"Gosh!" says the teenage boy, jumping up from his desk. He looks at the closed door, the locked window, and the intact ceiling, and asks, "Did you get sent here by a miracle?"

His surface thoughts are curiosity warring with fear. On the one hand, this is new and therefore interesting, and the man's clothes are foreign enough that he's probably come quite a long way. On the other hand, a miracle nearby might mean God is paying attention to him and Bruce would really rather He didn't.

"I am not going to harm you," Leareth says quickly, lifting open palms. 

The boy's reaction confirms that he's not at all where he intended to be. He is very sympathetic to the boy's reaction regarding gods, though the glance at his thoughts does nothing to confirm which god's territory he's landed in.

The boy's curiosity and quick-moving thoughts bode well for honesty as a strategy. 

"I traveled deliberately," Leareth said, "but this was not my intended destination, so I am not sure if the interference of a god was involved. What kingdom are we in now?" 

"Did you intend to travel by just appearing somewhere? Where were you trying to go?" Does this guy have magic? He and his friends can't be the only warlocks out there, but he's never met another one before, especially not one who doesn't seem scared at being found out by a stranger. "Also this is America, not a kingdom."

“Yes, I intended to Gate.” No recognition in the boy’s mind. “A type of magical portal for traveling long distances,” he clarifies. “My intended destination is not relevant to you. I have not heard of America - what are your neighboring nations? Are you a mage also?” His own mage-sight isn’t picking up anything.

He hasn't heard of America? Really? It's huge. "America is between Canada and Mexico. I don't know anything about Mages or Gates." He figures it's got to be from demons, because this guy hasn't claimed to be a prophet, but he would be in so much trouble if his parents found out he was consorting with demons, so, fake ignorance and technical truths.

...Back up and start over. The answers to his questions are only leaving him more confused, which means he’s missing something major.

”I am not a prophet,” Leareth says. “Nor do I ‘consort with’ demons; I am really not sure how that would help. However, I am starting to suspect I am much further from home than I thought.” Are there entire other worlds? “Can you tell me the name of your local God, whether there are other gods with nearby territories, and some of the laws of magic here?”

"Gyaaaa are you reading my mind?!" Bruce is now trying very hard not to think and doing a lousy job of it. He's going to get executed for witchcraft and go to Hell. Multiple gods? Magic with laws that he as a human would be expected to know about, that humans can use directly without help from spiritual beings? He's going to get executed for witchcraft and go to Hell. If this guy is telling the truth this is the most interesting thing ever. Also Bruce is super duper going to get executed for witchcraft and go to Hell.

“Oh. I apologize, it makes sense that this would be considered rude. I will stop now.” Leareth takes a step back. This is...messier than he realized. Where to start?

”I do not wish for my presence to put you at risk,” he begins. “I cannot leave by the method I arrived without time to rest, but I can go elsewhere if this is preferable to you. However, whether it is divine intervention or accident, I do not see how my arrival can be blamed on you.”

He glances around. The boy’s curiosity may be to his advantage. “I ought to introduce myself,” he says. “My name is Leareth. If I am not placing you in immediate danger, I am happy to answer your questions,”

Bruce calms down a bit over the course of his statement. Leareth isn't running off to his parents or the nearest church, and doesn't seem about to. 

"I--don't think you're putting me in danger? Not just by being here. But what do you mean about multiple gods? The first commandment is that there's only one." Though he has sometimes wondered, not that he'd admit it, why they're commanded not to worship other gods if there aren't any other gods out there to worship.

Oh, it’s one of those religions. Leareth has stopped reading Bruce’s thoughts; if he’d heard them he would be additionally confused by the assumption that he is here to snitch, but as it is he doesn’t address it.

”I have personal knowledge that there are other gods elsewhere,” Leareth says, “but they do often have territories. Perhaps your God is the sole one in power here. What is Their name and description?”

"Uh, His name is God, or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit--He's supposed to be three beings and also one being, but nobody's been able to get me to understand it so I can't explain it. And he created the whole world and everything in it and was born as a human and crucified to save us from our sins. Oh, and I forgot to say, my name's Bruce."

“I...see.” This doesn’t exactly help clarify where Leareth has ended up.

Also, he’s been surveilling the area for any source of ambient magical energy, and nothing. Nor any sign of shielding or magical artifacts. Aside from the faint glow of Bruce’s life-force - which shows no hint that he’s Gifted, leaving Leareth baffled by the ‘execution for witchcraft’ part -  his mage-sight is drawing a blank. 

This is a problem. It means that if the distance, or whatever the right word is for possible travel to another world, is greater than he can Gate across on reserves alone, he’s stuck here.

”You are a ‘warlock’?” he says carefully. “I have no intention of revealing this to anyone, however, it would be helpful to me to obtain information from you on how mage-craft works locally, and where usable mage-energy can be found.”

". . . Yeah, okay. Um, as far as I knew before today, humans couldn't have magic directly, they had to have demons or occasionally angels helping. I know a demon, they taught me some spells, I've been studying how they work but I don't know if the demon could have made them work a different way, or whether they have to do something every time I use one versus having just given me the ability to do it myself. Would it help if I showed you a spell?"

“That would be very interesting, yes.” He holds all of his Othersenses wide open.

"Okay." Bruce makes some hand gestures and says, "Let all perceive as I imagine." A shower of blue sparks appears in the air for a few seconds.

Leareth blinks. He Sees the magic flow, but...not from anyway, it's not from the boy or from the (nonexistent) ambient energy.

"Is that an illusion spell?" he says. "A little conspicuous, since the incantation clearly reveals that–"

Then the second piece of surprise catches up. The words are in a different language, but just as comprehensible, which is what makes him realize that Bruce also isn't, actually, speaking in the common trade tongue of northeastern Velgarth. He makes a mental note to investigate; Bruce is unlikely to know the answer, since he clearly has no idea how Leareth ended up here. 

"That one does a bunch of things, it's intent-sensitive--wait, what do you mean 'the incantation reveals'? Did you figure something out from the incantation?" Even without the mind-reading Bruce's curiosity is desperately obvious.

"You said 'Let all perceive as I imagine'," Leareth says. "In a – wait, was the second language one you do not yourself speak?" His first half-formed theory, that his Thoughtsensing is somehow automatically transferring languages from this world, now seems unlikely. 

"Woah. I totally do not speak that language. I wasn't even sure it was a language and not strings of nonsense words. I just memorized it. That's fantastic--and it probably has something to do with why you're speaking what sounds like English despite never having heard of America--wow."

"This indeed seems very useful." English isn't a language he's heard of either. Magic itself looks different here – and, unfortunately, the trickle of something-like-energy didn't pool anywhere, it fed directly into the spell, and he isn't sure he could use it anyway.

All of it is fascinating, and he's stuck here. With a teenager who seems to be made out of raw curiosity laced with fear-of-outside-authorities, who is a mage – sort of – but certainly isn't a threat, and is surprisingly friendly. Promising. 

"I was able to sense the flow of your magic," he says. "Do you also have a magical sense? I am curious whether, if I were to cast a spell, you would be able to detect it as well." 

"Not innately but I can cast Detect Magic! It lasts ten minutes. Do you want to try it now?" 

"A reasonable plan. I can cast several spells in that interval. Do you mind if I sit down?" 

Bruce dimly, as a distant tale of childhood, remembers his manners. "Oh! Yes! Sorry. You can take the desk chair or the bed, whichever. Do you want anything to drink, or a sandwich or something?"

Leareth takes the desk chair, concealing his momentary alarm when it spins around. "I am not sure what a sandwich is – in any case, I am all right for now." He glances at the door. "Does anyone else live here? For instance, ought I be prepared to hide?" He isn't sure if, in this world, Bruce is at the age where youngsters generally live with their parents. 

"My parents won't be home for " watch check "two and a half hours--does your translation thing convert time units?--but then you should be ready to either get out of the house or stay in this room and not make any noise, yeah."

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.)

"It's fine, ask whatever you want. Uh, sorry about how my thoughts are kind of awful." He keeps getting brief mental images of people on fire and shoving them away.

Leareth closes his eyes for a moment and tries to put his thoughts in order.

”I think,” he says slowly, “that you underweight your own intelligence. Trust me - I am reading your mind.” That part is sort of sad. “In my opinion, it indicates nothing wrong with your mind that you cannot, on demand, love a being who so far as I can tell has not taken good care of His people, and who makes your entry to His realm of paradise conditional on expressing enough adoration.”

He looks past the boy, absentmindedly studying the wall of his room. “If you have any treatises on the concept of the Trinity or how God is Goodness, or better yet a person with understanding I could read from their mind, that would be valuable. They are certainly not translating currently.”

"That--I--thank you. You could try reading the Gospels directly, and I have a book on salvation for small children if you want something shorter. I'm hesitant to volunteer someone else for mind-reading without their permission but if it makes the difference between you getting saved and not it's obviously worth it."

“...I can read the treatise and I might as well read the children’s explanation as well in case it covers any cultural gaps, which I am sure exist.” Leareth frowns at Bruce. “I confess I am confused about why you so fervently wish for me to love your God when one, you do not, and two, I am not even from your world and hail from a place with entirely different gods.”

(The gods of Velgarth don’t exactly approve of Leareth. He doesn’t much care.)

"Well just because I'm damned doesn't mean I want you to be too!" Bruce exclaims, and then stares at his feet in embarrassment for several seconds.

". . . Do you figure you might get your original afterlife regardless?" He adds hopefully, and stands up to pull a couple books off his overflowing bookcase. One is a massive and very fancily bound volume embossed with "The Holy Bible: King James Edition"; the other is dug out of the back of a bottom shelf, clearly aimed at small children, and written by someone who probably could not get a job writing for people old enough to choose what they read.

Leareth reaches out to take the books.

“I have...special arrangements,” he says. It’s not like Bruce has any chance of guessing right, and he might be reassured. “If I die in my world, I am very confident I will not go to Hell. If I were foolish or unlucky enough to die here...” He shrugs. “Probably it would still work. I will plan not to. Would you like me to read these now and ask questions?”

He’s hoping the books will have some additional hints as to how magic works, so he can at least set up contingency plans to go home.

He’s less sure he wants to leave right away, though. This world is interesting, and, well, gods are always relevant to his plans.

"Not dying is an excellent plan. And yeah, reading the books now sounds good. The stuff with Adam and Eve is the very first chapter, and the part with Jesus and salvation starts on . . . this page."

Leareth takes the book, open to the page Bruce indicated, and starts reading about Jesus and salvation.

The salvation bit is a ways in. First there's a genealogy, then the fiance of someone in the genealogy gets spontaneously miraculously pregnant without her husband's involvement (which rather obscures the purpose of the genealogy), and they have the baby and have some adventures and go on the run from the law for a bit, and then Jesus grows up and does some miracles and fasts in the desert and gets tempted by Satan.

Fortunately Leareth is a fast reader; whatever magical-or-otherwise-phenomenon lets them speak, apparently also covers writing, although occasionally he hits the difficulty where he's not sure if a word he knows maps to exactly the same concept. Mostly he can guess from context, for now; if he asked Bruce about every note of confusion this would take a lot longer than their two remaining hours. 

