"Oh! It's - very beautiful - it feels so alive... I guess it's all built by dead people."

"Oh, it is not less alive, for that. My divine domain was here, you know. My city. I hoped someday to see ones like it in the mortal plane, but...it is much easier here, to set up the scaffolding so that people can build, by their own hands, the sort of world that both of us dream of seeing. It is - I am only just beginning to rebuild, and Axis has changed a great deal even in just a century, it did not stop moving just because I was believed to be gone forever."

Aroden smiles again. "I am glad of that. So much was lost, an incalculable amount, but - I am grateful to be in a world where many others exist to pursue my values. And I am glad you can see it." 

Ma'ar nods. It's hard to tell if Aroden is scary the way Leareth is, he thinks. He's pretty sure Aroden is dangerous, much more dangerous even, but mostly he feels - old, and vast, and more, not in a way that's alien - he can sense the echoes of recognition, there - but it's nonetheless dizzying and strange, if not exactly in a bad way.

"There's so much," he says, awed. "I think your world is - more complicated." 

"I am not sure if it is. Older, yes, we have a far longer recorded history than Velgarth, in your time or in Leareth's - my Cataclysm, Earthfall, which like the Cataclysm on Velgarth wiped out most of the historical record, was almost ten thousand years ago. I was an immortal human for five thousand years before I became a god the first time." He sighs, and in that sigh is the echo of an ancient grief, a loss that isn't any smaller for being so distant in the past. 

"And - more of our complexity is visible at a glance, I think. Our gods are more legible than yours, and there are spells to detect the alignment of mortals, and of course the separate afterlives. But...I am not sure that, in the end, Velgarth has any less messiness or nuance than Golarion. It is just harder to notice and harder to understand." 

"Oh." 

He fidgets. 

"I'm...not sure I really understand." 

"That is all right. I am not sure I fully understand, and I am literally a god." He shakes his head. "I know you came here hoping for answers, to the question of what shape you ought grow toward, and - I am afraid I cannot really give you that. I do not think there will ever be a final answer, for people like us. The world changes around us, over and over, and we react and grow toward the shape that we must be to achieve our goals - for our plans to work... Leareth spent a thousand years investing in one path, in Velgarth, and then he has needed to change a great deal to adapt to Golarion, and - the future is not over, yet. There are so many more worlds that still need to be fixed, and I cannot say what shape any of us will need to be, for that." 

"Oh." He scuffs his feet. "That sounds - really hard." 

"I cannot say that it ever stops being hard, and I expect both of us will sometimes wish we were the sort of pattern that could give up and pass the work on to others. But I do not think that we are that sort of pattern. And - there are rewards to be found too. Especially here, right now. The forces that oppose us are very powerful, with many allies, and that means we cannot win alone - but we have allies too. I think that you will need to learn to operate under those conditions, to win, and - this is not the point, of course, but incidentally I think it will be very good for you. And easier, perhaps, than it is for Leareth. You have not had so long to practice being a shape that works alone." 

Ma'ar can tell that Aroden is trying to tell him about something good, but mostly he feels overwhelmed. Like the insides of him are too full and might start falling out any moment. "I - have you wanted to give up, before -?" 

"Of course," Aroden says, gently. "A century ago I woke up in a stolen body, in a world devastated by my own death throes, and it felt as though half of what I remembered of my past life lives was just the agony of being torn apart by the other gods. I knew one who I thought was a friend had betrayed me, but not which; I could trust none of my former allies. I had first-level spells and nothing else, and my country was starving and shredding itself around me. I - it was objectively stupid, in some sense, to think I could rebuild anything from that starting position, and that - would have been a very reasonable excuse to give up. But, in fact, it was a starting position that I could work with. It just took much longer than I would have preferred." 

"And so a lot of people went to Hell in the meantime." This would feel like an unnecessarily hurtful thing to say to a human, but it's not like Aroden doesn't know, and probably Aroden even knows that Ma'ar is thinking it, since he can read Ma'ar's entire mind. 

"Yes. That is a hazard of trying to do things that are very hard; sometimes you will fail, and innocent people will pay an awful price for it." 

"How - is there something I need to learn, for - how to be okay with that, for it to - hurt less..." 

"I do not think there is any way to be untroubled by it, no. You will eventually find it easier to carry out your plans just as effectively even when you are in pain. It just takes practice."

Aroden, or at least the metaphor for him that looks like a human, looks levelly at Ma'ar for a moment, then ducks his head. "We can hope that your learning experiences will be a little gentler than mine or Leareth's, since you are not trying to grow up alone." 

"Mmm." He sort of wants a hug, but it doesn't feel like getting a hug from Aroden will add anything much, over and above the fact that Aroden is the sort of person who fights Asmodeus and takes back the country he ruled and then becomes a god. "I - hope I can grow up and get stronger in not too long, though, and then we'll be powerful enough to conquer Hell and take away Asmodeus' dead people so he can't torture anyone. I - don't want to learn more gently if it means it take longer." 

Aroden smiles, softly, fondness and recognition and pride and - flickers of other emotions that aren't human ones at all. "I understand. You should not expect perfection of yourself, because then you will end up angry and upset at aspects of reality that cannot be expected to be otherwise, but...yes, it is important that we move as quickly as is realistically possible, even if sometimes it hurts us more, as long as it does not break us. And you are not a pattern that can easily be broken." 

Nod. 

"- You had better go back, now, I do not wish to exhaust you." 

Aroden looks him in the eye, calm, appraising, and the metaphor-of-him reaches out and takes Ma'ar's hand for a moment. It's not really like being hugged, at all; it's more like having his skin turned to glass, his insides looked at, and understood, recognized, approved of where relevant. Sometimes noted to be insufficient, but in a detached way that doesn't exactly contain disapproval. 

And then he's back in his bedroom, dizzy again and with the faintest twinge of a headache between his eyes, though that could be from the Gate-practice earlier.

Talking to Iomedae was comforting; talking to Aroden hasn't been comforting at all, and for some reason he wants to cry now, though the emotion he's having isn't anything as simple as 'sad' or 'upset'.

Also he wants a hug, very badly. As soon as the dizziness subsides, he hauls himself up and goes looking for Carissa again. 

She's still in the baby's room. Dierne/Aspexia is much cuter now that there are lots of other people to watch her, apparently.

She's very cute and it makes him feel obscurely better. Ma'ar doesn't say anything, just goes over and snuggles up against her. It's a little bit harder to do that than before, he notices; he's grown. 

Hug. "You talked to Aroden?"

"Mmmhmm." Hug. 

She doesn't say anything either, just squeezes him and watches the baby. 

He wants to explain it to Carissa, but it takes a while and a lot of wrangling to get the pieces into an order where he even can explain. 

"He said - that if I try to do hard things, sometimes I'll fail and other people will pay for it," he says finally. "Like - when he tried to bring the Age of Glory and got murdered instead and then Asmodeus took over Cheliax and millions of people went to Hell. I - he said it doesn't ever not hurt, when that happens..."