Some people in the US are quite upset about voting fraud: people who can't legally vote (by reason of non-citizenship, death, fictionality, etc.) are on the voting rolls, and sometimes actually vote. Other people in the US are quite upset about voter purging: people who can legally vote being removed from the voting rolls.

In many cases this is political: one party benefits from removing legitimate voters of certain characteristics (viz. those associated with non-citizenship). The other benefits from spreading voting as widely as possible, even to the occasional non-citizen.

But actually, both sides have their points. Political opportunists aside, there is general agreement that, ideally, the voting rolls would contain precisely the people who the laws say can vote.

But there's still stuff to think about, and even mock.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Drullguur is the perfect universe.

At least, Drullguur is the perfect universe for lovers of giant metallic shelf fungi and mighty scraping sounds in the darkness. Less perfect for others, perhaps.

The Waiting Room is in a massive building of steel and bronze and girium, tucked on the top of one of these giant metallic shelf fungi, the Turngrond Shelf. If you walk to the edge of the shelf — well, first of all, be careful. Your claws will not bite into the girium surface of the shelf. “We lose a few tourists a year,” said Junctifer the guide. “They don’t hold on to the rail, they wore slippery shoes like we said not to do, their feet go out from under ‘em, and they slide, slide, slide down the shelf and sail out into the well. If they’re going at just the right speed they zoom all the way across the world and crush-land on one of the shelves on the other side and die of a crashing crushing. If not, well, they go sploosh in the central lake at the bottom of the well. What they don’t ever do, is survive. So you gentle tourists should take heed and behave with the utmost of safety, and we’ll see you get from here to there and not be deaded.”

I have wings and could probably make it back to the shelf. But one of them is a bit ragged, and I’d rather not stake my life on being able to fly long distances (like back up from the ocean thirty miles down), or quickly (like not colliding with a wall) anymore. Which is oversensitive. I might be able to fly for another two or three years.

Junctifer continued, “So you keep your feet on these paths with the corrugations. You stay inside the guard rails and handholds. Keep to the camps and near the walls. Don’t go hiking, this is no world for a hike. Pay attention and you won’t go taking a long ride to a long bath. That’s how to have a long life on Drullguur.”

“Um .. excuse me? I’m already dead,” said Eric.

Junctifer peered at Eric from swollen eyes. Junctifer, like Vong, was a toad, and a rather bloated and swollen one even by toad standards. Junctifer, unlike Vong, was a good-hearted sort of person. “Well, keep you out of the water anyhow. You do not want to go into the water. It’s a long way down.”

I stuck my left head under the guard rail. It was a rather long way down. Drullguur is an inside world, a bubble inside of some cosmic matrix. It takes the form of a squat cylinder or coin, thirty miles tall, a thousand miles in diameter. At the bottom of the cylinder is the well. At the top of the cylinder is the Useless Sun. “It’s bright enough so you can see your candles burning,” said Junctifer. “It’s not bright enough so you can see your striker clear enough to light a candle. Keep close to the braziers. Snorb knows we pay enough for ‘em.”

“Who is Snorb?” asked Eric.

Junctifer lowered his voice to a bare whisper. “Just a saying, is all I’m saying.”

Hditr grinned at him. “Snorb is the God of Shit of the Sluvuttarian Pantheon. All living things must worship Snorb! Eventually.”

“Yeah, there is that,” said Junctifer. “You may have noticed that we’re a wee bit low on the soil here? What we’ve got is, a bunch of priests of Snorb who take the night soil and turn it into just plain soil like what plants grow in.”

“That sounds unhygenic,” said Eric.

“Don’t you go complaining. It’s not something you’ll ever be involved in any more, dead man,” said Hditr. “Not even if you want to. Snorb wouldn’t accept you into his priesthood. You ain’t got the guts.”

Eric waggled a finger at her. “No, I … I puked them out already back on Earth.”

Hditr gave him a big grin.

“So how do those braziers work?” I asked. We had passed dozens of them from the Waiting Room to the shelf-edge: iron poles topped with balls of hungry orange-green flame.

“Well, we got mostly Pugnard’s braziers here. They need to be paid. One obol a week, plopped right into the flame, or put on the post if it’s gone out. We go through a lot of obols here. One of my jobs is going around town putting obols in fires. Another one of my jobs is soaking my forepaw in a tub of cold water after it gets scorched. Do not touch those flame, good visitors. They are not particularly nice,” said Junctifer.

“Technically, if you want to be tacky and technical about it, Eric isn’t material and can’t get burnt, and Tllith is a fire dragon and can’t get burnt. I’ll keep my foolish fingers out of the fancy flickery flames for three, though. I like my fingers, and so does my girlfriend,” said Hditr.

“Ahem. Your … girlfriend … continues to wait in the Waiting Room?”

