And there isn't that much to talk about, after this. It's hardly news to Leareth that the Senior Circle is alarmed and scared and angry about what he just did. Vanyel really really really does not want to go into detail on all of his various private adventures with Elfyn and he's grateful that Leareth doesn't ask. 

It's been a long year and he learned a lot of new songs? 

(It's not until afterward, waking with a start in the darkness, that Vanyel realized he completely forgot to say anything to Leareth about Urtho's diaries.) 

Leareth wakes briefly, takes some quick shorthand notes, and then goes back to sleep. He's going to need to be well rested, to face whatever tomorrow has to bring. 

Quest log:

The 'Right Side of the Bed' skill ensures that, if you are preparing a surprise for a lover to wake up to, they will wake up at the precise right moment and not at any of the many inconvenient wrong moments while the surprise is in progress.

Like most similar skills you can get ten hours of work out of the way that way so long as you don't think too hard about it.

This was good because I needed ten hours. The spot I'd picked was covered in snow, which I was immune to but Leareth wouldn't be; I cleared it all away at which point it was covered in ugly uneven rock, which I used my new ~magic powers~ to blast into clear smooth rock. Vanyel is the most powerful mage in the world or something; apparently this would be way harder if I hadn't slept with him. I tried doing fine detailing in the stone floor, failed so catastrophically I had to lower it another six inches to erase my error, settled for the natural patterning granite has when you polish it to a gleaming shine, and spent an hour trying to put up a very basic weather bubble so the weather would stop snowing on my prisoner. When I eventually succeeded it was a glowy golden dome with a bit of a cathedral vibe. I had blankets and pillows and so on from Leareth's storerooms, but they were identifiably his, which would kind of ruin the vibe, so I spent a while sewing them myself, which made them automatically silken, and sexy. I fast-travelled to an alpine meadow in my line of sight and picked bouquets of flowers. I froze some snow into ice-crystal vases for the flowers that would melt slowly and water them as they did.

(I am good at my job when it doesn't require fixing the entire world.)

Finally, I made brunch. Gil's old lunchbox really outdid itself; I had a stunning spread of cheeses and charcuterie and deviled eggs and avocado toast and fresh fruits and crepes and croissants and tea and coffee. it even coughed up boba, which I'd never been able to get it to do before. I threw the picnic blanket over a slab of rock and laid out the whole spread, humming to myself. 

Which is the moment the magic chose for Leareth to wake up. 

Leareth wakes up - 

- and is aware within about a quarter of a second, just from background input like the texture of the bedclothes and the feel of the air and the lack of any of his familiar wards, that he isn't where he expected to be.

At which point, still not quite fully alert, he immediately flings out all of his Othersenses, and in another quarter of a second he IS entirely awake, at which point he instantly, instinctively, tries to weave an unscaffolded Gate under himself. 

He should have, within another half-second or maybe a full second at most, been somewhere else and safe. Unfortunately the Gate does not work. 

Leareth just barely manages not to instinctively blast all of his surroundings with fire and lightning, because his brain has by now started to process the actual content, in more detail than DEFINITELY NOT HIS SAFE UNDERGROUND FACILITY, and so he's aware that Elfyn is right there and...calm...? And humming to herself? 

Leareth goes for Mindspeech rather than talking out loud, because this makes it easier to focus on controlling his breathing. 

:What: he sends, tightly and with no expression whatsoever, :are you doing: 

"I come in peace - awww, damnit, that's not innuendo in your language. We're safe; I did Mindhealing so you wouldn't immediately Gate away on me but Nayoki says that the way I see things in ribbons, set-commands take a long time to do and almost no time to undo. If anything weird happens I'll undo it at once, but I expect my magic to -" not try to throw action plot into a character scene "be allied with us in ensuring nothing threatens you. 

Nayoki agreed this would be good for you, and she said nothing was going to go horribly wrong in your organization if I borrowed you for a little while.

Brunch?"

Leareth was just apparently kidnapped - without ever waking up during the entire process of being moved, presumably via Gate, from his incredibly shielded and warded bedroom to a random outdoor spot in the wilderness, which feels like a huge slip in his caution and paranoia - and he can't leave and is maybe completely at the mercy of an alien being steered by an even more alien magical force mainly interested in creating 'plots' about sex? And this was done with the active cooperation of one of his most trusted colleagues? 

