"I can probably assume it works consistently across mages. If there's a trustworthy one who'd perform a controlled test that works."

"I only know the one Wood mage, unfortunately. And any others you find are likely to be... differently specialized. Although they will all have lifeshaping."

"If local mages can get through my indestructibility it will be because of something about the nature of the magic, I'm nearly certain, not anything about the specialty.

"Also, there are two people on the other end of this fake bird. I'm Cam, the indestructible magic one, and there's also my summoner, Sindri, who is a human. Right now he's the only person with the ability to summon people like me to this world."

"I can imagine many things Nirue might be able to do that would not necessarily interact with your indestructibility at all, and many of them would be hard to test without finding a similarly unpleasant mage. Like cursing you to be constantly surrounded by impenetrable silence and darkness, if taking away your connection to your senses doesn't work."

"Okay, I don't have anything in particular prepped against a silence and darkness curse."

"How does it come to be that only one person in the world knows how to summon indestructible magical beings?"

"I can only push the mystery back one layer. There's a world where it's really common to summon us; he's from there and if he knows how he got here he hasn't shared it with me."

"I have absolutely no clue how I got here," says Sindri.

"He reasserts that he has no clue."

Prince Korovai looks thoughtfully at the fake bird.

Sindri sighs.

"I don't have direct evidence for your cluelessness," Cam says, "not that I don't believe you, I do, but still."

The bird says, "I can tell you how to summon me but I'd be skipping some safety steps."

"What do the safety steps guard against?"

"Undesired behavior by summonee. This summons is unusual in letting me talk."

"Undesired behaviour," says Sindri. "That's one way to put it."

"Would letting you talk normally be considered unsafe?"

"Yes, for extremely stupid reasons that have a lot of cultural momentum at this point on his world - if the bird suddenly stops talking that's him dismissing me but it takes a minute - circle on the floor with 'I summon the demon Cam' spell it -" He assigns himself a transliteration in Eivarne. "- written around it, close the circle after the writing's all in, with enough room for a person to stand in it, just so you know how if something happens, I have no reason to expect it but bottlenecking access to summoning like this is a bad plan long run and I don't have an adequate local translation of a decent actual summoning textbook -" He looks semi-apologetically at Sindri.

"You could, as a courtesy, mention that undesired behaviours in demons can include destroying a planet in a matter of seconds," Sindri suggests.

"My summoner suggests I mention that possible undesired behaviors in demons include destroying a planet in a matter of seconds," sighs the bird. "I'm not going to destroy your planet."

"...I should wait until Ruava is available to join this conversation before I make any plans," says Korovai. "You might consider giving me the means to speak directly to your summoner in the meantime."

"He can hear you, I can rig something up so I don't have to relay it." He fiddles with some things. "Okay, now we have actual two-way audio."

"Is the extent to which you appear not to trust one another accurate?"

"I trust him considerably more than he seems to trust me, at this point, although advising you to summon him unbound has done him no favours there," says Sindri.

"I know that looks suspicious! I would love to teach him actual summoning! I used to fucking teach actual summoning at the University of fucking Washington! But having one person on this entire planet who knows daeva even exist is a bad plan and I had to get it in under a minute in case you freaked out!"

"Well, here I am, not abruptly dismissing you," says Sindri. "Can we now agree that everyone in this situation is better off if we actually discuss our plans before implementing them - like, if you'd asked, you might have found out that I left my weaver friend instructions on how to safely summon my family fairy if I'm not back by tomorrow, and a note to give to her to pass on to my parents -"