"You can't die by having your body destroyed. If you get trapped in a loop repeating the same six seconds over and over? Or have your ability to form conscious thoughts stripped away? There are ways to end up beyond our ability to help without also being destroyed."

"Then don't use the word 'die'. If I am irretrievably incapacitated what good will a hidden gate to Fairyland do you?"

"Tell someone to pass on the information if you're ever effectively dead. We enslave a sorcerer—sending Contessa, not Eidolon—and not everything depends on your availability to gate to Scion. With any luck this will never come up, but contingency plans are often unpleasant ones."

"I'll borrow a gate-capable one of Peak's sorcerers and keep them in Hawthorn; will that do?"

"It should. The advantage of Fairyland is that it seems to be strictly impossible for Scion or parahumans to get there on their own. Two points of failure is almost certainly enough, but it's still a risk, however small."

"If I leave a gate open it is not impossible for people to get there," Promise says. "Actually, if just a gate, any gate, will do, some powers can destroy gates; you could de-pair one of the pairs I sold the Protectorate. Do we have an approximate timeline? The gate destination won't be flat and may take a while to settle."

"We can have equipment for surviving a hostile atmosphere within the hour. Most of the time will come from how long it takes the tinkers. That will probably take on the order of months if they start from scratch, or as low as necessary, down to minutes, if their existing designs can be used. String Theory will be able to tell you a precise deadline when she starts blueprinting. That will be a hard limit."

"I'll consult her, then. It'd probably be safest to have her do the construction somewhere on Scion's planet. Would that alert him or anything?"

"We have no way of knowing. But there are unoccupied habitable earths to choose from."

"Yes, but that makes transporting it to Scion's planet a possible bottleneck. Eh. Probably less dangerous than risking him noticing."

"You don't think he might notice the gate itself? If I can put it where he is I can put it on the opposite side of his planet - unless it's big enough to cover the whole thing? - but it might be detectable."

"I'm sure he has some way of finding it if he's looking. Contessa can't see your gates but can know where they are if dust in the air vanishes or appears from nowhere. The bulk of Scion's attention is on Earth Bet, but we don't know his limits. No guarantees."

"So perhaps I shouldn't open it right away but wait until we have more response mechanisms in place in case it sets him off then and there."

"Without knowing how long it would take to settle, we can hardly time it for just before the planet-destroying device goes off. We can fight him if necessary, might even win if the goal is to stall him, but there would be casualties."

"Yes, but right now a lot of Kept don't have contingency plans for 'what if Scion starts destroying everything' and wouldn't be able to fight, and I was planning to conquer Fairyland and still haven't done that, and so on. The gate can't be timed but it can be delayed."

"Oh, you meant other plans. Scion isn't attacking yet, we do have time. You can set up what plans you need. Though you understand why I'd prefer a resolution as soon as possible."

"Yes. I'll go talk to String Theory and update the Kept's orders and get a spare sorcerer and conquer Fairyland, shall I?"

"As you wish." People with their non-Scion goals, so annoying. "Door to Hawthorn." The rectangle reappears.

"I'd like the Queen's name - the real fairy queen, not Glaistig Ulaine - from Contessa as a failsafe."

Well, succeeding at her irrelevant task faster can't hurt. "Door to Contessa." Contessa steps through, already knowing what she's being asked. But she hasn't been asked yet, and current orders don't allow deriving fairy names outside of exceptions.

So Promise makes one. "The name of the fairy known commonly as the Queen whose unique power is to know other fairies' names may be, once, to me only, spoken."

"I'll have to get to Fairyland first. As far as my power knows right now there is no such person."

"There are fairyland gates in Hawthorn. I can turn you invisible so the Kept don't ask inconvenient questions. Only long enough to get the name requested, and without taking extraneous actions, you may use a gate I indicate to you." Voila.

Contessa goes through the door to Hawthorn, and is back very quickly. She whispers some syllables to Promise.