It's going to take him a lot longer than the duration of that speech to calm down enough that he can possibly be in the mood for brunch. 

That's fair. 

She's not shielding her thoughts. 

She's thinking that she doesn't actually want him to be scared. She has sometimes wanted people to be scared, if they're ruthlessly tyrannizing whole countries or whatever, wanted them to see why it's bad. 

She fucked like half Leareth's staff last night. She asked a lot of questions.

She's pretty sure he sees why it's bad.

Leareth also prefers not to be scared. It's not providing him with new information. The thing that would give him that information is talking, for which it would be really helpful if he could think rather than being distracted by the all-consuming desire to flee back to his warded underground base until the world makes sense again. 

He takes a deep breath. "I am - hoping you thought this out carefully and with reasonable input from Nayoki, but since I am not sure if Nayoki is in her right mind or if she was under the influence of mind-affecting sex magic that you literally cannot explain to me yet - where are we? Are we in a location that is anywhere close to the territory of any local gods?" 

That is, of course, kind of operating on the assumption that she in fact doesn't want to hurt him - and that neither does the force behind her sex powers. The latter is a lot harder to confirm one way or another by mindreading, but...at the same time, it's starting to seem like if the magic-source is opposed to his goals, then it's too late and he's already lost. So - for the moment, it makes sense to focus on the worlds where there's still a chance. 

"No." They're not far from his underground base, somewhere with a gorgeous view of the mountain peaks, and the stars at night. If he named himself after them he probably likes them. 

"...Right. Do you– can you explain at all why Nayoki thought this would be productive?" 

"I told her that I like you and I want to help you and that having done my due diligence on your staffing practices, I don't want to steal your organization out from under you. Which I would have, if you seemed horrible. I have learned some things from all my past supervillain boyfriends and girlfriends." Unspoken, but presumably understood: if I wanted to crush you, I would have.

 "I told her that my power - doesn't change who people are in their hearts of hearts, just which parts of it they let themselves feel. And I said that I thought I should probably run off with you now, and spend some time talking to each other outside your shell." Gesture at the mountains. "And I asked whether that would be disruptive to any operations and what reasonably security precautions against your gods intervening were. And I showed her how quick I can untie ribbons."

...Leareth nods. He's not relaxed, yet, but he looks somewhat less like someone holding himself on alert and ready to respond to a lethal thread on a fraction of a second's notice. (And, honestly, Leareth gives off some impression of that literally at all times.) 

"I would feel much more comfortable if I had more proof that you are right about your magic, and it does not - alter a person's goals or values. Since the force behind it is clearly intelligent and - has its own goals, or at least its own scripts - and for reasons which I expect you are coming to understand better, this makes me deeply uneasy." He makes a face. "I had been trying to figure out if I could just decide to be interested in sex with you, without first resolving all of that, since apparently if I do that then you will be able to speak more openly afterward? I - am not sure I can actually just choose to do that in a way where I would like it, though, and I am getting the sense that your magic might decide that did not count." 

"I don't actually know that the ability to explain the ~~~~~~~ is directly related to having sex. To our relationship, sure, but there are actually other elements to relationships, such as brunch. 

I do sometimes - read old Facebook posts of mine, to see if I can recognize the person who wrote them, and if the difference is just, uh, the great power great responsibility or something deeper than that. Sometimes I'm not sure. It's part of why - part of why I can't let it just change the whole world, right, what if it loses something important."

Leareth nods. This time, he restrains himself from immediately asking what Facebook is. 

Having brunch does seem much more uncomplicatedly pleasant than having sex, and also like it would interfere less with talking, unless the food is somehow supernaturally distracting. He scoots over to have a look at the options. Wow. That's a very impressive spread. Kings don't eat that well, in Velgarth - in general, not just the King of Valdemar, who doesn't exactly try for a life of luxury. 

He wonders if the feasts available in Tantara could have rivaled it. It's not like he would know. Maybe it's impossible for anyone to know. 

"That - does seem like an important consideration. I admire you for it. You are - much more careful than I was when I was still less than a century old."

