"It'd sure be handy. People become epic other ways but I think you'd make an especially good wizard."

"What are the other avenues?"

"It's... pretty much all combat stuff, wizards have the best options for also learning to do anything constructive besides divine magic users who heal. But some people just get that good at fighting with swords or whatever, and some people are epic clerics or paladins or druids or something, and some people get really good at magical music or dancing and manage to turn that into a combat thing - usually with a bunch of friends along - and some people don't hold up that well if you hit them but they're just very hard to hit or even notice and they can go around killing things that way."

"You can't be epic through - no, I suppose you can't be epic through learning lots about the world, your world is terrible. Through making magic things that help people?"

"Nnnnot really. The way the word is used it basically means, 'if you and a god got in a fight, the god might lose'. You can be really popular or rich by making magic things that help people, but unless a bunch of them make you good at fighting and you've sort of... convinced the universe that you are the sort of person who wins fights with gods, maybe by singlehandedly defeating an army and some dragons and somebody else near-epic first... then that won't get you to that point."

"If you get epic enough you get to be a god!"

"But then how do you get more powerful after that? Since there are other gods, and some of them are mean?"

"There's more and less powerful gods. You'd have to be really powerful even for a god to get all the mean ones out of the way."

"Right, so how do I become really powerful for a god?"

"Pretty much the same way you become more powerful before that. You get cool stuff that gives you powers, and you learn spells and practice all your skills, and you develop a track record of winning fights by having them in the correct order. It might be that gods also get more powerful if more people worship them but it's not clear and theologians argue about that a lot."

"Okay," he says, "I think that's enough to start writing from, and I'll ask you when I have questions."

"Okay. So I should go ask your father about a safe cantrip now?"

"Will you come back?"

"Yes, although if he says I may teach you then I will have to detour to figure out fancy inks and stuff."

"I don't think I'll be done with the book. I might try thinking of a faster way to do writing."

Meanwhile, Bella is actively looking for a king. Her life is weird now.

She finds him in the room where she first met him. Isabella! Rúmil explained to me that there's been progress already, but that Miriel will probably ask you to undo it since it involves her not remembering some things. He was very insistent that I shouldn't do that, and in fact that she'll be better once she stops feeling she has to pursue it. Is there anything else?

Not about that. Fëanáro wanted to learn some wizardry. He's promised not to do anything dangerous, but there are some safe, little spells, and I think he'd like one that does illusion sounds - he mentioned that the Valar language is hard to pronounce and I think it'd let him get around that.

Oh, that sounds nice. If it's safe, you're welcome to teach him.

It's quite a safe spell. Plenty of them are. Thank you!

Thank you, Isabella. It's very heartening to see progress already, and if Miriel's annoyed enough to walk to Tirion then she's - she wants things, which means a great deal to me even if I have to tell her I've been persuaded she can't have them.

I'm hoping I can find something that works better eventually but - yeah.