Aroden holds out his hand. 

Scaredscaredscaredscaredscared - 

When held up to it, Mhalir crawls into the ear of a dead-and-reincarnated god. 

The first thing Mhalir will notice is that Aroden is very very very smart. This can't possibly be a naturally occurring int in humans, at all, so presumably he's somehow increased it substantially, even more than the amount offered by the fanciest headband. 

Aroden's mind is, for the most part, very organized. A century's accumulated skill with magic, a century's worth of contingency-plans, lined up neatly where he can easily retrieve them. It's incredibly impressive, but not exactly inhuman. 

Some other parts, though, are different. 

Aroden remembers, vaguely, the moments before his death as a god, mostly made up of blazingly too-bright-too-loud-too-much something that doesn't fully fit into a human mind. 

- the future is no longer filled with noise; it's not filled with anything, really, a blank and terrifying vacuum. It is much much worse than having one of your major senses filled with uninterpretable noise; it's more like having one of your major senses filled with TORTURE. He feels it starting, though, feels His attentional capacity expanding and His power increasing and His senses expand to include His people, all of them -

There's an awful discontinuity, there, before his human memories begin, waking up with his head hurting in a rain-drenched cottage, in a body he stole. 

- this death was unlike the others; this death, He had every reason to suspect was forever (there'd been no way to check, whether His immortality method would still hold his spirit in the Material world if He died outside it, as a god, not by violence to some trivial physical form but by the sudden and utter destruction of His magic, His people, His mind, His city, until not enough remains to hold it together as it's scattered -

He does not know how long it took. It felt like centuries, bits and pieces trying to glue themselves back together and being systematically shredded again. 

He does not remember who killed him -

(except he does, now, it was Milani, he still hasn't figured out what if anything to say to her...) 

He remembers his careful and firmly calculated conviction that the opposition of the evil gods would not be enough, that to lose He would have to be betrayed, but He does not remember ever knowing who betrayed Him. He remembers taking that conviction with Him as he dissolved, because on the off chance that He could start over again He needed to start over with that, He would be lost for sure if He forgot that for a second -

Both of them are in quite a lot of pain, by now, as Mhalir keeps relentlessly digging at the buried godmemories. He ignores it and keeps going, and Aroden doesn't think at him to stop, he's agreeing that it's important, to really understand...

- He remembers His city in Axis, bright and bustling and beautiful, humming with the delight of people going about free, safe, happy lives. He remembers coils spinning and a glass bulb lighting. He remembers a woman, bold and demanding, Chelish, new to Her powers, her sharp eyes watery - "I knew you had a plan, I knew you were never resigned to this - can we make it happen faster -"

He remembers stepping into a quiet place, like a library, but not full of books, walking through it looking for - 

- "Of course I have all of your records," Abadar says - not says but that's how it's rendering now, as this distinctly human mind tries to reach for the scraps of the memory - "I save every work of mortal hands, that none of it might ever be lost."

"Why don't you tell them that," He'd said, "They'd - they'd want to know -"

"Huh. I never really thought about it."

And tangled in with that, He remembers some things that aren't of this life, memories of memories He's carried through since the beginning, and ones reclaimed in Abadar's First Vault - an underwater city - an alien voice, thrumming with approval -

- you care so much, maybe too much - 

- men like you and I should not rule, I have seen what becomes of us when we do - 

- flying across the ocean to see what became of Azlantl, and seeing only ocean as far as the eye could see, ocean and a dozen little barrier islands, barely peeking out above the sea -

- and choosing clerics, over and over again, the work He thought He'd never tire of and eventually did, looking into the hearts of men and seeing the brightly-burning spark that'd mean they'd fight, with this, for the right things or at least for the things that in expectation seemed right to them -

No, not that, back, before - Mhalir scrabbles at the fragments of that ancient memory of the water and the alien voice. There's barely anything left, now, it's been so long - eight thousand years, he knows a moment later, hard to even conceive of...

But the feelings tangled with it in Aroden's mind share a similar flavour with the feelings Mhalir himself has toward the memory of Seerow. Not entirely the same; Aroden has less bitterness there, less pointless anger. It's been such a very very long time. 

He wants...

...he doesn't know what. 

You want to be stronger, Aroden thinks to him. You want to be strong and clever and careful enough to save everyone and fix everything. 

Detect Thoughts is incredibly shallow, next to what a Yeerk does, but Aroden has it permanently - he felt so blind and deaf for decades, without his godsenses - and it's incredible how much he can get just from sensing the surface of Mhalir's reactions to his mind. 

<Yes.>

<I want that.> 

Then I will be grateful for your help. 

Aroden is calm, somehow, even though one thread of his mind is furious with Asmodeus and frustrated with the Andalites, and he's apprehensive, even scared, about the move on Hell and on Cheliax, and he's terrified that the price he'll pay for refusing to negotiate will be his wife's soul... But somehow his mind overall is level and focused. 

Mhalir bathes in it for a long time.

<I should let you get back to your work> he says to Aroden, finally. <Thank you.> 

An internal chuckle. Honestly I may need Delay Pain and a nap instead, after that, but I do not mind. 

And Mhalir crawls out of his ear and waits for Carissa to scoop him. 

Scoop. 

Mhalir slips into her ear. 

He basks in the familiarity of her mind, but doesn’t manage to say anything for a minute or two. Yeerks do not get headaches, per se, but he’s feeling very disoriented and like something is off.

Are you okay?

<I am - not sure - I feel very strange.> 

Oh no. 

Okay. Do you - remember what you were worried about before you went to look at him? That it would make you insane?

It takes him a maybe-worrying length of time to locate the 'before' she means, instead he keeps getting confusing fragments of godmemories that didn't really fit into a human head and certainly don't fit in a Yeerk brain even when a Yeerk has tried very hard to cram them in there. 

<...Yes. I remember that. I - do not think I feel insane? I, just - he is eight thousand years old, there was so much. And now it is feeling. Much.> 

She is MAD at Aroden and wants to walk over and yell at him and is not going to do that because somehow she is not dead yet and she is a fan of this remaining the case. Okay. I guess it's fine. We don't have a lot to do right now.

It's oddly reassuring that Carissa is so angry on his behalf, even if there's no way in which anger improves the situation. 

<I do not think it was his fault> he manages, finally, once words are working a little better. <I - tried to get at his godmemories. I could have not done that.> 

He is the god so she's pretty sure it IS his fault actually.  The pharaoh said that Mhalir was not invited because it might break his head, which is the reasonable thing to do if your head might break someone else's.

<Nefreti thought it was a good idea. Nethys sees all the worlds, if it drove me permanently insane she would surely have known that. Perhaps I am just - temporarily overwhelmed, and will be all right in a bit.> 

This makes sense but Carissa is scared. She is mostly scared for Mhalir but also she has ...no idea what happens to her, if he isn't okay or doesn't want her or anything else goes wrong. She knows too much and is not that useful to anyone who has their own limbs.

Carissa being scared makes Mhalir want to try very very hard to be okay, because Carissa being scared is terrible and he wants to fix it as soon as possible. This is probably not how being okay works, though. He wants to say that he's not ever going to not want her, but he's not sure he can actually promise that...but he wants to...

Now he's mostly very tired, and really wishes he could stop dwelling on the agonizing and disorienting memory-fragments of Aroden's death as a god. Maybe Carissa can distract him with something else? 

She can - try? She isn't having the best day ever for pleasant distractions. Does he want her opinion of all of the Andalites ranked by hotness.