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An echo and a light unto eternity
if you think about it this thread was logically implied by the other threads
Permalink Mark Unread

The hit is too sudden and too deep for pain, which is a bad sign, but she has time to think that perhaps it isn't over. If she makes it out, even if she collapses bleeding to death on the other side, the odds are decent that her parents will be able to save her. And now she's fuzzy in the head and it's lucky how their strategy only requires her to lie here -

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Through the deepening fog, from a great and ever-growing-distance, she feels the induction spell take her, and then she doesn't feel anything at all. 

 

 

 

 

...There continues to be nothing at all, but it's an odd sort of nothing, for dying, because it kind of feels like there's still a her

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Maybe she's....in a coma? That happens sometimes. She doesn't think it tends to happen from being stabbed in the heart, but. Maybe the best the people on site in Surabaya could do was some kind of stabilizing spell and now they're frantically trying to get better help from Boston. Boston's good for it, she thinks. Will her father even know to contact them - yes, they'll text his phone, and he'll text back that Annisa is in a coma, and then eventually they'll be able to throw some better magic at waking her up.

 

....this hypothesis is not actually a great fit for what she is experiencing. She doesn't have access to her body, but her mind feels very clear. She's not in any pain or any fuzziness and she has had, over the last four years, exposure to a pretty reasonable range of horrific injuries and almost everything leaves you either in pain or fuzzy.  

She's confused.

 

 

She - tries to open her eyes and look around? This probably won't work, what with how if she had access to her eyes then she'd just be awake in a bed somewhere and it feels like she very much isn't that. 

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This doesn't entirely not work, but it's indeed not at all like being awake in a bed somewhere. She's...nowhere. As though the world hasn't been painted yet. There's only formless white, and it doesn't exactly feel like she's seeing with her actual eyes, it's somehow more abstracted than that. 

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And then there's a sense of - something. A presence, maybe. Not touching her, but watching her. 

 

(Vanyel is so incredibly confused and his attention was - or will, or would have been, time is very confusing - mostly on one of the new rooms that are part-of-him now, where he was having an almost human kind of conversation, or argument even, with the Shadow-Lover. And then - he's very small, still, for the kind of being he is now, and very local, but something happened nearby and it was - unexpected - and now the threads of the future are rippling and shifting and he can't see anymore. Which is strongly disprefered, because when he COULD see them, the path to 'Leareth survives the next forty-eight candlemarks' did not look trivial to navigate....) 

(And - then someone died. In Haven. Which would be fine and expected and predictable, people die every day of old age and falls and infected cuts, but this one was different. This one....wasn't part of the tangled threads of past and future.) 

(And so he reached out and caught it, which is how he discovered that he can apparently just DO THAT now, and Vanyel, or the entity that used to be Vanyel, is now half just boggling at this, and half trying to figure out how to...interact...with the soul of a dead intelligent being who may or may not be human but who definitely does not belong here.) 

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- oh my god, she's dead.

 

And this is going infinity percent better than expected because she in some sense exists but apparently there is a god and conditional on there being a god Annisa's pretty sure that it's a bad plan not having believed in them! They get really mad about that!! She doesn't think they accept 'I thought the option value of trading sex for aluminum beat out the nebulous benefits of religiosity' as an explanation! She wouldn't if she was a god!!!

 

 

She...kneels? She tries to kneel, at least. 

 

"Is it too late to convert?" she tries to say. It comes out, sort of, in a very small voice. "I am still a child and I was not raised religious but I would like to convert if it isn't too late."

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Um. 

 

 

 

This is....really incredibly awkward?

Vanyel feels that gods probably aren't supposed to go around having human emotions like embarrassment, but he's new to this, and he has absolutely no scripts for responding to that, and...also he isn't entirely sure he knows how to talk to the soul in question without damaging it, it seems nontrivial. He thinks he could do it safely with Leareth, but partly that's because Leareth is himself, and partly it's because he's not currently dead, and living minds seem - less fragile? The patterns have more redundancy? 

(And now he's obsessively checking the bright thread of Leareth's life woven through the tapestry of Haven-and-its-causal-surroundings, which aren't the same thing as physical surroundings and are also incredibly confusing to interpret. He can't see very far ahead, which is stressful. Leareth is alive, but he's going to have to dedicate some active attention to keep it that way, and he still hasn't figured out the bizarre anomaly that made Foresight so noisy in the first place.) 

(Though it's probably related to the dead mortal soul he's currently very, very carefully 'holding' in some metaphorical not-space-not-time, trying not to disturb the so-fragile patterns of self.) 

