"—no this is totally the right place, come on in, I'm surprised."

"That is very much a supply closet."

"...wait, you can't see it? Oh fucking hell."

"...ah. Well, that's one way to keep the clientele exclusive."

"Well. Hold the door open? I want to see if you see me go through any walls as I walk in or what, that'd be funny."

Edmund dutifully holds the door!

Once Pete is in the bar proper, the door wobbles concerningly, and is closed.

Figures.

Well, time to test some stuff out.

And he's out. "What happened on your end, on my end the door wobbled and closed."

"Passed through some kind of invisible wall and vanished. Not entirely unanticipated."

"Reasonable. Anyway I'm a phoenix." He also doesn't have the pointy ears anymore.

"A phoenix! Are you liable to combust?"

"No but I can set people on fire and have that heal them rather than hurt them. ...I can do that to myself, too. I don't know how many times a day, though, I don't know what my CHA score is. Prestidigitation is still a cantrip, though! And the ears were a Disguise Self. All signs point to this being a Pathfinder sorceress."

"...point of confusion, is Dungeons and Dragons called Pathfinder sometimes in your world?"

"Oh, no, they're separate things. ...well, separateish, there's this overall system that I think was originally introduced by D&D third edition called d20 and there's some other games than D&D that use it and Pathfinder is one of them. You guys not having it makes sense, though, it'd be weird if you happened to have the fictional version of the system that spawned some actual historical person."

"Admittedly! Though I don't think anyone had connected her to D&D, either, her deeds were too mythologized for anyone post-Gygax to say hang on, was she just casting Fireball? ...it makes sense of a few contemporary accounts, though."

"Does it? Like what, did she gain discrete levels over time, or did her spells last multiples of six seconds, or...?"

"Mm - she could do a very specific number of earthshaking miracles in a single battle before running back to her tent, is the main thing I'm remembering, and they were very similar miracles. Flying out above the battlefield to blast the enemy command with a few fireballs, sending burning spheres rolling through their ranks. And, ah, she had a very popular party trick, whence all the progeny, where she became a young man at night, with the reported virility of a wild stallion. ...some artistic depictions like to conflate the fiery spheres and the virility. She was a popular muse of the hornier Orientalists."

"...oh that's kinda hot I gotta say." Pause. "I'm already a guy why am I thinking it'd be hot to turn into a guy."

"Perhaps you want instead to turn into a beautiful sorceress-queen with a massive flaming cock? ...or, I mean, you might just want to spread the Sam Pearl around. An alter-ego is a fun thing to have."

"No no I think it's the first one. Or maybe I want to be a beautiful sorceress-queen who is occasionally a hot young man with the virility of a stallion.

"...I also want to spread the Sam Pearl around.

"I want bilocation is what I want but currently I can only get that if I'm actively working on my relationships with multiple people such that I can't fit them all in a day and even then I'm pretty sure my subjective experience of it is still linear."

Kiss. "Poor Pete, not juggling enough lovers to splinter the fabric of reality."

Kiss! "It's tragic is what it is. I'm sure I'll get there eventually, though. Someday. This is just day two of my adventure."

"...want to go back to the dorm and get a head start on day three?"

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea. ...gonna need to be careful not to let Hywel see my ears but it's probably fine."

"I think he'd be pretty sanguine about the whole thing, honestly," Ed muses as they walk back. "But it does seem like it'd complicate matters unnecessarily."