Witch in which place?

[witchwatcher]

Grendyne groans and starts pulling on her boots when the alarm goes off. Again. She quick-marches to the broom hangar, sits on her machine and is handed a plethora of loaded weapons by attentive corporals.

"Two flyers in one day? They're getting way too common."

"It's worse," the commander informs them, "South Karlsland got hit with three at once. We're taking Lytee's express and sleeping there. You can sit out if you absolutely need to, but Freya's still recovering so we could use you as a comms relay."

"No, I'll come. I just reserve the right to complain about it."

The 42nd United Forces Witch Wing takes off, bracing to fight yet another city-destroying monster, and assembles into a perfect synchronized formation as Lytee charges her teleport power.



...This is not South Karlsland wilderness.

Near the Golden Coven capital, in Aurum

Near Savarasse, in Thilanushinyel

Near Whately Academy

With Unbitwise

Comments

[alicornucopia]

No. No it isn't.

This is the sky above a subtropical beach.

[witchwatcher]

...Palm trees? Is this Egypt or something? If so, the teleport spell overshot by about a thousand miles. She looks for other Witches. Failing that, landmarks.

[alicornucopia]

Well, there's buildings. Glassy, architecturally unfamiliar buildings. In the distance also really tall buildings.

Also, there is a man's voice in her head: [Please land. Someone may see you up there.]

[witchwatcher]

What.

Well, now that it's been used on her, she tries to grab the strangely dry-feeling magic. It's... Really slippery.

Eh, things like this are usually two-way, so she replies 'at' him [Why is being seen a bad thing? And where am I? I was supposed to end up in Karlsland to intercept a Neuroi, not wherever this is. Lytee botched her teleport spell.]

[alicornucopia]

[You may have ended up farther off course than you know. Please land; it will be easier to explain if we don't have to say everything through this channel.]

[witchwatcher]

She pours mana into her ears for a moment. The people below her are extremely weird, but there aren't any Neuroi close enough to detect.

[Very well.] She spirals down and lands along a section of beach free of people.

[her_imperial_radiance]

She is greeted by a girl who in the sunshine has an awfully healthy glow about her. "Hello. My name is Elspeth. You should be aware that you're in range of a mind-reader. If you don't want to be in range of a mind-reader we can have the rest of our conversation somewhere else."

[witchwatcher]

...She tries to find the mind-reader among the plethora of weird weird powers. She can't copy the power, not yet, but she can investigate it.

"Oh, he's only getting surface thoughts, that's alright."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"In that case, would you like to come in?" Elspeth gestures at a building. "He's of the opinion that you're not hostile."

[witchwatcher]

"Sure. Only hostile to things that blow up cities. I think I'm in an entirely new world, do you have Neuroi here? ...Your magic is very, uh, eager. You can use it on me if you like."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I can't not," Elspeth says, "as long as I'm talking, but" good to know. We don't blow up cities. This way.

They enter a building, which is carefully innocuous on the first floor - in a very otherworldly way, but still, bland is bland - and then go up a staircase, past a pale guard who inclines her head at Elspeth, and into a prettily arched open room with no furniture and a lot more pale people. There's the mindreader, over there, and a woman with a gold crown on her head, and someone who if she isn't a bodyguard has really missed her calling, and a precog and an empath and a few unpowered pale people. Everybody's eyes (apart from Elspeth's chocolate brown) are various shades of gold, some edging towards black.

[luminous_regnant]

"Welcome," says the woman with the crown. "My husband here says you're from another world."

[witchwatcher]

"Apparently so. I hope I can return at some point, I might as well be twenty different Witches so of all the people to get stranded losing me hurts the UDF the most."

[luminous_regnant]

"Unfortunately, we don't have interdimensional travel available, and you're at least on the wrong planet - itself not trivial to fix - and probably in the wrong world altogether. The latter's likelier, since you're speaking something mutually intelligible with English."

[witchwatcher]

"At least I'm used to moving from place to place by now. Lived in Greece when the Neuroi first hit it, moved homes half a dozen times since then."

[luminous_regnant]

"Well, we don't have Neuroi here."

[witchwatcher]

"Good. They're terrible and honestly I'm pretty tired of sortieing to fight them nearly every day."

[luminous_regnant]

"At any rate, I'm Empress Isabella Cullen, this is my husband Edward, you've met our daughter Elspeth, and the other people who happen to be in the room at the moment are Alice, Jasper, Renata, Santiago, and Emmett."

[witchwatcher]

She starts and gives a little bow. "Your majesty. I am Grendyne Nylund, Witch Second Class, 42nd Witch Wing, United Defense Force. I did not realize I was in the presence of royalty, and I swear that I have no violent intentions to you or yours."

[luminous_regnant]

"...Yes, I know, my husband reads minds and you landed in his range. If you had violent intentions I wouldn't have sent Elspeth. You may be slightly misinterpreting my title, though. I don't rule a territory per se; I run the global vampire shadow government."

[witchwatcher]

"Ah. That was a reflex. Most nobles take it badly if we neglect etiquette, even if they can't actually do much to the UDF. Vampires?"

[luminous_regnant]

"Vampires are a sort of creature with assorted superhuman powers. We happen when vampire venom is applied to a human. I also claim jurisdiction over hybrids, like Elspeth, and werewolves."

[witchwatcher]

"What a lovely fantasy world I seem to have landed in. I should probably ignore all my mythology. Though... I guess you could call a Witch superhuman as well, so who am I to talk?"

[luminous_regnant]

"Funnily enough, 'witch' is also the English word for people like, say, Edward, who have extra supernatural powers, whether they're vampires or humans or hybrids or for that matter wolves."

[witchwatcher]

"Interesting. In my world, witches... Let's call them Strike Witches, after my unit's nickname. Strike witches can fly with the right tools, we can put up shields and launch energy blasts and make ourselves temporarily stronger. And each gets one 'special'. Mine is copying... I think I can copy your kind of witch, but it'll probably take sitting down and staring at one for ten minutes. They're dry and slippery. Oh, only girls are strike witches, and our powers come in when we hit puberty and they decay with age, or sometimes go away if you get hurt badly."