turns and sizes up the extreme shininess that the frown is attached to. 

"Are you the mal-eating child of the dominsomething-to-be of New York too?"

She opens her mouth.

She closes her mouth.

She does that a couple more times.

"The fuck?????????"

"I'll be honest that's sort of where I'm at too." She siiiiiiiips her free drink. 

"And yet, whatever's going on here, you decided you trust its beverages??"

"It is not blatantly part of a mal which gives it a leg up on some things I tried to put in my mouth when I was three." 

She gives this argument due consideration.

"...okay, I see your point. Fine. I'm not drinking the space wedgie juice, though."

"Suit yourself. You didn't answer my question earlier, and now I'm curious--Ophelia Rhys, Oleander Rhys, other, or I should fuck off and mind my own business." 

"Ophelia Rhys, I, guess??? Are you saying you're my secret long-lost sister with the same fucked-up powers, because, that would be wild, but it doesn't explain the Oleander so actually I think I still have no idea what the fuck is happening,,,"

"So, my parents are Oleander Rhys and Lavinia Walsh, his parents are Ophelia Rhys and some dude with the surname Lake presumably. --I'm Lucia Walsh-Rhys and he's Orion Lake, and should I be making flashcards about all this?" 

"Balthasar Lake. I'm pretty sure I don't have a sister."

"...yeah, Balthasar Lake. And I'm Atalanta. Five minutes ago I was also pretty sure I didn't have a sister but there's a lot happening right now. Why are the options 'me', 'me but my dad is a boy', and 'me but... I... am a boy'???"

A fourth shiny person opens the door and walks into the bar.

Said shiny person immediately unsheathes a short metal rod from where it was attached to a harness under his shirt and shakes it, which causes it to extend into a light saber that he raises up to a defensive position while he scans the... bar... ???? and tries to assess the threat.

"...it's just us, uh, shinies, in here," says Orion to the new person.

"Two! Two Me But Boys!!!" says Atalanta, throwing up her hands, though she's careful to keep the gesture slow and nonthreatening.

"--Is that a lightsaber? Why are you not simply using a regular enchanted sword, that cannot be mana-efficient--"

"What the fuck," he says, slowly, enunciating each syllable precisely. He straightens up and unlightsabers.

"Well I dunno why you're all here but I told the void I had the munchies and it got me a spell to come here and so far that's working fine." He toasts with the root beer boba float.

"'What the fuck' was also my question! Hi, I'm Atalanta. And that's Lucia and that's Orion. Lucia, you can be in charge of explaining the Parents Situation."

"So, of the three of us who were here before you, my dad is named Oleander Rhys, and their moms are named Ophelia Rhys, and also they have a dad named Balthazar Lake, who has as far as I can tell no connection to my mom who is Lavinia Walsh. If you are also a Walsh-Rhys this will balance things out somewhat but, like, no pressure." 

"...no, Mother is Ophelia Rhys-Lake and my dad is Balthasar Lake. Once more: what the fuck."

"Wait, if you have the same parents as me and her why are you black."

"That was also a question I had but I wasn't just gonna come out and say it."

"One, dad is black and Magistra Rhys is white, two, if I had siblings I am pretty sure I would have heard of them, three, once again, what the fuck!!! Is there literally any context, here, where are you guys from, what happened, how are you here, how am I here, et cetera?"

"From the Scholomance. Did a spell to make the door lead to here. My dad isn't black..."

"Mine either!!"

"I also did a spell." And her mom is white but her mom's name isn't Lake so this is slightly irrelevant. 

"—was it a spell that mentioned, uh, stars, and drinks, and stuff? Like a short kind of ominous poem?"

"It didn't seem that ominous but yeah. Stars. Drinks." Another toast-gesture.

"...mine too," says Atalanta, very grudgingly.

"So, Orion had the munchies, I wanted more time to study Sanskrit, what were you two looking for?"

"I did not cast it. The void gave it to me and it had no explanation for it and I didn't cast it. I am feeling somewhat put upon." He finally resheathes the metal bar that used to be a lightsaber and makes his way to the bar, looking around more carefully.

Welcome to Milliways.

"Wow, if this woulda happened without casting it I should've dumped the mana instead of keeping it."

"Meh, it wasn't that expensive, we can always get more. Anyway, there's only so many places to dump it. Uh did that napkin just appear out of nowhere?" 

