"Your majesty. I am owed nothing, but - I accept your apology, and I hope that what trust you placed in me you've found was warranted." It's not Caris's voice at all, and not the woman on the scry either. It's not a voice she particularly thinks Bastran wants from her. But - all of Carissa doesn't come out from behind her shell unless it's safe, or worth the danger, and this might be either but she isn't sure.

Nod. 

"Altarrin says that if I want to ask for your service to the Empire, we need to - talk about what that would look like, and what kind of loyalty to the Empire would work for both of us. I think I...don't really understand what your hesitations are, but it seems important for me to get there." 

"Your Majesty, why do you think people should serve the Empire?"

He doesn't hesitate. "Because - even if it's flawed, and I know it is, I don't think anywhere in the world is better. Because right now the Empire is the only place where people can even sort of get temporary shelter from the gods. Because the only way the Empire is ever going to get better is if people who know what that would look like are here to fight for it." 

" - why? What would go wrong if people who knew what they wanted the Empire to look like went and built a wizard tower a thousand miles away - or on this forsaken rock - and traded peacefully with the Empire?"

"...I mean, this is the territory of the Empire. If you wanted to build a wizard tower here and be a magic researcher and sell us magic items, I am not sure how that is not serving the Empire. Is that - the sort of thing you want to do? The best thing you think you could do for the future of Velgarth?" 

"I don't have many ambitions yet, Your Majesty, it hasn't seemed like the right moment. Or - I have the final pieces more than the beginning ones. I intend to become a Lawful god and give everybody afterlives. I don't know if I ought to do that here or somewhere else in Velgarth or entirely in a demiplane I control where no gods can reach me even indirectly, and I don't know if you want to let me achieve that or hasten me to it or stop me from it, and until I know that what's the point in deciding where I'll live?"

Bastran opens his mouth. Stops. Closes it again. Frowns, then looks thoughtful for a long moment. 

"I - think I am having trouble - relating to that as...real, I guess. As something anyone could actually expect to try and succeed at, even someone as impressive as you. It just seems like, I don't know, not - actually the kind of thing humans can pull off - Altarrin is actually immortal and he hasn't done that, the thing he did was found the Empire! If you think I'm wrong, then - I might understand what you want here better if you can - explain why you think it's even worth aiming for." 

" - well, people in the world I'm from can become gods. It's not easy, and you need more than a single mortal lifespan to do it, but you can learn how to make yourself immortal in a single mortal lifespan, and then you develop the art from there. I'm not as impressive as the people who pulled it off, yet, but I'm only 25 and haven't even started enhancing myself physically and mentally with Wishes, like I'll be able to do at ninth circle. 

And of course, Altarrin also thinks it'd be possible to build a god in your own magic system without my help, just far more costly; it seems really quite likely that combining both, we could arrive at something that's better than either of those options, but either of those options are in fact wholly satisfactory. 

Afterlives are harder. It might just make more sense or be much easier to enable resurrections cheaply and then set you up with an infinite space, I don't know.

There's - very few things that are actually too hard to do, just things that take a very long time and have many places where they go irretrievably wrong. And I'd be scared to take on one of those on my own, but I won't be alone the whole way. There's lots of impressive people in the world, more if you're handing out headbands. 

And even if it's much harder than I think, and I probably can't do it - I'd still work on it, because - because the alternative is literally that everyone dies forever? And maybe wakes up somewhere else but I am not convinced that makes it okay to die and lots of somewhere elses kind of suck."

Glance at Altarrin. 

"I think she can do it. I think if you spent five minutes looking at her - rate of growth as a person - it would be obvious she can do it. It has been less than a year since she was approximately an ordinary Chelish citizen, a - third circle, right? - wizard who did not even realize her talent for spellcraft and item crafting was unusual. In that time she absorbed considerable dath ilani reasoning techniques, gained almost two levels in arcane magic, recognized that Asmodeus was opposed to human values and was immediately willing to put herself at great risk by making a plan to oppose him, and then ended up here. Where she survived an assassination attempt by the gods and leveled again – Carissa, how long does it normally take for wizards to go from third to sixth circle?" 

"A decade's a pretty solid pace. You do get people who do it much faster, and they mostly still don't become gods, but I really feel very sure that I'll accomplish this, unless the Emperor's decision is to not permit me to do so, or there later turns out to be an easier way to solve the problem."

Altarrin's expression stays level, but he reaches out and squeezes Carissa's hand tightly under the table.

"To be fair, I am not sure what would have happened if she had landed here on anyone other than me. ...The fact that she did land on me has some interesting implications about the goals of - whatever Power in the multiverse can send people places, if it is a goal-oriented process at all. She could easily have died before anyone could warn her about the gods or she could derive the risk for herself. But that is not what happened."

