She set the tablet down and looked at him fully because she had just heard an Immortal sage — a being who had witnessed the rise and collapse of civilisations, who had walked through centuries as a silent chronicler of vast power and the spectacularly stupid ways mortals chose to die — express a desire to place wagers like some bored mortal with a gambling problem and too much time left on the clock.
"Where did the sagacious, venerable, enlightened Immortal King go? Betting? What are you, twenty-six?"[1]
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, like he was about to deploy an argument he found genuinely compelling and expected it to be received with the seriousness it deserved — which, in hindsight, was probably the first sign that thousand years living in mortals had not improved his judgment.
"Psychologically speaking — are you familiar with the human studies on individuals who missed a developmental stage? The phenomenon of regression to —"