 

- if he makes the metaphorical not-space-not-time somewhat less abstract, fills in some concrete details to make it seem like an actual place, he - thinks that he might be able to insert part of himself into the same space and interact that way, without needing to directly not-Mindtouch the soul. Since that went rather badly when the Star-Eyed tried it with him, in the past. ...Vanyel thinks he can see how to do that, and then once he's seen it, it doesn't actually take time to execute it, or not exactly; he can feel it rippling out into his past and future, because 'now' is suddenly a much less privileged position, to a god, or even a meaningful concept at all....

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From Annisa's perspective, the presence seems to back off slightly, and then it approaches again, and this time the surroundings....change, almost as though a painter were painting the details of a world in front of her eyes. Which she seems to be experiencing having, again?

She's also experiencing standing, in a physical body, though it's - different than being alive, it's somehow less detailed. 

Nothing hurts. It feels as though maybe nothing could hurt, here. 

She's standing in a forest. The forest floor is covered in a deep carpet of fallen leaves, crackly-soft under her bare feet. The leaves, tinged red-and-gold with autumn, are whispering slightly as though in a breeze, though that too is somehow lacking detail. The sky is clear blue. There's a path ahead, winding into the trees and vanishing. 

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- and then there's a person, standing in front of her. A boy. He looks maybe fifteen or sixteen, and he's beautiful, pale and dark-haired, with finely chiseled features, high cheekbones, and piercing silver-grey eyes. He's dressed entirely in white, and his clothing also somehow seems like a not-quite-finished painting. 

....Annisa will notice, if she pays attention, that she herself is not technically clothed right now. 

(Oops. Vanyel did not at all mean to drop her in here naked, he just didn't...bother to think about clothes...?) 

The beautiful boy blushes and ducks his head. "Er, sorry about that." 

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Annisa does not really associate forests with peace or freedom! She doesn't actually have many associations with the kinds of forests that they have in cold places, she's never seen any!! It's lush and alien and - being naked is really far from at the front of her mind right now -

" - are you God? Or, uh, a messenger..." She doesn't remember what Muhammed was supposed to look like. He wasn't white, though.

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The boy shrugs. Smiles, in a self-conscious sort of way. "It's complicated. You can call me Vanyel. What's your name?" 

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Annie, to white people, usually. She's not sure that matters here. She's not sure what kind of god wouldn't know your name already? "Annisa Marunduri."

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"Annisa. Sorry, I - could probably figure out a lot more about you, but most of what I can see from here is in Foresight, and I think that doesn't show much on souls that aren't currently in bodies, and shows up even less for you? I - couldn't see how you died. I should have been able to, but I can't figure it out." 

It feels very awkward to be repeatedly apologizing for how he's bad at being a god, but Vanyel isn't sure what else to do, and also half of his attention is on watching every single scrap of Foresight he can find related to Leareth and Leareth's safety, and in another room-of-himself he's trying to chase down those causal-neighborhood threads in case this is a way to figure out what's happening up north. He can't see anything directly and he has no idea how to interpret most of what he's seeing indirectly - at least Jisa's safe, at least he knows that much, her thread is within his range of influence and - 

- huh, also suddenly intertwining with Leareth's. That's....new? Whatever 'new' means when past and present and future aren't entirely meaningful concepts. 

 

 

 

"You don't seem like you're from around here," the part of him being mostly-human-shaped in an imaginary metaphorical forest says, quietly, to the scared dead girl. 

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"I died graduating. Can you not see the Scholomance? That'd ....explain some things, I guess. Uh, I was mortally wounded graduating and I did feel the induction but I guess it was too late for me by then. I -" She isn't going to burst into tears, she isn't, she isn't, she has to orient, she has to figure out how to be safe here - she tries to distract herself by pinching her arm really hard and it doesn't even work, which is really unfair, and then she does burst into tears, which is pathetic.

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Vanyel can pick up somewhat more than the literal content of her words from that, it seems. When he pokes at what's happening here in more depth, he's in fact not precisely hearing words, not like how a human would; that part is on some level a metaphor, just like the forest is a metaphor, and the thing it's a metaphor for is more that he's - found a way of safely interfacing part of himself with the surfaces of her human soul, in a way that won't overwhelm or damage her, but that still conveys quite a lot more depth and density of information than speech would. 

She's from...elsewhere. Somewhere far beyond any of the threads-of-causality that touch Haven. 

Still holding the forest-stage, the entity that is Vanyel shifts more of his attention back to a different room - a more spacious, less human aspect, one less like the mortal human mage who died defending his home, and much more like the underlying Web-structure he once built. Concepts are translated into different terms, and then something reaches along other threads, touches - 

Can you see where this soul livedhe asks the vast inhuman god that lives behind the Shadow-Lover's facade. 

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Information is exchanged, not in words or even precisely in thoughts, but in ripples across the web of time and space and causality that they share. 