“Nah, broke up with me,” said Hditr. “Stayed home. I’ll find another one though. Hey, got any nice mammals who need a hot date?”

“Yes, of course. There will be an extra fee for attempted procurement, and I cannot guarantee compatibility. Now, I suppose you have wondered at the low screaming sound that frequently pervades Drullguur? It is not the cry of our lovesick badger folk,” said Junctifer.

“Nah, too quiet and happy for that,” said Hditr.

“As I am sure you are aware, the cylinder wall of Drullguur rotates and counter-rotates. It is divided into twenty-eight circles, each of which moves around the core. Adjacent circles move in opposite directions. We’re on the top one, moving clockwise. The one beneath us moves counter-clockwise; the one below that, clockwise again.”

“How fast?” asked Eric.

“A month per revolution,” said Junctifer. “Now, if you observe there, we have installed scrapers, so that the rotation of the universe….”

“What keeps them moving?” asked Eric.

“Very large gears behind the walls of the universe. We don’t know what the ultimate power source is though,” said Junctifer. “As I was saying, the rotation of the universe is forceful enough so that the scrapers peel great vast coils of metal off the cylinders near where they meet. This metal alloy, immense and pure, is the main product of Drullguur, and the reason for the colony existing in the first place.”

“What metal?” asked Eric.

“Iron, girium, tolarnium, copper, and some others,” said Junctifer.

“Could you translate better?” he asked. “Two of those aren’t coming out right.” A longish digression into metallurgy and chemistry reavealed that my language spell was just fine; English has no words for girium and tolarnium. It does have words for metals like “calcium” and “tellurium”, which, after a long discussion that I did not understand, Eric said ought to be the same as girium and tolarnium, but are, according to Junctifer’s somewhat shaky metallurgy, are quite different. Girium turns by itself, for example, and calcium (in the Ninety Worlds and in Eric’s world) sits still.

I peered, peered, and peered over the edge of the shelf. “I see eight clumps of light out there. Plus the Useless Sun, which is pretty dim.”

“Your eyes are proper, master Tllith, and especially good if you can see the Useless Sun. There are nine mining companies on Drullguur,” said Junctifer.

“And the sea isn’t quite dark either,” I noted.

“The white around the edge is where two underwater rings grind together and churn the depths of the waters. There they bubble, and there they boil betimes,” said Junctifer. “The steam from their boiling rises up, even to here, and condenses as streams upon the walls of the world. If it were not for these streams living here would be quite hopeless.”

“How is it with the streams?” asked Eric.

Junctifer thought for a moment. “I should call it expensive. And noisy. And rather vile.”

“Why does anyone want to live here?” asked Eric.

“The mining, mainly,” said Junctifer. “There’s a lot of money to be made, peeling metal off of the walls of the universe and selling it in other universes.”

“Well, why does anyone want to visit here?” asked Eric.

“I can’t possibly imagine why,” said Junctifer. “For that matter, you must refer to the lunatics who are your companions.”

“Power!” I cried. “I seek power, mighty and amazing!”

“Of course, of course,” said Junctifer. “A common desire of visitors.”

“I kinda do too. I am not planning to acquire the power, unlike the dragonet there seems to be planning. I am just planning to get out the Yardstick of the Elder Gods and measure the power,” said Hditr.

“Drullguur has an excellently-powerful domain rune. I mean to acquire its power for my own!” I crowed, in a traditional draconic attitude.

“Oh, that’s the miller’s pillars! I sure look forward to travelling with you, then,” said Hditr. “And not just because I want to know if a powerful domain rune stuck on a metal wall somewhere gives you more power when it gets copied on your wings, than some sleazy tattoo artist in some greasy tattoo alley in Dulmer-Jork.”

Eric tried to scratch his head, and was distressed to find his hand going through his hair instead. “Why is that?”

“Why? You ask why, dead man? Because the domain in question, hidden since the beginning of time in the near-total darkness and nearer-total inhospitability of near-total Drullguur, is the domain of «Cuisine»!” said Hditr. “I dunno exactly as it’s the mightiest of the domain powers, and I dunno for certain why our dragon here is picking that domain rather than a stereotypically draconic one like «Wounds» or «Money» or «Strength». But I expect some good meals on the road.”

“Perhaps my archenemy is a consummate gourmand? Perhaps I wish to open the best bistro in my native universe, and lure him or her in, and then serve a meal that will cause him to die in humiliation?” I wondered out loud. “Poisons could do it — vicious poisons. Or perhaps he is an oenophile of the highest order, and I could have him mis-identify a Plocqtarde Prenisset ’423 as a Doc de Doc de Doc. Dukes have slit their own forelimbs for less!” (I grew up in a swamp, but I read a lot.)

“Is that why?” asked Eric.

“No,” I said.

“Very well, masters,” said Junctifer. “Shall I arrange for transit to the heart of Drullguur’s power immediately by the fastest means possible?”

