Surpassing us isn't the right benchmark for that, they should be reasonable enough to— never mind.

They're not stupid, just reckless and occasionally evil. 

Yeah, reckless could be enough. "The Nolofinweans beat one of the exploding things, it's worth testing whether we can handle what the Enemy throws at us," is something I could see them thinking.

And there is nothing we can do about that, they're too - smart - if that's even the right word -

We can try to act first, before the landscape changes.

You're very mortal, aren't you. Yes, we can. What does that look like.

Hopefully less mortal than most, but yes.

We'll need more practitioners, more elementals. Possibly weapons for them to launch, I'm less than thrilled about asking your cousins for more enchantments. And I should finish translating the books I've got.

Once we've done that, we can try to bring down some Enemy walls. Coordinated with your cousins, of course, to avoid doing exactly what we're afraid they might.
Or even assassinate him.

I suppose it's what we came here to do. How many practitioners - what criteria are we hoping for -

Wish I knew. Depends on what the Enemy's got. Maybe go all the way to "enough that we can blast shapeshifter-equivalents indefinitely if he has bottomless numbers;" having an army of practitioners to be responsible for is probably less risky than not having one.

We can make announcements, awaken everyone in the host who wants it - what's the best way of telling people to minimize risk -

Hmm. I'd feel better about public announcements if we didn't know the Enemy had spying capabilities. Might be safer to just have people pass mention of a potentially dangerous secret project to friends of friends, ask them to filter for people who'd be consistent at following orders? Slower, but it's exponential.

And at least the thing where all practitioners are royal is no longer true.

Yep, there's that. Maitimo's batch will be scary loyal, though, all his people are. 

Yeah. We can't do anything about that. Except outnumber them with people who are normal, non-scary loyal; then their version doesn't get marked as normal.

More reason to do that, then. All right. I should go tell the King.

Yeah.

And everyone who said it was impossible? Didn't expect this.

We should have expected this. I apologize for my cousins.

I meant us. Them we should have expected.

I think it can be done. We have resources the Enemy had no way to anticipate -

Yup. When and how to hit him with them is a much more tractable problem. Maybe the King'll have better ideas than mine on how to spread it.

I'll mention yours as suggestions, in any event.

Maybe I'll write Maitimo a letter.

He'll know what we're doing in any case, may as well be polite about it. If writing helps avoid the problem with presenting emotional levers; if not it doesn't have to be from you specifically...

Well, he already knows what I'm thinking, so having someone else do the writing just means two people whose internal state he has way too much information about.

Fair.

We could avoid it entirely if we wanted to really try, maybe cycle the message through a lot of rewrites by different people, but eventually it's just more work than it's worth.

Yep. And then after the war we move somewhere far, far east and pretend they don't exist and I think that actually will bother him on some level so I can consider it revenge.

Most things after the war I'm just classifying as "eventually" and not thinking about in much detail. Maybe that'll change once the end is closer on the horizon.