The god in the shadows cannot see this place either. And the god in the shadows existed before the moment Vanyel died and became something else, and so is aware that the soul in question didn't come from within the world. Not the material plane, or any of the other planes that the gods exist in or can perceive indirectly. There was nothing, and then there was an anomaly, and then there was something. 

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This makes NO SENSE. 

Vanyel passes back what he's learned so far, to the extent that it's even possible to translate. 

- and in another room he watches Leareth's future, and feels a god-emotion that isn't frustration, because now Jisa's thread is tightly woven with Leareth's, and ALSO Jisa's thread is - deeply tangled into what seems to be the source of noise and confusion? Vanyel can't see any hint of an immediate threat to Leareth's life; he can't see much at all.

 

 

 

- perceptions are translated back into mostly-human-comprehensible shapes, and the boy in the forest looks apologetically at the crying girl. 

"I'm sorry. I - wish I could have done something, or that I could - put you back, but it doesn't look like that pathway is open. I -" He has questions, but they're half outside of time; he doesn't need to ask everything right now, and possibly he doesn't even need to do things in a straightforward chronological order but maybe messing with that is too much to take on when he's only just now learning how to do this. So he just bows his head. "I'm sorry. I - do you want a hug?" 

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Gulp. She gets a handle of herself. "I want to keep existing. I will - convert to whatever I'm supposed to - do whatever you want -"

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Oh. Oh no this is upsetting. (The new less human parts of Vanyel...can't really parse the upsettingness, but the part of him that's in the forest with the child can, and - he thought he knew tragedy, he thought he was familiar with grief and loss and pointless waste, but he hadn't imagined this.) 

 

 

 

".....You thought you were going to stop existing entirely, forever, when you died?" 

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"...yes? That's - that's what - if you can't see the Scholomance that's what happens to every kid who dies there - god - we should be keeping them home but people didn't know and the, the religious wizards, died out, because all their children got eaten,"

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Vanyel desperately wants to give the terrified, grieving child a HUG and she clearly doesn't want that and so he doesn't, but it hurts. 

"I - want to ask more about that later," he says, as gently as he can manage. "But - I'm not going to demand anything of you, right now, for you to keep existing. I promise. Er, and honestly I don't know what it would mean to 'convert' to - me..."

It's possibly the most embarrassing concept he's ever had go through his mind. Vanyel almost says that he thinks the gods don't deserve anyone's worship, but that's - probably a confusing and also questionable thing to say when one is, oneself, a god. He wasn't expecting this morning, whatever 'this morning' means now, that he would be a god before noon, but apparently. 

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"Uh, the religions I've heard of say that you go to Heaven if you worship God and if you don't then either you stop existing or you go to Hell where you are on fire forever? I notice I'm not on fire and it's all right if I'm sometimes on fire but I'd really rather worship you, if it's not too late for that!"

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"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." 

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....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?"

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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." 

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"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."

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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?" 

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" - 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 -"

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"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." 

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"- 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 -"

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"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. 

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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 -"

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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...)

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"...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."

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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." 

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"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."

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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?" 

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

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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." 

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"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.

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"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?" 

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"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."

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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. 

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

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"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." 

Permalink Mark Unread

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.

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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." 

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"Well. I would be honored to ally with you instead. If that is what you want to do."

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The pretty dark-haired boy smiles, and it lights up his face like the sunrise. "I would be honored to have you as an ally. I'm...trying to wrangle something kind of complicated, right now, and - maybe I should just explain, actually." It's not like telling a dead soul under his remit is going to be an information-security problem. 

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He ducks his head. "So - there's a man. His name is Leareth's. He's - er, he was, until now, it's complicated - immortal. About two thousand years old. He....was trying to fight the gods of the world who wanted things to - stay stuck the way they were, with nothing ever progressing. And that was a pretty bad way for things to be. Not....as bad as your world for wizard children, maybe. But lots of people dying pointlessly of starvation and disease and wars, and he - thought it was a stupid pointless waste, that it was unacceptable, and he...actually tried to change it. Alone, for millennia. Harder than anyone else's ever tried to do anything, ever." 

There are tears shining in the boy's silver eyes. 

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Annisa has no idea how to relate to this information. She's sort of leaning towards treating it as...this god's Bible? You gotta know your god's Bible. Ideally by heart. So she'll be very attentive.

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"The gods wanted him dead. They - made me Their pawn, when I was human. Twisted my entire life around it. I was destined to die fighting Leareth. They made me the only person in the world powerful enough to defeat him - or, well, supposedly." A crooked smile. "He's...very good at what he does. I'm still not sure I could ever have managed it." 

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Ideally one would write the Bible down but there are no writing materials here. She'll just try to throw a lot of mnemonic techniques at it.

