Mhalir gets them one more drink - appreciates the fact that Ma'ar can have a sensible coherent conversation about something as complex as magic when he must, at this point, be quite tipsy - and then while interrupting as little as possible, suggests they go back to Carissa's room. 

This mostly does not register, aside from remembering that the room has a door that locks and the wards he put on it earlier when they left him there to wait are presumably still in place, which seems preferable. 

Mhalir notices that Ma'ar is more relaxed here, which seems...good? Probably? He wishes he could tell what he was thiiiiinking, it feels very unreasonable that he still has to guess even though he's, one, a Yeerk, and two, the same person in some deep metaphysical sense.

He tugs Ma'ar across Carissa's lap and pets him while they converse. 

I am pretty sure he is gay, Carissa informs Mhalir during a pause in demonstrating magic. Tragic. I am sure if we search all the universes we'll find one somewhere.

<I think he needs something here and - probably it is not being seduced - I am not sure what else is in the space of things...> 

He casts Detect Thoughts. It's manageable even though Carissa is tipsy and arguably he's tipsy too, because he just needs to pull together enough total concentration across both of their brains. 

This works! Ma'ar's spell resistance is perhaps less than usual, right now. 

Ma'ar is very drunk. He's sliding around through several layers of thoughts which are not especially connected up or coherent as an overall whole. Most of his working memory is tracking the conversation and watching Carissa's demonstration; this is actually remarkably held-together given his tipsiness. Once in a while he reflexively checks the wards with mage-sight, and also vaguely notices the physical room he's in and that he's being petted, and this is kind of nice, and he wonders if this is what all Yeerk diplomats are like - it honestly wouldn't be entirely unlike Velgarth diplomats, he knows how to negotiate for an annexation while the local landholder keeps waving his servants over with more ale. 

Mostly he's detached from the situation, holding himself back and away from it; it feels like habit, or a carryover from earlier, but also there are layers of emotions that Mhalir can see a lot more easily from an outside angle than Ma'ar can. There's anger and fear and grief and frustration and bitterness, none of which is productive to swim around in right now, and so he isn't, and is entirely unaware of it. He's also not at all conscious of the tension he's still holding in his shoulders even now, or that he has a headache from it, from his perspective he's just a bit worse at thinking for no clear reason. 

...how do you do that much not paying attention to your brain when you're not even going to be in trouble for thinking. I guess maybe he would've been in trouble for thinking the wrong things at some points.

<Maybe? I think it is less that there are thoughts he is afraid of getting in trouble for, and more - he is trying not to fall apart despite the unreasonable number of scary and confusing things that have all happened in such a short length of time. He is very traumatized.>

Mhalir finds himself thinking that what Ma'ar really needs is a mother bird, but he is not at all sure he knows how to be that, or that it would work if he tried, they're too similar in a way. And he doesn't feel any older or wiser than Ma'ar, not really. 

He remembers being that confused. Remembers handling it with far less grace and willingness to update quickly on new evidence, actually. He remembers recognizing mistakes he'd been making all along, and how deeply it shook him, and how he had to keep moving anyway, because the world wouldn't hold still and things kept happening to them...

Carissa feels extremely unqualified to do the Nirvana thing at people. I could literally turn him into a bird but that seems like it'd make everything worse, really.

<I imagine so!> 

"Ma'ar?" he says quietly. "How are you feeling?" 

"Mmm?" That's unfair, it's not a question about magic, why are they expecting him to answer questions that aren't about magic... He shakes himself a little. "M'alright, why?" 

"You do not seem entirely all right." Petpetpet. "There was a time on Golarion where I - had to change my mind and my plans in a hurry and when the stakes were very high. It was hard, and it took a lot out of me. I did not even realize it at the time, because I was alone and in charge and did not feel I had the option to stop and rest. But... You are not alone." 

...Ma'ar eventually manages to eke out the thought to himself that this is clearly meant to be kind and reassuring, so why is he here feeling worse instead of better, how rude of him. 

...probably at some point she should stop bucketing an entire angle Mhalir has on the world as 'the Nirvana thing' and ignoring it as irrelevant to her and as mostly constituting patiently saying obvious things until people cry about them. But it really does seem to involve that! And there's no - hook, it doesn't seem like she needs it, in fact she'd be annoyed if Mhalir were to try it - which is probably why he hasn't - 

She pets Ma'ar and can't really think of anything to say and doesn't say anything.

Ma'ar isn't thinking at all that he wants to cry. He wants to...get in a fight? Except that's clearly stupid, he doesn't like fights, they're bad, and only sometimes justified as the best or only or fastest way to achieve your goals - 

- he wants to win. None of the last few days feel like winning. They feel like the ground vanishing out from under him and - trying to piece together a sail out of scraps and fragments falling around him - like constantly having to make one high-stakes urgent judgement call after another and not having time to step back and check if they worked. He doesn't know what the future is going to look like at all, and yet has spent most of the last day trying to convince everyone important in Predain that he has a plan and is in control and knows what he's doing here. Because if he doesn't this is all going to explode out of control around him and it'll be worse, but it still feels like lying and he's never liked that and especially doesn't like feeling like he's sort of trying to deceive himself about whether it's a lie at all...

He is, in that moment, desperately wishing that things were simple and he could see a clear path to victory even if it was a very ruthless one, which is probably the thing his emotions mean by 'wanting to get in a fight', except that remains an incredibly stupid plan and so instead he's just lying here very still. 

- oh, that's more relatable. Though she still hasn't got any idea how to help with it.  Things ahead ...are going to be complicated, probably. It seems like it would probably not meet this emotional need to, uh, play Kings, even if the replicator can spit out a set. 

"You....know you...don't need to think of this as diplomatic contact with Golarion, right, you don't have to do anything particularly, Mhalir's you, we want good things to happen and not bad ones... -"

"I know." 

He sits up, finds that this is slightly harder than he expected, leans on Carissa's/Mhalir's shoulder. "I am - grateful to you - for being here. I - apologize that I am not better company." 

He's thinking that the way Carissa feels toward him is still confusing; he gets Mhalir better, it's not hard to imagine how he would feel about allying with another version of him; Mhalir isn't going to judge him for having made mistakes because that won't help.

Mhalir would understand how it feels, to grow up in a world where almost nobody was evil and yet almost everything was broken, because it doesn't even take enemies to break the world, all it takes is no one clever and brave and learned and ruthless enough to rebuild it, day after day, year after year. And then to see the Tower, and feel for just a little while like there's all the space in the world for him and for everyone to grow and flourish, and to spend decades in the endless thankless grinding project of shaping Predain toward that dream, when he had so few materials to work with, and then for it to end in war - 

It did feel a lot simpler when his plan was just to win. He's incredibly grateful that instead Mhalir and Carissa wrenched this world's history onto a different path, there was so much he didn't know - 

- he's so angry with Urtho for not telling him, for not telling anyone, who in all hells invents magic that could destroy the world, when there are so many ways of fixing it still unexplored... 

He remembers being fourteen years old, illiterate and underfed and chasing a rumour, a dream, fighting his way through all the bandits and corrupt city Guards who wanted to stop him, with his knife and his fireballs and levinbolts, remembers shrieking and kicking and biting and sending magic crackling everywhere, that one - no, it was at least two different times that the mercenaries on caravans he'd joined with tried to surprise him in the night and - hurt him - and their startled eyes when he had the temerity to fight back... And he doesn't actually want to go back to that, it was horrible, but in some bizarre inside-out way he's feeling nostalgic for the simplicity. He always won. Sometimes he was limping for weeks but he won. 

Mhalir is thinking that he does understand, mostly, but that doesn't mean he knows what to say or do. 

" - we could spar but you're very drunk." And she doesn't really prepare combat spells but it seems unsporting to fuss about that; someone could have tried to kill her today and she would've made do with what she does have.

He's never tried to fight while this drunk. "That is - probably a bad idea - would be sloppy, might hurt you... Maybe later?" He's also feeling very tired. Standing up is unappealing. 

"You could sleep here tonight, if you are tired now," Mhalir suggests. "I know I feel safer and more able to rest when someone else is there who can..." He doesn't know what word to use so he just sort of trails off.  

"If you are sure you do not mind?"

"Course not." In fact she kind of wants to sleep too.

"All right. You should drink some water before we sleep." Mhalir gets up to get him some, and for Carissa as well. 

Ma'ar drinks his water and then looks around uncertainly, checks the wards a final time and lies down.