"That's horrible! ....Er, no offense, I don't - I'm not trying to criticize your religion, just - I don't want to hurt you, whether or not you worship me!"

And, in fact, he would prefer she didn't start trying to worship him, it sounds unbearably weird and awkward! But pressing the point will probably just stress her out even more. She's so scared. 

He tries to soften his voice again. "I'm sorry. I know this must be really confusing and you - weren't expecting it and didn't know to prepare yourself for it. It's all right. Anyway, I think all the other gods I know of definitely don't bother to make dead people's souls experience being on fire all the time? That sounds - really hard, actually, I think it'd take a lot of resources and, just, why." 

....unlike everything else about this situation that has a straightforward answer! "...to incentivize people worshipping them! It's kind of inconvenient and lots of people probably wouldn't do it if you didn't threaten to send them to Hell! But it's not my religion, I'm not religious, that's the whole problem - or are you saying that all the religions are wrong .....and you didn't have anything to do with killing all the firstborns in Egypt...... or with Jesus...... or Muhammed...... and they were all making things up.... but then there is actually a god who's just nothing to do with that?"

The forest is suddenly substantially less cheerful. 

- Vanyel catches himself. He hadn't realized you could do that by accident with a metaphor forest. "Sorry. I - what - killing all the firstborns? That's awful. I - don't have the slightest idea who or what Jesus or Muhammed are or were and I haven't heard of religions that worshipped them. So I'm mostly just feeling very confused here." 

"I mean I hardly think there's anything wrong with killing as many children as you do if it turns out they all get a nice afterlife! Just, we didn't know that."

Ouch???? 

It's - pretty fair as a complaint - whether or not the story from this bizarre religion really happened, children die by the thousands every. single. year. 

(Leareth wanted to fix it.... And now Vanyel is here, and - this - and maybe, somehow, someday -) 

Also what is going on in Haven right now, seriously - half of the threads he checks now are tangled into the anomaly! Tran and Joshel and Melody are somehow ALL involved! He supposes there must be a dead body somewhere, but surely 'investigating an apparent murder victim', which is what it would look like without context, can't possibly be taking up everyone's attention including Melody's! - And Leareth's, apparently, or at least that will or would happen, and Vanyel is at a complete loss for why anyone would DO that - if Annisa died at around the moment Vanyel became a god, which is what seems to fit, then he wouldn't have expected Leareth to even be conscious.... 

"I'm sorry," he says quietly, "and I - want to do better, I promise. But, er, right now there seems to be a problem going on in my city, and I'm wondering if it's related to your Scholomance place that I can't see? Did anyone else graduate with you?" 

" - my team was Boston? Is your city Boston? Are gods - localized like that? I don't - think there was a problem, I don't think anyone else got killed -"

"Gods have territories of influence, usually it's a lot more than one city but I'm....small. And, er. I - don't think you died in Boston. In order for me to have caught you, you must have been physically in Haven, which is the capital of Valdemar. Could the graduation have sent you and your team off target like that? It's - hard for me to see what's going on, but I'm starting to suspect that's because I couldn't see you or your team at all while you were there, and so you appeared very suddenly and it's throwing off Foresight a lot or something." 

"- oh."

At this she really does pull herself together; if she has to decide whether to defy God to protect Boston then she has to stop being a pathetic child. "I've never heard of Haven but I've never studied geography so all that means is you haven't got an enclave. I ....haven't heard of the induction spell failing like that but maybe there's a reason people don't usually go through the gates in an enormous tank? So....I guess maybe it landed all of us in...Haven. Oh no, they'll be really - they need to get home -"

"You....went through a Gate in an enormous what?" Vanyel says blankly. "I - sorry - I'm having to do a lot of interpretation to understand things in your mind, I'm getting some associated concepts but I don't think we have, er, enormous self-propelled fighting machine carriages here." 

He briefly has the thought that he should tell Leareth about the concept, before remembering that he has no way of actually establishing communication with Leareth from his side, and Leareth presumably won't be in any condition to do further work on the god-project for a while. 

Okay at this point Annisa is just........ very confused and should probably rewind a lot of steps and start with things that a god who is only in Haven might not know. 

"I was born on an island called Java. About a hundred fifty million people live there. Some of them, like me, are wizards. Wizards generate our own mana, which we can use for spells - do you know about wizards already -"

Vanyel is getting somewhat better at the interpretation-and-translation, here, but this is still very confusing to follow. 

"I - think I know about wizards, assuming you mean - the kind of Gift that runs in families? I haven't heard of a place called Jave– wait. A hundred and fifty million? On an island? How big an island?" 

His mind presents him with the incredibly stupid and unwanted observation that this could fuel the full god-building project fifteen times over. Vanyel doesn't think that even Leareth needs that many gods. (Although if there's really a school in another plane that no gods have domain over, and the children who die there just...dissolve into nothing...)