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"And....it's a really long story, but we spent twenty years sharing a magical Foresight lucid dream where we could talk to each other. He was my enemy at the start. By the end, he....was my friend. And then - something happened. People died. We - thought it could have been him, that he had been lying all along, that he was betraying us..." 

Vanyel closes his eyes. 

"It wasn't him. It was two of the gods, trying to...set up exactly the right series of events that would end in him dying. Forever, this time." 

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Annisa APPROVES of how her god seems to think people should not die forever. 

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People shouldn't die forever. 

"The Star-Eyed Goddess...turned one of our allies to Her side. He's the one who tried to destroy the entire city just to kill Leareth, after he'd disabled his immortality magic. I...stopped him. The method of stopping him was, er, how...this...happened." Vague handwavy gesture at himself, the forest, all of it. 

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Annisa thinks Bibles go into more detail than this but she's mentally taking it down faithfully anyway. 

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"Anyway. So now he's alive but incapacitated in Haven, which is - apparently also where your teammates are? Meaning I can't see anything and it's starting to scare me. And also most of our government is up north arguably still fighting a war which should never have happened in the first place. Or dead. Way too many people are dead and I - I wasn't, I couldn't -" 

He shrugs, helplessly. "I'm....sorry to complain to you about my problems. That's not very fair of me." 

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"Allies are supposed to know about each others' problems. Do you want problem-solving or do you just want someone to listen."

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That is such a helpful thing for her to try to offer, and the way she's putting it, and framing it in her mind, is...not familiar, exactly, but it reminds Vanyel of something. Of Leareth, a tiny bit. Of Stef, slightly moreso, though in a weird sideways way. 

Stef. 

I'm sorry, ashke. I never meant it to end this way. 

"...I want to figure this out, but, er, we don't need to be in a rush for that. Time works differently here. And - er, I think that if you're going to have helpful advice, you probably need to know a lot more context, but I honestly don't know where to start." 

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"What....are gods. Magically, I mean. Are they....sentient mana-consuming entities."

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Vanyel frowns, then sighs and sits down cross-legged on the carpet of leaves. 

"I have a feeling I'm not quite following everything you mean by that. They're - intelligent, yes, arguably a lot moreso than people, but...not in the same way. They - need resources, to act in the world? I don't think exactly in a way where it makes sense to say they eat mage-energies, though. And I sort of suspect you don't mean mage-energies the way I know them. Can you - tell me more about what 'mana' is and how it works, in your world?" 

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"Mana is present in people and animals and living things and things that were once living, but only a little bit of it; wizards are unusual in that they can hold and generate through effort quite a lot of it. Mals are creatures that eat mana. There used to be an ecosystem of them - occasional big dangerous ones, but mostly little harmless ones you just had to look out for - but people kept breeding new ones and...things broke down. Now most mals feed on wizards and they're very dangerous to young wizards, ones between the age when their mana starts coming in and the age when they learn how to use it. If we have any gods they're usually thought of as different things from big sentient insubstantial maleficaria but I don't know how to think about - do people have souls, is that how you found me?"

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"Er, yes, people have souls. Which god has remit over a person's soul is...complicated? But you died in Haven, or close enough, and the Shadowgod didn't contest me for you, They seem kind of busy right now." 

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Shiver. "Do all the gods give afterlives, or just you?"

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"It's kind of complicated? Most of the other gods keep the dead souls, but - er, right now I'm putting a lot of effort into keeping you intact - er, souls don't have all the bits that make a person, usually most of the specific memories of your life would get lost or blurred. I can't do this forever and I can't, er, keep you...conscious and experiencing things, all the time? It's taking too much of my attention and I have a lot less of that than the big gods." 

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHHAHAHAHAHAAAHA

 

that's not an afterlife, you shouldn't say you have an afterlife if you don't -

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The boy gives her an anguished look. 

"I'm sorry! I think we can fix it! Leareth - had a plan - I just, I don't know all the components, after the initial stage, and I can't do it on my own - he put all sorts of safeguards in, which is smart, right, I could've come out wrong, but I need him to undo them before I can do anything outside Haven or try to get more resources. I...and he was going to get the power for it by killing ten million people for blood-magic and I obviously don't want to do that! So we need to figure out something else and I have to talk to him only he's still in really bad shape..." 

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"Boston'll - have healing - killing ten million people to give all people an afterlife is a perfectly reasonable trade anyway -"

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.....Wow. 

"You know," Vanyel says quietly, "I think you'll get along with him. And, hmm - he's the one person I'm confident I can speak with safely, without seriously messing up his mind, he knows what he's doing. I - can try to pull you into the conversation? And then you'll be able to relay messages directly to him, and he can talk to your team." 

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"Sure." She's back to being extremely scared and sad, though.

