"You can say that when I've done it." 

"Ah okay. Run of the mill, then, really. I'm not impressed at all. Come back when you have it working and I can cast Haste all by myself."

"Oh, that I can do now, if you give me six months and the materials to rebuild my arcane engine. The hard part is mass producing them." 

"...That sounds like the sort of thing that we, as responsible archmages, wrote down all the details of over the last two days."

"All the details might take more than two days." 

" - you do realize, though, that's - that's bigger than the Crusade."

Yes he does but he's going to be humble about it.

"It only does Remove Disease now. Once per person per day. I'd have to do a lot more work to adapt it for other spells, and it breaks about every other week." 

"That's not the hardest spell to get a casting of but still pretty incredible." It's also not classically considered an arcane spell. "After this meeting we should make sure you're not the only one who knows how to do it, or at least that it's written down somewhere. We've got time."

"I'd make you go around with a bodyguard until then except it'd - pretty much have to be Karlenius, and he and Alfirin politely despise each other."

          "I am very grateful for the Archmage's work on the Crusade," says Karlenius. 

"As I said. Do try to stay alive until we have all your precious future knowledge, and ideally even after that."

Remove Disease is a third circle cleric spell where he comes from. Easy enough for powerful adventurers to get a casting of, maybe, but far too expensive for almost everyone else – and the Alfirin he knows isn't the sort of person who'd just forget – 

Unless the spell was cheaper, when Aroden lived. 

"Back to the demiplane, then? There isn't much that can kill me there. Except the pyramid. And maybe the crocodiles." 

She would volunteer to bodyguard him herself except for the thing where he doesn't like her. 

"Well. Watch out for crocodiles."

"We will." plane shift?

"...OK so in case you hadn't guessed Aroden grants a second-circle remove disease. Also it sure sounded like you said arcane engine?"

"Tien wizards can cast Remove Disease as an arcane ritual, that's how I figured it out. I –

– I'd always wondered why some god didn't do that. It seemed so much more important than everything else." 

"Well. Now you know."

"...I assume that future-me told you I can hang cleric spells. Given that she apparently told you everything else."

"...If I know what you're referring to then that's not what you are doing."  

"If what you mean by that is that they don't work on their own, sure, I had to make a tiny braindead god to get them to actually have any effect when cast. But my process involved studying cleric spells until I could hang them myself. Some of them, at least.

...I was thinking I should maybe write that down too. So that if I irretrievably die - which I very much hope not to do of course - maybe you'll be able to work something similar into your engine. Hand out the ability to cure wounds or raise dead or the like."

" – other way around. My engine is based on your tiny braindead god." 

"Aha! I'm flattered, I think."

"...Will you be terribly offended if I ask if you think you might ever want to kill me. For good."

"It seems very unlikely. The reason I know so much about you mostly isn't because of what you told me directly, or the years we spent adventuring together. It's because – I think I mentioned the spell you invent for turning people into books. When my wife and I found out that you had taken over our friend's body – and you'd been manipulating us for years, at that point – we used it. And I read it. And we decided, after that, that we trusted you enough to turn you back. 

The version of you I know is not a Good person. I don't agree with all of the decisions she's made, I don't share all of her goals, and frankly I find it extremely concerning that political circumstances will force her to once again become a mother. But I decided a long time ago that I wanted the world to have her in it. 

Any particular reason you're asking now?"

She thought he might have done that.

"Because it sounds like your arcane engine does not require you to kill sixty-five people to create it. And is maybe based on my eight-hundred-year-stale recollections of how I did mine in the first place, I burned all my notes and was never planning to do it again - And if my fresher memories can help you get it working faster or stop it breaking every week I would like to help. Even if it means giving you technical details on my immortality."

"You found a way to deliberately obscure the memories before you reincarnated. Even you don't know how you did it. But –  I guessed it was something like that.

Let's make it worth it, shall we?"

It was already worth it. But they can make it more so.

"Yes, let's."

"...Maybe not here, though. I'm not sure this work is safe while there's still prophecy." 

"Mm? Why not? I know why I hid my original work from prophecy, but - I was also not slowing down my work by a factor of ten to do so."