Two years ago this would have caused astonishment and possibly terror in this tiny hamlet of a hundred people on a river on the edge of a forest, but times have changed and now a small child pulls out a cell phone and tries to get a picture - "look, it's an angel -"

...yup that's her. An angel. Excuse her, she is lost. (Writing disappears from the sheaf of papers she's touching in her bag.) Do they know who she should go talk to about the immortality thing?

"You're an angel so you're all set," the girl says impatiently. "Angels can't be dying, Satya was suspicious so he stabbed one and she got scratched but she was fine - an' the Elves took him away because they were mad -"

"The Elves?"

"You don't know the Elves? They're tall and pretty and they live forever even without becoming daeva and they bought all the slaves and shoot everyone with needles every year so the babies don't get sick?"

"Oh, those, I must have misheard. Everybody else just has to become daeva?"

"Yeah. I summoned and Lise summoned and they sent Illa home because he's three and couldn't hold the button a whole minute."

"I'm lost, can you point me where they sent Illa home from?"

"The dot." She doesn't point. "You can't summon, you're an angel."

"You don't think they'll be able to help me get unlost?"

"Oh they'd probably do that." Point. "It's where the river curves."

"Thanks!"

She takes off, lands out of sight to write some things down, takes off again and goes to the dot.

It's a sleek white metal thing, with walls that one can see through. There's a long line of people.

She looks through the walls to see what they are doing.

The Elves are taller than anyone else, and dressed differently, and graceful. They walk a person up to some sort of control on the wall and press shiny lights in a sequence. Then the person flips a switch and then - nothing. 

A while later a winged person appears. They have some kind of exchange and then the winged person vanishes.

Hm. Well, there's no hiding her wings, which are probably why people think she's an angel. What happens if she hangs out in the trees over here till sundown?

The lines get shorter and eventually everyone has been seen. Most of them leave. Some stay; some of the ones who stay are clearly pleading for something or other. One person gets agitated and goes flying through the air and gets gently set down some distance away.

After that everyone disperses.

The Elves come outside and start singing. 

Prospects for sneaking in?

There's someone outside the building doing security. It has three sets of doors, all presently locked.

Are they looking, if she just appears inside -? She'd rather not...

Security seems to be looking outside, not in; the Elves are looking in all different directions.

The Elves can probably alert the security. Damn.

She goes and catches up with the disgruntled people leaving.

"Do you have medical qualifications?" asks one of the disgruntled people leaving.

"No, I'm sorry."

Sigh. "Their kids don't die, they can't understand. They can look for the spot on their script where it says 'I'm sorry' but they can't understand, they don't die - I guess you don't either. But Lara does, and she might, and they're all 'we'll try to get a whitemage if she gets sicker' -"

"A whitemage?"

" - where are you from, you look Cefaxi -"

"I just look that way, I'm not from around here at all."

"I thought everywhere sprang whitemages. Uh, they do healing. Normal folks can't afford it but the Elves sure could if they pleased."

"Where would they get one?"

"The nearest Temple-Guild's in Helar, or I'd take her myself, try to sneak in or something."

"They don't have very good security?"

"I bet they have a fairy just like the dots do but it's better than sitting at home waiting."

"Can you make them heal her, or -?"

"Hmm? No, no, white's not like silver, but there are whitemage kids and if I could talk to them I bet I could convince them."

"I don't really understand how this all works, I'm really not from around here." Pause. "Is it that she's little? Could I carry her, if taking her to Helar would help?"

"- the reason the Elves won't help is that she's little, yeah. They've got their rules, there's more at stake than our little mortal lives, you know. They don't approve of slavery, but they sure weren't going to end it faster than it said on the plan. Lara's sick, but she can't hold down a button and we couldn't dare inconvenience a daeva. You could carry her to Helar but I don't think it'd be good for her to be separated from us. I could summon a fairy to do it but I'm banned from summoning..."

"Oh no!"

"No one even got hurt. Paranoid pansies, that's what they are."

"How do mages work?"

