The two of them stared across the dream landscape.

That now familiar fountain from the other’s world sat behind them. A giant circle of water, with the white spray going into the sky.

“Well, I guess I’ll talk first.”

“No.” Sesako said, “I ought to speak first. The Great One has demanded that we speak, and I will be responsive to her will in this.”

“I managed to talk first,” he replied, smiling impishly. “So now you can’t go first.”

“So much suffering would have been stopped. If only we had ended the war then. All of these deaths would have been avoided.”

“I know. I know. I am sorry this happened. I am —” The other hugged himself. “I can’t change it, I don’t know if I would, but the deaths of all these people is fucked up and sad, and awful, and horrible, and I just wish none of it had happened.”

“I don’t want to die. I don’t,” Sesako added. “But my life is only worthwhile if I succeed in helping those who depend upon me.”

“You are worthwhile simply because you exist.”

“You do not believe that for yourself, and —”

“I do,” the other retorted.

“You do not. Whatever you say to yourself you do not: And that is good. That is not the truth. You know deep down as I do, that a man must prove his worthiness for life through his actions.”

“That is stupid. Worth comes from consciousness and an ability to be happy and suffer.”

Sesako sighed. Even though Isaac was often cowardly, foolish, overly theoretical, and very young, he at least strove to prove his worthiness through achieving his goals.

He would not tell himself, at least not in such a way that he would believe it, that he was worthy simply because he lived. He too believed that achievement and success was necessary before he could judge himself highly.

“You are not illogical to say that you only matter if you can prove your worthiness.” The other added. “But you hurt yourself and those who you love if you think that way.”

“I am the man I am.”

“Is it your nature that makes you this way? That… makes me feel sad for you. Some people think I am stupid to like what I like.” The other said. “That I think you are being stupid is not a compelling argument. Each of us has our own goals, our own preferences, and our own nature. It can’t be otherwise. But I’d really, really prefer — especially since I’m stuck sharing this body with you, if you’d find a way to be you while not hating yourself any time you aren’t sufficiently impressive. You don’t need to do more than your best. And it isn’t possible to do more than your best.”

“My best would have won the day on the island.”

The other was silent for a while. His short-sleeved tunic flapped in a wind that was not there. He scratched at his weirdly short beard. “It appears that you are also limited to my best while we are stuck together. It was not evil for me to wish to live, nor for my instincts to fight desperately for that survival.”

After having heard with the other his conversation with the Great One, Sesako could no longer argue upon that.

“Besides, more people would have died in that explosion than have died in the war since — from what you and Fitzuki have said a hundred thousand of men in the emperor’s service who are not cultivators are probably on that island, and they would have died.”

“I will not accept it if you make an equivalence between the deaths of our people and our enemies. She can do so, for she is beyond us. But not you.”

“I thought we couldn’t argue about preferences?” The other laughed and shrugged. “I prefer our lives now to theirs. But it is a tradeoff. Each of those deaths would be bad.”

“Yes, yes,” Sesako half snarled. “‘Death is always bad’, as she says. It is sad if the emperor’s soldiers die. They are the enemy. You are the one who defended the simple point that we must be able to engage in violence. God — I’ve killed so many now. But I’d kill a million more of his men to save the life of one of mine.”

The other shook his head slowly. “No. No. I would not. Not at that exchange rate… if I could gain a victory where all of our goals were achieved, but a million persons died in the emperor’s domains, and none in ours, or I could die myself, and then those million lived, but we gained the same victory. I’d happily die to save a million men amongst his people.”

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“You would not. You know you would not. You are a coward. It is that simple. You don't —”

“No.” The Other’s smile was bright, and unwavering. “I would die to save a million men. Without much hesitation. But my life is valuable here. There is much that only I can do. I am irreplaceable. I am the only person here who knows anything about my own world. If it was a simple question —”

He swallowed. He took a deep breath. Swallowed again. Around them the dreamscape flashed once more. That big moving thing that crushed him was hurtling down the road once more. But this time within it was somehow a million persons who would die if it reached its destination.

And the other chose to walk into its path and die.

Hit again.

Pain. Instant knowing. Acceptance. The choice was good.

The dreamscape changed again.

They now sat high on the mountain, the dragons circling around. The emperor aimed his great hurler at the dragon. And Sesako’s father, his half-remembered face blurry, hurled himself at the emperor, the core of his soul already pulled out and striking in a shocking attack.

Sesako knew.