He selects a croissant and some fruit, and switches to Mindspeech so he can talk while eating. :I also reread my own records, to check that I am not changing too much over successive lifetimes. I...wish I had anything left from my first lifetime, though: 

S/he's not really sure it's being careful. Probably being careful would be minimizing disasters, rather than just not doing stuff so the disasters aren't your fault if they do happen. Causing climate change wouldn't be careful so s/he's not sure just ignoring it is.

It figures that the quest about not having dilemmas anymore would involve thinking about the dilemmas all the time but also it sucks. Good think Leareth seems to find it sexy. 

:Was the war with Urtho your first lifetime?:

The croissants are really good.

:I think there is a case to be made that if you are inexperienced and do not have a sophisticated understanding of the domain where you are operating, it will - result in less total harm, in expectation, to err on the side of trying fewer things. This is obviously not how I have tended to work, and - it is also the case that this rules out many opportunities to accomplish very good things. But it - plausibly would have been better, for Velgarth overall, if Ma'ar as a young man had - erred on the side of not doing things. That was in my first time, yes. I was...hasty, and clumsy in many ways: 

:There's a case to be made but I don't really buy it? Or, I mean, I wholeheartedly agree that I could do way worse than doing nothing. But I could probably also do better, if I tried, which I don't because it'd suck so bad. And at some point it's like - you're in a multi-ton lightning-powered rail-tracked passenger-mass-transit-vehicle going off a cliff and you're like, 'well, I'm no engineer, who am I to be steering this?'

- not sure that made sense. I usually don't talk about this stuff but I got promised that this arc I can resolve all my emotional issues, which is gonna require talking about them.:

Leareth ducks his head. Closes his eyes. 

(That is such a metaphor and he has to step on the urge to immediately ask a dozen different questions about multi-ton lightning-powered rail-tracked passenger-mass-transit-vehicles and how you even DO that.) 

:I imagine Vanyel might understand the way you feel better. I– my underlying tendency is probably to make mistakes in the opposite direction. But I do...understand it at all, I think, that it is - exhausting, and terrifying, to - exist in a world where there are no safety rails, no guarantee that anything will turn out all right. And it is a different kind of stressful and terrifying if you know that you might have the power to do something about it. Because...in a world that does not have safety rails, enough power to fix everything is also more than enough to destroy everything, and good intentions are not enough, and - I am not sure that you ever get to know, until the final outcome - at which point it is too late to change course - whether you could have succeeded in principle...:

It is KIND OF ABSURD how much Leareth is having emotions about this! He sets down the boba that he was about to try, and lets out his breath in something that's half a bitter chuckle and half a quiet sob. :- Your mind-affecting sex magic is being very rude. I do not normally get so upset about this: 

:Vanyel understands. But he's like 'well, I'll just try my best to do the right thing even when I don't know what it is and am terrified of getting it wrong', and I'm like 'well I guess I'll just not do anything about this'. : She eats a cherry, sensuously.  

Why is her cherry-eating so distracting??? This is - presumably also just the mind-affecting sex magic, actually. 

Leareth takes a cherry as well. For some kind of absurd reason, he feels slightly competitive about eating cherries in a sensual way. He is presumably just going to lose that competition but apparently he still wants to play. 

:I mean, probably part of it is that he has a Companion. Also I was speaking to him regularly in dreams for sixteen years and I would like to think I can claim some of the credit for his - willingness to try: 

Pout. :I tried to get a Companion - well, technically I just tried to fuck them - and none of them would go for it!:

:.....Of course you did. Why am I even slightly surprised? I think you might need to fuck the gods until They are on your side first, though. Companions - were made by a god or gods, and I I think have certain restrictions on them, as a result. I am not sure of the details, but I would not be very surprised if they had been having doomy Foresight feelings: 

Leareth is noticing that he feels a lot more relaxed, all of a sudden? He wouldn't have thought it was possible to feel this relaxed while still under a Mindhealing effect blocking him from Gating out if anything bad happened, and he can't pin down what actually happened in the last few minutes that was so reassuring. But something did. 

"See, that just feels like the wrong order of operations! Fucking a god is way kinkier than fucking a Companion, so if I were designing this path I'd go first Companion then Heartstone then god. - Vanyel told me to not fuck the Heartstone. Which, I mean, it's called a Heartstone, I am absolutely supposed to fuck it."