"If you step in a godspring before you're six years old one of the gods chooses you and you become a mage. The springs here run white and green and silver and bronze, but it's different everywhere. And then you can do a kind of magic. Some of the kinds stay when you become a daeva but some of them go away - whites go away - anyway, they live at the temple-guilds because they need a lot of help, and they sell their services, and ordinary people can't afford it. These days I think it's mostly the Elves buying things up, though they say they don't mean to."

"Which way is Helar?"

Gesture. 

"I hope Lara feels better."

Takeoff.

Mostly uninhabited or sparsely inhabited plains and valleys. Along the river there are occasional towns; the towns mostly have dots.

She confirms that dots are all about the same and continues till she sees something that might be a temple-guild.

It's walled, and there are children playing. Everybody seems to be uniformed.

And color coded!

What happens if she lands on the wall and watches?

Someone with bug wings who can apparently fly zips over after a little while. "Hey," he says. "Looking for someone?"

"Waiting for someone, forgot to specify where, thought this might be a good guess as where they might look for me. It's a landmark."

"Okay. If you want to enter the temple-guild you hafta go through the main gate, it's over there."

"I wasn't going to go in. How do mages work?"

"Uh, so, they take kids and dip 'em in the magic fountains and the kids get powers - there's an associated religion but as far as I can tell it's as unsubstantiated as the Earth ones? And the powers vary but they come with serious drawbacks, usually like mindfuckery of some kind. And these places spring up around a godspring and sell mage services and take care of the mages who are fucked up from having done too much magic."

"Fucked up how?"

"I'm just security, sorry, dunno. Like, they lose their memory, or they lose all their senses, stuff like that?"

"Yikes."

"Yeah it's kinda fucked up."

"Why's it have to be kids?"

Shrug. 

"And there are more springs? I didn't realize there were a bunch of them, maybe I should check some more for my friend before I just park at one."

"Nah, this is the only one in Helar, they're pretty spaced out."

"Oh, like how far?"

"Dunno, I think there's like a hundred in the whole world?"

Nod. "What do the mages here do?"

"Uh, I think they've got white, green, silver, and bronze, here? Whites do healing, greens do - conditioning? Like, giving you instincts or changing how averse you feel to something, stuff like that. Dunno what the green drawback is, the white drawback is that their immune system's really weak and they're sick their whole lives and then die young. No idea how the other two work."

Nod. "If my friend doesn't find me here I'll want to check other landmarks, what else is there around here?"

"No idea, sorry, I don't leave the premises. You could ask at the dot?"

"Thanks."

She "waits" for another hour, writing things down and looking plausibly impatient, and then takes off again. Lands by a random person not in one of the mage uniforms, asks if they've seen her friend, he's yea high doesn't look at all local he's an angel too, he said he was going to find somewhere to learn things about mages but the Temple-Guild doesn't have him?

They haven't seen her friend and have no idea where aside from a temple-guild or a dot one might learn about mages. Someone suggests she could look it up online.

Gosh where does she do that.

...on a phone? Or at a dot?

Right of course thanks it's just she was so tired of all the singing but her friend is probably at a dot off she goes.

Miscellaneous additional people ask about her medical qualifications.

She's very sorry but she doesn't have any. Where does she look things up online?

Those big glowy screens over there! Maybe it's supposed to be obvious how to operate them.

She will make a very convincing show of finding this obvious until she has pieced it together.

Then she can get more accurate descriptions of types of magic, what they do, what the drawbacks are, and where they're found. And of the three types of daeva - angels, fairies, demons - and what they do, and that they are summoned at a dot and summoning one makes you become one when you die.

...and everyone thinks she can't summon because she's an angel so they won't let her -

- but -

Hmmm where is she relative to that godspring, is it more efficient to fly or -

Nope she'll need the oomph for a teleport.

She writes down lots of facts from the computer and then flies off somewhere nobody's looking and forgets them all.

She lands in the water.

And the water runs black.

That is not the one she had in mind but it is still pretty good. She gets out and quietly sings the humidity low enough till she's all dried off of glowing water and then acts casual and goes out.

