"Couple months, looks like."

"...I'm not sure how to weigh Imperial annoyance here nor do I know how tight your budget is."

"The budget will not be ripped from the hands of starving orphans or anything, though we'd better not die on this misadventure because three rings of teleport and three resurrections would in fact empty the royal treasury - metaphorical emptying, most of the world uses fiat currency - Imperial annoyance is not going to cause a war but might complicate enlisting Imperial aid against the evil god."

"It's... unlikely to be scale-of-a-week urgent. It may not even be them and if it is they're still Ainur, they still work slowly."

"Then I'll ask my father to authorize some fact-finding by carriage and I'll write to the Imperium and we'll probably have approval by the time we reach the border unless they know what's going on and don't want outsiders near it."

Nod. Sigh.

"Can you think of a way to demonstrate to my father that you know alternate universe versions of us in a world where my uncle lived, that'll make it easier to get approval -"

"...not an obvious way? I don't know what he'd find convincing..."

"Anything you know about our alternate versions that wouldn't be common knowledge to our people, maybe?"

"I mean, you don't have any way to verify any of that. And I'm not sure he's going to be delighted to hear about how estranged he and his half-brother typically are."

"It's not 'delighted' I'm aiming for, it's 'reasons to give this any credence'."

"I can do my best. Harder without the eidetic memory - I'm not close personal friends with any of you..."

"I'll convey what I've been told, it's just that this is - difficult to believe - 'he says he's epic but does not want to talk about it' doesn't generally impress - and while it makes sense that this particular evil god would be your primary priority, there are enough evil gods that we don't habitually turn our resources towards trying to stop them. We would if it could make any difference."

"I can explain the circumstances under which I killed some gods but it's not going to make you more favorably disposed. And yeah, I'm getting that there's a bigger problem here than one Melkor; he's the one I know something about how to fight him, is all, I'd be starting below local baseline trying to figure out the others."

"I think it's utterly reasonable for you to prioritize him, and given the truth of anything you said for us to assist you in any way we can, but - absent that, if we were the sort of people to ride off to fight him we'd also be the sort of people who'd be dead. I know what an annoying constraint that is."

"It's okay."

"If you don't think the circumstances under which you killed some gods will avail us any here, I won't ask, but I am struggling to imagine how I'd end up thinking worse of you - we don't expect any particular altruism from epic-level adventurers..."

"There was - a lot of collateral damage."

"Was it avoidable?"

"If I'd waited longer we would maybe have found Loki anyway and she could've fixed it. But I didn't know that. And waiting would've made it worse."

"A lot of collateral damage on the order of -"

"Fifty-five million people died.

I put most of them back. Loki put the rest of them back later."

"Damn. Let's hope this one goes better. Sorry for bringing up an upsetting subject."

"It's okay. It's, you know, relevant. And they're all alive now."

"I'm very glad. It sounds like it was worth it, and if you're epic that'll help a lot in this world too, so - may as well use that god-fighting license of yours. I'll go explain the whole situation to my father."