Alertmonger rolls her chair back a few inches at once and whacks a button on the right armrest. There’s a brief shimmer in the air in front of her. “Easy,” she says. “I thought we were keeping things cool. Don’t make me get uncool.”
Fin bristles and says uncooly in her normal voice, "we're cool..."
Fin takes a deep breath, and says "I haven't formally introduced myself though,"
"I am Hrafnhildur Arnursdottir, hin breiða, heir to Hlífðarsmiðja, hin snuðalaus, hin grasnær, hin wormtunga, hin barnsgríma. Sú úbæriligi borðs brjótrinn! Binder of books magical or otherwise, slayer of dragons, breaker of fabrics, hin mjaðarístra and munvíðar mús, hin draumfjöðurabera!"
“Well, I don’t normally get real names out of people, so that’s a start. And you’ve got the asset. Or at least claim to.” She sizes you up, absorbing all the information. “All right, we’ll talk for real. You, Hrafnhildur Arnursdottir. Are you aware just how many people would happily rip you to shreds to get their mitts on your eldritch cookbook?”
“If I was a bad person, I would kill you right now and peel it off your corpse and get myself set for life by delivering it to a certain person who’s very interested in it, but luckily for you I’m pretty chill.” She tilts her head. “Let’s keep it cool. I have good info to give you if you’ll give me some in return. Where’d you get attached to it?”
“A few days, all right.” She nods. “Info for info. These Dreamers who are after you, they’re after old magic artifacts. They buy ‘em up, dig ‘em up, want a lot of them, all from magic dig sites. The mortals just think they’re archaeologists and collectors. I don’t know the end goal of that, I just see purchase patterns and I connect the dots. Helpful info?”
"Well, that's some juicy info," she says, clearly pleased. She drums her fingers on the arm of her chair for a moment. "All right. Info for info. Can it really be called kidnapping if they go of their own accord? If you offer somebody exactly what they want, exactly their deepest desire and the thing they wish for most?"
"I only have the information I have," she says, shrugging. "I have no information on the exact properties of your encyclopedia, or whether you turn to Jello if you touch it, so that'd be something for you to figure out on your own. Assuming you haven't already."
"Bonded, eh." She nods slowly, as if she's fitting jigsaw pieces together in her mind. "Interesting. You know what? Normally I'd give you folks a spiel about how you're in over your head and this is way too dangerous and you're toying with forces you don't understand, but you know what? You three seem like you're powerful and you're gonna mess some shit up, and I like that in people." She tilts her head. "You want me to hit you with something really useful?"
"You folks familiar with the elemental stuff that's been going on in the Upside and the Otherside?" She gestures broadly. "Fire stuff? Water stuff? Things generally getting messed up everywhere? How the planes are all out of whack and SECO's getting their socks in a twist?"
"I'll tell you a secret." She takes out a palm-sized astrolabe-like device with four compartments containing red, blue, white and brown liquid, respectively. She flips it over, and the red and the blue violently mix together, as do the white and brown. "The four Elemental Planes are in a careful balance most of the time. When they get out of balance, it's chaos. A lot of things over the centuries have put the planes out of whack, like the Dukes having tantrums, but this time isn't like that."
She flips the device again expertly, and the blue completely swallows up the red. "This time the Water Plane is seeping into the Fire Plane and just completely drowning it. Completely absorbing it and consuming it. All the creatures that lived there are fleeing. The elementals have no choice but to flee here."
"Not my place to know, and I don't think SECO knows either." She flips it again and the blue consumes all the other liquids, becoming the only liquid left in the device. "But it's almost certainly coming for the other two planes next, once it's done. This hasn't happened in millennia and it's unlike anything SECO has ever seen, and they're scared. Something's going on and the world is gonna have big problems real soon."
She smiles and puts the device away. "I don't know. But it's not a coincidence that they're suddenly all interested in stuff that can alter realities, right?"