He leans forward in his chair. "And she is right, I could already have done it on my own – I will do it on my own, if something goes horribly wrong, and I will get her back no matter how long it takes – and then have her help getting everyone else back too. I think I would have realized I needed to do this sooner or later, even if Carissa never came to Velgarth, in hindsight I already had all the pieces I needed to realize that the Empire was too tightly constrained by outside factors to ever truly match the vision of the founders. But - she is also right that it will be so much less costly, if we do it together. And then the Empire can have the space it needs to - be a good place. To really be the thing that you have your loyalty aimed toward. When she reaches higher circles we will even have much more powerful time dilation and might be able to solve this before too many more human lifetimes pass, because - it is not worth rushing, it is not worth doing anything that will make it less likely to succeed, but people are still dying." 

It's pretty clear from Bastran's face that he has no idea how to react to this. 

He rubs his neck. "....I'm concerned that the gods aren't going to like this, and - the Empire is under enough pressure from them already." 

So let us do it somewhere else, Altarrin thinks, but doesn't say just yet; this conversation is for Bastran and Carissa to get on the same page. He squeezes Carissa's hand and waits. 

"Right, Your Majesty, that's an advantage of doing this somewhere else, it takes some pressure off the Empire. And I also want to experiment with - various approaches that would make it hard for the gods to see how to prevent this, like the deadman's switch when I surrendered - a pretty trivial implementation, that, but entities that are naively steering for more clarity in Foresight are very much possible to manipulate, and even if we assume the gods are smarter than that we can plan to do nothing notable on short timescales. And once I am immortal it will be very hard for them to change the ultimate result, even if they could delay. It's probably too late for them already, because Altarrin's seen my magic."

"- Which is another reason to prioritize learning wizardry, actually, I keep procedural memory across lifetimes much better than episodic memory." 

Bastran looks...kind of overwhelmed, actually. 

He clears his throat. "That...is an argument for you to leave the Empire - or at least stay in this part of it - and work on...a project that will strengthen the Empire only in the very long term. Which is not even unique, most fundamental scientific research has that nature, yours is if anything much easier to - assess in value." 

And Bastran hesitates. Gnaws his lip for a moment, then catches himself and stops. 

"I– are you going to tell me you want Altarrin too." 

"I don't think I know anything about that which you don't already know, Your Majesty. Altarrin's presence would speed my work immensely, and make it much less likely the gods manage to destroy me. I take it he is also very valuable to you in his current role."

"Very much so, yes." 

And Bastran abruptly looks - resigned, and sad, and almost bitter, and very very very tired. 

"...I want to say some things. I want - I know this is unreasonable to ask, but I want to be able to say them not as someone who has the power of life and death over both of you, because –because I'm human and I have feelings and I, I don't know how to think about this or talk about it and it's too hard if I also need to worry about all of my words having the full weight of the Imperial law behind them." 

Handsqueeze. Altarrin doesn't say anything. He isn't the one the request, if it can be called that, is directed at. 

"It has always been my desire that you could come to speak to me openly, Your Majesty, with the weight of your office set aside for a time."

Nod. (Bastran also vaguely hates it when people speak to him in - whatever manner and tone that was - but asking people to stop it is really not a reasonable request.) 

He sighs. Lets his head slump forward, resting his forehead in his palm. 

"I tried your headband on - the Owl's Wisdom one - when Altarrin was showing us the demo to pitch opening a mine. I– the first thing I realized was that I actually hate kind of...a lot...of the work I actually do. I love the Empire, I believe in the Empire, and in hindsight that's because Altarrin could always convince me of anything, and in hindsight that isn't even surprising because the man is seven hundred years old and also, you know, even at my age was the sort of person who'd end up finding a way to be immortal and swear a vow on the damned stars to fix everything and save everyone -" 

"...Younger than you," Altarrin says, very quietly. "I - don't have the exact timeline - but I must not have been forty yet, when the Cataclysm happened." 

"- Right. When Altarrin was a decade younger than me he'd already tried to save his country from poverty, with no one ever asking it of him, and found a way to live forever so he could keep doing it. I'm...not that kind of person. I don't know if I could ever be that kind of person but I certainly wasn't ever going to get there on my own against impossible odds. Altarrin told me I could do right by the Empire and he wasn't sure anyone else could do as well, and I believed him, and the worst part is that he might be right and maybe all the people who wouldn't hate it aren't actually the sort of people who have any business being Emperor." 

He tugs at his hair, restlessly. "And - I think maybe Altarrin regrets throwing his persuasion at that in particular, now, because he's decided to be disillusioned with the Empire, and he - he can square that, with having sworn to serve it, because he built this place and he knew what he wanted and it isn't this. I, I don't think this is what I want, either, I - I just don't know. What else there is. And I think I'm going to lose Altarrin one way or another, because - because he can convince me of anything, and he's going to convince me I should care about our great-great-grandchildren who even I won't live to see and I should let him walk away from the real actual Empire so there can maybe someday be a different Empire that isn't mine and that lives up to his standards. And he's probably right and I kind of hate that, sometimes, that Altarrin is always right, even if I'm glad of it too because I couldn't have done this for the past twenty years if he weren't always right, except I'm going to have to, because he's going to convince me that he needs to leave with you and then I don't know what I'll do and I, I just–"

Helpless shrug. "I don't know."