...

"It kicks me out of the precognition."

"- like?"

"Like we land on another precog who's already looking ahead as of now, except that worldleapers land in the middle of nowhere nearly every time, right? So it'd have to be an even more ridiculous psion than we were postulating, a diviner-precog-remote-viewer who has the spare capacity to look literally everywhere and yet still somehow hasn't contacted any other worlds even having had the chance to see this coming. So maybe the leaper is - indeterministic, or something -"

"...might be, it's supposed to be random, right..."

"Yeah. Damn, I was really looking forward to hacking that!"

"Oh?"

"It would've been great, we could've figured out how many neighbors are with in two hops of Eclipse over the course of - well, I don't know how long it would take because we don't know how many neighbors places have but it would've sped it way up - I can get things that come here from elsewhere, too, like I noticed people landing on Alex, I could've made the hunt from Shadow short and safe -"

"Still can, we just need a deterministic means of travelling - wizardry, maybe, or Joy -'

"They parameterize, they won't be able to catalogue everything."

"Maybe we should acquire one of those snake monsters."

"Are the snake monsters deterministic?"

"Don't know, haven't acquired one."

"Dear, if we go snake-monster hunting do we get a result in less than an hour -"

"- no, takes longer than that to wait for Gem's contact person in the relevant world who knows things about its monsters to 'wake up' and give a safety lecture."

"Okay. What about the wizardry one parameterizing for 'life' or something like that, we think worldleapers do that anyway -"

"Doesn't work either, Boots speculates it's interference from the wizardry divination in the spell."

"...annoying. Joy?"

"Works but is not a substantial improvement on Joy working alone. And she has to land directly on whatever she's looking for, so if we get too close to a precog I'll fall out anyway."

Sigh. "I will ask the Fëanors about deterministic worldleapers."

"Thank you, lovely."

"Of course. So are we doing any actual exploring today?"

"We can, if we know what we want to tell Joy - might as well be more specific than 'life', since my cheating amounts to getting results more specific than 'life' that she could've parameterized for anyway. What d'you want to explore?"

"...could aim for humanoids, we can probably help them more and they are less likely to have crazy powers as a consequence of differences in metabolism -"

So Sibyl asks Joy if she'd mind worldfinding for them whenever she has time.

Yeah, sure. While Golden's still there?

Ideally, but you can also just parameterize for things that you wouldn't need her help with as long as we can't cheat in any dramatic fashion.

Sorry we can't cheat. I can't parameterize for 'not' - like, I can do humanoids but not 'only humanoids' - so I'll come over while she's still here.

I budgeted an hour and a half, most of it's still left.

Pop!

"- okay, I have you covered."

"Okay." And what happens if they go invisible and inaudible and jump to a mile above a Bell in an adjacent dimension -

No such Bell to be had.

And if she looks for the Noldor -

None.

"So no obvious alts - what next, humanoids? Earths?"

"Bell parents, then Earths, then humanoids."

Bell parents?

Nope!

Earths?

Here's one!

Hypothetical Joy and Golden would have appeared over a dense rainforest, though obviously Isabella does not see this until they hop back and bounce it to her. 

Bounce back.

"Shall we go and actually explore?"

"Lemme pan forward a little, make sure nothing eats you -"

"We mineral life forms being so nutritious."

"- you got a Cretaceous-era Earth."

"What does that mean -"

"Dinosaurs!"

"...and no people?"

"No humans, I suppose there could be sapient Triceratops in contravention of standard Earth histories..."

"I can try aiming for people -" She does that.

"...that gets you a different location but no obvious people."

"...so, nonobvious people?"

"Apparently!"

"...huh. Well. Do we try to do diplomacy with the nonobvious magic sapients?"

"Probably shouldn't be an urgent priority. Especially if they're nonobvious because they can't communicate through my shield and talking to them exposes diplomats to nonobvious risks."

"Yeah. Okay, intending to check for more Earths now."

