"I am not humble of heart. I am going to be a Great Mage."

"Yes you are! And so am I. There will be two new Great Mages at the same time. This is unprecedented."

"Really? We're that rare?"

"We're that rare. There are six alive right now besides us."

"How many people are there in the world?"

"Four billion?"

"My Genoshan numbers only go up to the thousands," he reminds her.

"A thousand thousands is a million. A thousand millions is a billion."

"...Four billion people. Six Great Mages?!"

"Five hundred years ago, most Great Mages died."

"And five hundred years later you still have fewer Great Mages than my world has gods!"

"In five hundred years there have been three new Great Mages. Most people never try magic. If everyone tried magic, there would be more Great Mages."

He shakes his head. "I don't think you understand how insane that sounds. Your world is supposedly some kind of hubris-rewarding science paradise, and yet with a comparable population you have six people who've gone for the local equivalent of epic power and made it."

"Magic hurts a lot."

"And there are six masochists on the planet?"

"I wasn't born one! I am very resistant to Sympathy."

"Six in four billion is not many!" he insists.

"I don't know what to tell you!"

"I think there's probably something secretly horribly wrong with your world, and I'm going to find out what it is and then fix it."

"Disturbingly plausible. Let's ask Atennesi if he knows what it is, I don't think he's in on it."

"He struck me as far too sensible to be an evil conspirator. Reminds me a little of the king of Laefair, actually."

"Having never met the king of Laefair I couldn't comment, but if there were an evil conspiracy to kill nascent Great Mages and he was in on it you and I would probably both be dead right now."

"I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the conspiracy involves anything as benign as merely killing us."

"You have a disturbingly good point, but I think the principle probably stands."

"I guess we'll see."