" - hmmm? Oh, I don't think so. He'll - the girl thought he'd recover. I did not ask what definition of 'recover' she was using. He's not being hurt now. And I'm going to have to be very careful operating in Cheliax from here on out.

Do you, every time you hear about a bad thing, stop to think how to fix it -"

"...I think it's important, when thinking about bad things, to keep almost all of your attention on where the badness is located. And the badness about having tortured a man for six hours is located in him, first and most, that he suffered and is suffering, and meaningfully coming to terms with it is something that usually ought to start with him.

You can fix your own flaws through introspection; you can't fix having tortured people by looking inside yourself."

"He did, uh, sincerely attempt to have my family Maledicted to Abaddon because I said something mean to him at a party!"

"I don't actually have the slightest idea what the Iomedaen answer is, there."

"Did torturing him save your family in some way?"

"....no. It's just why I picked him."

"Well, torturing people is bad, and having peoples' families Maledicted to Abaddon is also bad, and deciding to hurt people who do bad things to deter other bad things is an approach to problem-solving which humans have a tendency to err at in many different directions, so it's best done systematically and transparently as part of a just institution, and if you find yourself just wanting to hurt a bad person in a way that doesn't make anything better, you shouldn't. Why did you bring it up, if we can't help him now?"

"I don't want to just go, well, I did all those bad things, I can't fix them now, I won't do it again, I guess I'm done here. It doesn't feel like enough."

"What would feel like enough?"

"...burning eternally in the fires of Hell?"

"Eternally? You don't think after a couple of years you'd go, wow, actually, I think that was enough?"

"....depends whether Keltham ends up destroying the universe because I fucked him up so badly? Burning eternally in the fires of Hell really wouldn't be enough, for that."

"So, comparing the worlds where Keltham destroys the universe except you and your loved ones, and you and your loved ones have a nice eternity somewhere, and the world where Keltham destroys the universe except you and your loved ones, and you burn in Hell forever and your loved ones have a nice eternity somewhere...what seems better to you?"

"I don't have loved ones."

"...okay. I only specified that because I think most people wouldn't want to spend eternity completely alone, burning on fire or not."

"- I mean, I could make constructs or something - I'm sorry, I think I'm being a bad student, here, and not addressing the point you wanted addressed. It is better if I am on fire, because everything is my fault, and I can't live with that, and if I'm on fire then I don't have to."

"I think that probably you just need to toughen up and deal with things being your fault and stop trying to avoid living with that."

"That is somehow not exactly the answer I expected. It's kind of what Derrina would say, if I said that to her, but I don't think she's Good."

"What answer were you expecting?"

"I don't know! Something - about how people shouldn't suffer?"

"People can suffer if they want to. It's just, in your specific case it seems like you want to because the alternative is learning how to live with yourself."

" - I do actually also separately like it when people hurt me but for my own benefit and it makes me stronger and then they pet me and tell me how well I did, that's a separate thing here that's not just about learning how to live with myself."

"Is it by any chance the case that that's approximately the only context in which anyone in Cheliax has ever been nice to you."

" - well if they were just nice unprovoked it'd be weird and I wouldn't be sure what they were playing at."