"I could maybe work with that... there's this problem in my world where there's no way to stop someone who has magic from using it, see. I'm a little concerned that even whatever it is you do can't completely stop people from using magic but if it can even mostly stop them then there's a lot of things that could work differently from how they do now and probably it'll all shake out to be better once I figure out the details."

"...And you have slaves, but not slaves who can do magic, those you just kill... right?"

"... I'm confused about that question?"

"If someone you want to enslave can do magic, you kill them instead, right?"

"Killing people who can do magic and might be a huge problem about it is my personal job that I do to keep my planet habitable. People getting enslaved is something that happens all the time without me having to get involved, and some of those can do some magic."

"I assumed since you can't stop people from using magic that you wouldn't be able to offer criminals who have magic a choice between slavery and death."

"That's not how people get enslaved, generally."

"...I guess it doesn't matter, then. Do you want to try standing in a place where I'm not letting anyone but me do magic and see how that goes?"

"...hmm... yes, but I want to try it somewhere that'll be okay if anything weird happens."

"What kind of weird happenings are you expecting?"

"I'm not sure exactly, I've just never tried not being able to do magic before and in my experience when I try messing with my magic in a totally new way sometimes there's problems."

"Is the backyard okay?"

"Would the backyard be okay if I, say, uprooted a mountain in it?" he asks Esme.

"Oh, yes, definitely. Well, it might need some landscaping."

"Then sure."