"You're welcome. - you do want to go back? I should have asked you before I hooked you in."

"I'll go back - we should have a backup mage -"

She looks out at the point, then gets up and tromps back to the camp.

He follows. "I'm not sure I can replicate the transit ritual from memory."

"I'll send you, then myself. Cor can teach you. He's - he's really - make sure he's okay."

"Yeah."

"I'm going to bleed you for your spell - we can't keep sheep here and I don't think I have enough for two."

"Of course." He extends his arm.

She nicks him, it barely hurts at all. Sponges up some blood, paints, chants.

In a flash of dark he lands outside the palace.

When they vanish Maitimo leans against the wall and shivers. He does not look at Cor.

Cor goes back to his rooms.

I have magic, he reports a little while later. And I think Ranary's okay - I was probably not the most reassuring, it's been a long time since I interacted with people.

Okay.

If I'm teaching you magic before I go risking my life that affects timeline, it's a few years of curriculum. I can cut it down and accelerate it but it'll still take longer than inventing the Melkor-killing spell would unless I am in a really astonishing slump.

I don't think we need that, if I just know the dimensional travel spell then if you die we can go get someone who knows the rest.

Yeah, I can teach you that in like an hour.

Does the additional information about Melkor help you guess whether the fast-and-dirty version is likely to work -

Uh, yes, but in this case not usefully, I'm in "probably it'd work but maybe not" and that's how I'd have described it before too, it's just that different information could have yielded "yeah good enough" or "definitely not".

Okay. And are there things I should know about Melkor -

Yeah.

He bounces what he's got left from what Thuringwethil sent.

All right. Let me know if you need anything which I am in a position to do anything about.

Might ask you to be a second pair of eyes on my art as long as you know what I'm working with.

Sure. Did you talk with Maitimo about after the Enemy's dead -

Not really.

Okay. You could probably have someone relay messages if you just find him particularly irritating to be around.

Irritating isn't usually the thing.