A god literally incarnating as a human baby is...a little odd...but given his own background, he isn't shocked. Mainly he would have expected most gods to hate restricting themselves to the material realm in such a way; it doesn't seem that this 'Jesus', while in human form, has access to His full godly powers. 

"How long ago did this happen?" Leareth finally thinks to ask. "I am...actually not sure of the current level of advancement of your civilization, but the descriptions here seem rather more primitive." He frowns. Orient. "Where is this happening geographically? Are we in the same region, or far away?" 

"Jesus was born two thousand twenty years ago--we base our calendar on it. And this was all happening halfway around the world; I'll show you a map real quick." 

Bruce has and displays a world map: the US here, the Middle East over yonder.

“I...see. Thank you.” Leareth resists the urge to ask a number of questions about cross-ocean travel, and makes a note instead.

He keeps reading.

Jesus preaches repentance and charity, and calls disciples, and miraculously heals the sick, and blesses the poor and the meek and the peacemakers, and says that anyone who calls someone a fool is in danger of the fires of Hell, and that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Leareth is nodding along; most of it isn't unreasonable, exactly, the adultery part is a little excessive but there are societies like that in Velgarth and maybe even God would absorb some local prejudices from the culture where He was raised from babyhood. 

Still, Leareth thinks, if he were God incarnated in human form he would certainly be a little more ambitious about it. He says as much to Bruce. 

"What would you do?" He shouldn't've asked that; this is the sort of topic that leads to doubting God's omnipotence. Bruce is kind of a lost cause, there; he's spent too much time wondering why God needed ten entire plagues and the Pharaoh's permission to take the Israelites out of Egypt instead of just teleporting them.

Meanwhile, Jesus condemns divorce and oath-swearing and vengeance and tells everyone to love their enemies and give to charity and not be obnoxiously public about their good deeds or worry about material goods.

This is an odd mix of social change that Leareth finds straightforwardly good versus baffling, but all cultures have their baffling pieces and they generally have a good reason. Maybe this God did look through all the possible futures, as an omnipotent being outside of time before limiting Himself to the material world, and conclude that human flourishing in this particular works just was maximized by banning oath-swearing. Weird, but not impossible.

”I cannot say for sure since it depends heavily on contextual factors,” he says absently. “I would certainly consider taking over the local empire, since it seems suboptimally run. A thorough reform of the education system is another possibility - I might found a scholarly monastic order.”

(A previous incarnation of Leareth has in fact done just that.)

"I think the Church might have been the first institution to have anything like monastic orders. God did appoint some kings, in the Old Testament--that's the part before what you're looking at--or ruled through prophets, for a while."

Jesus does a bunch of miracles, mostly healings, and gathers twelve disciples, and tells them to go out and preach his word, and warns them that they will be hated and persecuted and their families will turn against them but that they will be rewarded in Heaven.

The prediction of ostracism seems unfortunately plausible. 'Jesus' sounds like a very skilled social persuader and movement-builder, which isn't at all surprising for God, but still has him nodding in approval.

"How do prophets work in your world?" he asks at one point.

"Sometimes God speaks to someone, with visions or by sending angels as messengers, and tells them to do things--lead a people, explain some part of His law, tell a city they're at risk of getting smote--and does miracles around them to prove they're not making it up. Sometimes Satan sets up false prophets and sometimes they fool people, but usually God smites the false prophets fairly quickly, so they don't fool people for very long."

“Does Satan also possess the magical abilities necessary to perform these ‘miracles’, then? How do God and Satan’s power differ?” It’s a digression but he’s curious. “Did Satan ever incarnate as a human as well?”

"Satan used to be an especially powerful angel; he can do things that look like miracles but he's not as powerful as God. God is omnipotent, so everything Satan does is something God lets him get away with and he'll eventually be defeated forever at the End of Days."

Leareth raises his eyebrows. "So the plot with the magical forbidden fruit that conveys knowledge is one that He allowed to happen?" He doesn't wait for an answer, just shrugs and keeps reading. Bruce can tell him more about the 'End of Days' later, he's probably getting out of order here and maybe he ought to check how much time they have left before he needs to conceal himself from Bruce's family members. 

"Yes, original sin was part of God's plan too." Jesus breaks the Sabbath, on which Leareth has no context, and tells people to repent, and defends himself against accusations of being the devil. And then sure enough Bruce says, "My folks will be home soon. Do you want to hole up in here or find somewhere else? . . . I have some of my allowance saved up but it's probably only enough for one night in a cheap hotel. Maybe two nights in a really cheap one."

Leareth looks around the room. "I would prefer to stay here, then." He's had a chance to orient, and discreetly lay down basic magical wards during some moments when Bruce was speaking. Nothing that will actually stop an attack, he hasn't got the power for it, but he'll be warned. 

His reserves are in better shape after food, water, and a couple of hours sitting comfortably. "I can conceal myself with an illusion," he offers. "If you wished to speak later without risking being overheard, I could perhaps cover both of us with a sound-barrier." 

"An illusion is a way better idea than my plan of 'if you hear someone coming upstairs get in the closet'. Being able to talk more later would be good. Would the sound barrier make anything strange happen if I tried to talk to my parents while it was up? If so it should wait until they think I'm asleep."

Leareth agrees. “The sound-barrier will have that result - I might make it one-way, so that you would hear your parents if they addressed you, but you could not answer unless I took it down. I would rather not take it down and replace it repeatedly, so we might as well wait. Please do not sit on your bed if you come in, I will be here but unseen. I shall do more reading and collect my questions.”

He hesitates, but Bruce hasn’t gotten offended yet. “Bruce, if I do overhear a conversation with your parents that seems important, and I do not understand it, would it be all right if I read your mind for context? Or theirs?”

"Reading my mind is fine but please stay out of theirs; if they say something you don't understand you can ask me later. And I apologize in advance if you see anything in mine that you'd rather not." Honestly Leareth reading his mind is so much less worrying than the knowledge that God can see his every sinful thought, because Leareth just wants to learn things and doesn't seem inclined to use any of it against him.

“I do not think,” Leareth says wryly, “that any of your thoughts would surprise or disturb me.” He is 2000 years old, after all. (He doesn’t say that part out loud.)

"That's good I guess." There's a sound from downstairs that Leareth is very unlikely to recognize as a garage door opening."Oh, that's my parents, I had better go downstairs for dinner. I'll see you in an hour or two. Uh, if an emergency happens drop a book on the floor and I'll come up to 'investigate the weird noise'."

Leareth isn't sure what sort of emergency is likely to arise, but he nods, and stretches out on the bed, and casts an illusion over himself so anyone coming in will only see unwrinkled covers. It takes some concentration but it's not really tiring to maintain. 

He starts reading from where he left off. 

Bruce and his parents thank God for their food (chicken breast, baked beans, and broccoli; Bruce takes as little of the former as he can get away with) and start eating. They talk about his day at school (in history they're learning about the destruction of Portland; in biology they're memorizing all the kinds of fish; in phys ed they're playing tennis and he's lousy at it) and their days at work (his father sells used cars and his mother works in a nursing home) and the news (the World Games open next week; a senator got his marriage annulled and reporters are suspicious how good his reasons really were). Bruce says he doesn't want any dessert and has homework to do upstairs (this is a lie; he did it all during classes as usual).

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus talks about the day of judgement and says He will spend three days in the heart of the Earth. He delivers a lot of parables, mostly about how the righteous will be separated from the wicked and the latter thrown in a blazing furnace. He multiplies food and walks on water and heals people. He refused to heal someone's daughter because she's a Canaanite but is persuaded to change his mind about it. He predicts His own death and tells people to give away their possessions and delivers yet more repetitive parables.

Leareth half-listens to the conversation; nothing is confusing-and-urgent enough to push him into reading Bruce's mind. He reads, makes a few notes, and then accidentally falls asleep.

(The illusion doesn't need active concentration to maintain once completed, and stays up.) 

Bruce eventually comes back upstairs. If his arrival doesn't wake Leareth up, he finds his illusorily empty bed unresponsive and the Bible fallen on the floor and deduces what's up, reads at his desk for a while, and falls asleep on a pile of spare bedding on the floor of his closet.

Leareth half-wakes when Bruce is scraping together the bedding-pile, instantly orients – mainly checking for his wards and briefly skimming Bruce's surface thoughts – concludes that the situation is still safe, and drifts off again. He's actually quite exhausted after the ill-fated Gate, though he hadn't wanted to interrupt his initial learning about the situation in order to rest. 

He wakes just before dawn, feeling refreshed and with his magical reserves about as recovered as they're going to get, here in the world with no magic. Nothing else is moving, so he dispels the illusion, summons a tiny mage-light, and keeps reading while he waits for Bruce to wake up. 

Today's a Saturday, so instead of being woken by his alarm clock Bruce is woken by the sunlight reaching the floor. It takes him a moment to orient and remember why he's in a blanket-nest, but then he stands up (a process complicated somewhat by his excessive amount of teenage-boy elbows and knees) and says, "Good morning. Feeling better today?"

Leareth is sitting on the bed with his back against the wall. He’s already cast a sound-barrier around them. “Yes, thank you. I am quite hungry, if you were planning to break your fast soon.” Teenage boys are generally hungry in the morning, he thinks.

He glances around apologetically. “I hope your parents are not in the habit of checking while you sleep. I am not sure my wards would detect activity inside the house, and they might have questions as to why you were sleeping in your closet. In any case. I do have some further questions.”

"If they've started coming in my room while I'm asleep that would be new and also weird, but next time I'll remember to lock the door. How about I grab us both some food and you can ask me more questions while we eat?"

Leareth nods his agreement. He will keep reading while Bruce goes down to get food. 

Bruce returns with wheat cereal in milk and blueberries for both of them. "So, what are your questions?"

Leareth has a list.

"I am very curious about the mechanics of magic in your world," he says, "though I am aware you may not know the answer here. In my world, walking on water would be trivial for a mage, and Healing can be done easily by a Gifted Healer – and replicated by a mage with advanced skill and research. Creating food from nothing, however, is as far as I know not possible – the food could perhaps be Fetched in from elsewhere, that is the only workaround I can think of. Is producing food a common miracle here?"

He starts working on the bowl of mysterious food, without paying too much attention to what it is, while he waits for Bruce to answer. 

"It sounds like your magic is a completely different thing from micracles. Miracles aren't easier or harder; it's just God in His infinite power doing things. Feeding large crowds from a small initial supply of food is one of the more frequent ones, though not as common as healings." He looks like he's struggling with whether to admit something for a moment, then adds, "Though one of my many sins is that sometimes I'm not sure whether God is actually omnipotent or just very powerful."

"The gods of my world are certainly not omnipotent," Leareth says. "Perhaps your world is different." He resists the urge to read Bruce's surface thoughts out of curiosity; this isn't important enough to invade the boy's privacy. 

