Leareth nods his understanding, making a mental note. "Two and a half hours is sufficient. Would you like me to demonstrate magic?" He plans to go with a mage-light, a (small) fire spell, a shield (he can ask Bruce to test it by throwing things at him), and a minor illusion. 

"Yes!" Gesture gesture "Reveal to me all magic in my surroundings." "Oooh, neat, you're inherently magic even when you're not casting anything." It occurs to Bruce that Leareth could be a demon pretending to be a weird alien human, but he's being a lot more forthcoming than Zygynzaxx was and he can't really see a motive there.

Leareth can’t help but smile. “...That is what being a mage means, where I am from, so it makes sense.” He raises his hands and pulls in the limited mage-energy left in his reserves; there isn’t any more nearby. “Ready?”

”This is a mage-light. No heat. You can touch it if you wish... See?”

”This one is fire. You may burn something to test it. Perhaps one of those papers that you no longer want.”

”This is a shield; a personal physical barrier-shield to be precise, there are many kinds. Throw something at me.”

”This is an illusion. I am doing fog because it is simple and I am somewhat fatigued.”

Bruce pokes the mage-light and turns the room light off to try seeing by it and sets a scrap of paper on fire and uses that to set another scrap of paper on fire and wads up the rest of that piece of paper and throws it at Leareth and waves his hand and a tissue through the fog to see if they feel or actually become damp and watches everything through Detect Magic (which is mostly good for "a spell just happened") and generally has the time of his life for ten minutes.

"That was really cool, thanks so much! . . . Do you want me to leave you alone for a bit so you can rest? I can warn you before my parents get home."

Leareth smiles. “You are very considerate. I will accept your earlier offer of food and drink, I think, and perhaps if I might lay down there for a while...?” He gestures to the bed. “I am pleased to continental answering your questions, however.” And asking some of his own.

"Go right ahead. I'll be back with food and drink in a minute, and I can answer your questions about Earth, too."

He is as promised back in a minute, with a glass of cold water and what he names a "peanut butter and jelly sandwich" and some carrots.

Leareth sits at the desk to drink the water and eat the unfamiliar ‘sandwich’, which is very sweet and he would call more a dessert than a meal, and more familiar carrots (though they are also bizarrely sweet). He thanks Bruce and goes to stretch out on the bed, which is approximately normal-looking but turns out to be soft and springy in a way he’s never experienced.

He is tired, more from the Gate than the minor demonstration, and it’s very comfortable. Hopefully Bruce’s questions will be interesting enough that he won’t accidentally fall asleep; then again, the harm less, friendly young man probably wouldn’t mind.

”You can go first,” he says.

Oh gosh, where to start. He really ought to be giving Leareth the Good News and making sure he gets saved as soon as possible, but he has too many other things he wants to know. And he's damned anyway, so he'd probably screw it up somehow.

"Is humans doing magic allowed on your world?"

“Yes-“ Leareth lifts a hand, backs up, and clarifies. “In most places and times, though often restricted to a greater or lesser extent. Occasionally a nation or society will ban mage-craft entirely. And, of course, only the mage-gifted can access true magic.” Which seems incredibly obvious, but may not be true here.

"Do you also have false mag--no, wait, it's your turn."

"You mentioned that you are a warlock," Leareth says, "and that this means a demon taught you spells." He has enough questions about this that it's hard to put them in order. "What are demons like, in your world, and do you know the mechanics of how their magic works? Also, you had mentioned 'angels'? I am curious to hear more there." 

(It's giving him a fascinating window into whatever is going on with the translation – the word is coming through as an unfamiliar one, rather than his just hearing it as though Bruce is speaking trade tongue. Also, he's pretty sure that the 'demons' of Bruce's world aren't at all the same as his, given that "a demon taught me spells" is a patently ridiculous phrase. The translation isn't clarifying anything there.) 

"Angels are spirits created to serve God in Heaven, before humans were created. Most of them still serve God, but some were proud and rebelled and Fell and became demons in Hell, and now they want to lure humans into sin. Sometimes with forbidden knowledge, sometimes with other things. Satan, the most powerful demon, led the whole human race into sin in the very beginning. I'm already unusually sinful, so when a demon offered to teach me magic I said yes."

Which opens a lot more questions. "Your turn," Leareth says. "If you do not mind, though, could I borrow something to write on?" It's easier to organize his thoughts that way. 

"Yeah, no problem." He can have a spiral notebook and a pencil to match the ones Bruce has been taking notes with. (Bruce's notes are extensively abbreviated and cryptically phrased; if you didn't know the topic it would take some doing to determine it.)

He hesitates before asking his next question. "What happens to people where you're from, when they die?"

Leareth scribbles down some even more cryptic notes in his personal cipher.

"I do not claim to understand all of the steps," he admits. "Where I am from, humans and other sentient creatures possess a soul or spirit, which is linked to their material body during their life but continues to exist afterward. At death, the spirit passes through several other Planes, which I can describe in more detail later if you wish, and generally lands in what we call the spirit Plane, or realm of the Moonpaths. Spirits in this place are not fully self-aware; a spirit alone does not contain all that makes up a person; but they can be interacted with. They are often re-used, one might say, sent back to the world to reincarnate as new people. Not necessarily of the same species, and in general they do not retain memories of past lives. This system is, by my understanding, administrated at a high level by whichever god is locally in power, but mostly runs without interference. The gods will occasionally make other uses of spirits, as avatars or representatives, for example. I also know of one instance where a human spirit was bound to a physical, enchanted artifact – a sword, in this case – and has wandered the world for the last several millennia." 

