"I'm not turning myself in until you say it's safe. You know what serves the Empire" and whatever you tell me to do had better serve the Empire or I can't do it. 

Which makes perfect sense and also he doesn't feel like he has any angle on it, right now. 

"You could ask the Emperor?" He can say it without really thinking and to the extent he is it's idle curiosity not a request, and apparently that lets him get it past his compulsion not to try even indirect routes to modify his other compulsions. (It hurts afterward, though. He winces.) 

"We're talking. I told him I wanted you to think about and approve the precautions. 

- I am scared. I know roughly what they'll do to us and it's not easy to walk into, or leave you to. But it serves the Empire, and - well, I figured that with rescuing you I'd get a lot of information about whether I can trust the Emperor."

He can’t nod. “Mmm.”

(He’s so scared - mostly not even for situational reasons, probably, just because he nearly died a couple of times in a row and woke up paralyzed falling out of the sky, and now his mind is stuck in the pattern, which he could fix in a couple of days of processing if he could think but he can’t and that is, in itself, terrifying -

- and Carissa is right. It would go worse if she got him out - probably she literally can’t, the compulsions - but, also, it’s more likely they would lose)

And - try to find words - it’s even harder for abstract concepts -

“Under constraints,” he manages. “But - wants to. I think. If you - give him a path to follow - tried, before, explain—” alright seriously why do his compulsions hate the concepts of coordination or making agreements and trades, which serve the empire and don’t involve plotting his escape “—like, head removers - people, things, good…”

This is the STUPIDEST mental handicap and he doesn’t have any mental tools for it - should have practiced - probably frowned upon but it would clearly (the loadbearing “serve the Empire” still isn’t there) would have helped -

"Yeah. I'm trying. I'll keep trying. We saved your head, anyway, didn't even have to remove it. And maybe I should be sorry but I'm not.

...I'm trying to keep the scries short so they don't track them. Is there anything else you wanted to know -"

He is not sure he's entirely parsing that but it's reassuring anyway. 

He wants Carissa to hug him and huh, what is that want even attached to, it's not - something he usually wants - maybe it's because all of the reasonable and goal-achieving Carissa-related things are banned thoughts - none of that is a question anyway. “No.”

"Kay. Bye." If they were speaking Infernal she could wish him that his torture be as the fires of the forge, which strengthens, and not as the fire that consumes and reduces, but one she barely speaks infernal and two probably this would panic the many inevitable listeners about whether she serves Asmodeus.

She did this scry while the scrying mirror was in the Rope Trick but she was herself outside it, so that if they did manage to Gate in there'd be a dimensional barrier that'd block a Final Strike from getting to her. She's itching to develop a scrying/Rope Trick artifact that does that more organically and less stupidly, it totally seems like the kind of thing that could be done, but she already has such a crafting to-do list and is probably going to surrender tomorrow. 

She takes the Rope Trick down and flies off to set up another one.

Carissa is safe  (well, ish, but if she reached the cave she'll have supplies, and she should have just fine they still haven't gotten location from him) and she has–  it's not guaranteed to work, they won't get lucky– but Bastran is still willing to talk to Carissa then, then what he was afraid of already didn't happen... Carissa isn't going to be stupid, Bastran isn't going to be stupid, they should both know to look out for apparent betrayals that might not be that after all, it's...

...maybe this turns out all right after all. Somehow. Sort of. 

He feels a very confusing mix of hopeful and desperately lonely and exhausted and he should stop trying to have coherent thoughts, they're presumably going to interrogate him and now additionally want to know what that was all about, and...fine the path of least resistance here is to just. Start crying. Apparently it doesn't count as voluntary enough to be blocked and probably Carissa would have some kind of vague Asmodean negative judgement but it's going to make it inconvenient for them to interrogate him immediately and while he's mostly unable to take actions on purpose it's going to be hard to stop. 

Uh. 

That was bizarre and the Healer missed some words and didn't understand half the rest of them and is not really sure what the plan is now! Are they...still doing the interrogation? If this were a normal situation she would insist they give the poor man a few minutes but in this case they probably want him as off-balance as possible? 

(A transcript of the parts the Healer did manage to catch, which is everything on Altarrin's end and probably 75% of Carissa's end, is currently being prepared for Bastran and Mage-Inquisitor Beatta.) 

Carissa spoke to Altarrin. 

He was expecting it. That was the plan. He - had vaguely been expecting it would be either right away or not for a while, and it ended up very awkwardly timed - poor Altarrin - that might be a mind-control thought and he's certainly not going to call off an interrogation just because the prisoner is upset but actually he thinks it's not a mind-control thought. It's...the thing Altarrin used to chide him about, not being ruthless enough. Well. He's going to be ruthless enough ANYWAY and just...sad about it, apparently. 

He should probably think about the implications of the message from Caris but he did promise to do some routine work and maybe he can batch it for when they're a few candlemarks in on the interrogation and he has clearer information to work from. 

Junior Inquisitor Restra is not a mage, which is a severe disadvantage to advancement in the Eastern Empire. She was born with a life expectation of almost forty years and will die in her seventies if she is lucky, and under ordinary circumstances would have not even the slightest chance of making it to the level where she is chosen to interrogate an Archmage-General.

It turns that that there actually is, however, a level of loyalty to the Empire that will suffice to overcome this disadvantage, at least when combined with intelligence, ruthlessness, and a willingness to spend the smoking remnants of her family fortune on rising to a position where she can serve the empire. The Junior Interrogator does prefer to die framed for treason by a disgruntled ex-political prisoner than in an Imperial civil war, and will not compromise that for any bribe that an Archmage-General can offer. And she has an excellent shield-talisman.