"- there's one, uh, I'm gonna call it Cambrian era? Is this Prehistoric Earths Corner of the multiverse - this one has people but not on the Earth, there are cute little hunter gatherer lemming-looking things in another galaxy -"

"Does their planet have moons - are they adjacent to anyone else -"

"They have three moons but no eclipsed little lemming people, it's possible the moons just don't have eclipses in the relevant astronomical sense - they are not adjacent to Bells, Ardas, Bellparents, or alts of interesting Arda regulars -"

"Okay - next -"

"- no more Earths."

"Okay. Next -"

"- one of those infinite flat worlds like Fairyland or the snake monster planet -"

Golden runs out of budgeted time before they find a world that actually had eclipsed people of any kind in it.

"So maybe it's not a common problem. Thanks, Golden -"

"You're welcome." And off she pops.

"Anything else, or should I go too?"

"I mean, if you can decide to jump into unexplored worlds that may have heavy-duty eclipsed in them well enough for me to see it even without Golden along..."

" - I mean, supposedly I have an alt who went to Angband unarmed - 

- yeah, probably can -"

"...but first I need dinner. And dessert."

"On the way!"

"Thanks, lovely. Do I get dinosaur in honor of the Cretaceous planet?"

"Not available on such short notice, tragically."

"I'm so put-upon. Oh well, I'm sure it will be delicious."

Food arrives! It is in fact delicious.

Om nom nom food.

And more world-hunting and -

"Wow, moons are not very popular, are they."

"We're looking for life, could be most worlds with eclipses have extinction events."

"Yeah, that's possible. If they don't figure out the food thing fast enough, if they have a very concentrated population around when they achieve sapience, if they have a higher rate of eclipsing than one in a thousand, if they have short lifespans or rare eclipses and lots of them have the key eclipse at once..."

"Both here and Ithil had one in a thousand?"

"Dwarves were one in two thousand, they didn't throw psions. Maybe there is some third possible sort of eclipsed or something. It's also still possible that Ithil, Eclipse, and Patalon all happen to be adjacent to some fourth world which is actually the middle of the magic system neighborhood and so these are all red herrings."

"Wonder if I can target for that. ...not super likely, though, worlds don't usually have many shared adjacencies -"

"The daeva worlds do, the Materia cluster does, Materia and Warp and Telperion form a triangle..."

"What happens if I try for the origin of the eclipsed magic system -"

"Doesn't work but might not have anyway - if you try it from Ithil still doesn't work, so, no information."

"Huh. Well, if you think of anything else to try, ping me."

"Will do, thank you very much."

"Sure!" And off.

"Okay, next on the to-do list is figure out how quickly it's plausible for your mom to have invented otherworldly tech so we can drop it on Earth dressed up like it was in fact invented in an Eclipse-influenced Arda by an Elf."

"Yep. What'll make the biggest difference - vat meat, probably, we could get the Elf aesthetic by looking how Space does it -"

"Does Space do vat meat? Do they do it without daeva?"

"Doubt they bother any more but it'd surprise me if they never developed it, the way humans do it is - Elves wouldn't, Tyelcormë'd get really seriously angry with me -"

"Okay, Space vat meat tech, hopefully it's not too infrastructurally complicated. That'll upset the major farm corporations... and the mages who do ethical meat..."

"If you have something else in mind to start with we can do other things before we create a coalition against us, but it'll also drop food prices by a lot to roll out and help the environment, it's clearly the biggest lever we have available..."

"I'd consider morph tech a strong contender if we were in the neighborhood for it but alas. And vat meat's probably more plausible as a step before space travel..."

"Yeah, and space travel invites the 'what will happen to people living on the Moon' question again - though I guess we can now totally intend to do it and ask a long-range psion -"

"If we can get a few thousand volunteer kids together from somewhere and intend to put them on the Moon next time an eclipse happens, I can check it then."

"I will get to work on that! ...resurrecting the last kids who came to work for us should help."

"Did Matirin say when he'd be by? We can ask for a magic rock, too..."

