"May I present pasta and mushrooms in a white sauce, and some lemon cheesecake to accompany it."

"Ah ... Thank you, Shadowcrest."

He clears away the diagrams, pushing them to the far end of the table.

"This next course is pasta and mushrooms in a white sauce, and cheesecake for dessert," he relays. "I, for one, am deeply sorry to have let myself be distracted from the excellent food in my enthusiasm. Once we've finished up, perhaps we could retire to the sitting room to continue the discussion."

"Oh, cheesecake! Food is good too ..."

"Actually, I bet you could do thaumically-active cake decorations with the right frosting—"

Thunder booms again.

"—which I will, of course, speculate about after finishing dinner!" Zatanna squeaks.

She grabs a floating plate of pasta and settles it in front of herself.

...She really hopes those lightning strikes aren't Zeus warning her for her hubris. They totally could be Zeus warning her for her hubris, couldn't they be. 

No, no, this seems normal enough for them, and probably he could tell? 

She obliges on the schematic stuff briefly but yes! 

Food! 

She's not much of a pasta person, but she is a cheesecake person, and honestly existential concerns are enough that she isn't like that hungry, all things told? The ice cream helped, too. 

She lets Zatanna speculate about thaumically active food preparation! 

When the magic and lightwork conversation drifts to only a dull murmur and the eating is done, she rallies herself a little and... 

"Thank you for the meal, Shadowcrest, and thank you both for being lovely hosts." 

She bows her head towards each of them, maybe a bit more stiffly than usual, though it's a little hard to tell? 

She clears her throat a little. Just say it, Topaz! 

"Mr. Zatara, would you mind stepping out for a private discussion?" 

Zatara folds his napkin.

"No, not at all. We can talk in my office."

He leads her down a hallway and into a spacious office paneled in dark oak. It's surprisingly ordinary, for a magician's office — although there is a pack of tarot cards laid out across what looks like a tax return, on his desk. Perhaps he mostly does magic elsewhere.

"What did you want to talk about?"

She looks... nervous? She's still - relatively composed, but there's a certain - twitchiness to her. 

"It's... not something that I'm sure I can just start talking about without it being unkind of me?" 

She breathes out softly. 

"So please be patient with me if I stumble, a little." 

Zatara frowns, his brows drawing together.

"Of course, Topaz."

She starts nervously fidgetting with her hands, a little. 

"Um."

"I'm not actually going to ask you this, because I feel like it would be asking too much of the trust we have, and because I don't like to think of myself as the person who lets their ideal lawful solution to things get in the way of actually being kind and reasonable to the people in front of me. But if I were going to ask you something, it would be something like 'Please don't make any final decisions or take any particular rash action about the stuff I am going to talk about, until you do at least one of talking it over with a league member (probably batman?), a priest, or sleeping on it.'"

She's not like, incapable of or even that disinclined towards thinking like an Orderly person but she already feels all wiggly about even in an example having enough escape clauses - how do e.g. fey manage when so many things can happen...? 

"Even if I were asking that, I wouldn't be asking for any particular additional confidentiality, because sharing the burden of it is probably important enough that you shouldn't have to think more than you are already going to about the weight of this. Okay?" 

Her words are a little slow, not in a rehearsed way, but in a way where it feels like she dearly wishes it had been something that she could rehearse, or that it was something that she could have a real script for. 

She blinks. Oh right. 

"- Also you don't have any special e.g. magical vows or particular theological or philosophical beliefs that you need to maintain for your magic to work well that I need to keep in mind as operational constraints, right?" 

She would feel so silly if she did this and then his magic poofed. 

Zatara is now incredibly concerned, because that's quite an introduction.

"No ... No, I don't have any magical vows necessary to maintain my magic, although I do have, ah, normal vows that I'm uninclined to break. They're all confidentiality-related, except one promise to go check in on a ... friend's ... niece when he inevitably goes missing in mysterious circumstances. I can promise to go to confession before acting on whatever you're about to tell me, if that would help. I get the impression that it is not minute-level urgent?"

"It's not, no, just something very important, in it's own way. " 

She takes a deep breath, and rallies a little. She is not in fact going to force the matter, and honestly she's not sure a priest would have too much useful to say on the matter? Though that's probably not really the point of a confessional. 

"- What is your current understanding of the state of the art of resurrections, here? There's only so much background the gift can readily give me on the subject, and - I think it would be helpful to start from where you are." 

"Ah."

He's silent for a long moment. He sits heavily in an armchair in the corner, and gestures Topaz into its twin.

"I am ... aware that some people have come back from death — Ra's al Ghul, Vandal Savage, and so on. But it has always been a short time after their death, and I find it difficult to believe that their apparent survival truly involved separating them from their great reward. The only man who I believe has truly descended from heaven is our savior, Jesus Christ. It is clearly not impossible that God, in His mercy, may choose to work such a miracle again, but as it has been 2,000 years I suspect that He does not do so very often."

- Yeah, that's a workable enough answer, though on the lower end of them.

