<Mmm. Trust me, so am I.> 

He's quiet for a while, almost too tired to have thoughts. 

<Glad Urtho did not arrest you> he adds. <It is very confusing and makes him feel - more unpredictable - but I am very grateful we were not separated again.> 

I think he knows how the world would've hypothetically gotten destroyed. His face was - expressive. 

<Hmm.> Mhalir skims the memory again. <Yes, I see what you mean. Maybe he discovered some new use of magic, before, and did not consider world-destroying potential before because...why would he, he seems like the sort of person who would build things just to see if he could.> 

He does.

<I hope he and Urtho can manage to - avoid further miscommunications.> 

Yeah. She should worry about it but - she's very tired.

It's been an incredibly tiring day and now it's getting late, no wonder. They should get some sleep. He'll tell his staff to wake him if Ma'ar needs something. 

Mmhmmm. Spells in the morning. She won't be so helpless.

Ma'ar does not interrupt them. He manages a much calmer conversation with Urtho. They're both carefully civil, distantly courteous. Like strangers.

His troops are withdrawing and should be entirely clear of Tantara's pre-war borders by tomorrow night. Urtho's army is still guarding the Gate-terminus and the border; he agrees that this is a reasonable defensive precaution. They do a very frustrating dance around the topic of phasing out compulsions and blood-magic in Predain. Blood-magic he can order stopped now, that can be reassessed now. He's a lot leerier about the voluntary compulsions as oaths of service; he thinks it's doing important work, that his troops are loyal to him and obeyed his order to retreat and surrender even though many of them have lost friends or family to Tantara's army and hate Urtho's entire country, and they must have thought he had lost his mind. 

Urtho reluctantly agrees that he won't force Ma'ar to undo all of the current loyalty compulsions, as long as he stops doing any new ones. Ma'ar agrees to this. 

By the end he's so tired and his head is spinning and the ship's interior feels oddly fake. It doesn't help that the concept of being out in the vacuum after the sky stops being air is an incredibly surreal and fake-sounding one, but also the effort of not having any emotions and maintaining his best attempt at a diplomatic facade with Urtho is so draining. He feels a bit like he's forgotten how to be anything other than a careful mask over emptiness. 

It's good news, he tries to tell himself. The war is over. This is exactly what he wanted all along. 

It feels hard to really believe that. 

Some of the mage-recruits speak Tantaran, so he can ask them for a place to sleep, and he locks the door and puts wards on the walls and then lies down on the bed and closes his eyes. Ironically enough it feels like he's also forgotten how to sleep, but it happens eventually anyway. 

After two hours (a bit more than two hours; it was a very tiring day) Carissa wakes up, stretches, takes a shower, starts preparing her spells.

MHALIR MHALIR LOOK WHAT I CAN DO

Mhalir was thinking about peace negotiations and not paying attention. <- What?> 

Carissa was preparing Dimension Door, and there's a loop in Dimension Door that's the difference between it and Teleport, for Teleport it has an extra circle for power and targeting and she pushed into it, and now she's exhausted and is not going to be able to prepare any more spells for at least three hours because she was an idiot and you're supposed to have an external source of magical energy for spell prep as a FIFTH-CIRCLE CASTER but you see she did not know she was a FIFTH CIRCLE CASTER and that's Teleport. Look at it. It's beautiful.

It is!!!! Mhalir is so excited and proud of her!!! This is going to be incredibly useful and - it feels good, it feels safer, being more powerful. 

...He should take his turn in the pool, though, he forgot about it last night but he should do it now before anything ELSE happens that requires his attention. 

He SHOULD and Carissa will read a lot of magic theory in the meantime, paying attention to fifth-circle spell technique.

Mhalir dunks in the pool to get his kandrona rays. 

Ma'ar doesn't have a Ring of Sustenance and also went to bed much later than Carissa. He drags himself out of bed after six hours, not feeling nearly rested enough but it's morning and things will be happening, he should check in with his generals and see if logistics for their retreat needs troubleshooting and then probably talk to Urtho... 

One of the mages asks if he wants coffee. The ship has coffee, it's a drink from Earth, it's like tea but BETTER and it makes you feel less tired even when you don't have time to sleep enough. 

Sure, coffee. 

It makes him feel less slow and stupid, at least, if not exactly less tired, there's still the heavy exhaustion that isn't really about sleep at all. It doesn't help with the sense of having forgotten how to have emotions, of being unmoored and disconnected from the world - when he tries to reach for his memory of the stars above Urtho's Tower, that feels fake too, like it happened to another person in another life. Maybe this is just because interacting with a different you is disorienting?

He deals with logistics. There are a lot of headaches and grumpy upset people who need reassurance that Tantara isn't going to execute them for war crimes or something. There aren't any real emergencies or surprises, at least. 

Carissa nods off in the middle of reading about spell theory - you're really not supposed to prepare a fifth-circle spell for the first time from reserves - and wakes up a couple of hours later feeling a little better and gets Mhalir and prepares some more of her spells.

After spending the morning on the communicator with Urtho and using magic to talk to his people on the ground, Ma'ar comes to see if Carissa and Mhalir are available. He looks simultaneously tired and twitchy (the latter might be all the coffee.) 

Carissa and Mhalir are available! Carissa is a FIFTH CIRCLE WIZARD did he hear. 

Urtho on the radio is not sure what that means! But it sounds exciting, congratulations to her, and he would be very eager to hear more if they can come back to the Tower today! Also he would like to hear more from lucid-Mhalir about the Yeerks and the Andalites and their technology. 

<I have no objections to going back to the Tower> Mhalir tells Carissa. Glance at Ma'ar. <We...should probably not bring Ma'ar. Maybe we can drop him off in Predain so he can coordinate in person, I think he is tiring himself out using magic to talk to his people.> 

That makes sense.

She gives Ma'ar a hug. "Mhalir proposes we drop off Ma'ar in Predain and then come to the Tower to meet you," she says to Urtho.