Urtho is so delighted to hear this! He wishes Iomedae good health and a pleasant visit to Predain! 

Ma'ar passes this on to Iomedae. He doesn't otherwise make conversation. 

(Iomedae hasn't seen very much of the Citadel, only the infirmary where they were caring for her there and a bit of hallway when the Healers took her for a walk. It's noticeably smaller and darker and generally less fancy than Urtho's Tower, but it's at least heated to a comfortable temperature.) 

They reach Ma'ar's suite. It's spacious, inside, but not very decorated. He has furniture that he hasn't bothered thinking about in a decade. There's a rug by the fireplace - not lit, the magical heating is just recent enough that they haven't redone the fireplaces - that he bought in a marketplace in Tantara, on his way back to Predain as a young man graduating from Urtho's Tower. It's the closest thing he has to sentimental keepsake. 

He sits down. 

:I– ...can you undo the no-fear effect, actually. I am going to be scared but it feels like - lying to my brain - to not feel scared just because you are there.: 

She does that. 

Yeah, he's terrified. It doesn't show much in his body language; this is Predain, whether or not anyone but Iomedae can see him in his unscryable personal quarters.

(He moves differently in general, here, Iomedae will have noticed. He's more guarded, and also - more deliberately confident, taking up more space. It doesn't not suit him, but it's an odd contrast to having recently had him fall asleep on her.) 

They're already behind an obscene number of specialized shields, literally every technique he ever learned to put into a permanent set-spell, but he casts a few more anyway. 

:A number of years ago, I invented several forms of magic for immortality. As far as I know I am the first person in Velgarth to do this. I have never told anyone but you.: 

(His body language is calmcalmcalm stillstillstill and his emotions are some combination of 'internally screaming' and everything feeling like it's somehow happening in a different plane.) 

That makes it a very bad time to burst out laughing which is in fact her first reaction, for complicated personal reasons. 

(She's pretty sure that the only other person she ever loved also has some secret immortality arrangements, though the person in question did not tell her.)

She keeps her face calm, level. :I understand. I won't tell anybody.:

That...could probably have gone worse? There is in fact less internal screaming, seeing Iomedae's level expression, though Ma'ar still kind of feels like he's having this conversation from another plane. 

:It was going to take too long. More than a lifetime even just to fix Predain, and then there would still be everywhere else, and - I wanted to make everyone else immortal, too, someday, or I might eventually have had the idea of making afterlives - I am fairly sure we do not have them, I...part of my research was offering to help out at the Healers' station, I - followed people's souls when they died...: 

He shakes his head. :Urtho would be very angry if he knew. I - think you will understand why I did it. I am not sure how angry to expect you to be about...one of the backup methods.: He is not gritting his teeth even though it's very tempting. :Which would involve killing people. To take over their bodies. ...Specifically my blood descendants. The first-line methods did not do that and I think it was very unlikely to be necessary unless a very determined enemy tried to destroy all of the others, or if there was a - magical catastrophe - but there might have been if you had not come here -: 

:Does it change you?:

:I - do not obviously see why it would? I mean. Aside from being in a different body, and - probably very upset about it. If I am right about how our souls work, and wrong about how well the additional measures I took will - carry over extra information that would not be carried across in ordinary reincarnation - then I might lose a lot of memories. I took thorough notes, hid somewhere I might retrieve them later even if I do not remember exactly where it was. And - I very much think the core things about me and what I want do not rely on remembering very much about my life. ...I have tried to shape a lot of my mind around the parts I most want to remember. Urtho's Tower, mostly, and - making a vow to the stars to fix everything. I am very sure I would not forget that.: 

:The - forms of magical immortality available in my world mostly - distort you. Set you in stone, so you can't learn, or - just make you not care about other people -

- I do, to be clear, still think you shouldn't do it. Even if it doesn't do that. But - 

- it's, uh, a much more complicated call, if it'd just work.:

:I ruled out some methods. For the - setting in stone, reason, more than the distortion reason, though I was in fact worried about methods that would involve - partially sharing a body with someone else who might have different priorities.: 

He closes his eyes. :I suppose you are planning to just avoid the whole problem of mortality by becoming a god first.: 

:Yes. I would aim to be unaging, if I thought I couldn't ascend in time, but - not to come back, I don't think. I can do my work from Heaven.

But - every version I've ever seen of this thing was horrendous and twisted, and created monsters who the original people would barely have recognized, or stunted people who couldn't operate in a changed world, or blooddrinkers who bought their life with steadily growing numbers of sacrifices. And that probably affects how I think about it. If it were common and safe I'd have probably done it. Even - even with a backup plan that took another life. I'd have volunteers. 

...I would not do it to my children, I think, even in that world.:

He wouldn't have had volunteers. 

