They don't think kobolds are people. Most of the time they leave us alone anyway, but when it is a problem it's kind of an awful one. I was working on it, just going and talking to them works pretty well, but they live in small groups and are nomadic, so that was a long-term project.

Okay. I can try to help with that too.

Only if you want to, and I'm not sure I'll be up for it even then, we'll have to see. It's pretty emotionally exhausting for me.

I was fighting a war for the fate of the world. I think I'd get emotionally exhausted by not doing enough that matters on enough of a scale, eventually, but it should help in the short term while I can't do anything about that war anyway.

Nod. If the spell to find a warm place works I can probaby guarantee I don't land in Angband and go somewhere else in your world instead, too.

Yes but that's what the Enemy obviously wants me to do, if this is a false rescue.

I'm still pretty confused about what you think is going on with that, but anyway I didn't mean you should go back; I meant maybe if I go and find out what's going on there'll be some things we can do to help from here.

Sometimes the Enemy lets us 'escape' from him, or be rescued. It always turns out that either our rescuer works for him and we're just somewhere else in Angband - and any suicide triggers we've been given don't work - or that we were hallucinating all along. He can induce controlled hallucinations.

Yikes. That's kind of gratuitously awful. ...to deter people from rescuing people, I'd guess? Not that I regret getting you out of there, but.

And to make sure when he does release you, as a way of hurting your loved ones, you don't even believe it.

Sigh.

Yeah, forget the tigerfolk, let's work on burning that place to the ground. Are there any obvious problems with the idea of me going?

Going back to Angband? Yes, he might catch you and mind-control you into working for him.

I mean going elsewhere in your world. It might take me a little while to work out which parts of the location-pattern are for that world in particular, but once I do, and once I figure out the other aiming method, 'not Angband' will probably be trivial.

I suppose that can't hurt, they'll know you're real. You want to go to Lake Mithrim, where my family is, and offer to help them win the war using teleportation. If this is a hallucination that won't matter and if it's real they can help you. 

I doubt the name will help; let me see if I can work out what kind of information I do need.

Okay. Once I can write I can draw you a map and give you a letter for them.

Dunno what that is, but a map might be useful.

My people invented a correspondence between sounds and symbols, so you can put symbols on a page and then they can look at them and know the words as if you are there to say them.

She blinks. Clever!

I know, right? It was my father's idea. If you'd like I can teach it to you.

Once we've got time for it, yeah, sounds like fun. Assuming I'm not too out of practice at talking, anyway.

...I don't think one gets out of practice at talking. It's been thirty years for me.

Wow.

Anyway, kobolds do, it's kind of a problem - most of us can't learn at all, usually there's supposed to be at least two Speakers to a tribe so we can stay in practice, with only one to a tribe we only get to practice at the summer meetups and it's pretty clearly not enough. Going and talking to the tigerfolk was helping, for me, but it's been a year since I've talked to anyone and I'm sure I've forgotten some words.

Want to teach me your language?

I'm not sure I'd be any good at teaching it - I never did get the hang of the grammar - but if you want to try sometime, sure. Might make more sense for me to learn yours, though.