She's never found it difficult, but she is aware her method is only employable by paladins. She nods. 

- notices she's once again dizzy with exhaustion.

:If it's all right, I think I'll rest. Wake me if there's news of the peace, please.:

:Yes, of course: And Kariasha will leave her alone to get some rest. 

They meet. 

Urtho doesn't especially feel like he has any idea what he's doing, but he is actually pretty prepared, albeit almost entirely thanks to his hertasi. Ma'ar is more prepared than that. They're mostly not making decisions, at this point, just going through a long list of decisions that have already been made and making sure that every single point is excruciatingly clear, in writing. 

(It's not interesting work. Which isn't new; since the war started, Urtho has spent most of his waking hours on work that wasn't interesting. But at least this has the virtue that, once it's done, they will officially no longer have a war, and then maybe things can go...back to normal. Or whatever normal is going to look like, going forward.) 

He spends most of the time that they're speaking being spectacularly impressed with Ma'ar. Not that Ma'ar wasn't always impressive, but this is...something else entirely. Ma'ar is calm and patient and in control and bringing up the answers to all the questions Urtho has before Urtho even realizes he has them, and - he's learned so much - it's probably not the right mood for official diplomatic negotiations, to be so proud of his former student that it hurts -

Ma'ar is calm and patient and in control, and - none of it feels real, it hasn't since the moment he stepped through his Gate and saw Urtho's face for the first time in so many years. It feels like a game he's playing on behalf of someone else's life, and he's playing it very very well but - surely it won't stick, this isn't actually something he can just do, surely tomorrow he's going to wake up still at war with Tantara, or maybe back in the Kiyam clan lands. 

They finalize a peace treaty. They sign it. He agrees on a time to see Urtho tomorrow to start researching the problem of how to find Iomedae's world and Gate to it; Urtho would pretty clearly be eager to start now but is equally clearly exhausted.

He Gates back to the palace in Predain to inform his King that the war is over. 

It's only midafternoon. Ma'ar...can't actually think of anything else very urgent that has to happen today. There are almost certainly important things he could do, but it feels sort of like he's forgotten how to take actions in situations that aren't emergencies. 

He should tell Iomedae. Then he should - something - he can't quite make it line up in his head to make plans for the future, right now. The only thing he has on his schedule is working with Urtho tomorrow and that especially doesn't feel like the sort of thing that can be real. 

The headband-self-awareness keeps quietly informing him that this is a worrying thought pattern, and he abruptly doesn't want to be wearing the headband anymore. Possibly because it doesn't feel very safe to have emotions here in Predain, which is also kind of concerning but he's not sure it's surprising. He wants - he needs - maybe Iomedae can help him figure out the answer to that question, because he certainly can't. Or maybe not, she's still recovering, but possibly now that peace talks are over and it's less of a dubious idea to let her use mind-affecting magic or whatever it is on him, he can ask her to do the thing that makes him not afraid. 

...He tells the King that he's taking the rest of today and tonight off, and he Gates to outside the holy site of the Nameless God and heads in. 

Kariasha meets him at the mouth of the cave. She doesn't seem especially surprised to see him again. :Ma'ar. Is it done? Iomedae is sleeping but she asked me to wake her if there were news of the peace. I assume you want to tell her yourself?:

:Yes: He follows her in. 

Iomedae is lying on the sofabed-furniture with a blanket tucked around her. He watches her sleep for a minute, and then breathes out, in a way that feels like letting go of the rope he's dangling from and finding himself somehow not falling, and sits down beside her. He nudges her shoulder.

- she wakes immediately, relaxes on recognizing him. :

Peace?:

:Yes. Arranged to meet with Urtho tomorrow to research how to Gate to your world.: 

He's trying to smile at her but it's not an especially convincing smile. His expression is that of someone who has problems, has no idea how to deal with them and doesn't have the resources or emotional equilibrium to figure it out right now, and is not going to ask Iomedae to provide a solution but is kind of desperately hoping she might do it without his having to ask. 