"It super did!"

"Do you not just dump it in the enclave sink?" Orion asks Lucia blankly. "Did you manage to overflow it or something?"

"Napkin says 'Welcome to Milliways'," Scorpius says, peering at it. "Uh, thank... you? —also I never introduced myself, did I, I'm Scorpius. Uh, Lake. Scorpius Lake."

"--I haven't been dumping all my mana in the enclave sink since sophomore year when I found out the freshmen were getting out of the habit of mana-building." 

You're welcome. Can I get you anything to drink?

"Oh, okay?" says Orion, confused.

Atalanta frowns suspiciously at the napkins.

New napkin! Okay, new napkin, uh. "...napkins are talking to us." Peer. "Talking to me I guess? Uh, no, thank you, source of napkins. Do you have insight to offer on what the hell is happening here and why it's a comic book premise?"

"Plus I threw my power-sharer in Tebow's face two days ago and formally quit New York the next morning, after he tried to murder my best friend." 

This is an interdimensional bar. In the typical case you will upon exiting return to the time and place whence you entered. I don't have any special guesses as to why the door appeared to the four of you in this way.

"Totally comic book premise. I also have a Tebow who is a doorknob and who tried to murder one of my best friends! Napkin says this is an interdimensional bar and that upon exiting we will return to the time and place whence you entered. Now, source of napkins, when you say time...?"

(Quietly, half to herself, "You guys have friends?")

("I don't know, how do I tell if I have friends?")

"I have friends!" Bounce bounce. "I have an alliance! Made of people who are not from New York but who treat me like a person and not a saint!"

Typically patrons observe that time does not pass in their universes of origin while they are here.

"Four Scorpiuses walk into a bar..." he murmurs, and then, more loudly, "Napkin says time is paused where we're from so we're very firmly in comic book territory instead of whatever genre we were in before."

"Well, that'll certainly give me the study time I asked for." 

"What does that... mean. The comic book thing."

"Comic books occasionally have absurd plots like alternate universe versions of the same characters meeting in implausible circumstances. Whatever this is, it's not... the same kind of magic we're used to. I'm used to. And I make flippant references to fiction as a coping mechanism."

"A man after my own heart," Atalanta mutters.

"...Do you two read a lot of fiction?" 

"Not since joining the Scholomance."

Atalanta crosses her arms grumpily and doesn't answer.

"My special interests are murder, altruism, and friendship, and fiction doesn't usually scratch any of those itches for me. It's an interesting data point." 

"I do not think I could be described as having special interests but to the extent I can narratives and aesthetics would in themselves be two of them."

"Altruism? Really?"

"Is your objection of a form answered by 'I can afford to' or 'people dying is bad.'"

"Why are you like this?? Why is this a way I can be like???"

...Scorpius feels like there is a landmine somewhere here and he does not know any of these people well enough to guess accurately where it would be. "I think given that I'm black it would probably not be right to say that any of us is a way another of us can be. Exactly."

"It could totally be a Walsh thing, my mom is pretty excellent? She brought me agglos and paralyzed amphisbaena when I was a baby who longed for nothing but violence." 

"Is it really violence if they're paralyzed."

"If they start out paralyzed but in one piece, and end up the consistency of chunky salsa, it's totally violence." 

Heeee does not feel like this is going to make Atalanta very happy. How about he engage with the object level to move away from the Implications™. "My dad wasn't like that at all. He and Magistra Rhys kept trying to make me not kill every mal I saw. It didn't work, but they tried."

('Chunky salsa' gets a mild snort of amusement out of her, at least.)

"Mine mostly wanted me to do... other things? Not 'not kill mals' more 'yes watch Disney movies with Chloe' or whatever."

"My dad was all 'please have a normal childhood' and my mom was like 'my priorities are my kid being safe and happy, and I do not care if she wants to finger-paint with their blood after they're dead if it accomplishes those goals.' --Dad was, like, an amount, appeased by 'laser tag with the other enclave kids,' which was sufficiently weapons-training-adjacent to interest me."

"Huh, we were gonna try that once but I think something went after Julia and then we all went home instead."

"Julia? I don't think I have a Julia."

"I definitely don't have a Julia." 

