And then she is somewhere else.

Where else? Ah, now that's the question. The great city of Mechitar is dominated by the pyramids of the blood lords; some favor squat Osirian buildings, a shape easiest to ward, others vast ziggurats. (Some have begun building tiered buildings, still pyramidal but with one stacked on top of another; those usually crumble when comes a great quake or an annoyed neighbor.) All rise high over the city, and travelers navigate by them, telling not north and south, east and west, but Cimmerium and Coalscar and Vorgoroniv, New Oppara and Omenreach. In the streets beneath are the cramped tenements of the poor, and through them throng ghouls and mummies and glowing-eyed knights, the necromancers riding in skeleton-lifted palanquins that they need not see the sun, those quick who cannot raise their own dead furtive, hoping never to catch the eyes of the great. Sootwing bats flutter from shelter to shelter, and one in every ten has a wizard or witch seeing through it's eyes, and the rats that scurry through the streets have eyes that gleam with the same unholy light. Atop the tall pillars that line the streets, where once stood statues of blood lords now cast down, huecevas and bone priests spread the gospel of the God-Queen Arazni and Kabiri Ghoulfather and above all Urgathoa, the Pallid Lady of the Dead, and when the sun falls the vampire spawn throng it to carry out the errands of their masters. The great Axanir is full of boats, hauling cargoes downriver to Belowgeb-of-Lacedonia and to Mechitar's great port, and ships sail the Obari Ocean for every destination in Garund or Vudra or far Avistan, for Mechitar is first of all the cities of the world in the vastness of its wealth, and knows no equal.

So she obviously can't be in Mechitar. She is in a city - not a city, a town, an urban area - that is not lit up at night by perpetual Light spells, and that does not have such vast richness of cotton and silk that even the only mildly well-to-do can swath themselves in it. Everyone in the streets is quick, that she can see, and most of them are wearing short tunics or loincloths. There's no pyramids, no buildings higher than a couple stories, even, and they're all made of the mud brick of the poor except a few temples with very strange holy symbols. People turn to look at her when she teleports in, with more shock than they'd show to anyone but a blood lord back home.

On the other hand, water's over that way, land over that way, river flowing from the land into the water, and some of the bigger hills look really similar. There's a few extra, though?

...Huh. 

Someone...teleported her? Or something? She is sort of put out about this--her Nan is still in Mechitar, and all her brothers and sisters but two--but being out gives her more options, and someday she will be strong enough to go back and get them, in ones and twos if nothing else. 

"You alright?" she asks Kexil in Necril. 

Her familiar twitters for a moment before saying, "Yes," in the same language, which means he's physically alright but pretty unsettled, which is fair of him, honestly. 

She doesn't have the context to understand that the shapes of the hills shouldn't be almost the same as she's used to, not really; if you pointed her at a map and explained to her that most places don't have hills opposite the river, and those that do have differently-shaped hills, she would go "yes, obviously," but she isn't at all suspicious of what she's seeing right now. 

She climbs to her feet, checks that her bag and all her hidden pockets are as she expected them, and nothing is obviously missing, and approaches the nearest person who isn't obviously busy. 

"Hello, I'm lost," she offers in Modern Osiriani. This is probably Osirion, right? Or maybe Katapesh, but she thinks probably they speak Osiriani in Katapesh. 

She's on a major street, so the nearest person who isn't obviously is a farmer bringing a load of millet into the city on his back. He's currently staring at her because she just teleported in.

"A thousand pardons, great one, this slave does not understand your words," he offers in what is really suspiciously good Ancient Osiriani for someone who can't afford a wheelbarrow.

...Huh. 

"Sorry. What I said was, I don't know where I've landed, can you tell me where I am?"

"Mechitar, great one." Mighty wizards might take a lot of groveling to satisfy. Best to err on the safe side, right?

... Across the street and two blocks down, a perfectly normal-looking (except for being quick) adventuring party is starting to look at her with some curiosity.

The party wizard blinks, and then starts walking down the street in her general direction, his party following. slightly closer to her. He looks... distant.

