No. Go make some friends.

Okay.

He gets back to work.

And so does Sun-dark. He writes up those theoretical advances and pops into Nuime to hand them to his alts, who are still sitting on that cliff transmitting the teleport, and then he goes back to making magical artifacts, but with more of an intent to make friends as opportunities arise. The next step on the plan to acquire Internet is going to be talking to Summer-blue after he comes back from his first conversation with the peal. Shouldn't be long.

Corino appears on the cliffside as they're finishing up the transmission. He waits.

"Hi," says Summer-blue. "Liran-alore. Nice to meet you, Da."

"Nice to meet you too. At this rate there's going to be an entire nation of you by the end of the century."

He hugs his newest son.

"I've heard a few things from Esarkan, and I thought I might be able to contribute to the project."

"I welcome your assistance, of course."

"Sensible of you."

He pops the two of them to the Elven settlement in Nuime, and indicates that if Findekano has a moment, there's someone Corino would like him to meet.

...all right.

He manifested his soul a while ago. It's very abstractly like a knife, a dark blue; it says that the bearer is courageous and forgiving and expects better of people than they ever really are.

"Hello."

"...Hi," says - definitely not the Taliar he knows. This one has only recently heard of the public/private thought distinction and has been a little too busy to put it into practice. He's thinking about how he's going to approach the peal, and - oh of course if Findekano decided to help he'd be invaluable - and how badly must he and Elaneth-imire have gotten along, for Elaneth-imire to have said so little about him -

"Liran-alore Taliar," he says, touching his sky-blue soul. Hints of gold and silver remain, but blue is firmly ascendant. "Nice to meet you."

"LIkewise - what's going on -"

"Those people who chased the other Arda into our corner of the multiverse caught up with them recently. Esarkan wants to have a productive relationship with them, but they're inclined to look with suspicion on Ardas of the local type and anyone who's friendly with them, so there's been some tension. Taliar decided to... Taliar at it."

"And now I exist."

Which has been fascinating so far. He still has a lingering wariness of Raika-seren's situation, but Raika-seren swore on his soul that he's okay, so that's that.

"...all right."

"And I thought that if you wanted to participate in this venture, they might find you reassuring."

"...why?"

"For one thing, Tivarante let you go, twice, and the second time without any external motivation, and then left you alone afterward... I think that's more than they think him capable of."

"I don't think I'm uniquely qualified to testify to that."

"They also have this thing about alts - they know a bunch more of you, and they trust them, so they'd trust you. You might actually be the only person available who that's true of; the Ardas they're used to produce nicer versions of everyone - the nice Maitimos are all horrified by Midnight and Tivarante - and as far as I know, you're the only one who's consistent across both versions of the world."

Looking at Findekano's soul, he's not surprised by that. If there is some base version of Ardas from which the local flavour is a departure in the direction of everyone being less nice, this is exactly the sort of person who wouldn't budge an inch to follow it.

"Can I get a more complete explanation of what's going on? Who these people are? Nice Maitimos? If they dislike us, why aren't we civilly arriving at some sort of immigration and trade deal and otherwise ignoring each other..."

"They're—" he sends a condensed impression of what T'Mir was like when Raika-seren met her. "A bunch of that person and a bunch of people from nice Ardas. They have enormous amounts of useful powerful magic and other miscellaneous useful things which they hand out freely to people they trust but which they don't want to give to Dawn or Independence because they don't trust them and don't want to give to Nuime because they don't trust Dawn or Independence not to steal it from us. They're spying on Dawn and Independence with some of their enormous amounts of powerful magic, and the degree to which no one in this situation seems interested in avoiding an interdimensional Soul War is painful to watch, and I am absolutely not capable of leaving it alone to continue limping along in a grudging tacit truce until one day they decide they've got some clever way to come in and force everyone to submit to their benevolent oversight and they try it and it explodes in their faces."

"Ah. Okay, yes, let's go talk to them."

"Thank you. I can send the rest of the context too if you want it...?" He's not used to this telepathy thing yet and isn't sure of the extent to which his alts dropping large chunks of their memory on him at once was just because they're his alts.

"The more the better, probably, though I think I'm getting the picture."