It's great how when these guys go around the circle sharing their life stories Atalanta can just stand here with her arms folded and not contribute.

...that said, "Doesn't ring a bell for me either."

He'd ask if Julia was a boy instead in theirs but he is abruptly blanking on her last name. It is definitely not "Julia, You Know, From New York", even though that is what he'd say if somebody asked him which Julia. He can't remember her parents' names either. Or their faces. He does remember her sister's name. He remembers the first half of her sister's name, actually. It's Anna-something. Annamaria or Annabella or Annalisa or something. No, Annalisa's some indie kid, right? The one who looks violently enraged whenever he spots her in the language lab studying French. ...none of this matters to the situation at hand. He finishes his float.

"So, while we're talking about our Magisters Rhys, mine is definitely an evil maleficer, Orion is under the impression his is not, where are you on that?"

Oh my god you can't just TELL people your PARENT is an EVIL MALEFICER no good would come of saying this out loud with her mouth parts.

"...if I were to guess which of my parents is an evil maleficer I'd have said Magistra Rhys but I don't think I'd have said either of them is one?"

What the fuck.

"Because the obvious answer for why we get mana from stuff and now why we're all shiny is that we're part mal, right, and I figure if I'm right then you guys, uh, deserve to know." 

"...I don't think that's obvious at all! That's not a thing! How would that be a thing!"

"It's just my affinity, affinities are weird!"

"Evil maleficing! Presumably! Admittedly it is almost certainly less obvious if you don't know your Rhys is an evil maleficer. Or, like, if they're not. It's possible they're not, especially if I'm wrong about what's up with us. Orion could be right, El's shiny and a little OP and she, like, the opposite of has a maleficer parent." 

"I have one of those!"

"Oh awesome! She's great! She--okay I should not spill her personal business all over someone who knows another one of her, she'd've been so pissed if I knew stuff about her before she told me, but she's so cool, she called me Santa Lucia to my face when everyone else just calls me that behind my back, and she did it sarcastically, and she's just, so unimpressed, with everyone's bullshit." 

"Santa? The presents and Coke guy?"

"It actually just means saint but we did make presents and coke--well, just presents--related jokes about it later." 

"I don't think anybody does that about me... but yeah I have one and she's neat."

"I don't think I have an El but 'sarcastic, shiny, definitely not a mal' describes my Yvette...?"

"No El here either," she volunteers. "And no Yvette, I don't think, and definitely no 'my'."

He cracks a smile. "I just meant she's from my world. There's not any other meaning for 'my', uh, yet. Technically."

"Uh-huh."

"I am probably closer to dating her boyfriend than I am her," he says thoughtfully.

"Is her last name Higgins?"

"No, Villeneuve."

"Well mine isn't Lake so that's not a deal-breaker, clearly, but it does mean I can't just go 'ah, yes, clearly.' Is she...incorrectly rumored to be a maleficer?"

"Oh, yes. She's strict mana but has an aura of doom and New York thought she was maleficing me or something. At least Chloe and Jermaine apologized."

"Well of course they did, she's a social lever on the mal-slaying wunderkind." Bitter snort. 

"I... kind of understand why they did. Think she was maleficing me. They could've tried to spend five seconds around her to see how obviously she's not bad but in their defense I've, uh. The way Jermaine put it was 'if you want us to ask you how you are and mean it then you have to answer honestly'. I kind of... stonewalled them for years—them and everyone else—and Yvette kind of broke me out of it. They freaked out."

"...Huh, okay. I did not have that specific problem, I would answer questions honestly it's just that sometimes the honest answer was 'fuck off, I have better things to do than add to New York's consequence.'"

These people put so much thought into their social lives.

Mood.

Yeah he does, though apparently he didn't need to, if everything is working fine for those two.

"I think the only one who really cares much about that is Tebow. On my end, at least. Not that everyone else is saints, but, like. ...they're just people."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you know, there's people, and then there's people who suck, and then there's people who are great? And, like, Tebow sucks, and El is great, and Chloe and so on just sort of have the amount of goodness and suckage typical of their circumstances?" 

He smiles a bit. "I think everyone has the amount of goodness and suckage typical of their circumstances. Tebow has good traits, too."

"Tebow has good traits but he is underperforming his reference class. I'm not saying there's anyone who's all bad but there are people who under- and over- perform their reference classes, and Tebow underperforms, and Aadhya and Liu overperform, and El way, way overperforms." 

