"Honey and maple syrup have their own tastes, cane sugar doesn't, corn syrup doesn't and is cheaper, the artificial ones don't have calories."

"Why are there ones without calories?"

"When food is abundant and inexpensive people eat a lot more of it and some of them would rather be able to do that without gaining weight, so there's various technologies purporting to assist in this goal."

"Oh that's cool - do people not starve anymore?"

"Not in developed countries unless a lot of things go wrong. Usually we talk about 'food insecure' and not 'starving'."

"It'd be cool if the answer could just be yes."

"Those last few are sorta hard to solve for various reasons but yes."

Nod nod.

"It's cool that some countries have managed it anyways."

"Yeah, it's nice to have everyone richer!"

"It really is. It didn't really seem like all that much of an option when I was alive - though I think Lucian had some ideas."

"He sounds like an interesting person but there isn't much about him on Wikipedia in his own right."

"Well, he wasn't very famous."

"Some people aren't very famous in their own time but become better known later if they leave unusually good records or are later recognized for their achievements."

"Oh, the good records sounds like him but he was also a very behind the scenes sort of person."

"I'm not much of a historian so I have no estimate of how often those wind up being pulled to the forefront by historians."

"I don't think I've met spirits who are obviously like that but it's hard to tell where lots of spirits come from."

"Maybe the legend-accumulation process doesn't work well on people who weren't famous close to their lifetimes," she shrugs.

"Seems possible, yeah."

"Any idea when legends started accumulating in the spirit world?"

"I've met a spirit who was from Ancient Greece? But that doesn't mean he existed as a spirit since then. I think Atlantis was sunk by someone who won the tournament before 0 AD so there were probably champions and spirits back then."

"Gilgamesh and/or Enkidu?"

"I haven't heard of them being spirits but wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that they were."

"I can't immediately think of anything older than that to ask about."

"I wonder if-someone's coming." Lianelle is on her feet in the blink of an eye, sword held protectively in front of her.

May is invisible to all the other candidates and their champions. They'll probably think she's in the tent. She gets clear of it.