"Aww. And gods are finicky about handing out acolytehood, so no real scaling there. That's annoying. But at least this magic's transferable."

"Not horizontally."

"Yeaaah. Mm. What about technology, technology's fine, right? Do you have any cool - potions or medicines or anything? I don't know what the level of technology is here but I'm pretty sure it did a lot of improving."

"We have lots and lots of that where I'm from. I have a robot army, although that I actually inherited from some aliens, my world's technology isn't at robot armies yet."

"... Okay now I want to learn what 'lots and lots' constitutes. What sorts of things does it do, how does it work?"

"Effectively instantaneous communication over arbitrary intraplanetary distances. Getting people to not-so-intraplanetary locations, like the moon. Nonmagical flying vehicles that hold hundreds of people. Nonmagical overland vehicles pilotable by amateurs that go potentially as fast as my cloudpine on an unobstructed straightaway. Plastic. Recording all kinds of information in all kinds of formats. Nonmagical cures and treatments for assorted diseases and conditions. Figuring out exactly why people look like their parents and what else that mechanism does."

"Emphatically seconded."

"If you come to my world to try to learn it, your soul will turn into an animal, which is very nice when everybody has them and not so nice when everybody doesn't. But we can run an Internet connection through your portal and then you can read the sum total of Earthly human knowledge."

"I'll take the internet connection. Because that sounds amazing and like I need to know it yesterday."

"Yesterday you were still dead," says Isabella merrily.

"Yes, and I was rolling in my grave over not knowing it. I just didn't know it, then."

Isabella giggles. "The internet is pretty great."

"It sounds it. And we are acolytes and have a convenient distribution network for anything importable we find!"

"Yeah! Woo, acolyte high-five." Idania flies over to Aya to high-five her.

High-five!

"It sounds like you guys have more expected leeway to introduce big changes than Iobel and Edarial do. And they're the king and queen of a country."

"... Uh, wow, that's a bit strange. What kind of country? Are they like - puppetal figureheads?"

"It's called Marlatia. They're apparently in a politically delicate situation, and also don't work together nearly as well as me and Adarin do, but no, not figureheads or puppets."

"Huh. I guess that would prevent introducing big changes. Are they working on working together? Is there conveniently defined reasons for why they don't work together well, is there an easily applicable solution a flying foreign acolyte can provide?"

"No easily applicable solution. They're trying. The short version is that he was a prince, had to get married to become king, preferred becoming king to starting a bloody war of succession even though he didn't want to get married, and then ignored the details of the queen-selection process such that someone else coerced Iobel with the threat of becoming a vegetable into marrying him, and then they didn't talk enough to figure out what had happened for months during which she glared at him a lot."

"... Wow. Um. Yikes, okay, yeah, there's no way I can fly in and fix that. Maybe play counselor? I do have like - eighty years experience and have had lots and lots of relationships, I might be okay for therapy."

"You do have the advantage of not being blatantly happily married. Which we, uh, ran into some trouble with suppressing. So maybe you could try it."

"I can give it a shot, I guess. I'll try to be sly about it and not be like... 'Hello I am here to fix your problems!'"

"I mean, there isn't a portal direct from here to there. We'd have to come back separately and make one to let you travel there without getting a daemon. But I guess Aya's enough excuse for that."