Kariasha doesn't have to use Mindhealing Sight to notice that one of Ma'ar's problems is that he's dissociating wildly, and probably another is that he's been pushing himself very hard through emergencies for a long time and now he's run out of emergencies. It's pretty common, for people to find that adjustment difficult, and also be confused about it because it seems like a lack of emergencies should just be a good thing. 

She stays out of their way, though. 

She smiles at him and sits up. :Tomorrow? It seems possible that you and Urtho should both take a few weeks off.:

:I...am concerned that some of the gods who dislike you are going to try something and I would rather not give them several extra weeks to set that up: 

Also the concept of taking several weeks off feels confusing. What would he do. None of the things he can think of to spend that time doing feel real, except for working on Gates through other planes, which also doesn't feel real but he can at least convince his mind that it's important anyway, and it's likely to be interesting. He hasn't done anything just because it was interesting in...years, probably. 

:One thing they might try is pushing everyone very hard while they're tired and recovering from serious injuries, and then making the injuries catch up with them at the wrong instant. ...already did try that, actually.:

Obviously Iomedae should take several weeks off, but Ma'ar had - not actually been conceptualizing himself as recovering from serious injuries? He was only injured the one time and it wasn't that badly and it was a number of days ago and he got a lot of Healing-attention about it– ....fine, he was also technically injured another time when he rescued Iomedae again, but then Iomedae immediately healed him and her kind of healing doesn't actually involve any recovery time, which is why he nearly forgot about that. He's physically in perfect health and he's been getting enough sleep and he doesn't think there's a reason to expect himself to be impaired right now. 

He...supposes he does feel tired, and he isn't entirely sure why, today wasn't even a long day. 

:Look, far be it from me to tear a wizard away from his fascinating magic research, but - there'll be parades, yes? The soldiers will go home to their families? The food shipments will arrive? WIld accountings of the whole thing will spread through every tavern in every city? Are you planning to miss all that?:

...Ma'ar had in fact not thought to put that on his mental calendar. He considers it for a moment, and makes a face. :I probably do owe it to my people to be there for some of it, but - I am really not in the mood: 

:What mood are you in?:

That is indeed the question that Ma'ar has been having a bizarrely difficult time answering! It's probably a good question to try to answer! 

:I...think I have been expecting that I would have a lot of emotions about the war and everything that has happened, once it was - safer - it was obviously not a good time before and so I was mostly trying to schedule it for later. I guess now is later but I - do not actually seem to have introspective access to what my emotions are, right now? I am not sure why, usually the headband makes me extremely aware of it.:

Shrug. :Possibly it still does not feel safe, the war with Tantara is over but we are still ambiguously at war with the Star-Eyed Goddess and maybe with Vkandis. It would be easier to tell if I had introspective access to my emotions. I suppose I could try taking the headband off and then putting it back on, maybe that will make it go back to doing the usual thing? ...I would probably like it if you did the thing that makes people not be scared but I am not sure if that is too difficult right now: 

She smiles at him, in the relevant maybe-magical sense. :It's actually just what happens any time if I don't suppress it. I try to be intentional about it but it's not effortful.:

Ma'ar leans into it, and - 

- he's - 

He's going to just open his shields and shove it at Iomedae in Mindspeech, actually. 

- he feels like a river-boat cascading down through rapids, in a storm, and it's not a very good boat and he can't see what's ahead, there might be waterfalls, and it feels like it's been taking all of his effort just to keep the boat right-side-up and bail out the rainwater, he can try to steer but it doesn't matter because the river will go where it goes and even if he could see ahead he couldn't reshape the river's path. There are so many things that aren't all right, and there's only one of him, and - he's not alone, he knows that, but he feels alone, even with Iomedae right there, it's a groove worn deep into his mind, that he can't trust anyone but himself. And he's recently learned a lot about the ways that he can't even trust himself.

