"...What safety precautions are normally advisable when summoning a maker?" he inquires.

"It's smart to have something laid down to prevent us from using our phenomenal cosmic power to hurt anyone, unless that's what you wanted the maker for in the first place anyhow, and also typical not to let us talk but that part's not necessary."

"How lucky for everyone involved that you do not wish to use your phenomenal cosmic power to hurt anyone," says tail number two with perfect equanimity. "What sort of phenomenal cosmic power is it, exactly?"

"I bet you can guess." Cam tilts his head back, creates a marshmallow, and catches it in his mouth. Chew chew.

all

"I did not appear wings on you? Normally if I were in a room with a bunch of people and somebody spontaneously acquired wings I would be the obvious person to blame. Where did they go. What is going on."

"They're my wings," he says, as though the relevant implications of this statement are too obvious to make explicit. "...They're my wings. Crash the fucking sun, I just got my wings. Ha!" He laughs with amazement.

"Before anyone else gets too excited, I feel the need to clarify: you can just conjure arbitrary objects?"

"Yes. Why, does everybody else want wings too? I can't make them disappearable and the glow would be a bit tricky too but I find mine perfectly serviceable and I made 'em myself."

"...Oh." He blinks at Cam with dawning realization. "You're not a winged stranger. You are in fact merely a... stranger, with wings. That makes perfect sense in retrospect."

"...The distinction is somewhat lost on me. My name's Cam, if you would like to call me something more monosyllabic than 'stranger with wings'."

"...I'm Ashras Kevarsin, and these are my brothers Inlaith," the quiet one, "and Elarron," the one with the recently acquired wings. "Well. You see, in Suranse, when someone feels that they have accomplished something substantial and magnificent and truly worth celebrating, they... get their wings. Not bestowed by a passing conjuror, but inherently, without outside intervention of any kind. And from that point forward the person is winged, and will never get old or sick, and has their own Sphere - which, before you ask, is a... place... that starts out house-sized and grows with time as long as its owner is alive. Winged ones can make portals to their own Spheres from anywhere they happen to be."

"Sounds like a nice benefits package. I am immortal, don't have the sphere thing though. And made my own wings rather than having them bestowed by mysterious forces."

"Yeah. That's going to confuse people," says Ashras. "There's no way to get wings without the mysterious forces, around here. Anyway, this has been a fascinating look at the differences between our respective worlds, but this world happens to be kind of urgently in need of saving, and if you can conjure arbitrary objects you and any handful of combat casters can win the war by tomorrow if we play it right. Interested?"

"...I am wary of war as a general category. You seem very nice but I require more than an elevator pitch."

"A hundred and fifty years ago, the population of this planet was around two billion. It's now half that, because a hundred and fifty years ago the Enemy arrived and started killing everyone. Every diplomatic effort ever made has failed. They're not interested in being bribed or appeased, they just want to wipe us out. They have superior technology and superior numbers - an apparently inexhaustible supply of them keeps showing up from somewhere outside the planet, past the range anyone could fly to even if they didn't have to dodge Enemy vehicles trying."

"Well, as elevator pitches go that one's not bad. I would like more than your word to go on."

"Few things in this planet are more reliable than Ashras's word," says Inlaith.

"Which may or may not indicate that I have walked into a logic puzzle where one of the triplets always lies, one always tells the truth, and the last may do either, now figure out which way to go in this maze by asking only one question, but at any rate your corroboration is not independent."

"If you're as immortal as all that, you can go to the edge of the planet and experience the attempted extermination for yourself," says Ashras. "I don't recommend it with less. What would you like? An audience with the king? We can get you one of those."

"I'm very immortal - technical term is indestructible. An audience with a king you go and find me is more than sufficient if you want me to produce medical supplies and food but may, depending on king quality, fall short if what you want is munitions."