She nods, lightly, and files those names away for later. 

"I can't... necessarily make any particular definitive statements about the exact theological details of what I am capable of, but I can tell you, that in a pragmatic sense, short of divine intervention, the gift believes me to be capable of." 

For what it's worth, for all that her ideas involve calling back a soul from the afterlife, there's no reason in principle that it in some metaphysical way doesn't mean that they're not still there, or that it doesn't mean say, that in some sense they have a preset destination, so it's just a bit of temporary leave, or what have you. Though... She's pretty sure that some cases are probably a lot less ambigious, if you're just doing a snatch and grab of someone from hades or the otherworld or something like that. 

"As I understand things... there's a lot of things that go into a soul. But one of the most pivotal things that goes into them, one of the parts that fundamentally makes a soul a soul, not just some random arcane construct, is the network of the seven lights." 

She pauses for a moment. 

"Each of the seven lights is associated with it's own planar realm - you saw the connection that my lantern had to the honden of hope, earlier? One of the characteristics I've learned about the realms of the seven emotions is that - they store an imprint, of every instance of emotion that every being feels, of every contextual detail that creates say, their hopes or fears or will. With enough work - I haven't specced out what it would look like to do so, in detail, beyond knowing that the process is possible, but I'm confident that it should at least be achievable by a sufficiently well prepared quest out into those planes - you could..." 

She waves her hand lightly. This is all going to be horribly imprecise, but she does just need to explain things. 

"Recall, or replicate, depending on how you think about it and what exactly your process is, those patterns. And you could fit those pieces together into the system of a soul, bind that soul into a body, and in principle, short of any intervention from the endless or the divine, make a perfect copy of their mind, their feelings, and resurrect them, without even necessarily needing to access their soul in the afterlife in any direct way. You could also perform a similar procedure, and call down at least an imprint of their soul, and in that case, you'd have better results, in terms of getting back the fullness of their magical powers. There's similar, simpler procedures, if you just want to say, resurrect a shade from hades or imprint the - soul pattern and memories of someone's past life, because in those cases you already have most of what you're going for right in front of you." 

She takes a deep breath out. 

"This is all assuming away divine or cosmic interference - my operating assumption is that regardless or nearly regardless of implementation details, death of the endless, at least, likely has veto power over the process, and other local divine powers, especially those who have some sort of - custodian ship of the soul, could perhaps make a fuss of things. This also isn't a perfectly comprehensive solution that can ressurect anyone, though it's pretty close. It requires, at least without further adjustments that I don't currently have the skillset to adequately explore, that the resurrectee in question have at least a relatively normal baseline level of performance in each of the seven lights - I remember hearing stories in my world, of people with brain and endocrine system abnormalities that meant they were more or less biologically incapable of feeling fear, outside of a hardwired process for asphyxiation, some psychopaths who are probably similarly incapable of feeling compassion, things like that. It wouldn't work in cases like those. But in principle, it should work, regardless of the amount of time that has passed, so long as they haven't disrupted their connection to any of the seven lights in the afterlife. And even then, you could probably still recall them as they were around the time of death, as long as you're comfortable doing something that's less ambiguously... 'forking'. My... personal feelings around the philosophy of identity are relatively comfortable with that, as long as the person in question has a compatible advanced directive, but I understand if your beliefs lead you to have a different stance." 

She hums lightly. 

"For the record, I'm pretty sure there's other ways it could happen, too - as I and the gift understands things, Death of the Endless has enough latitude over such matters that she can simply resurrect people, regardless of normal limitations, if she so desires, and I wouldn't be surprised if individual gods who oversee the death and souls of their followers have some latitude, too, even before getting into whatever solutions that those people you mentioned use. There's a lot of options, and it all... really depends on what you, the league, and the gods are comfortable with, and what we want to prioritize." 

She pauses again. 

"Feel free to ask questions or for hugs - I know... this is a lot, and it's not necessarily a good time to - have this discussion, and all, I just... didn't want to keep this from you." 

She ducks her head a little. 

"I ..."

He folds his hands in his lap, trying to think through a reply.

"It is ... the sort of thing that desperate magicians try, sometimes. To bring a loved one back. When Sindella first passed, I scoured Shadowcrest's library. But none of the magics I found could do what I wished, not without a terrible cost to her soul and my own. There were plenty of ways to resurrect ... a shade of her. A pale imitation. So many different forms of undead ..."

He swallows thickly.

"If you truly can learn to bring back the dead, that would be ... amazing. Beyond belief. But Topaz — please be careful. God's creation is amazing in its complexity and possibility. Maybe you can learn enough about the structure of a soul to bring it back, complete and in truth. Maybe you are a, a step toward bringing Heaven to Earth, as His plan is said to be. But maybe you ... we ... are only fallible and foolish humans mistaken in our understanding and unknowing of the consequences."

"And I know which one seems more likely."

She steps forwards, and pulls him into a hug. If that isn't an indirect ask for a hug, she doesn't know what is. 

