"- is it literally just, if they could see people better they wouldn't hurt them?" That sounds SUPER solvable. 

"...I mean, I am not sure that would solve all of it, but it would be an improvement. And, hmm -" 

Pause. 

"- I think that if I knew the gods of Velgarth were fully seeing and understanding people and their experiences, I - would be far more willing to take their priorities seriously, even if it appeared on the surface to be costly to my plans and priorities. Because I - would expect that conversation to go somewhere useful, and be a better alternative than just fighting." 

"Well. I'll talk to them and figure it out. I'm not a very religious person but gods you can have sex with can't be all bad."

Wow that is such an incredibly pointless thing to feel jealousy about! Why are Leareth's emotions doing this to him??

It wouldn't necessarily even be a surprising update, if Elfyn from another world can just - go talk to the gods - and "figure it out" whatever that means....

Leareth is still STUPIDLY JEALOUS that maybe Elfyn will be able to establish communication with the Velgarth gods, because of her mind-affecting sex magic - which Leareth isn't even sure he would sign up for if he had the choice, but still -  

"....I am curious about your previous experience of - religious people? It seems likely to be different from religious people here in Velgarth. ...Also I am finding myself wanting to ask if there were any gods in your world of origin - fictional gods included - that could and did have sex with mortals? And what the story there was?" 

Leareth has so little idea why he's asking that question! It's because it might be hot that's not a reason for anything though. 

"If you want my tragic backstory you have to hold me and pet my hair. It's the rules. - not my magic's rules, my rules."

Well, it's not like holding her or petting her hair seem unpleasant in any way? Actually, for some reason (which is probably related to the alien-sex-magic mindcontrol effect, but Leareth is tired of spending much time on his mental flags for that), it sounds very appealing and pleasant. 

Leareth glances around at the current arrangement of blankets and pillows, and nudges them into the configuration that seems best for holding Elfyn and petting her hair in order to hear her explanations about the gods of other worlds. 

He makes eye contact with her and holds out his arms. 

Oh good, the kind of supervillain who likes logistics, such as the logistics of convenient cuddles. She does a flip and lands very gently in his arms. 

- cute and attractive??? 

Leareth catches her and snuggles her (and, in the back of his mind, wonders about the hypothetical "supervillains" he's met who didn't care about tracking logistics. How would you ever get anything done??) 

- okay this is the solemn sort of conversation now. At least that's Leareth's best guess. He can't claim to be an expert at reading the alien's facial expressions. 

"So we were going to talk about your tragic backstory?" he says softly. "Which is - somehow related to gods or religions, in your original world?" 

"I grew up Christian. Which is a religion, one of the most popular ones. Christianity is faith in Jesus Christ, the god who became a man. He got a woman pregnant, and He was born, and He went around teaching. And He said that He had come to bring us eternal life, and everyone who followed Him would have it, but that there was also - a place of eternal torture, where the souls of the damned went, and everyone was damned, except that He'd come to save us.

I didn't grow up very Christian. My grandma went to church every week and she took me, but my mom worked Sundays and my dad wasn't religious. I don't - actually remember stopping believing it, it just kind of happened somewhere in there, when I was a kid."

Leareth is trying very hard to listen intently, but he feels like he might need a diagram to make sense of it! There is separately a box of deeply horrifying but Leareth is mainly focused on holding together his mental diagram of this bizarre god parenthood situation.

"- Right. I just want to check that I am following this, I want to think for a minute and then try to summarize it back to you." 

Pause. 

"- So - there is a god 'Jesus Christ' and in your world it was claimed that gods were the kind of entity that could instantiate themselves in a human form? Specifically via the - original non-human god - getting a human woman pregnant...? I am maybe not following that part, actually, but–" 

"It only happened the once. Or possibly not at all, since probably that time didn't really happen either, but - yeah. That God could have a child, who was mortal, while still being God. To understand us better and teach us better, and sacrifice Himself to save us. - honestly it seems to me like a reasonable thing to do if your magic is sort of like mine but a bit askew."

Leareth spends at least fifteen seconds trying to consider all the implications of "it seems to me like a reasonable thing to do if your magic is sort of like mine but a bit askew". Askew in what direction??? 

He is probably not going to figure that out on his own, even if he's reading her mind (which he is, very thoroughly.)

Leareth strokes her hair, gently. "- I am curious," by which he means VERY CONCERNED, "about the place of eternal torture, but I - it sounds like maybe you have already concluded that it probably does not exist in your world?" 

"Definitely doesn't!! I got a bunch of disclaimers when I first got my magic, like that kids won't get hurt, and I won't get pregnant, or get anyone else pregnant, unless both of us are seriously ready for and intending that, or get sexually transmitted diseases, or rape anybody if it'd actually be bad for them, and one of them was that the exact answer to what happens to people when they die is slightly more complicated than 'they don't exist' but doesn't involve going to any torture dimensions for having tons of weird queer sex-

 - uh. In some versions of Christianity the things you go to Hell for include having weird sex, because it takes you farther from God, it's willfully disobeying Him. And I'd long since decided I was gonna do my thing but I needed to be sure before I seduced a bunch of people who were unlike me still being religious. 

I can't prove the erogame isn't lying but - it hasn't ever lied to me. And the version where people went to Hell for weird queer sex never made any sense anyway, like, God loves me and sacrificed His child to save me and I love Him too and he's going to decide my sins don't get forgiven because they were incredibly weird?? Whoever came up with that has never loved anyone in their life."

"...I mean, I - had never even considered that gods could be - the kind of entity that could love anyone, in any sense that humans could recognize at all. I am honestly not sure I would be surprised by the concept of a god that specifically disapproved of 'weird sex' whatever that means, given that several gods of Velgarth as far as I can tell specifically disapprove of printing presses -" 

Pause.

"- But, I do also have the sense that your erogame is - trying to cooperate with you? In the way that I was trying to cooperate with Vanyel, these past fifteen years–" 

(...What is an "erogame"?? Nevermind. He can think about that later, when it doesn't trade off against sexy opportunities where did that come from– ...nevermind.) 

"You heard 'erogame'?"

“…Yes? I am not sure what it means and it did not seem like the highest priority question but I heard that word.”

Does this mean something? …Obviously the word has a meaning, like words do, but the way Elfyn asked made it seem maybe more significant than that - 

"Usually takes longer, is all. And yeah. I think it's - it wants me to have a nice time. It doesn't do things that'd make me feel - like I wish I wasn't playing."

"....I do not at all expect you to know the answer to this question, but I am so curious why a force - entity - with those properties and that goalset, exists at all! It seems so specific! And so - oriented on values and needs that as far as I can tell, in this world at least, only exist for humans and other mortal sentient beings, and not gods -" 

Oh no. 

Leareth is going to have some kind of feeling he's not even sure what feeling if it turns out that the "Erogame" providing Elfyn's magic is a god or godlike entity that someone - not him, obviously - but someone in a similar position, tried to create, in order to promote the flourishing of mortal beings - 

"So, uh, in my world, there's a - genre of story. That goes like this. Normal girl, gets magic sex powers, has lots of magic sex. Gets better at sex the way you - get better at things in games, you have numbers and the numbers go up. The erogame is - something you could get on the internet, if you wanted to play 'I have magic sex powers'."

Leareth was already intensely curious about her world but he feels like suddenly he has so many more questions! 

"Right. So - there are things that are both - stories like what is told in ballads, and also games, like - dice games?" No that can't possibly be right, dice games are pure chance and that wouldn't fit into a plot-driven story at all. "Or is it more like the sort of strategy-training games where you have a semi-realistic map of various countries, and gamepieces to represent your country's army and mages, and someone else is playing the army and mages of the neighboring country you want to take over?" 

(Leareth's recent experience of games is, perhaps, somewhat restricted.) 

"...no. It's like. You're a normal girl, attending school, probably in Japan. For historical reasons. Suddenly, you see - a bunch of options. You can make yourself hotter. Or hornier. You can get better at seduction. You can become into a wider variety of stuff. Or you can make the world weirder. You have five points. What do you spend your points on?"

Just, you know, hypothetically.

This is deeply fascinating and also Leareth is so confused! 

"...I see. If that is a - description of the tactical constraints in the game - I think I follow? ...I have no idea what 'Japan' means except that I can gather it is a place? Anyway, if I were actually playing this game, I think I would need to know more context about 'Japan' and their local schooling for girls, in order to know what my best options were?" 

Pause. 

"- Well, on priors I would probably choose either making the world weirder - in cases where I did not like the current world - or else making myself better at seduction, since that seems like the most direct route toward influencing the world?"