Is there...another city named Mechitar??? One in Osirion or Katapesh??? One where...poor people speak...Ancient Osiriani...okay, Naithrope isn't a cunning-based caster, but she's not stupid, the obvious conclusion is that she's time-traveled somehow, except for how that is insane. 

She...was right near the Cinerarium when what happened, happened. If anyone could do impossible time-related bullshit, Arazni is a good bet. 

She takes another look at the shape of those hills. If that one were leveled, and that one...

If what's happening is instead Mother fucking with her again Naithrope is going to tear the old bitch's heart out, and Luzai can tut at her about it later, Naithrope won't even care. 

"Thank you," she says, and turns away...she should start walking, but she has no idea where to.

The adventuring party will stop a bit over a hundred feet away from her, or more accurately the wizard will stop a bit over a hundred feet away from her and the other people will follow the wizard.

He looks genuinely interested in her, and also rather as though he thinks discretion is an archaic type of fruit from Absalom, based on how he's not really pretending not to stare at her.

Sure, she will head towards the adventurers, why not, it's not like she has any better ideas. 

He looks less like he's looking at her and more like he's got Detect Magic active and is looking at all the magic on her, or the lack thereof.

That's fair. She'll cast Detect Magic when she's within about sixty feet of them. 

He's very obviously a wizard, and very much a wizard. His entire body is a clash of overwhelmingly powerful magic auras of all different schools, overlapping. On his head is the fanciest sort of headband you see worn by people who are not Arazni, and his linen tunic is also a minor magic item, and his bracers, and both his rings, and...

He's Osiriani, shockingly young for a wizard as good as he is. A casual observer might think twenties, not thirties, and it is probably not an act or part of his disguise because -

- Because an old man might know things, and he looks like he's never got tired of finding out; he looks like he thirsts more than most undead except it's curiosity, the curiosity - the wonder - stamped on every inch of his skin. He's got the kind of face that stares at and through you, except right now it's intently focused on her and her spell, as though it's not quite right -

She may notice that the two adventuriest of the party members with him have hats with Weak Illusion auras and are personally under Weak Illusion spells, which are generating an appearance that suggests more of a vampire (pale washed-out skin, not showing teeth, otherwise could pass for human) except that they are in the sun. One of them is a big burly fighter type maybe-something-like-a-vampire (though the armor he is wearing, or under an illusion of wearing, is bronze lamellar, not steel plate), one is a lean archery-er vampire type (who is, like any sensible archery vampire type, wearing leather), and then the last one tends to fade into the background and is probably not an adventurer but is their manager or employer or something and has wildly fewer magic items than the others, who are loaded. All of them are under Endure Elements spells.

Oh, and there's obviously an invisible telepathic communication going on between him and the rest of his party, just by their body language. Big Burly Guy is worried and Archer Guy is annoyed and Clerk seems to think that Wizard should get moving instead of staring at a random powerful wizard who appeared in the street.

Best foot forward, Naithrope. 

She stops a little farther than thirty feet away from them, and bows. "Excuse m--"

"You didn't teleport here," he says immediately as soon as she starts talking.

"That's correct! Unfortunately I haven't exactly determined what happened instead; whether the ancient archmage I happened to be in the vicinity of somehow launched me into the past, or whether someone presumably less powerful has put a great deal of effort into making me think that's what happened." 

"You aren't under illusions," he says, like this is an interesting puzzle (and completely ignoring that he's in the middle of a street). "The lingering aura is Conjuration. Self-disguising illusions are possible in theory, but nobody's doing interesting work on that."  He drums his fingers together. "Nobody civilized. Cast Detect Magic again."

Oh No. The very large adventurer is refraining, with great difficulty, from visibly facepalming. The possibly not adventurer is clearly, though not overtly, going why.

She casts Detect Magic again. 

"You're right, of course, although Magic Aura is only a first-circle spell, and I didn't happen to prepare Identify today." 

"Not the standard spell," he says flatly. "See?" He casts Detect Magic, flickering through a microscopically different set of gestures. "You'll see it if you prepare it. You're not from here."

