"Guide to what?"

"Righting the order of the world."

"And what is the right order of the world?"

"I don't know exactly. Good things instead of bad. People being free to do what they want." Glance at Tazich.

"No one suffering in Hell."

"But then what's the point of people being free to do what they want, if pleasure that doesn't guide is a waste?"

"I don't know. Maybe aimless pleasure will be a good thing then. It isn't now."

"So no one's allowed to have fun until the world is perfect? Sounds worse than what Asmodeus or Zon-Kuthon are preaching, at least they don't give you false hope that you'll get to have fun one day."

". . . Good things are good and bad things are bad, regardless of what's pleasurable. My pleasure is just one kind of good, and it's swamped by all the other stuff that's out there. We could make that not be the case if it's true right now."

"Why are good things good?"

". . . Why is one one?"

"Like, you have this group of things which you have labeled 'good'. Why are they preferable to the other group which you've labeled 'bad'?"

Why is she in the fucking hot seat about this

It's no different from one versus two, how does Katie not understand!

"Why do we label green things green and blue things blue? Do you have no sense of good?

Oh, I just remembered what word I'm using. Silly me.

Lastwall lumps them together, good and preferable. It makes sense if you're from there . . . but if I were to translate it into alignment-neutral language, I'd say something like 'the world being the way that everyone enduringly prefers ranks above just the world being the way I prefer right now, because everyone else being happy is" good "also going to make me happy."

This is a more interesting exercise than she would have thought.

"'Everyone' includes you, y'know."

"Yeah, but if everyone just did whatever felt good in the moment, we wouldn't get that nice thing where everyone's happier and it, what's the word . . . compounds."

"But if everyone is constantly sacrificing themselves for the Greater Good, no one will ever get to actually enjoy the Greater Good!"

Hasn't she been listening?

"It happens in the future. Which is different from the past. Because the whole thing here is that we're putting in effort to change the present. Over time."

"But how will you know when you're done? What if one day, Heaven has taken over the world, but no one's able to actually have any fun, because you're all still, like, manually arranging grains of sand until the beach is absolutely perfect for swimming?"

"Heaven doesn't even care about arrangements of grains of sand, it's already lost its way in a more interesting way. I'm not actually on their side anymore, you know. Otherwise I wouldn't be here.

I'm making the case for -- some things about what I was taught about how to organize the world, that I think are correct."

"I'm just saying, the world is never going to be perfect, if you wait to enjoy yourself until it is, you're gonna be waiting forever. No one else is going to put you first, so you have to do it yourself."

"I don't think we're talking about the same thing anymore."

She goes back to work silently.

She's noting down the growth of what appear to be miniature nut plants in a glass tub, against marks ruled on the tub's outside.

"Well if that topic of conversation's exhausted... is it true that you were not always so... vast?"

"Yes. I looked normal before I was turned."

She doesn't say it with particular happiness or any kind of particular gravity.

"But that doesn't normally happen with vampires, does it?" She resents the use of 'normal' but isn't gonna language-police Teg about it, she has standards. "I'm aware that ghouls always appear emaciated, regardless of their physique in life, but I haven't yet heard of any undead which are the reverse."