"It's like, taking something really seriously and being really glad it's helping you? It's- reverence, or respect, but also love?"

"...I'm not sure I get it. Does it like... magically help the god do stuff?"

"I don't think it helps them that much, except they're- the sort of people that care about their things. Azuth is the god of magic, so if you're a wizard and you worship him then you're saying- hey, Azuth, look over here, there's magic here and I want to do things with it, can you help me? And then Azuth knows to come help you. But if you never worshipped him, then he wouldn't know where to look. How does your pocket everything give directions to places? It might be like that..."

"Uh, people had to program in all the roads and where they lead and mark which ones you're allowed to have a bike or something on and which ones you're only allowed to walk and which ones there's trucks, and then when a city updates something about the layout they tell all the directions-program companies, and UI designers decided what roads and landmarks should look like on the screen, and how to translate all of it into directions... I'm not sure what they'd be worshiping? The... roads? They don't have to love them."

"Okay. So it's not the same, but- for magic, there's no one who knows how to program the magic roads- they're not real roads. But Azuth is like a program that would tell you which roads you could walk or have a bike on? There's no UI designer, so not everybody uses the program, because it doesn't look good on the screen. But if you really want to know where to go, then you can tell Azuth that, and he can still help you. Maybe it's not that much like directions."

"You should ask a priest. They're the ones who worship so much they get spells."

"Sounds like a good place to start exploring, where do I find one?"

"In Heliopolis! They have everything there!"

"You don't even remember it," he objects.

"I remember everything! I remember being born, even!"

She sticks out her tongue.

"...she's right, we can find a priest in Heliopolis. Were you going to go through the portal today?"

"Is... this not Heliopolis?"

"Oh! No, this isn't. The city is through the portals in the palace, like the windows and doors. If you just walked around the building, we would still be here."

"Ohhhh! Cool. I guess that's why I can't quite figure out how my window view lines up with all the stuff around here, I wasn't paying close enough attention. What is... this?"

"Heliopolis is the name of the city, and the district we're going to is called Iannu. Uh, Heliopolis is on Buxenus, which is one of the three layers of Arcadia. We're on Abellio right now. Most Outer Planes have more than one layer, and the first one is kind of the one that's the most like the Prime, and the last one is the one that's the least like the Prime. In Arcadia, the planes that are less like the Prime are all 'below' this one, but when I say below I mean...something else. We don't have a word for it yet."

Daernir assumes that the lack of a word means someone will invent one soon, and popularize its use.

"Why do Outer Planes have more than one layer? What makes the layers not just a different plane?"

"That's a good question. I don't know. It's something about how what people believe, though, like most of what happens on the Outer Planes. Mechanus, that's the plane of law, it has one layer. And Limbo, the plane of chaos, also has one. But Mount Celestia, which is lawful good...it has seven. Elysium is good, and it has four. Hades is evil, and it has three. I think maybe people believe more things about good and evil than law and chaos and that's why it gets more complicated for planes in the middle, like Arcadia."

"Huh! At home people think all kinds of different things about how the laws ought to be but maybe that isn't what you mean?"

"Well, Arcadia has three layers, and we care about law too, but it's different. We care about how law can help people, because that's what good is about- but not as much as Mount Celestia. Mount Celestia thinks the only point of law is to do good, and the only kind of doing good is lawful. People on Arcadia would say the only way to do good is to be lawful, but...that law is important for more than just doing good. Law is important because it's important for itself, even if sometimes that means it doesn't do good. It has to work the same, right? So we think law is more important than good, but we still care about good rules. Mechanus doesn't even care about if the rules help anyone, it just thinks everything in the universe should follow the rules. My mom says that Mechanus has one layer but Limbo has zero, because Limbo is chaos and so it just mixes everything up. That's not really true, I guess, because there's no difference between one and zero with layers, right? It's still an infinite plane. But I like that explanation, I think it says what's important about layers."

"But... where do the rules come from in Mechanus? Somebody has to write and enforce them for some reason, right?"

"They don't come from anywhere. They just are. They're more like gravity than they are like instructions. Mechanus is all clockwork and machines and things. It has rules but it doesn't care about people. That's what good means, caring about people and wanting them to be happy. Mechanus has people but they don't matter to it."

"The universe Amenta's in has gravity and doesn't care about people, so people have to make additional rules to help them have a society."

"Right, that's like the Prime Material, where people live until they die and come here. But the Kingdoms of Arcadia cares about people because it's- made of caring about people. It's made of good, and also law- even more law. Does that make sense?"

"It's Mechanus I'm confused about."

"Okay. Um. I don't really know how it works, because I've only read and heard things. But I guess- if you think about law as saying- there should be rules that determine how things work in the world, then that's what Mechanus is about. Without any of the other things law can be about, like corruption or taking care of your people or things even really or those things that sometimes happen with laws made by people. Mechanus is law without people."