The nicknameless mortal sits quietly in his hovering stone boat.

She comes back a bit later. "I don't see any immediate neighbors or signs of large courts farther off. Probably as good a place as is findable without staking it out for a month. Do you have a nickname? I'm Promise."

"I don't have a nickname like that. Unless 'Prince' counts, I suppose."

"It'll do. I'll put your gate over there, but it might take as long as a week to settle even if it works."

"What targeting information does the gate need?"

"Geographical specifications."

He sends the Lake of Gold. A glittering round lake, too bright to look at directly by day, breathtakingly beautiful by night, surrounded by the multicoloured peaks of the Godscrest Mountains that stand three times higher than any natural mountain on the planet.

"Will that do?"

"Should be specific enough."

And she marks two points with lights and - "It's settling."

"Thank you," he says quietly.

"Least I could do."

And she finds a nice spot in a valley and makes more lights in grids over the area and examines them.

Prince sits quietly in his boat.

Eventually she finds a spot where she likes the look of the light grids. She covers it more thoroughly, investigates the results, dismisses the lights, stabs her branch into the ground, and does magic to it.

Prince sure is sitting quietly in his boat.

(He's double-checking his immortality again, and trying to construct a plan to retake his empire. It is going to be a bit troublesome. He'd have to get close enough to touch Nirue in order to know exactly what her protections are, and without knowing that he can't know for sure that any given method of killing her will work on the first try; and he is as certain as he can be that his immortality will hold against anything she could possibly do to him, but that's not entirely certain enough... also, even if she can't harm him, she can harm lots of other people and certainly will if he provokes her and then allows her the opportunity.)

The branch roots and stretches up and up and up.

(Purely in tactical terms...

But how do you even ask someone about something like that? 'Would you like to use your terrifying power of command to help me retake my empire?' What possible reason could she have for saying yes? And why would she ever want to go anywhere near Reihar Nirue? For that matter why would she want to be anywhere near him any longer than necessary?)

Treeeeeeeeeeeee~

It's good that he has been able to help her.

...he's probably not going to be able to rest until he's done something about this place, is he.

One thing at a time. His duty to his empire comes first. But if the first person he saw after dropping randomly into this world happened to be being tortured... it's clear something definitely needs to be done, and it's possible he is in a position to do it.

The tree gets big enough that she can make it fruit and have some food.

That also seems good. She should have good things.

...he misses Ruava.

The tree grows. At one point she does another grid of lights above its crown before growing it higher.

It's interesting, and he almost wants to ask her about her magic system, but he is very unsure of how or when or whether to talk to her in general and he should really be thinking about tactics.

Eventually she goes and tosses a rock through the site of her gate. It lands in the grass. She goes back to the tree and gets it big enough that she can fit in the trunk, then looks over her shoulder - "Will you be okay if I get some rest - you should be fine if you don't give your name or eat anything but if you do get hungry my haws are safe for you now."

"I don't need to eat or sleep. I will be fine. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

And she ensconces herself in her tree.

(He triple-checks his immortality. Does it protect him against the vassalage system? Well, evidently not completely, but it's possible that the mental protections would hedge out orders. He tries to draft a revision to those, but he can't quite seem to put together one that satisfies him.)