Mhalir doesn't know! Maybe Carissa would be able to bluff her way through with a clever mix of truth and lies even when their only way of communicating is having their mind read! But he absolutely cannot do that, especially when he's injured and can barely string together coherent thoughts anyway! 

He's - not sure, actually, that Urtho in particular is going to feel toward Ma'ar the way that, say, Alloran did about Yeerks. Because he can't imagine Seerow feeling that way about him, once his protégé, no matter how many horrors and betrayals lay between them after that... 

<Ma'ar - not a monster> he thinks. <Maggie, you - I am not a monster, you - worked under me - tell him...>

He isn't sure what he's even asking for, really, just. Urtho knows Ma'ar is a person, who was a child once, a brilliant student - Urtho must've been proud of him before... 

Maggie thinks that probably her opinion about Mhalir was established when she yelled at them repeatedly for injuring him. "...no one is a monster or beyond forgiveness and repentance?" she tries tentatively. "And, uh, everyone has done horrible things they shouldn't have."

Urtho looks startled, and then smiles at her. "What a kind heart you have, child. The difficulty is that repentance requires wanting to repent, and I do not think Ma'ar seems himself as doing anything wrong." 

<He - thinks killing is wrong. Wants to save everyone. But - you started it - he is afraid of losing everything...> 

"I warned him where this path would lead." 

<He - thought you were his ally, his friend - he trusted you.> 

"How would you know what Ma'ar feels in his heart." But Urtho says it uncertainly. 

Every concept Mhalir tries to grasp for is somehow slippery and gluey at the same time, and he's so scared, and he wants Carissa there - where is she, what if she's in danger, what if what if what if... 

<Something happened> he forces out. <You - thought it was urgent - to question us... Why.> 

Lady Cinnabar answers for him. :Ma'ar was mounting troops to attack the south Gate-terminus. We moved our own troops to reinforce that front, but - were betrayed, one of the generals was an agent for Ma'ar: 

"It is a bloodbath out there," Urtho says, heavily, tiredly. "This war... You are doing a noble thing, child, in trying to coax us to settle our differences, but I think that point was passed long ago." 

"What's your alternative to settling your differences, the Andalites started releasing viruses that'd kill whole planets of people, in the Golarion war someone called down an asteroid out of space..."

"Well, as Ma'ar has shown, he is not above taking lives for power, and controlling people with dark magic to obey him - our weapons and magic are better than his, but he is more ruthless with the tools he has -"

Urtho stops, suddenly, and goes very still. 

Lady Cinnabar has no idea what his reaction is about but she's suddenly very scared! 

Maggie is thinking that that matches the Andalites and Yeerks, except that the Andalites got ruthless once they were losing.

"I - it cannot be, no..." Urtho has gone very pale. 

<You...have a weapon, right> Mhalir guesses. <Something - very powerful, that he cannot counter - would not consider using unless...desperate...but you might be desperate, if - the alternative were his taking the Tower...> 

"Ma'ar cannot be allowed to capture the Tower." Urtho's voice is stony. "He would become unstoppable." 

<What if - the price of stopping him - were even worse.> 

Urtho says nothing. His eyes are fixed on a point far away. 

Maggie is thinking about wars. There was the war with the Nazis and the Japanese which really kind of was one where you had to keep fighting until they were defeated, and there was even an unimaginable superweapon involved, and it worked out all right. And - she's really not a history person - there were lots of other wars which were a pointless waste and were fought until someone won? She can't actually think of examples of wars that everyone managed to agree to stop fighting, except the Yeerk/Andalite situation with Abadar and Iomedae and Sarenrae all involved in enforcing the terms.

Urtho is quiet for a while. 

Abruptly, he stands up. "I - need to think. Lady Cinnabar, do everything you can for Mhalir, please. We need him lucid." 

He leaves the room at a fast walk. 

Lady Cinnabar scrunches up her face. She looks pretty overwhelmed and frightened. 

:All...right: she says to Maggie. :Er, do you know anything about other times Yeerks were injured in their hosts' head, and what was done about it - what kind of Healing does your world have...?: 

"The Yeerks have medics, if you let him go back to the ship they could probably fix it - he's going to need to anyway, pretty soon, to eat - Golarion has super powerful magic healing but it's mostly through their so-called gods, Carissa can do a little bit of it with devil's blood for some reason - you could invite Carissa here? She's Mhalir's normal host and much more into all this, I dunno, high stakes magic war stuff."

Lady Cinnabar is herself not very into this high stakes magic war stuff! She kind of hates it! She's been playing the whole powerful noblewoman Healer spy game for a while anyway, but gah. 

:I - don't know that we can do that, sorry, but - I can talk to Ur– to someone. What do you mean, he needs to go there to eat - what do Yeerks eat, maybe we can give it to him here...?: 

"They need the rays of the sun on their home world. They have generators that produce it in a pool on their ship, and they swim around in it for a couple of hours, soaking it up, and then they can go a couple of days in a host before they need it again."