My lord, you must surely be aware that you are recognizable, even in disguise, and if word should reach Sothis of unlikely behavior by a mighty wizard -

Busy.

"Actually, if the time travel hypothesis is right, I am from here! I was born in the city of Mechitar, in the nation of Geb, in the year 4694 Absalom Reckoning." 

"It is illegal," he says carefully, "to say the name 'Geb.'"

"...What?" That's...hm. Geb conquered the country from Ancient Osirion, she knows that, so...that hasn't happened yet, but probably he's, like, around? And has done enough stuff that they're pissed at him. 

Hm. Interesting times. 

"It is forbidden by order of the Pharaoh to speak the names of proscribed families."

"That is for sure a decision and also a choice to have made. Well, in the future I'm from, that did not work out so great for him, though who knows, Osirion did a bunch of collapsing around now anyways, I think, maybe it didn't matter so much. But Osirion un-collapsed a few times, and never did get back...the country Mechitar is in, in my time...or Nex--is Nex legal to say?"

"Nex is legal to say."

(He likes Nex. Nex answers his mail.)

At a telepathic nudge - "Preaching the downfall of the pharaoh is also illegal, as his realm will, of course, be eternal." It is incredibly obvious just how much he is mouthing the expected words. "We should go somewhere else and talk."

"Sounds good! Wow, if this really is Ancient Osirion...I'd rather this have happened when I was higher-circle, of course, but still, better me than someone who isn't a caster at all."

"What circle are you?"

Time to go, people, let's not let the wizards wizard all their wizarding and forget the medjay* exist.

(*"Cops.")

"...Only second. For now." Whining that her father won't let her go adventuring isn't going to improve the situation. Still, it feels embarrassing to admit. 

(What circle are Luzai and Villibor, by now? Have they hit third yet? Probably it hasn't been long enough to have hit fourth. Or. Well. Hadn't been. Time travel is complicated.)

He nods. 'For now' is acceptable, given that she is young.

The place they're staying isn't very far away - it's a walled house, middle class (not the sort of thing you'd expect a wizard at his power level to be staying in), with an inner courtyard. There's a few servants, who are not under the Minor Illusion and clearly respect the adventurers very, very much. There's not a lot of art up on the walls, or other signs of personalization; it feels more like somewhere rented than like somewhere that someone lives. It is, however, warded, though clumsily - A lot of spells like Teleport Trap that every pyramid in Geb has are just missing. 

(This is fortunate, because he feels like he's going to burst while he can't talk. Instead he's excitedly asking everyone else questions under the Telepathic Bond, which Naithrope is not on.)

...Huh. 

She doesn't, actually, have a scroll of Teleport Trap. But she's seen it, that has to be an advantage in reinventing it. 

- But as soon as the doors are closed behind them he turns to her. "The future."

"Right. Which do you want to start with, magic or geopolitics?"

"Magic." Immediately.

"Excellent. Now, I am only second circle myself, but one, I have seen much higher-circle spells being cast--with Detect Magic on, even--and two," she reaches into the satchel she's carrying and pulls out a scroll of Daywalker, "when I got got, I was out shopping." 

"I have Arcane Sight," he says, and tosses her a wand overhand. "Silent Image."

And then he can look at the scroll!

She dumps out the rest of the scrolls from the satchel--not that she won't fess up to the scrolls in her Bag of Holding if he asks, but she's also not going to surrender them immediately. 

She's going to run out of charges on the wand before she runs out of spells she's seen. Also, the defensive ones mostly come applied to pyramids, for some reason. 

Well, yes. Pyramids are what you build. He's going to be frantically scribbling notes for hours at least. This is the most important thing since Aroden!

She may notice several other things!

First, that shortly after the wizard fellow looks at the scrolls, all of his party members are going to, with varying degrees of Being Able To Hide It, be very suddenly and visibly shocked.

Second, that servants would like to come in to offer the wizard and possibly-not-adventurer drinks, and that they'd also like to know what she'd like. They have about a dozen options, six of which she's never heard of and none of which are blood.

Third, that there's one decoration conspicuous by its absence - on the wall of the courtyard there's a discolored spot - somewhere an object had been hanging, blocking out the light - that looks remarkably like a stylized sheaf.

