Nope. Zip and zoom this way and that.

What if she tries to communicate with them?

They will communicate back! It's what they're for, an interface.

Okay.

Why is everything so active all the sudden?

The Anti-Extinction Protocols have been reactivated based on information from the surface and measures need to be taken to ensure the continued survival of the world's population.

Oh, right. What are those measures?

Building decision trees about what to do depending on this threat's capabilities, inventorying and gathering resources, obtaining more information, activating old enchantments, booting up servers.

Oh, we're actually here to figure out ways to help with that.

What resources do you have access to?

Temperance contacts Dr. Kei about this question.

She lists the kinds of magic they have specialists for on hand, as well as the systems already installed on their ship.

The mini-flayers start spreading this information around.

Cool, do the mini-flayers have information that they can share with this expedition?

They have access to various spells and enchantments the expedition may not have discovered yet, according to what the population at the surface has communicated them.

Cool, what about the space-distorning magic and the portal?

Yes, some of the enchantments registered are space magic that they can probably use.

Cooler, Temperance will start researching space magic and the portal right away. How hard it would be to make it useful?

Quite. It's absolutely incomprehensible.

And what is causing this incomprehensibility?

The fact that it's unlike any other enchantments she's ever seen, makes references to dozens of different concepts and runes at the same time, and is bizarrely complex and interwoven.

Is there an indication this complexity is something that only one of the starfish aliens could've understood? Or can Temperance work hard and believe in herself until she manages it?

She can definitely understand it if she studies it a lot.

For like a few weeks, maybe months.

That is barely any time at all!

...they do kinda have a potential war...

Oh, right, priorities. Are the flayers capable of using or altering those enchantments?