"He was off the grid, let me check -"

- "back, can come by any time."

"Do you think I should be there when they wake up?"

"...might be easier not. More importantly, we send them home and then it's instantly known we have resurrection - I guess we could claim that it's high-metabolism and only the Ents can do it -"

"It will take a year to find out if the Ents'll cooperate with that story."

"And therefore take anyone else a year to verify it!"

"Do you have a plan for in a year if the Ents won't in fact play along?"

"...if we're still not ready to make it obvious we're getting help from somewhere in a year, that's all the more reason not to wait on resurrection until we're ready to make it clear we're getting help -"

"...also I know Brent was working on lie detection and I do not know if it came in before he died."

"'Hey! You died about ten years ago, the power to bring you back just came in just now - human mages can't do it, we don't think, but there was a catastrophe in Arda and everyone eclipsed, and that included this species called Ents, they're trees, and have more metabolic capacity, and of course we asked if they could get resurrection to click. So. Welcome back to the world of the living, here's a compensation package.'"

"All right, he definitely doesn't have it sophisticated enough to catch that. I love you."

"Love you. Shall I have Matirin come over? He should probably be invisible and immediately go away, if I want to sell that story."

"Yeah, probably. Nobody has any extrasensory that'll catch him at least."

And he comes by! <Hello, Sibyl! Where are you waking them up?>

[Ask Maitimë, I don't even know where they are now.]

"I'll take us there -" pop - "but we are trying to have a non-multiverse explanation for resurrection, so if you can be sneaky -"

<I can be sneaky.>

"Perfect." And she gives names. 

And he goes invisible and inaudible and then wakes up all eleven in a swift whisk-whisk-whisk of an invisible tail and then pops out.

Brent is as it happens the first to ask what's going on.

She will deliver the same explanation she gave Isabella! (She had, in fact, at one point asked the Ents if they could do resurrection.)

The kids are upset about the decade gap. Oliver and Summer start crying.

Understandably. There are computers if they want to get in touch with their families.

Most of them do that. They also want to know what happened with Maira and the whole join or (apparently) die thing.

Maira is dead now. Liz helped her break Melkor out. Melkor is dead too.

...so where's Liz?

"...might face charges for a couple murders she committed - not you, Maira hid that from her - so we're still figuring out how to resurrect her."

Okay.

Where are Taylor and Ahmad -?

"Died when the place they were staying had a couple thousand unwarned uncontrolled eclipsed, so they're a bit more complicated to bring back but we'll have them soon too."

Oh.

So, uh, they joined instead of dying?

"Yes. Melkor just had them resurrecting orcs, they won't be in any trouble."

"We can do that?"

"Yep!  They both got it to click within a few months of Melkor escaping, you might be pretty close!"

"Do you still need people to do that now there's the Ents -?"

"Are the Ents going to resurrect more people -?"

"They're really slow and don't want most forms of payment, but I bet we'll have human resurrection reasonably accessible within ten years or so, maybe one of the Ents will pick up a way to do it batched."

"So how did you get them to bring us back?"

"We have a person who is assigned to communications with them, it's not impossible or anything, just - annoyingly slow-paced. I was really determined to get you back, and they're sort of friendly with this Maia we know in the area. Just - can't count on having all of Earth anytime soon."

This is a pretty satisfactory outcome. The eclipsed turn to catching up with where their families and friends are, except for the one who is reading the last ten years of a webcomic.

Great. Now to tech-planning!

Tech-planning!

Space has lots of Elfy-aesthetic stuff and Warp and Revelation have lots of humans-useful stuff. Some of them are even things Fëanáre could have invented! (Some are things her alt invented.)

He spends a week in the ballroom listening to the highest acceleration song Epic has and reading everything. 

After a week he cannot deflect his father any longer and assents to see him. And is tearfully hugged for what feels like forever and is made only slightly more tolerable by the fact he can pepper Epic with wizardry questions while it happens.