He's angry, with - himself, mostly, but maybe that just feels safest to look at, like the only part that's a legitimate or productive emotion, because one of the things about being alone is that you don't get to demand that other people be a certain way and you don't get to be angry when they let you down, and certainly he doesn't want to be angry with Iomedae, who has been trying so hard to avert the consequences of his own mistakes, who's paid such a high cost for it, she just went through something unimaginably awful (and he couldn't help, couldn't do anything but be there watching her suffering, and there's a lot of very strong emotions there which he's barely looked at) and she's still impaired and it's so spectacularly unfair to be angry at her for, what, not being invincible, not being impossible to damage, not actually being able to do whatever arbitrary things are necessary to solve his world's problems so he can maybe finally stop–

- and it's a really upsetting realization, to notice that some part of him does want to stop, because he can'tcan'tcan't he made a vow, on one of the high balconies of Urtho's Tower, decades ago, he looked at the stars and he promised to himself and to the world that he wasn't ever going to stop until everything was fixed. He's not sure he's a shape that is actually capable of deciding to stop, it's just that he's not in control and never has been and he's - not scared, which does make it easier to look at, but also leaves a lot more space to notice the other ways he feels.

Which are that he's not sure if he's actually a shape of person who will reliably succeed at making things better rather than worse, because Iomedae said that people make very scary mistakes when they try to make the whole world their responsibility, and he's - not a pattern that can not do that - but he's not capable of just deciding not to make mistakes. He nearly made a mistake that destroyed his kingdom and Urtho's. He doesn't know if it's a good thing, for a world to contain a person like him, and that's awful, it's a deep unbearable pain that he can't even name as a more specific emotion. 

He wants - 

- he has absolutely no idea what he wants, actually, just. Probably not this. 

:I think it'd be entirely reasonable to be angry with me: she says, after a moment of not really saying anything. :It was stupid to go to the Moonpaths without more backup and planning, and to do it at all before the peace was done and signed. It's not trivial to design a better rule which would've not failed in a spectacularly costly way in a different recent situation, but that doesn't mean it's an unfair thing to be angry about. 

Do you think that I collected all these notes on what goes wrong when people try to make the whole world their responsibility in order to talk people out of doing that?:

It's hard to think about that question, because being in this much emotional pain and aware of it is so distracting. He can still manage it, with the headband, but slowly. 

:I - suppose probably not. ...I notice I seem to keep predicting you are going to be angry with me for - trying to do things - even though this does not at all accord with how you have actually been acting toward me: 

:I admire you for trying to do things. I'd much rather have you as an ally than have someone who wasn't trying to do things.

One of the most important competencies a commander can have is the ability to look at a battlefield and go 'oh, we're almost certainly going to lose this'. You don't necessary want to announce that to everyone within earshot, but you need to know, because if you know what's going to happen you can change what's going to happen, and take only the chances that are actually worth taking. Doing ambitious things that actually make the world go better is hard. You are outnumbered, on that battlefield; the forces arrayed against you are stronger than you thought they were. This is not the claim 'only foolish people try to win battles' . It is the claim that you will not start winning consistently until you can predict what is going to happen and do different things when what is going to happen is something bad.:

:...That makes sense. I definitely need to get better at predicting what is going to happen, especially with gods.: 

He has to spend a while unpacking why that's such a painful thought.

:...I think I am feeling very stuck between the fact that it - feels unacceptable that I have not already made progress on improving at this - and the fact that right now trying to think about it so I can improve at it feels...very hard and bad. Which is - maybe because I am tired, and not fully recovered from...something...and it would be more efficient overall if I rested for a while and then tried to make progress on it. I just - I am not managing to figure out an angle where it feels like - a thing I can do - to put it off: 

:Most improving at planning and decisionmaking does not come via sitting in your room thinking endlessly about planning and decisionmaking, it comes when you do things you wanted to do. It's not putting off improving at planning and decisionmaking to do things, it's how you improve.: