"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."

"Dalvor's not bad, as kings go. Plenty of experience."

"Circling back - edge of the planet? I am not accustomed to planets having such things. Tacky planes of gold, yes, planets no."

"...What shape are you accustomed to planets having?"

"Spherical. Slightly wonkier shapes if they are very small planets which don't collapse under their own gravity."

"Well, Suranse is... planet-shaped. And not in a spherical way. Can you just conjure a scale model or something, or do I have to take you outside and show you the sky?"

"Uh -" Cam holds out his hands and makes a scale model. The top half clatters off the bottom half. Islands skitter to the floor. "What."

"I was trying to make an entirely faithful model. Which suggests that there is some kind of magical property keeping your... planetoid... floating in the way it does. And gravity can't be working normally either."

"Gravity is working just fine," says Ashras. "It points toward the central layer of the planet's shell. If you're on the inside, down is out; if you're on the outside, down is in. If you're in the floating jungle between the halves of the planet, or at the central layer of the shell, down isn't."

"And this is an extremely abnormal way for gravity to work! I mean, with a lot of engineering labor I might be able to rig something up with magnets... no, it wouldn't work that way either. This is not a thing that works. With gravity as normal. I can't make things in general with magical properties of any kind including abnormal gravity, so I hope you don't need that for your war effort."

"We can test that. Does anybody have a fire pin?"