"How'd that go?"

"Well. They have a five-year course in magic, which I'm now signed up for, and are separately considering how to roll it out to dimensions that aren't adjacent to Materia, though I might check if any more are."

"And they didn't give you trouble over -"

"They wanted an explanation of why I thought giving Shadow wizardry was a good idea, but they accepted one once they had it."

"Do you realize how easy it would have been -"

"Yes. I do. I don't think they do, exactly, but they know things could have gone very badly."

"I don't even mean 'it was a close call' because it wasn't, I was never undecided. I just mean that it would have been easy."

Hug. 

"Thank you for coming."

"My pleasure. How are you running this place?"

(When this news reaches the network he makes vague disgruntled noises at everyone in the vicinity.)

Kib, in the vicinity, pats him.

"Should have taken the necklace back."

"Do you believe you would not have found the results unsatisfactory if we'd done that?"

"I'm sure he'd have been upset, but something at some point is going to upset him and now he has a teleport and Shadow'll have wizardry and who knows what other resources they'll manage to accumulate."

"I think the idea is that his lack of resources was not what stopped him from being outrageously dangerous the other day and continuing with the lack of resources strategy makes it more likely that the 'he doesn't hate us quite that much' strategy will fail at a crucial moment."

"I don't think his level of hating us was even operative? As far as I can tell he just actually preferred the Yeerks not make it."

"Sure, but he could have gotten farther on what the Yeerks got him without the Yeerks getting anywhere."

"Could he have? Could've gotten a worldleaper, yes, but I think he'd rather rule an empire than start alone in some two-hops-out dimension and he knew that'd only work if we weren't that motivated to pursue him."

"Why would he have had to start alone? His Arda's still flat and its celestial objects still move because Maiar pilot them, not in inconvenient physics-based ways. He could have found a new world and brought the whole thing."

"We don't actually know what happens if you take an Arda to a normal dimension, it might break something - the music can only be composed locally, it wouldn't be surprising if there are other things like that - and if we were really motivated we could still have tracked him down."

"Sure. But he didn't choose to risk the move and he didn't choose to gamble on whether we'd chase him, he was not that desperate to maybe get out of reach. And that was too near a near thing."

"Yes, it was."

"So. Making him less desperate than that in case someone more appealing than Yeerks comes along. Having a not-his-very-own-personal-Findekáno lurking keeping an eye on things. Do you actually think this is a strategic mistake or does it just not involve him being dead enough?"

"His being dead does have the appealing feature of being even less likely to result in a disastrous betrayal."