"Creators. My world does not have those, far as we know. Well, some people would say we do, I suppose I shouldn't dismiss them completely out of hand."

"We do. They are angry with us at present but it is conceivable they could be assuaged over the course of a few centuries or persuaded by people they are less angry at to cancel a world-threatening kind of magic."

"They would need persuading? What, are they angry enough that they'd just as soon start from scratch?"

"Quite possibly. They are not very good creators."

"Sounds like they have issues, yeah."

"If we could evacuate everybody to another world we might do that. Then they would save this one, as it wouldn't be a favor to those they disapprove of. Or we could use our magic to find a way to do it ourselves, or we could hop for more magic and find things that interact well...if we definitely have at least a thousand years I think it's worth it, though it wouldn't be my decision."

"Assuming your years aren't a lot longer than mine that'll cover lots of magic."

"Angband. And a few worldhops. Nothing else, though I take it it'll eventually destroy us even if we stop using it."

"That's the going theory. What's Angband?"

"Enemy fortress." Accompanying visual.

"Lovely."

"Yes. We'd kill some prisoners - irrecoverably, I take it - but they'd agree if we could ask them. And he'd be gone."

"Is there a non-irrevocable form of death going around?"

"The Valar can reembody Elves and orcs if they see fit. They rarely see fit with Elves and never with orcs but there's the hope that one day we could do it without them, since it is possible in principle."

"...my magic can also do non-indiscriminate destruction."

"In that case maybe we could get Melkor and his Maiar and kill the orcs and prisoners the recoverable way."

"Maybe."

"It's promising that our worlds both have magic systems and both have different ones. It'll be more promising if they work for each other now that we've encountered them."

"Work for each other?"

"You can employ ours, we can employ yours. Signs that magic's contagious and we should expect if we find ten kinds we can stack them to get things done."

"Yeah, that would be great."

"It would!!"

"You are rather unreal at language-learning. Like, even if I assume you've been nefariously reading my mind you're bizarrely fast."

"I -" swear? "I haven't been reading your mind. I am just great at languages. It's partially a species difference, even mediocre Elves are much better than humans, and I'm not a mediocre Elf."

"Swear," supplies Cor. "I know two languages but I'm better at this one."