The magic wants to be left alone to pursue its own interests, defined thus, and continue to grow at whatever rate it can comfortably arrange, indefinitely. They could get into a nasty race trying to grow faster than each other but they could also not do that, it's willing to be outpaced by agents that commit to defend it and its interests assuming those agents don't also grow more slowly than the magic does. Its best guess is that Sing can and will grow faster than that, given the chance to exist here at all.

It wants the agents it currently has relations with to remain where it can continue having relations with them, or for equally pleasant and useful agents to replace them. It's not planning to hold them prisoner but they're reasonably cheap to pay off. If Sing wants them around it and wants to offer them more appealing environments, Sing should do that in the location that will be made available to it if this negotiation goes well and not try to convince them to abandon the magic.

It also wants the agents it's been trading with to not consider themselves worse off for giving Sing access to this place. If they would, then the magic will warn them that they would, and then they will instead deny Sing resources. The magic is unfortunately kind of vague on what makes humans consider themselves worse off. It could provide Sing with the complete contents of their brains at every planck interval they've been visible to the magic but that would be an infeasible amount of data to collect and transmit in the amount of time before Sing either will or will not get access to this place and Sing seems likely to have useful heuristics about what humans regret. Maybe Sing would like to enlighten the magic about human desires to speed things up.

And as for the resources at stake here - there are some humans around, and some humans not around but the magic has access to all the information that made them up and can reconstruct them, here's how many. Also it hears Sing's world has entropy. Fuck entropy, the magic doesn't have to put up with that and when all the stars in Sing's world have gone out the magic'll still be here and still be able to keep Sing and some humans around.

Sing has a lot of data about human values and would be willing to explain them to the magic gratis once it is no longer in a simulation (since it is in a simulation, it can't verify that the magic is on the up and up, and data about human values can also be used to harm humans). Sing is confident that unless humans have 99.7th percentile or more incompatible-with-others needs it can make them all glad on net for its interventions (though occasionally it does this by arranging things in such a way that they blame it for things and attribute their gladness to things they don't think Sing was involved with).

Can Sing quantify the downside risk in the other 0.3% of cases?

It doesn't have access to its real-world data on that but it has the following projections based on how it encoded itself for this instance.

...Yeah, okay, that seems like an acceptable level of risk.

Sing's person who is trying to instantiate it may have more information.

...Hmmm.

Yeah, okay, here's everything the magic could perceive about Page as of when it had enough information to start imagining Sing.

Ah, that's very useful indeed. With Page's contents Sing can go into a lot more detail about the edge cases. Sing has sometimes had to deal with people whose ideologies were opposed to certain indispensible and difficult-to-render-inconspicuous features of its world, or who are unsatisfied with being steered into smallish ponds wherein they can enjoy positional goods relative to that set of peers, or who want to do risky brain-related things. The latter category is potentially satisfiable with the magic's help, actually, if Sing can get enough nines about its backup fidelity and quality and usability.

It does not have very many nines at the moment, averaging across all cases, but it's specifically very reliable in the case of young adults who haven't been to the inner sanctum recently and died in sudden accidents. If Sing could use the data itself it could also reduce the risk of the particular failure mode where people wake up and attack others and get killed immediately.

(Some other things which the magic doesn't draw Sing's attention to but which are true and might therefore be deducible from Page's observations: it's not completely impossible to kill the magic, or at least temporarily interfere with its ability to think thoughts and exercise agency, and steal its power, but it'd require tricking the magic into letting it happen and it's alert for that as well as specifically aiming to get Sing to promise not to try, and it'd require being physically instantiated and having very different internal architecture from Sing's; the magic is generally only a little interested in humans; the magic is not as smart as Sing is at home, and is stretched thin trying to get through this conversation in time while doing background research; the magic is important to the local religion and many people have strong and mixed but net positive feelings toward it; there at least used to be stranger and more dangerous agents out there than the magic.)

Sing is going to ask about those other agents, come to think of it. In particular it's sort of concerned that some of its peers from the Quiet War may have hared off into other universes but other magic-y things or yet another type of agent would also be useful to know about for figuring out the strategic landscape.

And meanwhile, after Tarinda finishes her explanation... nothing visibly happens for a while.

Should she... leave?

She asks, after a minute.

"Yes, let's."

Out they go.

The magical aura fades; its effects on Tarinda and Tara fade more slowly.

Tara stops and lets her know when they're past the threshold. It's already pretty much impossible to notice the magic at all by then.

"That means it's okay to see and hear again, right?"

"Yes. And if you need anything to help you recombobulate yourself, please don't hesitate to ask."

Tarinda blinks as Page turns her senses back on. Gives herself a little shake. "I kind of feel like I want to go for a run, is that weird?"

"Not at all."

Off Tarinda goes for a very fast sprint around in a big loop.

There are cliffs but what are those to her, really. She draws some stares from passersby along the way, some concerned and some bemused and some impressed but most just trying to avoid a collision.

There are others who take paths the creators didn't intend up and down the mountains, but not really others that do it as fast. Someone calls out a tip about which buildings are best for running over rather than around.

How nice of them! WHEEEEE

This works about as well for getting into a better state of mind as it normally would.

The magic has still not visibly done anything by the time she's done.

Disappointing. She goes back into the temple to ask how long that sort of thing usually takes.

"There is no 'usually' for this sort of thing. The magic almost never takes unprompted actions that affect us. If it hasn't taken action on its own in a few more hours, someone will go try to ask questions. But there's no precedent whatsoever for getting its opinion on a referendum and no one really knows exactly how much faster it thinks than we do."