"...okay. Let's start from the beginning. Do you know why I'm here."

"Because my friend is self-dedicating a lot and if she's going to be a problem you would like to nip that in the bud?"

"Yes. Because the kind of power you get in a long enough self-dedication can fuck things up on an enormous scale, and can't be taken away once someone has it. So I keep an eye on things, and if someone does a long enough self-dedication to be a problem, and can't demonstrate that they'll be responsible with what they got, I kill them. And now here's you, showing up out of nowhere bizarrely confident, bizarrely ignorant, and claiming to be able to douse the sun. Do you want to explain why you're not an even worse emergency than your friend?"

"...Well, I've been like this for eighteen years and I haven't eaten anyone's soul yet."

"No, I mean, you're objectively right, the thing I am should not exist? I just...intend to continue existing and using my powers for good anyway." 

"...that's not... ugh."

"--Look, I get that you're trying to figure out what the fuck is up with me? I am not going to tell you what the fuck is up with me because while I am confident I could kill you now, I am not confident that I could kill you if you knew how."

"...it's not even that I want to know what specifically is going on with you so much as—well, to be honest, the likeliest explanation is probably that you're insane and don't know what you're talking about, and the more you keep saying things the more I keep hoping that it's that one, because the alternative is that you have magic that does not work like normal magic, that you did not get the way people get normal magic, and you think you can douse the sun with it, and you're terrifyingly careless about the consequences of your actions. And I really am trying to find a way to resolve this situation peacefully, because it seems only fair and because that's how I prefer to handle things when I can, but you're really not giving me an inch here and it is very frustrating."

"I have magic that does not work like local magic. I am from an alternate universe. Where magic is hereditary and also there are horrible monsters running around that like eating magic children, so my being very very murdery resulted in about two-thirds of my yearmates surviving adolescence, as opposed to one-quarter."

He breathes. "Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. —how'd you get here? How many more people who think they can douse the sun and might not be wrong do I have to worry about?"

"How I got here is complicated but it involves a magical accident that I don't especially expect to be replicated. I'm currently unique but I wouldn't be shocked if my dad decides to make another one once he realizes I am not going to be Daddy's Obedient Little Superweapon." 

"Concerning, but could be worse. Okay. Thank you."

He sighs.

"If you're not interested in having the conversation I want to have, what do you say to going to sleep now and waking up after I've had time to calm down, wait for your friend to finish, talk to them when I'm less stressed, and find somewhere to put you where I don't have to worry about the sun going out if you try to kill me?"

"Okay, first of all, I'm very sure I would have to actually try in order to put out the sun! I'm unique in being the only thing-like-me that is a person who can take actions towards goals, not in being the only thing-like-me at all, and I'm reasonably confident that if you chucked another thing-like-me into the sun then the sun would win! It did not even occur to me that I could probably douse the sun if I tried really hard and thought a lot about how to do it until you suggested it. Also, uh, if you want to fly off and calm down somewhere else I promise I am not going to do anything big and stupid while you're gone but I really do not trust you enough to let you magically put me to sleep?"

"...okay. So. Let's suppose that you tried to kill something, and the thing you tried to kill could not actually die, no matter how hard you tried. Think about all the worst ways you can imagine that going wrong, including ways where you screw up or do something stupid, because sometimes people in stressful situations screw up or do something stupid. Think pretty hard about that, because last time this came up I don't think the guy who was trying to kill me knew in advance that he was going to get a hundred thousand other people on the way to failing. I won't insist you tell me what you expect to happen, but what would I have to do to keep my people safe from it?"

She considers this thoughtfully.

The obvious answer is that there’s no reason anything would happen to anyone else, if she tried to eat him and, somehow, failed.

But…getting creative…if she were imagining things that might be “the thing that goes wrong” if something were definitely going to go wrong…

The obvious answer is that she would eat something else, if whatever wards he has made her slip off instead of just gnawing ineffectually on them.

So, how would she prevent that?

“…Bring me somewhere even more isolated and cast some sort of ongoingly magical effect around the two of us,” she decides. “Like, a reasonably strong one. By your standards, not normal people standards.”

"Sure," he says. "I can't stray too far from your friend until they either fail or succeed, and I can't move them. So going somewhere more isolated isn't going to work until that's dealt with. But I can pile up some magic in the meantime."

He makes a thoughtful humming noise and walks in a wide circle around the column of light. Flowers spring up in his wake in a riot of colour, each unique and beautiful, spreading their petals and reaching their leaves toward the sky.

"Why can't you stray too far? Is it can't like can't, or can't like I might be lying about how long they're going to take and if I am they could abscond while you're gone, or can't like the fireworks might blow up something important...?"

"You weren't very specific about it in the first place, and you might not be telling the truth, and when the moment came your friend might not have decided to go quite as long as they said they were going to. If I want to be here when they come out, I have to, at very least, check every hour at just the right time with enough margin to be sure I get the right time and not ten minutes too late."

"Sorry, I wasn't trying to be inspecific. I meant everything. I guess you're right about last-minute nerves though."

"...everything? And you expect them to live through it?"

“I mean, she might not? But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you kill her.”

"...it's not a question of whether you'll let me. I don't need your permission."

He finishes his circle of flowers, gazes critically at it, then makes a casual sweeping gesture. In a wave across the circle, following the arc of his hand, living plants turn to delicate crystal, translucent and sparkling—but they still grow; their faceted leaves still reach for the sun. When the breeze plays through them, they tinkle like a field of ethereal windchimes. He listens thoughtfully, then makes an adjustment, warping the shapes of some kinds of petals just slightly; the next breeze sounds a little better.

“I’ll kill you if you try even if this is definitely a terrible idea for the Empire. I’m not strongly expecting this claim to motivate you but pretending it wasn’t true wouldn’t be better.”

He sighs, and shakes his head, and adjusts his flower-chimes again.