"Is that why you do enchanting?"

"Yeah. Valuable to almost everybody, not generally dangerous if you're not stupid."

"I guess in this case it'll let you fund your prison sentence. Though if you were a conventional fireball maybe scrolls'd cover it."

"Maybe, but it'd pay you less well, right, so people'd be less inclined to exert themselves to make it happen."

"Yeah. I think we'd still try but it'd be less of a no-brainer that there's a lot of money waiting for someone clever to grab it."

"Yeah. You have to be very valuable if you want people to put in effort to keep you alive. I." Sigh. "I was trying to do that."

"I mean, there are lots of irrelevant out of the way people who weren't kidnapped by paladins, although I guess the specific event of having Kyeo land on you could have happened to anybody."

"Yeah. I try not to be so relevant I am kidnappable on the merits but - this wasn't very fair."

"I'm sorry."

Carissa looks like this is a confusing claim but not in a way where she has much to say about it.

"Not like it's my fault or anything, just it sucks."

She is still confused but tries to show it less. "Thank you."

"I'm out of prepared remarks for now, you have any questions?"

"I don't."

So Belmarniss leaves.

"How'd it go?"

"It's sort of hard to tell! Sometimes it seems like there's progress, but it tends not to keep feeling that way and she definitely hasn't gasped in amazement as all her corrupted epistemics fell from her mind like a broken enchantment in one fell swoop, y'know. I think it'll help if we can get her more space." Shrug.

"I guess that makes sense. It - feels very obvious, from the outside. But I guess most people are very attached to their politics whatever those happen to be."

"I guess. Kyeo doesn't seem to have this problem! But Kyeo got a divine revelation about it - of course, he requested one, I don't know if she's tried that."

"Iomedae probably can't reach her, right, I don't know if Abadar would have anything useful to say, He's kind of friendly with Asmodeus anyway, right -"

"Abadar is allied with all of the Lawful gods for the same reasons countries have pacts with all their neighbors, if you're clear where each other stand you're much less likely to accidentally have a fight."

"Yeah. But also - there's nothing inherently awful to him about Asmodeus, is there, Cheliax is a rich country."

"I don't really know."

"I guess if you make people value awful things they can be rich in awful things."

"Yeah. I think - there's probably a way to put in in Abadaran terms but I don't know what it is."