" - yeah, maybe. We need him back tomorrow at the latest because Yeerks starve, away from a pool..."

"Oh. That is - unfortunate." He scowls. "I am not sure what he would do if I went myself, he might - panic, and react hastily in some way... I will send a messenger. One moment, I need to contact my people." 

He goes quiet again. 

She waits. Mhalir was - probably pretty much exactly this distressed, last time, she just didn't care because she didn't care about him yet...

Mhalir is a prisoner now, and probably scared about - not her problem right now -

Ma'ar finishes passing the communication-spell message on, receives acknowledgement. He's more hopeful that this order will actually play out as intended; sending messengers to Urtho isn't a new thing for him, it's not a reason for his people to think he's gone insane or been captured and compulsioned or something. 

He's scared and miserable and exhausted, but he's chosen his path, drawn his hand and now he just needs to play it. 

He takes a slow breath, and rolls his neck in a very forced way, loosening some of the tension in his body without unwinding any of the tightness showing in his eyes. 

"I...suppose we wait and see what Urtho does, now." His voice is flat and weary. 

"I have more to explain when you're ready."

He sits down, heavily. "You can tell me now." 

"In my world the story happened a long time ago. The human civilization on land was - poor by comparison, and new, and the alghollthus under the sea taught us things - but we got powerful, and they got nervous - and they feared Aroden particularly, is my understanding, he was human and brilliant and ambitious and good at magic and didn't care much what they thought people ought to do, and eventually he was appointed the heir to the Emperor of Azlant and that's when the alghollthus declared war. They didn't expect it to be hard, but we fought back, it wasn't going well for them, so they decided to call down an asteroid that would kill all life on the surface but they thought permit them to continue, under the sea. They miscalculated. It would've just destroyed the world. The gods intervened, and Azlant and the alghollthus were both destroyed utterly but some humans survived elsewhere.

Aroden was one of them. He doesn't talk about how. But he - rebuilt, and kept going, built another rich human civilization and then another one, fought demon lords, travelled to other worlds...and eventually decided to become a god.

The god who sees everything said that he and Mhalir were - the same. It wasn't just the stories that matched, it was the people."

He stares at her. 

"I am not sure I understand what that would even mean. For - them to be the same person." 

"We don't understand it either. But - but it fits, right. Mhalir learned from Seerow, and Seerow betrayed him, and then he started fighting the war even though he didn't want to because the alternative was - losing, giving up, letting everything not be fixed, ever - he said your policies sounded - characteristic -"

"If our path here would otherwise have ended in the total destruction of both our countries, I owe you a great deal for averting that."

But he says it in a blank, rote tone. His expression is that of someone who stopped being able to process the events around him a while ago, and is mostly running on autopilot while some part of him frantically tries to orient and fails over and over. 

She wants to give him a hug so badly and it really won't help.

He's suddenly so incredibly tired. 

"What else." 

"Any chance we can get that headband I gave you back?"

"I did not even have a chance to rendezvous with the team that collected your package, sorry. I - can contact them, ask them to meet us." 

Nod. "When convenient. I'm - sorry that everything happened so quickly - you did a good job, with what you had - it took Mhalir longer -"

Ma'ar can't think of a helpful or productive answer to that, so he says nothing. 

Hugs won't help, she reminds herself firmly. Mhalir can at least feel safe with someone when he can see the entire contents of their mind and fully control their body; can Ma'ar feel safe with other people at all? Maybe with the mind control. It would be weird to offer that he could mind-control her until he feels safe.

Ma'ar was doing his best to read her mind at that moment, for lack of anything more useful to do, and now he's turning and looking sharply at her, his eyes both intent and very very confused. 

- she was kind of courting running into that problem eventually. 

"You remind me of Mhalir," she says. And she loves him and she wants Ma'ar to feel safe and not alone, to trust that there are other people who are trying, and - probably the thing Mhalir has humans can't have, they can't know anything that confidently, they can't live inside someone and have the chance to audit every thought they have, and if they did, they'd hate them - 

"I do not hate people," Ma'ar says, softly. "I do not hate anyone. People are - lights in the world - even when they are making it very very hard for me to save all of the other lights, they are still something precious." 

He looks uncertainly at her. He wants something, desperately, and he doesn't even know if he wants it from her or from the world or from Urtho or something else entirely. 

Well, if he does have mind control he can use to feel safe enough that if she hugged him it would actually help he's by all means invited to do that.

This is a baffling offer to receive from anyone, especially someone from another world who's - close friends and allies? with an alien? who she thinks is the same person as him? 

He wants to not feel alone. He didn't feel alone, for a brief beautiful few years, and then Urtho– no point in following that worn-out groove of thought again, he's been down it enough times. 

It's unclear how a hug would even help with anything, but it's not like he has anything else productive that he can do right now, he's still waiting on responses about the various events he just tried to set in motion.

This feels too private and also too bizarre to say out loud. He switches to Mindspeech; he's not that strong a Mindspeaker but he's extensively practiced the trick for talking to un-Gifted people.

:....May I place a compulsion for you not to harm me - I am not sure how you could verify that I am only doing that and nothing more, though...: 

If he's actually not Mhalir that seems better to find out as soon as possible and if he is Mhalir he wouldn't lie lightly.

...He'll take that as assent, Ma'ar decides after a moment; it seems like she won't be angry, at least in the scenario where he doesn't harm her, which he doesn't intend to do at all so that should be fine. 

He places the compulsion. It takes about half a second and shouldn't feel like anything to Carissa. 

:Done: he says, and then - waits, unsure what he's even waiting for. 

She steps up to him and hugs him and thinks about Mhalir - Mhalir's jealousy, because Urtho is still alive, when Seerow is gone, forever gone, like several billion people in Hell - Ma'ar saying earnestly he could never hate people, lights in the world even when they're making it very hard for him to save the other ones - she's not sure if she's ever prodded Mhalir to talk about that, and now of course it's a sore subject -

Probably she should instead think huggy things. She likes Ma'ar and she wants him to be safe and live forever and become a god like Aroden and fix everything.