"There's always butterfly effects and stuff." 

"Yeah. I mean, it won't be exactly the same. But - I guess their core problem is that they're fighting a god, and I guess that tends to not go so well for people."

"Mmhmm."

"Except the thing is - the thing is that there is a way to kill a god, actually. They didn't know how to do it the first time, but we do. Not, like, any god, but - uh, we think probably this one is the sort that can be taken out this way. But you can't take a god out without paying some kind of cost, so - it won't be fun. If we do it."

"We, uh - we know how to trap a god inside a baby. A human baby. But that means that to avert hundreds of years of war and some astronomical number of deaths, we need, uh, a human baby. And I guess those are in kind of short supply right now."

"Because there are no humans. Of course."

"Yeah. Well, Alex says there will be in a couple hundred years and it's possible that there are some somewhere right now, but they'd have to scour a continent full of orcs to find them, if they're there right now, and probably lose a ton of people in the process, so - yeah."

"It's really good of you to think about it, but I think it's a bad idea."

"Yeah? - or, I guess more specifically, do you think that for reasons that aren't, like, the obvious ones?"

"I dunno which things look obvious from where you're standing - so -

- I am not at all convinced that the, uh, that Alex's species is on the right side of this war or that it'll be a good thing if they win it. Both because - because both sides seem to really really hate each other and it doesn't seem like that'd stop if the other side's god-or-whatever-you-want-to-call-it dies, and separately from that because... it sounds like Earth is currently ruled by various demons and it's only when they fight each other out of existence that humanity gets a chance? And I like humanity, I dunno how I feel about denying us that chance."

"Humanity is in some ways all right," concedes Karen.

"I think - Alex's species - and also the orcs, because according to Alex the orcs are - they were Quendi, once, only if you torture Quendi enough over enough generations they turn into - whatever orcs are. Um, but they do this thing where they can swear to do something and from then on they have to do it, they can't not, it's - a magical compulsion or something. And he says that Melkor - the god-or-whatever we wanna trap - he makes all the orcs swear to serve him, and - I like the Quendi I know, OK, but it sounds like the orcs might have the worse end of the deal here, and at least if this guy they have to serve is dead, then - I don't know if they'll be OK, but they might at least have more options?

And then on the other front - I don't think this our timeline. I think the humans we know are probably still where we left them, so - we're probably hopefully not wiping them out. And in this timeline - in this timeline there are orcs and there are Quendi and this is their continent and they need help, and it would be - wrong, I think, to let them die out over the course of centuries of preventable warfare solely because we like people who look like us better."

"We don't know that about the timeline, it could just as easily be that - Alex said that he wasn't sure his family would believe him and take him back, and maybe they wouldn't have done and so the timeline wouldn't have diverged, but then you landed and so they decided to after all. 

And how do you know that? About the orcs?"

"I feel like Alex would have remembered running into an identical Alex claiming to have been from thousands of years in the future, even if he didn't take him back. I only know about orcs from what Alex told me. I'm sure that oaths are real, though, at least for Quendi."

"So, like - we can talk to Quendi, because of the telepathy and because Alex speaks English. We can't talk to the orcs at all. The only thing I know about them is that there were a bunch peacefully living in the caves on the way out of Angband, until we slaughtered them all so we could hide in their caves for a night."

"And - look, that sucks, but - in our timeline these are the people spearheading the effort to defang vampires instead of killing them. I can ask Alex for a clearer picture of what's happening, or you can, but if he says it'd be better for the war to end and doesn't clarify that if I had full knowledge I'd disagree, then I pretty much believe him."

"What do you think they're going to do when their enemies don't have a god to protect them?"

"We can ask."

"I don't need to. I saw it."

She sighs.

" - so I don't like killing people, all right? I don't even like killing vampires, and they're really, actually just - I know one who's OK now, who's friendly and weirdly loyal and who doesn't kill people anymore because if he did I'd kick his ass, and he's killed seven thousand people over the course of his existence, and he doesn't feel bad about it at all. That's what vampires are, and honestly, I still wish I could save every single one of them. But when I was called I couldn't, OK, I was one kid in a town full of supernatural serial killers with no idea how to end the ridiculous eternal murder wave. And then Alex showed up. And Alex, like - Alex taught me how to save people. Alex taught me how to take vampires alive, when we had the resources for that. Alex - there was this mummy girl, OK, she's been stuck conscious in her body for centuries now and can only move around and stop being a mummy if she saps people's life force and kills them, like one person a day, and she tried to sap Alex's life force at one point, and eventually we had to seal her away, but - we're still working on helping her, OK, and in the meantime he's - he was - still talking to her so she doesn't get lonely and making sure she has lots of TV to watch and - stuff like that. This nigh unhelpable person who tried to kill him.

"So - yeah, I will ask him what they plan on doing about the orcs after all of this. But I do not for a second believe that his ideal endgame is the extermination of everyone else on this continent. If it comes to that it'll be because the deck was stacked against us and none of us were smart enough to come up with something better."

"I'm sorry. I know you two are close. I - don't think he's in charge here, but I believe you that he's doing the right thing as best as he can."

"He's not in charge, no. But he knows - remembers knowing, anyway, the people who are, and I trust his assessment of them, whatever that is."

"They're in the middle of a civil war right now and he said his side loses."

" - ah. Well, that complicates things. But - if I talk all this over with him and he still thinks god-or-whatever slaying is the way to go from here, and he can defend his reasoning, then - I am willing to trust him on that."

"I respect that. - I"m not, though."