"...Aadhya?"

"Aadhya and Liu--Aadhya Iyer and Yi Liu--are the rest of our graduation alliance, besides El and me. Aadhya does artificing, her affinity is exotic materials, she's making me a kickass polearm out of this argonet I killed. Liu does incantations."

"I have a Liu, too, but not an Aadhya. ...Yvette and Liu are in an alliance with a Russian boy named Alexei? Who is Yvette's boyfriend and who may or may not be my boyfriend?"

"Wow, shame you don't have an Aadhya, like, I like her as a person but, also, it is really convenient to be on a team with a really good artificer with an affinity for mal corpses, given how many of those I make. There's a Sasha in my year, but no Alexei."

"...huh. Alexei is also a really good artificer, he was—wait. What... year is it for you guys. And day of the year? I'm a senior as of a week ago."

"Iiiiii'm a junior, like, about a week and a half from graduation?"

"Almost a senior in like... a month? I have a calendar in my room but need to look at it to know exactly."

(Pfft, sharing your life story? No.)

"Well, uh, unless this changes for you guys in a butterfly effect way, at the end of our junior year the mals in the graduation hall were in an absolute frenzy, like, a big enough frenzy that if the seniors had graduated normally they would literally have all immediately been torn apart. We went on an insane mission down there, me and Yvette and Alexei and a bunch of senior artificers and incanters, to fix the cleansing fire machines. We... don't know whether it worked. We hope so. Or, they did fix it, but we don't know whether it was enough. Um, and if anything like that does happen, shake Alfie from London for his incantation of refusal and have—El?—lead the casting."

"...If you could go down and back up safely, why didn't you just kill everything? I've been considering sneaking down to the graduation hall for years, but the other New Yorkers threatened to tell my mother on me, and then El pointed out that I could get zapped by the school on my way back up if it mistook me for a normal mal."

"I don't think even I could survive that frenzy. I, uh... some mals did actually slip past me, they'd—" Nope, he does not want to think about anyone who died, nosiree. "Anyway. It was a lot."

"Wow, really? Was there anything shinier than us down there? Did you see a maw-mouth?"

Wince. "Fortitude and Patience were where they always are. No maw-mouth tried to come after us, but after—oh. I don't remember when that happens, but a maw-mouth does climb up to the school. A week and a half before graduation sounds right. I didn't see it but Yvette did and killed it, you know, like a fucking crazy person because apparently she just is that bullshit. And I assume your El is that bullshit, too. But she has PTSD about it. And I don't know if I could've killed it. I can't cast La Main de la Mort. ...and Patience and Fortitude definitely were shinier than us. From a distance."

"Ah. Yeah, that happened. I don't know if El used La Main de la Mort or something else, by the time I got there she was just surrounded by rancid goo and she doesn't talk about it much. I don't know if she has PTSD, though--does Yvette have a set-yourself-right spell." 

"...no, I don't think so?"

"El does. Does that mean Liu still has black fingernails? El was really really out of it after killing the maw-mouth and I ended up shoving a bunch of mana into her in case that helped but oops it was too much and she ended up overcharging the set-yourself-right spell--it can work without any mana at all; with that much put into it it didn't just set her right, it set a bunch of us bystanders so right it cured Liu's maleficing." 

(Why. Why is she like this.)

"My Liu doesn't have black fingernails but I'm not sure she would be happy if I went into any more detail about her than that."

"Fair. I mentioned the black fingernails thing largely because... it was public knowledge. She, like, had them, out and around, and stuff." 

Orion cannot remember if he has a Liu or not. He isn't going to bring this up if he doesn't have to though.

Damn, these are some awkward vibes. Is Atalanta going to try to help smooth them over? Absolutely the fuck not.

Nah this is fine Scorpius is used to it. "Yeah. She wasn't very happy about it, though, so I'm glad yours got to," small smile, "get rid of the nail polish too. Anyway, I'm kind of curious about this set-right spell? What does it do, exactly?"

"...Man, it feels so simple and obvious from the inside, but I'm not sure how to put it into words. It--I want to say, it cuts through all the tangles and shows you your good center, but I'm not actually sure if that makes sense."