He makes a note, and moves down his list. "It seems I am missing some context about 'Canaanites', and why your literal God incarnated in human form would be bigoted against them. Did their people do something very bad?" 

"Hm?" He checks the relevant passage. "Oh, I think that's just that he's meant to be the Messiah for the Jews first and foremost and was prioritizing them over everyone else. Jews are God's chosen people; most of the earlier parts of the Bible are about them. But salvation is available to everyone."

Leareth makes a note, but he isn't less confused. He leaves it alone for now. "I am curious about this 'Day of Judgement' but I suspect it will be covered before the end," he says, looking at the chunk of pages remaining. "What is the 'blazing furnace' a metaphor for?" 

"Uh, that's Hell. It's not a very metaphorical metaphor. Just, lots of fire. And there's more on the Day of Judgement in Revelation, but that's several sections ahead of where you are now."

"...I suspected it was not." Leareth has been trying to hold off on his final judgment about Bruce's God, but he is...concerned...about Hell. "I think that is most of my questions for now. I ought to finish this." 

"Okay. I'll write down some questions while you do that."

Jesus prophesies confusingly about the end times, and says that however you treat the poor it is as though you treated Him that way.

Jesus is betrayed, and crucified, and dies, talking alternately about how this is inevitable and how He's having a pretty awful time of it. He stays dead for three days, then comes back to life and vanishes out of His grave and tells His faithful to convert all the nations, and that's the end of that section.

Leareth's first thought is that, from a purely storytelling perspective, God's book is very badly paced. His second thought is that from the strategic side, God's plot is bizarre. Not in itself surprising; gods are like that. 

Leareth is very familiar with the concept of blood sacrifice. Self-sacrifice, even. The bloody death of 'Jesus Christ' must be conceptually similar, in some sense, to a Final Strike.

"You said that God, incarnated as Jesus, died as a sacrifice for your people's sins," he says slowly. "I...am still confused about how exactly this accomplished His goal. Did He need to die in order to create Heaven, or open a door to it? What was the working that the sacrifice fueled, and why was God's death as a human the best means to obtain the necessary power?" 

"So, it's not about power, per se. It's . . . a metaphor that gets used a lot is a criminal gets brought before a judge and found guilty, and he's going to be thrown into prison, and then a benefactor shows up and volunteers to serve his sentence for him so he can go free. Jesus took the punishment we deserved for our sins on himself. Heaven already existed, but humans don't deserve to go there, but because of Jesus' sacrifice we're allowed to anyway, if we accept His gift by relying on Him as our savior."

"...In your society criminals can have a benefactor take their place and serve their sentence instead? How does that accomplish any of the goals of a criminal justice system? Crime deterrence and the harm reduction aspect would be compromised." 

"Oh, yeah, no, the human justice system doesn't work like that at all. Only divine grace works like that."

Leareth nods. "Please give me a moment to think." He skims through his notes, and then closes his eyes and tries to put his thoughts in order. He really hasn't been approaching this in an organized way, and it's time to step back and reassess. 

"Bruce," he says finally. "I...realize that I am still missing information, and so I am not quite ready to conclude that your God is straightforwardly evil."

If the claims of omnipotence are false – perhaps they're propaganda, intended to reassure human mortals that they can trust God over His enemy Satan, and Bruce's God really does only have the power to save humans from Hell and instead bring them to His Heaven if they pledge loyalty to Jesus Christ – if this is the case, then the existence of Hell might be less damning. God might truly be doing His best to protect His people, under adverse circumstances and with limited resources. However, even in that case, His best is clearly, obviously not good enough. Someone needs to step in. 

If God does have unlimited power over Bruce's world, and could choose to defeat Satan and destroy Hell at any time, and is instead choosing to carry out some sort of millennia-long game with the mortals of the world...

Then Leareth's path is even clearer. 

"I am, however, nowhere near convinced that He is worthy of your love," Leareth says, "much less mine. Your world is...bizarre and confusing and most likely has very different metaphysics from mine – the part where God is Goodness is an example," assuming that isn't just another piece of propaganda, "and so I must better understand how things work before I make any plans. Nonetheless. I am ready to conclude that the situation here is unacceptable, whether it is the fault of your God or of this 'Satan', and that I wish to take action to change it. Even if Hell will be destroyed when this 'Judgement Day' comes, it has been two thousand years since Jesus Christ made that promise. That is already far too long to wait."

He looks into Bruce's eyes. "You, also, find the God of your world difficult to love. If I choose to intervene, will you help?" 

Bruce needs a minute to think as well. He's terrified of Hell, for himself and for the unknown number of people already there or heading there. But he's also terrified of doing anything about it, of becoming one of those people you see on the news who get blasted by fire from heaven or eaten by suddenly-appearing snakes and going to Hell sooner than he has to.

But, he asks himself, what else is there? He's already damned. If he doesn't do anything, he gets to keep his head down and go to school and get a job and . . . what? Enjoy his three score and ten years of dread and die alone and burn forever anyway. If the end of the road is the same either way, why not do something beautiful and meaningful and doomed while he's still capable of doing anything?

Beautiful and meaningful and doomed, or pathetic and meaningless and doomed, one or the other.

"I . . . I want to help. If you have some way to get people out of Hell, if there's something I can do to help, I want to. But I'm just a kid with borrowed magic. What help could I possibly be?"

"That," Leareth says, "is what we need to figure out. I am not sure either, but we have not considered the problem for even five minutes yet."

He glances at his notes. "The first way that you can help, I think, is just in being an ally who I can trust." Leareth isn't completely sure that he trusts Bruce, but he's seen the boy's thoughts. No malice there. Perhaps a teenager won't make the most reliable agent, but it's what he has to work with. "We need to understand the limits of your God's power – I am almost certain that there are limits – and the relation between God and Satan. Neither is our friend, here, but perhaps they might be played against each other. We must better understand how your magic works, and the limits on it – whether, used in clever ways, it can be much more powerful. Also, we ought to experiment with how my magic works, here, and whether it can be combined with yours in ways that will be harder to combat." 

Leareth leans back, smiling slightly. "Our first step, then, is to lay out our research agenda and our current uncertainties. Do you think this is something where you can help?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I can help with that." He grabs paper and pencil. Just having one other person around who knows he's damned and thinks the thing to do about it is something other than "try to love God more" makes everything feel . . . not exactly better, but less closed-in. Like wanting to act isn't automatically foolish.

He starts writing a list of research questions. Questions about God and Satan and how they interact with each other and the world, questions about Leareth's magic and about demon magic and whether Leareth's apparent ability to speak the demon language can be exploited for anything.

Leareth half-watches, smiling to himself. He was pretty sure this was how Bruce would react, and he's pleased that his prediction was right. 

He starts absentmindedly reading the book-for-children about Jesus. 

It's . . . yeah, absent-mindedly is a good way to read it.

"So, you probably have a better idea of priorities here than me, but it seems like one thing it would be relatively easy to investigate today is whether you can come up with modified versions of spells by changing the wording."

Leareth takes a moment to think. 

"That seems as good a place to start as any," he says. "An especially high-priority question on my side is whether any of your magic, or other artifacts in this world, would allow me to access greater magical power. In my world, mage-energy flows and pools naturally, and can be used by a powerful mage such as myself – here, I have only the fuel within myself. Experimenting with your spells seems to be a good avenue for that question, as well as for the question of increasing your power." 

"Does the fuel you have build up indefinitely like a savings account, or build up to a fixed maximum like a battery, or are you going to run out with no way to get more?"

"...The middle one," Leareth says after a moment. "My personal reserves could be considered as a pool, which can be filled to a certain point, and then emptied by use. If drained, it refills gradually simply from food and rest – more slowly here, since your world lacks a base level of ambient mage-energy, but I was nonetheless able to replenish my reserves overnight." A pause. "What is a 'battery'?"

"Oh, it's a device for storing electrical energy. If you have lightning, it's like that, but smaller, and batteries can release it slowly over time instead of in a big burst. Does your world have atomic theory, because a proper explanation involves talking about parts of atoms. But let me do a demo first." He fishes a flashlight out of a desk drawer, turns it on and off a couple times, and starts taking it apart. "This thing is the battery, it makes the energy flow through a circuit of wires hidden in the casing, and when it flows through the lightbulb it heats it up to white-hot so it glows."

Leareth stares at him. 

"You can store lightning?" he says finally, half-incredulous. "You can put lightning in that small cylinder, and then make it flow through a wire – without killing anybody – and instead of coming out as lightning it comes out just as light? And you do all of that without magic?" 

Leareth shakes his head. "Atom... That is, tiny indivisible parts of matter? I would not say that my world has this theory. I have it, but...no more than that, really, I understand little of the details. Your world has scholarship that says these 'atoms' are divisible and have parts?"

Leareth wants to know everything about it. Now. Or ideally yesterday. 

"This battery stores a lot less energy than a single lightning bolt, but yes, it's the same principle. And yes, atoms have structure, let me draw a diagram . . . " and Leareth can have a massive infodump on atomic theory and electrical engineering to the level of a bright high school student who reads for fun a lot. There are a lot of parts where Bruce has to look things up or signposts that there's more he doesn't know, like the details of AA battery chemistry and why electrons repel each other and why some materials glow when white hot but not others. Also, Bruce looks the happiest he's been outside of when they were doing magic experiments.

Leareth is very, very pleased. He takes a lot of notes and plans to ask Bruce for some of his textbooks later.

Then there's the mention of nuclear weapons. 

"You have," Leareth says, "weapons that can obliterate entire regions? That any human can use, without requiring the use of magic? That is...far more powerful than anything that exists in my world – it would take a hundred or even a thousand Adept mages calling Final Strike in synchrony to replicate." 

"Yes, nukes are . . . a big deal. It takes, oh, probably dozens of people, to authorize using one, and it's only ever been done once, but, yeah."

"Your world is better coordinated than mine, then," Leareth says. "I am impressed." He hesitates only a moment before asking. "Are there still 'nukes' currently in reserve? Where are they?"

He isn't sure whether energy released purely as heat and light can be converted to mage-energy, but maybe that doesn't matter – in his world, he has the power to make some large explosions, but not here. He's planning a war. Always a good idea to inventory the weapons available, even if they technically belong to other people. 

Bruce follows his logic, goes right back to being filled with dread, but says, "There are some, yeah. The US military and the Russian military and a couple other militaries have them. Mostly in silos in secret locations in the middle of nowhere, I think."

Leareth is fairly sure that, given the ability to read minds, he can find out the location of said silos without too much difficulty inside a week.

"Thank you," he says. "Moving on – we were talking about your magic." He glances at his notebook, which is already half full. "Do you own larger pieces of paper? We may at some point wish to draw diagrams or other representations." 

"Uh, big paper no, sticky tape yes. And I can show you the rest of my spells if you think that's a good place to start."

Leareth has to take a moment to unpack the translation of 'sticky tape', a very straightforward object which doesn't quite exist in the same form in his world. 

"I approve of that plan," he says, preparing a fresh page for notes. "You can describe the spells and then demonstrate?" 

