<...call in the army? Our tech differential is not such that - no one working alone could amass a substantial combat-relevant advantage against their fellow citizens. And our existing military is much more powerful than you might be imagining.>

"Okay. So the easiest way for the Yeerks to get the Andalites to stop fighting them is probably to mind-control the Electorate?"

Alloran had thought he was maybe getting somewhere on getting this person to consider that slavery was bad and he is crushed. He tries not to show it. <I think that would be very hard. Letting Yeerks conquer the galaxy is very unpopular. If a politician proposed it they wouldn't win elections. If a politician changed their mind about it people would be confused and suspicious. If all the politicians changed their minds about it people would be overwhelmingly suspicious. 

Also I think you ought to end the war by making Yeerks stop enslaving people, not by making people stop objecting.>

Well she very much cannot fucking do that, can she, the threat has not actually been spoken aloud but she's not an idiot. "It doesn't seem like Yeerks have a lot of reason to stop enslaving everyone in the galaxy."

<If the people of Golarion joined the war against the Yeerks over it then they'd have such a reason.>

"The people of Golarion mostly do things according to the will of the gods of Golarion. Probably some of the Good gods will object to anyone enslaving the universe but I don't think Asmodeus will, and the Good gods would've stopped Asmodeus in Cheliax if they had any power to stop him at all."

<Do you personally yourself want Yeerks to enslave the galaxy?>

"If that's what's going to happen I want to be able to function in the world where it happens!" And she's choked up, how utterly humiliating - breathe, breathe normally - "I can't help you even if I want to so I am trying to figure out which of the things I can do actually make any sense!"

<Sometimes it is better to try to do the right thing even if you don't see any opportunity for it to work than to try to be complicit in the evil works of whatever evil maniac has you in his power this week because at least they'll smile at you while they enslave you if you keep playing nice.>

"Asmodeus," she says in Infernal, "greatest of the gods, may your servant -" And then she stops being able to talk, somehow -

and then her mouth says " - sorry - she didn't particularly expect it to work -"

-and then she realizes that, of course, she was and is an idiot -

Not interrupting and overriding during the entire length of that conversation is one of the hardest things Mhalir has ever done. He's - surprised, somehow, it's been a very very long time since any of Alloran's thoughts or feelings surprised him but they are now. He feels - admiration, respect? 

Sometimes it is better to try to do the right thing...

And it hurts, because the time when cooperation between Yeerks and Andalites was possible, the time when there was any path ahead other than total war, is so, so long past. 

- and it hurts even more that this young wizard seems to feel so helpless to do anything other than serve her horrible god - it's an understandable way for a human to feel, in a world occupied by far greater powers, but he hates it with every fibre of his being, and hates every indication she's given of what kind of world Asmodeus wants to build...

<I apologize> he says to her. <I am sure you understand why I was being cautious, but I do, genuinely, prefer cooperation over enslaving you. And I appreciate why you wished to speak to Alloran. Out of curiosity, what were you trying to do, just then?> 

<Let her speak> he adds privately to her Yeerk, <as long as she is not speaking in order to - summon her god, or cast a spell, or whatever that was...> 

Carissa is not particularly tracking things that people are saying to her because she is processing the realization that she is an idiot. She is usually pretty successfully at managing her expectations enough that disappointment is not debilitating but - but somehow, because she is an idiot, she had totally believed that there might be some way to get something that mattered. 

She does not try to say anything. 

She seems very upset. Understandably. Mhalir waits for a while, giving her space to calm down. 

<If you are willing> he says, finally, once he thinks that she's maybe capable of processing it, <I want you to cast Detect Thoughts and read me. The Yeerk in your head will allow this. You can also read them, and of course Alloran, to verify I was not impersonating him in your conversation.> 

He asks her Yeerk to repeat that to her as well, in case that gets through better. 

Why. What does he want. 