In countries where the springs turn blackmages the dots are configured differently; you summon a daeva behind a wall. This is a little bit revealing all by itself; it means that there's something blackmages could see. And she is not very confined to the country where she started.

She is not.

She flies to a different dot.

She looks.

(Blackmages' drawback is intrusive, worthless facts. They hit her brain a little more forcefully than she was expecting. Fifty-seven years ago exactly 600,328 raindrops occupied just exactly such an altitude over a period of six hours above this square mile. It's as obvious as pain, more obvious than what she's actually trying to look at, if these kept accumulating she could see how she'd lose the ability to function, but she can sing it away, and she does.)

(She copies out the circle onto her paper, sings gone information about the density of magma fifty miles belowground to translate it.)

(She looks at things and listens to things and writes down things until she has enough to go home.)

A banner on his site urges readers in the EU to vote against escort laws. He and Theodore race dragons under yet another banner screaming "DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!" He comes up with, and advises various authorities of, more exploits - some phrasings of 'don't affect the area outside your circle except by being visible' allow for illusions -

- and he takes summons, of course. He doesn't have every language in Godspring yet.

While taking random summonses Minor appears on a beach in a circle drawn in sand, summoned by some guy with wings.

The language is weird as fuck.

"Hi," he tries to say. - he knows enough of the language to know he did not successfully say it, which is weird. 

The guy laughs at him and sings something. He can't quite understand it either - he can sort of guess - if he assumes it's about his accent that narrows it down -

"Where is this?" he endeavors to sing.

More laughter. There are no buildings. The circle looks to have been drawn with a stick. There's some giant eggs on the beach with colorful shells, like mother of pearl. And he's back in Hell.

- scale model of the planet, a size that can fit in his arms?

Water and islands.

Scale models of all daeva who've ever been summoned there?

Couple dozen so far.

- life-size model of the giant eggs, in colored glass, what hatches from them -

Winged people!

Need a ride home right this second, he writes Cam and Amriac.

Here's one.

He snags it gratefully.

Wrong one. This appears to be Austria.

He blinks at the guy. He tries to talk - can't - tries to write on the ground - can't - glances at the binding to check that all other forms of symbolic communication are out - yep -

- stomps his feet and gestures as urgently as he can -

"Don't look so indignant. My little girl is gone, you have no right to complain."

He doesn't have the flashcards on him. 

He takes a deep breath. He nods. He sits down quietly. Maybe the guy just wants to lecture him.

Nope. The guy wants to throw a brick at his head and stomp away.

Minor curls his wings around himself and thinks.

He thinks for a while.  He imagines explaining to Miranda.

He wants to think longer, think more, but he's not having new thoughts.

And then he makes himself invisible, shrinks the circle, tears off a sleeve of his shirt and Transfigures it into a bird with broken wings. 

He sets the bird just outside the decoy circle. It shrieks in agony. 

Minor is crying.

The guy stomps back out. Looks like Minor's in a backyard, the bird could be heard from the house.

There's no demon in the circle somehow he must have escaped please dismiss him please dismiss him -

Nope. Frowning, rereading the binding, mercy-killing the bird...

Petrificus Totalus -

Guy keels over, eyes wide.

Minor goes visible. Pulls him into the circle. Stares down at him and waits - come on come on come on -

He might be trying but he looks pretty panicked. Might not.

He curls his wings tightly around himself and waits and waits - 

Guy keeps rolling his eyes desperately houseward, maybe expecting help.

Binding won't even let him do it cleanly. He can stun him first, though.

Minor goes to Hell.

need another one, he writes Cam. 

He has mail accumulated.

Where are you?

Here's another

And home - "pause Hell I think that means you have to pause everywhere but pause Hell -"

...the circle in the corner fills in.

Minor collapses on the floor. "There's a world where people hatch from eggs and they're summoning daeva for the immortality - started today - they'd done a couple dozen when I got one - the eggs are right there being really obvious stunningly pretty large eggs people'll make 'em just out of curiosity -"

"Shit. Were you the only demon -"

"No and there would've been more last couple hours -" he makes models of all the daeva who've been summoned to that world again -

Just two new ones, both fairies.