"It's okay. Honestly, even if we... want to go down this path, a lot of it would be just doing what I'd want to be doing anyways - learning more about the lights, making more lanterns and rings of different colors, looking into cloning and perhaps robotics, that kind of thing. I don't want to rush this, and do anything unsafe or unwise. There's - less intimidating applications I could look into, too - I think I mentioned to batman, a while ago that I could make - empathic storage devices. I could... make devices that could restore erased memories through their emotional context and the records in the emotional spectrum, say, and that wouldn't be something that would run into those sort of limitations, I think. You... might also want to see if you can talk to Wonder Woman, say, about having an audience with Hades? As I understand it, he's on relatively good terms with the people of Themiscrya, and he might be able to talk to you about the limitations there, too, if you'd like?"

She has some more ambitious ideas, too - she could probably do some sort of body transfer system using the same principles, say, and that wouldn't necessarily involve any special perils of resurrection but would work as a proof of concept for part of the system, probably? 

He takes a deep breath.

"I ... I'm glad you're not planning to rush," he says.

Orpheus and Eurydice tried that and it didn't work out so well for them, he doesn't say. Hades has no power over the soul that's most important to him, he doesn't say.

"And I think those are reasonable next steps. If you can restore memories, that will be ... a good start."

He pats her on the back.

"I'm sorry. It's a perfectly reasonable thing for you to speculate about, and evidence of your good heart. It's just a sensitive subject. I'll be fine with a little time to reflect."

He hesitates for a moment, and then decides to go with it.

"I can also let you peruse a book about the structure of the soul if you will promise not to use the quite horrifying spells that it contains. Other than the torture, it is a comprehensive introduction to different theories of the soul. It can't be taken from Shadowcrest's library, though."

She nods, and steps back a little. 

"I'm happy to make that promise, or go over any of this again under wonder woman's lasso, or let you make similar arrangements." 

She looks inwards for a moment, and she takes a deep breath. 

That's a thought. 

Could she make a bud? She's not sure how rivalrous it's development would be with the integration of the rest of her powers into her soul, or if it would have any more immediate concessions, but that's a thought. Also... Could she make a power that would let someone else query the intuition powers she has? It might be more helpful if he has a... more hands on access to it, though it might be a good idea to wait on such things, for a while. 

It can definitely start a bud, if she would like! It will take a while to grow, though, and since she only has one open slot right now she'd be locked into her current powers while waiting for it to finish unless she had it stop and start over. As for the rest ...

It thinks for a moment.

It could ... make a power that lets her telepathically convey her intuitions to people via touch? That doesn't seem like quite what she wants, though.

Is this about conveying things to mr. magic man himself? Because if so, she could eject an intuition power and let him catch it and bind it to himself. The powers aren't long-term stable outside of a suitable host but it's only growing, merging, creating, and repairing powers that actually needs the gift itself.

Oh, that's a good idea. She'll bring it up, then. 

Could she get an estimate of how long it would take? You seem to be a bit fuzzy on this sort of thing, but a general idea of it would help. 

"Though I don't think that should be a today thing. I... don't want to - frontload more onto today than I have to. Still, I... do want to mention that I'd be comfortable in principle providing you or your daughter with a bud of the gift, as consideration for your time and efforts, here and elsewhere - that will take a while, but I doubt that'll be too much of an obstacle - and that... If you'd like, I can eject the power I've been using to make these determinations of would or could work? The gift seems to think that you should be able to make use of it, at least in the short term, and I imagine it might be interesting as an object of study regardless of if you're comfortable making use of it that way." 

It takes ... longer than making a maximal blue spark from scratch would. And the amount of time it takes isn't constant, because it depends on how well the gift can capture and store cosmic background energy.

If she had asked it to start a bud when she was last asleep, it would be nearly done with one, it thinks. Does that help?

"Oh! I don't know if that would be helpful or ..."

He stands and goes to grab a slate and chalk from the wall next to his desk.

"The other spark I was looking at came apart under inspection, but I think I learned enough to construct a much gentler and more thorough containment ward ..."

He sets the slate on the desk and rapidly sketches a complicated circular diagram.

"!ezigrenE"

"If you would eject it into the space over this diagram, just here, then I will go talk to my priest tomorrow morning and do some soul searching until I'm ... ready to confront the possibility with a clear head."

That helps!

She unmerges the 2fer and obliges, giving him the cheating death prediction one, and then after a short while discarding the afterlife knowledge one - she shouldn't be needing that right, and honestly having it would just make her rush him more. 

She nods firmly. 

"I understand."

She pauses, for a moment and glances up at the air. 

"- Is that the night, then? I'd be happy to stay for a while longer, but I expect it might be for the best for the both of us if we just retire for the night, and I'm sure she's had enough to get herself excited about for the night." 

She smiles shyly. 

Zatara smiles, if a bit tiredly.

"I'm certain Zatanna would love to get to know you better, if you wanted to stay. But you certainly don't have to if you're feeling ready to retire."