She will take something non-alcoholic from the list of six things she's never heard of. 

"Yeah, uh--I assume you don't actually care about it being illegal to say the name--Geb, the survivor of the proscribed family, who goes on to conquer the area, he's a necromancer, the country is full of undead. My own father is a vampire, hence the," she waves a hand over her own complexion, which is not typical of a person full of red-colored fluids. 

He'll nod to the 'don't actually care' comment.

"It's the most interesting field," says the very young extremely powerful wizard under an illusion spell in Mechitar. "How do vampires have children with mortals without the mingling of negative and positive energy in the body canceling out and preventing conception? It does with other undead."

The drink is made with honey and vinegar and cleric water and is actually pretty good.

Delightful. 

"That is a good question, and I don't actually know the answer--once Father found out it was possible, he was more interested in experimenting with how to get different results out of the process than what made it possible in the first place. There are--were--twenty-nine of us who survived to adulthood, and none of us have ever met a dhampir we weren't related to, even though we grew up within a stone's throw of the Ebon Mausoleum. We heal like undead, though, even though we're ourselves quick--alive, I mean."

That is visibly fascinating to this man! "So do humanoid-targeting spells work on you or undead-targeting spells? Do you or your siblings have children?"

"Humanoid-targeting spells. None of us have children yet." Theoretically, Luzai or Villibor could have--but it hasn't been nine months since they left, yet, so no, not even theoretically. 

Unfortunate. So, she was showing him spells?

Yep. 

"I'm going to need another wand of Silent Image," she says after several more spells, "or you can look at the lower-circle spells that I have prepared, if you can assure me I won't need them today." 

He glances up as he asks on the Telepathic bond.

... He's thinking intently about something.

O...min...ous??? She was sort of expecting "yes you can crash here tonight," fingers crossed that whatever he says instead isn't substantially worse, like, "only if you join our Skinsaw cult" or something, that would really suck. 

"We don't have another wand, so we need to go to Numijan or Kasai to buy more," he says, noticing her confusion, "but it's inefficient to spend two teleports tonight. Your risk of being assassinated is probably very low but it it might happen."

"...Well, I won't spend all my spells, but I am, at the moment, second circle; it's unlikely that any serious attempt to assassinate me is going to turn on whether I have my spells at the moment. I'll settle for a promise that I can crash here tonight and that you'll do your due diligence to prevent me from dying while I'm under your roof." 

"Of course." He says it as though he's not really sure why anyone would assume he'd do anything else.

She didn't assume he would do anything else! She assumed he would just say yes without getting into the specifics of how likely she was to be assassinated. 

The first spell she casts is Inflict Light Wounds, on herself. She...doesn't actually think she's going to be able to keep it from them that she isn't actually a wizard. 

"We have that one."

"You also have Detect Magic, I didn't want to assume it would be exactly the same. ...Also we haven't solved Cure and Inflict spells for wizards, I am actually a different thing." 

"Oh ho..." He will examine her with Arcane Sight for a while. "Not Arodenite. Pre-Arodenite? Demoniac?" He is clearly just tossing out ideas, and does not say 'demoniac' like he particularly pays enough attention to demons to have any opinions on them whatsoever, even hatred.

"Witch. And not the normal kind, either. ...What does Arodenite, mean, in context, at first I thought you meant a cleric but I don't think he's ascended to godhood yet." 

"Aroden brought wizardry from Azlant," he says. Doesn't everyone know this? "All arcane traditions that use spellbooks are descended from him. 'Witch' is divine magic and you're arcane."

"Oh, yeah, I did know that modern wizardry descends from Aroden, but people just say 'wizard,' for that, when I'm from, Aroden did ascend to godhood, uh, about five thousand years before I was born, that's actually basically what Absalom Reckoning means, so 'Arodenite' means the worship of Aroden as a god. But using it to describe the magical tradition descending from him also makes sense. I don't know what you're hearing when I say 'witch,' but the thing I mean is a kind of caster that uses arcane magic despite getting powers from a higher source. ...I don't actually know who my witch patron is. Also everything I know about witches comes from my mother, and I don't trust her, but I'm pretty sure the thing I am doing is arcane magic." 

