"Oh, sure, sorry."

"We were at war. It was costly but Predain was winning; I suppose was a much better tactician even then, though I am sure I made many stupid blunders. However, Urtho had - designed a superweapon. I was not aware of this; he had done a great deal of secret research. When my army was close to his Tower, he - dispatched a gryphon strike team with the weapon, then called down a Final Strike on it himself and triggered a number of additional failsafes, resulting in a very large explosion. The weapon reached me, it must have been only hours later, maybe days - I did not have a chance to record any of it and so the memory is very blurred now. I must have known he was dead. The weapon - killed my body, and presumably all of the team sent with it. And in combination with the damage from his Tower, and the fact that they had left a Gate open nearby and linked to a permanent threshold that was part of an entire network, that is what caused the Cataclysm." 

"...eeesh."

Leareth hugs her tighter. He's quiet for a few seconds. "All right, now you can ask the rest of your questions." 

"Uh - how far in advance of that did you set up your immortality thing?"

"A decade? I do not remember exactly and I lost all of the notes on it. I know that I tried multiple different setups, with the actual one as a backup since it involves killing people, and the others either did not work in the first place or did not survive the Cataclysm." 

"Like, definitely some of each, or you don't know the mix - trying to gauge how likely one would be to work if attempted now."

"At least one was not going to work period, given what I now understand better about magic. One that I am certain does work - similar to the method with Need, though I had not met her at that time and was deriving it from first principles - is now dispreferred since it seems to have left her...not exactly intact as the human mind she was before. There are probably options that would work, but they would require unlinking my current setup and then a lag time while I finished preparations on the new one, and I have been concerned about the gods finding a way to murder me during that gap, or to directly sabotage any method they can arrange to observe me setting up, so I have not attempted it." 

"I mean for me."

"I definitely have ideas of what we could try for you. I am concerned about interference but there is not the same downside risk since you are not already immortal. Probably we ought not try one of the ways that involves killing your current body, though." 

"Not unless something real bad happens to it, no."

Protective squeeze. "We will have to take good care of it, then; I would be very sad if I were lifebonded to a magic sword instead, it seems it would be less snuggly." 

"A sword seems like a dumb choice. If I have to be an inanimate object at all I think I'd like to be a book. Which might be snugglier than a sword but that isn't saying much."

"A book does seem much more suited to who you are as a person. Anyway. Unless you have further questions about the Mage Wars or immortality, I can tell you about the present plan next." 

"Go ahead."

"There is various reasoning behind this plan, and behind starting it in Valdemar specifically, but the core of it is fairly simple." Leareth takes a deep breath. "I wish to create a new god, which will prioritize people's flourishing to a much greater extent than the current ones." 

"...huh. O...kay."

"...You are really not going to like the next part, I am sorry." Leareth is kind of bracing himself for her being mad at him, even though normally it doesn't get to him at all when people are mad at him, he would have a hard time being the person he was if it did. 

"...okay. Do you want me to guess, or -"

"I mean, I suppose you can guess if you want, but I am not going to make you, I will tell you." 

Squeeze. "Go ahead."

"This plan requires a great deal of power and the best current idea I have for obtaining that power is via blood-magic. It would take up to ten million lives. I am very much hoping I still find an alternative before the final point, but the reason I need an empire is so that I can have that many people in it." 

"You're right! I don't like that part! Can you kill a god or two instead, that has to count for more than a regular person."

"If I could get one to hold still for it I would consider trying! I am not sure how it would actually work to try to extract power from destroying a god. If I had - hmm, several dozen Heartstones that I could control fully - that would do instead. The Star-Eyed Goddess seems very unlikely to allow this." 

"'Seems unlikely to allow this' doesn't seem like you spent a long time exhausting the possibility. Like - not just the ten million people, that many people probably die of natural causes throughout the world every, I don't know, year? Five or ten years maybe? The logistics, the moral injury to everyone having all those ten million children, the sheer - yeah. I don't like this part."