"Sure thing. Prestidigitation, the one I showed you, actually has a couple of different incantations." He demonstrates lighting a bit of string on fire, making his window dusty and then cleaning it again, making his pillow unnaturally cold to the touch, turning it blue, and making a little illusory bird fly around the room for about ten seconds.

Leareth scribbles some notes, snatches the tape and rips out four notebook-pages and tapes them into a bigger rectangle (they have a convenient perforated line for just that purpose), draws a diagram, turns it sideways, frowns at it...

"I do not comprehend your magic at all," he admits finally. "I am baffled by what definition of 'spell' would allow a single such entity to accomplish all of those effects." He runs a fingertip down a line on his diagram. "Your demon calls this a single spell, but given the differing incantations, one could instead classify it as several spells that share a gesture. Most of your spells have a single incantation and a unique gesture, no? So this distinction does not–"

He stops, lifts a hand. "Pause. I wish to make a note of something unrelated." Language is on his mind again, which is probably why he remembered.

"It does not seem like an accident that I arrived here able to understand you," he says. "Meaning, perhaps it is by the will of some entity. In my world, if one has the Gift of Thoughtsensing or Mindspeech, it is possible to instantly acquire a language from another strong Mindspeaker who is fluent in it, via a technique of deep mental rapport and sharing of memory; this could be a related phenomenon." Though different in that he doesn't remember it happening, and also didn't arrive here with a splitting headache. "We ought also wonder if it is related to why, when my Gate-experiment went awry, I landed here in particular. That part could conceivably be coincidence; however, I am suspicious."

He shakes his head. "I am not sure where to go with this question. Mainly, I wish for you to keep in mind that, if some being caused this to happen, we do not know what their goals are. Perhaps a powerful being in your world, angelic or demonic, wishes to see God defeated. I suppose it is even possible that your God is playing games with us. I cannot think of a way to test it now, so all I can suggest is that we maintain vigilance." 

"Yeah, that's--a thing. I don't know what the motive would be but it sounds plausible. I'll keep an eye out for any more . . . purposeful-seeming coincidences."

"Calling prestidigitation several spells that share a gesture might be more accurate, yeah. One of my friends also has spells, and when we try to use each other's gestures nothing happens, but when we try our own gestures and each other's incantations it gets weird results. Partial effects, or overpowered effects, or the spell works normally but something else random happens at the same time."

Leareth is confused, and very intrigued.

"Are there spells that you shared from the beginning?" he asks. "This spell you call 'Prestidigitation', for example, or take any other example – did the demon teach it only to you, or to your friend also? If there are cases of the latter, do the shared spells already have the same incantation?"

The incantations are meaningful – they're in a language that the mysterious force of translation makes comprehensible to him – but the gestures aren't. He knows there are languages of hand-sign, with meaningful vocabulary and syntax; this seems like evidence that the gestures aren't that. Which makes it natural to assume that they shape the function of the spell, and the gestures serve some other purpose – what? 

"Is it necessary that you know the purpose of a spell when casting it?" he asks. "I assume you have tried having your friend teach you one of their incantations without explaining what it does." 

"We have a couple of the same incantations but different gestures for them. We haven't gotten any of each other's spells to work correctly, but they fail almost the same way whether or not we know what they're supposed to be doing. Except for the things you need to mentally specify it fills in something random."

"Rather than failing entirely? Fascinating." Leareth frowns at him; he's going to ask about bringing in Bruce's friends at some point, but he wants to try the experiments that only require a Bruce first. "What happens if you cast one of your own spells and use the wrong pair for gesture and incantation?" 

"Similar range of things to what happens if you use someone else's incantation--underpowered or overpowered or side effects. Also, if you want to see any examples of the latter, we'll want to go to the basement--sometimes the side effects are fire."

"Hmm." Leareth thinks it over for a moment, glancing over his notes. "I would like to see that – it may be informative to observe with mage-sight. Should I conceal myself with an illusion again in case anybody sees us going downstairs?" 

"Probably a good idea, yeah. Unless it's expensive enough that I should scout and tell you when the coast is clear instead."

"It is costly in terms of concentration – I will not be able to manage any complex thinking on the way – but not especially in power." Leareth isn't trying that hard to save every scrap of mage-energy he can, at this point; his reserves can replenish to keep up with regular use of minor magic, and anything major needs a different solution anyway. 

He stands up, closes his eyes, focuses. A moment later, the bed and bedroom wall behind him are perfectly visible, with no sign except for a very faint shimmer when he moves. "Ready." 

Bruce stares curiously at the shimmer for a moment, then leads the way down two flights of stairs to an unfinished basement, making sure to leave doors wide open behind him and doubling back to shut the basement door after Leareth is definitely through it.

And then Leareth is visible again and unfolding his makeshift note-paper. "I am ready to observe." 

"Okay, I'm going to do one that comes out overpowered first and then one that does random stuff. This first one is going to make an excessively bright light."

Bruce attempts to cast Silent Image with the somatic component of Darkvision. The resulting silent image of a green cube is almost too bright to look at.

The corresponding mysterious-language phrase is about what one would expect. Leareth raises a partially-opaque shield to mute the light. (It doesn't block his mage-sight).

"Interesting," he notes. "As before, I can see the energy flow, very briefly; it is more than Prestidigitation used. I cannot, of course, tell whether it is more than this spell would usually require, without also watching you cast the standard version. What is the spell to which the gesture belongs?" He's trying to sort out how power requirements correlate to effect, whether it's the intuitive way he would expect for his own world or something different. 

"The gesture is from Darkvision, which lets me see clearly in dim light and as well in pitch darkness as I can see at night normally. The game the spells are based on says Darkvision is a more powerful spell than Silent Image, but I don't know how accurate the game is or how much Zygynzaxx is deliberately imitating it."

Leareth's mind races. "That is – I will not conclude it would be impossible in my world, but it would certainly be a highly complex spell. Though I think the difficulty would lie in technique and not power; illusions have this property, they require very fine control and focus, and thus advanced training, but the energy needed is minimal. That is why I am not very limited in their use currently."

Pause to make a note. Leareth frowns. "You have not mentioned finding some spells either more mentally arduous or more physically tiring than others. If that is true, there is a large difference between your magic and mine. It seems you are not holding the entirety of the spell yourself? If there is additional complexity in the Darkvision spell versus Silent Image, it is not you who is managing that; it happens elsewhere, hidden." Presumably in a place where Leareth can't see it, although he should observe more castings to compare. "Perhaps by the work of your demon? Or by some mechanism that they built. Tell me more about this game?" 

"Some spells involve holding a mental image, or a mental specification of the effect I want, but they aren't any more tiring than if I concentrated on the thing without casting the spell, and they don't take anything out of my physically. There's definitely something managing some of the complexity behind the scenes, because the illusions I can do are way more realistic than anything I could have painted. The game is . . . well, first of all it definitely doesn't correspond perfectly to reality, because it's got all sorts of rules about how many times you can use which spells per day and I can just cast any of them whenever. But the general idea is that you get a bunch of people to all pretend to be characters in an imaginary world, generally either people with magic powers or people who are really good at fighting, and make up stories about your characters exploring mysterious ruins and fighting monsters and saving the town and stuff. And there are a bunch of complicated rules for what you can have your character do and how to tell whether they did it successfully or not. Like, if you shoot an arrow at someone you roll dice and do some math to decide if it hit."

"Interesting. It bears some resemblance to games I have seen used for military training, but...well, adapted to focus on enjoyment rather than education, I suppose. The correspondence is interesting. Do you think that your demon invented the game? I suppose it would also explain it if another warlock in the past made a game to imitate the magic they had learned." More notes. "In any case, I would like to see a spell with random side effects, next." 

"Demons teaching humans magic has been a thing for a lot longer than the game has, but it could go either way. It probably wasn't Zygynzaxx in particular, because there are a lot of demons and a lot of DnD players, but maybe. He's pretty secretive. You might be better than me at getting him to tell you stuff."

"Spells with random side effects . . . I think I'll go with Mage Hand and the gestures from Detect Magic. That tends to be pretty mild." He does some gestures, says "Create a spectral hand that obeys my will," and the spectral hand appears. It's made of a concentrated and directed blob of ambient magic. Some more ambient magic appears from the same mysterious source, and lacking anything to do with itself it attempts to turn Bruce's hair bright green.

Oh. 

Leareth reaches out with mental hands and snatches the wandering magic, drawing it into his reserves. It...doesn't quite feel like taking in node-energy, but it's not like blood magic either. Maybe somewhere in between.

He closes his eyes for a moment, just enjoying the feeling of power. 

"I think that I took care of the side effects," he says a moment later. "Does it have the same effect every time?" 

Bruce's hair remains un-green! He picks up the notebook in the spectral hand and turns it around. "I think you did! They're different every time but they're usually super obvious. Setting fires, turning things colors, one time I tried prestidigitation with the gesture from  Detect Thoughts and it spontaneously appeared about half a gallon of water. What did you do to fix it?"

"I stole it!" Leareth smiles, briefly, but more broadly than usual. "To be precise, I took it into my reserves, as I would with ambient energy in my world. I think that this solves several of our problems." A pause. "I am very curious about the water. Is there a different spell that creates or transports in water?" 

He watches the spectral hand intently for a few moments. "May I try something? Your hand also appears to be made out of mage-energies. If I am able to use that, and casting the spell costs you nothing, this could solve my issue with replenishing power, at least for minor to moderate-sized casting." 

"There is a spell that creates water, yeah. One sec--" He casts Detect Magic again and then says, "Go ahead and try the thing you're thinking of."

Leareth, concentrating, Reaches in and tugs at the tightly-woven energy, unraveling it and then, before it can dissipate, drawing it in as well. 

The hand vanishes.

It's somewhat more energy than the random excess he had time to absorb before. Leareth almost grins. "Excellent. About ten more of those and I could most likely manage a Gate." 

"Awesome! And I can just spam that all day if you like--with the right gesture this time."

"This is excellent progress." Leareth rolls his neck, shakes out his hands. "I do not actually need to Gate now, however, so perhaps I might observe more of your magic. You could observe more of mine as well with your spell for it, now that I am not limited to very minor workings." 

"I would love to see more of your magic! As far as mine, I haven't shown you Shield, Unseen Servant, Alter Self, Darkvision, Detect Thoughts, Fly, or Nondetection. That last one isn't as cool as it sounds; it only hides you from other magic instead of making you invisible."

"You have the ability to read thoughts?" Leareth is intrigued. "I would like to see you demonstrate that, and in particular, whether my shields are proof against it. I can show you..." He thinks for a moment. "I could scry a view of your bedroom. That is a good example of a moderate-power spell." 

"That's cool, that you can scry. If you can scry yourself I can see if Nondetection blocks it. But we can try Detect Thoughts first if you want. Uh, let me know when your shield is ready?"

"I am always shielding, generally speaking." He closes his eyes, takes a breath. "There, I have reinforced it to full power. Go on." Unfortunately, shielding fully does mean that he can't watch with mage-sight. 