He now knew that if the other had an opportunity to accustom himself to the idea, and that if he was convinced that the cause was worthy, and convinced that there was no more worthy cause whose pursuit would be destroyed by his death — a great many caveats — the other would step to his death willingly if the choice was that or a great evil.

The coward was not quite as cowardly as Sesako had thought him.

Yes, there were a great many caveats.

But there ought to be a great many caveats. Only a fool would sell his own life cheaply. Men almost never went into a battle where they were certain that they would die.

The coward would sell his life though, for a great enough cause.

“Even for your enemies.”

“As your dear Great One likes to repeat, death is never good. Honestly, death should get permanently solved. You cultivators haven't put enough effort into figuring out a plan for getting everyone immortality.”

“Why do people want to become celestial like the emperor?”

“That doesn’t help everyone else. I mean, there was so much suffering, and so many other things wrong with the world, and we weren’t making enough progress on ensuring a safe future for mankind, but back in my world there were some people who wanted to figure out how to completely stop aging.”

“You would truly die. You would be willing to die to save all of the emperor’s armies. And yet you say that you also would kill them to achieve a victory?”

“If the victory is worth their lives — there needs to be a potential for violence. But I don’t want to ever forget that my enemies are humans as well.”

Sesako smiled bit. “Maybe I should not hate you.”

The other rolled his eyes. “I never hated you.”

“And maybe She was right — you should not hate yourself or feel any great guilt for the failure at the island. It happened, and it was your nature.”

“And maybe you should stop hating yourself — a century is far too long for survivor’s guilt.”

Sesako grunted.

They were both quiet, but it was a companionable silence. Sesako looked at the inarticulately flashing lights, the strangely warped shapes and images, the bits and pieces of existence that floated around them. These fragmentary constructions of his own unconscious mind were beautiful.

Maybe he didn’t want to die either.

The other said. “I worry for you and Fitzuki.”

Another shrug.

Sesako studied the young face that he saw every time he looked in the mirror. “Maybe killing the emperor ought not be my deepest goal — but I will sacrifice everything to save the Great Ones, even if they will not fight for themselves, and even if tens of thousands of the emperor’s men must die.”

“I hate this! The helplessness of the situation.” The other exclaimed. “I hate war. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it — and I wish we knew whether we would win or lose. So that we will not fight, and bleed, and lose so many, and then find out that we lost in the end anyways.”

Sesako laughed. “Wars are generally not fought unless both sides think they can win.”

“You all have fought to protect the great ones, even though you believed that you would lose.”

“No. No. You listen too much to what we say.” Sesako shook his head. “All of us… deep down we believe in a happy fate. Deep down we expect to win in the end. Only a few of us, such as Fitzuki, and… well I am like him. I fought to die, not to win. Most of the Yatamo believed in victory.”

“The goal needs to be to win, not to die.”

Sesako chose not to reply.

“Hmmm.” The other lay back down on the dreamy grass, and he said, “the dragon has some limited ability to see the future, right? — and there are prophecies. How does that work? How dependable are those prophecies?”

“I asked the Great One once. She explained that the future is not one. Every moment there are an infinite set of possibilities splitting off from each other, and all continuing forward in time together. She can dimly see the patterns that occur in large numbers of these possibilities. But sometimes she sees a rare pattern that is unlikely to be found. And she also… that is why she is so… unconcerned about her own death. She perceives herself in some way as being this multiplicity, and only some of that multiplicity dies.”

“A multiple worlds hypothesis confirmed through magic. Maybe she drew me from one of those other worlds that broke off long ago — except no, that doesn’t make sense, since the physics in my world is fundamentally different from how it works here. Oh well, that isn’t important now. And is the prophecy the same?”

“Maybe? It is more… hints that come back as specific patterns of words. And often the words cause the future. As a stable pattern. But sometimes the prophesied thing doesn’t happen at all.” Sesako shrugged. “It is usually wise to ignore prophecies.”

“The emperor is wise, and he is paying close attention to a prophecy.”

“I would not call him wise in this.”

“No, and the dragon told me that she believes the emperor has already lost. Because I am here. aybe we’ve been approaching the whole problem in completely the wrong way.”

“Oh?”

The other smiled thinly. “I come from a country where we really weren’t fans of dictators. Rulership comes from the will of the people. But while the emperor is dependent on the loyalty of his great men, I don’t think the rest really realize that they can just remove him.”

“They can’t. He would just defeat them, and —”

“He can’t defeat everyone. He rules because they choose to follow him.”

Sesako was not entirely sure what to think of that.

“I know one pathway by which the emperor’s fears might come to be — maybe I should talk to him about why it might not be as scary as he thinks.”