Two wizards and two soldiers appear in the desert, a few feet away from a tired slave caravan.
They nod at each other and disappear again.
Two wizards and two soldiers appear in the desert, a few feet away from a tired slave caravan.
They nod at each other and disappear again.
"I don't know how to check if their abilities change the value of objects given to them without giving them any objects, and I take it the gate can only be open a minute."
"I could see if I get lucky with one of mine. - once we have visibility we should check if your grandmother is still entangled with whichever of your parents."
"Would the lot of you like to consider my opening a gate instead of you doing it as a favor to you for which you're prepared to trade as much as possible of his grandmother's debt, and then check through there if name entanglement persists after resurrection by checking between Lohte's father and grandmother without any of you watching lest you also guess his name, and if it does proceed with the plan, including thinking of additional magic you might like done if a gate isn't enough to buy his grandmother's debt?"
He repeats this to himself.
"I assume the considering things favors is relevant to managing the debt, somehow?"
"If I just do things on my own and the things aren't a standard debt-affecting category it doesn't count, but favors do count. My gates take varying amounts of time to settle and there's also some interaction I don't really understand with fairy paths if I start them from this world, so it might take me a few tries, and I have to manually close them and can't do that until they settle. I have some already that lead to my world and can start there if I can't make one large enough for full-size people here."
"Sure, we would consider a gate to your world a favor which you can trade for this fairy we resurrected."
"'My world' is ambiguous, how about just 'a gate enabling exchange between us' or something like that."
"I'll get to work on that, then. I think maybe if I go almost but not quite to the beginning of the fairy path, I'll be able to make it and then people will still be able to fit through, just not with as much margin as I'd usually leave. Lohte, do you want to get your father and meet me there -"
"I am sort of confused about how all this works, but I thought she will count if she sees him and probably won't count if she doesn't see him?"
"What I'm worried about is if, before they actually look at each other, a fairy looking at both of them can identify them as entangled. If that happens, then killing Lohte and bringing him back will probably not disentangle you."
"Okay. So if we'd be reentangled as soon as he's resurrected then once he is dead we will change our plans and figure out how I can make sure Osirion is safe if I'm too sped-up to manage it and conceivably we should also try to figure out a modified, more stringent Zone of Truth and then we'll resurrect him once we can weather the entanglement a bit better."
"I don't know how feasible the spell idea is but it sounds handy."
And she goes to almost but not quite the end of the path. "I need geographical information on where you want this to lead."
"Sure, 'ground level so many feet in this direction from the this edge of the shell' should work."
"You can try ground level two hundred feet from the southernmost edge of the shell, but if it doesn't work, that might be because of some features of the shell and we might need to go outside it to get your gate to work."
"Okay."
She tries.
A moment later she steps through.
"Okay, I'm going to turn her invisible after I've watched her long enough to do that so who sees whom when is under more control." She studies the fairy. "It'd be nice to meet you all under less stressful circumstances."