<Did you see it?> he asks the people who actually went into the house. They were aware of the importance of spellbooks, from the first wizard, but weren't going to stick around long to look for it. 

They shake their heads. It wasn't on her desk or in an obvious locked box or anything.

It is in an extradimensional space from which she can recall it if she wishes but that wasn't technically a lie. 

"I would probably greatly enjoy participating in an exchange of magical knowledge between our peoples. But most of the capabilities of wizards require our spellbooks. May I return home and get it?" 

...Well, they can just send her with a Yeerk in her head, without informing her of that fact unless she tries to tell anyone about them or avoid coming back. Still, he would rather not take extra risks, here, and also it might be suspicious if they do agree to let her go without any restrictions. 

<Do you need to return home personally?> he asks her. <Perhaps we can retrieve it for you.> 

He's impressed by her calm manner, and the fact that she's evidently planning. He wishes he could ask her Yeerk what she was thinking, but unfortunately, while he can thoughtspeak with them if he wants, they can't answer. 

"I don't know what sorts of things your people can do. I would retrieve it by returning to my desk and then recalling it by magic from the corresponding location in the Ethereal Plane." And telling her mother to go to the church and get help.

<Do you need to be at your desk or can you do it from elsewhere.>

She is almost definitely planning something, probably something clever, and he doesn't know what and can't find out without revealing that she has a Yeerk in her head. It's very frustrating. 

The question is likelier if he does have truth magic up but isn't just mindreading her. "I could cast Etherealness and then traverse the Ethereal plane for it but that's riskier than going home and also I can't cast spells without my spellbook. If you have Etherealness or a scroll of it that'd do." 

<But you could do it from your desk without needing a scroll?>

"Yes. At my desk I don't have to search for it, I can just grab it right back."

<We have already left the planet. I want to retrieve your spellbook for you, so we can collaborate fruitfully. I will consider the simplest way to do this, either obtaining you a scroll or bringing you back to retrieve it.> 

"Thank you. Are you in a hurry to get somewhere in particular?"

If he's going to be asking her for her voluntary help then he does, in fact, need to tell her what they want help with. 

<We are fighting a war. The inhabitants of another world are trying to destroy our people. I will explain more once we have retrieved your spellbook.> 

That is such fucking bullshit and Alloran is furious with him, for lying like that. 

"My country of Cheliax might be in a position to help you with that, and our god certainly could, but I do not think I alone could do very much. I am a very new wizard, and it is a craft where one improves with time and study."

<That makes sense. I will take it into consideration. Actually, I would like to hear more from you about your god. I have only heard outsiders' perspectives on him.> 

She can probably read something into that but she's not sure what. It'd be nice to have more context before she has to explain anything, but - "Asmodeus is the ruler of Hell, the largest and most powerful of the lawful afterlives, and the only one that takes people regardless of alignment. He is a Lawful Evil god. He is one of the oldest of Golarion's god, and the most powerful. His church in Cheliax is headed by the Grand High Priestess Aspexia Rugatonn. He offered the people of Cheliax his protection after a terrible civil war and I expect he would offer it to you also."

<How do the afterlives work? I am not quite sure that I understand the concept of alignment you are speaking of, it is unclear to me if our world has it and as far as I am aware we do not have afterlives at all.> 

(Thus the couple of contingency-plans, prepared in secret, unknown even to the others on the ship.) 

"I'm so sorry," she says sincerely. "When we die, our souls are distributed among the gods. The exact arrangement has varied over time and Asmodeus will change it at some point in the future, but right now souls are judged in the courts of Pharasma, the goddess of the dead. They are judged according to their Law and Chaos, and Good and Evil. Those are - concepts the gods use, they might be translating to nearby concepts that your people use or they might not. Law as it is relevant to humans is mostly the tendency towards order and participation in ordered society, the willingness to obey the law and obey just authorities. Evil as it is relevant to humans is, well, the tendency to have goals and accomplish things, unless you're willing to be very terribly narrow about it and only associate with similarly narrow people. The gods of Law and the gods of Chaos generally oppose each others' interests, and the gods of Good and of Evil often do as well, though it's not universal. The Lawful Good and Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil gods work together at the Worldwound to stop demons from spilling out across the world and destroying everything.

I think that Asmodeus could claim your souls, if you allied with him, so that you would get an afterlife when you died. He would be happy to do this; He considers it wasteful, for souls to be - whatever must happen, if they don't go anywhere. To devils souls are valuable, even the weakest ones."

