Cool. 

And she can get to work on the magic item. One that indicates who is moving the body doesn't work, since it's possible to share; it's possible to do something that indicates who is affected by spells, though, and she's working on that.

She's nervous about meeting Aroden. The second to last time she saw him she escaped from his office despite him having been incredibly nice to her (or specifically because of that), and last time she saw him he was very very scary and planning an invasion of Hell, and now he's the ruler of Cheliax and it feels like this confers some authority over her even though she's technically living in Absalom now and there aren't laws about desertion from the army that fought his. (She checked.)

  Hopefully he mostly wants to talk to Mhalir.

Mhalir kind of feels like Aroden should be excited to talk to Carissa, since Carissa is GREAT and also a wizard, but he's not going to push Carissa on that, he'll take the lead. 

At the appointed time he takes the shuttle over to Cheliax, it's cheaper than a scroll of Teleport and more than fast enough for non-emergencies and he likes flying it anyway. They land in Egorian, which is the most rebuilt city, since Aroden is based there, and it was further from the main clash between Rahadoum and Cheliax and thus not quite as badly damaged. 

It's still very, very noticeable, coming in from the air, that there's recently been a highly destructive war. 

It wasn't just Cheliax and Rahadoum. Andoran attacked the eastern border and the church of Iomedae had an underground in Westcrown and Kintargo and - it could've been so much cleaner, they could've Yeerked almost everyone and had it over in a night -

Mhalir can walk them over. 

Mhalir isn't sure they could have done that, not with Asmodeus already knowing. It might've been cleaner, but - in many ways it would have left his people starting off on a much worse foot, people in Cheliax would've been scared of Yeerks for decades. Of course, it might still have been worth it for the lives saved, but... He doesn't think it's that simple. 

He walks them over. 

The palace seems very organized. A servant meets them and ushers them to their appointment with Aroden. 

It's in a nice conference room, with kind of an absurd quantity of magical protections on it.

Aroden is sitting down when the servant leads them in, and he greets them courteously - both of them, separately, by name - and asks them to please take a seat; he doesn't himself stand up. He looks very tired, and like he hides this fact most of the time but isn't trying that hard right now. 

"I hope you have not found the adjustment to being alive again too difficult?" 

"It has been manageable." 

"I apologize that we did not have the resources to raise both of you sooner." 

Nod. 

Aroden looks like he's considering saying something else, but doesn't, just shakes his head a little. "You wished to have an update on our plans with Cheliax?" 

"- Yes, and also I have some questions for you, about magic." 

"Ah." Aroden's expression is suddenly a little more animated. "Well, we can do that first." 

Can Carissa help him explain the question about the hypothetical morph tether spell? Mhalir can do the actual talking, if she thinks words at him, but she honestly understands how to talk shop with another wizard better than he does, and of course he can pull all the same knowledge from her brain either way, but it feels easier - and less intimidating to try to keep up with Aroden - if it's collaborative between the two of them. 

It remains easier to just sit here being something Mhalir uses to do interesting things but - probably that's not actually the healthiest tendency. 

"Technology is good at complex information storage and bad at transmission across planes. So they've got a pocket in another dimension that has the matter and the instructions and the morph system and everything to configure it - and then they tether it, to the construct-body. You could do it like we do summoning, instead - at least, it seems like you ought to be able to -"

Mhalir is pleased and proud of Carissa for doing the hard thing here. He jumps in fairly seamlessly with his own explanations of the technical aspects that he understands better; it's not the case that Carissa has all of his knowledge, although he imagines wistfully that if both of them got morph then she could Yeerk him and know him as well as he knows her, there'd be a satisfying symmetry to that... 

Aroden nods along, seems quite interested. "It would not be a very scalable solution; I think it would require a relatively high level spell, to replace the transmission of something that complex. I can perhaps find something efficient with some experimentation, though. What about -"

And he asks a number of followup questions, some of which are more about morph and thus Mhalir is better placed to answer, and some of which Mhalir instead defers to Carissa on because they're mostly wizardry. 

"Another question about magic, before we cover Cheliax," Mhalir says once that part is wrapping up. "Carissa and I would like to have as many spells as possible, I am sure you understand why, and - I wondered if you could share some that you know with her, since you are the best in the world at arcane magic." 

Aroden blinks, looks thoughtful for a moment, then actually smiles. "Ah. Of course. Carissa, are there schools of magic that particularly interest you?" 

Secluded Grimoire, the first spell Mhalir ever saw her cast, the one that hides your spellbook in the Ethereal Plane indefinitely, is first circle. Possibly it's an - island, a stable thing with no stable things nearby that lets you do something oddly specific much more cheaply than you can do the general thing. There are lots of those. But it seems promising, for powering the magic half of morph with something simple enough you can mass-manufacture it, which is a separate project the Andalites and Osirians are working on, have they told him about it?

"Oh. Hmm." Aroden looks thoughtful, closes his eyes for a moment. "It may be - I would need to run experiments on nearby variants, but from experience, most spells that stabilize and are near to known spells do something far less useful. As you know, however, a spell does not need to stabilize the way arcane magic does, in order to be placed into a magic item, and I would not be surprised if relaxing that constraint got us somewhere..."

He reaches for a notepad and starts sketching out something, in some sort of thoroughly incomprehensible shorthand notation. 

Maybe you have to be a god to understand but she wants to try anyway; she peeks at it. Tries to think about what spells would be near Secluded Grimoire.

He notices her looking and offers a quick explanation. It's trying to depict the way the conceptual-structure-of-possible-spells feels to him, the 'nodes' that represent stable spells, he draws in a simplified way that's vaguely based on how they would look in an actual spellbook. 

"Is there a way to get an intuition for that - just designing lots of spells, or -"

Aroden looks a little apologetic. "Yes, but I think not to the level that I have it - I am cheating by having been a god. Nefreti is–" he stops, is still for a moment, his expression very controlled, "Nefreti was, very good at inventing spells, but hers would still often explode. Mine never do." 

<...I think that I might have some of his spell-intuitions> Mhalir thinks suddenly to Carissa. <They are not very usable to me and thinking about any of his god-memories makes me feel disoriented and out of it, but I did pick up something from having been in his head.> 

- huh. 

"That makes sense. Is it anything like how outsiders who aren't gods learn magic, I didn't pick up any of that but I'm suddenly wondering if I should have."