Hditr laughed. “Fastest means, you gonna shove us over the edge and tell us grab on when we pass the right shelf?”

Junctifer frowned, as if considering the issue for the first time. “Is this somehow unadvisable? Perhaps even injurious? Might that explain the paucity of my tips, despite the grave intensity of my labors? Only last week there a shedu from Gidru-Morsht. Not only was I unable to tip him off into the void by my usual devious means, I even had to apply butter to his hooves to get him to fall. The finest butter! Its ethereal fragrance enhanced by its proximity to «Cuisine»! Expensive, too. I needed that tip to pay for the butter I used!”

Eric stared at Junctifer, aghast. “You kill…? And joke about it…?”

“No,” said Junctifer.

“For one thing, shedu can fly,” I noted. “They’re winged cattle with faces sort of like yours.”

“Huh. Do they do wing magic like yours too?” Eric asked.

“Sometimes, I suppose,” I said, because I have never actually met a shedu and I have no idea.

“In any case, my lord tourists, are you wishing to procure the swiftest of all passage to «Cuisine»?” asked Junctifer.

“No!” thundered Hditr. “Give us the most boring passage that gets us there in moderate speed!”

“I shall, instead, procure for you the most perilous passage, the one which brings you into the gravest danger of any means of transportation thither,” said Junctifer. “The form of passage that most greatly invigorates the spirit and challenges the courage!”

“Can we compromise on one that has lots of stops at good bars?” asked Hditr.

“No,” said Junctifer.

“How about one that brings us along in comfort and safety, save for the occasional assault by brigands and bloodthirsty blundigars?” asked Hditr.

“No,” said Junctifer.

“How about one in which we are dissolved in acid, slung across the void in magical eggs, and undissolved when we get there?”

“No. I shall, instead, procure for you the most expensive and the slowest means of transportation. Fortunately, although it is the most uncomfortable, it is also the worst-smelling.”

“Ah! Just what I was hoping for!” said Hditr. “Do so at once!”

“What?” asked two of me and one of Eric, or, perhaps, one of me and two of Eric. We were both pretty confused.

“According to the gibbering guidebooks, the only way there is the Porthmorth Passage Company,” said Hditr. “Fastest, slowest, cheapest, dearest, cleanest, dirtiest — all the same company.”

Eric whined. “If I had a head it would ache!”

I have three. I resolved to have one of them at least take a look at a guidebook.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

[ (1) «Guillemets» for domains. Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey. (2) My current plan is, to post Nexterie parts once a week. On occasion — e.g. if I am inspired by donations or other goodnesses — I will post other things. The first of the other things is a series of letters from Cleiestis, poor serpent. -bard]

[If you write to Cleiestis or Tllith, I will see that they get your note and that you get their answer. -bard]

Cleiestis

I have lots of pen pals! They’re from all over the Ninety Worlds (and beyond it, like you). Mostly they’re people with something like the «Language» domain or far-talker spell of magic, or a technology internet like that. Many of them are herpetological, by the Laws of Slithering Similarity, which I just made up.

Cleiestis is one of them. I don’t go around writing in public everything that my pen pals tell me, but Cleiestis wanted me to tell everyone what was going on with her, on the hopes that the message gets to people who want to know, or who can help her. So I will.

This first letter from Cleiestis isn’t about her trouble though. It’s just her introduction to me, about two months ago. I’ll post some more letters from her once you’ve had a chance to digest this one. It’s not as easy as some letters. Her later letters are more familiar of language, though harder to read for other reasons.

Cleiestis 1: Letter of Introduction

This being read for Tllith of Yirien. The apology for no title being given, on account of no title being known. This being written by Cleiestis of Gemgaru. Priestess of the third florescence is she, mistress of seven spells and three visible and four invisible potencies. Wife of Tomolrouc is she, who is the assistant administrator of flying insects to the Hoouthgala district. The hope from here is that you are in a state of delighted, and that three happinesses and four contentments are on you.

I am now very happy and excited! Also, bored! A lot to explain!

Me — a couatl. A snake of four yards. Avian wings of three yards. Brilliant feathers of three visible and four invisible colors. Charming smile. Elegant ruff. Erotically handsome tailtuft, entirely red.

Me — a wife. Tomolrouc — a couatl. Small for a male. Brilliant feathers of five visible colors. Sweetest eyes anywhere on Gemgaru, and full of love and erotic mischief, and entirely red. Two years of marriage.

Me — To be a mother!!!! The rank, it is not sufficient for mothering, not until the seventh florescence. The Tomolrouc rank, no higher yet. But the junior priestess married lottery! It has seven tickets this year. Mine is drawn fifth. Great joy!

Friends — The married to males: great envy! The happiness for my sake! The wishing for their own sake! Me to them — the gratitude. I hope the graciousness. I hope the not washing their feathers and smearing my good fortune as congealed sap to them. I hope I hope I hope. Hard not to wriggle! Hard not to fly circles and loops around every tree!

