"He did say he meant to talk to me again. Do we have a way to stop him? Failing that, is there anything in particular you want me to do? Keep in mind, I'm a very bad liar."

"Spell immunity to whatever spell he was casting, presumably. Dream? It doesn't work that way for ordinary people but few of Tar-Baphon's spells work the same for ordinary people as they do for him."

"I think it was dream or some close variation thereof when he did it to talk to me - might be close enough for spell immunity."

"Are you all immune to Dream at all times, or does he eventually just give up?"

"In my case he gave up. I don't know if he's bothered with anyone else here."

"I do not think he regards me as very amenable to reason."

And Marit, presumably, wouldn't mention if he had. 

"Do you think I could get anything out of him if we speak again?"

"Try asking for dominion over all the vampires in Ustalav."

"Yeah, that''s the genre, things that'll cause problems in his ranks, though I do expect he'll just refuse. With Alfirin we didn't end up thinking of anything promising."

"What have you tried already?"

"Trading crusade secrets for spells, or for information about how to make a phylactery - I assume he wasn't telling me anything secret about the process he used for himself, and he didn't give me all that much, but it was a plausible thing for me to ask for and we might have got something that would help us find some vulnerability of his lackeys'."

"The problem is that, not being an idiot, he'll ask pretty early into negotiations for signs of good faith that would not be hard for an archmage to conceal from the Crusade or make look like an accident, like handing some people over to him, but which we're not actually willing to do to preserve the relationship."

"Or at least, we haven't thought of anything we predictably get out of the relationship that'd be worth a price like that."

"I defer to you on whether I should speak with him again tonight."

"Skip it if you can, I'll have someone give you the spell immunity. If you can't, don't say much. We won't overreact if you try to negotiate something with him, and it is in principle the duty of everyone to try to see if a peaceful resolution is negotiable, but - I predict it isn't."

"He probably wouldn't find it particularly plausible if you reversed your negotiating stance the next day anyways. You might also want to skip some sleeps with magic."

If they're messing with his sleep schedule anyway, they might as well go back to the demiplane. When he's there, he'll observe – 

"Iomedae must have admired Arazni a great deal."

"She did. We all did. Where are you going with this?"

"Geb steals her body and raises her as a lich."

"Oh. How long?"

"I don't remember the year. Decades from now, though. After the crusade is over and after Iomedae's ascension."

"And how long did it last?" She thinks she knows the answer but she wants to be sure.

It's Geb. Alfirin has to know that's an unwinnable fight. 

"It's – too early to say."

"That's what I thought." She's tempted to ask questions like 'is she okay?' but - she knows the answer to that. It was worth asking if she ever got out of it - it wasn't likely, but Nex was still around, Geb isn't completely peerless -

"What does she do. For eight hundred years, as a lich?"

"Rules Geb. Beyond that I really don't know very much, we haven't had any reason to visit. I don't even know if she's awake or conscious." Liches typically are, but outsiders typically can't be raised as liches. "I'm sorry I didn't think to mention it earlier. I hadn't –  there are a great many things in the world."