"...I'm afraid it doesn't. To me." Another small smile, self-deprecating. "And I'd be surprised if it could actually deal with PTSD but if it helps then—it helps. You can teach it?"

"Yeah. It's so simple it doesn't need mana or even an incantation, but you can use Simple Gifts for it. You just--decide to set yourself right, and it happens." 

She shuts her eyes and sways slightly in place, and sings. 

"'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where you want to be

And when we find ourself in the place just right

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight

When true simplicity is gained

To bow and to bend we shall not be ashamed

To turn, turn, will be our delight

'Till by turning, turning we come round right." 

And she setsherselfright.

Atalanta is so appalled that against her better judgment she blurts, "Is the song about joining a cult strictly necessary??"

"The song about what???"

"It's a Shaker song, as in from the religious sect," Scorpius says, carefully neutral. "But if it works, it works. I have the impression that the spell doesn't actually need the song?" he adds, inflecting it into a question at the end.

"It...doesn't..." Lucia is not LESS CONFUSED. Why would someone object to a song just because it came from a religion. Lots of incantations come from a religion originally. What. 

"It's a religious sect that's had some less than savory practices," he explains, for the benefit of Lucia's unspoken confusion. "I would not... necessarily... call it a cult, but I can see why someone would."

"Man, I don't even know what a Shaker is, I just feel in my soul like that song is telling me to be some old guy's fifth wife and like it."

"I, uh, not to tell you your soul is wrong, but I don't see it." 

"Funnily enough the Shakers were actually pretty against marriage or, uh, sex. I think. If I'm remembering my history right. There was a group of wizards once."

"You know, if a group of wizards decides 'no sex, no marriage, no babies,' that's... kind of valid of them honestly?"

"Yeah, probably better for everyone if wizards die out and the starving mals all eat each other until all that's left is one big mega-mal that chews its way through the planet and kills everything."

"I mean on the margin, not overall."

"I guess it's valid to be against human extinction."

"Who cares about human extinction? I just don't want the super-mal, in chewing through everything, to get the kangaroos." 

"I care about human extinction!" Scorpius pipes up. "There are as many as four people I care about."

"Four? Yikes. Who has time for that shit?"

"It's actually pretty efficient when one of them can keep up with you on the mal-killing front when you supply them with mana!"

"Can El do that? How do you get her to do that?"

"El can do that! She killed a maw-mouth! The school gave her the Golden Stone sutras for it!"

??????????????????

"Wow!"

She brandishes her Sanskrit textbook. "I originally picked up Sanskrit because I wanted mortal flame, but the Sutras are in it too--after graduation, El and I are going to travel the world and put up Golden enclaves." She hugs the book, twirls around once, and flops on a convenient couch. You cannot literally see hearts floating over her head, but Scorpius at least has the social awareness to perceive them anyway. 

He sure does. "Yvette got them, too. They're beautiful."

"It's going to save so many more people than just killing mals would have."

(Eyerollllll.)

Snort. "You can be as cynical as you want, but the dead will still be dead and the living will still be living." She gives her textbook an extra squeeze. It is not the Golden Sutras but it is an acceptable surrogate. 

"I don't think we have any specific plans like that, ourselves; if nothing else our mutual boyfriend—caveat lector—is neither a weapon of mal destruction nor someone who continually refuses to be a dark sorceress of dread power and I don't know how okay either of us would be if. Uh. You know."

"Iiiii'm going to guess the thing that 'you know' refers to is 'he dies' but if there's a more specific way he dies implied I don't actually know if it's mal attack or assassination." 

"Yes I did mean he dies I just don't like thinking or talking about my maybe-boyfriend dying," he sighs.

"Sorry, I'm just bad at subtext, it doesn't fall under murder or altruism and none of my friends use it much either so it hasn't come under the heading of friendship yet."

You know, Scorpius used to think he was a bit much but he is starting to reevaluate that.

"I wonder if it would be fun to have the Els and, uh, Yvette, meet. ...if they're, like, kind of the same person, that'd be freaky, actually. At least the Els. I can't imagine what people would think if they met an alternate universe version of themselves, as opposed to whatever us shinies are to each other."

"An alternate universe version of me would be a breath of fresh air right now," Atalanta mutters.

"...I'm not sure what would happen if the Els met except that it would probably involve sarcasm so weapons-grade it would kill a quattria." 

