Chap­ter VII brings Cartho­ris and Thu­via into the strange world of Lothar, where noth­ing can be trust­ed at face val­ue. Their arrival is met not with hos­pi­tal­i­ty, but with con­fu­sion as Jav con­fronts them, backed by bow­men who van­ish like mist. Cartho­ris pre­pares for bat­tle, but his ene­my dis­solves before he can strike—a dis­ori­ent­ing moment that leaves both him and Thu­via wary. Jav, instead of explain­ing plain­ly, presents rid­dles cloaked in log­ic, slow­ly reveal­ing that the bow­men were mere illusions—phantoms sum­moned through thought, as real or as false as the mind dares to believe. To Jav, these fig­ures are more than tricks; they are Lothar’s defense, tra­di­tion, and lega­cy. For Cartho­ris, it’s an assault on rea­son. A sol­dier can­not fight shad­ows and win.

Tario, the ruler of Lothar, is intro­duced as a man shaped by thought rather than action. He rejects the phys­i­cal world, claim­ing true strength lies in the mind’s abil­i­ty to shape expe­ri­ence. This phi­los­o­phy dom­i­nates Lothar’s cul­ture. The peo­ple no longer build or fight; they dream, project, and believe until belief becomes indis­tin­guish­able from fact. Cartho­ris, forged in the phys­i­cal strug­gles of Heli­um, finds this log­ic dan­ger­ous. His skep­ti­cism grows, espe­cial­ly when he learns that food, too, is imag­ined here—sustenance with­out sub­stance. Jav insists that belief alone sat­is­fies hunger. Though uncon­vinced, Cartho­ris eats. Strange­ly, it nour­ish­es him. Yet the unease remains. Is this nourishment—or sur­ren­der to a world that no longer val­ues real­i­ty?

The more Cartho­ris observes, the clear­er it becomes that Lothar is not just a city, but a con­cept. Its peo­ple have giv­en up progress for per­ma­nence, trad­ing truth for illu­sion. Thu­via, by con­trast, remains a bea­con of clar­i­ty in this murky envi­ron­ment. Her pres­ence alone chal­lenges Tario’s world­view. She is real, defi­ant, and unmoved by the phan­tom com­forts Lothar pro­vides. Jav warns Cartho­ris that Tar­i­o’s inter­est in Thu­via goes beyond pol­i­tics. Tario believes she might be his cre­ation, born from desire rather than lin­eage. This thought enrages Cartho­ris. His loy­al­ty is not based on illu­sion, but on mem­o­ry and shared strug­gle. Tario, in deny­ing her auton­o­my, becomes an ene­my not just of rea­son, but of respect.

Jav, half men­tor and half manip­u­la­tor, presents Lothar’s ideals as noble. He speaks of peace—how illu­sions pre­vent war and suf­fer­ing. Yet beneath his calm log­ic lies a sub­tle cru­el­ty. Real threats are fed to Komal, the beast revered as divine. Komal, accord­ing to Jav, main­tains Lothar’s har­mo­ny by devour­ing non-believers—those who refuse to accept illu­sion as truth. Cartho­ris sees this not as peace, but as selec­tive tyran­ny. In Lothar, safe­ty is a reward for sur­ren­der. And sur­vival depends not on strength or wis­dom, but on belief in a shared hal­lu­ci­na­tion.

Despite Jav’s cryp­tic coun­sel, Cartho­ris is unmoved in his resolve. He under­stands now that Thu­via is in danger—not only from Tario’s infat­u­a­tion, but from a city that can­not dis­tin­guish love from imag­i­na­tion. When Tario speaks of Thu­via, it’s not as a per­son, but as a dream made flesh. That belief, in a world like Lothar, gives him pow­er. Cartho­ris refus­es to allow it. Whether illu­sion or not, the love he feels is real. And it dri­ves him to act. He pre­pares to chal­lenge what­ev­er force Lothar brings forth—phantom or oth­er­wise.

Thu­via, though silent for much of this chap­ter, holds firm against the grow­ing absur­di­ty. She remains com­posed, nei­ther seduced by com­fort nor shak­en by fan­ta­sy. Her resolve gives Cartho­ris strength. They do not need to ques­tion what is real. Their shared past, their strug­gles, their choices—they are the proof. Lothar may com­mand illu­sions, but it can­not recre­ate the authen­tic­i­ty between them. That truth becomes their defense against a world built to obscure it.

This chap­ter casts a philo­soph­i­cal shad­ow over the adven­ture, rais­ing ques­tions about the role of belief in shap­ing real­i­ty. Is it safer to live in a com­fort­ing lie than in a harsh truth? Lothar answers “yes,” but Cartho­ris and Thu­via say “no.” Through them, Bur­roughs con­trasts pas­sive imag­i­na­tion with active courage. In a city ruled by thought, it is action that reclaims mean­ing. And even among phan­toms, real love and real loy­al­ty remain invin­ci­ble.