<I see.> He is going to want such a detailed report from the Yeerk in her head, later, but he doesn't want to reveal his hand just yet. <I will have more questions on that later, I think. Do you know of any magic shops where we could obtain the scroll you need, but where no one present would have Detect Thoughts?> 

She may well just lie to him, and it's infuriatingly hard to find out when he can't talk to her Yeerk. He's very much wishing he had just done it himself, except that this conversation is also promising... Frustrating and stressful, but still promising. 

Why would it be a problem if someone had Detect Thoughts, do they have no shield against it? She suddenly desperately wants to detect their thoughts. "I don't know of a shop that carries Etherealness regularly, it's a bit of a niche spell." It's ninth circle and there probably isn't a scroll of it anywhere in the world. "If anyone in Corentyn would have it Tómas would, at Second and Academy, and I'm sure some of the people there know how to Detect Thoughts but I'd be very surprised if they were doing it to random passersby," though they may well do it to someone who shows up wanting a scroll of Etherealness. 

If this doesn't work she's probably in very grave danger and she should maybe have weighed the pros and cons more clearly before deciding to try to work around a truth spell but -

- but her initial analysis might still hold, they might not want to kill her, and - and if they do kill her she has valuable information for Hell, maybe -

It still sounds very risky, and also she's not giving any signs of lying but he would bet that she is, at least about some aspect of it. 

<It might be simpler just to return you to your home before dawn, so that you can retrieve it there.> He turns all four eyes on her. <If you swear that you will go directly in, retrieve it, and come out without talking to anyone. We have the capacity to watch you while you are there.>

And the Yeerk in her head can stop her from taking any inconvenient actions - and probably directly compel her to retrieve the spellbook but he's not utterly sure of that. 

"I assume you have some very good reasons for secrecy. And I have family, at home, they're not in the army like I am, I wouldn't want to drag them into all of this. I promise I'll go to my room and fetch it and then I'll walk right back out and you can scry me the whole time, if you'd like." And the stomping on the stairs will wake her mother, a light sleeper, and then she'll message 'help' and then - well, she might very well end up personally dead but the situation will be appropriately escalated.

- she's not committed, yet, she can reevaluate this and do what she claimed she'd do if she'd rather. She can think on the way back.

<All right.> Mhalir directs the pilot to head back toward the planet. It seems unlikely a rescue mission will be mounted for either of their new captives, at least not before morning when their disappearances are noted. 

And he privately thoughtspeaks to 'Sevar's' Yeerk. <Do not let her raise an alarm, but wait to see what she does first. I am curious.> 

On the flight back he asks her more questions about Hell, and Cheliax's government, and exactly what resources they have to offer. 

Hell is unpleasant for mortals at first, there's no point in trying to soften that. It might be more true of mortals from Golarion, who have a special flaw in the will introduced by a god who was an enemy of Asmodeus and is now dead (it is not wise to be an enemy of Asmodeus). But anyway the first time in Hell is a process of correction, and you can get started on it in life but most people don't get very far on it in life, and it is unpleasant, but the thing about eternal life is that you should not really be very distracted by something that'll happen for a few years or even a few centuries of it. Humans have a hard time with that, and many of them fear Hell, which is mostly all right except insofar as it makes them incompetent in life, desperately hoping that if they do nothing of note they'll make Lawful Neutral.

Cheliax has a King, named Infrexus; she knows little about him but Cheliax has prospered in his reign, and he's Lawful obviously which means he'll keep agreements if he makes them, and he will obviously make an agreement that delivers an entire new people to Asmodeus. 

Cheliax has the world's most powerful armies but he'll forgive her for not sharing details with friends met so recently. What sort of resources were his people hoping for?

Mhalir is very dubious about a lot of that, but he listens attentively anyway. She will surely forgive him for not sharing any sensitive strategic information, for the same reasons, but - well, wizards mainly, neither his world nor their enemies' world nor any of the other civilizations they know of have their kind of magic, and it could be a game-changing advantage. 

For once, Mhalir is paying attention to Alloran's reactions and thoughts and feelings. He wants an outside perspective. Alloran's perspectives are always very, well, Andalite-flavoured, as well as personal-hatred-of-Mhalir-flavoured, which is understandable on his part. But still, this time he's curious.