"Go ahead."

"If you feel like threatening random people to get cooperation you can do that and I can't really stop you short of blowing up myself and as much as I've got blood to reach. Ranary is a problem because she's my friend. If she's out of the way someone I don't know personally can be a backup mage. They can do this from outside the world, if they drop somewhere a few osanwë relays away periodically to check if I have died. Minimize your machination opportunities."

"I am not replacing someone I know to be competent and benevolently-inclined with an unknown quantity's periodic drop-ins which they could forget about or get distracted from or get elsewise killed without having been careful about lining up a replacement. I'm not sending Ranary home save for something that improves our prospects of winning the war over having her, not counting changes to our prospects from you making conditions. I swear to that."

"Does that Elf she's with even like her or is he just keeping tabs on her for you?"

"He likes her but I did ask he introduce himself in the first place. - I asked him in particular because I thought they'd get along."

"We have a problem, as long as I can't talk to her."

"If you tip her off that she should leave then we'll stop her while she's trying and then she'll be a prisoner and unhappy about it instead of a backup plan and perfectly happy about it."

"That's not the whole problem."

"Are you presently so miserable that if not for Ranary's wellbeing you would kill yourself."

"Missing the point."

Sigh. "If you want her boyfriend to break up with her I can arrange that."

"I sort of hope you really are this dense but then again you might stop being so at a moment's notice."

Maitimo leaves.

"Seriously," says Cor as he walks away. "She could make Elf mages too and I have no way to tell her not to except by leaving a distinctive crater, is that how you want it?"

"So set some conditions under which we can have Elf mages, instead of trying to make yourself more and more the single point of failure."

"You should not command a magic that eats worlds. Demonstrate to me that she has not yet been convinced to mage any Elves, now, before she could easily be done painting having started half an hour ago, or I won't give myself time to get cold feet before I obliterate a messy radius."

"I swear that I haven't arranged to mage Elves and that next time you threaten suicide I'll let you do it."

"You should really stop swearing things."

"You should really stop threatening to let millions of people die in order to delay our getting magic by a year or two."

"What's the plan for in a year or two?"

"We'll have lots of mage neighbors. Or are you crossing your fingers that the planet with one clear beach turns out to be uninhabited and that they can evacuate people there instead? Thirty scouts, two survivors, I don't think they're going to keep doing it when they've got a continent right here and people already scouting and preparing it. I don't think even a demonstrative crater would accomplish that - though it'd kill me, I suppose, there is that. Is your objection to me in particular, if I die will you help my successor win the war."

"Don't know, who is it?"

"Macalaurë, you haven't met him."

"Does he torture people too?"

"No."