He curls up and numbly conjures for confirmation that Hell is paused.

It is.

"Minor -"

"I killed my summoner I didn't know if you'd noticed it was urgent or if Cam was around to get a door to Revelation or what the wait time for a fairy was with a new world summoning -"

He doesn't look at them. He starts conjuring for valid circles on the eggs planet, what was the first one -

This one's on paper.

"It's the Godspring standard binding."

"Where's Bright -"

"Probably in Godspring which is presently paused."

"Okay, opinions on spying on his mail in case anything that might have to do with this is in there?"

"He'd be fine with it."

Mail.

Lots and lots of complaints and concerns and notifications of adjusted procedures and nothing at all explaining how a new world could be using paper bindings that look copied from Godspring's.

"Maybe they have interdimensional transit and Elf-quality vision," he says. Scale model of the author of that first circle on eggs world?

Angely person with claws.

And models of her surroundings, jumping back a day at a time -

Here she is on Godspring two days ago.

He narrows the timeline down until he can tell how she jumped. "- yeah, they have interdimensional transit. Don't know how the targeting works or why she went for Godspring, she wasn't wearing anything protective so she must've been able to anticipate habitability - or maybe they'd done it before -" members of that species who'd been on Godspring ever? 

It's just her.

Been in any of the worlds known to them?

Still just her. 

"- so no, hadn't done it before. The interdimensional transit is itself a disaster once they become daeva -"

"Somebody have an idea better than 'raise a hatchling and see if they can go there' please."

"Should've grabbed some sand while I was there.  - some probably stuck to my shoes, I could go back to Hell and grab it, do you suppose that's sufficient?"

"Might be. Have to unpause Hell to get the sand, have to unpause somewhere else to get a Vala..."

"Hell could be a really brief trip, I go back there when dismissed and get another circle and grab the right one this time. And then Mingling's Arda, fill in the one circle and you can have it detached from everything else. - we can check if they're in the middle of drawing more circles on egg-world, check how much time we have -"

- has the woman who did the interdimensional travel drawn all the circles so far -

Yes.

What is she currently doing.

Flying.

"So they're not at this moment about to do another summons. Second problem, once we can portal to the world we still can't talk with them if they don't feel like it, she appears to be able to teleport at will. And we don't know what else the magic system can do."

"The entire written corpus of the entire planet is less than a gigabyte and that's with the text stored as images because I don't have the character set."

"I don't know what to make of that but in Milliways I can at least read it...

...it's weird and patchy factoids."

" - I think I might go fly around a bit. Let me know when you have it figured out? Or if you need actually knowing the language for anything..."

Cam turns his computer. "Did you get literacy, is it supposed to be little clusters of words in lots of whitespace?"

"I got - a little bit of literacy? And it is not supposed to be that."

"Okay. Go fly. - Do you want a hug -"

Hug - "I waited and waited and waited I don't know why the fuck he wouldn't just let me go-"

Hug.

He goes outside and flies out as high as Milliways lets you.

" - anyone made eggs in Hell yet -"

Check - "Not yet."

"So maybe we can contain it, just - sneak in and replace eggs with inert ones whenever anyone tries it until they conclude it doesn't go. Doesn't solve the interdimensional teleporting people, but - if they're friendly that could be an asset, a non-Milliways way to reach new worlds..."

"...they might not be very friendly if we try to make them quit doing immortality."

"- ask them to keep it to angels and fairies, explain why? Though there's still the fact we cannot contain a daeva one of them, if they keep the powers -"

"Yeah. Maybe she's the only one with the powers? Doesn't say anything about them in the writing."

"Not impossible."

Sigh.

"Where's Minor's summoner?"

- "Fairyland."

Wingput.

Lean. "What's the sentence for murder - thirty, fifty years -"

"Depends. Thereabouts."

"Well that'll fuck him up spectacularly."

"It's lower for underage perpetrators but it'd take some work to make that apply to daeva even now."

Nod.

"You don't strictly have to dismiss him."