He declines to meet his father's new family. Vehemently.

They're okay. They think we're great.

Doesn't make them family.

No.

Walk me through the interdimensional teleport -

- he going to relent on that?

- probably not. They never get better than 'civil indifference', most places -

Sure, but Epic likes us fine -

His mother isn't dead.

So past that point - they just intractably hate us all?

When an alt of me marries an alt of you my father extends the you honorary non-membership in your family.

Fantastic.

Sorry.

Will it go very badly if I talk to him -

Quite possibly? ...actually, you know what, you should have your Millenia alt talk to him, he's here working on wizardry rollout stuff at least half the time and will therefore be able to have a technical conversation for long enough my alt-father'll get over his defensiveness -

And extend that to the rest of us?

I can't think of anything more likely to help.

Hooray.

So he looks up his alt.

"Hmm, I could, but I really really really don't want him deciding what I'm doing is of interest and following me back to Shadow - maybe I'll ask Boots."

And he sends a query. Leaf thinks the way to get Ferardrin to soften towards his stepfamily is to talk to him at length about my project, which is the magic rollout. I trust Leaf that that's the way to get a Fëanor to like alts of his half-family, but do you have much sense of - whether it's a bad idea for other reasons? Whether Ferardrin is likely to get particularly involved in Shadow, in particular, and how much he'd change the pace on the research work we're doing -

He is more likely to be interested in research than distribution in general or Shadow in specific but this will be more protective if he has a project or a few of them occupying him already. Might help to make a point of how slowly Elves do things so the entire thing sounds frustrating.

Thanks, I can definitely do that.

And he sends Ferardrin and Epic a lot of research notes and a few tricky technical problems over the ball network!

And gets an answer in a few hours! They raced! (He won.)

Why haven't we taught everyone magic yet, there're still planets where people die and stop existing, all the time, right -

I'm actually working on that! There are, but inconveniently a lot more of them will die if we give them all powerful weapons and wizardry's a powerful weapon when you're not constrained by Materia.

Even when you are, kind of, but it'd be really hard to get development of weapon spells from, like, arcane healing, without accidentally killing yourself along the way.

We don't want that either, though.

I'm going to see how long it takes me, without peeking at any actual weapon spells, so we have an idea of how hard it is.

That's a great idea.

He still doesn't want anything to do with his half-family, though.

They'll be okay.

Because they have you.

I'm not trying to steal your family. They'd rather have you.

Well. They can't.

Okay.

They only named someone after me because I was dead, not because they liked anything about me - they don't do that in the normal worlds -

Well, naming people after living relatives is a little weird.

But the point is they don't like me they like an idea.

And you don't dislike them you dislike an idea.

They took my name. 

You should pick a peal nickname anyway.

I haven't accomplished anything yet.

Me neither, it's for what I'm gonna do.

I'll be Hubris.

Yes, you will, and you'll live forever and everything will be good.

Elsewhere questions are compiled and wordings debated for a conversation with Eru.

Sibyl reports that Elentári's Eru kicks her out just as much as Ithil's can. Well, at least that means he's going to answer.

Yep. Questions: 

How exactly do you design Ardas? what makes them appealing to you?

When people land on Ardas, how do you decide how to react?

Do you like the way the world is now? are there more surprises in the works?

What else -

How and how much do you direct the Valar, when they do and when they don't consult you -

Why are they all the same. How do you interact with adjacency -

How omnipotent is omnipotent -

Why do Bells keep getting drops on Ardas, is that something to do with you - 

- why aren't Ardas ever adjacent - 

- how many Ardas are there -

When they vary why these variants, why "space", "genderswap", "evil", not, say, "really nice for once" -

What is up with them being all different ages?

- why did he tell the Valar that homosexuality is wrong, and why make people gay if it is -

Any other little Easter eggs like "oh turns out gay marriage works fine"?

Why do prophecies work like they do -

What do Ardas turn into if they never ever get found -

And if they think of more questions later is it okay to ask and does that go for Erus in general -

That everything?

