He does not comment.

He doesn't either.

"...That's really inconvenient." Frown. "I could - try to read your thoughts about it? But you're probably not allowed to agree to that and also it - seems hostile to him." 

"I'm wondering if he wasn't convinced, because why would you do that to your self from another universe who's sending an army."

"Some people are just very very very paranoid."

"Leareth would absolutely do that if their positions were reversed. He is very - cautious, that way. And, Aroden's situation is almost worse, right, he was betrayed by the other gods - well, at least one of them - he's got to be feeling awfully paranoid about making waves now." 

He is making a little bit of a face whenever anyone says 'Aroden'.

He feels bad about this but kind of needs to do it anyway. "...at the site of Earthfall there was the Starstone."

Vanyel has noticed the face. "Does he want us to be calling him something else for, er, information-security reasons? That'd be pretty reasonable, honestly, I just don't know what else he goes by." 

"...the man in charge of Rahadoum is named Malduoni. I don't... actually know that it improves information security... to claim that Malduoni found the Starstone at the site of Earthfall...but apparently I can think it, so there's that."

"That's a good point. My plan here is to just try really hard not to think about it if I'm somewhere my mind might be read by some hostile telepathic person in your world - that's not a worry in Velgarth because Thoughtsensers can't get past a stronger Thoughtsenser's shields and definitely not without it being very obvious, and I'm very strongly Gifted. Anyway. Are we - worried we might find something that level of, er, dangerous and fraught. Given the other resemblances here." 

"I am not sure how to reason about this." 

"I am worried about that, yes. We know there's something dangerous here, the analogies seem to ...hold, even when there's no logical reason why they would..."

"Urtho doesn't sound at all like the kind of person who would make an artifact you could use to become a god. Though I suppose the Starstone wasn't deliberately built with that in mind, it was a - byproduct, sort of." 

"It was accidental, yeah. I've seen it speculated that it the remnants of the gods who died trying to prevent Earthfall from being so destructive, I don't know if that's right.

An artifact ....meant for something else but which Leareth could use for his preexisting plan to make a god?"

"Huh. That's - more plausible, I guess, at least to the extent that all Leareth really needs is an unimaginable amount of power, and I don't know anything else about the Cataclysm-causing weapon but it threw a lot of power around. Not in a very, er, usable-sounding way, but maybe one of the other weapons is better for that. Still not very reassuring to go near where they are, but... Probably they can't be set off by accident, that'd be even stupider than building them in the first place, right?" 

"You think."

"Urtho doesn't sound stupid so much as - cornered, and very dangerous when cornered."

Yfandes, too big to fit in the room with them but listening through Vanyel's ears, jumps in. :He sounds brilliant. But - well, you know how in your world you distinguish cleverness and wisdom? He sounds like someone with all the cleverness in the world and, er, perhaps a deficit of wisdom about how to use it: 

"He really does. 

I'm curious whether Ma'ar did any particularly Evil things in the war aside from being very ruthless about winning it. Because we don't...mind if Malduoni is very ruthless about winning it but if he, say, used captured civilian population centers for blood magic or something that does seem like the kind of thing we care about in thinking about what he's planning in our world. Not that he's - necessarily the same now, but -"

Vanyel nods. "They seemed the most upset about him using the - whatever-it's-called, the artifact that generated fear and made everyone flee the city in a panic. And that reduced bloodshed. Maybe the memory tapestries they want to show us have more detail on the war?" He's not that hopeful, though, two thousand years is a long time to maintain a detailed history. "I...get the feeling Leareth might not know, anymore, he's admitted he loses memories between lives and he wouldn't've had any surviving written records from the first one." 

"That's what Leareth said to Malduoni. That he lost most of his memories and didn't have surviving records but - didn't want to fight Urtho and didn't want to kill him, but things got out of control."

"...Poor Leareth. He must've wished so badly that he had done literally anything else." 

Sigh. "It feels like an - obvious mistake to me - but probably it wasn't at the beginning of history."

"Right, if that was the first time that two mages that powerful had fought in earnest... They wouldn't have past examples to use as lessons." Vanyel grimaces. "And our world barely remembers the Cataclysm. The Shin'a'in and Tayledras do but I knew almost nothing about its circumstances. I'm not sure how easily it could happen again, but - a lot of people don't know."