"If he wants to stay here and evade it I'd let him. But - I don't think it'd be right - I don't know what'd be right - it turns on a lot of questions that cannot even be safely raised in court -"

"I suppose he could kill a volunteer Elf for immediate reembodiment and let them hash out the jurisdiction contention."

"I don't actually see how that helps."

"It'd get him out of a Ganymede trial without having to do the 'terrible secrets, can't have him tried here' thing but no it doesn't really help."

"I honestly do not think he would be okay, or possible to get back to an okay state, after thirty years gagged."

"Even with the soul Elves -?"

"It's not the lack of conversation it's the inability to create or record or - think, I think my father and Minor think on paper -"

"- drawing?"

"Honestly if we decide he should take the prison summons I think the best option is just to keep him unconscious."

Hug.

"Want to yell at the summoner but that probably won't help at all."

"Yeah."

Elsewhere someone else is less deterred from yelling at Minor's summoner by the fact it is a bad idea. He finishes the circle.

Fairy. Confused fairy.

"Hi, asshole. I'm just going to throw a brick at your head and then leave you here indefinitely, you can let me know when you start feeling like you'd totally kill me to go home, it'll be educational."

"I - wh-"

"My. Little. Brother. Was in the middle of handling an emergency with thousands of lives at stake this afternoon, when the summons he thought was going to get him where he was needed to help instead took him to your house. Remember that? I've never heard anyone mention that dying affected their memory."

Silent overwhelmed fairy.

Theodore throws a brick at his head and then leaves.

"- ow -"

"By which I'm sure you mean 'it has just occurred to me that doing that is wrong, convey my apologies to your brother?"

Now the fairy is crying.

He leaves.

"Wait, please - is that all you want, I can apologize, I -"

SIgh. "I want peoples' lives not to have been pointlessly ruined in the first place. If you have an idea about how to fix it by all means go ahead."

"I d- how would I -"

He sits down and puts his head in his hands. "I don't know. If I knew I'd be doing that instead of this. I - look, Minor didn't want to hurt you, he's fucking miserable over it, he'd have sat there gagged and terrified and miserable for weeks if it'd only been his own life at stake - 

- you could just go home?"

"Please?"

"I don't mean to Fairyland, that fixes none of my problems. I mean you could just go home to Vienna and go about your life like you didn't kidnap a teenager in the middle of an emergency and then refuse opportunity after opportunity to stop kidnapping him." 

"I thought my wife was - there's escort laws -"

"How often do people check if people they know are suddenly and inexplicably a fairy though."

"I don't know."

"So if you want we can go downstairs and walk out the front door and you're back home, and we clean up the body and I don't care if you tell your wife and I don't care if Austria mails me citations for not accompanying a daeva of mine, what I care about is that two people have a shitty and traumatizing afternoon instead of having permanently ruined lives. Do you see what I mean? Because if you ruin Minor's life I will absolutely unambiguously without any regrets ruin yours but I can at least acknowledge that that's worse than if I don't have to do it."

"I - think I follow -"

"So go home and don't try to get him circled and then I have nothing to be pissed off at you for."

"If - if my wife already -"

"Then that's not your fault but because of magic timefuckery it's only been like twenty seconds back home since you died so maybe we can spare her the experience."

"- okay."

"You can take me to Vienna and promise not to kidnap my little brother or ruin his life and in exchange I will give you this." He hands him a miniature dragon; it bites. "Deal?"

"Ow!"

...the fairy looks at the model dragon and at Theodore and says softly, "Deal."

Downstairs they go.

"Is that -?"

"I figured you guys would be moralizing or moping or making out or some combination thereof and so if anybody wanted to just suggest sorting the whole thing out it'd hafta be me." He gestures at the door.

"What's the arrangement -?"

"Uh, family is happily reunited and does not engage in further kidnappings or arrange for any children to serve a life sentence in Ganymede over this one?"

"...So, you're not going to press charges?" Cam asks the fairy.

The fairy shakes his head meekly.

"...okay. Good. Uh, nicely done."

"Thank you. You hafta open the door," he says to the fairy, "if I do it'll go to my house instead of yours."

