"Interesting. That is a plausible explanation. It would be worth testing that theory, and seeing if we can address it, especially as the current mission is likely to involve Gates." 

"If he's cool with it, yeah."

"I suppose we can ask after." Leareth goes back to reading his newspapers. 

Nechar steps out. "Your new security guy is the mysterious nonverbal obsidian pillar, have fun with that. You ready for me to open the door?"

Leareth rises. "In a moment, yes. Cam, is the plan that I simply attempt to Gate within the world at all – I could use a second of those hoops for that demonstration – and then to Velgarth?" 

Cam makes another hoop. "I believe so."

"Door leads to my flying castle," says Nechar. "And I'll want you to be quick, when the door's open I start losing momentum and I can only do so much cloud art."

Leareth nods. "It will not take long." He retrieves his first hoop as well. "Ready."

Nechar holds the door.

Leareth steps out, takes five seconds to scan the area as though memorizing every interesting detail, and then holds the hoops at arms' length in front of him and concentrates. Frowns slightly. Shifts the hoops in his fingers. 

...A couple of minutes later, faint glow. "There," Leareth says, quietly satisfied. Thirty seconds later the little baby Gate is up. He peers through each hoop, tests it by floating a pebble from his pocket through. "Good." Gate vanishes. "Velgarth next?" 

"You do you, man," says Nechar, who is concentrating on looking out his window and making clouds do bizarre things.

It is pretty obvious that Leareth would really like to watch the clouds do bizarre things for a moment, and maybe ask questions about how it's done, but instead he hooks one of the hoops on his arm and holds up the other.

–This time, he gets the threshold almost immediately, but the next step seems to cause some difficulty. Tendrils of light flick out from the glowing circle, apparently at random. "A minute, please," Leareth says. "Search step is– something needs to be reevaluated. It might still work, I wish to try it longer." 

"If you want a literal minute, fine, if you want longer than that you have to wait till I've been and gone running errands to get back what I'm losing doing you the favor in the first place," says Nechar, on edge. The clouds become stormy and begin to strike each other with colorful lightning.

More like forty-five seconds later, the inside of the hoop flashes white and then clears to show the cave again. 

Leareth sticks his other hand through it to check, pulls it back, drops the Gate, and runs back through the open door. "Done." 

Nechar forces the door shut quick with magic rather than letting it swing closed. "You're welcome."

"Thank you," says Cam.

"That was an extremely valuable test," Leareth says, setting down the hoops. "I hope you did not lose too much to it." Glance over at Cam. "I ought to be able to manage it faster on a second try, if we wish to do it from your world." 

"I'll probably have to explain what's going on and why I'm not doing dozens of reembodiments a minute at some point but I think I want to draft what I'll say in advance given the luxury of time," says Cam.

(Nechar looks at Lissa.)

Lissa grins and goes to hook her arm around Nechar's. 

Nechar teleports them elsewhere.

"...huh," says Cam.

"She did spend a good while talking to him before. I suppose they found that they get along." Leareth sits down. "Hmm. I think the fact that Gating works in Nechar's world is strong evidence it will also work in Arda, though I suppose that is not guaranteed. So it could make sense to at least discuss possible refinements on the Gate-spell here, before communicating with Arda." 

"What sort of refinements do you mean?"

"You have my writings on possible further uses of the Gate-spell, no? I - doubt that an ordinary blind Gate into the black hole is going to work to retrieve the Maiar, but there are hints that the search-spell built into Gate magic could be anchored on something other than a location – I know it can be done with objects or the magical signature of artifacts, but perhaps it can be stretched even further. For example, to anchor on a particular Maia. If that is possible, it seems a much better avenue to extract them." 

"- it does, yeah. Uh, it's fairly important that you not accidentally get any Valar out. If you get even one, they're likely to be able to get the rest, and collectively they have the power to forbid summoning, and there are humans and also a species called Dwarves on Endorë, and they aren't backed up, and them being able to summon daeva is the only thing providing them with an afterlife setup, and the Valar had in reaction to my showing up made summoning not work in the entire world."

Leareth nods. "That...is a complication. I assume that the Valar are fairly different, magically speaking, from the Maiar – however, I would wish to understand and test the properties of any modified Gate-spell very precisely, to be sure that one of the Valar would not end up piggybacking along." 

"I don't think they actually are very different, just - bigger, stronger."

"Inconveniently, I suppose the only Vala left for comparison is Melkor, and I highly doubt he would cooperate and assist us with tests." Leareth frowns. "Ideally, then, it would be possible to summon each Maia using some unique identifier, if that exists – this would be much slower than anchoring on all of them, but would minimize the risk of accidentally including a Vala. In any case, this is all very theoretical still; the spell we are discussing does not yet exist."