combinatorial explosion | Glowfic Constellation

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The strangers have six casters, in their group, that Qiri can count. Qiri's group has four counting him, and they got split up awhile ago when the strangers started that earthquake. Qiri is stuck with Master Huo. Master Huo is dying, but since Qiri is chained up he can't use that to escape, or attack Master Huo. The master's magic is uninjured, and he can reach Qiri's from where he lies, and Qiri is sitting there, goosepimpled, enduring it. He wonders if Master Huo might be in enough pain to distract him, if Qiri tried to wrench his magic away, but he doesn't think so. He can squirm around a fair bit under Master Yu and Master Zao if only one of them is using him for a spell - and if he wants to earn himself a beating - but not Huo.

He doesn't get nauseous anymore, like he did when he was a kid. So there's that.

Huo's casting a healing spell, moving Qiri's magic around this way and that to set it up. Qiri assumes it's going to target Master Huo, but spells don't know who anyone is. Qiri can't distract himself, not with his spine tingling and all his magic cringing under the slide of Huo's. Instead he tries to concentrate on something less directly sensory: how's the spell targeting? How is Huo going to make sure it heals him, and not Qiri's irritated skin under where the chains sit, the injuries to his fingers from the last time he irritated Master Yu, the probably broken toe sustained in the earthquake?

He figures it out when the spell is probably almost over: it's going to target the most injured person, and Qiri is a little banged up but Master Huo's got an arrow to the gut and a slice through his thigh that's probably going to bleed him out before the abdominal wound can kill him. It's objectively pretty impressive that he can concentrate enough to make his magic force Qiri's through the motions he wants.

Then, dimly around the cloying sensation of Huo's magic over his, Qiri notices a group of the stranger mages approaching, standing close together, back to back to back, doing something -

And he and Huo are banished somewhere else.

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"Can you eat these too?"

"Yeah. It's all Valian."

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He tries the grass that she picked.

Savory and crunchy.

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"I like how you can eat the whole garden even though it's so pretty."

"Yeah, Valinor sounds nice that way.

My dad thought about killing us when my mom died, so I could grow up there instead."

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"- like, hundreds of years later?"

"Yeah. Or thousands, whenever the Valar got around to it."

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"...well, I guess he didn't do it."

"Yeah. I don't know why not, he got as far as asking for permission and everything."

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"Permission?"

" - uh, usually you're not allowed to murder people. Something like that would be a special case but in general it's against the rules."

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"I mean I figured if you want to murder someone you would just do it."

"....no? That'd be awful."

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"I mean. Yeah. But he had a good reason to be thinking about it, right?"

" - so the way I'd think about it would be that there are, like, four or five good reasons not to kill people. One is that they'll be worse off, which is probably not true if you're killing them in Himring to raise in Valinor. One is that their family and loved ones will be worse off, which in this case was the opposite - it'd be better for my mom if she hadn't missed so much of my childhood, it's going to be very hard for her to be okay with it. One is that their community will be worse off. I think my community would be worse off if I died, I do chores and I'm useful and people like me and Lord Maedhros gave me this assignment.

And then one is that other people will be scared they might get murdered, and one is that it's wrong to break a law. And those two are only a problem if you kill someone without permission. So on the whole on balance it's okay to kill someone in a situation like that one if you have permission, but not if you don't, I don't think."

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"Huh. I guess that kind of makes sense."

"How does reincarnation work exactly?"

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"I don't know exactly. But approximately when we die our souls get born into a new life. And it happens to animals too and souls aren't always the same species."

" - huh. It seems like it'd be hard to decide when to die? Since you don't know if the next thing will be better or worse?"

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"...humans don't decide that. I don't think strangers do either. But the idea is it's a nicer thing if you are a better person in your life."

"And Eru decides that?"

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"What's an aru?"

"Uh, the creator of the universe, is he the person who decides how good people have been? Because it seems like sometimes that'd be hard to evaluate."

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