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"Possibly the best thing I'll be able to figure out is, er, sending you back in some sort of body? I can keep most of your memories intact for a little while and then if you have a physical form to tie your soul to, I think that shouldn't take ongoing effort. ....Er, I don't think I can give you a human body though. I - could make you a Companion, maybe? They, um, have horse bodies. Magical horse bodies. It's a long story." 

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Why would that be easier than a human. "Uh, whatever...works, I guess? I...have a body, can you not use that one because it has a hole in it?"

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"Probably that's the issue? I...think it's mostly that I don't have, er, any internal protocols - that's not quite the right word, sorry, trying to translate something from god-concepts - er, anyway, it seems like I don't obviously have the ability to repair damage from your body, um, having been dead for a bit. I might've missed some sort of window where it would've been possible to pull a miracle or something, seems like the Shadowgod did that with Shavri - er, a friend of mine, she was involved in the mess that just happened, she carried a message back from the Shadow-Lover to Leareth."

Yet another long story and he should really stop going off on digressions.

"But, um, Valdemar's government runs on a system where magical intelligent horses bond to people - setting it up was a one-off miracle that several gods were involved in, but I think the Shadowgod was most involved in the Companions. And the standard method just reuses human souls because that takes - fewer god-resources? The Groveborn are created souls, constructed from scratch, but the others aren't. ....Er, I can maybe figure out how to use that protocol but not automatically give you the mind control. Normally Companions have a sort of - internal block added - that makes it impossible for them to think about fighting the gods. But I don't want to do that to you because a lot of the other gods really need fighting, and having to break through the block is messy and painful." 

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"Also Boston won't trust me or listen to me at all if I am obviously mind controlled!"

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"Also that! Er, hopefully Leareth will have a better idea. Another proof of concept we have is Need - she's an immortal intelligent magical sword who used to be a human mage, thousands of years ago, she predates Leareth even. I don't currently have any protocols to pull that off but I bet Leareth has notes on the process." 

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Nod. There is no point being sad and terrified at him, but she can't hide it very well from someone who can read her mind.

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Vanyel is thinking that there's no point in having the tiny still-human corner of him flooded with grief and guilt that he couldn't save this one girl. 

(He knows it's not only that. There was no time to grieve, before, and so many things happened so fast. Randi's dead and he wasn't there and the last words they exchanged...could have been worse, he supposes, but it's not what he would have wanted. Well. What he would have wanted is for Randi to not be dead, and he can't have that, it's too late, he's a god now but it's too little too late and he can't save Randi or Savil or even poor Kilchas, who died to save Haven, in the very same instant that Vanyel was becoming a god...) 

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None of that is the point, right now. 

He - can't exactly decide to stop feeling the grief, but he can shift his attention away from the tiny humanlike fragment, toward - all the rest. Because there are problems to be fixed, right now, and he can't afford pointless distractions. It can wait. Later. It...seems important, not to forget the pain... 

 

He still wants to offer Annisa a hug but that almost certainly won't help. 

"....Do you want some time alone to, er, process things?" he asks, stiffly. "If it'd help for all this," vague gesture at their surroundings, "to - feel familiar, I - can probably do that?" 

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"Sure. It should look like a metal box with furniture hand-made by a fourteen year old who's lousy at carpentry." Being snarky at the god will not help at all but Annisa's very stressed out and she's not exactly saying things which makes it much much harder to not say them.

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Vanyel smiles at her. "Leareth is going to like you, I think." 

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- and then she's alone, in what at a quick surface glance looks mostly like her Scholomance dorm room. (If she looks closer, the furniture and objects all have a vaguely unfinished look, as though a talented painter got most of the way through a photorealistic painting but didn't quite have a chance to get to the final details.) 

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Don't mind her she'll just curl up on the ground having a breakdown. She didn't mean to do that but none of her usual strategies for hurting herself until she's okay work properly here.

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She is left alone in the simulacrum of her dorm room for a fairly long subjective period of time, though time seems to pass sort of oddly here, a little like the way time passes in dreams. 

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And then, abruptly, the simulacrum-void-wall is gone, and in its place, an expanse of snow stretches out. There are mountains visible. The sky is wintry grey. She can feel the wind on her face, but it's not cold; it's oddly temperature-less. 

"I'm about to pull Leareth in," Vanyel says, reaching out a hand to Annisa, "but I figured I should give you a chance to get acclimated first." 

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"Okay," says Annisa expressionlessly. 

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He doesn't ask if she's all right. That would be an incredibly stupid question and she'd be within her rights to get offended. 

Instead, he just shows her to the mouth of the pass, sheltered from the imaginary wind. The pass is visibly unnatural; a perfectly straight slice carved out across nearly a half-mile, the walls rising far above both of their heads at the deepest point, perfectly smooth, the floor perfectly flat and just wide enough for two people to walk abreast. 