"...I don't really know how big an island. There are bigger ones? Gifts that run in families sounds right. Anyway. Mals like to eat mana, and they go after young wizards, and most young wizards get eaten. So people send them to the Scholomance, which is outside the world entirely, where they'll be safe from mals. And it's safer, but - when you're eighteen you have to graduate and fight your way past all the mals the school's been holding off you for the last four years, and it's very dangerous."

Vanyel...is not actually going to 'stop and think' because this is apparently not how thinking works, anymore, but he's going to pull a LOT more corners of his attention towards this particular mystery. At the cost of being able to track what's going on with Leareth, but that's not very tractable right now anyway; he's going to have to trust that the humans in the situation will handle it. Jisa must be nearby, and Melody's thread is practically coiled around Leareth's. 

Reassess. 

...There are a number of elements of this that don't fit, both on the god-Foresight side and the more human-legible-conversation he's having with the dead girl. Most young 'wizards' get eaten by monsters that eat mage-energy? There's a religion that says its god killed every firstborn for some reason? There's a school outside of the material plane entirely, beyond the reach of any god, and children are sent there and have to fight their way out?

The girl's soul is somehow both clearly mortal and clearly not from here. Her 'team' is probably here in Haven as well, and they're making it impossible to see clearly. 

"Where is Boston, and how many people live there?" he asks, again keeping his voice as gentle as he can. "Because - I'm kind of starting to wonder if it's not just the school that's outside the reach of any of the gods." 

"Other side of the planet from Java. ...I don't know how many live in the city but America has three hundred million, about the same as Indonesia, the country Java's part of."

Three hundred million. Are there that many people in the entire world of Velgarth? It's overwhelming even to think about. 

"Is America the biggest country? Do you know how many people live in all of the countries put together?" 

"China is the biggest country. Then India. I think it's eight billion, all put together?" 

What. 

- this is important information to translate-and-pass-along to the Shadowgod. Vanyel does this. It's expensive, in some way he's still wrapping his head around, to take what feels like an obvious inference to the still-human parts of him and make it legible in god-terms, but it's possible. 

At the same time, he smiles sadly at the girl. "I think you're just...straight-up from a different world that isn't this one. Which - means that maybe your material plane just doesn't have any gods who claim domain over it. I'm sorry." 

"Oh. Well. That is what I thought before. And I - am continuing to exist, so I guess it's great for me, that we landed here. Sucks for the rest of my alliance, though. I assume there is no way for the living to communicate with the dead." She was very strongly assuming that but given that she's in a different world maybe there's, who knows, a spell for it.

"I'm - not sure. It's not impossible but I think it - takes extraordinary circumstances. And resources I don't have right now. I - sorry - I can try to figure something out, I...might at least be able to pass along messages to someone who I can safely communicate with?" 

"I think it might be in your interests? If you're a - god who is broadly decent - and we're getting in your way then we're not doing that on purpose and they'll stop if you communicate how, cooperation is important."

She's trying so hard and she wants her friends to be all right so badly and Vanyel desperately wishes he could give her a hug and then fix everything for her. 

"Noted, I - can definitely try." 

And....this is deeply embarrassing, but it's also relevant. "I - should tell you some context. I'm, er, sort of a god now, but I...wasn't until today. Until - almost the exact moment you arrived, actually. It's complicated. But that - means I'm a lot more restricted. And I obviously want to keep your friends safe, but I'm pretty stretched trying to keep some people who were already here alive." Well. One person in particular. Vanyel hates that he can't even guess at what the possible threats to Leareth are. Even when he could see more in Foresight, it wasn't something he could interpret in human terms. 

"In what sense are you stretched? Is it something I can help with? Is it something they can help with?"

"It's complicated. I'm not sure. So - the issue is that I'm not the only god in this world and I am the newest and smallest, and I'm...also under some additional restrictions. As a precaution, because I...might not have turned out right. And the other powerful gods - aren't especially decent. One of them just tried to blow up the entire city, another was, er, responsible for an allied army betraying our country's army, but that was far away." 

If the god is trying to convince Boston to ally with him instead of with the other gods they're already convinced, what with how he offers a nice afterlife and presently has Annisa. Boston on the inside works with people who are truthworthy and working with them, and Boston on the outside is, you know, American, they want to be rich and do lots of research and live up to their obligations and get the best people from everywhere else.

Vanyel has a harder time parsing that from just the god-equivalent of Thoughtsensing, at least while he's trying not to unduly disturb the fragile remaining patterns of the girl's mind. But...it makes sense. He thinks. 

He shrugs, self-consciously. "Anyway, that's - a lot of why I don't care if you worship me and would kind of rather you didn't? I've never personally thought of the gods as deserving our worship."