"'Evil' is not a categorization that comes naturally to me in the first place."

"That's what Sigyn said. It's slightly distancing - in comparison to 'rapist' - shorthand for 'psychologically distinct thataway'. We'd have to get creative if we found more Maitimos who were psychologically distinct in some different unpleasant direction."

"If it were my alt with this problem I'd just go for 'rapist'," says Inlaith.

"I cannot imagine you having an alt with this problem," says Elarron.

"Well, the regular Maitimos prefer 'evil'. And advocate killing them on sight, we're actually the voices of moderation here."

"I'm not lining up for the Taliar solution, but 'kill on sight' does seem kind of extreme," says Ashras. "They do a good job with their kingdoms and that matters a lot. The Zaranyes don't discernibly have consciences, but they make really good kings, and I'd stand between Dalvor and an interdimensional execution any day. Granted, the Zaranyes have no personal lives to speak of, let alone horrifying ones."

"Oh, yeah, we don't have problems with their governance on an absolute scale. It compares badly with other Elf populations but that's not the Maitimos' fault, we're pretty sure that traces back to the Ainur sucking extra much and the Melkors in particular being subtler." She glances at their souls; she's been looking at Ashras's, since it's loud, but when she peers at the others her gaze stops on Inlaith's.

Ashras's soul says much the same things as Taliars, although he seems to be less - extreme, refined, developed. Elarron's soul says nothing discernible at all.

Inlaith's soul...

...says he is clever and insightful and good with puzzles, but very troubled in the area of social skills, and his sense of humour is like so...

"Yes?"

"Your soul reminds me of my best friend."

"Curious."

"Yes. He's not a triplet, but I suppose if one of you can appear alone... And he doesn't look like you but that too is known to be a thing."

"Maybe I have an alt!" he says delightedly. "Presumably not even a rapist alt!"

"He is indeed not a rapist! He is however incommunicado at the moment; Shadow Findekáno needed to be away from all the everything so Sigyn toted him a couple hops away. We could with the abilities we had to acquire to track down the Yeerks find them now, but I don't think they'd appreciate that."

"Seems like they wouldn't, yeah. Well, whenever they return, I'd like to meet him."

"I'll make sure you have the chance. We are not expecting them to be gone more than a century all told, but, well, Findekáno is an Elf, so it might actually be that."

"We have forever ahead of us. A century's not so long."

"Speak for yourself. I definitely have the Taliar affliction of wishing I could get everything done yesterday. I wonder if I'm going to grow out of it? We haven't met any of me older than eighteen and a half yet..."

"You'll mellow out a little, but a two-thousand-year-old Ashras is still fundamentally an Ashras," Inlaith predicts.

"Sigyn is... mellowed out..." (grown up?) "compared to you. Some," says Loki, squinting at Inlaith's soul. "I'm not sure how much of it is context and how much of it is the fact that he is in fact two thousand and change."

"Oh? What are the differences?"

"...he has social skills and self-esteem."

Inlaith laughs.

"All in all I think I'll take that as a good sign!"

"I would imagine it would be!"

"It means I can likely look forward to developing those things in less than three thousand years!"

"Possibly even less than a few hundred, Asgardians have distressingly prolonged childhoods!"