fandomtownies | Infinite Consortium, Monday

Sairis took a look in the window and frowned at the goblets, not at all sure how that would be a very popular party trick. Who wanted to taste those? Then he mentally shrugged and went inside.

"Magus Liliana?" he called while looking carefully around.

Well, one healed you and the other--

Well, the other, you gave to someone you didn't like.

"Over here, Sairis," she called from behind the check-out counter. "Do you like tea? I have a kettle going."

That was not reassuring about the sorts of things you sold!

"Yes, thank you," Sairis said, coming to join her. "Does it use electricity?" Everything here seemed to, and he was now very curious about it.

Oh, it didn't kill a person. Well, not unless they were already very close to death. Or it was used multiple times.

Listen, if people wanted to murder individuals, that was their business. Liliana only kept the really dangerous stuff locked away.

"Oh yes, it's a much more convenient than just placing it on the stove." Which also used electricity. "You can even choose what temperature to keep the water at, depending the type of tea you're planning to brew."

"I don't know whether to start by asking about the electricity that lets you do that, or why tea uses different temperatures."

He thought you just made the water hot. Look, Sairis wasn't exactly a gourmand.

Liliana was just going to sigh. Oh this poor, cultureless child.

"My knowledge of electricity is limited, my knowledge of tea and temperatures much less so, in case that influences your decision any."

A loud CLANG came from behind him. "Just one of my servants, fetching the tea supplies." Like, what, was she supposed to do that? Hardly.

"The tea, then," Sairis said. "Why do you need different temperatures?"

He turned to watch whatever had caused the clang.

There was a slightly oversized suit of armor walking through the aisles, heading towards a door in the back of the store.

"It depends on the leaves and the blend, darling," Liliana explained. "Delicate greens and whites will turn bitter at a temperature that doesn't even begin to unlock the flavor of a robust black or brewing an herbal. So unless you enjoy your tea scalded or underbrewed and weak, you adjust your water temperature appropriately."

Look at that! Barely in the shop a minute and already learning important lessons.

"Whites?" Sairis asked. Herbs and black tea he knew, he thought he could understand green (though he might have it completely wrong), but white was baffling him.

He eyed the armor curiously. "I've never thought of putting a ghost in a nonliving body." Yet. "Doesn't it need a lot more power to move something without muscles?"

"The ghost chose the armor," Liliana said. "They came as a set. I don't keep it going, it's autonomous. I just give it orders."

A nicer person would have maybe made them requests. Liliana wasn't a nice person.

"Where does it get its power from, then?" Sairis asked, distracted from tea.

"It absorbs its own mana," Liliana said. "Do you not have individual ghosts and spirits on your plane?"

"We do, but in order to manifest physically, they still need to get power from somewhere. Generally blood or rituals, or both. Mana is...the power of magic?" he guessed.

"Correct," Liliana said. "Land generates mana, different types of land generating different colors of mana, and mana flows across the face of the plane in ley-lines, much like rivers."

She conjured a swirling purple-black mist around her fingers. It thickened and brightened as seconds passed "I've tapped into the black mana ley-line that flows through this island and--" A flick of her hand and the light vanished; mere moments later, a flying machine made of gold filigree to look like some kind of wasp or something came buzzing out of one of aisles and over to where Liliana was sitting. "A thopter," she said.

Sairis nodded at the flying thing, which was pretty on its own. "I'm not familiar with colors of magic itself, though of course there are different types. And yes, the land generates some of its own - the Sea even more these days - and there are places where it's stronger or more connected, but I have no idea about different types of land."

For one thing, he'd only ever seen one type of land.

"My magic is stronger where there's life - and thus death - around."

"Fascinating," Liliana said. "Sit, darling, it's hard to have a discussion with someone looming."

Well. Someone not her.

"There are chairs behind you, feel free to grab one and--don't you do it." Sairis could be understandably mistaken in assuming Liliana was talking to him, but she appeared to be focused on something behind him. "Don't make me put you back in the window with a shame sign," she threatened. "This is my advisee, he is not for eating."

All that was behind him was an armchair.

Sairis gave her a bemused look. He was average height; he wasn't used to being accused of looming.

Then he turned to look behind him when she said that, frowning and focusing on the air behind him. He didn't see anything magical there, though. Certainly nothing that would eat him. "Is there something I should be looking for?"

Though even as he said it, he was expanding his sight. "Is that chair magical?"

Edited 2026-01-07 23:14 (UTC)

He was when she was sitting.

"Yes, it's an artifact," she said as the chair reluctantly skittered off into one of aisles. "An ambush predator, and before you ask, no, I have no idea how or why somebody decided to turn a chair into an ambush predator."

Her best guess was 'because they could' or 'because it's funny.'

"The other chair is simply a chair, and is perfectly fine to sit in."

Sairis grabbed the normal chair and brought it over to sit near Liliana.

"Someone must have truly hated their guests."

He could easily see reasons for an ambush chair; his master would probably have found it incredibly amusing.

That's why Liliana kept it in her store. She thought it was hilarious. Though she still likely wouldn't have put the time and effort into creating it.

"So you can understand why I keep it in the store, then," she said, as the armor clanged its way over to them, holding a tea tray carefully in both hands. He set it down on the counter, bowed slightly to Liliana, and then clattered off. "Since you seemed curious about white teas, I decided that's what I would serve," she said, picking up the teapot to pour for them both. "White tea is made from the young, unopened buds and immature leaves. The taste is sweeter and more delicate than other teas and the brew is a much lighter color as well."

A teacup and saucer made out of porcelain so fine it was translucent if held up to the light was passed to Sairis. "Sugar, lemon, cream, or honey?" she asked, nudging each container (matching, obviously) forward a bit, so he'd know what was held where.

Sairis held the cup very carefully and sniffed the tea, though he couldn't tell much about it from that. "Honey, please," he said, reaching for just a little. "So this is the same plant as regular tea?"

"Correct, just immature," Liliana said. "This honey is from Innistrad, one of the planes I make my own. It's very rich and sweet, so I'd suggest taking less that you normally would until you're calibrated for it."

Sairis nodded and put the barest touch of honey in his tea. He could always add more if he wanted it.

He sipped and made a surprised noise. "It doesn't taste much like tea, honestly."

Possibly because his usual tea was peasant quality and generally steeped for as long as it took him or his master to remember it was there.

"What that suggests about the quality of your tea is terrifying," Liliana drawled. Her hand with the honey was much heavier.

Once her tea had been doctored to her liking and several sips had been taken, she considered Sairis with deep purple eyes. "So," she said. "You were meant to have questions for me."

Sairis couldn't exactly defend the quality of his tea. It could be horrible or wonderful; it was just what he was used to.

He nodded as he sipped his tea again and added just a touch more honey.

"I'd like to know how to get a phone." He still wasn't sure what they did, but she'd said they were important. "And I'd like to know more about electricity, and how things here work. I'm not used to not being able to do things for myself. Also..." he hesitated. "I'd like to know how safe it is, being a necromancer here."

"The phone thing is easy," Liliana said, reaching into her desk and pulling out a phone. "My number is already in it, so if you need to message me, you can, and if I message you, you'll know who it is from."

And prioritize it appropriately, that is 'moreso than anything else he's doing.'

"I don't know a great deal about electricity, though I'm willing to at least attempt to answer your questions. You can also look up information on your phone--though I think the library will likely have books more appropriate for someone who has never experienced it before. As for your last question..." She gave him a crooked smile. "Do you think there is a single person on this island other than potentially your new classmate, who doesn't know what I am?" She laughed at the idea. "The first class I taught here was called 'The Necromancer's Guide to the Undead,' which meant it was announced to the entire island every week."

Sairis took the phone, a bit surprised. "Thank you. I'm not sure how I can pay you back for this. Or even what its value is." It looked like a glass and metal square. "How do you message with it? Or look up information?"

He quirked his lips in a barely there smile. "Honestly, Magus Liliana, I think you're probably terrifying enough to make them leave you alone. But I don't know that I am."

He could terrify peasants without even trying, but the people here seemed different.

"How very sweet of you to say, darling," Liliana said with an indulgent laugh. "I would like to think you're correct, but honestly, some people are under the mistaken impression that I'm nice and dissuading them of that ridiculous notion would be more trouble than it's worth."

She leaned back and her chair and considered. "Some people get very precious about their personal morals. 'Ghostslaving is bad, because it has the word slave in it!' and 'zombies should be given time off and a work/life balance!' - do they even hear themselves? - and 'the dead should be respected and protected!'" She rolled her eyes. "That being said, no one has every done anything worse than lecture me about whatever they think I should be caring about; as if they thought that if they whined at me about the power of friendship enough, I would stop being so mean to my zombies and shades."

Three guesses no prizes how much that had affected her any. "Knowing you're a necromancer will be fine. Some might get upset if you use the graveyard by the church as your own personal zombie playground, enough that they might arrest you and keep you in a cell overnight until someone came around to give you a well-meaning lecture about the sanctity of the dead and how you shouldn't defile them. And if you hang your head and apologize and promise to put them all back, that would likely be the end of it. What are you generally planning to do with your necromancy, darling?"

Zombies...didn't have a life to balance? That was just weird.

Sairis nodded. "I won't raise anyone from the local graveyard without dire need, then." Being in a cell didn't sound too bad, but he should probably still avoid it. "Although that does bring up another question I had - I would like to work on charms to sell and to do some spirit-walking and studying, and my room in the dormitory is too small for a summoning circle. Are there workrooms or someplace similar?"

