"Yes, let's."

He looks for the local Maitimo with his spirit-sense, and—

—those are mind-altering oaths that's even worse than a brain slug my love, what do I do—

Make them go away -

They go away.

He contacts the spirit.

Hi. I'm Dawn-shining Taliar. If you want me to resurrect you, come this way— and a path to follow.

(He is having serious trouble with the notion of a Maitimo under mind-altering oaths - his thoughts keep flinching away from it, it hurts to think about - he needs to get his head together, this is an emergency, but oh that poor Maitimo, no Taliar of his very own and brain-slugs all over his kingdom and mind-altering oaths...)

That Maitimo accepts resurrection.

A moment later when that Maitimo regains his senses, he is lying in an improbable patch of fresh soft grass amid the charred flaming wreckage that is the rest of this area. The whole area is bathed in a gentle golden light emanating from Taliar's soul, and the light carries the soul's sense-of-personality - his drive to bring freedom and happiness and fulfillment and exaltation to everyone, his cheerful love of accomplishing the impossible, his integrity and insight and compassion and cleverness, his inexhaustible will.

And there must be a Silmaril around here somewhere, or - no, that's the soul hanging around this other Maitimo's neck, the Maitimo against whom Taliar is fretfully huddled; and the sense-of-personality in his soul is faint and slow and subtle, a whisper under Taliar's shout, but still enough to distinguish him as one of Midnight's type.

Also they're married. They are very much married. It somehow shows in Taliar's entirely human eyes, and there's a hint of it in the light of his soul too, if that wasn't enough.

He's letting the new Maitimo see all his thoughts - it would just feel wrong to do otherwise - and mostly right now his thoughts are concern for the new Maitimo's well-being. He knows one shouldn't rush newly reembodied Elves, but he so desperately wants this impossible duplicate of his husband to be okay, how can he help him be okay...

You can explain what happened, you can get me another necklace -

He organizes his memories of relevant information: brain slugs captured his Emperor and kidnapped his mother, his mother exploded at them, his mother thought this Maitimo was the one she knows and in her rage concluded that he was in league with the brain slugs and killed him - she's still a little iffy on their relationship because of all the rape and torture, even though Taliar himself is fine with it - and then she got in contact with Taliar and he killed all the brain slugs in Nuime and came here and killed all the brain slugs in this Arda except for the inexplicably indestructible ones and then he erased this Maitimo's oaths and resurrected him. Sorry if he wanted to keep any of those, but some of them were mind-altering and Taliar kind of freaked out. He can re-swear any that he wants back.

...and what do you mean by another necklace?

I had an eidetic memory necklace that gave me an interdimensional teleport, I would like to have it back. The genocide in your dimension sounds like it was unavoidable but most of the Yeerks in my dimension were children and all of them were partnered with consenting hosts.

Everything else he is still processing and is not going to comment on.

I somewhat regret being so hasty about it, but given the information I had at the time, leaving any of them alive wasn't worth the risk.

(They can go on the internal list alongside all the baby orcs from when he cleaned out Angband, and someday when he has general resurrection and has built enough paradises to hold everyone he'll bring them all back...)

I can get you another necklace if you know where to find one that isn't in use, or if you can get me the instruction set I can make you one pretty trivially.

The risk being what, exactly? It does not sound like they can affect you. I'll have my people bring me a necklace.

Taliar isn't actually categorically immune to things. He'd be moderately inconvenienced if someone dropped another mountainside on him. But in any case the risk is more about the things he doesn't know: he doesn't know in detail how interdimensional transportation works between any set of worlds that isn't Nuime and his husband's Arda, he doesn't know any of the capabilities of the brain slugs except for taking over people's brains and those strange weapons they knocked people out with.

If they had access to an interdimensional teleport capable of taking passengers, and were willing to sacrifice someone to it or had a way to survive the trip, and were very quick-thinking, they could've put Taliar way out in the airless void between the stars, in this world or some other one, and then they could've grabbed all the dead souls from that crater over there and a couple of soulbearers with resurrection powers and run off to yet another world where Nezhefena wouldn't be able to easily follow them unless they happened to steal a soulbearer she had met. If they had other powers he hasn't even thought of, they could have done other things he can't predict.

They came into his world unannounced and started kidnapping and enslaving his people using terrifying otherworldly powers, and Esarkan suggested that they surrender before Taliar found them, and instead they kidnapped and attempted to enslave Taliar's mother. This implies both that their interests were very fundamentally hostile to his, and that they thought they could take him.

He does regret killing all those people. But he stands by his risk assessment.

Well. The threat to your world has been eliminated. Do you have additional business here?

(he doesn't have a Taliar - given the circumstances of their meeting he probably doesn't want one but Taliar is nonetheless strongly tempted to ask his soul for some kind of self-duplication power - it's painful to know you could make someone so happy, if things were just a little different - )

I guess I don't, he says. Where's Nezhefena - ah, she's over in the crater, picking up the souls of the soulbearers Aeleva incinerated and taking them back home to be resurrected. We can go as soon as Shadow-cloaked Nezhefena finishes collecting the dead. If you're interested in further contact with Nuime, and I don't blame you if you aren't, you can visit Esarkan's palace or send a representative - will your interdimensional teleport take you there without trouble? He's visited the palace with Maitimo, he has crystal-clear memories of it, it looks like so. Esarkan won't hold a grudge even if he thinks you condoned or supported the invasion, which he probably will because he tends to assume the worst of people until proven otherwise.

He glances at his alt.

You want one. If he does happen to manifest the power for it.

He murdered my people. If they hadn't been slugs, if you'd been invaded by a human civilization with scary powerful capabilities, would he have popped into their home dimension and turned them all to ash - because if so, I should put him in vacuum somewhere, that's how the Valar reacted when someone tried to invade Valinor -

(he sends this to Taliar, too, because why not -)

Maybe he should ask his soul for general resurrection first, then.

He doesn't know what he would've done if it had been humans. The nature of the brain slugs was relevant on multiple levels - they're really easy to tell apart from things that are not brain slugs; the population was small; he couldn't actually tell that their children were children, or he would've left those ones alone; given their displayed tactics, once Taliar got over his instinctive aversion to thinking about a Maitimo being enslaved by a brain slug, it seemed rather more plausible that they had invaded this Arda the same way they invaded Nuime than that they were here by the King's leave...

Don't put him anywhere.

I didn't say I was going to, I said I don't want one. The additional safety against interdimensional invasion doesn't seem worth the risk that any attempted interdimensional invaders will be instantly extinguished as a species. Unless their infants are conveniently distinguishable to human senses. I have a lot of work to do; we were in the middle of a lot of important work and most of it's now lost but some might be salvageable. Does his world have computers?

I haven't heard of them.

They were teaching us. Please just go away.

Nezhefena's almost done. Do you want me to come back when I have general resurrection?

There's another habitable planet in this dimension, I was going to take whoever had caused the giant horrible fireball there so she didn't hurt my people but then she murdered me - you can put them there - although they'll starve without a generator and no one alive knows how to make one -

Taliar remembers his mother's perspective on the event. Terrified and bewildered and utterly lost to rage, and there he was looking like a confirmation of all her worst fears... if he wants an apology from her, he won't have trouble getting one, once she's had some time to calm down.

If they'll starve without something that no one alive knows how to make, it sounds like mere general resurrection won't adequately solve the problem of them being dead and I'm going to need something more complicated. Should I go away and assume that if you want to talk about it you can send someone to Esarkan's palace and ask for me?