Hmm so it looks like he copied this part here from major creation but she thinks she's got - yes, she's got a variation of that spell from a wizard in Kelesh that's a bit more compact, it's not enough to change the circle so she never thought very much of it - It shouldn't be enough for fabricate, either, on its own, but it should help -

Oh, that might work – although he doesn't want to rely on the major creation infrastructure too heavily, since he'd like to make the spell work for magic items too – 

Does he even expect to be able to do that, with a fifth-circle spell? She expects that'd have to be a much larger variant...?

Not really at fifth circle, no, but he's hoping he can develop a base structure that scales neatly to greater and lesser versions. Any other surprising magical advances? 

Nothing quite as surprising as the magic missile; his fly is a little better, a couple more spells have permanent versions, and of course new spells she's never seen before like phantom chariot but those could be spells that exist and she just hasn't happened to encounter yet. Anything surprising in hers, besides the braindead-god spells and the ones that no reasonable living person would ever have a use for?

She has spellcrash, which he knows of but hasn't been able to personally track down. Also a lot of cool-looking enchantments which are of no use to him personally. 

"I suppose I never did ask, what's your specialization?"

"Conjuration, initially. Though the kinds of things I do have since gotten stranger and more specific." 

"Enchantment, at first, and - otherwise the same, yes. I think that happens to us all, after a point."

"I was really a teleportation specialist, at the beginning. Possibly because I spent so much time trying to escape from things. And that's how I got into making tiny braindead gods – that and your influence – since so much of it is figuring out planar linkages. 

I've always been useless as an enchanter, though." 

"I wound up focusing pretty hard on enchantments early, they were very helpful for - avoiding notice, and then getting out of Sarkoris - and then of course I spent thirty-odd years of my life fighting a war against a horde of undead, where most enchantments are useless."

"I wish I had more that was useful for fighting undead. There's just what I know of Gallowspire – and, actually, I might be able to reconstruct some of Nex's notes on lichs, I did get to leaf through them at one point. My headband gives me eidetic memory, but so far the retroactive recall isn't perfect and that would have been before I made it."  

"Ooh, eidetic memory on a headband. I'd love to get a look at it some day, though I doubt I'll be able to replicate it myself for a while. I haven't really started serious magic item crafting, yet."

"Not yet? After thirty years?"

"It's been a very busy thirty years! And I've had some other research projects! I was imagining I might get around to it this lifetime, but I've been prioritizing cracking true resurrection."

"I wonder how you built your little god without serious item crafting experience! There were a lot of crossover skills, for me." 

"Well, I can show you how. Once we've got more privacy here. Maybe it'll turn out that when I start trying to make artifacts it'll be easier than I expect, if a lot of the skills from making a god transfer."

"Are we done with everything that doesn't require more privacy, then?"

"Well, we could write down a bunch of the less critically secret history. But I think we might've picked all the low-hanging magical fruit that doesn't involve forbidden secrets that apparently caused the ruin of Azlant." She sighs. "Probably the responsible thing to do would be to do it in the other demiplane. I think we could get this one to be that secure in less time but - that would involve more experimenting with the pyramid. And Iomedae's right that that does have a small chance of - irrecoverable harms - I'll want to warn her, if we'll be multiple days sidereal, and make sure they've got a way to reach us in emergencies."

"I can write down all the Crusade-relevant notes here while you talk to her." 

"I'll see you in - however many hours it winds up being."

Plane shift, teleport.

The Crusade has survived their absence. Iomedae's out on the front, fighting the rare thing that's stupid enough to let her. 

She can inform a page that she has some things to discuss with the Knight-Commander, in the command tent, when convenient.

The Knight-Commander cannot exactly be seen to reliably respond instantly to these requests but she is not generally all that slow about them. 

"How'd it go?"

"It's been going well, so far, but - there's some things that Élie doesn't want to discuss in that demiplane. I have one that's more secure, we'll record it all there, but we won't be able to use the time dilation. So it'll probably be a couple days on the outside. Sending won't reach us there, very reliably. I have a spare tuning fork in case you need to get one of us for an emergency."