Eli breaks into a smile that could rival the sun. "That's great to hear. All of it." Smile falls soon enough. "Even if they managed to escape and settle somewhere, they probably didn't survive the end of the world."

"Well, the end of the world will do that." Sigh. "There was a time when we thought the United States and the Soviet Union would destroy the world by accident. We have extremely powerful weapons and both sides were - posturing, blustering, threatening. The Soviet Union collapsed and nobody is seriously concerned that these weapons will be used, at least not in all-out war, anymore."

"Gah. At least yours survived. Vitek's world - summonee number one - didn't."

"Indeed. The same technology gets used for power, as a replacement for coal and the like, sometimes. But even that causes dangerous disasters once in a while. I was a teenager when the Cold War ended for good."

Eli nods. "How old are you? I am not good at judging human ages. Ah, we probably should figure out days and years lengths." They can presumably do that with some narrative math.

"Thirty eight."

"...It is even stranger that the days and hours and year lines up. For God's sake, we thought any aliens would be, well, really alien. Impossible to properly understand."

"Well were trying for similarity. And what do you mean with impossible to understand?"

"Oh, not having the concept of time. Or perhaps living so long that our short, frail lives seem like the scurrying of ants. Or not having games and failing to understand anything other than the most efficient and direct approach. Or something. There is no reason to expect aliens ought to be similar to us."

"Spirits. That sounds like spirits. Spirits are basically an idea sprouting a person around it like a seed. I don't know if that helps."

"Not quite, but close-ish. We expected other evolved lifeforms to act really weird, at minimum."

"Aside from spirits, the different magic species have some personality tendencies, but nothing that I wouldn't be too surprised to find in a human," Eli shrugs. "How weird are we talking about?"

"I've already give you the examples that readily spring to mind. I don't read a lot of science fiction anymore."

"Okay, and it isn't really practical knowledge anyway. I guess I can explain what our magic can do then. Let me see... Easier to explain the sixty-four powers first. It's at least gives you some sense of what our magic can do. Each power belongs to an element, like Fire or Air, and a category like Sense or Movement." He starts drawing a 8 x 8 grid. "So there is Enhanced Sight, which is both Fire and a Sense, Enhanced Hearing, which is both Air and a Sense, Teleportation which is Fire and Movement, Flight which is Air and Movement. And so on, so there is every possible combination between an element and a category, following me so far?"

"Mm-hm. Very structured. How do you know there are sixty-four and not more you haven't found yet?"

"Good question. There are eight magic species: Spirits, Dragons, Faen, Giants, Phoenixes, Sea Serpents, Thunderbirds and Unicorns. Each has access to powers from either an element or a category. In the cases of Phoenixes, they get either Fire or Sense powers, and they are mostly random picked from the available known options. If there used to be more, it isn't the case now and given the magic's structure we would expect to be an even number of elements and with an equal number of categories."

"Can you obser- Nevermind, I think I need to learn more before attempting to do science to magic."

Eli nods. "Moving on. the Eight elements have opposite elements and species are vulnerable to each other's opposing elements. The pairs are Fire and Water, Air and Earth, Metal and Life, Mind and Magic. There isn't really any specific interaction between the categories, which are Sense, Defense, Movement, Blessings, Skill and... ugh, translation is a bit confused between using the term familiar or companion, I think I will go with companion. It gives the power to create a loyal, telepathically linked members of a magical species. Either one with two powers or two with one power each. Moving on, the other two categories are elemental control and... another translation problem... 'Might' powers? They are the strongest powers, so strong that using them leaves you tired."

"I feel like I should be making a chart. Well, I'm sure you have some here and there. Ahh, translation woes. It's honestly almost as mind-boggling that whatever you're doing to deal with that is working as well as it is. Hmm - if you don't mind, how's this? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Estoy cansado. Un, deux, trois. Watashi wa ningen. What happens if I think I know something in another language, but I'm wrong about it?"

"We do have charts, some really elaborate, but they got displaced when we moved everything from the library to make room. This was the library wing - that's why there is a translation effect around. I don't speak German, but a native German speaker would hear German regardless. I know eight different languages. If you're tired we can take a break. Four, five, six, seven, eight. I am a three-quarters Faen one-quarter dragon. The translations can tell what dialect you're trying to speak and use thee rules of that, even if that diverges from intended meaning."

"I am not actually tired. That was the one phrase of Spanish that leapt to mind. Uh, what kind of magic is summoning people?"

"Primarily teleportation. With added bits of astral projection to allow it to take things instead of sending them, and a bit of various sensory effects so it doesn't summon random objects. A bit of portal magic so we can send you back easily and also Purification, so it rejects dangerous things. We also had a layer of wards that was a separate ritual entirely."

"So you can end up with complicated and layered effects, even if the... Categories? Are limited to sixty four."

"Through ritual magic you can. And even non-magical humans can use it. But it's much easier to work by branching from something already there or at least established."

"Huh... I'm starting to feel like this conversation, while fascinating, is decreasingly relevant."

"True. And we need to talk about potential problems with the U.S. I don't know what kind of problems you're expecting, but... some mixed blessings in this whole mess is that a great deal many central political figures are now in the same location and under siege by monsters. The larger part of spirits and dragons have fallen too, and they are the more complicated to deal with than the average magical person - personality wise that is. Our general hope is that you can take refugees somewhere with food, water and weather that we can magically make mild. Then we can spend our energy planning solutions and finding a number of habitable worlds that we can divide among the people involved. Some ways this can go bad from our end include: people switching alliances or doing things that force us to lock away the worlds; people abusing powers that you don't have means to fight back; cultural shocks that lead to violence and death... I am not sure if you had anything more specific in mind."