"You know, that would be fair, except for how my entire magic system runs on human connection and romance and sex."

Huh. That was a clear explicit answer to a question about her magic system. Nayoki had been under the impression that that somehow wasn't allowed? 

That's such a strange base for a style of magic to be built on! Then again, maybe Leareth should be trying harder to set aside all of his assumptions about what is or isn't weird. Maybe Velgarth's Gifts - or its gods - seem just as bizarre to her as what she said seems to him. 

(Also, in addition to being admirable and worthy of respect, Elfyn is impressive and eloquent and just pulled an entire long detailed thoughtful explanation out of apparently nowhere, and maybe some of this impression is actually just mind-control but it can't all be that...) 

"I - right - so if I want to learn your kind of magic, or - ally with you and have you use your magic to help fix everything wrong with Velgarth - then I need to, to do the romance and sex part first? Is that the implication here?" 

"You can use me however you'd like. I'm not your enemy. But if you're thinking first I fix things and then you fall in love with me, well unfortunately -" let's see if I can roll SED to talk about my problem with doing-stuff - 

"I don't fix everything wrong with the world. I know I should. I don't think the magic wouldn't stretch that way, if I really wanted it to, wouldn't give me opportunities to cure diseases with orgies and will pollution out of the sky because having half my OKCupid matches saying 'I'm not having kids because of the climate crisis' is unsexy. It was willing to transform my whole world. Some local politicians who'd been trying to ban trans kids getting treatment decided that actually everyone's got a little bit of boy and girl in them. The PrEP clinic was suddenly the classiest place in town and everyone agreed it also worked on all STDs now for some reason."

This is not what using SED feels like. The thing earlier about hugs was using SED. This is just - talking, and it sucks as much as it always does. 

Ugh. 

"I don't .....know what the world should be like. So I can't reshape it. What if I make it the wrong shape. What if actually everyone doesn't have a little bit of boy and girl in them but I do so I made them all that way because I think it's sexy. And forget the thing where I don't have perfect control over the [thing you can't yet understand], maybe that's solvable, say I could do exactly what I wanted, what the fuck is that??? If I yank all the extra carbon out of the atmosphere do I cause some kind of sudden backlash collapse thing? If I turn all the nukes into giant chocolate bars that say 'make love not war' on them does China invade Japan and Korea immediately? Or, like, there's the effective altruism people, good fucking luck, they'll be like 'have you considered wild animal suffering' and 'can you use your powers to shut down all AI research immediately, it's life-or-death for all of human civilization'. AND THERE's A MULTIVERSE AND NO ONE HAS FIGURED OUT WHETHER ANY OF ETHICS WORKS IF THERE ARE INFINITE WORLDS.

And like - there's a thing here I'm not saying, which is 'there's no way to know if anything is a good idea'. There is a way to know. It's just really fucking hard. It would involve hiring a huge number of people and figuring out which ones are actually good at their jobs and firing the ones who aren't and reading a bunch of zany ideas for how to make decisions and figuring out the non-stupid ones and implementing them and doing this three times with three organizations in different countries that don't know about each other and then doing whatever they agree on, or something.A bunch of the stuff I did would be bad and tons of people would hate me and I'd probably fuck up and destroy some worlds but hopefully not mine. It'd probably be better than not doing anything. Not just a little better. A lot better. 

I don't care that much. Not about - not about the fate of my whole world, and I love my world, I want it to be okay. And there are so goddamned many worlds, and there's no real reason to think it would ever get any easier. I am not willing to spend my eternity fixing them, I - I want to say I can't but I don't even think that's true, I think I can, and I just don't want to. 

I won't help you fix everything wrong with Velgarth. You'll have to do it yourself. All I do is fuck you until you don't want to be evil anymore, because I like that part."

Well. 

That's that said, then. 

The SED kicked in for various bits of that but weird bits, not the bits she would have identified in advance as sexy. 

Nayoki has so many new questions now! What is a "climate crisis", is that her world's equivalent of the returning Mage Storms echoes in their future? What is "PrEP". (Why did her mind sort of stumble and skip just then?) ...What is a chocolate bar. What are "nukes", based on her thoughts just then they're probably horrifying! Who are the "effective altruism people" and is there any way for Leareth to open communications with them from here because it sure sounds like they would get along. 

.....It feels oddly deeply unfair how much that hurts. 

It is hard. It's almost impossibly hard and even now, even after almost two millennia, Leareth doesn't know if he can do it. If he can be clever enough and careful enough and prepared enough to design plans that actually work and fix the problems in the world without causing other, worse problems. And she's not wrong, that even the ethics of judging what is and isn't a problem, and what does or doesn't count as 'fixed', is incredibly hard and maybe no human who's ever lived was smart enough or careful enough to figure that out. 

