"Your alts expect your Rúmil'd want to stay dead, I'm gonna wait for confirmation from him on that."

"I mean, I wanted to be dead. You're - pretty good at the terrifying mental tampering thing."

"Thanks."

"Sorry, it's just hard not to think what if the Enemy -"

"Yeah. This is actually how I convinced the Bell who went through Angband he was out, I stacked him up with some temporary stuff and he conceded that if the Enemy could do all that..."

"Then she made it with surviving orc mages and psions through the portal to another dimension she was working on and that dimension is probably a nightmare but for the time being my Earth and my Arda are probably safe."

"...well, that's not what Kib concluded but he had different background assumptions, the existence of psions complicates matters some for you. The powers are really different but they could probably emulate any specific telepathic application of my powerset I could name and of course it doesn't prove anything that subtle arts also gives me telekinesis."

"I'm thinking this is likelier than not to be real, it's not a very productive lie. I'm glad your - alt - decided it was real."

"We are too. Although he coped better than yous do - er, after a period of coping much much worse, but Cam and Iobel snapped him out of that."

"How's that?"

"He was slightly vaguely informed about Enemy mindreading capabilities - not that 'can detect any actions you attempt to take and read your complete history of sense data' is much better - and turns out that if we expect to be mindread all the time we can sort of self-destruct and instead not have any thoughts to read. Also when his memories were deleted he'd get them back in dreams because he's a reincarnation and 'getting memories back in dreams' comes with the package, so he couldn't be stuck very long convinced that the Enemy couldn't actually do that or that he hadn't actually been captured. So they rescued him and he hadn't developed triggers or anything, he was literally not paying enough attention, but he was thoroughly unresponsive. Cam and Iobel hung around narrating the thoughts he would've been having if he'd been having them and he figured if he couldn't prevent the Enemy from having his thoughts he might as well have them himself and then he was pretty okay, just wouldn't use magic or do politics until I finished convincing him."

"...huh. I'm glad he's okay."

"So're we."

"What's - going on, in the world, in the multiverse -"

"Lots of stuff, although we're very much current events ourselves. Here, have a map -" Sibyl has a chiplocked computer. "Ardas are yellow, worlds with Earths are blue, red worlds are interesting but neither, little gray ones are boring, non-circle shapes have useful adjacency properties. We're actually just guessing that Eclipse is the 'middle' of the magic system, this world between us and Wish has no inhabited planets with moons but my magic still works there but we could all be clustered around some other world. Multiverse facts come in a wide range of pleasantnesses and any awkward talking around stuff is because of that. Uh, I'm supposed to call your attention to the fact that your shapeshifting blue centaur alien alt Matirin gave my alt Butterfly her Earth."

"Gave it to her? How does that work -"

"Her Earth was being invaded by smaller yuckier more horrifying aliens and his lot came to help and accumulated lots of political capital in so doing and then he turned himself in for the most justifiable war crimes of all time and went to be in political prison on his home planet - he has since been sprung - but not before leaving her all the political capital."

"Awwww. Is she having fun?"

"Yes, although he didn't actually tell her she was receiving a planet in advance so she snarks about that. Also she's the only other Bell with an Alex, most of me are only children - Loki's adopted and has an older sister that way, Golden rounds to 'sibling' with some adopted inlaws, that's all."

"Do I always come with the full set -"

"Yeah, even the human alt, so far nobody's found an Arda after you but before the twins."

"We need to introduce Laurië to a boy of her, it'll be entertaining."

"There's a selection. What are you envisioning happening there?"

"They will find the competing gender roles thing really weird but get over it quickly enough to have a spectacular and globally-televised wedding on whoever's planet has more people to be impressed by such and then they'll sing together for all of time. ...are we genetically similar to our alts -"

"I'm genetically identical to Gem, Golden before she turned into a vampire, and Butterfly, and very similar to the others except Loki who is a frost giant, I don't think anybody's checked Ithil Elves against alts yet but Flat - as opposed to Space - Elf alts are in other cases identical."