"This is Annisa! She's from another world. Oh, and she's also dead but I'm hoping we can fix that, maybe?" 

"- What." 

"Er, sorry, I'm - kind of having trouble with this whole 'conversations in linear order' thing. The problem we have is that there are a bunch of teenagers from another world who were all attending some sort of wizard school built in the Void, and their graduation transport spell was supposed to take them home only it took them here instead. Annisa was killed but I guess was just barely still alive when they landed, so I had remit and I grabbed her." 

Blink. 

"...Yes. I was aware. Jisa came and asked for advice. I...was not very lucid at the time so I am unsure what advice I gave." 

"Oh. Right. Good. I wasn't sure if they'd have figured out the other world part or not, I...was confused at first." 

And then his expression softens. "Jisa. Is she all right?" 

One eyebrow lifts. "I doubt it. But - your daughter is coping gracefully enough. Also, has anybody ever told you she is a terror? She came and woke me and ordered me to swear on the stars that I would not murder any of Valdemar's population to make a god. ...It was a reasonable assurance to give the Council so that they would sign a peace treaty, but I was also hardly in a position to refuse any demands, and she was not shy about taking advantage of that." 

And, briefly, Vanyel's face breaks into a smile like the sun rising. "I'm so glad she's alive, and...being herself. Thank you. For - helping her, when I can't." 

"You are welcome."

And then Leareth turns to Annisa, his black eyes piercing. "Your allies, the children who survived. Are they likely to present a threat to Haven." 

"Only if Haven starts it! ...or if the mals that came through with us outcompete your local ones."

Leareth glances over at Vanyel, who shrugs helplessly, and then looks back to Annisa. "I - doubt Haven would start anything deliberately, and one might hope that they learned a lesson about accidental escalation from what just happened in the north. However, I am reluctant to place too much weight on hope. - Can you please explain what 'mals' are?" 

"In my world there are dangerous magical creatures that eat mana, which mostly means they eat wizards, especially wizards who are old enough to store mana but too young to effectively defend themselves. Your world apparently doesn't have that problem. It would be bad if you started. No one knows why but it's been getting worse in our world for the last several centuries - it used to be that about half of kids survived to adulthood and now it's, like, one in twenty, if they don't spend their teens in specially protected extradimensional spaces."

Leareth's eyes narrow very slightly, his chin dipping and his mouth tightening almost imperceptibly. 

To Vanyel, at least, this would be recognizable as the Leareth equivalent of a gasp of horror. 

(In practice, of course, Vanyel is perceiving Leareth in a way that has very little to do with the simulacra of his body interacting with this imaginary space.) 

He finds himself wanting to reach out and take Leareth's hand, or clasp his shoulder. He doesn't do this. It's not really the sort of friendship they've had, and it would probably just startle Leareth. 

"That is unfortunate," Leareth says, slowly. "I - am guessing that Jisa would have informed me if there were any signs that mals had followed you. It - does impose some additional cost on trying to establish contact with your world in order to help solve this problem." 

....Vanyel is not going to mention the part about just one island having a big enough population to fuel over a dozen gods. He's thinking it, though. 

"Jisa was hoping to find a way to at least send messages," Leareth says quietly. "So - that their parents can be alerted to what happened." A glance at Annisa. "And - to whether their children survived or not." 

"Mine already know," Annisa says flatly. "But the rest of Boston'll want to get home, if they can. I assume it's not possible? If either world had interworld transit we'd, uh, have noticed. And mals will absolutely get in if you have transit between worlds."

"I would have assumed it was impossible, but I also had no idea that other worlds existed at all! And if travel was possible in this direction, even if only by accident, it is probably possible to reverse it." A slight sigh. "Perhaps not worth the risk."

And then he pauses, and his eyes turn and fix on her again. "Although - Annisa, does your world have gods?" 

"Well, I didn't think so, but some people do think so, and since this world has gods and I apparently do have a soul I'm starting to think they're right."

Leareth...looks confused, mostly. "I would not have thought gods would be easy to miss! Ours prefer to act in subtle ways, but even so Their interventions are unmistakeable; not everybody worships at a particular temple, but I have never heard of anyone denying that gods exist at all." A frown. "What do the people who claim there are gods have to say about Them?" 

"People say they used to do more overt miracles but don't much anymore. There's an obvious explanation for that - magic doesn't work very well around people who don't believe in it, so most wizards can't do 'miracles' in front of a disbelieving audience either. People say they grant prayers, but in subtle ways, and that they give you an afterlife, which is practically the only important thing. Uh, some people say they only give an afterlife to their followers and some say that the afterlife for nonbelievers or bad people is eternal torture, I don't know how we'd verify any of that."

"I mean, the way I would attempt to verify it would be by using magic to explore the other planes, until I found the one where souls go. Does your magic allow that?" 

"No? We only know of two and we don't have a way to explore them. Does that...work in this world?"

"The skill to do it at all, much less safely, is very rare. Especially for those planes other than the spirit world - also called the ethereal plane or the Moonpaths, by different traditions. I was able to verify when I was only a few centuries old that the souls of the dead are in the spirit world. ...Though for the living to interact with them, it generally requires a god acting to provide an interface. As Vanyel is doing for us now." He gestures at the snow and the pass. "Anyway. Your teammates are likely to know more about local gods?" 

"They're not religious either, no. They will probably assume that your gods are as non-obviously-existent as ours, if people just mention gods to them, but they'll cooperate with gods who are trying to cooperate with them, they're Boston." Brief intense grief. She would have been Boston.