The wizard is not hugely surprised to hear that Aroden ascended at some point. Nethys ascended, after all, and Aroden has a lead on everyone else.

"You are. There are many different types of granted arcane magic. You cast through familiars?" That's a common feature of them.

"Right." She gestures to the songbird on her shoulder. "This is Kexil. He actually helps me prepare my spells, instead of using a spellbook." 

"Hello," Kexil chirps. Not in Ancient Osiriani. 

"...He only speaks Necril. I don't actually know if Necril exists yet." 

"Hmm. You could make an amulet of Tongues. Or you could teach Kexil wizardry, though it wouldn't help until third circle."

Oh right politeness. "Hello, Kexil."

"...He says I forgot to introduce myself, which is true. I'm Naithrope." 

"Naithrope. Call me Pasenkey*."

(*Lit: "The Little Brother.")

She nods, and then casts Alter Self, taking on the appearance of an elven* woman she'd seen in the marketplace earlier today/several thousand years in the future, and then Dancing Darkness, and then runs through the three other cantrips besides Detect Magic that she had prepared today--Mending, Message, and Light. 

*drow

He knows Alter Self, Aroden introduced that one, but this version is compressed and there's something that that extra loop that wasn't there is doing and he will take so many notes. He has never heard of Dancing Darkness but it is such a fascinating concept he can't help but try to see about playing with it, in his head - it obviously ought to be a cantrip, he's seen a witch* who got Dancing Lights down to a cantrip but it hasn't been compressed below first circle, maybe it's all the extend duration -

(This will involve a tremendous amount of scribbling and staring off into space.)

- and those three cantrips are all cantrips where he's from, though her version of Mending is noticeably improved.

(*: "Person who gets magic from talking to a familiar")

"Dancing Lights is a cantrip in my time, I just don't have it prepared today. I can do it tomorrow." 

Oh good. Does she need anything else? (He's going though all of his notes on her spells and adding secondary detail, sometimes pausing with his eyes closed before writing out more.)

"I don't have a Ring of Sustenance and will need a corresponding amount of food and sleep." 

"A..."

“—Oh those haven’t been invented yet, right. A Ring of Sustenance is a magic item that lets you do without food entirely and means you only need two hours of sleep a night. Very popular among quick adventurers.”

He wants one, so he supposes he'll have to learn how to make rings.

"We can get you food and sleep."

“Excellent.”

Even without the ability to display spell structures, she can go on explaining the existence of future spells for some time, albeit it’s less obvious where seemingly-unchanged spells might have slight variations.

Well, at some point she might want food or sleep. Pasenkey can keep downloading information from her basically indefinitely, given the free drink refills his servants are providing them.

She will mention when she gets hungry, and she will want to go to bed not long after sundown. 

They can bring her food (it's plainer than what she's used to in her Mechitar) and will not object to her going to bed on her own in one of the many guest rooms surrounding the courtyard.

She does not automatically assume the difference in food quality is a temporal thing as opposed to the disposable revenue difference between an adventuring party and a blood lord. She picks a bed more or less at random and goes flop. 

(...She's going to actually have to say, with her mouth, "I can't cast Prestidigitation, will someone do that for me," isn't she. Terrible. Letting her siblings just do it whenever without actually saying words is much preferable. Hang on, has Prestidigitation been invented yet? She should show them Prestidigitation next time she has a wand or whatever.)

Pasenkey will keep working for several hours more and eventually be reminded to sleep. He sleeps very briefly and very deeply, and if he has nightmares he does not remember or mention them.

And in the morning, Naithrope can be woken by the dawn creeping in through the courtyard windows.

It is deeply weird to be waking up somewhere that gets sunlight, and not deep within her father's pyramid. 

But she's going to have to get used to it. 

She strokes Kexil's back, and hums along with his singing, and prepares her spells for the day. 

Partway through the spell preparation someone will knock quietly on the door, in an "I hope I'm not disturbing you, ma'am?" way.

