That's probably a lie. It's possible that they're just far enough away he couldn't do it but if he's telling the truth about being thousands of years old she doubts that he couldn't do it, so it seems likely that he won't want to, and for it to be overdetermined enough Nefreti sent her here - not a productive line of thought, not right now.

She's scared. She's scared that once he resolves whatever he's still confused about he'll decide to be more careful, and she won't have a chance to - she curtails that line of thought too. Focus on the questions. 

"I'm an arms and armor enchanter serving at the Worldwound," she says. "I did a two-year tour of duty on our border when I graduated, but I was doing well at learning weapons enchantment, and there was a program to get weapons enchanters a tour at the Worldwound because it attracts adventurers and armies from all over the world. Cheliax is the bulk of the force there, of course, but other people cycle in and out, and lots of them have powerful magic weapons they won or had commissioned or scavenged from a tomb, and I can look at them and take lots of notes and then I'll be able to make those myself. On a typical day I do that. I work on magic items all day while most people are out fighting, and then in the evening I meet other adventurers and ask them how they got their gear and ask to look at it. They usually find it flattering."

He smiles slightly. "I see. You must know quite a lot about magic items at this point, then?" 

This line of questioning is much less concerning. "Yes. I planned on opening a shop once I was out of the army."

"What sort of supplies and setup would you need, to work on magic items here?" 

"Spellsilver. And - I don't have most of my notes. I can probably reconstruct some of it from memory but not all of it."

"- I am not sure I know what spellsilver is, but if it is a metal that can be mined, it seems plausible we have it here and I could provide it. And - you seem very clever, I expect you could make progress even before we have any leads on contacting your world."

Another slight, brief smile, and then it fades back to a level, neutral expression. "I want to know more about Cheliax, though. What was your childhood like, there - you can describe to me an average day when you were, say, ten." 

He wants to get at something and she doesn't have any idea what. "When I was ten I was in school and I was tracked for being clever but not for magic yet. I went to Imperial - to the Imperial Academy of Corentyn, it predates the war, it's a big old school up on the cliffs. You can see the Arch of Triumph, which stretches all the way across the Inner Sea at its narrowest point, ten miles. I studied math and composition and drawing and Infernal and geography. I was good at all of them except Infernal, I'm rubbish at languages for some reason." A pang of misery she doesn't dwell on.

"The school fed us breakfast, lunch, and dinner - some schools only do breakfast and lunch but at Imperial most students stayed after class to do their homework. There were prayer services before breakfast and there were sports after class, but you were allowed to skip them to do homework and I always did because I wanted to be a wizard and that takes being smart, not much in the way of sports, and also boys are better than girls at sports but not at magic so it seemed like I should compete where I could get a fair playing field."

A flicker of something like approval in his eyes. "That makes sense. You sound like a very diligent student. ...Can you tell me why they taught Infernal in school, what it was important for? It is...the language spoken in Hell?"

(And Leareth pays a lot of attention to her thoughts because he wants to figure out what that pang of misery is about.) 

"Yes, they speak Infernal in Hell. Lots of important books about Asmodean theology and so on are only written in Infernal and lots of people summon devils to do work or trade goods and you want to have a good command of Infernal for that." She resents about herself that she's bad at languages. It seems to mostly go off intelligence, she hasn't really met other wizards who are bad at it, but the sounds sound the same to her and it's all just memorization and she had to be beaten for it a lot just to get up to average.

Leareth nods. Looks sympathetic. "There are many skills that correlate with intelligence but that some clever people are bad at for no reason. I am rubbish at drawing, for some reason, I would not have done well in that class had I studied in Cheliax." He looks thoughtful. "What is discipline like, in Chelish schools? I know that varies widely even within this world." 

She wonders if he's reading her mind. "I don't know what they do in other places. I guess they consider most students not worth educating and maybe they just kick them out if they seem incompetent at it. We punish students for misbehavior or slacking. Not enough to need healing, except in unusual cases. You can get transferred between schools but not kicked out of school entirely until you're of an age for an apprenticeship."

Well, she was bound to get suspicious at some point - he was surprised she hasn't been more suspicious about it, actually, she didn't even seem to be considering that someone might be reading her mind while she was alone in the room. Maybe her world's mindreading has different limitations, she hasn't thought about it in enough specifics for him to guess. 

"I see, that does not sound especially unusual," Leareth says smoothly. "Aside from the firm commitment to educating everyone, which is - unusual at least. The Eastern Empire - a kingdom in our world, I founded it many centuries ago but it still exists without my intervention now - has something similar but I think not as well executed." His lips twitch. "They lack a committed deity to help with it. Perhaps I could bring you a history book on them, you might find it interesting."

"That sounds fascinating."

"I will do that, then." Brief smile. "Anyway. Most people who die go to Hell, yes? The existence of afterlives in your world seems like - a significant improvement on what we have here, but I am curious what existing in Hell looks like, for the souls there who are serving Asmodeus' goals. What would their days consist of?" 

