He made it sound, last night, like he couldn't stop people from reading his mind and his peoples' minds, and this was a major barrier to going shopping. "I see. I'd be happy to help you, at least with getting introduced to people who are much more experienced and powerful than me, and I don't mean you any harm." Because if they're really on a spaceship, and even if they're just in a secret base somewhere, she's not getting out of here alive if she makes them mad, and also, she doesn't even have Fireball, what's she going to do, punch them? "I'll let you know when I'm ready."

<Thank you.> 

Mhalir stays in the room to wait, but is politely quiet, not distracting her. He's very curious about the process of preparing spells but doubts he'll be able to see much by watching with his usual eyes. (He does thoughtspeak the ship's engineer to check if their internal sensors are picking up on anything.) 

There's some light outside the visible spectrum being emitted but not much of it and not reliably even when she seems to be doing things.

She builds the scaffold for spell-stabilizing - she feels weird about being watched, which is stupid, she's done this for observers before - and prepares two of the spell that hides her spellbook and two of Detect Thoughts including one in a third-level slot because she only has Tongues and Dispel Magic there neither of which are going to do her any great favors here. She takes it all down and pushes the spellbook off to the Ethereal Plane. "All set," she says cheerfully.

<Thank you.> Mhalir stands a respectful distance away, resisting the urge to swish his tail, it's probably alarming to her. <All right. Some context on the war. Unsurprisingly, there is a great deal of ground to cover here, and I expect much of it will be confusing to you. First: the body you are looking at is not, actually, mine. Our species is called Yeerks, and we look like this.>

Using Alloran's brain chip, he indicates to the shuttle computer to project an image of Yeerks in a pool onto the wall, with an indication of scale. Yeerks are very small, compared to humans. 

<On our home planet, we had a symbiotic relationship with another species, the Gedds> image of a Gedd, <where we would enter their heads, and interface with their brains. Without us, they were not very intelligent, and so they returned to our pools repeatedly to obtain our help; they gave us their senses, and in turn we gave them the ability to reason and achieve more complicated plans and goals.> 

<My current host body is an Andalite. This part is even more complicated. Some decades ago, Seerow, an Andalite scientist, came to our world to study us, and realized we were a fellow intelligent species. He shared his people's high technology with us, including starships, and he figured out how we could replicate kandrona, the nutrient that we previously needed to obtain in the pools, from our homeworld's sun. He gave us the stars.> 

<We wanted to explore the universe. To share the technology he had shared with us, and to find others, like the Gedds, who might benefit from our help in the same way. Some of the Yeerk factions were - less concerned than others about the consent of the hosts, and while I do not think that faction would otherwise have won out, Seerow became alarmed. With very little warning, he escalated and attacked us. That is how the war began.> 

Mhalir watches her closely, trying to gauge her reaction, though presumably the Yeerk in her head will have a much more detailed debrief for him later. 

She doesn't know much of anything about biology. The creatures on other worlds are strange, so that fits, maybe, that ones from farther away would be even stranger. - you could Baleful Polymorph people into Yeerks, maybe, that's not important right now but it's interesting because there weren't previously any intelligent creatures that qualified -

'to find others, like the Gedds, who might benefit from our help in the same way' is definitely a euphemism but she's not clear, yet, on for what. 

'less concerned than others about the consent of the hosts' is also definitely a euphemism but seems even less clear.

Well. Asking questions isn't exactly safe but it's probably a good idea. "Why ...did the Andalites give the Yeerks starships?"

<...I am not sure why starships in particular, but - we were a fellow sapient species, and he wanted us to achieve our potential? And perhaps he thought that if we had high technology, we would become a prosperous fellow civilization that the Andalites could have mutually beneficial trade with. I am not sure of his exact motives; none of us were ever in his head.> 

"And your going theory was that he just - thought you ought to get to do more stuff?"

<Yes, I suppose so. Anyway. Seerow was killed in the ensuing battle, and he had already been the Andalite most concerned with our welfare, perhaps the only one concerned with us at all - most Andalites thought our race inherently disgusting, because we are slugs that control the bodies of others...> 

Mhalir recounts the next few steps of the war. The alliance with the Taxxon world, Taxxons offering themselves as voluntary hosts in exchange for help controlling their hunger, and how he felt vindicated in his belief that other species would want the Yeerks' help. The Hork-Bajir conquest, much less voluntary, and his attempts at the time to open communications with the Andalites, trying to de-escalate and come to some sort of truce agreement. How everything he tried was used against them, and how the Yeerk leadership was concerned he was too 'pro-Andalite'. 

He describes Alloran's capture, too late to stop him from triggering the bioweapon that killed all of the Hork-Bajir still on their homeworld - killed them forever, he reminds her, dissolved and vanished from the universe, not in the hands of some god (evil or not.) This is perhaps a tiny bit manipulative, since he predicts she'll find it much more horrifying than the Yeerk enslavement of involuntary hosts, but it's not false. 

