Tazalkyran has fun.

It's really, really, really good.

(He is almost, but not quite, successful at preventing himself from running into the curse while he plays. He mostly manages not to flinch or freeze up, and he entirely manages not to cry, but there's a slightly unfortunate effect where when he's losing his mind automatically turns toward the place where it used to keep its violent fantasies and then falls off a cliff and then he loses more.)

After a while, Asher says, "would it help to play a game that isn't competitive at all?"

"—Maybe? I like this one, though, when I'm not—getting distracted."

"There's one where you run errands for adorable small animals, and one where you run a farm, and one where you're just exploring a desert-- but we can keep playing this one too."

"I could try exploring a desert."

It's a one-person game, so Asher has to watch. 

The exploring the desert game is very very pretty, full of beautifully animated ruins and animals and plants. You can jump and climb to get to locations, and there are puzzles that unlock new locations. Tazalkyran probably doesn't have the cultural context to understand the plot, but it was designed to be very soothing. 

It's surprisingly nice. Not as exciting as Sugar Rush, but he likes it.

"The Desert would be my Heartland if I had one, I think," he mentions while navigating a stretch of pleasingly soft open sand.

"How do you know which Heartland would be yours?"

"It's the one that... fits. Leaf types tend to be nurturing and Rain types tend to be melancholy - I'm oversimplifying horribly - and out of the four seasons I'm definitely Sun, and I think I'm more of a Desert than a Temple or an Island."

"Four seasons?"

"Oh - every Heartland has its own month of the year, so, seasons. Leaf and Sun and Rain and Stone. Spring and summer and fall and winter, when you're not talking about magic."

"And seasons correspond to personality types?"

"Soooort of. It's not as... tidy as that makes it sound. Like, there's some people where you can tell they're a Warden but you can't tell which season, and some people where you'd expect them to be something different from what they are, and all the Heartlands have things that are just about them and not about their season or their function - function is the thing that's different between Warden and Seeker and Strider."

"I think I followed like... ten percent of that."

"Yeah, sorry. I'm not... good at explaining things."

"It's all right. You're kind of stuck here forever. There's plenty of time."

"Yeah. I can keep trying until I start making sense. But not now."

Now is for video games. What an incredible invention.

Video games are, in fact, amazing!

"Do I need to show you how the other stuff works or do you think you can figure it out for yourself?"

"I... can probably figure out the important stuff? Maybe?" He does not sound sure of this.

"...Actually, I am going to very selfishly show you how things work, because you make good faces."

...He smiles a little. "Okay."

"Okay, so we also have movies, which are sort of like plays, except they're recorded so you can watch them whenever you want. They are mostly not going to make any sense without more cultural context than you have, but if you look at the 'action movies' section you will see things that have a lot of pretty explosions and fight scenes. Or you can call me and we can watch one and I can stop it every five minutes and try to explain what's going on."

Another, wryer smile. "Do you not have anything better to do? Not that I mind. It's good when you explain stuff."

"I'm skipping tourney practice."

He smiles at Asher like he is having trouble believing someone wants to be this nice to him, which is in fact the case.