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Sparkles mates on Milan
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Sadde's been meaning to go to one of those imperial capitals for a while now. He's tested himself around humans again, he's been only conjuring animal blood into his throat even though he could do the much tastier human blood and stay golden-eyed—there are in fact effects on his cognition, he notices them—and honestly even for a vampire this long moping is a bit much.

The fact that he thinks it's a bit much is probably as good an indicative as any that he's over it. It hurts that he's over it, but it hurts less than not being over it. He runs through the woods, so there's less risk he'll be spotted, and makes his way to one of the European capitals.

He stops when he spots a key.

He comes to a halt and peers at it. It's on the ground, half-hidden by grass, and there's a tree right over there that would have obscured his view had he been running a foot to the right. But as it is, he found the key. It is a very small key, as if sized for a child to hold, and it has a certain shine to it that's not quite like any other keys he's seen during his vampire life.

He explores a radius of about a mile around the key. There seem to be no houses or cabins or mansions or anything like that where such a key might have come from. He returns to it and peers at it, then shrugs and picks it up.

He doesn't pocket it, though, because the moment he touches the key he's quite certain it's a magical key.

It doesn't actually do anything, it doesn't explode or shoot fireworks or glow, there's no mysterious voice saying that he has found the Artifact of Doom or anything like that. He just—knows.

When he straightens up, he notices how he knows it. There seems to be a certain sense produced by the key, a feeling of sorts, that shifts and moves about as the key is moved through the air. He waves it around a bit, and reaches two conclusions: one, most spots in the air don't feel like anything; two, what a spot in the air feels like depends on the spot itself, and if he waves the key around a given spot multiple times he feels the same thing each time. Interesting.

Now what does the key actually do?

...well, it's a key, presumably it opens doors. It's a magic key—does it open all doors?

After thirty minutes—during which he runs to the closest town, finds the least observed door, and tries to open it with the key, followed by several further attempts on several different doors—he has determined that the key does not in fact seem to have the property of opening all doors.

He has also determined that locks consistently don't feel like anything to the key. Which seems to suggest that, if he wants to use it, it's not going to be on an actual door. So he decides to try the obvious thing. Except not here, this is not a good place, so he finds an isolated spot in the woods to try the obvious thing. Upon finding an appropriate isolated spot, he waves the key around until it feels like something, then he pushes it and turns it, as if he were unlocking an actual door.

That one works.

He pulls it, and the door opens before him. On the other side it's early evening, on what appears to be a sort of college campus. He removes the key from the door—it remains open, good—and walks through it.

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There is a familiar-looking sun hanging low in the familiar-looking sky, just beginning to dip behind the tops of a cluster of four- and five-story buildings whose architecture and decor is clearly in the genre of 'generic American college town'; but all of these things are just a little bit off. The sun is just slightly too yellow, the sky just slightly too blue, the scattered wispy clouds a shade too white. The subtle hum of electrical power is totally absent, but all the buildings have indoor lighting and there's a group of students in the lounge on the third floor of that residence hall watching TV with a bowl of popcorn.

Of the students he can see walking around outside, two seem unremarkably human; one has turquoise hair, amber eyes, and pale bluish-green skin with a subtle shimmer to it that hints at scales; one has long pointed ears and moves so quietly he can barely hear her even though she's less than a hundred feet away; one is very very short and so unobtrusive he needs a second glance to notice her; and all five are openly carrying some kind of preindustrial weapon, a club or an axe or a knife or a bow. One of the humans, a tall girl in jeans and a crop top with a sheathed dagger hanging from her rhinestone-studded belt, has a compact mirror in her hand and appears to be playing the local version of Angry Birds on it.

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Cooool did he just get dropped into Magic Earth, Now With Added Species? Is anyone speaking English or any other Earth language by any chance?

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The language he can hear being spoken sounds very similar to English in structure and phonology, but different enough that he doesn't recognize any words immediately.

Somebody comes around a corner and crosses into Sadde's field of view, headed across the open square in front of him toward the residence hall with the TV. Human, 4'9", late teens, with two daggers on his belt and an unusual number of scars. The most prominent is a faint slash down the side of his face, but there are plenty more - faint burns on the backs of his hands, a scrape along the side of his wrist that peeks past the end of his sleeve when he moves his arm.

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!

!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(A small part of his mind is suddenly enraged that anyone had the audacity of harming the most perfect and gorgeous person in all universes, but the rest of it is !!!!!!!! and yep this is a very entranced and slackjawed vampire completely missing the fact that the door he's walked through just closed behind him, leaving no evidence of its existence.)

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He glances at Sadde and blinks. A look of mild concern crosses his face.

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No no no why is he concerned why is the objectively best person feeling anything other than utmost joy he should ask but no that person is concerned about him oh no what if he's scary what if he looks threatening? Sadde needs to reassure him—he doesn't know his name and that's suddenly as unbearable as the pain of turning, that's a way the world shouldn't be, it's wrong and needs to be corrected.

"What's—your name?" he asks, tentatively, in English—then remembers people are not speaking English here but completely blanks out on what he could possibly do about this.

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"Are, uh, are you all right?" he asks in the off-English local language. His meaning is pretty clear from context and cadence alone.

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He nods extremely quickly—superhumanly quickly, even—then asks, "Are you alright?" in the same language, correctly guessing which part he needs to stress to convey what he means. He's also fretfully trying to glance at all his scars and failing and just looking at one after the other and making abortive gestures as if he wants to move from where he is but doesn't quite... know... how.

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"I'm fine," he says, "I'm not convinced you are - do you have an exemption from the weapons policy," with a slight gesture at his daggers and at Sadde's lack of any corresponding item, "or - do you even go here?"

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He blinks and says "I don't actually speak this language" in English—and he still doesn't know the boy's name—he points at himself and says, "Sadde." Points at the boy...?

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"Milan. You don't speak Pax? Could've fooled me."

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"Milan," he repeats as if savouring the word. Everything is—not right, something still happened to Milan—but still a bit better with the world.

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"...and once more I am concerned."

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"And once more I am concerned," he repeats flawlessly. "I'm sorry," he adds, in English again.

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"I have been accosted by a lovestruck parrot. —sorry, that's not fair. Um. What in the world do I do with you," he wonders.

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He smiles pleasantly and enamouredly.

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Yeah, he sure does do that.

Milan regards him with a mix of puzzlement and concern.

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"...are you alright?" he repeats the question from earlier, his smile turning into a worried frown.

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"Yes, I'm fine. I'm just—" He shakes his head and sighs.

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"You are just...?" he encourages.

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"Perplexed?" he suggests. "Confused? At a loss? I would also like to note that you speak Pax remarkably well for someone who allegedly doesn't."

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"Perplexed, confused, at a loss," he repeats. "I doesn't speak Pax?"

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"You sure act like you don't speak Pax, except for the part where you keep, uh, speaking Pax. Are you just that fast at learning languages?"

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Okay that is way too many words. "I sure act like I don't speak Pax," he transposes. "I doesn't? I don't? I speak Pax? I speaking Pax? I keep speaking Pax?"

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"...are you hunting for grammar lessons, here - 'I don't', 'I speak', 'I keep speaking' - what is going on...?"

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