Precisely! And yet--!

"You can speak to the Dean to see if there is a space you can use in the school, I cannot speak for the dorms. ~~Though wasn't there a room that was what you needed? On the top floor?~~" She seemed about to say something and then sipped her tea instead. "What kind of charms do you make? And how are you defining spirit-walking."

Sairis nodded; he'd speak to the Dean, then.

"I've made charms for the nearby villages before," he said. "Mostly healing and pain relief, fertility and infertility, locators and such.

"And spirit-walking is visiting the Shadow Lands." He tried to think of how to explain it to someone who hadn't done it before. "Sending my mind and spirit there while my body stays here."

"What are the Shadow Lands?"

Okay, that question threw Sairis for a loop; he wasn't expecting their magic to be that different.

"Maybe you call it something else? It's the lands around the Styx - where spirits go when they die or are close to death. Go far upstream, and it becomes the Lethe, and you're in Faerie. Downstream is Death. There's forest all around."

An excellent underscoring of her point about assumptions, Sairis! Liliana was shaking her head. "I've never been to any plane that had anything like that. A land of the dead? With a river and a forest? And what even is 'Faerie'? You speak of it as a place, not a type of creature."

And he kept learning even more and more of his reality didn't apply!

"Because it is," Sairis said. "Fae creatures do live there, though. If you have fae - or faerie, I suppose - creatures, where do they come from?"

"What do you mean, where do they 'come from'?" Liliana asked. "The same place as anyone else. Even on Lorwyn, where most faeries are born in Glen Elendra, they can still be born anywhere flowers are. Once, all of my moonglove flowers ended up birthing faeries and they were underfoot everywhere until I complained to Oona. And every other plane, they just...are."

"They just live the same place as everyone else?" Sairis asked. "In my world - on my plane, I suppose - they have to be summoned."

"Why? For what purpose?" she asked. "Is annoying your neighbor that important" to your culture?

"They have no way into our world except being summoned," Sairis said. "And most people in our world can't get to theirs. We usually use a summoning to share knowledge, or we can exchange things they want for services." He shrugged. "The same as demons. Demons are more likely to be annoyed than fae, though. The fae I've met mostly seem to enjoy it."

"Demons live in the Abyss, which is it's own plane that connects to various others," Liliana said. "Calling demons makes sense to me, but they are nothing like fae. And fae are nothing like you're talking about, at least not in my experience. They are simply indigenous to a number of planes and are creatures like any other. Certainly not anyone you'd call upon for favors or knowledge. Unless you wanted to use them as spies, but best of luck keeping them from getting distracted by the nearest shiny thing."

She leaned back to regard him again. "Now, what exactly do you mean by summoning?"

Sairis snorted. "About the only thing mine have in common with yours is getting distracted by shiny things. To summon them, you start with a summoning circle. It concentrates power to help with the summoning, and it also keeps them from getting out and causing mischief."

Which for a fae could mean making a mess of your workroom, and for a demon could mean killing a lot of things, probably starting with you.

"There are runes that will help and focus in on what specific creature you want to summon, and spells to actually call out to them and give them a gateway."

"How very odd," Liliana said, shaking her head. "And time-consuming and vastly inconvenient. What if you're ambushed and need backup and there aren't any dead to call?"

Summoning was much more complicated now, after the Mending, than it had been before, obviously. Now, much of their summons involved drawing the concept of a creatures from the Aether. But significantly powerful mages - as Liliana was - could still summon individuals. ~~How? Don't ask questions is how, we're all just gonna go "LA LA LA I CAN'T SEE YOU" at how it goes against revisionist rules, okay?~~ She gestured with a hand and suddenly there was an old man standing beside them. He gasped and fell to his knees. "Dark Lady! Have can this one serve--?"

"Just using to you illustrate a point," Liliana said, like this was totally normal. "For my new student here."

The man looked up at Sairis in awe. "Blessed are you, to be taught by Our Lady of the Dark Realms!"

"Yes, yes, he is very lucky," Liliana agreed. "I'm sending you home now."

"Praise b--!" The man vanished with as little fanfare as he'd been summoned.

"Then I don't have backup," Sairis said, a little distracted from the random summoning. "Was he human or something else?"

"Oh, he was human," Liliana said, carelessly. "His age is catching up with him."

"And you just pulled him from wherever he was, and then sent him back?"

"Correct," Liliana said, nodding. "We are limited to summoning only creatures and people that we have seen before and at least have done a cursory of. Which is why planeswalkers have an advantage against other magic users, in that we have the creatures of dozens of planes at our disposal, not just the one."

Infinite Consortium, Monday

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