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And then - pull this thread, that thread, like so - 

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And suddenly a man is standing fifty yards out from the mouth of the pass. Dark hair, dark eyes, dressed all in black. There's nothing especially unusual about his appearance; he's reasonably good-looking, in an ordinary way, medium height, fit but not ridiculously muscular. 

Something about the way he stands, though, gives off the intense impression of being dangerous

There are figures behind him, shadowy and not fully sketched out, just giving the vague impression of an army. 

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"Leareth." 

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Annisa is mostly not having feelings but she decides that she likes him already.

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"Sorry this is confusing," Vanyel is saying, as he walks out of the mouth of the pass toward the man. "I just got access to this place and I - there's a lot we need to talk about. Mostly not even the things I was expecting to have to talk about with you! There's, er, a problem in Haven, except maybe it's not a problem and it's actually an opportunity, I'm not sure yet. Either way it's throwing off Foresight a lot, so I'm going to need you to help gather some information for me from, well, the human level -" 

Pause. 

"...Leareth, are you all right? You seem kind of out of it." 

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The man blinks, and then, with an evident effort of will, lifts his foot and takes a step toward Vanyel, then another. 

"I apologize - I think that the painkillers they gave me were stronger than I realized." 

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"Gods! I'm sorry. You must still be exhausted. I - would've waited if I thought I could, but I'm worried about staying in control of the situation, and with Foresight this noisy it's taking a lot of my attention just keeping a lookout for threats to your safety. I think I can do it but it's less guaranteed than I'd prefer." 

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The man's eyelids flicker briefly downward, his eyebrows bunching very slightly. "...You are expending resources on that?" 

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"On preventing anyone from murdering you? Obviously I am! Totally aside from the part where Haven would be a crater right now if not for you, you're...my friend?" 

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Annisa is pretty sure you don't speak when your god is talking to other disciples unless invited so she'll just stand here trying to keep the whole Bible in her memory though with less enthusiasm what with how there isn't really an afterlife.

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The way Vanyel is communicating with Annisa's soul at all means that there's not actually much difference between things she says to him deliberately versus thinks to herself. 

...He is absolutely not going to burst out laughing at the concept of Leareth being his disciple, but this is taking a bit of effort. 

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Leareth blinks again, in the deliberate way of someone trying very hard to wake up fully, and looks around. 

"- Vanyel, who is...?" Gesture at Annisa. 

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"This is Annisa! She's from another world. Oh, and she's also dead but I'm hoping we can fix that, maybe?" 

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"- What." 

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"Er, sorry, I'm - kind of having trouble with this whole 'conversations in linear order' thing. The problem we have is that there are a bunch of teenagers from another world who were all attending some sort of wizard school built in the Void, and their graduation transport spell was supposed to take them home only it took them here instead. Annisa was killed but I guess was just barely still alive when they landed, so I had remit and I grabbed her." 

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Blink. 

"...Yes. I was aware. Jisa came and asked for advice. I...was not very lucid at the time so I am unsure what advice I gave." 

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"Oh. Right. Good. I wasn't sure if they'd have figured out the other world part or not, I...was confused at first." 

And then his expression softens. "Jisa. Is she all right?" 

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One eyebrow lifts. "I doubt it. But - your daughter is coping gracefully enough. Also, has anybody ever told you she is a terror? She came and woke me and ordered me to swear on the stars that I would not murder any of Valdemar's population to make a god. ...It was a reasonable assurance to give the Council so that they would sign a peace treaty, but I was also hardly in a position to refuse any demands, and she was not shy about taking advantage of that." 

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And, briefly, Vanyel's face breaks into a smile like the sun rising. "I'm so glad she's alive, and...being herself. Thank you. For - helping her, when I can't." 

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"You are welcome."

And then Leareth turns to Annisa, his black eyes piercing. "Your allies, the children who survived. Are they likely to present a threat to Haven." 

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"Only if Haven starts it! ...or if the mals that came through with us outcompete your local ones."

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Leareth glances over at Vanyel, who shrugs helplessly, and then looks back to Annisa. "I - doubt Haven would start anything deliberately, and one might hope that they learned a lesson about accidental escalation from what just happened in the north. However, I am reluctant to place too much weight on hope. - Can you please explain what 'mals' are?" 

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"In my world there are dangerous magical creatures that eat mana, which mostly means they eat wizards, especially wizards who are old enough to store mana but too young to effectively defend themselves. Your world apparently doesn't have that problem. It would be bad if you started. No one knows why but it's been getting worse in our world for the last several centuries - it used to be that about half of kids survived to adulthood and now it's, like, one in twenty, if they don't spend their teens in specially protected extradimensional spaces."

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Leareth's eyes narrow very slightly, his chin dipping and his mouth tightening almost imperceptibly. 