His mouth twitches into a smile. "In one very odd case, human spirits are placed into the bodies of horses, with certain modifications to ethical reasoning, as well as magical abilities, and these entities form bonds with humans and together make up the system of governance for a particular small kingdom. Yes, I know it is rather bizarre."

(Leareth doesn't mention his own particular setup, which allows his spirit to slip past the notice of the gods and return to the world again and again over the centuries. Bruce may be harmless, but that's still a level of trust that will take a lot longer to reach.) 

Bruce listens intently, drawing a cryptically labeled flowchart. 

"That sounds nice. . . . I don't know what would happen if you died in this world. Not that you're especially likely to. But I should get you saved soon just in case."

“...Could you please clarify what that means?”

"Yeah, sure. Uh, fair warning, you should probably get anybody other than me to explain this at some point, because I'm not saved, but anyone else I know who is would freak out about you being from another world and I have no idea how to handle that. So."

"Humans, at least in my world, are inherently sinful. Ever since the first two humans ate the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, humans have been proud and greedy and wrathful and various other things and generally turned away from God. So we're all by nature damned to Hell. But God doesn't want us to go to Hell, He wants us to serve Him forever in Heaven. So He sent His Son, who is also Himself, to be born as a human and die as a sacrifice for our sins. And if we believe in Him and love Him and accept Him as our savior, we're redeemed and go to Heaven when we die."

Leareth stares at Bruce. That is...not at all the sort of explanation that's in line with what he's heard from the boy so far, or picked up from his surface thoughts.

Eventually, he lifts his hand and rubs his forehead. "I think that I need you to define several terms here," he says slowly. "Whatever is handling language translation is not being helpful here, as I think some of the concepts they are mapping to are dissimilar, and I am very confused. What are 'Heaven' and 'Hell' in your world, and what exactly–" he leaves out several emphatic curse words, "–is the 'fruit of good and evil'? Some type of magical artifact?" 

He shakes his head. "I apologize; it is your turn and you may ask a question of your own first if you wish." 

"No, this is important. You can read my mind again, if it will help and you're not too tired for it." And he wants to get it over with. The idea of leading Leareth through the Sinner's Prayer is unpleasant in a way he doesn't have words for. Sort of disgusting, actually.

"Okay, terms. So, Heaven is a place outside the world, where God is, except He's also omnipresent in the world. And if you die saved you go there and spend eternity praising God in infinite bliss. And Hell is--" he swallows. He's never had to explain this before. "It's a realm of torment, full of fire, where sinners burn for eternity."

Leareth isn't too tired for Thoughtsensing. As Bruce speaks, he nods along, and rests a probe on the teenager's surface thoughts. He's particularly curious about the associations linked to the 'Sinner's Prayer'. 

The Sinner's Prayer is what you say when you're feeling especially aware of how sinful you are and need to beg for forgiveness. You're supposed to say it in public but he always hates hearing people say it. You're supposed to feel clean and whole afterwards, but he never does, because he doesn't actually love God no matter how much he tries. 

He's also thinking that this isn't how it usually goes in books when someone meets an alien or an uncontacted tribe or a kid who was lost in the woods and raised by wolves and tells them the Good News. The books usually have a lot more emotions from the person getting saved. It's probably because he's doing this wrong but it's also a relief.

"What was the other thing you wanted to know about? Oh, right, the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. So, when the first humans, Adam and Eve, were created, they were innocent and immortal, and God's plan was for them to live forever in the Garden of Eden. But they defied Him, and ate the one fruit they were told not to eat, and became sinners, and mortal, and God cast them out of the garden. The whole story is in the Bible, if you want to read it yourself."

“That,” Leareth says, “sounds like remarkably poor Foresight on the part of your God. This magical artifact, the fruit that - it somehow directly conveys knowledge of ‘good and evil’? How does that even work? I assume it was some kind of adversarial scheme by the powerful demon that you spoke of, Satan, against your God.”

It’s not a subtle or sophisticated plot, compared to the usual work of the gods he knows. And the rest of Bruce’s thoughts are even more baffling.

He raises his eyebrows. “You say ‘Good News’. I hope you will not be offended that I think the news is rather terrible, actually. Your world is under the personal dominion of a God who demands complete self-abasement, as well as love, or else He will torture your spirit?”

Bruce is feeling a lot of things right now. Sad and guilty, because Leareth isn't feeling joyful about God's love and saying he wants to get saved right now, and this is clearly Bruce's fault. Unsurprised about that. Relieved that there's someone else who finds it hard to love God, that it's not a uniquely broken thing about him. Extra guilty because he's feeling relieved that someone else is damned and that's awful.

"Yeah, I don't understand how the forbidden fruit worked, but it was Satan who tempted Adam and Eve into eating it. I'm sorry you think it's bad news. I guess it's really different from what you're used to. And I did a bad job of explaining it; I've always been lousy at theology."

(Bruce has a pretty low opinion of his own intelligence in general. Sure, his grades in school are alright, but there are really basic things like the Trinity and God being Goodness itself that everyone seems to understand except him.)

“...Do you mind if I ask about things I sensed in your thoughts?” Leareth says. “I will be able to ask more insightful questions this way, however, I can stop now if you find it invasive.”

(It’s low-cost to be polite to the youngster, and he expects Bruce’s burning curiosity to win out and the answer to be ‘yes’. Also, this world is...complicated. If he’s going to be stuck here, it’s higher stakes that he get along well with his fortunately-friendly initial contact.)