"Okay, at least it's not urgent to get her into a pool if we manage to find a way back to my world."

"She's young, yes," he agrees, "Only four years older than I am. And her Artefact should grant her an extra 200 years, at least - Lady Helen was in her sixties, when she found the Healer's City, so her span was shorter." 

"Alright. The enterprise started as a medical outpost?"

"Oh no, it was an ancient ruin, from before the Mana Seal. She discovered it, took up the Gauntlet, and immediately started working with the resistance of the time to evacuate those willing to the city. Sanctuary is somewhere on Tor - the other continent - but few remember where. Only those citizens alive at the time, along with the Lady and perhaps some of her council." 

"Mana seal?"

He blinks, "Oh, I haven't mentioned it," he huffs at himself, and settles more comfortably onto his log stool. 

"For 3000 years, this world was magicless. The Mana Seal hid it - a great feat of magical engineering, a ward over the entire world, holding all things made with magic out if phase with the rest of it. Anything living and tied intrinsically with magic, as most monsters are, was held in stasis there, buildings, items, and whole cities slowly deteriorated within the Seal. Our mana pools were held out of phase as well, and we did not even know to feel the loss.

"Then, 313 years ago, the Seal was broken through some mysterious means, releasing magic into the world again. Ancient cities and temples came crashing back into existence, monsters woke and attacked the villages which had encroached on their territory in their absence, and the world fell into chaos as we discovered our magic again. 

"And that was before the Mana Plague," he adds, taking a drink from his mug of tea. 

He motions for him to elaborate on the Mana Plague.

He nods, "We've since discovered that the Plague was the reason the Mana Seal was created, in the first place," he begins. 

"What it is, at it's most basic, is an inherited disease which causes extreme sensitivity to mana. Nowadays, the lines which produce children with it are known, and are discouraged from having children together. They still produce some with it, occasionally, but it is slowly being bred out. 

"At the time, however, the majority of the population were carriers." 

He pauses, trying to remember the exact figures, then shakes his head and continues, "Roughly 70% of the world population died of the disease alone, within ten years, after ambient mana levels had risen high enough to wake the dormant plague. More were killed in the chaos, as the entire world descended into madness. It took decades for any order to be brought to most of the world. Only some of the southern isles survived unchanged, some of their populations being entirely free of the disease." 

"Maybe it's something that shift might help. The pools fix a lot of things."

Oh gods, he thinks, noting that expression. He should have expected the topic to hit him hard. It just doesn't hit most people in this world so hard, being a background fact most simply live with.

"We can hope," he agrees after a moment, solemn, "We can't save those already lost, but if we could save children born with the disease... It would be something, at least." 

Nod. Pause. "It was a much, much longer time ago, but the water in our world didn't use to melt people off. And according to the stories that changed suddenly one day. I don't think the two events are related, but there is a weird resemblance."

"Magic brings change," he half states, half suggests, shrugging. "It allows the good to be made great, and the bad to be made terrible." 

"It's mostly the sudden catastrophic change." But he mirrors the shrug. "Anyways, the pools will completely regenerate all your forms if you stay long enough to acquire a new one. New limbs grow and many chronic maladies are also recovered. Changing shapes regularly has similar, if lesser, effects. Not only you stay younger, but you become closer to your ideal self. Physically, that is and with limits. Someone who didn't like their nose growing up might still dislike it afterwards, but they always think it's an improvement."

Well that explains some things. 

"It sounds like something out of a story - a fountain of beauty, youth, health and magic." He hums, "The greatest of our Life mages can regrow limbs," he says, "And Illusion could make one seem more beautiful, though the change would only be a veil over the truth." 

Nod. Blink. "Can you do anything about non-cisgender people?"

He nods, a pleased smile quirking his lips, "Life magic can do some, and Illusion more," he says, "There's no way to make a complete change, from one sex to the other, so far as I know, but much can be altered to suit an individual more."

He pauses, "Though of course the Priesthood here in Cialin do not approve," he adds, "Nor does much of the nobility." 

Head tilt. "Why? Back home it's even considered... not quite sacred, but a gift from the gods. Err, to clarify, shifting changes your physical sex to match yourself."

"Something left over from before the Seal fell, before we had these capabilities," he explains. "The Priesthood was what our people rallied around, when the years of chaos were coming to an end. The last High Priest before the fall had named a young woman as his successor shortly before be died - or so history says - and she became a leader during the chaos. Many of the more restrictive policies here are results of this beginning. They had, and have, a great deal of power.

"The Priesthood firmly believes that the form given a person is the one created for them by the gods, and to rebel against this is to deny the creators. Thus, much of the population believes this as well. Particularly strict observers find even temporary changes - hair dye, face paint, illusionary tricks - to be wrong." 

He pauses, "This will be one of the greatest obstacles, I expect, when it comes to convincing the people of Cialin to use the pools. It was already something my brother and I planned to change, however. It has simply become more urgent, now." 

"What one's ancestors have anything to do with how one is supposed to look today?" He asks rhetorically. "It just might be the case that... shifting's changes are not voluntary. Desired, yes, but not something one can directly control. So there was no way around besides just accepting that when someone turned eighteen and managed to shift they were a dozen changes away from having the bodies they want."

He hums, "That would work once every person was born with more forms," he thinks it would, anyway, if it was everyone, or most people at least, "But we would have to convince everyone to use the pools against the Priesthood's wishes, before that was the case." 

"Huh, do you have... numbers for this sort of thing? How many people will refuse to acquire forms, or people that will want in general? Because there aren't that many pools, even without your world they tend to be full all the time."

"It is hard to say," he admits, "I expect that the army would be willing - both those loyal to the king, and those loyal to me - and would convince their families as well. That's 1.5 million people, roughly. 

"Aside from that, things are complicated by... well, whether the prospect of immortality would outweigh the teachings of the Priesthood." He considers, "I believe it would, for many. But the Priesthood does have enough sway that the extremely devout would refuse, out of belief that immortality in the mortal realm would keep them from the afterlife, should they die.

"Likely, the Priesthood's objections would be ignored, for the most part," he decides, "Though it may lead to some level of more or less open war with them." 

He makes a few mental calculations. "I am confident we should be able to handle that many people in a few decades. Conservatively, we can do more with contact from other places and if people from your side manages to pay. And I guess we can do somethings like coordinating couples to get different shapes before having children - then the child is sure to be born immortal."

"Is the preventing from the afterlife just the general rule against change to one self or something else? What a open war looks like in this case?"

"Access to the afterlife is said to depend on how well you follow the tenets of the Priesthood. Other deviations from them could also cause it, it is simply that to so fully change their forms would obviously bar one from it." 

Tea, "Open war would involve the priesthood causing their most faithful to rise up against the royal family, I expect. It has threatened in the past - three generations ago, when the High Priestess refused to bless a Queen, is the most recent example. If they did so I expect their goal would be to put Princess Sais - my fath- the king's sister - on the throne. She is a Traditionalist, and agrees with much of the Priesthood's beliefs."