Tllith — To you, are you to reproduce soon? How are matters conducted by those like you of Yirien?

Today — The lustration of back-feathers. The inquisition of career. The lustration of fresh-picked gemstones. The inquisition of health. The lustration of [untranslateable]! The reverse lustration of cloth. The reverse lustration of talismans. The lustration of small wavy iron objects. The inquisition of readiness. After each — a long delay. In these delays I write letters such as this.

[We think what Cleiestis means here is that, for the lustrations, she's making offerings to the temple (?), and for the reverse lustrations, she's getting gifts from the temple. The interrogations are probably questions like, "How will you combine your career as a priestess with being a parent?" -bb and tll]

Tomorrow — The Hoouthgala Temple of Fertility! Twining with Tomolrouc in the Form of Reproduction! The laying of eggs! The seven years of egg-waiting and egg-tending! The squirming wormlings poking their heads out of the eggs!

Withal — joy in anticipation!

Mirrored from Sythyry.

foomf and others have asked about what Tllith looks like. Here are my notes, colored purple so you can tell they’re not part of the story. –bard

Tllith is a three-headed dragon with six legs.

Hditr helpfully exclaimed, “Furthermore you have shiny scales of a pretty purple, helpfully highlighted in blue here and there. I cannot tell if your scutes are purple or blue; I wish there was a color in-between for me to call them. Your tail is quite long for your size, perhaps three or even four feet. You are quite small: a regular dragon could eat an adult sheep at a single gulp, but you are no bigger than that adult sheep yourself. The pupils of your eyes are triangular. If I count properly, you have six eyes on your left head, one large one on your middle, and seven on your right. Your heads have very large and very flexible ears, such as make little sense on a lizard. Your paws are six-toed, with short claws of some translucent blue substance whose full nature I am unaware of. You have a pair of distinctly clothlike wings, but, of course, one corner of the left one is turning into language. Aside from that you look like a standard enough dragon.”

All the heads are on the small side, like cats’ heads. The muzzles are, similarly, smallish — Tllith is a predator, but not incredibly well armed.

1. Left head: Apparently made of purple ice. Three stubby horns and eight barbels, six eyes. This breathes cold and ice (a yard-long ray), and has a tendency to accumulate a beard and moustache of icicles around the mouth and nostrils, annoying Tllith no end. The horns and barbels can surround the head (and anything else made of or covered with ice that is touching the head) with a cage of lightning, capable of delivering a substantial sting to anything that touches it.
2. Middle head: Apparently made of flesh. One big eye, whose most intense gaze increases bacterial activity — its radience can cause wounds to become infected, hasten the leavening of bread, fermentation of wine, and maturation of cheese, and do amazing things involving halitosis and flatulence of living people. The eye has a heavily-scaled, thorn-lashed triple eyelid, and a double wall of fixed horns to protect it. This head breathes fire: a blue-purple gasjet of flame, which can be a few yards long and leaves small but painful burns on unprotected flesh, or sets things on fire, or, if Tllith works at it, can weld metal.
3. Right head:Apparently made of swirly iridescent (purple-heavy) anodized metal. Seven eyes. A single sharp twirly unicorn horn eight inches long. The horn is of course magical: Tllith can cure the horn-wounds, by rubbing the side of the horn against them. The right head’s breath weapon, such as it is, is a stream or cone of dancing sparkling lights. They are not particularly damaging, but can be distracting or annoying; they are also Tllith’s only area attack.

Combat Prowess: Tllith can probably outfight an unequipped human. Tllith is unlikely to kill (both because it is not Tllith’s taste, and because Tllith is not that deadly.) An armed and armored warrior would probably win a fight against Tllith. We don’t expect many fights in this story though.

Magical Prowess: Tllith (and other dragons of Yirien) has a remarkable number of magical gifts for a person of the Ninety Worlds setting. They’re not all that useful in general, but obscure and semi-useful magical power is better than no magical power at all. Tllith’s domains, as they show up over the course of the story, will leave Tllith an intriguingly flexible mage. (But Tllith’s sigil magic will never be as powerful as the spells of a wizard. Then again, wizards’ power is limited to a small area — a world for the weakest, down to an acre or two for the strongest — and Tllith’s works throughout the Ninety Worlds.)

Mirrored from Sythyry.

In the meantime, Eric gibbered at me. “You … you have three heads!”

I never know how to respond to monocephalons exclaiming about that. “Ssh! Don’t say it so loud! Each of them thinks I have only two!” That made the badger giggle, at least. It is not true.

Eric just stared more. “They’re all different!”

“If they were all the same, there’d be no point to having three!” I said, which is also not true.

