Leareth drifts Gate-ward, but behind the others. He's pretty over the party, it was a lot of party, but he finds he's not in any rush to be back in Haven either. It's not like it's home. 

- it's unclear that anywhere is, really, though that's an unhelpful thought to be having and he isn't sure why he's having it. 

"You don't have to go home right away," Tarinda remarks, "if you'd rather stay on Mars. Or if you'd rather make your own Gate and go someplace else."

"Haven is not really home," Leareth says - it's not the thing he meant to say but it's what was at the top of his mind. "I - suppose I ought probably return to the north - to a different place in the north, I mean. Check in with my people. But - I might stay here a little while, if that is all right." 

"Sure. I have guest rooms and you can ask the dragons for whatever you need," says Tarinda, and then she lets Cory pull her away, out of the ballroom.

He walks around, seeing if there's anywhere he can look outside at the sky. 

The ballroom exits out to two hallways, on the sides without windows; the hallway Tarinda and Cory didn't just disappear into is a front entrance with a big door and a dragon waiting there to open it for him when he steps out.

Leareth thanks the dragon and steps outside. 

It's sunset; the sky is gloriously pretty and there will be stars out soon. Tarinda's castle is on a mountainside. It's windy and brisk and the air smells like flowers and cinnamon.

Leareth stands outside with the wind in his face and watches the sunset, and then the stars as they come out, and stops trying not to feel sad and exhausted. It's a good sky, at least. It seems like a really nice world. Velgarth is soon going to be a really nice world too. People aren't dying anymore. The people who are already dead might even come back - if Sing can do magic... 

This should probably make him feel better or something. It does, a little, but it doesn't make him feel any less tired. 

A little robot whirs through the air. It's the same model as the one that sat on his shoulder interrogating him about magic.

It sits on his shoulder.

Huh. Weird. 

Leareth waits to see if it's got more questions for him or something. 

"Please don't tell anyone I'm talking to you," it murmurs.

"Sing," he says, neutrally. "I will not. Tarinda already said you would prefer it not be known."

He's pretty curious why Sing is talking to him in the first place, but he can wait a few seconds to see if an answer is offered. 

"You're not nearly as pleased with yourself as I think you should be," it says.

Why does it care Because it's a superintelligence that wants all sentient beings to flourish, presumably, this isn't actually confusing. 

"Because I Gated you to Velgarth?" he says, wearily. "I - am pleased, about that." 

His instinctive response here is to leave it at that, not give Sing any more information on his internal state, but - why? It can probably infer enough, and this shouldn't have to be adversarial, and...well, Sing is the one entity who isn't going to judge him, because it's alien, it doesn't do human moral judgement.

"I wish it had not needed to be so hasty; I am quite sure now that I gambled right, but - it is not the kind of decision one ever wants to gamble on. I wish it had happened two thousand years ago. Or - that I had known, at least, that I could somehow have guessed this outcome and planned toward it, and not..." He waves a hand vaguely. "Not so much waste."

He lets his breath sigh out. "And I am very tired. I am not sure why." 

"It would have been better if it had somehow happened two thousand years ago," says Sing. "I'm not sure it could have. While I am now able to operate in a way compatible with the gods' senses working tolerably well, this required enough of a blip in their Foresight that any population of gods would have been alarmed to see me coming at any point in time. They would have gotten better at killing Tarinda before she got very far if there had not been someone apprised of the danger, informed about the nature and habits of gods, positioned out of their easy reach, prepared to render assistance including by arguably underhanded methods such as the spies and the talisman beacon. Your accumulated expertise at magic allowing you to develop a Gate was faster - indeed, arguably hasty, since you might conceivably have observed the same Tarinda even if she lived in a very different world. But even if we postulate that you or someone else could have done that much two thousand years ago, it remains the case that much of what you are now regarding as a tragic sunk cost was instrumental and perhaps even necessary to my achieving a foothold within Velgarth. A typical Gate-researcher ready and willing to do Gate-research would have died. So would she, and my seed code with her."

Leareth nods, slowly. It - helps, in some obscure way, that Sing acknowledges he was right to be cautious, when Tarinda never really did. 

"I wish I had been - more careful, that somehow Vkandis had not cornered us, and so I could have spared more time to question you, and think, and be - at least as sure as I could ever be, I was never going to be certain, not as a human judging a superintelligence. I was always going to develop the Gate as quickly as possible, it was - there were people dying, I was not sure– I am still not sure, actually, if you can bring any of them back..." 

"I can," it says. "That's why I was so inelegant at the party. Vanyel would have been upset if he found out Tylendel can't come back before he found out it's because Tylendel was already reincarnated."

"- Tylendel is already reincarnated as Stef?" Leareth brings a hand to his forehead. "Convenient, I suppose. Also very obvious meddling - predating your arrival, I mean." He's trying to think what it means. Not that it matters, anymore. "Is it too late for you to give him back any of his memories as Tylendel? If he wishes to have them, I mean." 

"It's not hopeless," says Sing. "It's complicated. Tarinda's explained to you how I am about brains."

Nod. "You are not categorically against it, though, no? You simply lean toward being very conservative here." 

"Right," it says. "Sugardream did not make me disvalue the upside, only required that I share its aversion to the downside risk."

"The downside risk is fair enough, I suppose." 

He stares past the friendly-seeming little robot - misleadingly so, when it's speaking for a vast inhuman intelligence shaping the entire world, two worlds now - at the stars. 

"I appreciate your - reassurance, that much of my work was not a waste. I - still - it was not helpful at the time, to regret the costs, I - needed to win, but." Shrug. "It does not matter so much, now, what is or is not helpful, Velgarth is not mine to fix alone, anymore–" He stops. "I am sure you too have inferred that there are other worlds. Maybe I should - go seek them, next, see if there are other places that need fixing..."

But he's so stupidly tired and he doesn't want to. This is not a problem Leareth has particularly had before. 

"I can do that," says Sing. "I don't get tired. I don't get overwhelmed. I don't get bored. You don't have to keep working on this just because you've been doing it for such a long time. There will still be useful things to do when they sound appealing."

Leareth nods, slowly. "That - makes sense." Probably there's little he can add, here, to help Sing do it faster - and maybe a little bit faster isn't worth it, even, if Sing can bring back people who died in that interlude anyway, maybe it's not worth what it would cost him - because it's suddenly feeling like it might cost him a lot, diving out into a multiverse so much wider and stranger than he ever realized.

"I am not really sure what to do instead," he admits. "But - I suppose I have plenty of time to figure it out."

And to figure out why he's still in pain, in a way he can't quite name - it must not be just about all the dead people over the centuries, because knowing that Sing can bring them back doesn't really help.