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To Vanyel, at least, this would be recognizable as the Leareth equivalent of a gasp of horror. 

(In practice, of course, Vanyel is perceiving Leareth in a way that has very little to do with the simulacra of his body interacting with this imaginary space.) 

He finds himself wanting to reach out and take Leareth's hand, or clasp his shoulder. He doesn't do this. It's not really the sort of friendship they've had, and it would probably just startle Leareth. 

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"That is unfortunate," Leareth says, slowly. "I - am guessing that Jisa would have informed me if there were any signs that mals had followed you. It - does impose some additional cost on trying to establish contact with your world in order to help solve this problem." 

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....Vanyel is not going to mention the part about just one island having a big enough population to fuel over a dozen gods. He's thinking it, though. 

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"Jisa was hoping to find a way to at least send messages," Leareth says quietly. "So - that their parents can be alerted to what happened." A glance at Annisa. "And - to whether their children survived or not." 

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"Mine already know," Annisa says flatly. "But the rest of Boston'll want to get home, if they can. I assume it's not possible? If either world had interworld transit we'd, uh, have noticed. And mals will absolutely get in if you have transit between worlds."

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"I would have assumed it was impossible, but I also had no idea that other worlds existed at all! And if travel was possible in this direction, even if only by accident, it is probably possible to reverse it." A slight sigh. "Perhaps not worth the risk."

And then he pauses, and his eyes turn and fix on her again. "Although - Annisa, does your world have gods?" 

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"Well, I didn't think so, but some people do think so, and since this world has gods and I apparently do have a soul I'm starting to think they're right."

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Leareth...looks confused, mostly. "I would not have thought gods would be easy to miss! Ours prefer to act in subtle ways, but even so Their interventions are unmistakeable; not everybody worships at a particular temple, but I have never heard of anyone denying that gods exist at all." A frown. "What do the people who claim there are gods have to say about Them?" 

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"People say they used to do more overt miracles but don't much anymore. There's an obvious explanation for that - magic doesn't work very well around people who don't believe in it, so most wizards can't do 'miracles' in front of a disbelieving audience either. People say they grant prayers, but in subtle ways, and that they give you an afterlife, which is practically the only important thing. Uh, some people say they only give an afterlife to their followers and some say that the afterlife for nonbelievers or bad people is eternal torture, I don't know how we'd verify any of that."

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"I mean, the way would attempt to verify it would be by using magic to explore the other planes, until I found the one where souls go. Does your magic allow that?" 

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"No? We only know of two and we don't have a way to explore them. Does that...work in this world?"

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"The skill to do it at all, much less safely, is very rare. Especially for those planes other than the spirit world - also called the ethereal plane or the Moonpaths, by different traditions. I was able to verify when I was only a few centuries old that the souls of the dead are in the spirit world. ...Though for the living to interact with them, it generally requires a god acting to provide an interface. As Vanyel is doing for us now." He gestures at the snow and the pass. "Anyway. Your teammates are likely to know more about local gods?" 

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"They're not religious either, no. They will probably assume that your gods are as non-obviously-existent as ours, if people just mention gods to them, but they'll cooperate with gods who are trying to cooperate with them, they're Boston." Brief intense grief. She would have been Boston. 

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Vanyel wants to fix it. It feels so bitterly unfair, that he can't. That he was too late. 

That another world exists with even more horrifying problems than the ones he knows, and, and - 

 

 

 

- and he might have to choose not to help. Because the risk to Velgarth is too high; because it's not worth it, to gamble on fixing it, when if the cards fall wrong all they would be accomplishing is spreading Earth's problems to his own world as well. 

He hates it. It doesn't feel fair. Surely after everything he sacrificed for this outcome, he should be strong enough to save one girl. 

"- Leareth, do you think we could figure out a way for her to speak directly with her teammates? You can take back a message, obviously, but...I think it'd be better if they could actually talk to her, rather than doing all this relaying. And with you needing to be asleep to talk to me." 

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Leareth looks thoughtful. 

"It sounds as though wizards are not exactly Gifted in the way we understand it, but - possibly they could still access the Web from its physical focus? Unfortunately, it is currently buried beneath a rather large pile of rubble." 

And he turns back to Annisa. "What message would you like me to relay to your teammates?" 

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Annisa is incredibly confused by that question. "I....don't know what Vanyel's objectives are, here. Aside from keeping you alive. I guess you should tell Boston to keep you alive?"

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He blinks at her again. 

"....If I want to know what messageVanyel wishes relayed, I can simply ask him. Or use my own judgement, since we know each other rather well and I designed the process that made him a baby god. Mostly he needs more information, to compensate for the Foresight noise. But, right now, I am asking you, not Vanyel. I...hmm, I imagine you might want to reassure them that your death was not their fault or that you are not angry about it, if those are both true?" 