In the scenario he wanted this final contingency for at all - the scenario where all of the other plans, that he likes much better, fail, the scenario where he can assume something worse than he can imagine happened, probably not just to him but to a lot of the world - he wouldn't have necessarily had anyone. He couldn't rely on any steps that required someone else to make a decision to complete the process. He wouldn't even be able to assume that any spell he had cast in the material plane, or any artifact he had crafted, would have survived. He needed something hidden and indestructible, a that would play out its inevitable logic no matter what else happened. 

It was important to him, in that worst case scenario, to have something that no enemy, no matter how powerful - not even the gods - could take away from him.

And this is what he came up with. He would also have preferred it wasn't his children or grandchildren. (It doesn't actually help, not really, that he doesn't know them. It feels like trying to cheat on the personal grief, when the real cost is so much bigger than that.) 

He so incredibly does not feel like having an argument with Iomedae over it. 

She doesn't really want to argue either. She's - mostly trying not to want too many things, right now, that seems like it might quickly get out of control.

:Thank you for telling me.:

Ma'ar doesn't know what he would want, if wanting things - wanting things from Iomedae, especially - felt like a coherent concept, which it mostly doesn't. He can't really tell what his emotions are, which is possibly related to why he can't seem to get a read on Iomedae's reaction despite still wearing the headband. He's going mostly off the prior that it would be a very logical reaction for her to be angry. 

- the headband-self-awareness is obnoxiously pointing out that this is probably not at all a helpful way to be relating to this conversation - that it's unfair to Iomedae, who may or may not be angry but almost certainly doesn't want to hurt him even if she is, and he's not giving her anything to work with on what will or won't hurt him. 

...he'll probably figure out how to respond productively in a moment. Right now it still feels like there's something in the way. 

:Thank you for agreeing not to tell anyone: he sends, his mindvoice almost devoid of overtones, because he can't thank her for not being angry but that part at least is factually true. (Assuming she hasn't changed her mind since he said the rest, but - he doesn't think she would, even if she regrets making that offer in the first place now.) 

:

Are you all right? What do you need right now?:

He was in the process of trying to figure that out and it feels very unfair to be rushed on it. She disrupted his train of thought, which shouldn't even be a thing that happens when he's wearing the headband but he's clearly using most of his head for something that isn't thinking, right now. 

:...I think what I want is for you to - say that you understand and it makes sense to you why I did it, even if you would not have. I want you to not be angry. I want you to - not do the no-fear effect yet: 

He kind of hates the thing his emotions do when he's mostly not feeling them, on priors because he's terrified and it doesn't feel safe to have any weaknesses, and then Iomedae makes him feel safe, and he definitely doesn't want her doing that if it's maybe a lie.

:I want you to say it makes sense to be scared, but that we are going to find a better way that does not involve killing anyone but also does not involve dying forever and breaking a promise I made. ...I am having very mixed feelings about whether I want you to hug me or to definitely stay over there, I - think I want to try to feel a way where hugs would help.: 

:I am not going to ask you to do that if it is - not actually how you feel - and so it feels silly to say it is what I need.:  

: - I'm not angry. I'm not at all angry, what would be better in the world if I were angry.

- I think I do understand. It's - very different from the world I grew up in, but I think it is my job to try to account for that and when I do I mostly understand. 

We're going to get you lots more options, lots of better options. I don't want you to die forever.:

That probably helps? It continues to be hard to tell. Ma'ar is trying to drag himself back to actually feeling fully present in the room, but even with the headband it's not trivial. 

:...I think it will maybe take a while before that feels - real in the way that my own plans feel real - when you are not doing the no-fear effect. ...Still would rather you not, yet, trying to - figure this out -: 

And he's going to try to explain what he was thinking, what trade he actually thought he would be making, there, and how it could possibly be justified. He has other contingencies - they were easier, for the most part - and if his work in Predain succeeded, if he lived through to the end of his natural lifespan and died in a stable and prosperous kingdom, if not a perfect one, it should have been enough. He would have had allies, maybe not people who understood what he's trying to do as deeply as Iomedae does, but people who cared enough to put in the effort and pay the costs to get him back. 

On his journey through Predain to Tantara and Urtho's Tower, he was alone. He had almost nothing. He was fourteen, with no magical training save what he had figured out himself. Things went wrong, over and over. The only time things went right was when he had been enough steps ahead to ensure it. The only reason he was enough steps ahead not to have died, on that journey, is that he spent a year miserably living in the plains so he could practice his defensive magic, with his parents dead and his people starving, mostly shunned by them because he refused to go on pointless wasteful cattle-raids but his magic meant they weren't going to go as far as kicking him out of the camp, and he could mostly feed himself. He knew it was going to be dangerous and it was more dangerous than he expected and he only survived it because he had decided to be more prepared than he thought he needed to be. 

