Lotus didn't start the fire - that was probably the dragon, she doesn't know for sure but it's the most likely hypothesis given, you know, dragon - but she was ready for it. She had gone for the library, joining the foolhardy, heroic-minded individuals rushing in and out to save the books. She had grabbed the books she needed and then raced across the campus, heading for the teleportation circles. The building is unguarded, for once - not surprising given, you know, dragon - so she slips in. She picks the nearest circle, disrupts it so it will pick a destination at random - should make her harder to track down if that's anybody's priority given, you know, dragon - and steps in.
"Damn. Those sound harder to acquire. I am sure if it ever seems sufficiently useful I can figure out magically-induced prettiness. In the meantime, shall we go over more magical theory? I can't actually teach you any spells until I have ink, but I can do diagramming 101 so that will go faster, or more pure theory stuff. And I'd like to learn more of your magic though if you'd rather direct me to your books and go off and be introverted and misanthropic that works too, I just don't have any introductory books on me and I suspect language is not one of the things your magic does well."
"It does not do it well. Fortunately I've been practicing for over eight centuries so I can do it anyway."
"Regardless, I lack introductory material. Should I cover diagramming now or would you rather wait until I have a more readable example?"
"Excellent, I suspect I am not the world's best teacher and I prefer studying anyways. Do you want to teach me, or be misanthropic and introverted and point me at books?"
"Enjoy!" She follows him to books and then takes them elsewhere and pores over them.
And he introverts misanthropically.
After a few hours one of the blood donors interrupts them with the news that the angel showed up.
She marks her page and prestidigitates herself more presentable in case angels care about that and goes to meet an angel.
She gives a deeper half-bow than she did on meeting Kanimir.
"...Hello. I am not entirely sure how to address an angel. Kanimir said that you and the god you represent are less likely to find me heretical than the angels and gods where I am from?" That was probably not the smartest opening line, nice going Lotus.
"I don't know what the gods where you're from are like but we're not likely to mind any miscellaneous heresy."
"...That is a very confusing position for an angel to take. OK then. Um. The afterlife situation kind of sucks? Having multiple planes devoted to torturing so-called evildoers seems a little excessive. And terrible. And the torturers leak and that's a pretty awful design feature. Although it just now occurs to me that this plane might have an entirely different afterlife setup in which case I guess I am directing my complaints at an uninvolved party. Though those complaints where what prompted Kanimir to say I should talk to an angel..."
"We have two afterlife planes. One of them is in fact torturous and periodically leaks. God didn't do it, at least not on purpose, and we're trying to fix it."
"Almost everyone goes to Heaven. That's the non-torturous one. Very few people are evil enough to get into Hell, less than one a year."
"Oh, you have managed splendidly by comparison, congratulations. One more point in favor of your world. I don't suppose you have an angle on your hell in mind already? Supposedly the evil afterlives for my plane exist because there are evil gods who desire their continued existence, I am guessing your world with it's - " don't say 'supposedly' - "single good god has different reasons."
"We think it was an unanticipated side-effect of something else but we really don't know for sure. We, ah, do have a plan in motion to some degree, but it's--very odd, to explain from the beginning."
"Odd as in unpleasant or just unusual? I would like to hear your plan, I intend to put an end to my own plane's atrocities and it might be adaptable."
"I don't think so. You see, there's this--room-like--thing in interdimensional space, and certain entities have the ability to access it, and it contains information about different worlds and certain--themes--that crop up across them, and gives the option to add these themes to one's own world. Ability to access the space is not transmissible; we've tried. So these themes are often personalities, and some were rated highly for world improvement, but most were unavailable for some reason, so she picked the likeliest-looking of the lot, which oddly enough was a superposition of personalities already extent here, and instantiated her as a sort of being who subsumes a fraction of God's own power into themself."
"That was not a very good summary and I am feeling rather confused, would you mind giving a longer version?"
"Okay, so one day a few decades ago God encountered something we will for the purposes of this conversation call a room. This room is accessible by at most one person per world, invariably people who are in some way strongly connected to their world."
"So within this room one can, apparently, acquire 'templates,' which are essentially a kind-of-person that one can then cause to come to exist within the world one is connected to. There are reviews available so one can make informed choices."