“Did he tell you anything more than that about his future plans.”

"Yes."

“Tell me what he told you about it.” His tone is still very patient. He doesn’t appear frustrated at all.

It is really very weird that she is not on fire but some people aren't very demonstrative about being angry. What is the least useful or strategically relevant thing Mhalir said about his future plans. "He wants to invade Hell."

“- What, really? Why?”

Hah, distracted. "I don't know. He has some bizarre philosophy about enslaving people where he wasn't sorry but he also didn't approve of Hell at all." Probably she should expand on this as much as she can get away with. "You would expect that having less free will would be good for your moral development but Yeerks are kind of bizarrely loose about it at least if you're cooperating and so having one is weirdly not very conducive to being Asmodean. Also Mhalir thought that because his cause was righteous he should really try for the Good gods if he was going to ally with any of them, and I tried to explain that actually the Good gods will throw a fit about the slavery and prefer letting billions of people be destroyed forever to allying with someone who actually has goals and is willing to sacrifice things to achieve them. But I think he was still leaning that way. He has a cleric of Sarenrae prisoner, that's what prompted him to give up Alloran."

It’s faintly amusing how she keeps thinking she has him distracted from the important part, but actually this is both fascinating and maybe critical to his confusion about Alloran. Also he wants even more to bring Parmida here so the poor thing can have a hug and a cup of tea, but he nudges that thought aside.

He can play along with appearing distracted and dubious. “Really. Did the cleric of Sarenrae make some different claims to him about the Good gods?”

Shrug. "I don't know what the usual Good pitch is. It was very 'hurting people is Evil! helping people is Good! it's not that hard!' except I know the percentage of people who make Good. It doesn't matter whether you can describe your philosophy in words three-year-olds recognize if only two percent of the population can do it."

He smiles, slightly. It’s a sad smile. “That statistic is from Cheliax, yes? Have you ever wondered if other countries had different rates?”

"I am sure Lastwall is doing fine, what with the only taking Good immigrants and then making sure they mostly die young, heroically, in battle. You know that kidnapping people and ripping their hair off is Evil, right?" In hindsight maybe it is a bad idea to try to convince this person that actually if he has goals in the world then he's evil, in case that's the reason he's not lighting her on fire. On the other hand this is the kind of interaction where she clearly deserves to be on fire and maybe he'll feel better if he realizes he's allowed to do it.

“Oh, I am sure this is hitting me a little for Good.” She’s so confused about everything, the poor child. And scared, but - trying, so hard. 

He likes her, he decides.

And he should focus. “Is your impression that Mhalir had Alloran brought to Nirvana instead of keeping or killing him because he was, hmm, confused by the Good gods’ claimed philosophy? What did he say to you about his reasons for doing this?”

"He was hoping Alloran would be able to think once he wasn't a slave. Alloran was trying to - convert, to become Good, in case he could get the Good gods' attention and they'd save him, which won't work because they don't give a shit about people but I guess if you take the propaganda completely at face value you might think it'd work. And Mhalir thought that if Alloran actually became Good then he'd see that the Andalites shouldn't fight the Yeerks, and - I don't think he thought it was very likely to work. He was probably underestimating the risk of -" Hold Person has worn off. She gestures vaguely at the guy's dungeon which looks like it'd be incredibly annoying to scrub blood out of. Maybe it's all illusioned. "But I think he was hoping that he could, actually, go to the Good gods, and if Alloran converting worked and also made Alloran agree that the Yeerks were right then that'd be a good sign."

Malduoni says nothing for a long time.

“How do you predict he will respond to your disappearance.”

"Dunno. The plan was that I should kill myself and he'd try to raise me but I don't know if he'd really bother. Probably he would. Diamonds are really cheap for him. Presumably at some point he'll cut his losses and rejoin his fleet. He might pay a ransom, if you could get a good intermediary and promised to actually leave him alone after that." He almost certainly does not mean what will Mhalir do about Carissa in particular, actually, no one except Carissa has reason to find that question interesting. "I expect he'll be pretty nervous until he figures out who you are and why you did that. Maybe he'll go try to check on Alloran and figure out this was his fault. I'm not sure. It's probably not very safe to try to kidnap people out of Nirvana even if they belonged to you in the first place. I think he doesn't have enough wizards to end the war yet but maybe he could steal a bunch and run - we were trying to get them consenting, which takes longer -"

“What motivated him to try to get them consenting.”

