"Inlaith, for fuck's sake!" exclaims a different triplet from across the room.

"Father went to check his Sphere. We should tell Dalvor we have you back, before anything else."

"Okay. Fine. Does he have the other end of the comm?"

"Yes."

Cam makes a new one. "I'm back. Maze of spheres between here and Earth is full of various nasty stuff, slowed me down, wrecked the relays. Should probably have given me more than two hours the first time relays were wrecked and I was that far away. Anything interesting going on here besides the obvious and creepy?"

"Mostly politics," says the king. "With you back, I at least won't have to organize a planetwide evacuation into the Spheres, for which I'm very grateful."

"Yeah, we know how well that worked last time. Any nearby alien activity of any kind?"

"Not that we've seen. But if they were preparing another assault from the portal, we wouldn't be likely to hear about it until it arrived."

"Yeah. I'll go check it out. ...First though, you, whichever one you are, try dismissing and resummoning me, there's the circle for you to finish," he makes a new one, "I assume he tried but maybe there's some specific reason it didn't work, the wings or something."

Pop.

Resummon!

"Okay. So if your brother doesn't make it back please hold off on the suicide, I'm going to feel very awkward about that later when I'm not in such a desperate hurry to singlehandedly fend off an alien invasion, where the fuck are we." He looks around.

"In the palace. Where do you want to be?"

"At the portal. Which way did I go when I went?"

"You went from the edge. I think it would be faster to leave through a chasm," says Inlaith. "I could show you the way. Faster than stopping for directions."

"Okay." Which way out of this building?

Inlaith leads him toward the door of the room they are currently in.

And behind them, Ashras says, "Inlaith for fuck's sake...!"

Inlaith ignores this brotherly advice. He glows brightly and sprouts wings, black-feathered with a silvery sheen, still making for the nearest exit with all speed.

"What the - couldn't you have just not? For all we know that's why your brother couldn't dismiss me!"

"Getting one's wings is not traditionally a voluntary action," he says. "As well ask me not to think of a blue giant bat. Ashras was upset when he saw it coming, that's all."

"You could've avoided it if you'd tried!"