If I so desired I could commit myself to want everything you want, and nothing else.

And that would be intensely fucking horrifying and you'd spend the rest of your time without free will wishing you hadn't done that!

Only if you wanted me to wish that! Horrifying I will grant you.

You didn't say 'wanting everything I want you to want', you said 'wanting everything I want', and I would want you to not have done that!

I would sooner die. Well. I'd sooner die than do lots of things, that perhaps carries too little force. I can barely conceive of circumstances under which I would do it, and it would require tremendous discipline to do even then. But if you think our words can only be used to build nondistrust you are underestimating it.

All right, yes, oaths can also overwrite personalities into revised versions that are by design trustworthy.

And this is among the things we should end, and you may not actually have time to hit your priorities one at a time before Eru decides to delete this experiment.

Is that a serious risk? I do think I can yank the entire place to my dimension if I get the Tesseract.

That would solve it, probably. I have no idea how to evaluate risk with respect to Eru.

Me either.

'want whatever Loki wants for a certain number of Ages' would be tolerable, were it necessary.

No it wouldn't because you're still phrasing it in such a way that would guarantee you'd wish you hadn't done that!

He waves a hand wearily. I am trying to think of alternatives to 'you're the only person in the universe with the power to fix our world'. I assure you I wouldn't speak one that was worded incautiously.

The Bifrost managed to land me here without me knowing anything about how to teleport at all and I am confident that sufficient inter-realm transit would fix the problem by itself, it's just that at the moment inter-realm transit comes solely in the form of me. That's not a limitation in principle, just a limitation in happenstance.

But the limitations on 'fight Eru, end Oaths' are not actually known, and might be pretty serious.

Yes.

I'd appreciate it a lot if you thought about under what circumstances you could trust us.

It is sort of unsettling being on the receiving end of this, however plain the rationale.

I am happy to interact only as far as needed for my city to run smoothly and defend your people well. If you want to interact with me more than that I am going to have a bit of a hard time trying not to have any goals.

I'm not saying you should stop or even that it's not worth the conversation - although as aforementioned if you want me to go away, I will do so - just that I'm beginning to see why you might suspect someone who didn't think very highly of your goals would not read your letters.

I don't want you to go away, but you did mention being tired and this is a discussion that can wait at a minimum the years until my father has the memory solution, if it even works.

All right. Good night. Sleep well.

Likewise.

And she goes to bed.

In the morning there is the promised talk in an elaborate amphitheater with acoustics so exquisite that Maitimo need barely raise his voice to be heard, even to the ears of Men, in its back rows as clearly as if he were standing beside them. They go over evacuation drills. The city's laws, as far as Maitimo are concerned, are 'don't make it harder for us to run a war'. He does tell Men who to escalate complaints to. He smiles frequently. He laughs frequently. He is intimidating only in the sense that confidence is.