He laughs. "Go fuck yourself, old man."

He smiles a little more and turns his attention to Siva.

"Any complaints about my son's conduct you'd like to raise?"

"Nah."

"Glad to hear it. You're welcome to the hospitality of my palace for as long as you choose to stay." He pauses, glances at his son, and adds, "That means that if you get tired of this human disaster you can apply to me for protection from him."

"I missed you too," Seofar says dryly.

"Maybe someday I'll observe a parent-child relationship that is in no way dysfunctional. That'll be interesting."

He laughs again.

"Nentiane Siva," says the Emperor, sounding a little like he's not entirely familiar with the concept of delight, "now that we have translation available, perhaps you'd like to explain what the events of the last few days looked like from your perspective, since I gather that out of all the available witnesses you were consistently closest to the assorted drama."

"Sure. Do you want me to summarize and then you can ask questions, or try to tell the whole thing at once and probably forget stuff?"

"Try to tell the whole thing at once, and I'll ask you to clarify if I notice a gap."

"Um, okay. So a few nights ago I went to sleep in my own bed, snuggled up to my boyfriend back home--we weren't monogamous, I don't anticipate drama over having picked up another one--and then woke up the next morning in a room I had never seen before that looked like someone else lived in it. I wandered out of the room and through various hallways until someone who looked like a servant gestured for me to come with them. I--hm, okay, back up, my world has a totally different magic system from this one, my boyfriend back home is a powerful sorcerer, he set something up so I could call for help if need be. So I did that, describing the situation as best I could. Then another servant came and showed me to another room, this one containing someone who did not look like a servant. We managed through gesture to introduce ourselves; it was Kelora."

He nods. The weight of his attention is not as heavy as Kelora's, but he definitely has that same trick of listening very completely to someone.

"She--explained things to me. I explained some stuff to her that doesn't belong in an explanation of as short a time frame as 'the last few days'. She said she'd try to hide me from her father and Nahira but didn't strongly anticipate success. I told her about my world's magic system. She told me how to manifest my soul, then hid me in her room for safekeeping while I did that. It wasn't very long after I finished that I heard footsteps coming down the hall. It was her and Seofar."

"Hm," he says. "Go on."

"I shoved my soul in a pocket of my dress so he wouldn't see it. He indicated through gesture that I should follow him. I'll spare you the details of what happened next, because out of all the things I'm willing to do, 'discussing my sex life with my boyfriend's father' isn't on the list, but suffice to say he attempted to torture me and was thwarted by extreme masochism."

"Well, that's a novel solution," he says. "But evidently a highly effective one. And then?"

"And then Nahira showed up, and Seofar objected, and she decided I was mind-controlling or manipulating him, or something, and she paralyzed him, and--bypassed the masochism defense--and then when she healed me to start over that happened," she gestures at Seofar's soul, "and he broke free and killed her. And I cried on him a bunch."

"Hmm."

He looks at Seofar.

He shrugs.

"Turns out I've been kind of an idiot my whole life, I assume that's not news."

"The part where you took over a province to make yourself feel important and then only barely fell short of openly threatening a Soul War if I objected was certainly a clue," says Esarkan.

He half-scowls for a moment, but then laughs instead.

Esarkan returns his attention to Siva. "Anything else of note?"

"Well, there's the three-thousand-some-odd year story I left out earlier for brevity."

"Yes, do by all means elaborate on that."

"Okay, so the country I come from is called Nathureme, and it's one of many that rose from the ashes of the Ansati Empire, which fell about thirty-four centuries ago. The Ansati Empire had fantastic magical infrastructure beyond anything we've been able to recreate to this day, including fountains of healing and youth. This much is common knowledge. What far fewer people know is that the reason the Ansati Empire fell was because the Last Emperor's son decided he didn't want to be a prince forever and decided to try to usurp it. This instead resulted in a horrific civil war and the downfall of civilization."