The fairy opens the door.

His wife looks up from her computer and sees the bar and shrieks.

"Sophie, Sophie, it's all right, I'll explain," he says, rushing through and letting the door shut behind him.

He makes a move to go through also.

" - don't, everything's paused."

"Oh, okay." He watches the door swing shut.

The fairy's explanation is cut short.

"What'd you do?"

"Threw a brick at his head."

"...well, the result is elegant."

"You're welcome." He goes back upstairs.

He leans into Cam and sighs.

Hug. "I should go catch Minor and tell him probably."

"Yeah, good idea."

Cam goes out back and takes off to catch up to Minor.

He sees him coming, circles. "Hey."

"Theodore summoned your summoner and convinced him not to press charges and sent him home to Vienna."

 "- oh. That's good. Is he okay?"

"He looked kind of freaked out but more in an overwhelmed way than a traumatized way?"

"Don't know why he didn't - I dragged him into the circle and then stood there. For ten minutes. With a wand on him - you'd think -"

"Don't know. Well, he wouldn't have recognized the wand, but even so."

"I think the idea was clear without the wand, yeah." Sigh. "Would've turned myself in. People shouldn't be scared their daeva will murder them."

"Well. People shouldn't be scared their summoners will trap them, either. Ugly situation. He's back with his wife, he's all right."

"Now we just have to stop the dimension-hopping egg people."

"Yeah. That's still a problem. But you're not facing down Ganymede while we work on it, okay?"

Nodnod. Sigh. "Should've checked the rate they were doing summons first so I knew how badly the minutes mattered - should've checked if there were already eggs in Hell, too -"

"I would have panicked too. It might turn out to be nothing, maybe they're developed enough by the time the shells harden that they can't actually be made as minds or something, but we don't know."

"Yeah." Sigh. "I would still rather never have killed anyone. Them being back and okay doesn't quite -"

"Yeah. I know."

Minor angles downwards. "So let's try to piece together the adventures of the egg rogue, shall we?"

"Sounds like a plan."

He's making a list when they get back inside. Demons who went to egg world, and subsequent conjurations. A minute-by-minute of egg rogue's travels, so they can determine how often she teleported and whether it seemed to require any preparation and what sorts of trips she'd fly in preference to teleporting. Whether she'd been to dimensions besides Godspring. Whether other inhabitants of her planet had.

These four demons besides Minor have been to egg world. They have made ordinary things like breakfast and computer chips and sofas and letters to their friends ("new summons didn't even offer me anything for my time, it's still really hit and miss"). One of them copied an egg person's jewelry, which may be made out of eggshell but doesn't contain any embryos.

Egg rogue does not teleport frequently and preferred to fly medium sized distances. She takes a lot of notes, or seems to - the paper appears blank or very sparse when conjured. She talked to several people. She has only been home and to Godspring and she's the only egg person who has left home.

"I think it's likelier there's something magic about the paper than that it's that sparse."

"We can conjure the paper, it's the writing we can't get..."

"Okay, something magic about the writing - something's just not adding up -"

"Yeah. We also don't have a good way to get there even if we figure out what's going on, if the sand from Minor's shoes doesn't cut it - I guess the wait time's enough that taking randoms next time they start up could do it but then we can only stay a minute and might not get anything more than sand."

"Could go wearing a sign that says 'what you're doing is incredibly dangerous please hear us out' but only if they summon another demon, last couple have been fairies."

"I do not have enough corpus to even begin to guess how to write that. Who'd the egg rogue summon, maybe hers got it..." Check. Some fairy.

"Could ask that fairy but I don't want people thinking 'oh cool another world' and then mentioning it -"

"Yeah, but that cat may already be out of the bag. Pretty eggs, totally bizarre language, new worlds are still a relatively novel phenomenon and if the fairy thinks she's the first to be there she might want to cash in on talking about it while the getting's good..."

Nod. "So summon her, try to get the language, then what if the next one they summon's not a demon -"

"Harder to get an angel or fairy on board usefully. They can't conjure the newest circle. Might have to let a few more summonses go by before we can get in. If the summoner can't read the sign and the egg rogue is not there, though, that doesn't get us much."

