"I don't know very much. I'm sorry. My normal Yeerk is a jump engineer, I wasn't with Mhalir for any of the planning. They were looking for worlds, they found this one. They talked to some people trying to learn how magic works here. They wanted to stop the war, I think, that's what Mhalir just said -"

"I see." He doesn't see at all. "War is awful and this one especially so, I - can understand why a stranger to our world would see it and wish it to end. But, you have to understand, Ma'ar is–" Sigh. "He must not be allowed to continue on his current path." 

Mhalir is so scared. Both because this is the highest stakes moment so far and he can't think, and because apparently he's not getting better and what if he dies out here - would they even be able to resurrect him, even Aroden might not be able to get him back, not from here... He's trying to remember if they have any data on Yeerks being in a human host's head while the host sustained a serious head injury, but - well, usually the Yeerk would get out as soon as help arrived, they'd have backup hosts available, and also his ability to remember things is impaired right now. 

<The war is - you are missing context - misunderstanding each other... Ma'ar will stop. If he understands.> 

Lady Cinnabar is very confused but she relays this. 

"If he understands what? I...fear it is too late to correct him with words and admonishments. I tried and failed, a long time ago. He has had a decade to change his ways, and did not." 

Mhalir can't even figure out where to start; he's skidding from the edges of a vast gulf of inferential distance, here, what is he even supposed to say. 

Aroden, Earthfall, a meteor called in from space, two flourishing civilizations wiped out in an eyeblink, and for nothing. 

The Andalites, Alloran wiping out a planetful of the poor innocent childlike Hork-Bajir; own failure to realize that he only thought he had tried every avenue for peace, when in fact he had barely tried at all - and they were pulled short of the brink, but only by the help of a literal god. 

The cleric of Sarenrae, impassioned, crying out to both him and Alloran that his goddess saw a wasteful tragic pointless war and just wanted them to have a chance to stop hurting each other... 

Alloran in Nirvana, running a database and search engine on his own goddamned brain chip, to save millions of souls from torture or annihilation. Not forgiving Mhalir, but not trying to hunt him down and murder him either, for all his furious and so so understandable oaths to do so. 

Carissa. He wants Carissa. He wants her to give him a hug, even though that's kind of silly, when he's with her then their body is his too. 

- He wants Caroline to snuggle him under her wing, which is really quite something, he hasn't missed Nirvana in a long time - 

"- Eeek," Lady Cinnabar says quietly. "I'm - sorry, I only got fragments of that..." She says this in Mindspeech to Maggie and Mhalir at the same time. 

Maggie doesn't really understand what's going on enough to translate for Mhalir, here. "Those're - wars from other worlds - Carissa's his normal host -"

"More than one other world?" Urtho looks quietly awed. "This - goddess, Sarenrae - this 'Nirvana' - do you know what they are, Maggie?" 

"Golarion's the world with the very interventionist so-called gods." Maggie is a Christian and while she has a lot of questions lately she's pretty sure everyone else's gods are just powerful aliens. "Nirvana's their afterlife - it's where you go when you die - Mhalir died and went there for a year before people resurrected him..."

"- This other world has magic that can bring back the dead???" 

"The so-called gods give their priests the ability to do it. Uh, if you die there. I don't think they can work here."

And they can't bring back the souls destroyed in Hell, Mhalir finds himself thinking, 3.2 billion of them, not even Iomedae has any inkling of a plan for that, yet... 

Focus. Urtho is talking to them now because there's - some kind of emergency - which almost certainly means the war is getting worse, and he needs to explain and if he can't pull himself together then maybe another two civilizations will fall. 

<Yeerks - had a war> he thinks as clearly and verbally as he can. <With - other aliens, Andalites - stupid - Seerow taught us and then - scared - betrayed us - I tried to open talks - never worked - he thought we would enslave the universe - they killed a planet... Same story. As - Aroden, Earthfall - but they lost, the tragedy happened all the way... Has not happened here yet. Stop it. Have to.> 

"Okay, I think this is important! Urtho, listen–" Lady Cinnabar does her best to recount what Mhalir thought to her, somewhat haltingly, she's incredibly confused. 

"What do you mean, it hasn't happened yet here?" 

<Same...story...> 

"That does not make any sense!" 

"They had some kind of magic that looked for - people whose stories matched." But she doesn't actually understand it at all either. "Where the story is a horrible war that doesn't need to happen but no one knows how to step back from it and it goes worse than either side would ever have wanted."

"You - think that Kiyamvir Ma'ar would step back from this war, that he would - willingly set aside his dark magics, if he knew...what? I do not understand what information he is lacking. He knows perfectly well the cost of war." 

Aroden thought he did too, Mhalir thinks, and he was wrong, and the empire he was born to died for it, and the world was plunged into a thousand-year age of darkness. 

He doesn't know what the cost would have been for him, for Earth and the Andalites and the Yeerks and all the others. It can be stopped. It just...won't be, probably, unless he finds the right point of leverage to shift their history onto a new course. 

"I cannot fathom why you think that this 'Aroden', and your own war, are evidence of any kind about Ma'ar." But that's not exactly true. Urtho feels dizzy, reeling, and - hopeful, which hurts more than the bitter resignation did. 

<We are the - same story. The same pattern - same person...> 

Lady Cinnabar stiffens, and flinches back from him. She relays this in a flat toneless voice. 

Urtho recoils as well, lurching back from the bed. "What." 

Was it a good idea to tell them that??? They're gonna be the way about Ma'ar that Andalites are about Yeerks!