"Reveal the thoughts of those around me," Bruce incants, and turns his attention to Leareth.

With an unshielded target, he would get an immediate sense of "there's a person there", and then, when he looked a bit closer, immediate surface thoughts. The former is useful for sneaking out after curfew. He's done the latter only once before, on Larry from his gaming group, with Larry concentrating really hard on the concept of pink elephants.

"Huh. I can tell you're there, but I can't get anything off you. Possibly because it doesn't work on people from other worlds but more likely because your shields are good."

"...There is the obvious test, then." Leareth takes in a slow breath, lets it out, and – very unchararistically, and with some discomfort – drops his mental shields. (He keeps his basic shielding against magical and physical attacks up, because he's not stupid.)

He doesn't try particularly hard to control his thoughts. Mostly he's thinking through the possible use cases of a spell to sense nearby people, that isn't tiring for Bruce and can be cast with a gesture and a word. Bruce could be trained up to be an incredible spy, especially if any of his spells include invisibility...

And now Bruce can see Leareth's surface thoughts. It's as fascinating and unnerving as it was the last time, having another mind right there, having thoughts in his head that aren't his. Maybe even more so--Leareth thinks faster. The idea that he could learn to be a spy is exciting, though he expects that spying requires a lot of skills Bruce wouldn't even think to list and which he may or may not have the potential to get any good at.

He drops the read after a couple seconds and says, "That let me see your surface thoughts. Theoretically I could try to look deeper, but I've never tried it. I've stopped now; I don't know if you can tell."

"Very good." Leareth immediately raises his shields. (He dislikes being unshielded; it feels naked.) "I can sense that you are no longer casting – that spell requires a minor but ongoing flow from its source, rather than a single point of access. Since I was paying very careful attention, I did feel something, but if I were not participating in this experiment, I would not have recognized it as a mental probe and might not have noticed at all. I suspect that a deeper look would be quite noticeable, however. It is in my world." 

He frowns. "I ought perhaps demonstrate a deeper mental probe for you, so that you will know the feeling of it. Hmm, I wonder if you could learn to hold mental shields? Or if your demon acquaintance has a spell for it – though, I am not sure if you can be casting more than one spell at once, in this system. Have you tried that?" 

"I can do two at once, but I need to be concentrating on both of them and it's easy to drop one. Learning to shield and to recognize a mental probe would be good. Uh, ready when you are, I guess." He tries to pay attention to his own mind and watch for anything unusual.

Leareth reaches out. He wants to know... For the purposes of the experiment, he would like to know Bruce's opinion of him, and he floats that prompt, not quite at the level of verbal Mindspeech, and then dives deeper into the fast-moving current that is Bruce's surface mind. 

Leareth is smart, and extremely brave, and his magic is totally awesome, and overall he's the most interesting and reasonable adult Bruce has met in person and he wants to learn as much from him as possible.

He notices the direction of his thoughts turning and looks up. "Did you just do the thing? I think I noticed it."

"Very good." Leareth is smiling. "I think you do not have the means to notice it directly, as I would, since you are less aware of the 'surfaces' of your mind than a Gifted Thoughtsenser would be. However, a deeper probe, in order to be useful, generally will involved nudging your thoughts in a particular direction, which it seems you are enough in touch with your mind's usual patterns to remark on." 

He thinks for a moment. "I am not sure if I will be able to teach you the standard method for shielding; I know of a method that can be taught to un-Gifted people, but it requires extensive practice and control of the mind. Have you done meditation?" Pause. "Perhaps a simpler method is to see if this Nondetection spell can works for this purpose." 

"I haven't, no. Let's try Nondetection first." He casts it.

"Fascinating. No, I cannot sense your thoughts now." He closes his eyes. "In fact, if I am not looking at you, and relying on Thoughtsensing alone, I would be unable to tell that there is another person in this room. Just a moment." 

Leareth gathers his power, and pushes, the same way he would if forcing his way through the shields of a much weaker mage. At first, nothing, but he's got some power to spare after the Mage Hand experiment, so he pours in more–

And the spell shatters, and there's Bruce's mind again, full of startlement at the novel (and moderately painful) sensation of magic exploding in his metaphorical hands.

...And some of the collapsing spell springs back on Leareth as well, just as his reserved mage-energy runs dry. He staggers, instinctively reaches for nearby ambient magic, finds none, and then sits down on the floor rather suddenly. 

"Ow--Shit, are you okay? I've never had a spell explode like that before!"

"I imagine...no one...has tried to break one before." Leareth is out of breath. And dizzy. And, ow. He slowly brings both hands to his head. "Tired. Breaking that...took some doing." He's wondering if the magic of Bruce's world behaves differently, because his shields seem not to have done much against it – maybe more to the point, it drained enough of his reserves just getting through that he didn't have much to reinforce his shields with. 

"Do you want, like, an aspirin or something? Uh, it's a painkiller."

"...Would appreciate it." Leareth is feeling steadier, but not enough that he especially wants to stand up. "Are you hurt? If not, it would also help if you might cast a few more of the Mage Hands so that I can use the energy. I suspect my magic is operating at something of a disadvantage, when it comes to breaking your magic – it is doable, but there is loss of efficiency." 

"I'm okay. Could use an aspirin myself, though. But I can do a couple of Mage Hand first." He starts casting it; two is the most he can keep up at once but if Leareth is eating them as fast as Bruce is casting them that adds up to a pretty decent throughput.

Leareth consumes about a dozen and then lifts a hand. "All right, all right. Enough." The headache is still there, but his body hums with energy. He hops easily to his feet. "Go, take care of your headache as well." He rubs his neck. "...I would appreciate a glass of water, and perhaps something to eat. Probably I ought stay down here to avoid notice?" 

"Yeah, staying down here's a good plan. Back in a minute." He pops upstairs and returns with water and aspirin and bread and cheese for both of them.

Leareth looks at the small pill with some dubiousness, it resembles a pebble much more than any kind of medicine he's seen, but swallows it and then munches on the food while he goes through his notebook and reviews his taped-together diagram. It's...reasonably tasty. The cheese, although odd and definitely oddly coloured, is still recognizably cheese. 

"On your end, I think that we still plan to review Shield, Unseen Servant, Alter Self, Darkvision, and Fly," he says when he's done. "I would be glad to demonstrate scrying first if your head is still bothering you, however." 

"We can do more magic now; I think you got whacked worse than I did." Shield is ideally going to involve Leareth trying to get through the shield, so, "Alter Self is neat. I can change my appearance, or give myself gills and breathe underwater, or grow horns if I wanted horns. It wears off after an hour." Now that the idea is in his head, it occurs to him that this would be another really useful spell for a spy.

"...Are all of those using the same incantation? They would be very different spell structures in my world, to alter appearance versus function, and I do not think that the gills option is possible in temporary form at all." And he's curious to see what the incantantion is. Paper is ready. "I am ready to observe when you are ready to cast." 

"No, it's a set of three, the human one is one incantation and also the gills are different from the horns and stuff. Maybe because they're the most anatomically fiddly. Check this out, I can turn into you." Gesture gesture "Alter my form within the bounds of human flesh." Now he's an exact duplicate of Leareth. "It even does voices!" He adds, in Leareth's voice.

That is extremely useful. "You can do perfect illusions with no additional concentration," Leareth says. "Incredibly powerful. Hmm. Does it also, for example, give you the same weight and physical strength of your target? Can you change it midway without re-casting the spell entirely? How long does it last before requiring renewal?" 

"Weight yes, physical strength . . . I think so? But not coordination, if I tried to play sports in a differently shaped body I'd still be lousy at it even if I was copying an athlete. And I can switch it up but it has to go via my real form--like this." He returns to his normal self for a moment, then acquires bright blue hair and green eyes and an extra six inches of height. "And it lasts an hour unless I get too distracted by something."

“Interesting. We ought perhaps experiment at some point with how distracted is ‘too distracted’ and whether your focus on it can improve with practice. Certain situations are likely to be distracting.” He frowns. “Can you become an animal this way, and if so, do you acquire their abilities such as a bird’s flights?”

"No, unfortunately I have to stay basically human. I tried copying a cat's eyes one time to see better in the dark but it didn't work. But I do think concentration gets better with practice; I'm better at holding a spell while I do other things than I was when I started out a few months ago."

"But gills and breathing underwater does work? Is that some kind of special exception?" 

"Apparently? Maybe the incantation will make it clear. This one actually doesn't have a visualization component; it looks the same every time." He reverts to his usual self and demonstrates; the incantation turns out to be "Make my body suited to breath and speed in water as on land." Slits open on his neck, and his hands acquire webbing between the fingers.

Why that gets counted as the same spell, Leareth can’t fathom, but it’s not actually any weirder than Prestidigitation, and he supposed an access-point for mortals to use magic set up by a capricious demon might well be odd from his perspective.

“I suppose you cannot really demonstrate its function here,” he says. “And the third?”

The third incantation is simply "Grow natural weapons from my body," and it gets him a pair of ram's horns that look, frankly, stupid. Think "pair of cinnamon buns glued to his head" except he's not as good as Princess Leia at making them look reasonable.

Leareth smirks slightly, and makes another note. "I see." He's not clear that said horns are an especially useful weapon, but keeps that to himself. "I am ready to show you scrying now," he offers. 

"Yeah, I still don't really see the point of that third one," he says, ditching the bun-horns. "I don't want fangs or spines or claws or whatever. Let's check out scrying, that's way cooler."

Leareth sets down his papers. "I would normally use a focus of some kind for this," he admits, "and it will be more difficult and tiring without, but not to an infeasible extent." Most mages wouldn't be able to cast at all without a focus. Leareth, of course, has figured out a way centuries ago. 

He closes his eyes and raises his hands, and over about a minute, a flat circle of pearly light appears in the air. Then, quite suddenly, it flips to show a slightly-distorted view of Bruce's bedroom, seen from the perspective of a point hovering above his bed. 

Leareth grunts slightly, feeding more power into the spell. "There. I am curious if Nondetection might also block this one – can you cast it at a distance, on your bedroom as a whole? Shield is another candidate for a spell that might block it, though it could also be a purely physical shield." 

"Ooooh." Bruce walks around the scry, looking at the image from all sides to see if it has a back and if things seen through it exhibit parallax relative to each other. "What would you normally use as a focus? Can you scry places you haven't been? What happens if you pick somewhere dark, or a viewpoint that's inside an object or underwater? I can only do Nondetection on myself, sorry. Is there a range limit? Could you get around the range limit by scrying someone who was scrying somewhere else?"

Leareth gives Bruce a chance to have a good look (the spell looks like a fogged mirror from behind, from the front it's more like a flat TV screen than a window), then drops the spell; he can't hold it and focus on answering so many questions at the same time. 

"We use crystals, usually," he says. "Often with some of the initial spell-elements permanently cast into the substance of it – that is the main advantage of a focus. I cannot scry places I have never been unless I also have some kind of anchor there, for example, a matching focus-crystal or another object with a magical signature I can search for." The latter is a rare technique; Leareth wasn't technically the one to invent it, but the inventor lived and died in an obscure kingdom a thousand years ago and he may be one of the only people alive who knows it.

"If I select a location that is dark," he adds, "I cannot see anything unless it is also at close enough range that I can cast a mage-light there, using the scrying-point to aim. My range for that is in the vicinity of a mile. Inside an object, I have not tried, but I assume one sees nothing. Underwater is possible, but flowing water erodes magic in my world, so it becomes difficult to hold the spell at a constant point and it is much more draining." 

He stops to think for a moment. "Range is determined by the mage's power – it is more tiring to cast at longer range, both at the initial casting and to maintain it. I myself can manage a range of about fifty miles unaided, several hundred with a focus, and up to a thousand if I have assistant mages who can feed energy to my reserves." He smiles slightly. "I have not tried scrying another mage scrying, but it is a clever idea." 

"That's neat. Scrying your home world probably won't work, if range matters. Does any crystal work equally well? I can probably find you some quartz if it doesn't have to be anything fancy. Do you know why flowing water erodes magic?"

"I did assume scrying my home world would not work." He frowns. "Quartz is commonly used, as one of the more neutral options, so yes, that would be very helpful. Mages tend to have personal focus-stones as well, of more specific substances that they can work well with." He tugs open the neck of his tunic and pulls out a small chunk of amber hung from a leather thong. "This is mine. I have not needed to use it so far, since it is mainly for drawing in large quantities of turbulent or impure magic from outside oneself."

He tries to remember Bruce's other question. "Right. In my world, magic interacts to an extent with the physical world, and can be eroded in a way analogous to physical substances. Strong winds have a similar but weaker effect. Rapidly moving earth would likely do the same, but this rarely comes up." 

"Huh. That makes more sense than it just being water." He jots down a note to look for quartz, in the driveway gravel first and then at the store if that doesn't turn anything up. "If I go over there," he points at the other side of the basement, "and cast Nondetection again, can you try scrying me?"

Leareth turns to face the other way, and casts the initial step again. (If he has to do much more of this he's going to need to eat a few Mage Hands to recover.) 

"Interesting," he notes. "I...appear to be able to scry the basement itself...but you are not visible." He turns around just to check that he can see Bruce with his regular eyes. "Fascinating." 

"So it's like I'm invisible? Cool. What happens if I . . . ?" He picks up the cardboard box of Christmas decorations.

Now the box is also invisible! Leareth reports this to Bruce, and then apologizes and drops the spell before he hits the point of unreasonable exhaustion.

"I suspect that my magic is generally less efficient in your world," he confesses. "This spell ought not be as tiring as it is, and yet." 

"It does seem that way. Though now that I think about it I have no sense of how much power I'm actually using. I could just run out at some point. Zygynzaxx didn't say anything about that but he's a demon, he might have thought it was funny not to mention it."

Leareth thinks for a while. 

"Since it appears to me that you are clearly drawing on power from elsewhere," he says finally, "and since my best guess is that the reservoir is another plane and not a cordoned-off area within it, I doubt that." A thin smile. "Although, if you did, and if I am correct that the reservoir of power is Hell, that might be a very good thing for our mission." 

He has a brief and absurd mental image of a city full of demons having a power outage. "That's reassuring. Is that possible in your world, cordoning off an area so the ambient magic in it is separate from everywhere else?"

"...Not easily. With a specific technique, something similar can be done – power is keyed to particular mages, so that only they can make use of it. This technique requires the direct help of a god, however." 

"Huh. That sounds sort of similar to Moses--he was a prophet, one of the most important ones, and God had him do a bunch of miracles, or did a bunch of miracles through him, or something."

"...Could be." Leareth is unconvinced. "The setup I describe is less one-off, more of a process. In any case. I am interested to know more about Unseen Servant, if you wish to do that next." 

"Sure. Create a shapeless force that follows my commands." This has no immediate visible effect, then an invisible entity opens one of the boxes and starts pulling winter clothes out, unfolding them, refolding them, and stacking them on another box. 

"You could probably eat this one too, now that I think about it. It's more automatic than Mage Hand, I can think 'unfold and refold clothes' at it instead of thinking about the individual motions." In fact, he's not even looking at the box of clothes while he says his.

This is another case that would seem miraculous and incredible in Leareth's world, but he's not shocked anymore – he's starting to sketch out an understanding, build his theories, it would be stupid to keep being surprised by the same things. 

"Very useful," he says instead. "Can it operate outside of line-of-sight? Is there a total range limit? Weight limit to lift? Do you need to personally possess the skill you command for it, or have a detailed understanding, or can you ask it to perform a task you would be unable to alone?" He shakes his head. "I apologize if I am going too quickly." 

"It's fine, I might not be able to keep up but that's not your fault. It doesn't need line of sight but also I can't see through it, so I can get it doing something repetitive and leave the room but can't send it out of the room and have it start something. I haven't found a range limit because I haven't wanted to try it outdoors and also it doesn't move very fast. It's roughly as strong as I am and it can only do fairly simple stuff, I think it's something like things I can do without thinking much about how to do them? That might not be the actual criteria. I can sweep a floor or make a sandwich with it but not write an essay." (Look, just because it would be wrong to use magic to do his homework instead of doing it himself doesn't mean it's wrong to find out if it's possible.)

"Interesting. I wonder if it need be a skill that you in particular can perform without thought, or only a repetitive technique that is possible to perform unthinking. All of what you described requires practice. Is there a similar skill you can think of that you do not yourself possess, but which you know someone who does, and the materials for it are easily obtainable in your home? Sewing, for example." 

"Good question. I think we've got a needle and thread somewhere . . . " He digs through a couple of boxes while the unseen servant packs the winter clothes back up, and doesn't find sewing supplies but does find some yarn and knitting needles. He can get the invisible force to pick them up, but it doesn't seem to have any more clue than he does how to knit. He mentally squashes down his embarrassment at demonstrating an absence of a specific skill. "Looks like either it uses my knowledge or it can't knit. I don't think it's a fine motor problem; I had it sort colored beads one time to see if it could see in color and that worked fine."

"Hmm." So, less powerful than the spell could have been, but still quite useful. "Is it all right with you if I try to eat it, now?" 

"Go ahead." (It's edible, and provides slightly more power than Mage Hand.)

Excellent. 

"I would be curious to see Fly," he says. "Flying is definitely not trivially possible with magic in my world. Although, it is perhaps my turn." He thinks for a moment, going over categories of spell. "I can show you a short range Gate if you wish. Perhaps from this door to your closet door?" 

"If a Gate is what it sounds like it sounds really cool. And Fly is actually one I can cast on you, if you want to try it."

Leareth would be delighted to experience flying! He can demonstrate a Gate first, though. Focus, weave the threshold on the basement door (he's very fast at it) – the doorway glows blue white, and then little tendrils of glowing magic start licking at the air – hold the destination in mind – and seconds later the Gate snaps up, and Bruce can see his bed and desk through a shimmering membrane. 

"You can cross back and forth if you wish," Leareth offers. It's a little tiring to hold it, but not very, and he can always eat another Mage Hand or two. "Interesting, that Gates work here – I suppose I knew they must, given how I arrived, but my understanding is that they route via the Void, a plane in my world." 

Bruce does all the things anyone would do the first time they saw a hole in space--going back and forth, standing in the middle, sticking one arm through and bending it around so it feels like his hands ought to be in the same place even though they aren't, inspecting the impenetrable back side of one and going "oooh". He's done within a minute or so. "Maybe it's all one big collection of planes, and this one is 'next to' the Void the same way your normal one is? I don't know enough about planes to know if that makes any sense or is totally dumb. Also, if someone had been in my closest would they be stuck in there?"

Leareth thinks for a moment. "Yes, I suppose they would. It is customary not to built Gates on doorways that are the sole entry and exit to a room, for that reason. Often, standalone archways are built for this purpose. I did not want to cast it on the door to your room, however, since it might be more conspicuous. If you are done, I will take it down now."

He waits for confirmation and then unweaves the magic – carefully, returning what he can to his reserves, but most of the input was lost to the Void.

When he's done, he sits down and leans his back against the wall. "I will rest for a minute, and then if you are able, I would appreciate consuming some more of your spells to replenish. Gates are among the most draining spells." 

"No problem." Just between him and himself, he's glad he's a useful power source. Leareth's abilities are impressive and intimidating and it's nice not to be totally useless. Makes him feel like Leareth is benefitting at all from having him around. Of course, if they actually end up using magic in some sort of fight, it would be better if Leareth had infinite amounts of it, but given that he doesn't it's good Bruce can make more.

"Very good." Leareth stands up. "That first, and then I am very curious to experience this spell of flight." 

"Okay." Mage hands mage hands, then he holds out his real hand and says "Grant with a touch the power of flight." And if Leareth taps his hand he will be able to move himself through the air as fluidly and easily as he can move his limbs. Gravity still gives him a sense of down, but no longer causes him to move in that direction.

"This is very impressive!" Leareth calls down from the ceiling. "How long does it last? Range limit?" 

"Ten minutes at a time, and I need to touch you to start it but now you can go as far as you want as long as you're back on the ground when it runs out."

Leareth spends several minutes exploring the spell, moving up and down and sideways, testing if he can duck to the floor and lift objects, or push himself off the walls and glide. 

He can lift things, and they seem to weigh as much as always. Pushing himself off a wall works, though air resistance slows him down if he doesn't keep using the spell to maintain speed. If he goes past nine minutes Bruce will give him a time warning.

Leareth runs out of things to try well before the nine-minute mark, and lowers himself to the floor, retrieving his notes. "This could be very useful. Especially combined with my magic, I think. I might cast an illusion to conceal myself or you, and then the flight could happen unseen. Hmm – if you are casting it on yourself, and reach the ten minutes, can you re-cast it quickly enough to remain in the air?" 

"Yeah, I can just start a new casting before the first one finishes and hold both for a minute." That was actually the form a lot of his two-spells-at-once practice took once he got his character to level five: hovering a foot above his bedroom carpet trying to chain fly spells.

"Very good. Of course you have checked." Leareth makes a note. "And, what about Shield?" 

"It has a weirdly short duration; it only lasts about six seconds, and it doesn't look like anything. I can just cast it repeatedly and you can throw stuff at me?" The incantation turns out to be the speed-optimized "Shield me.", and the result appears to Leareth's mage-sight to be unusually power-inefficient.

Interesting. Leareth looks around, and throws the pen he's been writing with at Bruce. It bounces off. 

He starts to prepare a levinbolt and then stops; this seems like a bad idea to try without asking. "Does it block magical attacks as well? Also, is there a force limit to the physical protection – if the ceiling collapsed on you, for example, would it protect against that or fail?" 

"It does block magic attacks--or at least it blocked Larry's magic missile--but it definitely wouldn't hold up to the ceiling collapsing." It's good that that ill-advised experiment with the cinderblocks and the third story window ended up being useful for something.

"There is probably a power limit for magical attacks as well, then," Leareth says. "Hmm. I am not sure how to safely test it. Can you shield something other than yourself? I could also test with a very weak levinbolt, that will not harm you if it penetrates, but that will not give us an upper limit and it would be valuable to know." 

"I don't know how to shield something else, sorry." He really wants to suggest that they can find an upper limit by just working up gradually, but he's pretty sure the shield goes from "works" to "doesn't" with no partial-failure stage in between and frankly he's too scared. "I know the upper limit is somewhere below 'a bunch of cinderblocks pushed out a third story window.'"

"...That sounds like a risky experiment? Was anybody hurt?" Well, clearly Bruce is fine now, it can't have been too disastrous. Leareth frowns. "Shield me," he mutters to himself. "The incantation does specify that the target to be shielded is yourself. Can you... What is the mental component? If you were to say, Shield that, and hold the target in mind...?" He's not sure if that will make it even less efficient but it seems worth trying. 

Bruce declines to answer that question, because the truth answer of "I had a concussion but Larry did a really good job of lying to my parents about how I got it" is desperately embarrassing.  "Shield thett, er, shield that? Does that translate to just "make a shield" or something? I can give it a shot." He checks the nearest box for stuff that won't be missed if they destroy it and comes up with a basketball. "Shield that."

Bruce can't tell if a spell does anything except by seeing the effects; he aims a kick at the basketball and gets deflected. Leareth can see that it's still massively inefficient but not more than the previous version.

Leareth throws a weak levinbolt at the basketball; it's also deflected. He tries progressively stronger attacks until, at around the point that a strike would generally be powerful enough to get through a Master-potential mage's ordinary shields, the magic shatters – backlashing at him a little, but he's ready for it this time – and the ball goes flying at the wall, bouncing and landing with visible scorch-marks.

"Interesting," he says quietly. "I wonder if different incantations... Can you try Build a shield here?" It's longer, less speed-optimized, and he's not sure if changing it around will interfere with the power requirements and thus the accompanying gesture, but worth checking.  

He can totally try that! The first time, he screws up the pronunciation and nothing happens. The second time, he gets it right and it works about like the previous shield, except it ends up attached to the area of floor rather than the basketball. This doesn't matter much because the basketball isn't going to move out of the area under its own power, but it is a visible difference to Leareth's Sight.

Leareth makes a note. "Similar," he says, "but specified to a location rather than an object, worth keeping in mind." Unfortunately it doesn't look like it's any more efficient. "I wonder... If you use the gesture for Fly, but that incantation, I am curious to see what will happen. If there are simply side effects from power leakage, I can take care of them." He smiles briefly. "I doubt I would mind the snack." 

"Sure, here goes."

(Having Leareth around makes doing magic science so much safer and easier, and he has good experiment ideas, and in general it's just so good to have an adult around who knows what he's doing.)

This time, half the extra power goes into the shield, and it stays up for about fifteen seconds, and the rest goes into heat and tries to set Bruce's sock on fire.

Leareth snatches up the free magic before it can do more than spark a little. "Hmm." He glances at his notes, trying to remember the order of spell-gestures against his guess at the power being drawn. "Perhaps try with the gesture for Alter Self now?" 

Gesture! Spell-casting! This produces somewhat less runaway edible magic and makes the shield last about ten seconds.

Well, that's somewhat irritating. 

"I will consider this further," Leareth says. "It looks as though we cannot manage to direct all of the excess into the shield. In the meantime, I suppose you could demonstrate Darkvision – I think that is the only one we have not yet run through." 

"Sure. It's convenient that we're already in a basement." And he can turn out the lights and tell Leareth how many fingers he's holding up from across the room, when Leareth can barely see his own hand in front of his face at all.

Also very useful – particularly for spies. Bruce doesn't have any combat spells, exactly, but a number of them show promise for subterfuge. 

He consults his list. "Is that everything, or are there more that we forgot to cover? On my end, I have not showed you much combat magic, but it is...not clearly safe to practice inside. Also, there are compulsions, but I could only demonstrate that on you and I would understand if you are not comfortable with it." 

"Let me think about it for a minute," he says, staring at his shoes. On the one hand, compulsion magic sounds scary. On the other hand, it's quite clear by now that if Leareth meant him harm he would have done it already; it's not like Bruce could stop him. And his brain is oh-so-helpfully generating examples of ways it could be useful to be able to control one's allies in combat. And, no sense not admitting it to himself, he's curious how it works and what it would feel like.

"I think I would be okay with trying a compulsion, if it definitely wouldn't do anything that wasn't temporary. Can you explain how it works, first? Like, does it make you want to do things or just do them, can you make someone do something you know how to do but they don't, stuff like that?"

Leareth frowns, trying to figure out the appropriate order. 

"On the question of shifting wants versus actions, it is not that simple; however, it is certainly much quicker and easier to cast a compulsion that forces actions rather than changing all of the underlying motives, and so one would almost never use the latter in practice." He smiles thinly. "The latter would be impossible to do subtly, since it would take days or weeks to lay all of the sub-components that would cause someone to feel internally motivated to, say, assassinate a certain target. Since this would be very noticeable to the victim, it is unclear what the point would be." 

He pauses, clarifying his thoughts. "It is also possible to use a compulsion for something that the caster knows how to do and they cannot, however, again it is something that one must work for, since in practice what one is doing is building in all of the component mental motions that would usually go into the skill. This method can be perfected once and then repeated many times, though, which offers efficiency gains. I have implemented it in military contexts, voluntarily, to speed training for soldiers learning certain fighting techniques and particularly those which require coordinated group formations." 

"As to your first question – I can very easily place a compulsion temporarily and then remove it without leaving any traces. Assuming that you trust me to do so." Another thin smile. "You could also check for yourself with Detect Magic – an active compulsion is detectable by mage-sight in my world, so I assume that your spell would also work." 

Using it for faster training sounds unfairly awesome in a The Matrix "I know Kung Fu" way. "I trust you to take it off, but you still haven't told me enough examples of simple ones for me not to be confused."

Leareth nods. “A simple example would be a basic action - we might say, going to that box of clothing and removing a shirt and bringing it to me. Usually it would be tied to a trigger phrase rather than initiated by the casting, and would be invisible to the subject in the interim. A skillful mage can cast one subtly enough that the subject does not distinguish it from their own thoughts; for example, if we were not already having this conversation, I could compel you to go upstairs and obtain food for us without your necessarily remarking it was not your idea; but that is not really the purpose of this demonstration, so I would not try to be sneaky about it.”

"Okay, that" is terrifying "makes sense. I'd be okay with trying it now." before I lose my nerve.

“If you are sure.” Leareth looks hard into his eyes for a long moment. “I am casting it now,” this will not feel like anything or be in any way noticeable to Bruce except that Leareth looks very focused for about ten seconds. 

”I would like a shirt,” Leareth says, conversationally, and now Bruce is going to find his legs moving of their own accord, over to the corner of the room where the box is, and his hands opening it and reaching in...

It's not at all an unpleasant or disturbing experience. In fact it's exactly like being lost in thought and getting up from his desk and getting a soda out of the fridge and being back at his desk before consciously noticing he's thirsty. But the fact that this is something magic can do, to people in general and to him in particular, means he can't just let himself do things and trust that his body is generally going to work in his own interests. And he also can't pay constant conscious attention to his every physical action at all times while also functioning as a human being, so. Once the compulsion stops moving him around, he spends a long moment very still, except for a racing heart.

You need to calm down, he tells himself. This isn't any different from the situation you were in five minutes ago, you're just more aware of it. It also isn't any different from being in a universe with an omnipotent God. Your free will has always been contingent on other beings choosing not to mess with it, and you've made it sixteen years that way, so stop breathing manually and go back to doing science.

"Huh."

"I can see why you would use that for teaching things, I bet it would be way easier to learn to throw a football or whatever if you could watch yourself do it first."

(He's still breathing manually, embarrassingly enough. He'll stop eventually.)

Leareth is one hundred percent not fooled. He’s slightly tempted to read Bruce’s thoughts to figure out what’s going on, but he doesn’t.

“Bruce,” he says. “Bruce. Look at me.” He waits. “You seem...not all right. Listen to me; I swear to you by every star in the sky that I will not do this to you again without your permission. Now. Can you tell me what is troubling you?” It shouldn’t have been an especially distressing compulsion.

"I'm sorry. It's not, I'm not worried about you doing it, I said I trusted you and I meant it and you did get permission. It's just, knowing that's the sort of thing that can happen. That it could have happened before and I would never have known about it. I know it doesn't make any sense to freak out."

"I know." Leareth spends a long time searching for the right words. "You live in a world where your mind is not inviolate," he says finally. "This is a true fact about reality, and one that is justifiably painful. I grew up knowing that compulsions existed," this isn't technically a lie even though he doesn't remember growing up the first time, he's pretty sure he knew about the concept, "and that once I was trained as a mage, I would have defences. You are learning of it only now – in fact, your world as far as I know does not have this particular magic. It makes sense for this to be an unpleasant shock and realization, even if nothing about reality has truly changed."

He pauses, thinking. "I can put my own shields on you if you wish," he says. "Such that nobody else would be able to meddle with your mind. It would be advantageous to me – I do not wish my allies to be vulnerable. The downside is that it would be visible to Detect Magic; I am not sure if you expect this to present a problem?" 

His first instinct is to say yes, please, shields are good, but he makes himself think about it. And then makes himself say, "I'm going to want to talk to Zygynzaxx on Monday, we have questions for him, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had some equivalent of Detect Magic that was on all the time, and we probably don't want him to know about you. So I guess it would actually be safer to not, at least for now. But I really appreciate you offering." He dimly notices he's gone back to breathing normally, but avoids noticing all the way in case that would mess it up again. "Is there anything someone without your kind of magic can do to learn resist compulsions, or notice them happening?"

Leareth nods. "On the first – yes, a good precaution to note. On the second, I will need to consider; perhaps, but I do not know of an existing technique so I would need to put one together–" He cuts off. "Oh. If your demon Zygynzaxx might possibly be running Detect Magic at all times, could they also be running Detect Thoughts?" 

Bruce searches his memory for times Zygynzaxx did anything that might have indicated he was reading Bruce's mind or detecting people who weren't in the room. "I can't prove that he isn't," he says carefully, "because he could be telling any number of lies about his abilities, but the one time I did Detect Magic on him it came up negative, and he's not uniformly faster than us at noticing when someone is about to enter the room. So if he is he's doing a good job hiding it."

Leareth nods, slowly. "I see. Not proof, no, but evidence. In any case, if he is he would notice the difference if you did arrive shielded, and I cannot quickly produce a talisman that will shield your thoughts without itself being detectable by magical leakage – in fact, possibly I cannot make one at all that would evade Detect Magic, if it works by a different pathway."

He shakes his head. "I might begin working on such an artifact, however – it is a valuable test to see if permanent set-spells are feasible in your world, and I am no longer concerned about exhausting my reserves thanks to your abilities. You could then wear it most of the time and remove it when about to speak with your demon. What sorts of questions do you wish to ask him?" 

He checks his earlier notes and adds to them a bit. "What sort of goals do demons tend to have, what are the limits on their abilities, what do they know about angels, and I don't want to ask him directly but it would be good to know whether demons can be injured or incapacitated--by magic or in general. And probably a bunch of other stuff depending on what our priorities are."

Leareth nods. "I also have some general questions regarding Hell and its properties. I am not sure if you think there would be an unsuspicious way to ask?" 

"I could try asking him what his life is like back in Hell, see if that gets anything useful. Also I might know some of the answers already, there have been some prophets who had visions of Hell and one who actually went there."

"That truly happened?" Leareth stares at him. "Did they write of their experiences?" 

He nods. "They're not the most pleasant reading, or the most coherent, but they might have information we can use."

He pulls up some texts on his phone. The longest one is the account of an Italian poet who was guided through Hell and Heaven by an angel. The man can clearly write, but his account is more like a soldier's diary, or a recounting of a nightmare, than like poetry. The others are shorter, mostly descriptions of visions from a single viewpoint, but together they paint a consistent picture.

Hell, apparently, is divided into nine levels separated by narrow and treacherous paths, each characterized by a different gruesome thing happening to the inhabitants. The higher levels, which are in some sense closer to Earth, are mainly inhabited by demons, who occasionally manage to escape their various tortures long enough to mess around on Earth or further torture nearby humans. The lower levels are mostly full of humans, who have a much worse rate of being able to interact with anyone. Dante goes from Hell to Heaven via the bottom level of the former, and this version has a footnote by the translator to the effect that some theologians speculate that sufficiently repentant dead souls might do likewise, but that no evidence of this has been observed.

Well, that's pretty disturbing. Leareth takes notes. 

"It would be good to have a source of confirmation," he says slowly. "Nonetheless, I...would like this place eradicated from reality." 

Solemn nod. "I know getting between Hell and Earth is possible in principle because Zygynzaxx does it, but I don't know how or if it's possible to get dead humans out."

"I may at some point wish to attempt to follow Zygynzaxx on his departure, then," Leareth says. "However, given that this would not exactly be undercover, I would prefer to leave it until we have more information and resources. So I suppose that we need a plan for how to obtain those, and it is possible we will find better avenues of attack in the process." 

"Yes. What sort of resources do you think we should be prioritizing?"

"...We need to think about that. Properly, with paper." Leareth frowns. "I suspect this is not a matter where mundane armies are the answer. We will need supernatural fighting power. Arcane artifacts, if your world has them? Perhaps some mundane weapons can be adapted, since your world is advanced in this space. And allies – agents on the inside. I wonder if it is possible to turn a demon? Or an angel. In any case, first and foremost what we need is knowledge." 

"Dungeons and Dragons the fantasy game has arcane artifacts, but I don't know if they're possible in real life. Does your world have them? As for allies . . . angels are supposed to be extensions of God's will, but some of them did Fall. And demons have rebelled at least once, so in theory one could change sides again, if we learned enough about what they want."

"We have artifacts. Few that I know of are powerful enough to take on a god, and those that are, are...not particularly safe for mortals to wield. That might be a question for your demon. And, yes, the demons who have already rebelled once are likely candidates for being subornable." He frowns. "What time is it, locally?" It's hard to keep track but he's starting to feel pretty tired, in a non-magic-related way. 

"Yeah, it's getting close to dinnertime. It's a good thing my parents are used to me hiding all day. Also, tomorrow is church in the morning; do you want to try to sneak along and watch or would you rather stay here?"

"That sounds very educational, so yes, I wish to accompany you. It would be helpful if I knew some of what to expect first. I can do further reading tonight if there is any relevant material." 

Frown. Something is niggling and it's possibly an awkward topic but it seems important. "Bruce, what is your relationship with your parents? From what I have gathered so far, it seems they are not potential allies in this, and if we will need to evade their attention in this project..." Also Bruce seems unhappy every time he mentions them, which...seems relevant in general even if not to any of their immediate goals. 

"They're good parents. They're fine. They . . . they're good people, they love God, if they knew I was consorting with demons they'd send me to a school for troubled youth for my own good, so I haven't told them. And I haven't told them I'm damned because it would make them sad."

Leareth...does not say his initial reaction, which is that anyone who loves a torture-God is not what he would describe as a 'good' 'person' even if he thought the phrase 'good person' was actually a useful one or a particularly coherent concept. 'Good parents' he can believe. It seems pretty common for people to compartmentalize in that way – hold one sent of societally-approved beliefs without fully looking at the horrifying implications, and otherwise act in kind and thoughtful ways in their local environment. It's not particularly a condemnation of Bruce's parents; it just means they're not the kind of people who take their beliefs seriously. Ergo, not particularly valuable allies to him, at least not at this time. 

"I see," he says. "I suspect it is a good idea to continue concealing everything we are doing here from them. I will take the necessary precautions there." He frowns. "What is the best way for me to obtain food without their noticing – do they pay close enough attention to their pantry that they would remark if you suddenly appear to be eating twice as much?" 

"Probably not, if you take stuff that I could plausibly have eaten in my room. They'll just assume I'm having a growth spurt." And Bruce can eat less of that stuff and more at dinner, and buy a bit more food at school, and the exact size of Leareth's effect on the grocery bill should get lost in the shuffle.

"That makes sense. I can stay in your room and read while you have dinner, if that works." 

"Okay. Should I bring something up afterwards or are you planning to raid the fridge invisibly later? And then for church tomorrow, I do think it'll be educational but I'm not sure how to get you there since we'll be driving. I can give you walking directions and you can leave ahead of us?"

"How likely is it that your parents would walk in at an inopportune time and notice the fridge opening by itself? If this is at all likely, it seem safer that you bring food. And, yes, walking ought to work." 

"Very unlikely if you wait until they're asleep, too likely if you don't, so I'll bring something. If there's anything in particular you want to read about other than more Bible I can show you the Internet; I bet you'll love the Internet."

"...It certainly sounds intriguing. I do wish to learn some more general background about your world's present, in addition to the historical document that is the Bible." 

Bruce has a laptop and his laptop has Google and Wikipedia! "Can you read, like, concepts and procedural knowledge out of my mind as well as words? That'll be a better way to explain than trying to remember all the assumptions I'm making, and be faster, and I might get called for dinner any minute."

"Yes, that ought to work." Leareth unshields a little and reaches out to read Bruce's surface thoughts, ready to probe deeper. "If, hmm, you attempt to think them at me, I think that will help." 

Bruce mentally packages up the entire experience of using the internet, searches and hyperlinks and comments and trolls and logins and wikis and videos and keyboards and mice and all the rest, and tries to beam the whole wad in Leareth's general direction.

...All right that's a lot of content. It's not quite overwhelming but he definitely grabbed onto the gist more than any particular details. That's probably enough, though. "Thank you. I can manage from here, I think." 

That's good, because a woman's voice calls out, "Bruce, dinner's ready!" from the kitchen. Bruce responds "Coming!" and unless Leareth has any last ideas he proceeds to disappear for an hour or so.

That works fine for Leareth. He can sit on Bruce's bed, concealed by an illusion just in case, and use Bruce's laptop to do a quick preliminary skim of this 'Wikipedia'.

Geopolitics: what are the main powers in Bruce's world? How to do governments work generally? Tensions between nations?

Cultural norms: what are the dynamics within families; what are the main family structures? How is marriage practiced, and what are the expectations here? Are there different cultural scripts for men and women? 

Religion: what does worshipping God actually look like? Does this differ much between regions? Does anyone practice a religion that isn't worshipping God or Jesus? 

Geopolitics: the main temporal powers are the United States (where they are now, and it's a republic), Russia (ruled by a hereditary Tzar), and China (doing some extremely complicated thing that seems to cash out to "it's corrupt but it keeps things mostly functional"). There are also several other big countries and a whole lot of small, slightly poorer ones. There are tensions between countries, over trade and the question of which government is best, but lately weapons are so fearsome and war so terrible that the big ones avoid it in favor of glaring at each other.

Family: marriages are between one man and one woman of similar age, usually between 16 and 25, and are indissoluble in any circumstances. Having children is expected though not technically mandatory, and recent advances in medicine have the world population exploding into the billions with no sign of slowing down. Men are expected to work outside the home, to fight in time of war, and to have final authority over decisions made for their households; women are expected to work inside the home, do nearly all the childcare, and be morally and spiritually pure, as demonstrated by never being alone with a male non-relative.

Religion: different countries have different amounts of organized and centralized Church hierarchy (in Russia, it's practically a second government; in America churches are mostly local). God doesn't seem to interface formally with any of them. Worshipping God looks like everyone saying a few sentences of praise to Him first thing in the morning and last thing when they go to bed, plus weekly services with more praise (sung and spoken) and a pastor giving a speech about some aspect of ethics AKA His will, plus more services on holidays. Worship is universally the same everywhere, with the main variations being the celebratory customs around various holidays. There are a handful of humans living in places so remote, and with such willingness to murder intruders, nobody has been able to explain the Gospel to them; this is considered a tragedy (since they're inevitably going to Hell until someone does) and expeditions keep being sent.

It's so uniform. That's Leareth's first thought. Not at all like his own world, with a dozen overlapping religious groups. On the one hand, that does make sense in a world with one god instead of dozens, but on the other hand, people are people and he'd at least expect more, well, disputes on the exact correct method of worshipping God, especially since it sounds like nowadays God doesn't do much in the way of day-to-day reminders or providing clarification. 

He wonders how much the very impressive archive of information that he's reading right now is censored. 

Bruce still isn't back, so he starts poking around for Wikipedia pages on natural laws in the material world, properties of Heaven and Hell, angels and demons and magic. 

The material world: is a crystal sphere with the Sun at its center, with Earth and the other planets orbiting it. The whole thing was created over six days, 6543 years ago, with laws of nature that, when God isn't directly doing something, have everyday results pretty similar to Leareth's world but without magic (Bruce's demon-derived magic isn't mentioned).

Angels and demons are discussed, but not much is known about them. Demons started as angels but rebelled against God; there are seven types of each with a hierarchy of power between the types. Only the two least powerful tiers of angels, confusingly named angels and archangels, have been seen on Earth; the rest are only known to exist from prophetic visions. It is widely suspected that the most powerful demons can occasionally access Earth from their confinement in Hell, and generally use this ability to harm people and/or turn them away from God.

If demons can access Earth from Hell, then travel in the opposite direction ought to be feasible; if he can arrange at some point to observe with mage-sight as Bruce's demon arrives and departs, maybe he can replicate the method.

Bruce is probably going to be back any minute, but in the meantime he can poke at whether angels can be summoned or requested, or if they only appear at random times according to the capricious will of God. 

There are occasional reports of angels showing up in response to the prayers of the especially devout, and helping them with whatever emergency they were praying about, but nothing systematic. And now Bruce is back, with some food.

Leareth is pretty hungry at this point, and starts at the food. "How was supper with your parents?" he asks a few mouthfuls in. 

"Told them my day had been quiet; got them to tell me about theirs so I didn't have to come up with more lies. How's your reading going?"