"Powerful wizards are really hard to hold as prisoners. The magic is ours, not theirs, and they can only use the bits of it that require using our voices and bodies. If a wizard can do a silent still spell their Yeerk can't stop them. If they are conjuration specialists who can teleport with a step their Yeerk can't stop them, and they could probably control whether the Yeerk comes along. And we're mostly talking about adventurers and adventurers are creative and risk-seeking. And it's easy for the Yeerks to pay them! Also I think Mhalir thinks he's in the right and that people should want to help him accordingly." Her opinion is that this is a stupid frame and probably any adventurers buy into it but mostly they'll be stupid ones. Mhalir of course knows this.  

“I see.”

He spends a while longer asking her questions, mostly diving into specifics about the ship’s technology and the magic items she made or purchased. The whole time, he seems calm and unhurried and not angry at all.

Well, some people like to very calmly plan which cuts they'll make first as they slice you to pieces. She goes back to being as uncooperative as she can, once they're back on strategic topics. It does slow them down, but not very much; he just repeats his questions in more detail until the geas forces the answer he's looking for. 

"You could try out being a Yeerk, you know," she says at one point. "With Polymorph. I've always wanted to but I'm not actually a very good wizard." 

"Thank you for the suggestion," he says dryly, and keeps going. 

Eventually he's covered all the relevant ground, and even her thoughts are mostly repeating things he already knows. He pauses for a while, looking at her with a thoroughly unreadable expression. 

"You do not want to go to Hell," he says, thoughtful. "Would you wish to get an Atonement, if this could be arranged?" 

"You - don't have to kill me at all, really -" It's a very pathetic thing to say and she's very mad at herself.

What an incredibly reasonable inference for her to make. "I am not intending to kill you now, there is no strategic reason to do so. It was a general question."

Sigh. "I think I am finished here. I will politely request that you avoid making a mess in my library." She doesn't have magic, which limits how much of a mess she can make - she can't reach any of his secure records or magic items at all, they're in cabinets locked with his spells - but she could still throw all his books off the shelves or something, if she felt like being difficult, and it would be mildly annoying to put everything back. "You are welcome to read the books that are not locked up." He doesn't offer her one of his spare headbands that work here. It doesn't seem like she needs any more cleverness to plot with right now. 

Nothing about this situation makes any sense. She wants Mhalir back, she wants to relax into the back of her head and have no control over everything but in a way where someone actively prefers that she remain alive and is thinking about how to make it happen. She wants to curl up on the ground and cry. She wants him to light her on fire just a bit and then say 'behave yourself' again but then she could actually believe him. She wishes she had hair, even though probably for most purposes being an ugly prisoner is better.

Does she want an Atonement - she thinks that you have to actually think that Asmodeanism is wrong to get an Atonement, not just that it is right but it would be nice if randomly you also didn't have to go to Hell. "I don't want to go to Hell" isn't really a heretical opinion; the heretical opinion would be that it matters that she thinks that. Which means getting an Atonement would in fact be heretical, which ...would mean that it'd work? She's so tired. 

She's scared for Mhalir. Hopefully he can take care of himself and doesn't enjoy some other wizard's head more than hers.

No one likes cowering prisoners on their floor - some people do, actually, but most don't - and probably someone who has been inexplicably resisting the urge to light her on fire for the last hour is someone who likes it unusually little. She stands up. "Thank you," she says, as blandly as she can to someone who doesn't at this exact moment have a strategic reason to kill her. "Is there a restroom."

"Of course." He points her to it, and to where she can find some water and nonperishable snacks, and then he Plane Shifts out. 

- and lands in his hallway demiplane, and walks out to his office in Rahadoum, and Teleports to his front doorstep in Absalom and knocks on the door. 

Parmida comes to the door after a minute. 

Malduoni steps through the door and closes it behind him and lets the calm controlled state slip away, just for a moment, like setting down some heavy burden and shedding off his coat. "I do not have a lot of time," he tells her. "I found - in Quantium - can you just Detect Thoughts...?" He's not sure he can explain the whole thing and also hug her and be upset at the same time.