"What?"

"Just, leftover discomfort over the fact that even with light safety orders there's still a non-negligible chance that they'll become someone else's vassal and that makes me kinda sad."

"Yeah."

He finishes setting stuff up and goes through the gate. "So of course we're gonna fix it."

"Well, we can try."

"Yep. After we're done here."

"The Queen will be harder than Thorn to handle."

"Yeah, she will, but we have more time, and potentially more resources."

"That's true."

"I wonder if we could try inviting some of the sorcerers here to help us..."

"I'm keeping an eye out for any who seem open to that, none so far."

"What about the ones that are too dangerous to release?"

"Wary of trying to use them. I'm good, I'm not perfect."

"But if Thorn is better than you, we could use him to use them...?"

"...that really doesn't help."

"I mean, with some appropriately worded order about cooperation and stuff...? The plan we've used here is his, after all."

"Yes, but giving him lots of complex orders and permission to enforce them on others - or lots of opportunity to decide what we're enforcing - introduces lots of opportunities for our mistakes to cost us. It adds up."

"No, I mean, ask him what we should order. We use his knowledge and skills, not his—self. And also not just that, and maybe not that at all, we should only use the uncooperative vassals if we have absolutely no other plan, I think."

"We'll see what kind of ratio we wind up with, I guess, but using Thorn is still potentially risky even if we only use him as a consultant."

"Fair enough."

"It still kinda sounds like getting the help of more people—fairies or otherwise—might be the way to go."

"Why?"

"Because they're resources. The Queen doesn't have mortals' names by default, and my effectiveness is limited by the fact that I'm a civilian. We could try to vassalise, say, the president of the United States—most economically and militarily prosperous nation on Earth at the moment—and get his country's resources, too, but I'm not a fan of this idea. Point being that... well, that's what she has, is people."

"I wasn't even planning to hang onto Yellow."