"More or less. There are Peacekeeper forces in the Districts, some of the Hunger Games arenas are far away from the Capitol, that sort of thing, but by and large it's one huge city."

"I often use my terrain powers to demolish buildings without disturbing their surroundings," he says. "'Spread out underground, come up fast, and have anyone who tries to organize retaliatory action swallowed by the earth immediately'... lacks some elegance, as a solution, and would probably kill more than the strict minimum of mortals necessary to get the job done, but if most of the organized retaliation is going to be coming from a single city I won't have any trouble finding it all."

"There's probably some innocent people in the Capitol. Not that there's more innocent people than die annually in the Districts, but if you could be precise enough to avoid the kids at least - although I don't know what to do with them since I imagine they'd be unhappy about what happened to their families."

"If they don't bring their children to the places where they are trying to destroy cities, their children will survive. It's hard for me to get much more precise than collapsing one building, but I have plenty of practice collapsing one building very thoroughly without damaging the ones near it."

"Okay. I'm... guessing that the talking thing you do covers the language barrier. Does it cover it well enough that you'll know what they're talking about so you can distinguish between somebody who's performing some harmless official activity like closing school for the day and someone who's launching bombers?"

"Yes. When I hear a mortal speak, I understand what meaning they intend to convey with their words. One of the conveniences of being a god."

"And do you have reason to believe that you'll hold together correctly between worlds? You're persisting here and you probably would have noticed if this interrupted what you have going on at home, but Milliways is special and wouldn't have let you in if just walking through the door was going to hurt you. Going out my door doesn't have that guarantee."

"If you take a holy object of mine into your world and it loses its connection to me, then I lose an insignificantly tiny part of my domain and can't take over your world, but that doesn't leave either of us any worse off than we were before you tried."

"Okay... there still could be some weird interaction like, I don't know, I'm making things up, but it could turn into a little disconnected copy of you or the not-having-gods-ness of my world could propagate back to yours in some unfortunate way or something like that. But I don't have a way to predict that and the risk is mostly to you."

"If it turns into a disconnected copy of me, he's likely to starve. I don't think I could safely sustain myself in your world without my empire's surplus to draw on. But... while that would be unpleasant, it's something I'm willing to risk. I think the other potential disaster is much less likely."

"Okay. Are you going to be offended if I go ask Bar for some materials to verify your god-empering credentials?"

"Not at all. While you're at it, you can ask her if she knows anything about the risks of bringing a holy object to your world."

"She probably doesn't unless someone's done it before. You don't think you'd have noticed?" asks Shell Bell, getting carefully to her feet and going over to murmur to Bar.

"I don't have much contact with other gods. If someone was very successful in a strange world, I'd expect to hear about it if they used the surplus to start absorbing continents at home, and obviously if someone accidentally destroyed godhood I would not be around to have this conversation, but the fact that neither thing has happened doesn't prove very much."

"Yeah. Bar doesn't know either," says Shell Bell, as a stack of books and papers appear. She hauls them back carefully to her booth. "Are you in a hurry at all?"

"No."

"...If you can't afford your food and lodging here, I can cover the cost."

"I'd appreciate that. Although I'll have to move rooms if I start paying for it instead of cleaning."

"Whichever you prefer. Anyone in my empire who finds themselves without food or shelter can find both at a temple."

"That might be a big deal, especially if you interact with the terrain and climate enough to make it hard to get food the ways we're used to. Not that we ever get enough that way, but there'll be a transition period."

"Arranging to feed and shelter everyone in my new domain is likely to be one of the first things I do after I am no longer facing organized resistance from people with city-destroying weapons."

"And how do you do that part?"

"Terrain powers aren't tremendously well suited for putting up buildings, but putting up hills and then hollowing rooms out of them is a decent substitute in a pinch. I can bring over food surplus from my original continent and make edible plants grow where I want them."

"You can just... move the food? You're sure that will work if the rest of - you - does?"