"Yep. I got Fetching first and I happened to break my leg shortly after and we could afford enough Healer attention to set it but I was still in bed for a while and got much better at Fetching. Also these days I can soften a fall pretty well but it took practice so I self-Healed aaaall the time even before I was allowed to work on patients, which took me longer than usual because I couldn't piggyback on a meld."

Thinking about Belrun getting injured is stressful and Leareth hugs her instinctively. "I am very glad you have Fetching and self-healing. I think probably we ought to take a break from Mindspeech for today and then practice more tomorrow? We might try to figure out your range." 

Hug. "Sounds good." She shows him to the eggplant dip restaurant.

They can have a pleasant eggplant dinner and talk about safe-in-public topics like Belrun's studies, and if Belrun thinks of anything god-related or otherwise sensitive, she does now have the option of Mindspeaking it. (Private conversations in public places is another very useful case for it!) 

Over dessert she asks :On what schedule are you imagining the ten million? Is it all at once?:

:It is a multistage process: Leareth explains. :The bulk of the power requirement would be only in the final stage. The total for all the steps before that ought to add up to only half a million lives worth of blood-magic - and would be feasible at all to power from other sources, though at the cost of far greater inconvenience. Pulling that much from nodes, for the second to last stage, would require draining every node across Valdemar, Rethwellan, and Hardorn. Which would cause sufficient disturbance in climate patterns that the resulting crop failures and floods or other natural disasters would claim many, many lives. Perhaps less than half a million, still, but it would be a gamble. Also I would need ten times as many mages in that version, given the larger geographic area, and it would be much more dangerous work for them:

:I don't know a lot about how mage stuff works, but why can't you just... make more nodes? The analogy is to ponds, right, you can dig a big hole and dam a river...:

:You can do that: Leareth admits, :but it is...not very safe. Not unless you have a Heartstone or some kind of comparable tech - and I have tried many times to invent something of my own that serves the purpose of a Heartstone, and not succeeded. They are akin to living creatures in a way, with the ability to self-regulate. ...Somewhat ironically, I suppose, after the second-to-final step I would have a godlet with abilities that included what a Heartstone does, but that does not help with getting to that stage since even gods cannot time-travel to the past to create themselves:

He goes quiet for a minute, looking down at his plate with a forgotten half-loaded fork loose in his hand. 

:I suppose another way would be to enlist the help of an existing minor god: he admits. :If you are correct and, for example, Astera is actually friendly rather than simply uninterested in my goals, then She could probably do something similar: He shivers. :...I must confess that I hate the idea of relying on that, and I expect it to fail and that I will get murdered in the attempt, but - if you think it is worth trying anyway then perhaps you are right: 

:I mean, I guess it depends on what the downside risk is? Are you operating under the assumption that the gods already know what you're up to because they can Foresee it, or what?:

:I am certain They can Foresee that I am doing something large with disruptive potential. I have significant uncertainty of how much detail They can perceive a century into the future, but I think it is quite blurred, exactly because what I have planned is disruptive. That is, at my best guess anyway, one of the major reasons why they dislike change and innovation in the first place; it makes it much harder for Them to lay down schemes to maintain their resources and territory: 

Sigh. :To an extent I suppose it is understandable for Them to prefer stability. The Cataclysm was very disruptive, for example, and - that bore a very high cost in human lives. However, I have grown very tired of the part where Their strategy to avoid this recurring is trying to keep the world at a level where most people are subsistence farmers: 

:It seems probably harder to sell Astera or somebody on a plan it's not safe to explain to them.

Wow, it is really crazymaking to have to think in terms of being in opposition to folks with godly powers, isn't it -:

:It is: Leareth smiles sadly at her, then reaches across the table to squeeze her hand. :I am sorry to drag you into such a bewildering and crazymaking plan, but...I am grateful to have someone else looking at it alongside me. And making very clever suggestions about it too. I did not realize how lonely it was before now: 

She squeezes his hand. :Was that at least better than noticing?:

:Probably. It would be difficult to go back to not noticing, though: 

:If anything happens to me you have bigger problems.:

:True: He's quiet for a minute, frowning. :...I do have evidence, from attempts to study the present afterlife situation, that lifebond compatibility is retained if people die and then their souls reincarnate, but the active lifebond itself does not carry over. I am not sure whether this would be different for me given that I do not start over as a baby and do retain my current personality and at least some of my memories: 

:I'm really curious what you know about the afterlife situation, it seems important:

:I retrieved some of my notes on it in the previous trip, so we can go over it in detail later: Leareth twines his ankle around Belrun's under the table. :It is important: 

:I have my quibbles with how it was managed but I'm glad you're not lonely anymore:

Aww. :I also would prefer not having been - manipulated into this, I suppose. It...is an additional level of crazymaking, wondering what scheme whichever god did this is trying to accomplish via my not being lonely anymore: 

:I know, right? But - they don't always win, right, and I think that seems equally likely to hold less in cases where they try pleasant distractions instead of violence:

:Yes: Leareth is suddenly in the mood to finish his food as fast as possible so that there can be more of the kind of snuggling you cannot really do in a restaurant. 

Gosh okay she will eat her dessert faster too and they can scurry home holding hands so he can catch her if she slips trying to be brisk.

And then there can be snuggles, which Leareth somehow finds extra satisfying and pleasant after talking about alternate paths to fighting gods, even if none of the ideas are clearly on the way to an actual workable plan yet. 

Snuggles are good.