"Little bit!" she calls. 

Then they will not come back until after she's done preparing spells.

She finishes preparing her spells and then opens the door.

There's a quick servant around, a young woman of about the standard Gebbite ethnicity (slightly darker than the standard Osirian ethnicity, given the warmer temperature, but otherwise pretty similar) wearing a short tunic. "Ma'am? Breakfast is served." Was served half an hour ago, though the master hasn't made it there yet either.

"Thank you!" She is going to be exquisitely polite to all the servants; she hasn't forgotten that her own mother (the real one, not the biological one) was a slave. 

She'll dip her head in gratitude - anything else Naithrope needs? Changes of clothes, drinks, et cetera can all be provided before if she needs it...

...A change of clothes would be good, yeah. Thanks. 

The clothes are perfectly normal for a respectable woman in Ancient Osirion, which is wildly less colorful than what Naithrope wears at home; they suggest she can't afford daily Endure Elements, but make no other statement regarding her wealth.

Naithrope notices that the clothes are a different style than she's used to, but that makes sense, since this Mechitar is still Osirian instead of Gebbite. She accepts the clothes with thanks and does not consider or realize anything about any implications the clothes might have about her. 

After that there's the prospect of breakfast! It's served in the courtyard, under the shade of a couple old trees and a cloth stretched between them as sun cover, where there's a nice table set up with several covered dishes on it and the same choice of drinks as last night. Nobody is there yet.

If Naithrope decides hard enough that that isn't weird and she doesn't feel apprehensive about it, then it will probably be true. Right? Right. 

She will try a different drink than the one she had last night and investigate the dishes. 

It's an unsweetened yogurt drink, pretty well made. Covered by the dishes is a mild variety of foods, because they don't know just what she likes.

Before she gets very far, Pasenkey will show up, apparently bodyguardless and looking distant and sleep-deprived.

"Hi! Does Prestidigitation exist yet?" 

She is a little concerned by the apparent sleep deprivation--wizards need sleep to prepare spells--but he is the kind of person where she's confident that skipping the small talk and going straight to the magic is the right move.

"Yes," he says. "It's an Azlanti wonder."

“Good. Uh, for some reason I can’t get it to hang on my familiar. Usually my siblings who are wizards—Arodenites—would cast it for me anytime they noticed I wasn’t completely clean, but obviously that isn’t happening here.”

He'll Presdigitate her, it's faster than getting someone else to do it. "We don't have very many wizards."

"Yeah, my family is weird. I have twenty-eight half-siblings and seventeen of them are wizards." 

"Who taught them? How were they taught?" 

“Ghoul tutors, mostly, but Father would step in sometimes. With Istraya more than anyone else. There were group classes that everyone attended and then also smaller sessions for one or a few of us at a time. I never got as far as really being a wizard but all of us got the classes, at least at first.”

"The law in Osirion is that wizards may teach none save their apprentices," he says tonelessly, "nor take multiple apprentices at a time, nor take any apprentice not Osirion by blood and heritage, nor do so without paying a bond to the Emerald Order." 

"Wow, that's--do they want? To not have wizards? Why would any country not want to have wizards? Wizards are useful!" 

"The fewer wizards, the more they're people you know, the easier they are to watch. Wizards you can't watch might do something you dislike."

"The more wizards you have, the more they can do things you like. And the more wizards you have doing things you like, the less it matters if one does something you don't. And the more wizards the other guy has that you don't, the harder it is to win wars. No wonder this iteration of the empire fell. Anyway, my Father isn't Osirian in heritage at all. He came here from Avistan when a necromancer in Avistan pissed off the Church of Aroden bad enough that they really cracked down on undead. He could've picked slaves with Osirian blood for all the human experiments, but that would probably have made the tiefling and aasimar mother experiments significantly harder, and pfui on the elf and hag ones."

"The empire will of course last forever," he says in the same toneless voice.

- before returning to his normal tone. "The Emerald Order has very little presence in Mechitar."

"Good for Mechitar, I think? The Emerald Order didn't last long enough to feature in any of my history lessons, so I don't know anything about them that you haven't already mentioned, so they sound bad but I'm not confident in that read."