Hditr helpfully exclaimed, “Furthermore you have shiny scales of a pretty purple, helpfully highlighted in blue here and there. I cannot tell if your scutes are purple or blue; I wish there was a color in-between for me to call them. Your tail is quite long for your size, perhaps three or even four feet. You are quite small: a regular dragon could eat an adult sheep at a single gulp, but you are no bigger than that adult sheep yourself. The pupils of your eyes are triangular. If I count properly, you have six eyes on your left head, one large one on your middle, and seven on your right. Your heads have very large and very flexible ears, such as make little sense on a lizard. Your paws are six-toed, with short claws of some translucent blue substance whose full nature I am unaware of. You have a pair of distinctly clothlike wings, but, of course, one corner of the left one is turning into language. Aside from that you look like a standard enough dragon.” She did not manage to sound nearly as alarmed as Eric.

I giggled, and declaimed back at her, “Well, you look like an anthropomorphic badger woman, no more than five feet high under your ears, built like a fist, wearing garments which I would call nondescript traveller’s clothing if it weren’t such a brilliant scarlet and didn’t show off your rump quite so much.”

Eric missed her sarcasm altogether, and wailed, “Your left head looks like it’s made of purple ice! Yet it is moving and speaking! I don’t see how it can be alive at all!”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to complain about who looks alive and who looks not,” said Hditr.

“But I can see through it! It’s clear ice all the way! Where’s your brain, Tllith?” asked Eric.

“Don’t have one,” I said. (Which is true. Yirienese biology tends towards the decentralized, especially as regards such disposable body parts as heads, paws, and tail.) “Where’s yours?”

“I … I don’t know,” said Eric, patting at his head confusedly. “It’s buried in a mass grave in Boston, sealed in with cement and lead because radioactivity. Am I thinking with dead, rotting neurons?”

“No-st, you’re jost a ghost,” said Hditr, making the words rhyme very much against their will.

Eric frowned at her. “But what is a ghost?”

“Húu háa hakety! Now that’s a wild worm of a question! I guess you might be taking it personally though, so I’ll do my dutiful ditziful duty to answer it. Do you know what a standing wave is?”

“I am a physics grad student at MIT! Well, deceased,” said Eric.

“And I’m an ecclesiast of the Rogalian Pantheon of Nurki, but most of my colleagues wouldn’t know a standing wave if it was standing on their head. Or helping them sing their hoopty hymns,” said Hditr.

“Well, I do,” said Eric. “What am I a standing wave in?”

“Slow down, slow down your slobbering spirit, we’re not nearly there yet,” said Hditr. “Actually I gotta warn you, we are not actually going to get there. If anyone knows precisely what ghosts are, I have not heard a herring’s heartbeat of it.”

“Right-o,” said Eric. “You’re telling me about theories. I can handle theories.”

“Good! I’m used to people who want to know The Right Answer right away and if you don’t know it they’ll find someone who does or at least can make it up! Anyways, you know how a standing wave needs stuff to bounce off of? Guess what! You got one, wrapped around you like a woolen woman! It’s the curse of the death god.”

I do not know what a standing wave is, much less advanced theology, so I went to get a second snack box from the guards. I had to pay for it.

When I got back, Hditr was smiling a large and very toothy smile to Eric. “Y’know, I’m glad you died.”

“… what?” wailed Eric.

“’cause you’d've never gotten out here if you were alive like some antelope-appalling asshole. I like the way you think. Want to be my research assistant?” asked Hditr.

“Um, didn’t you just say that the only way I continue to exist is in resonance with the death god’s curse? So I have to keep travelling around Magic-Land and can’t do physics?”

“I gotta lot of travelling to do, and what I’m doing ain’t physics, it’s experimental theology. Full of glomerulous gods and magic and all the stuff that the death god was trying to rub your nose in.”

“Well, I … I suppose I can give it a try,” said Eric. “What will I be assisting?”

“We’re going to be measuring how well magic works in lots of different worlds. See what we can learn when we have a few inglimmerings of information.”

“Like what?” I asked, sticking my left head into the conversation.

“Like! You know sigil magic, right? Don’t lie, lizardlet, I can see your weird-scribbled wing. So, do your spells work just the same in every one of the widespread worlds?”

“I don’t know! I’ve only been to two, and they haven’t let me out of the Waiting Room on the second yet,” I said. “The one spell I cast seemed to do the same thing here as at home. But I’ve never cast it on a ghost before either.”

“That’s an empirical answer. I like that in a lizard. I’m used to people saying ‘Of course!’ even if they’ve been to necky-nobbling nowhere. So. Suppose that we can measure how good your ᚜Language᚛ spell is here, and on Nurki, and on Thabir-Nsog, and wherever else, and we see that it’s a pint strong over here, and a pint-and-a-dram strong over there, and a pint-and-an-ounce strong on Thabir-Nsog,” said Hditr. The toad peered at her at the mention of his other world. “What would that say?”

“That language were more important in some places than others,” I said. “Like — maybe ᚜Language᚛ is a stronger domain in a world with lots of languages on it?”

“Or maybe there’s some inter-cosmic source radiating luminous ᚜Language᚛ out between the universes, and the worlds that have stronger magic are closer to the source?” guessed Eric.

“There is,” said Hditr.

“Or maybe that the Rogalian Pantheon has found a weakness in Drullguur’s magic that it wishes to exploit!!” snapped the toad. “Come in with translators and learn all our secrets with them, I’ll bet!!”

Hditr snorted. “Drullguur ain’t got snibby submissive secrets worth knowing.” Vong glared at her, but she continued, “Eric and Tllith, you both got good ideas. Kind of a basic question about magic, don’t you think? Does it come from inside the universe, or outside? From the Idol of ᚜Language᚛, that’s on your home-world, dragonlet? Priestly magic comes from the gods. Does a god’s power vary by universe? They aren’t quite sure. I mean, either the god can do anything there or he can’t, even the dumbest gods know that. But Drullguur is on the edge of the Rogalian Pantheon’s territory — are their spells three percent weaker here? Ten percent? Just the same as usual? Ten percent stronger? Usually just the same but sometimes they fumble down to half-strength? They don’t know! I don’t know! Only the nobbity nobody knows!”

“They shouldn’t be allowed at all!!” said Vong. “They are a nosy and expansionistic pantheon!! They should be excluded altogether!! They are surely looking to expand their power here!!”

“Nah, that wouldn’t be too fair, seeing as we helped get mining on Drullguur started, same as whatever pantheon you like,” said Hditr. “But it would sure be interesting to know how to get our spells working better, here or anywhere.”

“You are planning to persuade everyone that Rogalian powers are superior to those of all other pantheons — to become popular and powerful!!” proclaimed Vong. “Your tricks and crimes are becoming clear to me!!”

Hditr laughed. “Well, when they’re cloud-clobbering clear, tell me about ‘em so I can do ‘em, will you, Vong?”

“You mock Vong at your own peril!!” thundered Vong.

“Aww, Vong, don’t fuss your pointy pebbly pretty little head about it. I mock everyone. That’s why they picked me for this little multi-universe expedition,” said Hditr. But the toad hopped away, snarling.

“Sensitive little slubbertoy, isn’t he?” said Hditr. “Tllith, since I’m offering jobs to everyone today, would you like to come with me? You said you’re wandering, and company might be nice on that. Plus you got sigil magic, and I’m real interested in how that goes cross-universe. Obviously all the sigil mages I know of, don’t like to travel so much.”

“Why don’t they?” asked Eric.

“‘Cause getting a sigil put on, destroys the limb you have it on,” said Hditr. “Put it on a leg, lose the leg for any purpose but magic. No leg, no walkies, no long trips.”

“How come the dragon still has its wing?” he asked.

“I don’t, completely,” I said. I spread my wings. “The sigil ᚜Language᚛ is at the edge of the wing” — I pointed with my tail — “and you can see that my wing is getting tattered there already.”

“But you can do magic?”

“I put the translation spell on you!” I said. “I’m not great at magic yet, but I’m learning.”

“Birds and those dragons and other wingies have the easiest time getting sigils,” said Hditr. “Hurts them less than anyone else. ’cause they got some big flat kinda-useless body parts. For badgers, we sometimes get sigils on the tailtip, but they’re only tiny sigils and not good for much. Ears too, but sometimes the power on your ear gets too big and eats your brain. That’s bad.” She glared at me. “Dragons don’t have brains either, and the big ones don’t have ears though this one seems to. I don’t see why they don’t wear sigils on their horrible horny horns.”

“Horns are important for mating contests,” I said.

“Ach, mating contests. I don’t get any of that now. Throublesome thirteen-year vow of chastity,” grumbled Hditr.

“Why?” I asked.

“A wee bit of indescretion with the wrong bishop’s husband at the wrong time,” she said. “Nothing for you to worry about. And don’t listen to any rumors you hear about the ecclesiastical hierarchy being glad to send me off chasing ideas around the multiverse for a few years.”

I cocked my left head at her.

“Ach, they’re all true,” she said. “All but the one about me and the stallion. That didn’t happen — owie! Hurts to think about it!” I looked confused, quizzical, and curious at her (one per head) but she just said, “Longer I’m gone, the happier everyone’ll be.”

“Tllith? Is Tllith in the Waiting Room still?” called the receptionist. I waved my tattered wing at my new companions, and scampered over to get interrogated, inspected, intimidated, iterrupted, and finally admitted to Drullguur.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

When you visit Drullguur, or pretty much any civilized universe (not the same thing at all), you should expect that your long trip there will be a bit longer. Just inside of the universe, at the place where the worldways are tied, there is a fortress of the sternest and fiercest sort: a thousand guns and murder-holes, soldiers and sorcerers and traps, all aimed at a single room. (Or that’s how it should go in a civilized universe. Drulluguur’s is much smaller and less impressive.) The waiting room’s walls are so thick of steel and spells that I would be all day trying to melt through them.

Not that I tried! I came to Drullguur to start my wanderjahre — which I am going to do as a proper nexterie, not simply going to the next swamp over and sitting there for a year. That would turn into a wanderminute if I looked like an enemy. And then some buriedjahre, lots of them. Buriedjahre are probably a bit dull though, and I’m in no hurry for them. And being dead and buried is about as far from a nexterie as one can get.

So, the Waiting Room. It is big enough to hold a thousand badger-people or ten thousand dragons or whatever, or even a couple dozen of the kind of dragon I’m not. Or over a billion gumdrops, should some inter-cosmic traveller decide that Drullguur’s native candies were insufficient. Actually Drullguur’s native candies are pretty good, despite everything you might expect, which is symptomatic of why I came there. The Drullgies noticed that I had been waiting a long time, and gave me a snack box, containing an utterly adequate bird-bits-on-a-bun, an utterly adequate pot of seaweedy savory oatmeal — and four very nice chocolate-covered candied fruits with sparkly ginger crystals that were easily worth the whole three-hour Waiting Room wait. Not the whole two-week trip through the gnarling void, though, so I didn’t turn around and leave.

The whole thing was taking a long time because the brigand prince Fierce Novvert had brought a small army of brigands, princes, ne’er-do-wells, won’t-do-wells, can’t-do-wells, and who-ever-heard-of-doing-well-anyhows. He had more sense than to fight his way through the fortress. Instead he was trying to bribe his way through the fortress. This would ultimately prove to be unsuccessful, as the fortress-folk realized that they would be blamed for any brigandry that came from Novvert, and the bribes weren’t that good. But they did have to determine such important things as (1) who needed to be bribed, and how much, to let Novvert flee back into another universe, (2) who needed to be bribed, and how much, to resupply Novvert and his men in a hurry, and (3) who needed to be bribed, and how much. This took quite a long time.

The Waiting Room was not terribly full. Fourteen vulpine Fulk-Fulks (I’m sure) from Gnangdibar (I think) were wailing horribly and snapping at each other and anyone else who came near them, and chasing each other around the room. They had been disarmed — we all had to leave all our luggage in a separate set of rooms — but they had not been dismouthed. Somehow, with their leaping and bounding, they managed to occupy approximately nine hundred million gumdrops’ worth of the room.

The rest of us crowded in the far corner. This compelled us to indulge in conversation.

“Who are you, dead man?” asked the badger-woman in the fancy but gravy-stained ceremonial robes.

“I beg your pardon!” I exclaimed. “Why, I am not dead yet, nor shall I make easy prey for you!”

“Calm there, calm there, lurking laugh-lizard,” said the badger. “I was talking to the dead human man in the chair there.” She pointed at an empty bench, a massive metal thing eight feet long that all the Fulk-Fulks couldn’t have moved without cooperating, which they were evidently in no mood to do.

“But the bench is empty…?”

“Yeah, yeah, silly ghost fell into the bean-boinking bench,” said the badger. She scratched on it with her claws. “C’mon out of there, dead man, and explain yourself to us to pass the turgid time before you gotta explain yourself to the dapper but dolorous dish-whackers in customs to get in.”

A pair of spectral human hands emerged from the seat of the bench, braced themselves against the metal, and pulled. A black-haired human head and white-shrouded torso emerged from the bench. He said something incomprehensible in some garbly barbarical language. I don’t like to listen to such stuff! Barely three words out of his mouth and I threw the Nomesiac Nicities at him. “I’m not used to that yet,” he concluded in perfectly good Ilmalang.

“So, who are you, and what are you, and from where, dead man?” demanded the priestess. She spoke through a linguistic spell too, though not of ᚜Language᚛.

“I’m Eric Nakamura. I’m a first-year physics grad student at MIT on The World,” he said. The Nomesiac Nicities is a very good bit of magic, yes. But if he’s just going to call his world ‘The World’ or ‘Earth’ or ‘Homeworld’ or something generic like that, and if there’s no name for it in Ilmalang, it can’t very well translate its name to Ilmalang, now can it?

“Well, you’re just a milt-mucking mite on the dead side now,” said the badger woman.

“I didn’t mean to get killed!” he protested.

The badger smiled. “Ach, I don’t I hold that against you! Most of my blessed ancestors are dead too, and sure as sheriffs should be shanked I’m a lot fonder of them that way. But most of ‘em have the mucilaginous manners not to go grim-ghost gallivanting about the cathedral, much less from world to world. So how’d you get scragged?”