"The egg rogue's drawing them all, if we get it fast enough she might have to be there."

"She can teleport. She doesn't seem to have been teleporting around at home so far, but that could change."

"Leave the sign? Or - is there a loophole in that binding if one happens to be a wizard -"

"The Godspring version hedges that out preemptively just so they don't have to change it after we do Hazel."

"Smart but momentarily inconvenient."

"Yes. Where's your Hell door, is it near your sand or would you have to be dismissed and resummoned again..."

"Should be to near there, I can check -"

"Do we have any better prospects?"

"Did she drop anything in Godspring?"

"Oh good question -"

A lot of conjuration later: "Seashells from the food she brought, apparently."

"Sounds better than trying to go off sand."

"Quite. Okay, do we have any better ideas than fetching shells and getting portaled to egg person world to... what do we even say to her? The circles are obviously for immortality, do we have to say 'your friends and family all have to die because of vague bad actors in another dimension who might hatch some of you'..."

"It's not even just that, we also really can't have them all daevafy if they all have the interdimensional teleport, and if it's transmissible we need to keep a lid on it beyond that - we could have a Vala make them unaging -"

"Might be a good enough substitute. If the problem isn't a plague or something."

"Problem is they don't really have any particular reason to compromise."

"Well, they might not like the idea of unvetted demons hatching their eggs either."

"Hopefully not - would it really not have occurred to them, if they were in Godspring long enough to learn everything else..."

"I don't know. She wasn't there long enough to plausibly learn the language of one place, let alone everywhere she went, probably has magic translation, maybe it's costly and she wasn't thorough?"

"I guess if there were people urgently dying it might seem more important to get it home than to know what you were doing with it."

"Could have missed something irrelevant to her, like, 'demons can't normally make people', and assumed it didn't matter about the eggs..."

"You'd think if you thought demons could make people you'd be hesitant about bringing your species to their attention, at least hesitant enough to stick to angels and fairies or not be around when the summons got answered..."

"Well, we know nothing about the culture."

"We don't! Can't even speak the language, I think it requires either better ears than I have or something magic..."

"Do you know enough that you could invent separate writing for it?"

" - maybe? Probably."

"So it's not, like, conceptually magic."

"No."

"So something else is going on with the patchy writing..."

"Maybe there's a separate magic alphabet for the teleportation?"

"Can't rule it out. But she could read, she spent awhile at the computers..."

"I have no idea. Does restarting Godspring restart Hell, you expect -"

"Yeah, they'll have live circles."

"So we should go for the seashells fast as we can."

"Cage the dragons and get their fairy to give a ride?"

"I'll go ask her."

"I don't really mind but what's the emergency?"

"Some new people landed in Godspring and are now summoning people with no idea what they're doing, we need to go find them and explain, like, basic safety stuff."

So the fairy will give them a ride to the seashells and back from Cir's house.

And then they can get a door to Mingling's Arda and ask a Vala for a portal, and open a circle for the fairy that the egg rogue summoned.

The fairy shows up. "Good morning!"

"Hi! Uh, weird question, did you get summoned by some winged people recently?"

"Just one. Friend of yours?"

"We want to say hi but we can't speak their language, it's all - singy?"

"Ha, yeah, I can't speak it either! Maybe if I had one of those chip tone things."

"Is the written version any better?"

"Sure, it's a little fiddly but I got it good."

"Would you be willing to write a note for me to pass on, that says 'what you're doing is really dangerous can we please talk -'"

"What are they doing?"

"Uh, they seem to have spied on summoning in Godspring and now they're doing it themselves, drawing in the sand, and we don't know if they know getting the bindings exactly is important and we're pretty sure they don't know that if they say something that sounds like agreement to a task -"

"I'm not sure I could've understood her if she had, but yeah, okay. Got something I can write with?"

"Yeah -" Paper and pencil -

And the fairy scratches out the message.

"Thank you! Can I get you something for your time?"