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"I...don't object to you saying either of those things if that serves your goals in some way?"

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Leareth feels like the question he's attempting to convey is very basic and he's not sure why he's failing to communicate it! He's not at his most coherent, sure, but he's not that foggy. 

He glances over at Vanyel. 

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"I don't know! I tried really hard to keep all the memories and goal-structures intact! I'm not any good at this yet though." 

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Leareth nods, then turns to Annisa. 

"You - seem to be bouncing off my questions about your goals. Are you - not able to experience wanting things right now? Or is it more that you do not feel you are in a bargaining position where you can afford to ask for them? ...Which one is relevant to whether Vanyel was successfully able to figure out how to retain more of your memories and self than the other gods usually bother to." 

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"I want to continue existing! I told him that! I don't want other things because I'm not willing to trade off any continued existence for anything else!"

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....Nod. 

"- Well, both Vanyel and I already think it is awful and unacceptable when anyone ceases to exist, and intend to work on solving that problem, but...I would not expect you to place much trust in that, yet, we must earn that from you." A very slight shrug, one shoulder slowly lifting and falling. "In the meantime, I can use my own judgement on what is productive to relay to your friends, and work on arranging a direct conversation." 

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"Vanyel said that, and that's very noble of you, but lots of people are obviously going to irretrievably die while you try getting around to it and I don't want to be one of them, and you've got absolutely no reason to care whether I am! I can absolutely help you figure out what's productive to relay to my allies, it'll just depend on what you want my allies to do."

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"I...am going to be much better placed to figure that out when I am not feeling terrible." Leareth sounds very mildly annoyed by this inconvenience. "My initial thoughts are - obviously your world likely has knowledge that ours lacks, so collaboration there would be of potentially very high value. And - if you think your allies can be trusted, then I would like to fill them in on as much context as possible, so that they are less easily manipulated by the hostile Powers into harming my or Valdemar's interests. Oh, and if they have healing magic, that could be extremely valuable right now." 

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"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?"

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"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." 

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"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.

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"...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." 

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"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." 

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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." 

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

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"...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." 

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

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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..." 

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"....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..." 

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"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."

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Leareth goes very, very still. 

 

 

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

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"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."

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

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....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. 

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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?" 

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

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"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."

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.....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. 

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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. 

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"Yep, you've got it."

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"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 -?" 

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"....No. I - was very tired - and every time someone came to speak to me, there was a more urgent emergency, and I was not sure how to explain it..." 

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"- Leareth, hey. It's all right. You've - already done more today than anyone could've asked. But, er - can you please relay that? To...Jisa, I think, and Melody - I trust the two of them together to figure out where to go from there. I think. If words are hard you can just say 'Vanyel is a baby god now, it's a long story' and promise them that I'll explain later once I figure out how to actually talk to people?" 

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"...All right. I can do that. And relay Annisa's message to her allies from Boston, and - hopefully once these drugs wear off I will be able to have a conversation with Boston and exchange information." 

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"All right."

And the beautiful boy with raven-black hair and silver eyes - who is, somehow, at the same time, a lean weary man in his late thirties, hair entirely silver, dressed in ragged clothing that was once white - glances around, and then after a moment's hesitation, crosses the remaining five paces between him and Leareth, and hugs the man. 

 

(He never hugged Leareth when they were both alive. But, right now, it kind of feels like that was a mistake on his part.) 

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And then the snowy pass dissolves, and for a moment there's white nothingness again - 

 

- and then Annisa is back in the simulacrum of her Scholomance dorm room. Alone. But time feels less dreamlike than it did before, and she can think. 

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She wants to be alive. 


That's such a pointless thing to want, here, now.

 

She curls up in not-her-bed and cries.

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Vanyel is dedicating a corner of his attention to giving her soul the necessary support-and-infrastructure that it needs to continue having any experiences while disembodied. Because Annisa helped him, and also she's a person and so he cares about her anyway, and the thing Annisa wants most in the world is to exist, and he can at least try to give her a vague terrible approximation of existence while he figures out something better. 

(He...hopes he got the forming-new-memories part right? It intuitively felt like the sort of thing that's incredibly unintuitive from the usual god-angle on the world, and much easier for him to triangulate, as an entity stretched between two widely divergent ways of existing and perceiving reality. And it seemed like there was an obvious tweak to make that ought to work and cost him only minimal extra resources? But he's not sure.) 

 

 

 

...Apparently, giving her space to exist and experience means automatically reading her mind and experiencing all of her emotions? Because the metaphorical 'space' he's holding for her is, metaphorically speaking, inside him. 

 

It hurts, to look. But not-looking isn't a choice that the pattern-that-is-Vanyel would make, ever.