Nod. Okay. Anyway, I'm not sure what the Enemy is capable of, so I want to be careful.

Understandably. I suppose it's risky to open a portal to yet a third world where we can hunt but there aren't any people.

It might be tough to find one without people, but if I can I don't see a problem with it. What risk are you thinking of?

I thought the manner in which you found my world was meant to be suicidal?

I was trying to teleport to 'nowhere', yeah. Turns out it doesn't do that, if I try to it gives me a completely random place with the usual safeguards as far as I can tell. And now I know how to aim better than 'completely random', so it'd be just like finding the jungle except I wouldn't specify that the place had to be in this world.

Oh, okay. In that case it could be worth a try. We'd have somewhere for people to retreat to safely.

Mmhmm. If I can figure out how to find worlds without people in them, anyway. I can actually specify how many people should be around the location, as part of aiming, but it's only in the local area, not in the whole world.

And it might be hard to check whether a world has any people in it.

...checking shouldn't be hard. It'd be an extra step but that's not a big deal. Go to a world and then try to teleport to people in that world - or make a portal, better - and if it doesn't work, there we go.

And that's not dangerous if it does work?

...not sure. Different worlds obviously have different magic, it seems possible that some of them could have magic or things that would make it dangerous just to be there or something. Might be worth it anyway, though, depending on what the situation is like in your world.

Having a place to evacuate people to would be very valuable. But maybe teach others the magic first, just in case.

Mmhmm.

Is there anything else they might be in need of?

Weapons for fighting the Enemy. Magic matters there too.

I can't help with the actual weapon part of that - kobolds don't have metalworking at all - but I can enspell things if they can do that part. The most obvious application is weapons that teleport whoever they hit off a cliff or something - that'll work even if they're armored, I'm pretty sure - but there's probably other things, too.

That does sound astoundingly useful, if requiring of caution so we don't hit our own people. Arrowheads, maybe. Things shot through one-way portals. I expect my brothers will know their needs better than I can guess them.

I can do arrows. I can definitely do portals that you can shoot things through. For hitting your own people... reaction time might be a problem, but depending on how many fighters you have I might be able to enspell them all to be able to teleport back at will.

...I can probably do spells that bring people back automatically when they're badly hurt, too. Exactly what 'badly' should mean will take some work, but... yeah, that should definitely be possible.

That'd make a tremendous difference. Perhaps we shouldn't wait the week to speak to my brothers.

Maybe, yeah.

Lake Mithrim's between two mountain ranges, it looked like this - he sends an image.

All right, let me see...

Fifteen minutes and two failed attempts later, the viewing rock holds a portal showing the lake.

Lake. Sun in the sky. Pretty, if slapdash, barricades and walls and sprawling Elven city.

That looks right. Thank you. Can you do one that opens over there? People will stumble on it eventually...

Not from here, but yeah. I'd kind of like to have more of a plan, first, though, in case they find it quickly or notice me before I have it cast.

Right. They might attack, that's a real problem. Let's put it farther away; they might not notice for a month but you won't be in danger.

Or I can just enspell myself to come back here if anything hits me hard enough to injure me. Might be alarming but I don't think we lose much that way.