The walls pop into existence faster and more solidly this time, and there's less activity from Blai's holy symbol, though it still forms that initial connection with his bishop. Apart from that it's hard to tell what's different without understanding what Chris is saying. The quartet of Elizas seem identical.

She speaks for noticeably longer this time, bringing up her tone more slowly from neutral and casual into focused and direct, and the effect that makes the walls look realer than the reality around them is accordingly slower to come in. But the end of the spell looks about the same, restoring the room's normal appearance in the same order and on about the same timeline.

"Spell's over," says Eliza, getting up to help put everything away.

"Thank you." He gets up to unsleepify his legs.

She holds out her hand for the rock as she passes him.

He hands over the rock. "I don't suppose there's any good way to quantify how protected I am - or guess what spells it will or won't stack with."

"It's pretty hard to quantify. I can tell they landed well but that might mean anything from 'we won't notice much of a difference' to 'you'll take two hits in a row that could each individually have killed you and they won't' - normally if I see one dicey hit glance off me I assume that's exhausted my physical protection and I need another one. I'm also not used to thinking of spells in terms of how they stack with each other; what does that normally cash out to?"

"There's no good reason to have Prayer and Divine Favor active at the same time because they do the same kind of thing, but Guidance can cooperate with either, for example. There are I believe technical terms for all of the categories but I don't know them, just how they apply to spells I might wind up casting or calling for."

"I'd expect these spells to... stand behind?... any other protections you've got, and only step in where those fail."

She finishes putting away the pawns.

"Chris needs to get back to work, so let's leave her to it and go downstairs to play some more chess."

Nod nod. Down the stairs with him.

Downstairs to the chessboard in the living room, though she doesn't get out the pieces; the variants that require Prestidigitation are more fun.

"So," she asks as she sits down, "is now a good time to ask about your divine employment history?"

He makes chess pieces. "What are your questions?"

"Am I correct in concluding from the staging of the vision that whatever was going on when you first became a cleric wasn't good for you?"

"...I would not describe it as being good for me," he agrees.

"And that your first patron was of a generally ominous kind?"

Could they be playing chess slightly faster so he can narrow down all his non-chess thoughts to a fine and useful point. "Asmodeus is the Lawful Evil god of tyranny."

"That's pretty ominous. So then you got your fort, and lost Asmodeus, and gained Iomedae. Is that why you aren't familiar with commonalities among clerics of Iomedae? Started out in someone else's territory?"

"I've met some of Iomedae's paladins before, adventuring parties coming through in the course of their duties at the Worldwound, but they were not - chatty. She chooses more paladins than clerics, unlike most gods."

"You said you didn't have an excuse for not having explained this earlier. Which aspects of the situation did you feel you should have explained?"

"That I spent twenty years in the service of Hell and most people would probably consider this important information when determining whether and how much to trust me in various capacities notwithstanding that I have Iomedae's vouch now."

She nods thoughtfully.

"Why did you spend twenty years in the service of Hell?"

Speaking of playing chess slightly faster - he should've taken white to begin with, if she wasn't going to move right away - he turns the board so he has it, and moves a pawn.

"Why did the pawn do that?"

She nods again, like this is a fully satisfying explanation. Makes a move of her own.

"And did you end up with Iomedae the same way? Redeployed to the other side of the board?"

"That is how I tend to think of it. It wasn't immediate, there were a few weeks in between. - Asmodeus dropped everyone I had the chance to hear about, I can't be sure about His high priestess and the like but all along the Worldwound line, suddenly no clerics at all, I was sending people out to get snow to melt and we were rationing healing far more conservatively than usual."

"A problem that Iomedae solved by picking you up. But it sounds like you're a lot less clear on what your orders are than the average chess piece."

"I wrote for instructions from Her people and was told I could remain at my post, and then I was going to go to the constitutional convention back in Cheliax when called upon to do so, and now I'm here. Iomedae has interests everywhere, but She doesn't have marching orders everywhere, and conveying them would be expensive."