Elsewhere:
Maitimo wakes up.
The room is littered with forensic conjurations of people and notes and wands and books and planets. In the room is Ms. Chua, and a black-winged demon. Looks too straightforwardly Asian to be naturally occurring.
Elsewhere:
Maitimo wakes up.
The room is littered with forensic conjurations of people and notes and wands and books and planets. In the room is Ms. Chua, and a black-winged demon. Looks too straightforwardly Asian to be naturally occurring.
"Hi. Somebody forked my Singularity alt. And let him write home for help, so it probably wasn't maliciously intended, but - seems like a good idea to go and talk to her, figure out how likely she is to mention it in public, hopefully come to a mutually satisfactory agreement and if not -"
"- ah, because I'm unforkable - all right. Can you recommend a fairy for the trip? Where are we going?"
"Hi. The director of the GCP has been having her demon dig into multiverse stuff. She cannot stand me and I think is seriously contemplating threatening to make this public if we fail to hand over the daeva she wants to punish; the demon is GCP founder Lilie Ho and I think would much prefer it not come to that but has not outright ruled it out. I want to see what's going on so I can tell if they're being truthful, but I'm not at all sure I should accompany you; Ambela, can you bounce me -"
There they go. Ambela keeps her senses borrowable.
Knock knock.
Chua gets the door. "You I know about," she remarks of Michael. "Who are you?"
"My name is Mirelótë Ambela. It seemed prudent to have someone other than Maitimo speak to you."
"Ambela's not princess anything but all of the relevant Elves will listen to her. Nice to meet you."
"Charmed, I'm sure," says Chua. She stands aside. Mirelótë steps in.
"I have no plan to repeat the procedure," says Lilie.
"That's very relieving to hear."
"Unfortunately it's not just your plans but those of anyone else who might learn what you have that concerns my species."
"I do not believe anyone else is liable to have as much motivation to attempt to discover what is underlying the various universes and their contact," says Lilie. "I do not plan to invite demons to attempt the same myself."
"Thank you. I appreciate that more than I can say," says Mirelótë. "I am sorry that our scrambling around this secret thusly motivated either of you to begin with."
"Hrmph," says Chua.
Likes having leverage, not nearly high-minded enough to commit to not using it until she's confident she's wrung everything she can get out of the Elves.
"- we're aware you have no particular obligations to or affections for Elves. I would rest easier if I left here today knowing that you were convinced that keeping your silence on this matter was the right thing to do anyway," she tells Chua.
"You people let five dangerous daeva off scot-free in an incompetent mockery of a judicial process while you were scrambling to get the black hole demon off our hands before it was allowed to tell us anything," snaps Chua.
"Elves seldom find ourselves in need of haste and are not very practiced in its use. The mechanical realities of the situation as it stands -"
Chua gestures angrily at a Hazel wizardry book.
"Hazel does have mind control magic. It is, wisely, illegal; there are, at least at this time, no exceptions."
"Not just illegal, it's an automatic life sentence. You could probably find people to do it anyway. There's the recent would-be Dark Lady who used it to make three hundred Muggles slit their children's throats in a blood ritual to make herself immortal, I don't think she'd take much convincing. Look, my world takes 'this is a problem you can solve with the Imperius Curse' about the way your world takes 'this is a problem you can solve by summoning an unbound demon', no one inclined to propose it under even extreme circumstances belongs anywhere near power. If Maitimo'd asked us we would have strongly suggested he get replaced."
"This seems prudent," says Lilie, before Chua can get started.
"The five daeva were selected because they had resisted their circles for a considerable time," says Mirelótë. "They were unlikely to respond and were able to take random summonses - may in fact have been motivated to do so to avoid what I'm led to believe is a very distracting sensation of having hundreds of circles. They are now summoned by immortal people and kept thoroughly away from this star system. Their stories will not be very quelling to any daeva who are afraid of prison in general or Ganymede in particular, to be sure, but they might be to some who fear specifically getting caught. No one will look at a loose binding and think in the course of dealing with some criminal temptation, 'well, I can probably resist a bunch of circles'."
"The fairy's sentence in particular is a travesty."
"As I understand it he currently lives among the people who were so eager to acquit him. If he recidivizes on their own heads be it. We have no grounds for complaint if you keep your circles for him open should he fail to be contained there."
"It's really reassuring that you have such a principled objection to letting people be tortured by daeva in order to achieve political gains, or you might be tempted to hold the Elf thing over their heads."