He hasn't been that powerless in a long time, now. But it's still what sets his baseline. If something won't still work in a hostile world, it doesn't work. It's - very important to him, to have a backup plan that he can still count on even if he can't count on anything or anyone else in the world. 

He wasn't preparing for anything specific, he didn't know what the dangers would be. Just suspected that in any situation where the danger was that bad, a lot of other people would be in trouble, and a lot of problems would need to be fixed. 

But he suspects that, in fact, his spell in the Void - almost impossible to find, even more impossible to destroy, self-powering and self-stabilizing, tied to not just his own life-force but, by tiny invisible threads, the life-force of several hundred children he's fathered - would have survived even the vast destruction of one - or all - of Urtho's weapons. The Void is a seething sink of all the magic in all the planes anyway, it would hardly notice the difference. And he doesn't think the gods could have destroyed it even if They had thought to try. 

(He doesn't really think it matters, whether it's his biological children or not, aside from the part where it bothers him somewhat more and he wishes magic worked more conveniently.) 

It would obviously have been a terrible mistake, to have caused that disaster that wiped out everything even slightly good he had ever built. Maybe in the world where Iomedae never came, it would have been better for Velgarth if there hadn't been a Kiyamvir Ma'ar, but there was. And - at least this is how he feels about it, he thinks - in the world where Ma'ar moved on the Tower and Urtho used his weapons, he thinks it - would have been better than the alternative, for Kiyamvir Ma'ar, who had magic and context and would at that point presumably have had a very hard-earned lesson in politics and carefulness, to also be around to deal with the aftermath.

Iomedae wouldn't have done it, and that's - a better shape of person to be, he wants to try to be that shape if he can - but he doesn't think Iomedae could really have existed, in Predain, and certainly he doubts that, without a god backing her, she would have made it off the clan lands alive. 

That all seems right. She doesn't know that she couldn't have lived in Predain, but she thinks she would have been a very different person if she had.

:It makes sense, to have an ultimate last resort that would survive everything. Especially given what nearly happened. And - I think more of you, for learning you had some plan for Predain which wasn't 'hope your successor is a nice person'.:

:I did want to eventually get it to the point that I could count on - not individual rulers being nice people, but the whole system being strong enough to steer in the right direction anyway. If I was going to get to the rest of the world I would need to be able to leave Predain in a stable state. ...I realize Predain right now is not that, and I am not sure how to build that, but I think I could have figured it out, eventually.: 

Ma'ar feels almost fully present in his body, after putting kind of a lot of effort into this, and it does help him read Iomedae's reactions and believe more viscerally that she isn't angry and does understand, but he's also much more aware that he is, in fact, pretty upset. Honestly, less because of anything to do with Iomedae's reaction, and more because he really hates thinking about the year after his parents' deaths or the journey to Urtho's Tower. This is the first time he's ever really talked about it as more than a single-line summary.

He...probably does, at this point, want a hug. 

She can offer a hug. 

:I think you could have figured it out eventually. 

I'm sorry that - you needed to do that. That you were so alone and so afraid. I want you to live forever.:

It means a lot. 

It's going to be a very long time before he entirely trusts it. Maybe never. It doesn't seem likely, that something could take out Iomedae and Aroden and yet leave Ma'ar's little pocket in the Void alone, probably in all the worlds where he woud lose allies that powerful he would, himself, also be dead, but - it's a thing that could happen. As they've recently proven, even gods aren't immune to being killed.

(Ma'ar is mostly not bothering with coherent Mindspeech, at this point, he's clinging to Iomedae and shoving half-formed thoughts at her.) 

...He probably doesn't endorse quite as much uncertainty as he feels about it right now, though, he thinks that's - a holdover of past circumstances, probably to some extent past circumstances that already haven't been the case in decades. He doesn't want to lean too heavily on using Iomedae's no-fear effect to cheat at that, but - maybe right now it's all right. 

He can be unafraid, if he wants, then. 

:I'm sorry I can't give you - more than that, right now, concrete advice or anything. I - don't want to countenance something I normally wouldn't just because I like you, or decide something is bad because things that look like it are bad. I need to think. And you have the headband.:

Being unafraid kind of makes Ma'ar want to collapse in a heap on the rug - why is he so exhausted, it's still morning, he slept a full night - and then maybe cry, but he manages to refrain from doing this. 

:I think what you said was - was better than how I had imagined anyone would respond, I am mostly upset about the situation. You can have the headband back. I think I am - not going to be having productive thoughts right now. I - I need to lie down for for a few minutes right now, I think, I would like it if you stayed but if you need space to think then I would rather you do that.: