"Why do you take so long to answer questions?"

"This entity does not usually communicate with sounds. It requires unusual simulation to convey its desired meanings this way."

"Would this conversation be facilitated if someone who can communicate the way Epic did were involved?"

"Yes."

Golden solicits a Flat Elf assistant via network.

Scion just sorta floats there.

Flat Elf.

And with this accessory she would like to confirm that everything said so far has been complete and accurate.

...well the Flat Elf can read Scion's mind but she should maybe repeat the series of questions.

She can do that.

If reading minds is like glimpsing at the surface of a lake, this is the ocean. A much larger share of Scion's processing capabilities than usual is being dedicated to this interaction, and a lot of it is trying to work around the fact that he just—can't—predict her. All his precognitive shards are completely unable to simulate her so his usual go-to for understanding—simulating reactions—is unavailable.

He does not recalculate his reasoning for deciding to answer Golden's questions, but there's enough surface that, if one looks, they might correctly conclude that he does not think he could possibly win against someone as thoroughly shielded as she is, with powers that reach dimensions beyond the ones his species knows. His species, wormlike creatures which consumed all of a planet's energy then evolved the ability to hop worlds and started doing that, and then consumed everything every version of that planet could give them, and then they warred, and unified, and became very few select individuals—the very first shards are what used to be these individual members of the species. The energy thus acquired used to propel them off that planet, the cycle starts there—all they need is a way to survive, to keep existing, it's their only focus, their only reason. More complex desires are only present as echoes, as simulation inside this biologically human avatar, but mostly they're just huge computers.

His counterpart—a long time ago, in the past of his cycle, the entities came upon the idea that specialization would improve upon their chances, and so they're two, the warrior and the thinker. The thinker plans, controls, thinks, decides—the warrior fights, defends, protects. Without the thinker, the warrior cannot take any steps forward. Without the warrior, the thinker cannot survive. They coexist, united in their single purpose, coordinating more like symbionts than two individuals.

But the thinker is dead, and the warrior does not know what to do.

If the thinker could return, then she would find a way to set everything right, to make sure they would not stop existing. If her power is curbed, though—then all may be lost. But he cannot find alternatives, except for eventual annihilation and the hope that someone else, somewhere, might step up to fill her role.

"- it'd be useful if I could bounce this - I can't, right - he's not lying exactly. They'd attack us if they thought they'd win but right now he thinks they'd lose - he can't do what the other one does, and she's the strategist, she might think of something that'd cause her to conclude she'd win -"

"You could go bounce it to one of my alts if there's important nuance."

"There's a ton going on, I think I'm catching everything important but I could be missing something."

"How likely is that?"

"That I'm missing something that changes the meaning of everything, not at all, that I'm missing something you could use... probably? There's a lot."

"Are you in a hurry?" she asks Scion.

He has waited this long—so many years, so many eons—his is not an impatient species.

"No."

"I suggest that you avoid doing anybody any harm for the next few decades as a show of good faith and we will learn more about this neighborhood and get back to you about bringing back your counterpart. Is that agreeable?"

He still does not quite understand what "harm" means, he has too many definitions, some of which are mutually incompatible, and he is not sure how to optimize for them, what counts as something he should not harm—he does not particularly see humans as meaningfully different than rocks or for that matter his own shards, and he sheds shards all the time, is that harming them, what should he do instead—

—and there's the not-sadness, he doesn't need his counterpart for strictly rational reasons, he needs her, it's a part of him that's missing and that's wrong and a world without her is wrong and if he can't have her then he could have something else instead of her but he needs that part of him that's missing—

(—and because this avatar is humanlike enough there is in fact something very much like sadness going on there, as much sadness and anger and hopelessness as could fit in a human mind, even if it's comparatively dwarfed by the other thing—)

—but he cannot fight, and he is at their mercy—he could make it costly for them to impose this condition but he would lose and then he wouldn't get her ever except maybe he would but she was the one who knew how to weigh probabilities like that—

He cannot convey all of that through words. So he conveys all of that through thoughts -uncertainty.— at the Flat Elf and hopes they can convey that better.

" - he's not sure what we think counts as harm, might be that some processes involved in his magic are sapient not that he's thinking in those terms, I'm not even sure he can distinguish thinking and non-thinking beings except by checking against an exhaustive list - he's really sad about her -"

"He said he wasn't in a hurry -" Sigh. "Would his counterpart be better at interpreting things like 'harm'?"

Yes, the thinker could simulate all sorts of things and people, she had an outlined plan about how to interact with humans and how to translate what they were doing and saying into instructions for him, but she never told him the plan before she disappeared and then died—

"Yep."

"Okay. We can try taking him to Gem to wish for her back with some limits."