...well, reading his mind is a better way to figure that out that most. Unless Yeerks can fake sensory input - she doesn't actually have any evidence on that point -

- she doesn't know anything about anything but you still get tortured less if you're acting cooperative than if you're acting difficult, that seems like a universal. She raises her hands and casts Detect Thoughts. "You have to let me read you," she says. "I don't know what that feels like to someone with no experience with magic. With human children we tell them to imagine someone is reaching out magical arms for them, and they want to climb into the magical arms."

It's a very weird thing to imagine, and it's - honestly quite hard, because the young wizard is scary, she's probably even more scared of him than he is of her, but he is nonetheless pretty scared.

Mhalir imagines it, though, and imagines holding himself open and letting her see his insides, in case that helps too. 

Alloran tries too.

It works; there they are, shaped oddly for minds but not much more oddly than, say, a familiar or a devil. As soon as she does it it occurs to her that maybe the justification for this is that the Yeerk needs to see her cast magic in order to use her magic itself but that doesn't make a ton of sense - nothing makes sense -

She focuses on Mhalir. (She wants to focus on her Yeerk but probably it will stop her.)

Mhalir is so scared. 

He's keeping it pretty under control, it's not getting in the way of his ability to think, but the fear is still there. Mostly he's terrified of losing the war with the Andalites, who from the very beginning have thought Yeerks were inherently disgusting and evil just because of their physical nature, which they can't exactly change. All of them except Seerow (a sliver of pain, grief, he trusted Seerow, he misses him, and it feels like so much more than a brilliant scientist was lost, when he caught them by surprise with an attack and then died in the ensuing firefight.) 

He's scared of Golarion. Mostly of its gods. Powerful entities with bizarre goals that sentient beings can't quite understand is terrifying to him. The supposedly-Good gods aren't much less scary, because he doesn't trust that their definition of 'Good', or come to think of it their definition of Law and Chaos, match his own sense of those concepts at all. 

But Asmodeus in particular sounds pretty awful! Maybe not so awful that Mhalir, personally, wouldn't choose an afterlife in Hell over ceasing to exist, because ceasing to exist is the most terrifying thought he's capable of having and his entire mind runs from it screaming - (some other thought he manages not to complete) - but he can still imagine most Yeerks wouldn't choose Hell over true death, and so he thinks they can't afford an alliance with Asmodeus even though it could plausibly help them win the war, because he's bigger and stronger and smarter and even if they can trust him to keep agreements, Mhalir suspects a god could probably just outsmart him. 

He does think that they're currently outside Asmodeus' reach, on a ship far away from the planet where they collected Carissa and the other weaker wizard, but he's not sure and that's also terrifying. 

Focus. 

He's still feeling admiration for Alloran's try at persuasion, and confusion - Alloran has spent most of the last fifteen years yelling vitriol in his head, shouting that he hopes all the Yeerks get dissolved in acid or whatever, and hearing him talk about how doing the right thing is important even when it's hard and probably won't work is...jarring, it's left him off-balance and dizzy. 

He doesn't expect Alloran to have gotten through to Sevar, much, but the reasons why are also making him sad. He hasn't seen the inside of her head, of course. (He badly wants to, because he's confused about her and understanding her feels essential to this venture and all of this is so critically important.)

- he's sad because she seems to genuinely believe that Asmodeus is the most powerful being in her world, and also that Asmodeus doesn't want humans or other sentient beings to - have goals and ambitions and dreams? Apparently their religious philosophy considers the entire concept to be a flaw in human nature, which is honestly the opposite of everything Mhalir believes. 

What does he want.

Thinking about his own goals and values is unlikely to be persuasive to her either, because she seems to just not believe in caring about other people as a concept, but it feels important to be honest, if he's to have any hope of getting her actual cooperation. Which he does want. He can extract valuable work from her regardless, but that feels so tragic, pointless. A continuation of the strategy that the Andalites pushed them into, everywhere else, but right now he's out of the Andalites' reach, in a world they don't know exists, and - it would be stupid, to let the horrors of the war up to this point force him to approach the Golarion locals just as adversarially.

