"Yeah, if it's not good enough the spell will just fail, but I am limited in number of trials per day."

"Which makes experimenting probably really slow and frustrating..."

"Yeah. It's also got an opportunity cost against other spells I can prepare."

"It'd be really annoying if alchemy worked like that..."

"Yeah, it's annoying for me too, but it is what it is. Cantrips I can cast all day, but rite of centered mind is first level."

She nods.

Hughes has been listening with interest. "Your world sounds very different from ours."

"Very much so, yes. If I ever get back I'll have interesting notes on technology to share around."

That seems to amuse him. "You're lucky you landed on the Elrics, then."

"They've been very hospitable."

"They're good kids."

"Yeah. Uh, this translation spell won't last all day, what's your priority here -"

"Mostly getting a sense of you, your trustworthiness, and your priorities."

"There's magic back home that can detect what 'alignment' people are on two spectra from law to chaos and good to evil and I read 'chaotic good', if that helps."

"Well, I don't think you're lying about that, but we don't really have a local structure where that means something relevant... Still, 'chaotic' definitely puts you in Bellona's wheelhouse."

"It's not a very good system even in its context, honestly, but it's what came to mind."

"I can imagine a couple of problems fairly easily, yeah."

"Oh, it gets worse, anyone who sorts evil goes to a torture afterlife when they die."

" - Eesh."

"Yeah. My long term plan is to ascend to godhood and kick that real hard. But that's not really something I can do here."

"We really don't have - any ways I know of at all for getting godhood."

"We have a few but the most straightforward is going and poking a specific magic rock. It's hard to get to, most people die trying, I will need to upgrade my resurrection insurance before taking a run at it."

He nods. "Probably not something I can help with."

"Not as far as I know."

"Let me know if there's anything I can?"