"I don't think El would go through a door I did this spell to."

"Reasonable of her."

"I think El would go through a door I did this spell to after I told her I'd already done it and been fine but, also, she'd probably chew me out for doing a weird spell that I didn't know exactly what it did the first time. Which would also be reasonable of her." 

"—oh but the door opens to the inside of our rooms. My room? My room at least."

"Well, yeah, but we have the spell, we can cast it again later."

"I don't, I gave it back to the void. I also, uh, am not sure I believe the spell actually did anything or matters. This place does not fit with our understanding of how magic works and I got here even though I specifically did not cast the spell."

"...Well, Orion and I have the spell, we can give it to you that way. I suppose you're right about the latter part but I have no idea what that really means in practice."

"Hey, uh, person with the napkins—actually we've been so rude, we've been ignoring you, please feel free to participate in our conversations. But I wanted to ask, what happens if one of us walks out and then tries the door again? I assume their door won't be leading here forever, but..."

By and large the door you came through will resume its normal behavior after you let it close on Milliways.

"...ah. And, ah, did that spell they cast actually do anything?" he asks, offering his napkin to the nearest not-Scorpius.

Quite likely! The door usually comes and goes of its own accord but some people can force it; perhaps the spell is a means to do so.

"Oh, okay, that's promising. Is there a way to verify it?"

Other than by trial and error I don't know of one.

"...somewhat less promising." He shares these napkins with the others, too. "So, uh, I never did ask. Who are you, what's your name?"

You can call me Bar. She/her.

"Oh, are you, like... the building?"

No, I'm the bar. If you go knock on the window that won't affect me.

"Don't bars usually do alcohol? I don't think this has alcohol in it." She gestures with her smoothie, which she is giving a slightly dubious look, on account of being less confident of the absence of alcohol than she would like. 

I'm not limited to beverages at all, let alone any specific kind!

"What do you do besides beverages?" 

I can sell most medium sized nonmagical inanimate harmless items.

"...Huh. Define nonmagical, like, spellbooks usually get magic fast but often they don't start out that way?"

If they're widely published I can access them; if they were secret it's unlikely.

"Hm. I know the Golden Sutras used to be fairly widely circulated...but that's actually not really a priority right now because El has them anyway."

"Not everybody is El."

"I mean, yeah, but--given access to one copy, it's possible to make more, so."

"...so... you go home and get to crank out as many grimoires as your heart desires... and the rest of us, what?"

"If your timeline matches up your El-equivalent will find it anyway but that is a big if, especially with us butterflying anything. And you do kind of have to wonder if the books we copy here won't immediately become magical as soon as we step out the door and vanish on us. Yvette tells me that her version of the Sutras is, ah... somewhat temperamental. She spoils them to death. I imagine no longer being unique might miff them."

"People used to copy the Sutras all the time...anyway, if I just, you know, have the door-forcing spell, I can give you a copy whenever, was what I was thinking."

"Assuming I can bring myself to ever come back."

"--Okay, fair, I did not anticipate that potential difficulty and so did not take it into account."

He smiles a bit. "The Scholomance does suck a lot," to other people. "Anyway, yeah people would copy it all the time but as far as I know all of the Sutras vanished, right? That was my concern, that bringing a lot of new copies of the Sutras over—or maybe even one new copy of them—might make them all feel less special and want to disappear the same way all other extant copies did."

"--I mean, people stopped using the Sutras, because the modern spells make bigger fancier enclaves. I feel like that has more to do with their rarity than their wanting to be unique?"

"It might! My worry might be unfounded. Just, you know, the Sutras Yvette found were brand-new, I don't think the newer enclave-building spells had already been out by the time that one vanished. My concern may be entirely unfounded, I just wanted to register it."

"El and I were always planning to copy them, albeit, like, over a longer timescale than this. On account of how without a magic time-stopping bar time is a really precious commodity in the Scholomance."

"Yeah, Yvette was planning to do that, too, also over a longer timescale, one at a time to people who would themselves use it, which assuages my concerns some since then they would immediately be loved and cherished by their new owners."

"Anyway, the thing I originally meant was that probably Bar has access to texts from our worlds that none of us have any access to at all, that are in that context even more exciting than the Golden Sutras. I'm not sure what, off the top of my head, but I am prepared to be surprised."