She'll ask for Altarrin to be brought to one of the nicer interrogation-rooms. (He probably won't take it to mean anything, but it might help.) He'll there find a comfortable chair he can be lowered into, suitable for a man of his age, and across a table a surprisingly young woman whose hair is still all black, looking at some sheets of paper that he can only see the backs of.

Altarrin could theoretically have walked over unaided if clearly and explicitly ordered to do so, but in fact after days of being bedridden (or floor-ridden, when he was trapped in his– random secure bug-out location), he's incredibly lightheaded and shaky on his feet and two Healers needed to help him. It's a little better once he's sitting down, and the compulsions don't seem to consider "continuing to hold his torso upright" an action. He suspects he'll be worn out physically after a few candlemarks out of bed - which could well be deliberate on the interrogators' part - but on some level he appreciates not being questioned while in bed in his cell. 

He's not crying anymore and doesn't even look obviously miserable, just resigned and blank. He waits. 

He's decided to try not to immediately fall apart again. If there's a plan - (no, compulsions, not a plan to escape a plan to serve the Empire calm down ow) - if Carissa and Bastran are negotiating then maybe they can avoid a stupid pointless wasteful war. Altarrin is in favor of avoiding stupid pointless wasteful wars. He's - not going to try on purpose to actively cooperate until it's clear where this is going and if it seems like it would help he's going to ask to be under fewer volition-affecting compulsions than this so he can think, but. Maybe? It's no longer definitely the case that he's in enemy hands. 

"Archmage-General Altarrin. The crisis is over. We are coming to terms with your ally, Carissa Sevar, on what terms she will return to service to the Empire. Since your murder did not occur, she is not under suspicion for it, and she is accused of no crime. At this point, we are simply trying to find out what happened, so His Majesty the Emperor can have an accurate picture of the situation for the decisions he needs to make. Do you understand me?"

That's - better than he had hoped. He's suspicious, of course - and really, really doubts that the crisis is in fact over, or that the situation is that conclusively fine, or that everyone is on board with 'Carissa committed no crime' - but under this many compulsions he's not very good at being suspicious. And it's - the obvious thing, right, an investigation was opened into a godassassination plot whose target survived, so the original premise is false, though of course it came very close. 

"Yes. What - do you need to know." He's very unclear on what they already know. 

"Why did you go to visit the spellsilver mine?"

(She wants to go over what happened right before his apparent death first, since that's important for the question of just how much contact there was between Carissa and Vkandis, if any. Also because the Empire... genuinely doesn't know.)

This is fine. He can talk about this. 

"There were - problems - suspicious coincidence problems. Had been for weeks - not immediately when it was founded, later, but it was a pattern. I went myself because it was high priority, for non-public reasons - I was keeping Carissa low profile to avoid godattention and court politics attention - and so I had unshared context and it would have been - more difficult to delegate to someone and have them know what to look for." 

"And what happened when you made it there?"

He frowns. This is not something that made it into any notes and it's been a distracting few days. 

"...Gated in late. Slept– ...no. Ordered mine evacuated first. Looked at worker list, did - first pass profiling - arrested three most likely Vkandis cultists. I think. Then slept. Did some work, cast detection spells. Questioned workers, went over incident records. They were - incomplete, missing key facts. Needed to see myself - detection spells not widely known by my mage-guard. Made sure everyone was accounted for before I went down. With the lead engineering manager. ...I think. Maybe another person. A guard, not sure." 

(This is not obviously a surprising amount of forgetfulness for someone recounting events from days ago who had several near-death experiences in the meantime. If anything, Altarrin has a better memory than most eyewitnesses.) 

She nods understandingly. "When did it go wrong?"

"First was - I think it was bad air - I felt suddenly unwell. Did not affect anyone else or trigger detection wards for flammable gas, I think it was - isolated gas, alchemists call it, it interacts with nothing but displaces air. Would have been the one heavier than air. I crouched down to examine damaged equipment. Everyone else was standing. ...I did not put this together at the time, only later, cannot check it now. Probably that. I had...also been overworking, and was slightly injured, might have been more susceptible than others." 

She nods again. "And then?"

"I - suppose someone - oh, I think it was my mage-secretary, the third person - someone called a Healer? I was not fully tracking what was happening, for a minute or two - they must have helped me out of the lowest mine section, I remember sitting down in a tunnel we had passed through earlier. The Healer arrived. Wanted to make sure I was stable enough to walk out of the mine, I think, before attempting that. ...There were footsteps in the tunnel behind. Should not have been anyone else authorized to enter, and I - mage-sight - sensed blood-power. The Healer looked– ...I knew she knew. I - reacted, before I was sure what was happening, started to raise a Gate out - slow, I was still groggy - and then, fire. I assume Final Strike. Did not have time to analyze it." 

"And then what?"

"I....can infer I successfully Gated out. To a - supply cache I had used while on campaign," see that is not false he uses his records caches all the time including on campaign, "it was a panic-reaction. I woke up - it must have been many candlemarks later, and I was very badly injured with severe backlash. Considered ways to report in, but - too drained for a Gate, too drained for the comms spell, trapped. I - tried to bandage my wounds and. Waited. To have enough reserves to cast anything." 

She nods understandingly. (She is, perhaps, less impressed than a mage-inquisitor would be, at having a reflex of opening a horizontal unthresholded gate when on fire and suffering from oxygen deprivation and having it work.) "And when did you stop waiting?"