Seems to be.

So Loki goes mostly to a boring Edda neighbor

and her voice goes to Elentári and says, "Eru?"

"Loki Godslayer! Hi!"

"Hi. I have some questions for you."

"Yes, yes, I know!"

"...do you also know what they are?"

"Yep! But if you want I can wait to answer them until you ask! People sometimes like that better."

"No need to wait."

"I design Ardas by imagining what the most beautiful possible world would be like, and then finding critical moments and doing - detail work? so they will happen exactly the right way, and then creating peoples who will fit into the pieces between the detail work so that everything works out perfectly. It takes unfathomable amounts of time and attention but when it's done it's so unimaginably beautiful and then I set it into motion and the Valar go to live and work in it. They can see enough that the beautiful moments will all be there, but they muddle some details. It's okay because them being fallible servants of my will works better than them being perfect at it - if they were perfect at it people'd be more upset about them letting Melkor out. They might lose faith in me and enduring faith in me is so beautiful.

I see when I start a world if someone will land on it. I let them, if they can make the story more beautiful - sometimes they can, even though I designed it for beauty, because unlooked-for hope has its own beauty. I put them back or send them somewhere else if they're not going to make the story more beautiful.

I like the Arda you call Elentári a lot! It's lovely. It will definitely have more tragedies play out eventually, but I space them, usually, by thousands of years to give some breathing room, so they shouldn't come to pass any time that seems soon to you, and they might be quiet tragedies that escape your notice entirely. 

When the Valar consult me I tell them the truth but the parts of it that make the beautiful bits shine the brightest.

They're not the same at all! No two of them have turned out the same, have they. But anyway, the most beautiful story isn't less beautiful for the retelling! Retelling is beautiful! 

I haven't tried interacting with adjacency. I think if I wanted to pull someone into an Arda who wasn't nearby, and I knew enough about them, I could do it no matter where they were. I could put all your worlds next to each other, probably, but that'd make everything dull faster and then I'd get bored and then I'd introduce some beautiful things.

I can restrict the degree to which I am omnipotent? For example, I can't know the contents of your mind, because I decided not to be able to, because it would make you less beautiful if I did and you knew it, and it's aesthetically wrong for things to be beautiful only out of ignorance of me. But if I'm not deliberately being unable to do something then I can do it. - if you wanted to send a traumatized Maitimo back in time I could definitely do that, it sounds like an amazing story!!

Bells make for beautiful stories, obviously. There are other people who could do it but Bells when they're around are very suited.

Ardas aren't adjacent because it would inhibit both Erus creatively. It's hard to say 'we move them' because it's not really moving - we just decide that they aren't adjacent, before there's anything to be adjacent - there are so many Ardas, Ardas are so beautiful, they're distributed through the multiverse like stars in the night sky..."

...two universes away Loki facepalms.

"All the Ardas are different ages because we wanted to showcase all the parts of Arda's glorious history without you having to wait several thousand years, incarnates are very impatient. Doomed romances are beautiful, and prohibited romances are beautiful, and people torn between their heart and their conscience are beautiful, and that is why homosexuality is not allowed. There are lots of things that don't work the way the Elves think that they work! Prophecies are so people who won't live to see the beautiful bits get to appreciate them anyway! If Ardas never ever get found they continue being so, so beautiful. And of course you can ask questions! I don't know why you think I'd smite you, that would be petty and not beautiful at all. I smote a continent, in the original story. That was beautiful. Killing random people is different."

"Can you be more specific about what you mean by 'beautiful'?"

"...it is the morally relevant trait of universes. When you hugged Vár and told her to go to Mandos and killed her that was beautiful. When Maitimos leap into a fiery chasm holding a Silmaril that is beautiful. When Angband is nuked and everyone watches and weeps and lets themselves dare to hope that is beautiful. When Cam fed Valinor into a black hole that was beautiful."

"Is this in any way not synonymous with 'tragic'?"

