“Ah. Good.” He nods. “Then - I wish you well in your endeavors, Mhalir.”

Mhalir returns his nod, uncertainty showing in his eyes if not his posture.

And the cleric Word of Recalls them back to Vigil. The spell lands them in a temple; it is clean and quiet and a reasonable temperature. Through the window, people are practicing swordfighting. 

"Welcome," she says. "I need to speak to my superiors, but I can probably drop you off on the way...Carissa is here. She Teleported here after escaping and asked for sanctuary."

He blinks, then relaxes. “Oh. Good for her. This must be one of the only places she could go where - whoever the wizard is - could not chase her down.”

"It seems likely." She heads out at a brisk walk through the street, through a gate into a more walled part of the city, and then gestures at a locked door. "There you go. I'll be back in about an hour, I expect. You can tell people I brought you if they ask."

Mhalir’s other personnel, one of them human with a Yeerk in his head, trail after him.

“Thank you.” Mhalir looks at the door for a moment, tries it, done discovers that it is locked, and makes a confused face for a moment before knocking on it.

"Who's there?"

Something in his chest clenches. “Mhalir.”

"- I'm gonna Detect Thoughts."

“I understand. Go ahead.”

She casts Detect Thoughts.

Mhalir’s mind is still a muddied tangle of doubt and hope and exhaustion and confusion, as bits and pieces of his conversation with the cleric replay in his mind.

Good is about fixing everything wrong with the universe. Hell, and hunger, and disease, and tyranny, and slavery, and suffering.

It is almost never the Good thing to do, to give up and die, because then you will not be able to do any other things and there are a lot of other things to get done.

Mhalir - Do you want to fight for Good, forever, with people who are also fighting for that? And how that felt so stupidly blatantly obvious a question that it had to be a trick, somehow.

Mistakes. Costs. Misunderstanding one’s enemies. Skills he didn’t have. 

“Good” strategies are ones that are robust against making terrible mistakes...

He wants it to be actually true, and it probably isn’t but maybe he can play his way into a trade anyway, give Iomedae spaceships to advance Her aims in exchange for Her help in their war... He wants more than that, though, he wants the impossible mirage where he’s not alone anymore, and it hurts, staring at the earnest claim that it’s right in front of his face, and holding back from seizing it because he’s made that mistake and learned that lesson before.

He really misses Carissa. Maybe, somehow, everything will make sense again once he’s back in her head.

She opens the door. "Hey. Iomedae offered to help with the war?"

“Well, Lucia - the cleric - did. I am not sure how her relationship with Iomedae works and whether that automatically means Iomedae approves, she did not stop to pray and ask or anything.”

"Gods mostly don't deign to directly venture opinions about political things but I guess this is very big. And it - fits, right, Good is definitely super into fighting Evil and you have a lot of resources for that." She doesn't look entirely happy about it. "I have fourth-circle spells now."

He can guess why she’s unhappy and it’s uncomfortable, because he’s VERY on board with fighting Hell and she’s reading his mind. He - really hopes Iomedae isn’t planning to melt Hell into slag along with all the dead souls in it, that seems vastly unfair even if he can picture Lucia saying it’s justified.

“Good job!” he says to Carissa, and means it, even if his mind is mostly elsewhere.

"Are you, uh, is the Polymorph permanent?" She can't think how you'd do that but she's not a mysterious secret ninth-circle wizard.

“No! Twelve hours, he said, but that was - some number of hours ago. I am not sure if it can be cancelled sooner than that, if you wanted...” He doesn’t want to wait another ten hours for a proper reunion, but he’d understand if she wanted a break, it’s generous of her to want him back at all...

"I bet his spells are a nightmare to Dispel. Normal Polymorph the target can undo themself. If not I can try throwing a Dispel at it but I bet it won't work. - though I did throw off his Lesser Geas." Smirk.

“I cannot believe you got away from a ninth-circle wizard and instead I got myself captured!” He’s smiling at her, though, sort of fondly. “I will try undoing it myself - do I just sort of think at it?” He tries that, focusing on wanting his own Yeerk body back.

"I've never actually cast a Polymorph but I think -" he turns into a slug on the floor and she doesn't see much need to finish the sentence in light of that. 

She feels a flutter of anticipation or maybe fear but she scoops him up and holds him to her ear. (What's the fear. He can hardly be mad at her for running? She was going to try to scry him periodically and raise him if he were ever dead. She is upset that everybody is probably going to invade Cheliax. She knows what the people in the Chelish army are like. If not for a random twist of fate she'd be one of them. And...she doesn't really think outsiders understand Cheliax, she doesn't fully trust them to do something good with the thing they've stolen, once they've stolen it. ...Iomedae is Chelish. She still doesn't fully understand Iomedae but...but that worry in particular she probably needn't lose too much sleep over.)

There's also a vague sense that - everyone keeps being very Good about the power they have over her but that's not the same thing as it not being there and it's not necessarily more reassuring than being strict about it. She still has no idea what Mhalir is like when he's not desperately trying to appease a host he isn't allowed to just take, and she kind of wants to, and she kind of feels like she won't really know something important until it happens, but also she doesn't want to mess up their relationship, obviously. 

It would be a good time, though, for him to take over and figure out what to say to get all his people set up somewhere here because she doesn't feel like doing it at all.

Mhalir doesn’t much feel like doing that either but Carissa’s had a worse day than he has and they’re his people, and one of them kind of urgently needs a host, so he reluctantly takes over and forges out to find someone who looks vaguely in charge, to explain their situation and ask about accommodations for their people. 

In the background he’s thinking that he likes the dynamic he had with Carissa before, it felt - restful, like setting down one of his many burdens, and he doesn’t know how to explain.

- huh. It makes sense that if he has to spend lots of time commanding people it's refreshing to not have to do that? But presumably - retracing to what she's actually confident of -

- she is not small and weak the way a Yeerk is but she is small and weak relative to a lot of the people around her lately and sometimes she wants to stop having to appease them. To just - get to do whatever she wants and know she's safe because no one can hurt her because she's stronger than them. And she would expect it to also feel like that to be Mhalir.

<...Oh.>

<I had not even thought to - mark that - for all the time I have been alive, I have been small and weak and needed to accumulate resources and power in order to shape the world how I want it to be. I could have taken over if you had tried to kill yourself and me. It was restful that I did not have to.> 

She would never.

This doesn't totally make her stop feeling like the other shoe will drop eventually but it's - useful, in that direction. 

The Church of Iomedae is recruiting people who want to go to the Yeerks and be invasively mindread a lot to help the Yeerks understand that they have prospective allies who will definitely not put up with any enslaving people. They have a couple who are maybe interested and can host Mhalir's people in the meantime. 

(Carissa is not interested. Letting hundreds of Yeerks in her head feels like - the analogy her brain is coming up with is letting hundreds of people have sex with you even though it's a dumb analogy because the only thing wrong with that is that you'll get a disease. Hopefully Mhalir is important enough that he will just be able to assert he is keeping her.)