Chapter 696
“Apologies for the delay,” Quilith said, gently bowing his head. “As I’m sure you can imagine, rearranging a schedule when someone comes back to life isn’t the easiest thing, especially when we didn’t immediately notice you lived.”
“No worries, almost dying is inconvenient for a lot of people,” He shrugged. “So how have you been? Did I miss any exciting news?”
“A bit. Shall I go through your usual reading and update you?”
“Sounds good.”
Taking a seat, the grey brought up all of the new information they’d learned about the universe in a series of rapidly switching slides, letting Ben take it all in while they talked.
“We still haven’t found a world we’d want to talk to if your planet fails,” He admitted. “It’s a big universe, there’s probably plenty that would meet our desires and be willing to help us but it's a matter of finding them among everything else. If you lose and we keep not being able to find other options we might need to settle for picking the lesser evil.”
“And what exactly does that mean for you?”
“In general? It means limiting ourselves. I won’t lie, not many of us are attached to the thought of being ruled by gods who can force their whims and desires upon us, it seems like a recipe for stagnation in general. The fact that the gods of this world act through community makes it a lot easier to stomach when one can’t unilaterally decide that something is forbidden with no obvious reason.”
“Mmh, true, I don’t really know what things were like on a lot of their old worlds but I sure wouldn’t want to be under a couple of the ones I know about.”