"They can be trusted if you can. Vanyel said maybe he could...bring me back.... as a horse.... which is stupid but they'd pay a lot for that, if it's available. None of us have had a very broad based education but we'll happily teach what we know about, uh, what tech level is this exactly?"

"Much lower than I would prefer! Everywhere outside of the Eastern Empire, at least, which is - an unpleasant place along different dimensions. This is one of my main complaints with our gods; they kept trying to kill me every time I would attempt innovation. If your world has less active gods, or none at all, then I would not be surprised if your tech level is much higher! Valdemar has... Hmm. Lighting by candle or other fire sources, most transport by draft animals, no non-magical forms of more rapid travel or communication. Though of course we have magic, but the number of Gifted people is low enough that it is mostly used only by the very wealthy or the core government." 

"Our mundanes have more than that and Boston will help you as much as they can." She wants to say 'in exchange for sending me back' but even if they don't do that.

"...I have a very large number of questions but I think it might make more sense to ask the living, since maintaining this space for both of us is resource-costly for Vanyel." 

"If you can do your checks and then remove the localization safeguards, I'll have access to about a thousand times as much, I think! The Web is right there, I just can't - do things - in it." 

Leareth smiles slightly. "An excellent point, and I am even almost sure it would be safe. However, I am sure you will understand why I prefer to be cautious, and perform the full set of checks once I am definitely recovered enough for it." 

"....I know. I, just - people are going to die today and if I were stronger I could catch them and I...can't...." 

"...I'm sorry. I know you just nearly died and I know it'd be even worse if you don't do the checks and it turns out we're both wrong and I turn into something worse than the Star-Eyed Goddess and Vkandis combined. But - that's the cost, right." 

Annisa is extremely unsure if the thing being negotiated is whether there will be enough resources for Annisa to go on existing???? 

Vanyel still feels like it's somewhat rude and awkward to read someone's entire mind and then respond to things they didn't even say, but...he can, in fact, read Annisa's entire mind and sort of doesn't have a choice to not. 

"Whether you're going to keep existing isn't in question," he says quickly. "I - I already have you, that situation is stable - the very worst case is that I can only give you a few subjective hours per real-world day or something, until I'm stronger. What I'm worried about is that there's a war zone up north right now, a lot of people were injured when Iftel dropped Urtho's weapon on the pass, and - there might be people still alive now, but who aren't going to make it through the night..." 

"....I mean, Shadowgod has remit by default in that territory, I think. And plausibly Vkandis gets the souls of His followers and the Star-Eyed gets Hers. They - probably won't be gone gone, not fully - I might be able to negotiate something, later, if I can manage to get on actual negotiating terms with the others instead of a full on gods war..." 

"Look, how expensive would it be, to send me back, so Boston can just be entirely pointed at this instead of being confused and suspicious, we have a lot of healing on hand and we can throw it at Leareth and whoever else needs it and if the other gods go to war with you we can, you know, cook something up that kills gods."

Leareth goes very, very still. 

"- Can you?" he says, after a long few beats of silence. "Create a spell that kills gods?" 

"Sounds like a weapon! I'm good at weapons! We learned there were gods literally an hour ago, but if they need killing, we'll kill them. And if they're keeping you from modern medicine then they need killing... unless that inevitably causes mals, which we should check."

- Wow. Leareth is pretty sure he's going to get along with this kid. 

....or would get along with her, rather, if she were alive. 

Maybe they can fix it. He's not sure, yet. None of his plans had taken into account...well, most of the bizarre specifics of this situation. And Leareth is so very tired, and even here, in the imaginary space that a baby god is holding for him, his head distantly hurts and his thoughts are gluey. 

Vanyel sighs. "I...agree, it would be a smart strategic move to just send you back, even if I need to do it the stupid way. It's...mostly not physical or magical resources that it costs me, it's attention? And right now I'm needing to pay a lot of attention to Haven, because there are multiple hostile Powers that would really like to murder Leareth, and - I think there's a good argument that allying firmly with Boston will reduce all the Foresight noise and actually make that cheaper, but it's a gamble, right? And I - don't feel great about gambling so much when I've been a god for...er, I don't know how long it's been in human time? Leareth?" 

"Somewhere between twelve and eighteen candlemarks, I think. It depends on how long I have been asleep." 

"Okay. Have Leareth tell Boston that I have arranged an alliance with a god who wants to bring modern medicine to Velgarth and might need to fight some other worse gods about this, like the ones who tied Prometheus to a rock, where Leareth is Prometheus, and they should heal up his liver metaphorically speaking and keep him safe and I'll be back as soon as I can, possibly in the form of a horse because this magic system is incredibly bizarre, and they should start thinking about how one would fight an evil god. There will not be any doubt about whether that message is really from me."

.....Leareth is going to assume that she is (metaphorically) cryptographically signing off this message via the use of bizarre inscrutable metaphors that are probably inside references she shares with her particular team of allies and no one else? 

He's so confused, but he has to assume at least half of that is because whatever pain-drug the Healers gave him - which, to be fair, was in fact strong enough to take the edge off enough that he could sleep - is making him feel incredibly foggy, and Vanyel's work to hold open this metaphorical space for the conversation can only go so far. 

He repeats the message back to Annisa. 

Annisa seems to be under the impression that Vanyel is the one giving Leareth orders? Or something? 

Vanyel (or, well, the small room in the larger house of what-used-to-be-Vanyel which is closest to his former human self) has no idea how to respond to this so he's just going to ignore it. 

"Yep, you've got it."

"Right. Leareth, er, I don't want to go much longer, I'm worried about hurting you, so I should figure out what else we need to cover and then send you back. I, er, have you...explained to anyone what happened? I mean, with - our plan, and me being like this now -?"