<I was in command in that engagement> he explains, <and so I took Alloran as a host. The Andalites, I am sure, consider this a far worse war crime than his decision to murder a planet of innocents. I disagree. I - would nonetheless have considered some sort of prisoner exchange instead, except that I no longer trust the Andalite people to hold to any kind of agreement, and also my position among my own people was precarious, and so taking him as a host was a strategically helpful move, in terms of proving I had learned from my mistakes there.> 

"...why are the Andalites at war with you? Just because they're mad about Seerow being dead? What's their goal, what are they fighting until..."

<I am not entirely sure, since they are unwilling to talk to us about their goals here, but - I think they fear we are planning to enslave all other species in the universe. Which, to be clear, is not what we are planning to do; I still believe that many species other than Andalites would willingly work with us, we can be very helpful if the relationship is collaborative rather than adversarial, and my goal here is only that we have enough leverage to open negotiations with the Andalites, from a position where they cannot just win by force. I think that many of the Andalites want all of us dead, and others think it would be sufficient to take away our technology and confine us to our homeworld, guarded by Andalite ships, with only the Gedds as hosts. I am not sure which Andalite political faction would win, there, if we lost the war.> 

"Could you enslave all of the other species in the universe if you wanted to? What is the - balance of power in the universe - such that this is a going concern? Are the Andalites, what, holding most of the rest of the galaxy as protectorates?"

<I am not sure about the universe, but it seems most species in our galaxy are less advanced than either Yeerks or Andalites. I...do not think the Andalites had considered this much before Seerow found us. They did not do much exploration, they were mostly content to live on their homeworld and have their technology benefit only their own people. They...are probably afraid we will try to enslave all of them, if we win? I will not deny that some Yeerk factions think they would deserve this, but having involuntary hosts is unpleasant and my goal is to cease that practice once we are in a sufficiently advantaged position that we can afford to do so. I believe I, and others in my faction, have enough political influence with the Yeerk leadership to ensure that this is what happens.> 

Mhalir is definitely expecting some Alloran yelling right about now. 

Alloran hates Mhalir so so so much but also if the girl is going to read Mhalir's mind she should get his too and then he can explain the real situation, and she seems quite skeptical of Mhalir's account of it already, and then she'll know the truth. 

...and be enslaved forever. But it'll be satisfying to see her understand the truth anyway.

"You could Charm them," she says. "There is magic for making people like you and cooperate with you even if they wouldn't normally. People mostly don't bother with slaves but people mostly don't have to live in their slaves' heads - they remain conscious? Do you...fight over who can control the body?

What is the specific Andalite tech advantage over everybody else in the galaxy, it's the starships?"

This makes it so ridiculous that Seerow supposedly gave them out as an act of charity; her best guess right now is that there was some kind of internal factional dispute within the Andalite government or governments and he thought he could get Yeerk loyalists to help his side come out on top of it, only they turned on him.

<Our hosts remain conscious, and can fight for control of the body but generally cannot win unless we are being very inattentive. Though in many cases with voluntary hosts, they trade off being in control; Yeerks do not inherently value being in control all of the time, it is just that without a host we have minimal senses or ability to interact with the world. In terms of the Andalite tech advantage, they also have something called morph, which they did not share with us - though Alloran, my host, has it...> 

Mhalir describes how morph works. 

"Huh. Druids can do that. Powerful wizards can do it very briefly. And some people are born shapechangers. I would love to learn how their technology works," it's clearly just some other application of magic but he keeps using that word, "and maybe we can productively collaborate. ...this means there is an Andalite there with you? Can I talk with him about what he thinks the war is about?"

<If you cast Detect Thoughts you will be able to read both of us, but - I suppose I can give him access to speech alone, and you can have a conversation. I am not sure how long Detect Thoughts would last.> 

Alloran is probably going to do so much shouting if Mhalir lets him have thoughtspeech access, but - probably that's fine, he doesn't actually expect Sevar to be more sympathetic to his account than Mhalir's, and besides, Mhalir is the one with all the power here and this is clearly very relevant to the young woman's decisions. 

"It only lasts a couple of minutes. I can use it afterwards to verify you weren't impersonating him but I think it ...might take more than a couple of minutes of conversation for me to understand what's going on here."

Alloran is - actually trying to pull himself together to not shout, he needs the girl to understand and - it's unfair that being tortured for fifteen years makes you less able to explain why torture is bad, but the universe is very unfair, this might be the only chance he'll have to talk to a person and he has to be able to hold himself together for it -

<All right. You can talk to him.> 

Mhalir keeps firm control of Alloran's body, but releases his hold on their thoughtspeech, so Alloran can talk. 

<The Andalites are at war with the Yeerks because they are destroying every civilization they come across in order to turn it into a factory for producing more slaves they can use for more conquest> he says immediately.

"And you're - worried that eventually they'll get to you?"

<- I mean, yes, that is a worry, but even if we have developed some kind of magic that renders it completely impossible the Yeerks could ever threaten our homeworld, we couldn't stand by and let every other people in the galaxy be destroyed and enslaved.>

"...why not?"