" - yikes. If it doesn't make them unresurrectable maybe they could try it in Golarion."

There is definitely some kind of emotion waiting to burst loose, about the fact that Golarion has magic to bring back the dead, but there's no room for it now, with everything else already happening. 

"It is interesting that you think of me as safe to trust," he says softly. "I imagine that Urtho feels very stupid, now, for having trusted me enough to teach me so much about magic, which I ended up using against him in war." 

"Well, would you have started it? I don't doubt you'll hurt me if I try to kill you!"

"That is true, I - am aware that I am a dangerous person when I am threatened." Sigh. "I told Urtho I wanted peace with Tantara, I tried to tell him multiple times in the letters we exchanged... I am so frustrated that he apparently did not think I would keep my word!"

"I'm not even sure that he thought you'd break your word, that feels more-possible-to-interact-with, maybe he just felt - that you aren't supposed to agree to terms with evil, you're supposed to defeat it? That wars don't end with everyone agreeing they'd rather not fight?" Shrug. She doesn't like him but she doesn't want to argue with Ma'ar about his Seerow.

"I suppose it does not really matter, now." He feels less angry. More tired. "I - I wanted to fix everything with him - I thought he wanted that too. I do not understand what he wants, anymore - how someone could build the Tower and then turn and - try to destroy what I was building..."

" - normally when someone looks to be starting an empire their neighbors are going to invade them about it, right, you know that..."

"- No? When the Ceej was becoming an empire, I do not think anyone invaded them about it! They had plenty of border wars but they were the ones starting them, at least according to the histories." 

"I'm not a historian but - great powers don't usually tolerate the emergence of others, it's much safer to have weak neighbors than strong ones especially if they're very different from you and don't have a history of being allied with you, and - even if one king seems committed to peace, eventually there'll be a successor, and so if you're at your neighbor's mercy you're not just counting on the wisdom of one king - I wouldn't have invaded I'd have tried to scoop up the outer provinces you were going for, get there first, contain you with alliances and our own conquests, but if that didn't work it wouldn't be surprising for the war to start in any particular year and it'd feel nearly inevitable that it happened eventually. Nations...fight, it takes a lot of work to get any other outcome."

"Tantara had not had any wars for a hundred and fifty years before this! I suppose Predain was not formally allied with Tantara under the last king, and...Urtho did not want to change that... But you may be right, if you know about more history than our even world has." He seems quietly miserable about it. 

She feels bad about that but she's not sure what she could do about it. It seems - important, that you shouldn't try to build an empire in a fashion that spooks the one next door, just like you shouldn't try to move in a way that spooks the mage next door, that you should stay small and assume by default that many people have a great deal to gain by keeping you that way unless you have explicitly set it up to give them a great deal to gain some other way. 

She would - have aimed to marry the King of Tantara, probably, if she were powerful enough it wasn't a laughable idea. Ma'ar couldn't have pulled that off, of course, but - a daughter, on either side - or ask to become part of Tantara and bribe them for effective independence - or stay small, if you haven't given the people around you a compelling reason not to crush you when you raise your head.

"I - did not think that Urtho wanted people to be small," Ma'ar says, thoughtfully. "When he built something like the Tower. He always said that he hoped his students would surpass him, would learn ever deeper secrets and discovery new magics and build things he could not... He approved of that kind of ambition. But...now I feel that maybe he did want people to be small, in other ways. He - thought that desiring the power to change the world in large ways, was - a dark path, a dangerous thing to want...? I tried to talk with him about it, but his explanations never seemed coherent to me...and he would say he was proud, when I had clever ideas, when I took them seriously..." 

Carissa feels that this is because Urtho wanted to believe nice things about himself that weren't actually true of him.

Ma'ar hates everything about that so much, but it doesn't mean she's wrong, and hating reality won't change it - at least, not without a large number of steps in the middle, like 'having plans'. 

He's so tired. He wants to go home, except where is home, home was a tent in the plains once, but then blood and screams and stupid pointless wasteful endings took that away, and then home was the Tower - and it was more home than anything had been before - he wanted to stay, but he had made a vow, and there was more to be fixed in Predain, and he thought maybe he'd go back someday but there was so much to do and he never did - and then the Tower became a place he could never go back to anyway. 

He wants his mother to not be dead - speaking of incredibly stupid things to want - 

Maybe right now he just wants to be held, on this awesomely powerful spaceship that even Urtho can't touch, with the person who's somehow another world's version of him, and the woman who - loves him, and seems to consider it straightforwardly obvious that this transfers to Ma'ar who she just met? It's very surreal. 

Mhalir is thinking that it would help Ma'ar a lot to get DRUNK, like Carissa did that one time, and maybe for her to seduce him, he's so lonely, but also that's objectively a stupid plan when Ma'ar might be urgently required to deal with critical war-related matters at any moment, it's sort of surprising he hasn't been interrupted so far. Maybe Urtho is taking his time figuring out what to say with his new comms. 

She pats Ma'ar. He's twice her age but he looks kind of, on some level, like a tired, scared child. Probably that's an offensive thing to think. Probably since he's like Mhalir he will be offended at the very idea that it's a reasonable use of power to demand she think things that he likes... though maybe not, he does have the mind control powers...

She does not think she is up for seducing him though if Mhalir did it she wouldn't object.

Mhalir feels that seducing himself would be incredibly weird, and also Ma'ar probably isn't up for it right now, he has a lot on his mind - which is part of the problem, he needs just a little while of not worrying about the fate of the world - but he's not wrong that the war is important and time-sensitive and he can't just decide to ignore it right now. 

He pets Ma'ar and doesn't say anything. 

If Ma'ar is offended at Carissa's thoughts, or has any particular reaction to the seduction-related ones, it doesn't show. He lies still, half curled up but not as tense anymore, and lets them pet him. 

A few minutes later they're interrupted by a polite knock on the door. "Visser Three?" It's one of Mhalir's staff. "Uh, we have Urtho on the comms. Is Ma'ar still with you?" 

(He's speaking English, and Ma'ar doesn't have Tongues and has no idea what's being said.) 

(Why would seducing yourself be incredibly weird, Carissa would feel so at ease seducing a Carissa because she'd know exactly how to do it. Way easier than seducing people who are not you. Ma'ar has in any event not seemed like that was at all on his radar even when she took him to her bedroom and sat on his lap and he was clutching her so tightly there are now little finger-bruises. He might be gay or something.)

"Oh." She translates.

"Thank you. Tell them I am coming." 

Ma'ar extricates himself from her lap and stands, and she can practically see the mental motion of folding away his emotions to deal with later, returning to controlled stillness. It's kind of impressive. Mhalir does a similar thing sometimes, in her body. 

He takes a couple of breaths, hands loose at his sides, and then nods to her and walks briskly to the door and follows Mhalir's staff out. 

Carissa means to follow but finds suddenly that she's very tired.

<He will manage. He does not need us to babysit him.> Mhalir finds that he still desperately wants to be in a dark quiet room alone. (Having his alternate self there doesn't count as not-alone.) <I think we should rest, while we can, I am sure there will be more to deal with tomorrow.> 

Yeah. 

Glad you're not dead.