He'll do it, of course, if it's the only way. 

What does a Mhalir want... 

He wants the Yeerks to be free and prosperous, able to invent and discover and explore. And he wants the Andalites to have the same, ideally, and for all the other species that have experiences and feelings to have the chance for those experiences to be ones of flourishing. He wants that future desperately, and he's not sure it's possible, anymore - so many possibilities were closed forever when Seerow fired on his people - but he hasn't stopped trying. He isn't going to let the Andalites massacre his people, never ever ever, but obviously he doesn't want to enslave everyone in the universe. What kind of victory would that be.

He's kind of ticked off with Alloran for slandering his genuine efforts to engineer a better solution to the Taxxons' hunger. He thinks plenty of Taxxons would still want to keep their Yeerks, just because they know each other, now, and because having a friend right there in your head to help you be your best self is nice. There are some early case studies on Earth humans having that viewpoint too, though he's very frustrated with Visser One's handling of the situation, even the 'voluntary' hosts are voluntary by a pretty stretched definition, her constraints are understandable but still. 

He's suddenly sad and tired and he's not even sure why. 

He wishes they could just - trade their resources, technology for magic. Build routes between the stars. There's a flicker in his memory, a shining city, the image is vague and feels at this point like a hopeless unreachable dream but he's never going to stop wanting and trying and having goals. 

He doesn't want to harm Sevar and certainly he has no intention of killing her. He'll put a Yeerk in her head, of course, if he can't get her cooperation, and she might consider that torture, like Alloran does, and he feels a pang of regret for that possibility but it won't stop him.

...He wishes, vaguely, that she could have met Seerow, maybe Seerow could have better explained why he was doing any of it. 

...

Having his thoughts read is making Mhalir self-conscious and as a result his thoughts are kind of going everywhere. 

Alloran feels - really weird, it's been so long since there has been any reason to act in a goal-directed way and of course it didn't work, but it felt - fairly extraordinary, to be allowed to talk, to someone who hadn't decided before they ever met that destroying the Andalites was just the most convenient way to operate unopposed on his campaign of galaxy-wide slavery. And - the best possible outcome was always that she'd refuse to cooperate and then Mhalir would enslave her. That is how Mhalir it is, he is too profoundly evil to ever consider anything else. It is tragic, and he can grieve it, but also he sincerely believes it is much much better than cooperating with Yeerks out of some mistaken sense that slavery is fine. And maybe she did figure it out? Certainly it came close enough that Mhalir will probably not want to try this tactic with the next slave, which he feels obscurely sad about because it was really wonderful getting to talk to someone.

It still seems very possible that Mhalir will make a mistake in handling Golarion, or that the Good gods will turn out to actually be good and will intervene. It's what he's holding out hope for. And he's sorry, that there isn't anything better for Sevar to hold out hope for either, but he meant it, about it being better to try to do the right thing no matter how hopeless, and he tries to sit with what that means, in case it can help her see it -

She's so incredibly tired and she's a prisoner and there's someone reading her mind and she still doesn't understand what Mhalir wants, what outcome here he is considering distinct from the outcome where he enslaves her. 

Well, a nice thing about things not being possible to get any worse is that you don't have to worry you'll make them worse through carelessness. 

"Is there," she says, "anything I can say or do where you will decide I do not have to have a Yeerk in my head and can act freely."

He's also so tired, and only a little of that is because he (well, Alloran's brain) slept terribly last night due to being stressed about the powerful wizard being Yeerk-less in his ship, albeit sedated until they put her Yeerk back. And he's reacting to Alloran's thoughts with pain and grief and something that isn't quite regret but is apology flavoured. He will enslave people, if it helps them win. He'll free the involuntary slaves later, when the war is won.