Drily, "I would not want to contradict my guest."

"Okay, you're saying that in approximately the same tone you said the Empire is eternal, so I'm not actually sure if you're going for 'remarkable understatement' or 'sarcasm' or what." 

"It is usually strategic to be in the habit, even in your home, among friends, of not saying anything you would not want repeated under a Zone of Truth."

"Ah. Okay, thanks. I mean, I hate it, but it makes sense." For now. She has no idea if anywhere else is better, but she can in fact leave and go somewhere else, probably, once she gets high enough circle. Assuming Teleport isn't one of those spells that just won't go in a familiar for some reason. Someday she's going to figure out what the difference is between spells that both she and a wizard can use, and spells only a wizard can use, and then rework Prestidigitation to fit into the former category instead of the latter. "Should I just stop talking about the future," she thinks that over for a moment, "or at least the parts of the future that take place on this continent, until and unless that stops being a constraint?"

Normal voice. "You should continue telling me about the future." Toneless voice. "After all, the gods may have sent you here to avert its horrors."

Wryly: "Well, there are certainly some horrors I'd like to avert. Like the giant planar rift to the Abyss, that's not great. Or the necromancer that pissed off Aroden, he caused a lot of problems."

"Oh?"

She ticks off her fingers. "Well, one, he killed Arazni. And then two, after Aroden and his protege Iomedae--a paladin of his who ended up ascending to godhood--beat him up and sealed him away, they decided to turn their attention to...the area we are currently in...as another hotbed of undeath...and the, uh, archmage whose name is illegal to say, retaliated by stealing Arazni's corpse and turning her into an enslaved lich. ...I assume you were only asking about that one, and 'a rift to the Abyss is bad' is self-explanatory." 

"Interesting." He doesn't actually think it's possible to make liches unwillingly, right now, or make a lich for someone dead... "You are saying he didn't have access to Arazni's soul and yet he was able to transform her into a lich?"

"Oh, yeah, she was, like, an angel and also a demigod at the time."

"How?"

"Fuck if I know. One of my sisters went into Enchantment specifically with the intention that she was either going to become a legendary archmage herself and crack open his head to find out, or die trying."

Oh good, he'll still have challenges in the future.

Pasenkey is now staring off into space thinking about all the interesting problems involved with reanimating an angel demigod as a lich without her permission.

He doesn't seem to be eating.

"...So, uh, are you in fact the individual in question, because, like, I am genuinely not sure at this point...? And it seems like that's getting awkwarder."

"Hm? Oh. Yes."

"Cool. Word of advice, don't become a ghost." 

"Why would I do that? It doesn't seem as though it would help."

"It doesn't! Lich-Queen Arazni does all the actual running of the country. If your ghost, like, does things, without having been royally pissed off first, I've never heard of it. Like, you strike me as a basically reasonable person! But there is a reason my sister, who is one of the friendliest, most cooperative people I know, jumped straight to magicking his secrets out of him instead of asking nicely. Unfortunately I don't actually know why, except that it prooooobably wasn't on purpose? I think you just, like, died, and it didn't stick. But, like, ghosts aren't even one of the less annoying kinds of undead to be, and even vampires and liches seem like pretty annoying states of being!"

"Oh?" He hasn't had the chance to dissect any vampires or liches yet, thanks to all that nonsense with the civil war.

“Just the normal problems that every undead I’ve heard of has where they stagnate, like, Father was fifth circle when he was turned about a millennium and a half ago and he’s still only sixth circle now. And it’s supposed to fuck with your head in other ways but I have less concrete evidence for that.” Plus, for liches, they tend to lose all their fun soft bits, and Naithrope is so not about that life.

"So you say that even in the future, that hasn't been solved?" He looks almost disappointed. "What was I doing?"

"...Being a ghost, and thus subject to the problem?"

"Before that."

She was sort of hoping to avoid this as long as possible, but oh well, it probably wasn't going to work indefinitely anyway. "Fighting a war with Nex. I don't know what over, just that the two of you got really mad at each other at some point after you both had countries. It went for a very long time and the border area between the two countries is called the Manawastes now." 

