<I think you owe him a damn good apology for the fact he's spent his entire life enslaved to a institution that eats him alive and can't even make the world better. - possibly not right this minute, though.>

(She's grumpy mostly because she's not slept enough to prepare spells.)

" - Bastran. Do I guess right that you woke up, noticed the compulsions were gone, didn't remember how or why, and summoned help? Did you message anyone else?"

This is terrible he's so embarrassed. He needs to pull himself together anyway, it's - not fair for Caris to be scared because he was an idiot. 

"...No one else," he mumbles into Caris' chest. "I - remembered almost right away. Just - panicked. I guess." 

(At a different time Altarrin might be annoyed to be snapped at - not angry, he's very rarely angry and certainly not when people do the right thing even when it's terrifying, just - even now he's not sure what else he should have done, with the information he had at the time the succession was being decided and he supported Bastran. It's...fair, though, and right now he's mostly just feeling proud of Caris for being willing to say it. And tired. He hasn't slept yet tonight but he doesn't think the tiredness is mostly about that.) 

"To be clear, it'd be fine if you had summoned people? I gave it around..ten percent, when I did it. I trust you, so I trusted that even if you had me arrested, once you'd had time to think you would decide not to kill me." He in fact sounds quite calm about this. "You generally decide that."

Okay, yes, it would have been fine. Just even more embarrassing. It's bad enough that he keeps crying uncontrollably in front of Caris, let alone Altarrin; if his guards saw him like this he would never live it down. 

He should be perfectly rested thanks to the Ring of Sustenance but he already feels exhausted again. 

"M'worried I - can't function without it," he manages. "Don't want it put back but - can't go back if I'm like this." 

"It's been ...less than three hours. We can worry about that after lunch, if it's still a problem."

"Mmkay." 

He needs to try to pull himself together, but it feels like doing that requires a stable surface to pull on, and there's nothing there. His motivation system is still just...mostly not working...he can notice that there are things he cares about, in theory, but this is not actually resulting in any kind of desire to do things, other than flop on Caris and be sad. 

He should probably try to talk about it. Caris has...been through something not entirely dissimilar...how did he find the strength to keep going? Maybe he just doesn't have that problem because he is, unlike Bastran, a functional human being. 

Altarrin hovers for another couple of minutes, feeling worried and also completely useless. 

"Do you want some time alone?" he asks eventually. 

"Probably. ...probably one of the two of you should in fact be functional and checking on the Empire."

"Of course." It's the least he can do. Caris has a good point about the suffering he's caused Bastran. 

(And he feels like he owes Caris rather a lot, right now, for - being the one to push things in a direction such that maybe, someday, he too will be able to leave.) 

<Please keep me updated on whether he seems to be recovering or deteriorating> he adds, privately. <Right now I am assuming we can both return tonight but - if that is not going to be the case then I could use more lead time to come up with an explanation.> 

<I'll let you know.>

Altarrin nods, and slips out to do some remote check-ins with his staff. (Probably nothing is an issue, yet, Bastran scheduled a day off and Altarrin travels and checks in from random unspecified locations all the time.) 

It's much less fun than immortality research but it does, in fact, need to be done before he can take his turn at sleeping. 

After a while spent clinging to Caris and not really finishing any thoughts, Bastran eventually manages to find some fragment of traction on, if not quite pulling himself together, but at least being able to actually want to talk to Caris about his feelings. 

He clears his throat. "How did you - keep going? After you realized that serving Asmodeus was...bad." 

"- well, I sort of had to do something, because otherwise they'd find out and probably trap my soul.

I think I was being - kind of self-destructive, with the plan I came up with. Selling your soul to Hell once you've noticed Hell is bad and are planning to betray them is - it was definitely part of a tendency to solve my problems by suffering as much as possible at them. But also it was - the only way to make things right. And I really wanted to make things right. I really wanted Keltham to be - better off because he met me, I wanted to undo everything I'd done -

- I guess a lot of backwards-motivations, pointed at reversing all the things I'd done for bad reasons -"

He makes a thoughtful sound. 

"Don't think I...actually want to reverse what I've done? S'wasn't what I - wanted to be achieving - just, wouldn't make it better to take it all back. I don't think. I don't - like the Empire - but not sure it helps anyone to destroy it." 

"You could pardon people. If you wanted to. I agree that the Empire - isn't like Asmodeus, it doesn't need to be destroyed. It just needs to be - a place where people can care about lots of different things and mostly all work together and they don't need to all be mind-controlled until they can't think."

"It's not everyone. ...Just everyone important, I guess. I - think if I were a peasant I'd still rather live here than anywhere else? But there's...got to be a thing it could be instead that would be better for everyone." 

"I wish I knew what other places on Golarion are like. I don't really know if places are...ever really good, or how they do it. 

If I were a peasant I'd want to live wherever I could go to school and not die young. But - but I would've defended Cheliax, on those grounds - I did defend Cheliax on those grounds - and I think I was missing something even apart from how everyone went to Hell."

He ducks his head. "I don't - I can't think of anywhere I've heard of that doesn't have some sort of horrible problem, even if it's not, er, mind control. Holy Ithik has Atet and that whole horrible religion, I don't - know if it's worse to be a mage there, or a nobleborn man, but I'd never want to be a woman there, or a slave, and I think their peasant serfs are worse off than here. Seejay is - all right, I guess, but their merchant houses order assassins on each other a lot. South of there it's mostly just tiny city-states and nomadic tribespeople until you hit the coast, I - guess they're free, moreso than us, but - I don't know that I'd choose that. ...I mean, I might choose it over being Emperor but I don't think most random people or even most mages would." 

Shrug. "Maybe Iftel's actually nice for the people who live there. We hardly know anything about them." 

"You know what you should do, is spend a lot of time wandering around as a travelling musician, in the Empire and outside it, to get ideas on what's wrong with the Empire. It's a very traditional hobby for Emperors. Abrogail went around in disguise all the time."

He stares dubiously at Caris. "- What, really?" You can just DO that??? is what he's thinking, but that's a stupid question, obviously an Emperor with absolute power can do what they want, the question is just whether it's a good idea. "Er, who - did her job, in the meantime?" 

"Her advisors, presumably? I doubt she was ever away for all that long but you can learn a lot just from a day or two in some village you've never visited before."

"Huh. That still sounds - kind of irresponsible and dangerous." Though also so so tempting. ...Maybe dangerously tempting. He might end up not wanting to go back.