"I'd take a chiplock installation, now that I think of it!"

"Sure thing lemme get Cam." And he messages him on his computer.

Cam turns up and performs the installation.

Fairy can go home. And once a Vala can get them a portal - "who do we want to wave the note at egg rogue?"

"We're assuming she'll take over translating, right, so it doesn't, like, need to be a teamup of a-Fëanáro-and-a-Macalaurë to figure out the language, so, a you for diplomacy, is there a reason not you specifically that we should get somebody else? Bright because Godspring or anything?"

"If they react violently it might be convenient for it to be someone more resurrectable than I?"

"Okay, are any more of you around or should we grab Bright?"

"- I think Midnight's here? Though he's not more resurrectable."

"...yeah I don't want to have to dip into limited Vala time to fish around Milliways for his soul. Where's Evening?"

"Also in Godspring, I think. I can go, they haven't shown any signs of murderous intent yet..."

"She's still in midair, we can probably afford a few minutes to grab a chipped you and then I do not have to attempt to teach you cellular biology while you are too hugged to have the use of all your limbs."

Kiss. "All right. Evening'll probably be happier with things to do."

So they get Ava to open the door to Godspring and the dragons fairy nips out to grab Evening. "Hey, Timothy needs you for something?"

" - uh, okay. Back in Milliways?"

"Yeah."

"Can I have a ride?"

"Yeah sure." Zoom.

And he is caught up on egg rogue and is delighted to go meet her.

She is still in flight.

Well, now there's an Elf walking around on the beach she seems headed to, holding a sign that says 'what you are doing is very dangerous, can we talk?"

......

that's interesting.

She circles him for a bit then lands.

"Hi, I'm Maitimo. I'm hoping you have translation magic?"

"I'm Tireh. Yeah." She pulls out her paper, she scribbles.

....he waits. 

"Go ahead, I can write while you talk."

"The only people in Hell are demons. Demons are all indestructible. Demons - vary - and if there were vulnerable people in Hell some would aid them and some would kill them for fun and some would keep them as prisoners or torture them. The reason there are no other people in Hell is because demons can't make anything with a sufficiently developed mind. They can make species that hatch from eggs by making the eggs very early in development."

"I can just do fairies then."

"That will reduce the danger. Not eliminate it, because some fairy could write a demon and mention you, but reduce it. There is another source of danger. You can travel between dimensions; can all your people do that?"

"Not yet."

"As I am sure you know, they will become daeva when they die. If they can travel between dimensions, some of them will find it entertaining to go cause harm, and daeva who desire to cause harm can cause unthinkable harm, and there will be absolutely no way at all for anyone to stop them."

"Do you have a better idea than letting us all die?"

"Our gods could probably make you unaging."

"That won't help if somebody gets eaten by a shark."

"It won't."

"Is it fast, the thing with the gods? Aging is most of the problem and I can look for something besides daeva in the time I was going to use sharing that."

"How many people are on your planet?"

"I don't know exactly. Thousands at least."

Blink. "Then yes, they can do it quickly."

"How'd you find me?"

"One of the demons you'd summoned saw the eggs, realized the implications, and came to warn us."

"How do the gods do their thing? Why aren't they doing it in the other world?"

"They can touch people and make them live ten thousand times as long. There aren't many of them and they have to do it one-at-a-time, and Godspring didn't have any of the reasons it's dangerous to teach summoning. And Godspring has about a billion people."

"That's a ridiculous number of people."

"There are worlds with a lot more people than that. And one daeva who could jump dimensions and thought it would be funny could kill them all."

"Okay. I have everybody who's already summoned written down if that helps."

"Thank you. Hopefully they will all stay alive and then we won't need to worry about it at all. Do you know if the magic can be learned by people from other worlds?"

"You probably would have noticed but I'm not sure."

"How does it work?"

"Songburning. You sing a fact and focus on an effect and you forget the fact and get the effect."

"Huh. Any kind of effect?"

"It only does weather and translation and transportation, at least so far - there's stories about translation being discovered after the other two, so there might be more concepts that work, but I don't know how to add them."