"Oh, he is just like you," murmurs Ashras.

"Except I can't wield a sword like that," says Inlaith, "a flaw I intend to correct immediately."

"Ooh."

"Are there lessons conveniently available somewhere around here or am I going to have to make Ashras solve it?"

"Asgard continues hopelessly sexist but I might be able to princess you in somewhere. Or apply to some Elves, who will do fine for the basics - you'll need later timeline Elves than my set for more than that."

"I'd be happy to disguise myself as a girl if necessary."

"Yes, but your brothers, who definitely want in on this, would be slightly less so," says Ashras.

"I'm very tempted to teach you myself but I am afraid I haven't the time."

"Understandable. Although, speaking of, if you can think of any problems we might be able to help you solve, we're all itching to get our wings after the parade of interdimensional visitors fledging by the dozen."

Loki materializes her wings, long pointed swift ones, and folds them smugly before dismissing them again. "My personal energies are spent on being a princess of two planets, one of which kidnapped me from the other, and on spell development and on things best handled by deployment of magic items it's not safe for anyone to try touching; I'm not sure I'm the person to go to for things that respond particularly well to outside help..."

He shrugs. "For wing-getting purposes it works just as well if you pass us along to somebody else. Although I hear the Taliars can replace you as free will distributors, so it's not all hopeless - Ashras is going to be just about equally general-purpose, we're pretty sure."

"I'm really glad to be replaced as a free will distributor! My free will distribution solution was both imprecise and highly uncomfortable!"

"Any more imprecise and highly uncomfortable magical artifact effects I could try replacing, or was that the last one?"

"Anything else I'd need the Aether to do, pretty much. Handling the Tesseract isn't uncomfortable and the time stone isn't - well, it's uncomfortable but not painful, it's weird. And none of these work more than a hop from Edda so outright copying me is potentially useful too."

"Maybe that can be my niche. It would be nice to have a niche."

"Do not ask if you can touch the unsafe magic items just to see if your soul copies them," says Inlaith.

"I would normally ask the Tesseract if the unsafe magic items might be expected to get along with people but the Tesseract is in a bad mood because it learned there are locations it isn't spatially omnipotent over."

"Aw. My sympathies to the Tesseract."

"The poor thing. I am avoiding doing certain experiments with the limits of its powers because I don't want to piss it off even worse."

"Seems prudent. What are the normal use cases for spatial omnipotence?"

"Killing Melkors. I rounded a Flat Arda. Fun with colocation. Lets me borrow the other rocks from where they normally live."

"Mostly all things that Elaneth-imire can already do, worse luck. Although I bet he'd have an interesting time trying to round a flat Arda with all the people still on."

"I didn't stir a hair on their heads. Tesseract is great."

"It sounds it! I'm very impressed." Thoughtful pause. "And we didn't tell anyone where we were going, so we should probably go home before someone starts thinking we were eaten by a giant snake. Do you still intend to find me sword-wielding lessons? We can stay in touch via Suranse's crystal ball, right?"

"We can. If you want actual computers, Cam can hand out the state of the art and they'll hook up fine to the latest crystal ball model and you won't have to check the ball all the time to know when I've found you a teacher. Are giant snakes endemic to Suranse? Do they have mirrors for faces?"