"Yes, but not along any dimensions you are capable of experiencing. Sorry. I can try to think how to make it visualizable or something."

"To what extent are Erus aware of each other and other Ardas despite being nonadjacent?"

"We know each others' worlds! We don't talk since that would be a little silly."

"What-all can you do with nearby non-Ardas?"

"I could make them beautiful too but it seems rude, and they wouldn't be as beautiful because I'd be starting from a muddled base."

"Rude to - whom?"

"Whoever designed that universe! Almost all universes have designers, even if they're not as - precise, or involved, as me -"

"Almost all?"

"You can get naturally occurring universes! You have to wait billions of years. Even I am not that patient, not with no guarantee it'll turn out beautiful."

"How'd you know what my questions were?"

"I can know things if I want to! Because I'm a god."

"...but not via mindreading?"

"No! I told you I didn't do that! I like you. You had such a beautiful story."

"So how did you know?"

"I can see the whole timeline."

"Does that mean the 'free will' distinction isn't quite as useful as we were guessing, if you know what everyone's going to do -?"

"Did you question whether you had free will when you met Sibyl? Because it's just like that."

...could be quibbled over but whatever. "What are other things that don't work how Elves think they work?"

"That's a secret!"

"Is secrecy beautiful?"

"It can create opportunities for beauty."

"Do any Erus make non-Ardas instead?"

"...I think some might. Under the right circumstances. I do not know of any."

"...would there be Erus you didn't know about -?"

"There are as many Ardas as stars in the night sky, I told you that! I know everything about my world, but I do not know everything about all worlds. I could, but it wouldn't be very beautiful."

"Do you know how alts work in general?"

"Yes, I do!!"

"Is that also a secret?"

"...I think so, yes." A pause. "Hmm, yes, definitely!"

"...what changed between 'I think so' and 'yes definitely'?"

"I was looking at the outcomes of explaining!"

"What happens if you tell me how alts work?"

"Fewer beautiful things!"

That's worrying. But probably not fixable. "Where do Erus come from?"

"Erus just are."

"Do you know how many?"

"Four hundred ninety three million, six hundred twenty two thousand and four!"

"I did tell you they were like stars. There are a lot of stars."

"How many of them have already been landed on?"

"Not very many! I expect we'd raise our standards for external interference if most Ardas were getting derailed instead of getting to play out nicely."

"...then why are most of the ones in this region of the multiverse derailed?"

"This region of the multiverse has a lot of interdimensional travel going on! And a lot of Bells. There are not four hundred million Bells."

"Is the density around here of Bells and interdimensional travel a coincidence?"

"The two are related! Bells tend to come in worlds with interesting magic and lots of interesting magic can do interdimensional travel. And the Bells are near each other so they can find each other because it's cute when they do. I didn't arrange that personally but I can see what caused it and that's what caused it, sort of."

"Sort of?"

"'caused' is complicated."

"Complicated how?"

"It is not caused in the sense you understand causing to work!"

"So what is it instead?"

"I picked the word because it was the closest approximation, despite not being particularly close."

"...and you can't explain it?"

"I could explain it but you will get impatient before you understand it."

"Ah.

Do you know how many Bells there are?"

"It changes! And I'm not the one changing it. There are some Bells you won't find because the place where they are isn't reachable from here, too."

"In principle at all -?"

"Yep!"

"So how do you know about them?"

" - omnipotence?"

"But if it's impossible in principle that sounds like you couldn't get there either or then theoretically we could talk one of you into helping."

"- if I tried going there it might work but it would work differently than you want. And I don't want to, because it wouldn't be a good story."

"Differently than we want how?"

"...I would make a copy of those Bells that was close enough to be accessible. The original ones would still be inaccessibly where they started."

"Ah."

"I wouldn't be deliberately doing that, I don't know why that's what would happen."

Not unlimitedly omniscient, then. "Are there any things you find beautiful you think we would not object to?"

