Of course he can come back. I see absolutely no reason to think that this world with its spirits of dead avatars and its spirit world has a complicated, non-Downside-compatible afterlife situaiton.
You monsters. I hope you hurry up finding the lost Pen and doing whatever else this world needs doing. If this world is ready to peal before Pen is found, I hope it peals before or at the same time as Warp.
I also hope Voice is rescued similarly somehow, and maybe even Beast’s brother.
Notes regarding the rescuability of various Stevens
Ahaha.
Okay so the thing about Stevens is, if you get them early with the right interventions, they never turn into serial killers. If you get them early enough in being serial killers, they have a pretty easy time of it turning around.
If you're late to the party...
Voice is going to be a really hard rescue. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's going to take a lot more than "show up with a basket of poofs".
Etienne, uh, I'm honestly not sure what you'd even do with Etienne. Because the thing is, Voice's problems are mainly rooted in fear; this makes helping him a delicate and difficult and upsetting task, but it means that once you've solved the part where he is terrified of you, helping him be less terrified of everything will proceed with his more or less enthusiastic cooperation.
Etienne's problems come much more from a sense of entitlement instilled in him by that asshole enchantress, and that's much harder for a Steven to let go of because it's appealing in itself; the only two ways he knows how to be are "be terrified of everything and believe I deserve to suffer", and "be arrogant and cruel and believe I deserve everything I want without regard for other people's needs", and you're going to have a hell of an uphill climb convincing him that there's a third option and that it has advantages over the second one.
It can be done. Probably. But I'm not at all sure how.
At least I don't have any other friends at school so there's nobody to ask me if I'm okay.
*distressed noises*
(I would like to note that I made actual out-loud distressed noises and my little sister gave me a concerned look. Then I explained the source of the distressed noises and she made distressed noises too).
Sandy-era Chainsaws do actually have a preference for having only a few close friends, but yeah, Dao could use more friends than he's got right now. XD
Ooh, cool, it looks like Loki will have to reveal to Sigyn that she knows magic, which I strongly suspect will lead to teaching him the metaphorical alphabet.
Also, ugh, that description sounds painful. If they were to learn that magic system without first meeting Loki, would Glass and/or Lazarus be able to cheat at learning the alphabet? Obviously Kaylo would puzzle it out eventually, and I suspect Addy would play with the spells but not go much below page level copying.
Does Yggdrasil have the same magic? Do they know the alphabet?
A Bell learning seidr conventionally would probably get into esoteric theory about words pretty soon and would eventually learn some letters, although she probably would decide that not all of them were actually essential to her project.
Yggdrasil has the same magic and I haven't decided whether its nonbell Loki has the alphabet, but he likely does (I based the way Lokibell's illusions worked off the way his do in the films).
Odin is probably going to have an apoplexy when the Peal shows up. I look forward to it.
Sigyn seems to occupy the same narrative role that Sif does in canon. Are they circumstance alts or something else? The fact that in actual mythology, Sif was Thor's wife and Sigyn was Loki's is suggestive, but...
You know, I can totally imagine the Incandescence peal showing up during this conversation and temporarily mistaking this Miles for an Adarin due to the snark-to-snark combat she is sharing with her Bell. And also I think someone thought Mileses are similar to Adarins, so.