(Alloran, of course, has never ever believed Mhalir's claims that he intends to do that, but he does, he's fully aware that he's torturing Alloran and he doesn't actually prefer to torture people and besides having a miserable involuntary host is much worse than having a host who actually likes having you around and has conversations with you instead of alternating thinking at you about how they want your entire species to die and trying to slip past your guard to kill themselves.) 

<Yes> he says, tiredly. <If you let me in your head once, without resisting, and you say - and mean - that you will not attempt to contact Asmodeus, or murder me or any of my people, I will consider that sufficient to leave you un-Yeerked. I expect you to be more capable of having thoughts in that state, and - I do not even require you to agree to cooperatively help us, yet. It is entirely reasonable on your part to want to think about it, and to see more evidence of my claims.> 

She's very smart and impressive and bizarrely good at lying, and he's terrified of those traits being pointed against him, but - well, he can always grab other wizards, and the upside of getting her mind actually aligned with his project is a significant one. Even if all he can do from her starting worldview is convince her that he's going to win (which he thinks he is, he's not certain but they're in good shape, especially with the invasion on Earth) and that therefore it's in her interests to switch sides and play nice with him rather than Asmodeus. 

And - there's value in it as a test case, right, whether he can start with an arbitrary human, in conditions that are admittedly pretty hostile, and convince her that the Andalites in the wrong. Alloran is convinced he can't. Even if he's right, Mhalir doesn't actually consider that proof that all the Yeerks should die or be confined forever to pools on their homeworld. But it'll be interesting, to see which one of them is right. 

...she wasn't aware she had the option of resisting letting them in her head. It makes sense that it'd be like spells, which she is pretty good at throwing off because she is a wizard and good at what she does, but which people who are asleep cannot resist.

"I don't mean to murder you or any of your people. If it is a condition of my remaining here and free that I do not try to contact Asmodeus I will not do so. I don't think it'd work to get His attention anyway. I was praying because people do that - to remind yourself of what you care about, to calm and focus your mind. I won't resist, if you want to come look at me." If he's had people in her head anyway then he's noticed everything she has considered doing.

<If she is telling the truth, and in fact did not prepare spells that will enable her to murder me instantly from a distance, then you can leave her head now> Mhalir tells her Yeerk.

And to a couple of the other crew, privately: <I am going to morph Yeerk. I want you to guard me while I do so and then bring me to her. Please be ready to restrain her physically if she tries to harm me, and if she is able to resist multiple people doing that, attempt to stun her at the higher power level we think a wizard needs, hopefully with immediate medical attention this would not harm her. And I want someone outside this room ready to pump sedative gas in here.> 

He waits for acknowledgement of these preparations before starting the morph. 

Her Yeerk leaves her head. She holds very still. Mhalir might be lying or might not have the authority to promise this but - there's nothing she can do about that right now. Detect Thoughts expires. She has another one but she doesn't bother casting it right now. Maybe in a little bit. She watches the morph. It's - way more gruesome than Polymorph, and she tries to think about the implications for their magic system. Their 'science' system. Maybe it circumvents channeling capacity limits by doing most spells as a chain of little spells - that'd be clever -she thinks lots of spells are bottlenecked in a way where it wouldn't work but perhaps there's some way of designing them so that 'bottlenecked' doesn't even make sense. 

Why morph, instead of just crawl from Alloran's ear to hers - right, because Alloran would kill them if he had control of his body for half a second, considers the inconvenience this imposes to be worth never being able to move again -

Mhalir's guards are watching her and look very twitchy but she doesn't move a muscle until the morph is complete and they bring Mhalir to her. 

Mhalir is so so so scared from the moment he loses his Andalite senses and tail, but he trusts his people, and they should have enough precautions even if Sevar's Yeerk was wrong and she intends to betray him. 

When brought to her ear, he slips in and spreads out and reaches for the deepest parts of her - who and what is Sevar, what drives her, what has she always wanted. Yeerks are good at mindreading, probably a lot better than her spell, and Mhalir is exceptionally well-practiced at this even among Yeerks.