(And there are other worlds, and she's not wrong that of course there wouldn't just be two - he doesn't know about 'infinite' or what degree of infinity but there must be many - and that changes so much, and it means stepping back and re-evaluating everything he thought he knew, and he's suddenly so tired...) 

Leareth...cannot bring himself to think poorly of anyone who looks at all that, at the endless fractal complexity of the world, and decides that no, actually, they do care but not hard enough to try to fix it, not if that means working alone, not if it means having to reshape themselves over and over again into the person they need to be, to pull that off - 

- someday, Leareth hopes, once the work is– not done, he's not sure it will ever be done, but once the sharp awful edges of the world as it is now are padded, once there are safety rails, once there's a safe solid foundation for people to build the world they want to live in - someday, in that world, if he can make that happen, he hopes that the children born there would call the person Leareth is now a monster. Because in that world, someone like him shouldn't have to exist. 

...Leareth, separately, doesn't understand what she means by "fuck you until you don't want to be evil anymore", what is 'evil' there pointing at, how would that cash out in terms of changes to his current decision process? He - doesn't really expect asking her to get a good answer. 

He is, somehow, feeling more intensely lonely than he ever has before. And also - and you would think this would be actively in tension with the first feeling - he kind of really does want a hug? 

He doesn't say this out loud, mostly because twenty different thoughts are competing for space in working memory and he's not sure he can speak in coherent sentences just yet. 

(...Which seems suspiciously like it might be sex-mind-control related, actually? As does the 'wanting a hug' part? Though Leareth is still pretty sure that he doesn't want to fuck her, which makes it hard to judge.) 

She can tell Leareth wants a hug but she still cannot do much in the way of directed non-wiggling movement. Which is terrible!! One thing if it's a scene but Leareth...did not understand that he was doing a scene, here, she's increasingly getting the sense. And he needs a hug. 

"Master Dark," she says, and then, "Leareth. 

People aren't meant to do this alone."

This is somehow really adorable and also very upsetting to watch at the same time! Nayoki is so unsure what to do about it. Well. She could hug Leareth, in theory, but it feels like that...wouldn't actually accomplish the thing? 

Leareth can vaguely tell that she seems more distressed about her lack of mobility, and he had briefly been paying less attention to her surface thoughts but he leans again, and - oh - huh - he's confused about what exactly she thinks he didn't understand he was getting into? It seems to maybe be a sex-magic-related concept. 

"I...am not sure what you mean by that," he says, slowly, heavily. "If you just mean that it is - not generally psychologically tenable, let alone emotionally healthy, to - try to do the thing I am doing - then I cannot disagree. But it is not as though reality cares about that." 

Pause. 

"- Possibly some major force in your reality does? Unfortunately I am still not quite following where your powers come from and why they - depend on romance and human connection." 

He sighs. :Nayoki, you can probably undo some of the compulsions - the ones restricting physical movement, at least. I am very confident she is not going to try to harm me: 

On the one hand, it's really hard to tell if this is a sensible reasoned Leareth-decision or one resulting from mind-affecting-sex-magic nudges? On the other hand, if she has to keep sitting here watching Leareth not get hugs for one more minute, she might explode. 

Nayoki undoes the most restrictive of the compulsions, leaving only the standard ones for (not unusually absurdly dangerous) prisoners, plus the basic ones to block Gift-use; Elfyn should still be thoroughly blocked from making or carrying out plans to escape, or harm Leareth or any of his staff, or sabotage any of his infrastructure or projects. She might, if she tried hard and was determined and creative about it, be able to work around the compulsions against using Gifts. She should be able to move her body freely. 

"Hang on a sec, I got a ~~~~~~~!  Details are hidden, though the ~~~~~ name is 'share the burden', which is promising. I'm glad at least one ~~~~~~~ here is having fun. You know if the ~~~~~~~~ dipped into psychoanalysis I'd have really expected it to be a Freudian. Ah, thank you Nayoki, that feels better."

And she stands up and stretches, sexily, and then pulls Leareth into a hug. 

Leareth, slightly startled despite the fact that he knew exactly what she was planning to do with her newfound mobility, tenses noticeably before forcing himself to relax again. 

He would probably be able to appreciate the hug a lot more if he weren't so confused and stressed about his inexplicable inability to parse several of the words she just said! He's pretty sure they were words, spoken clearly, it's just that nothing is resolving into meaning anything. 