"...you like Fëanors. I like Fëanors. I like Epic and there are some beautiful things that could happen to him that on the whole I don't think you'd resent! I told you I liked the idea with sending suicidal Maitimos to earlier Ardas so they have to try to pull themselves together and do it all over. I liked your war, it was a good war, and you liked it too because now you can wield the Tesseract."

"We have very mixed feelings on the 'sending Maitimos to earlier Ardas' thing and definitely don't want to do it via outright time travel."

"Then you might have to be creative!!"

"Can you give an example of a beautiful thing that could happen to Epic you don't think we'd resent?"

"...he gets stranded by a magical accident on a planet that you were otherwise not going to find in time and that is on the verge of extinction, and he saves it, and his chronic insecurity about not being good enough is vanquished and he learns life lessons?"

"Is that the sort of thing one of you might decide to do at some point?"

"It would require the opportunity lining up but if it happened to, yes, definitely."

"I suppose I'll come back if we have more questions."

"You won't!" he predicts cheerfully.

"Why not?"

"Because it would have been true if I hadn't said it. Now it's more up in the air."

"How much can I expect things you tell me to be actually true?"

"I wouldn't lie! That would be unfair. I'm omnipotent and you're incarnates who tangle up plans really interestingly, it'd be a disservice."

"But you will say things that are only true if you don't say them?"

"That are true when I say them. If I only said things that were true no matter what you did I couldn't say any things."

"...all right. Well. Thanks."

"Have a lovely day!!"

And Loki goes and puts a transcription on the network.

Nearly five hundred million -

And Bells not nearly as common and most of them aren't due to be interrupted, yeah.

So how do we kill an Eru.

We come up with a really beautiful way for them to die.

It will be so, so stunningly beautiful.

Exquisitely gorgeous. And then we promise to cry over it, maybe. Lemme know if you come up with something.

Trust me, I'll be giving it a lot of thought.

Wish I had better news but honestly this is in range of what I was expecting - except the nearly five hundred million thing -

I guess I had been dodging the thought that there could be infinitely many. That. Is a lot fewer than infinitely many. So that's something.

Maybe next time I'll ask if the story has an ending.

Ooooh. That would. Be something. I - as long as I get to stop eventually -

If there's no sequel, yeah.

I wonder if I could convince them it's more tragic if I get to properly die, when I kill myself.

Well, it's probably safe to have the conversation even without two hops of buffer and the Godslayer moniker if you're inclined.

I think I'll think more about it before I ask, but I might eventually.

Unclear if we can retroactively affect how the other Ardas are run anyway, I do not understand Eru's relation to time and causality as well as I'd like.

Yeah. Ugh.

Seconding that.

Thanks for asking.

You're welcome.

And he considers beautifully tragic ways for a god to die.

And he teleports off to the bottom of the ocean. It is dark. And snug. Perhaps he will discover a new tubeworm species.

Yeah.

"If we can't kill them maybe we can mind-control them? I'm sure there's some way to disable a god who's only locally omnipotent -"

"Dear -"

"Also maybe we should have more children! The Erus don't seem to start trouble until the children grow up, in the standard timeline, so if there were more children around they'd want to delay until the story has more characters. Also one of my alts has eight."

"Dear."

"I'm actually really really curious whether we'd have a Lári alt. For Eru-unrelated reasons."

Sigh. "I suppose that would be interesting."

"Eeeee! Thank you, dear!"

"No spending half her - or should it be his - childhood in Tampa -"

"Yes, yes, whatever, get undressed -"

"I don't think we have to decide right now -"

"I bet it's only a Lári alt if I've very impulsive about it."

"I love you."

"I know!"

She reads the report and does not teleport to the bottom of the ocean because she is not indestructible. She just curls up and waits for the next plot hook. It comes in the form of a letter from Taylor's parents, who heard about the resurrection and are wondering - 

"We can probably just do Taylor and Ahmad from the moment of the eclipse, rather than trying to undo whatever a thousand eclipsing psions did to them," she says to Isabella.