Geb does not currently see any particular reason to fight a war with Nex. Nex is an intelligent person.

He shrugs. "I expect I can find something better to do."

"I really hope so but, like, I'm not assuming that the explanation isn't something like the archdevil Geryon forging extremely convincing evidence to each of you that the other was doing something you couldn't not respond to, so like--I think it makes sense to keep an eye out? 'That's dumb, I will simply not be dumb' is probably not the best approach to take when so much of the history of this era has been lost in my time." 

Geb will file that advice in the same place he files all such advice, since it is mostly by and for people who did not reach seventh circle in their twenties.

Geryon is a pretty good answer, though. It's not like there's only two sides, in this war.

He'll make a completely generic mild grunt of acknowledgement.

“I assume there’s been some progress over the past several millennia, though, even if the most important issues haven’t been solved. Unfortunately I won’t be able to cast any of the really interesting necromancy spells I technically know for a few more circles.”

Then she's going to need to go do fantastically dangerous things, isn't she.

"We're going on a dungeon run after breakfast to buy more wands," he says. "Are you coming?"

"--Of course!" 

A dungeon run! Proper adventuring! FINALLY! It's not like she's been wanting to do this since she first met Kexil and got her first spells, or anything.

He nods, and - 

- Refocuses. She is not a person he is talking to right now; she is a part of his team that needs to be optimized to win. What are the concerns on the path to victory? Where might he fail? How might those risks be crushed? What is the first step.

"This is illegal." Pause. There's a second's wait to sink in, like the wait between arrows when an archer reaches into his quiver.

"And dangerous." Pause.

"You will need to obey orders while in the dungeon." Pause.

"Do you understand?"

“—Yes.” She can recognize the shift, the intensity, even if she doesn’t exactly understand the specific things he’s thinking.

And she understands needing to rely on someone in an emergency, and he doesn’t know her. She could tell any of her siblings to do something urgently and they would wait to ask questions until the crisis was over, but she does not have that relationship with this man.

"Have you prepared spells yet? If so, what spells?"

“I have,” although she wouldn’t have yet if she’d known he was going to invite her dungeon delving. “Cantrips are Dancing Lights, Guidance, Message, and Stabilize. First circle spells are Burning Hands, Inflict Light Wounds, and Grasping Corpse. Second circle spells are two Bestow Insight. Plus for Witch reasons I can Charm any animal or humanoid once a day per creature, Levitate once per day total, and Feather Fall at will.” 

Geb is actually very disappointed in her that she already prepared spells instead of checking what was needed, but there are reasonable explanations like "she needs to prepare at dawn like a cleric instead of whenever she wants like a sensible person."

He will therefore ask.

"Why did you prepare spells?"

"...Well, partly it's that I was very excited about magic research, and partly it's that back home consulting anyone on what spells I prepare would have been a bad idea and I've built some bad habits."

He nods. She shouldn't show him the spells yet, but -

"Grasping Corpse and Bestow Insight?"

"Bestow Insight is an Enchantment spell that copies expertise from the caster to the recipient in a specific area. Like, if I cast it on a peasant who'd never even seen someone cast a spell before, I could still give them a working knowledge of how spells are cast such that they'd have at least a chance of recognizing most common spells by their verbal and somatic components. I...don't actually know how it interacts with time travel, if I could give you a basic overview of, say, modern advances in necromancy, or the geography of the Mechitar of my time, etcetera. But it seems plausible. Grasping Corpse is less interesting than that, I think, in this situation, it just fleetingly animates a dead body just enough to grab at someone, doesn't even count as creating an undead." 

Geb is going to discard all of his prior plans to sit staring into space for a moment.

"We are not going on a dungeon run today," he informs her.

"Canceled, put off until tomorrow, or some third thing I'm not thinking of?" 

"Tomorrow, unless something else unexpected occurs. We still need money."

"Right, that makes sense. The spell is of limited duration," she warns him. 

"I can write down my thoughts under the spell's effect."

"Excellent. Say when."