"...You got a - something?" he says after a few moments. "Is that good? Is it a - reward of some kind - does it mean you have more powerful magic now or something? Or is it a next action in your quest?" 

"When we're closer I'll be able to explain it and you'll be able to hear it," she says tiredly. "I just - subconsciously, or whatever - don't want to go through every supervillain trying to fathom all the implications right up front, so no one gets it until we're close enough it'll actually help. It's probably good. It's definitely not going to hurt you. Like I said, I don't do that." It's so hard to figure out if it's a good idea.

Leareth can tell, because he's reading her mind, that she means it - that she's not going to hurt him, she 'doesn't do that', and so the - whatever it is - the force behind her magic, because Leareth is starting to get the definite sense that there's something there, something more than just a different kind of Gift - but it's not here to hurt him. As far as she knows.

He...is a little surprised to find that he mostly trusts that. 

And it helps, not just with having less of an anticipation of suddenly being set on fire, but also with - the hug being nice? It's unclear why that would be related, but. 

"That makes sense, I suppose. It does sound difficult and tiresome. I - apologize for being the sort of person who will just try to fathom all the implications of the ten different things I can think of that the words you tried to say might mean, even though almost certainly none of them are right. ...What do I actually need to do to be 'close enough' to you that I will be able to hear it accurately?" 

"We need a romance arc! This was a decent start! You kidnapped me and I seduced your loyal assistant and then you had me disabled so you could speak to me safely and you told me your tragic backstory and I told you my greatest insecurity. That's a fine opening. 

...generally the next thing Is sex but I am capable of noticing you're not ready. You could take me to your bedroom and neglect me entirely for several days while I writhe and beg you to have mercy and fuck me - no? We could try this again, but in boy mode, see if that does it?"

"I would not expect your physical sex to make a huge difference here but it might be worth trying? At the very least, I would find it fascinating to watch with mage-sight while you...change forms. And maybe have someone come to watch with Healing-Sight as well. - I had initially thought that the sex-shapeshifting might be something that you can do because everyone in your native species can do it, but it sounds like it was a new power you acquired because of the sex magic?" 

Nayoki clears her throat. 

"I think there are multiple ways of doing romantic courtship other than leaving someone in your bedroom to writhe and beg. Honestly, in this world it is normal for young people to do months of courtship before they have sex at all!" 

"There's a perk for 'no one will ever be disappointed by what's in your pants' and then the rest is just from putting a lot of ~~~~ into ~~~ - sorry, uh, from focusing on enhancing my physical form while being pretty sure that my ideal physical form is, you know, an incredibly hot man and an incredibly hot woman. 

Can you believe that 'no one will ever be disappointed by what's in your pants' has not once yet resulted in me having tentacles down there. .People just have low expectations, that's all, if they really thought about what they wanted I'd be getting so much more mileage out of that perk."

With this said she turns to blink at Nayoki. "- I mean I take your point but I'm not really huge on dates? I'm - a bit of a speedrunner, temperamentally."

The Thoughtsenser observing from outside the room is noticing that actually someone having tentacles "down there" would be incredibly hot and why did this never occur to him before– actually the better question is why is this occurring to him now, it's so far besides the point. 

Giggle. "I think Leareth is not going to be very into 'dates' either! He is - I mean, I cannot say he is impatient, exactly, he did spend a thousand years coming up with his current plan, he is just - not going to be very interested in candlelit dinners, or generally in date activities that are not directly about his mission or at least intrinsically interesting. I just think he probably needs to spend some more quality time with you before he can possibly be interested in sex?" 

She looks thoughtful for a moment. 

"He is generally interested in - magic research, and math, and he likes explaining his plans– no, Leareth, you do like explaining your plans. To people who are actually going to listen. Which I think she will." 

Usually if the Dark Lord's lieutenant will wingman once seduced she's a hidden objective but she didn't get a hidden objective for Nayoki. Maybe because it was a really easy seduction and honestly would have been hard to avoid. Supervillain plots have a tendency to be a bit railroad-y because the supervillains will kidnap you and so on; she doesn't mind, because making decisions isn't the fun part. 

"I don't usually talk about myself," she says, staring shyly at the ground. "No one understands and - it feels like they'll hate me, and be right to hate me, for having had that and not offering it to them."

“For having had - the sex magic powers? - I imagine it must be very hard to talk about just because of the problem where people often literally cannot understand the words you are saying.”

Nayoki looks, for some reason, very entertained. 

“Oh! Leareth is not going to hate you. He does not really do hating people, or - holding grudges - even when they deserve it. Personally, I think I would still be angry with Urtho if he had almost destroyed the world just to prevent me from winning a war!”