: - maybe to help the Star-Eyed, as we were in the middle of trying to kill her? We should expect something similar to perhaps be commanded next time we try to kill her.:

Ma'ar winces. :Oh. Yes.: 

He pulls his knees in to his chest. :And of course you would still have been in Urtho's Tower, while Urtho himself was unwell - I doubt anyone else would have agreed to Gate you to Predain voluntarily. I - am not sure if I should be as bothered by that thought as I am? But - I do not actually trust Urtho or Urtho's people to have kept you safe.: 

He looks thoughtful. :I - did not at the time really think about it as though I had a choice? It felt like - Aroden had warned me, and so obviously Aroden had already judged it was worth it? But Aroden did not specifically tell me to Gate into the Tower, or if He did I have no memory of it. If I had...trusted someone else in Tantara...I could have kept you safe and avoided provoking Urtho's people or terrifying my people. And in hindsight I took a very big risk, with the countermeasures, if Aroden had not given you the magic to heal me then I would almost certainly have died, and I am not sure there would have been any way of retrieving the ceasefire then even if you were functional to argue with them.: 

:My memories are fuzzy but I think it looked to Aroden like the only way was to save your life. Which - makes sense. 

That's why we didn't kill the Star-Eyed. Because He couldn't afford to do that and to heal you in time.:

He winces again. 

:I am not sure I could have had any way of knowing it, but - that sounds like the trade I made, then. More assurance of your survival, in exchange for the Star-Eyed not yet being destroyed. ...Though I think there is a high chance you would have died if it had gone on any longer, even if your physical body was safe.: 

He closes his eyes. :I - I think that not trying to rescue you would have felt like crossing a bright line, and I should - probably think about why - it might or might not be the wrong way to think about it but I should at least be aware I am doing it. ...I think it felt the same way when I was deciding to Gate into the Fifth Army's camp to tell my people to surrender? It was not an incredibly reasoned decision, I was under time pressure and did not have a pre-existing heuristic for it. I did - compare it to the other options I could think of, and could not on the spot think of another path where we had a higher chance of maintaining the ceasefire. All the other ways of communicating a surrender order would either be too slow or - not convincing enough, to soldiers under attack by a terrifying enemy, and even if you had convinced Tantara not to escalate, I do not think I could have convinced my King again, not once you had slaughtered several hundred of our men. It was hard enough talking everyone into it the first time.: 

He closes his eyes. :But it was also a tactically stupid decision in many ways. I knew that General Shaiknam had been trying to corner me into escalating, by putting me in a position where the alternative was to leave my people to die, and I still - could not actually decide to stand back and watch.: 

(And he wasn't going to die forever. That's a key part of it, and the decision must make very little sense to Iomedae, not knowing that. He's still - well, he can't be scared right now, of the consequences if he tells her, but he can still notice that he doesn't want to.) 

:The ceasefire would most definitely have fallen apart if I'd killed you, which I would have done if I'd possessed a ranged weapon.

In your place I'd have let my soldiers die, though under some circumstances it would have been - very very difficult. And of course my soldiers wouldn't have believed I ordered them to attack during a ceasefire; that's an important sort of advantage to preserve, when it's attainable.:

:It is possible it was something I misjudged because I am - not used to there being anyone or anything in the world that can kill me that trivially. I - think I expected you to try, and that you might succeed, but that I would have - more time - I am not sure. It was mostly a decision I made on instinct. 

...I am glad it did not go that way.: And it's easier to be calm about the thought, with the no-fear effect in place, but he...maybe still wants a hug about it, actually. 

Hug. :I'm very glad it did not go that way. I have thought about whether I should - be more careful, be less someone who predictably might try to kill you under the circumstances I arrived in. It would have been - an extraordinary loss.:

Less of a loss than she thinks, for him - a disaster for Predain, but less of one than if they had won the war and gotten as far as trying to capture Urtho's Tower... 

He should tell her. It's actually very relevant information for her to have, if she's going to be in the position of having to decide whether to rescue him at some risk to herself. He should tell her and he's not scared because he can't be, he just - doesn't - 

:It must have seemed incredibly reasonable to kill me, given the information you would have learned about me from Tantara's side.: 

It is at this point fairly obvious in his body language that he's holding something back, and he can't exactly be stressed about it but he's definitely deeply conflicted. 

:I was worried it'd make it hard to rebuild Predain after the war. Because the prisoners I spoke to admired you so much, and I suspected would never trust or forgive me or Aroden if I killed you in the war. I wasn't thinking about it as a loss beyond - that, and the way every death is a loss - but I think I wasn't giving you enough credit. The thoughts in your letters to Urtho - I had them all read to me - they would only have been mildly impressive in my world but here you were inventing the whole underlying framework from scratch -:

Ma'ar doesn't really know how to respond to that. :I was not very good at it - I was so confused about basic things... I suppose that is easier to see in hindsight, and after having had the headband for a while, but I am not surprised you were not especially impressed.: 

 :I would have been very impressed, if I'd done enough background reading to realize how much of it you were developing for yourself without examples to reason from. In our world, it's work Aroden did, or got from lost Azlant, and so no one who wants to think about it has to start from nothing. I was impressed even without that, but less so.:

He leans on her shoulder. :...I wish I had grown up in a world that had an Aroden. I - think I would not have been me, especially, if I were born somewhere that already had very powerful people and gods working toward - the sorts of things I care about. I would have been something different, but - it seems better.: And maybe something that hurts less to be. 

