Lidea found emself hesitating more and more as ey moved further through the open camping area toward where a group of other greenwitches had set up camp. Maybe a third of the members of the Thýlalykófoton’s members actually gave a shit about the organization at a structural level. The largest outer rings of membership were populated by the automatic entry of any elven magician that showed interest. Lidea settled comfortably into the middle rings. The Thýlalykófoton sourced jobs for em. Ey went to meetings. Ey was here doing this presentation in exchange for a ticket on their dime.

But then there was the super-intense inner core that kept the whole thing running. They formed a clique that fell together into a dense ball. For things like the Tourney, they camped together and changed the whole mood of everything around them. 

Their campsite was just off the main path, and all the other nearby campers had created a ring of space around them. Tents formed a rectangle, with all doors facing the center. Standalone awnings covered most of the open space to create a sort of interior courtyard with a hole in the middle for a central campfire. The front of the rectangle was lined with hip-high tables, creating the sense of an entryway. One side was dishwashing; the other, a larger group food prep space. 

The elves emerging from their tents for breakfast and coffee were mostly wood elves with the occasional bits of other things running over their features. Two stone elves came out of smaller tents along the back wall. If ey was recognizing them properly, they had been saved from childhood body trafficking by the Thýlalykófoton. Lidea was aware of those specific efforts but had never pressed anyone on the details. In the corner was Evire, the only sun elf Lidea knew by name, her dark beaded braids clacking as she looked up from whatever ineffable book she was reading alongside her coffee. Lidea had always gotten the impression she was less of a volunteer member and more an installation. An ambassador-spy sent in by sun elf elders to make sure the rest of them weren’t tearing the worlds apart. 

A dozen sets of eyes in total, turned to em as ey moved into the camp circle, then flicked away again, guilty hearts knowing they weren’t going to step in and volunteer their help.

"No one wants to do it, Lidea." 

Lidea closed eir eyes hard in frustration, then rolled eir head around to the wood elf sitting under the nearest awning. Paul balanced his prosthetic arm across his knee and fiddled with something inside. His long blond hair, drawn into a high ponytail, was dyed with threads of lavender and pink this quarter. 

"That's bullshit, Paul," Lidea insisted. "We're supposed to be working together."

Paul rolled his eyes and pulled his arm up over his elbow, fastening the harness up around the outside of his upper arm to lock into place. He flexed his prosthetic hand with a small magi-mechanical sound. Something about the movement wasn’t to his satisfaction, and he took the arm off again. 

"If I could help you, I would. But I can't risk damage to my focus." He patted his arm. Yes, there was a slight chance the feedback from the demonstration machine could ricochet through eir own focus and damage it. But that risk was marginal at best, or else the contraption wouldn’t be demo ready.

At the same time, any risk was too much risk when your focus was also a functional part of your body.

But he could also just admit he didn’t want to do the damn presentation either, instead of hiding behind his arm. Again. That excuse was going to run out, one day.

"Lidea. You here to grovel?" From the tent behind Paul, a giant of a man ducked through the doorway. Archmage Ivan Magnusson was half human and half elf like eir, but of different varieties of both. The bull elf side of his parentage gave him his lean muscle, flaxen hair, and sharp blue eyes. While bull elves were the biggest of them, for Ivan it was the human side that drew him up, the genetics of the Cofash ethno-subspecies stacking him seven feet tall.  

He was also a vampire, which pissed Lidea off when ey thought about it. Trans-hemaphagic transformation had been the only way to treat a hyper-rare genetic condition that manifested in his teens. Elven and phagic genes didn’t play well together without some kind of biological buffer or outside intervention, so his medical case was genuinely cool. 

In all the connected worlds, they estimated a double-digit number of phagic magicians, and a very small subset of those were actively registered on professional or academic rosters. Lidea had heard fewer than twenty at one point. Four of these people also had elven lineage of some sort. Four people with this specific combination of biological traits out of something like twenty billion people of a dozen different species and twice more magical inclinations. It should have been a treat to be on a first-name basis with one of them. 

It was too bad he was such a fucking asshole.

"Ivan," Lidea grumbled. "You have the most power to help me here. You've read the manual."

 "And?" He pulled his large gray hat on, looking down at her in the halo of the wide brim, buttoning his long sleeve white shirt at his wrists. The frog-shaped cufflinks shimmered silver with emerald inlays. 

"And you're an incredible magician who could do this demonstration in his sleep." The words were ashy in eir mouth, made worse by the fact they weren't wrong. It was an open secret that several of the phagic magicians were Arches for purely political reasons. Ivan had earned it multiple times over. 

"Ivan," Paul murmured, "you can not be a dick here. For once." 

Ivan shifted his gaze to the back of Paul's head and drilled into him. He clucked his tongue. 

"Jean-Marie Auclair is very close to not paying on a bet. She's here for the Tourney. You get her to make good on it by tonight, I'll be in a good enough mood to help you tomorrow morning."

Lidea considered him for a moment, debating whether this was actually worth it. 

Lady Jean-Marie Auclair, Duchess of Chandlay had been nice the one time Lidea had occasion to speak with her. It was the suspicious brand of nice, though. The kind that was perfectly fine if your interactions were cursory. Lidea wasn't inclined to go beyond that first layer to find what was underneath, but ey was comfortable enough to gently plead eir case.

Except Jean-Marie Auclair was also the head of community management for the Interworld Office of Phagic Affairs. She was the talking head for everything involving the phagic community. 

Getting to her was going to require going deep into vampire territory. 

Which was really really annoying, and Ivan knew it.

Lidea tilted at him, the pros and cons populating a side by side list in eir head.

"Done. Be ready for tomorrow." Lidea turned on eir heel, grabbing an apple from the food prep area, and biting down on it viciously as ey walked off.