“Dusted. I got dusted when Aum Shinrikyo did their little ‘Eclipse Celebration’ in Boston. I didn’t even know it for a couple days! By that time all the hospitals were full. Not that a doctor could have helped me. I figure I got about eight Grays of radiation, maybe more. Really sucks as a way to die, it takes a long time and hurts so much. I wish they’d stuck with Sarin. At least that’s fast.”

Poor Nomesiac Nicities! So many words that don’t translate into Ilmalang! (Later on I got Eric to explain it in a lot more detail, and he wanted to share it with his loved ones back on The World. Which, I am tolerably sure, is not you, but you are as close as currently possible, so I am sharing it with you instead. Enjoy! Or understand! Or something!)

“Yeah, that sounds like a tugubrious and terrible way to go, even if I don’t know half what you’re talking about,” said the badger. “So why’d you end up here as a gawking groppelling ghost?”

“Turns out there is a god of death, and a mean bastard he is, too. He looks like a dead tree growing up through three nasty iron crowns. After I died, I found myself standing in front of him in a huge cave full of mirrored cactuses. He told me to pick one of his crowns. They’re all the same as far as I can tell. I picked the middle one. He got all angry and shouted that I’d be fed to the soul-grinder for my sacrilege. I started complaining about how that wasn’t a fair test. He picked me up in his branches and tore my head apart, and read my thoughts like I was a book. I was thinking This crap is scientifically impossible! I bet this is just some stupid drug hallucination.. So he says to me, “A science-lover! Never before has a science-lover come before me! I shall punish you terribly! I shall do worse to you than the soul-grinder! I condemn you to wander in the realms of magic, where the laws of science are lies!”

“Odd, that a death god of a world where people can study science in schools has never had a scientist come before the god of death,” noted the badger. “Perhaps scientists are immortal?”

“No, they die all the time. Anyhow, he squeezed me back together and tossed me into a big slippery nowhere, and I was kind of freaking out for I have no idea how long until I banged into a metal door and then fell through it. And here I am.”

The badger said, “Ach, the dilly-duking death gods! Most of them are utter scrumordeal bastards who make intestinal flukes look good, and it sounds like yours was that. I’m professionally required to say that Vlutscrag is among the nicest anywhere. Which is totally true, but somehow, if I were inviting just one or two gods to a beer party, I wouldn’t be inviting Vlutscrag.”

“Professionally?” I said, insinuating my left head and neck at her. “What profession might that be?”

“Oh, that. I’m Hditr Durkümkrãg, Anti-Bishop of the Rogalian Pantheon, from Nurki, at your service.” (Oh, good. She’s from somewhere reasonable.) She bowed so low her whiskers brushed the floor and tail approached the roof. “As long as the service you want is passing time in the Waiting Room. Who are you, lizard? And you, toad?”

“I’m Tllith,” I said. “In Ilmalang my species is called ‘dragon of Yirien’.”

“Crazy name, that, just because you look like a small dragon and come from Yirien,” said Hditr. “And you, sir-or-madam the toad?”

“I am the honorable and honored Vong Das Dassick!!” proclaimed the toad-morph in a voice like an over-ripe banana. “I am returning to Drullguur after a trade mission to Thabir-Nsog!! I am an extremely important mayor — the mayor of the Turngrond Shelf!! The guards are delinquent sluts, for they have not let me precede that pirate!! I must swiftly return to my office and undo the foolishness the fools who are my assistants have done!! Yet, who takes it upon themselves not to request me to the chamber?? The guards!! Who call other person this and other person that, but not me, the mayor!!”

“Where are you on the queue?” I asked.

“I don’t see that it’s any business of yours, child!!” snapped Vong.

“What, too busy having a scrawny donnybrook with the door-guards to even give your name to the reasonable but relentless receptionist?” asked Hditr.

“Bah — ridiculous!! The honorable and honored Vong Das Dassick has no reason to bother with receptionists!! In any case they are his subordinates, for he is the mayor!!” proclaimed Vong. In a minute he excused himself to go to the privy, and, instead, was observed trying to browbeat the receptionist into believing that he had been waiting for some hours and thus deserved first place on the list.

And the affectionate, purring kitten has won the Supreme Prize!

It's time for a push poll! It's time for a negative campaigning! It's time for a negative push campaigning poll!

Decisions are few! So many ties! Waffles and High Finance are evicted — but no other evictions occur! Thus our brackets become trackets!

The first round has finished! The Macarena beat out peach pie at pistol duelling! The theory of evolution wrestled the potatoes out of a box of chocolate cupcakes! X-rays, perhaps with an X-men connection, barely beat the Incredible Hulk at a taste test! Toothpaste topped Titan as a better foundation for Western democracy! An affectionate kitten is unarguably a better health care product than the gold standard! "Getting plenty of sleep" is well on its way to conquering the world, despite chess's strategic advantage. And ice cream might just be our next president!