"Does magic rock resurrection allow for that?"

"I was assuming it worked off the moment the basement-dweller's grabbed from, and that doesn't have to be moment of death."

"That's not a bad guess but I don't think it's been tried and from the wish wording it might not be clear whether it can do that until someone does try it."

"If it doesn't do that what are we likely to be dealing with -"

"...they are equally likely to have been affected by mage stuff first and most uncontrolled mage stuff just kills you. A lot of psion stuff is unpleasant but not harmful, some of it's not even unpleasant. But if they got hit by something harmful they could be missing memories - the wish wording probably means that's fixed all by itself - or have scrambled cognition like a less precise version of Boots's aphasias thing, or something like that."

"What happens if we try it standard, are they both all right?"

"There's nothing obvious but there could be something we don't notice for a couple hours."

"How likely do you think that is?"

"Don't know, but it's probably still worth answering the question in the general case, I bet somebody somewhere has a list of people who are willing to be the subject of experiments like that especially if it gets them bumped up the resurrection priority list..."

"Yeah, what's Cube doing for people who had late-stage dementia or whatever?"

"Let's ask!"

Email.

People keep all of their memories and don't come back brain-damaged.

That seems likely to fix psion damage too.

I'd expect so, yes. No one on Cube had magic damage but I can't think why it wouldn't handle it.

When's good for bringing back a couple more people? Possibly Liz too if scheduling's enough of a problem, we can do all three out of neighborhood.

Can you add them to one of the magic rock's handling lists? I think they're in Warp right now putting Vulcan back, so you'd have to meet them there, but you could easily do two now and one later, unless it needs some kind of special handling.

Can do, thanks.

Of course. Let us know if you need anything else.

"Want to go to Warp and borrow a magic rock?"

"Sorta stretches the 'Ents did it' story, no?"

"Loki's illusion spell."

"Gonna disguise the resurrection itself and a bunch of hops back home?"

"No, I think we should move the magic rocks here so if they try to do magic it works, but we can illusion a fake Ent. Liz'll have to special case, or lock her down maybe."

"She can get it removed. Or are you thinking just while we talk to her?"

"I was thinking to cover for having her out of neighborhood till we think she's safe. Being locked down feels like something and would explain why she couldn't do magic."

"Ah. Sounds good, then."

So Sibyl arranges to borrow a magic rock and Epic off the Vulcan project to resurrect Taylor and Ahmad.

Sure, they can take a fifteen-minute break to come back to Eclipse and do that. Here are three more basement-dwellers. ...has anyone checked whether offworlders can eclipse?

"Haven't had an eclipse since we pealed."

That's too bad because he wants to be magic! He goes back off to Vulcan.

And the magic rock taps Taylor and Ahmad with his staff (they're asleep) and says to call him back when they want the third one and leaves.

Illusion Ents. Squirreling away basement dweller Liz.

"They're probably going to assume this is a loyalty test from Maira and I have - mixed feelings - about being of assistance in convincing them it isn't."

"They never mentioned anything like that coming up when I talked to them but I suppose they could have omitted to do so..."

"And even if she didn't do it before, she could and this is how she would -"

"Does it help if I open with, like, 'thanks for the warning about the portal' which would indicate the loyalty test was already failed or is that worse."

"I'd expect that'd help at least some."

"I'll check a few options. Do you want to not even be in the room?"

"...yeah, if that's okay."

"It's fine, lovely." Smooch.

She leaves.

Okay, straightforward option, what if she wakes them up and tells them thanks for the portal heads up, sorry I didn't give you advance notice on the eclipse, it's been a few years and there are tree people with unprecedented metabolic capacity welcome back to life you can thank the tree person if you want but they kind of have trouble with conversations taking place over less than a month -?

Wary, confused - "Uh. Okay. Can we go home?"

Of course they can go home, portal is this way, there's usually an Elf teleporter on duty near it -

Then they both leave.