"You turn into a devil. I might be able to summon them here," probably not though. "They do - all kinds of things. I wanted to work on magic item design. Some of them are soldiers, some of them are craftsmen, some of them do politics, some argue for souls in the courts of Pharasma, lots of them visit the material plane to help Cheliax and devil-summoners elsewhere..."

"They turn into a devil? Is that not like...turning into an entirely different species of sapient being?" Leareth looks mildly surprised, and curious. (He is in fact not very surprised at all.) "How does Asmodeus manage that - what does the transformation look like?" 

(And he pays close attention to her thoughts, again, because he doesn't expect her to be honest about this at all.) 

She already explained this to Lacie, when she asked why the paladins hated them. Maybe he's playing a game, maybe it wasn't conveyed, maybe she's misunderstanding the question or Lacie mangled her first explanation in conveying it -

"It takes a long time, decades or sometimes centuries. It is referred to as being - reforged. I think it is partially physical, learning to take a new shape in the world, and partially mental, fixing - the original error introduced in people, that makes us have random goals and priorities and frailties and not follow through on things. It hurts. It is inherently painful, to come to terms with your weaknesses, to see the places where you fall short of what Asmodeus requires. A lot of people are scared of it, because of that. But - I've never met a devil who thought it wasn't worth it. And lots of valuable things hurt. And I wouldn't rather keep being weak."

"Ah. - I think this is related to the part I am not sure Lacie conveyed to me right, because it was very confusing. The...fact that humans in your world at one point did not have 'free will', and then it was introduced, and...this is the inherent error that Asmodeus works to correct in His souls in Hell? I - am confused, I think, because the way the phrase translates at least does refer to a concept that philosophers in our world have studied, but I am not sure it is the same one. ...For one, our philosophers have sometimes disagreed on whether free will really exists at all or whether the whole world, including the living beings in it, is predetermined by physical laws." 

"Yes, that's right. The translation is probably not exactly right, it's sort of about -" and she repeats the explanation she gave Lacie, almost word for word, about how constructs can be without free will and what it was like to be a human before free will and how free will broke things. This is the sort of thing that's better to recite word-for-word because if you introduce any new ideas you might accidentally say something heretical.

Leareth nods along as though this makes sense, even though it DOESN'T and he is very concerned, especially about the thought regarding accidentally saying heresies. 

"I see. I think I understand how the concept fits together in your world, but...I confess I am unsure how to interpret it in this world, in the scenario where it turns out to be impossible to ever contact your world and its gods. I - do not think we have any equivalent time when humans lacked free will, and to be honest I do not think any of Velgarth's gods have goals that are more worthy than what sapient beings want to create and build for themselves. Do you have any thoughts on that?" 

Leareth does his best to sound genuinely unsure and thoughtful, which isn't hard because he is feeling both of those things and he can fold the other, by default much louder feelings to address later, not in Carissa's presence. 

It is very strange to imagine concluding that none of the gods's goals matter. It seems very pathetic but if you are a thousands of years old wizard that might make it not pathetic, you don't need to worry about dying... "Probably your gods' goals would...seem more valuable if they communicated them. But, uh, if they can't explain why you should care and they lack the resources to make you care then I guess it's their own fault, if you don't care, and maybe they don't care about whether you care? Not being of any value to any gods sounds - awful -  you'd have no one with a reason to make you keep existing - but if they haven't got a reason to keep you existing then I guess that's the hand you were dealt and you should, uh, become immortal about it, which." Tight smile. 

He returns the smile, small and tight and brief. “Exactly. Though - I have not yet succeeded at sharing my immortality with others. The gods seem to oppose this too, though They do not care to tell me why. And from what Their actions reveal of Their goals, I - do not care to serve Them. If Asmodeus existed here it might be different,” the ‘might’ and his remaining uncertainty make this not quite a bald-faced lie, “but - in fact this is the world I have. Perhaps I am an ant beside them, but They have not stamped me out yet.”

He sits back in his chair. “This may be relevant to you as well, since from my preliminary study of the magic I detected on your arrival, it will be incredibly difficult and perhaps impossible to replicate.” This is not quite a lie. “So this world and its gods might, if we are unlucky, be all we have to work with. And - I think that nobody should ever stop existing, if they prefer existence over not - I think that our gods’ failure to care about this is Their greatest fault, and a terrible tragedy in need of correcting. What do you think of it?”

It's a bizarre frame, considering it a fault that the gods care about different things than people. Probably the things the gods care about are more important, even, but - it's hard to blame him, for wanting his things, when the gods haven't even said what they want.

Or it's a lie. It's a very convenient story. If they've been reading her mind it wouldn't be hard to guess it's a cause she is sympathetic to. 

Either way it's smarter to play along. "Do you have ascension here?"

“Well. Not a preexisting known route, but - in fact I have a plan, here. Not to ascend personally, per se, but - to create a god of our own, who does care to make use of human souls. Given our magic this is not harder than ascending myself, and allows more control. I have been working on this plan for a thousand years and am currently preparing for the final execution of said plan. It will be very costly, but - worth it, I think, in the end.”

She forms no opinion at all on the truth value of this claim. "Wow. I - that's a clever plan. I see why you are curious whether Nefreti meant to enable it or disrupt it or - what."