:Well, it's not like they're doing an adequate job of it. But - it makes sense that it'd be very different to feel entirely alone.:

He lets out his breath, slightly shakily. :I suppose not. ...Anyway I was talking about my decisions. After we got you out and you healed me, I was trying to stay on top of the situation by communication-spell while also guarding you, I was very afraid someone else would come after you and I am the fastest in the kingdom at Gating out. I am not sure I made obvious mistakes, but I was less on top of things than I might have been if I were in a proper meeting room with maps and my advisors, and I am not entirely sure that was the right allocation of priorities. ...I was also impaired, I think, the healing did not entirely fix whatever Aroden did to my head by contacting me. I think I was reacting mostly on instinct and using pre-existing contingencies up until the point when you gave me the headband. I was very overwhelmed, and - spending a lot of mental energy trying to deal with feeling overwhelmed and scared, rather than on the actual concrete decisions. That is...definitely a skill I want to improve at but I am not sure it is exactly a decision I could have made any differently.: 

She nods. :I usually try to ground a failure analysis out in a thought I had that I should have responded differently to having. Anything else is wishing for a miracle, in a sense.:

He frowns. 

:...I thought about taking the headband while you were still unconscious. I think if I had done that, I would have been more on top of things, and - in fact not being on top of things did not result in any horrible disasters, but it certainly could have if we had been less lucky. ...My prediction is that you would not have minded, but we - I did not feel that we had the kind of alliance where it was an acceptable thing to do unilaterally without asking you. And also the Mindhealer and I were unsure if it was the only thing holding your head together, but it seems like in fact removing it it helped a bit, and - I am not sure if he could have concluded that in advance if I had pushed him harder on it. - Also I was scared of putting on the headband because the previous time it immediately caused me to spend ten minutes being very upset about all of my past mistakes, and I am not sure if that was distorting my judgement.: 

:I wouldn't have been angry if you'd done that, it wouldn't've been useful to be angry about. I might've - dispreferred that you had done it, depending on how carefully I thought you'd been thinking about it. 

It seems pretty reasonable to not put it on if you suspect it'll be incapacitating? It's - not supposed to do that.:

:It was not actually incapacitating the most recent time? It might just be that I was injured before.: Shrug. :I think I endorse the decision I in fact made, and - endorse having put the headband on once you did offer it to me.:

:That seems reasonable.:

Nod. 

:After I put on the headband, I - thought about all of the important considerations, I did not take  - and concluded that making progress on the peace talks was the highest priority. I was confused about the goals of the Star-Eyed in what happened, and the dead shaman, and whether there were likely to be further incidents, but I decided the best way to be in a good position to handle further incidents would be if we were officially at peace with Tantara and I could just - work with Urtho on it. ...I met with my King and had a very exhausting conversation where I had to convince him that we could even meaningfully negotiate with Urtho at all, his perspective was that Urtho was clearly not actually in charge and most of the major strategic decisions were being made by random cultists of various gods. Which is...not even really wrong...it was just not going to help if we were additionally still at war with Urtho.: 

:Indeed not. And it matters a lot how Tantara regards the god-interventions, whether the people see these actions as having been done in their service or not.:

:I think they mostly do not. I already thought so at the time, perhaps with less justification. I did push very hard for Urtho to - take measures to make sure they were contained - before we proceeded further with peace talks. I think that went fine.: 

He thinks. :- A part where I would have asked your advice, if you were available for it, is on negotiating the level of restriction Predain would accept on our internal use of blood-magic and compulsions. I am not actually intending to use any blood-magic in the near future, and expect we will eventually negotiate an agreement where we make it illegal, but - I was very very reluctant to weaken our position, in case it made it look more tempting in Foresight for the gods to attack us. And it felt important to me that while we still do not have a trusted religious order to hold mages with compulsions, which will take a long time to set up, Predain can still capture any mages of Vkandis or shamans of the Star-Eyed if they actually enter our territory. It felt like we would be giving up a major avenue in keeping our people - and you - safe, if we made a formal agreement to stop. I...think I expect you to disagree with some part of that reasoning but I am not sure where exactly.: 

:That seems reasonable to me. I might have committed not to no use but to some kind of formal international accountability process on each occasion of use, so you can do it whenever it's worth the hassle and headache of convincing the churches of Aroden and the Nameless Flame, and some Tantaran representatives, and so on, that you were acting reasonably in response to a threat.:

Nod. :I - think I worried it would take too long, and I did not want to delay the peace treaty on building new institutions that do not actually exist yet in this world - the temple of the Eternal Flame is probably willing to administer your idea of having a neutral order of priests who can use compulsions, but they have never done something similar before. I imagine the church of Aroden has, and if they were here I would have been more comfortable working with them on it.:

:Yes, I think it's very reasonable to say you'll continue your present policies while whatever you want to manage things in the long run hasn't yet been established.

And right to contemplate whether you will have any - vulnerabilities visible in prophecy. It's sometimes worth expending a lot of resources in a situation where harm has already been done, to make it obvious in prophecy that that approach won't work - it's sort of why Aroden's killing the Star-Eyed - but it's a very dangerous line of reasoning, one that often results in bad mistakes.: