"It's gotten more efficient with practice, but any mage who wants to do anything else with the next five years of their life is best advised not to put in the time to get this good at it," she says, smiling.

Giggle.

"Anyway. Besides that... I think the theoretical limits of magic are mostly unexplored," she says. "Partly because lyrium is expensive in large quantities and you can't really do anything on a very large scale without it. Partly because the templars are an inhibiting factor to research, and in Tevinter where they don't have templars everyone seems to be much more interested in doing politics and killing each other."

"How many mages are there per capita among humans and elves?"

"Mages are more common among elves than humans, but there are fewer elves... I don't have statistics on hand, but I'd expect the combined ratio to be something in the neighbourhood of one in a few thousand. I'd be very surprised to hear we were as common as one in a hundred or as rare as one in ten thousand."

"...About how many people are there? In the world?"

"Again, I don't have statistics on hand, and any number I give will be off by some unknown amount because only the qunari know how many qunari there are. But I'd say that between humans, dwarves, elves, and stray qunari, there are probably about fifty or sixty million people on this continent."

"How large are you expecting a continent to be...?"

"Maybe one or two thousand miles across."

"That doesn't sound very far off."

"Oh. ...My world's coming up on four billion people worldwide and fully expected to clear twice that in my lifetime if nothing weird happens."

"Does your world have Blights?"

"No. And it took a fair amount of technology to get it to that carrying capacity too."

"They're a two-wheeled rider-powered vehicle. Caridin's working on some to export; if they catch on they shouldn't be too hard for surface smiths to copy. They're probably not helping the population that much though, I was thinking more like farming technology. Fertilizers I don't know how to make and harvester machines I never saw in my life."

"Well, one thing at a time, then," says Metella. "Save the world first, improve it later."

"Although I hope you won't begrudge my attention on the lights thing."

"I expect to be able to save the world without needing you to drop everything to help."

"Good."

"If I expected to need you to drop everything, I would be clear about that."

"Good."

"Do you know where I might find Prince Stalas?"

"I don't know where he is now but he'll probably be here this evening if not sooner." Because he visits her because he's so great!