That's fair.

Anyone else?

A handful. Some of the ones who look the most human, and a few who look the least. They say they'd be willing to do some genie-ing for that form of payment if they ever happen to be around that Lord's territory, and maybe eventually they'll go out of their way to stop by.

Success, then.

Other Others?

Those were the only ones Johannes pegged as likely to listen to this. Unless she wants to ask around randomly.

Yeah nah, this should be enough for now.

Is... Johannes available?

He's off playing arbiter or possibly arranging a chain of deals for some clients, but he gets back soon after she does.

"Hello again. That was... more successful than I'd expected, but less than I'd hoped."

"Any unambiguous agreements? The faerie or the Djinn could potentially boost demand just by themselves."

"Not really. Some of the Djinn other than Eblis were interested enough to say they'd give it a try but not the man himself."

"I was toying with the idea of inviting the priests to set up a satellite temple here. Could increase their reach a lot and benefit me the obvious way. But it sounds like it wouldn't be worth sacrificing secrecy yet."

"That's fair. Do you have plans for when you want to do that? Sacrifice secrecy, that is."

"Once I'm confident I'd look unassailable. And in case the local players decide to try to oust me right away, I'd rather be actually unassailable. I was expecting to have to build my customer base and stockpile resources for another few years."

"That's fair. Say, I was curious, what are vestiges exactly, again? I ran into some, they're kinda unsettling."

"They're images or echoes. They're most similar to ghosts, except vestiges are duplicating more than a single experience and don't strictly have to be based on a real person. Very uncanny valley, but not dangerous."

"And they're not... people?"

"They're more like recordings of what that person would think or do."

That does not sound like it's that different from an actual person.

She is not powerful enough to take Johannes on.

"Oh, that makes sense," she says, not missing a beat. "Well, I think I'm gonna go study some glamour."

"Not a specialty of mine, unfortunately. Good luck."

"Thanks!"

And she does that for the next two days, with a couple of pauses to go check on her traps and make sure they haven't become soil.

And a few minutes before the fated hour he is nearby, waiting and watching.

It took a bit of extra glamour to disguise smell, since some goblins identify people that way, but now that he has a source of systematic information on illusions he's warned about that in advance.

The goblins arrive when they should and take his past self by surprise.

...wow even with all the disgusting his past self is pretty hot. That's quite something to watch.

He sees himself use the sympathetic trick with the rock, then the glamour with the Swiss Army Knife. The goblin breaks it and his past self tries to stab him—

—his present self pulls on a little hidden bit of rope, the goblin trips on it, that's the oath satisfied, right?—

While he's doing it he feels a rush of energy. It's less on the scale of superhuman powers than getting a second wind thanks to a really cool soundtrack, but evidently the oath thinks he was acting toward completing it. And he did in fact bring the goblin down in multiple senses. So probably.

Awesome! He gets some bottled water on his face to clean off the glamour and then replace it, then he waits for the moment when he's eaten—

The two combatants stumble into the circle. It contracts around them, one of the rocks making contact with the goblin. Both of them disappear in the eyeblink it takes for the circle to close.