This isn't where Raafi went to sleep. He'd set his bedroll up on a comfy patch of moss under a tree, and now - he still has the bedroll, at least, and his pack, but the tree and moss are nowhere to be seen, replaced by a strange metal room with still, stuffy air and an implausibly clear night sky out the window.
"Hello?" he calls, getting to his feet.
"Fair enough. Man, I hope potentially angry gods can be talked down, a god-war sounds very bad."
"Mm. I don't think there's much hope of that. I suppose we could try to come up with something mutually agreeable to offer him, but as it stands he's going to take the situation as a threat to his life, and not wrongly."
"If he just likes - wilderness doing its thing - a demon could terraform a planet intending to leave it uninhabited."
"That's the kind of thing I had in mind," he nods. "I have no idea if being made in the first place would make it unsuitable, though, it might."
"-demons?"
"The foreign sort aren't evil."
"And Pelor himself offered Cam a clerichood, I was there for it. He's not dangerous, it's just a quirk of the translation."
"That's a hell of a quirk."
"It is! They aren't treated well for it in the other world, either, we were looking forward to things being better here."
"-yes, all right. My apologies."
"I used to be a human, if that helps? I'm not clear on whether your demons start that way or not."
"I don't know much about them myself beyond the danger. It doesn't matter anyway, it would be uncouth of me to judge you over a translation issue."
"Maybe whenever I get around to wizard lessons they will include why translation magic works like that."
"Isn't explaining the issue that inspired the question an infosec issue?"
They land a few blocks from the palace, when Raafi and the prince's spells wear off, and pass a crier telling the people who've come to get water about the food available at the warehouse on their way in. Prince Maziar detours through the barracks again to send a contingent off to the far warehouse.
"We've got a room set up for you already; is there anything else we can do for you while you're here?" he asks afterward.
"Show me where to put anything you want made, otherwise nothing leaps to mind!"
"All right. I should present you to His Majesty before dinner - he'll ask about that too; if you'd like to leave it to me to answer I'll suggest we ready the kingdom to send assistance to your war."
"Is kingdom-level assistance likely to swing it, at the relevant scale?"
"I don't know that they'd be decisive overall, but I'd expect people familiar with gods to do a better job of defending a place from one, they could make a real difference to your civilians."
"We will, then."
It's not far to the throne room; prince Maziar pauses outside to speak to the attendant there. "His Highness is hearing a report from the scions, we can see him in a few minutes," he reports.
"They're mainly general-purpose problem-solvers - their training emphasizes ranged combat but they aren't a military order, really, they spend most of their time helping our main population with day-to-day issues, solving disputes, offering healing, that sort of thing. They keep us in touch with the farther reaches of the kingdom, especially, they give farming families who can't take a week away to petition the throne a way to tell us if something's wrong."
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