"Yes... You only have to worry about being too Good if you are firmly Lawful or Chaotic."

More bitter Osiriani muttering.  Deep breath, and she takes her hands off her face.  (It's still kind of screaming.)  "I thank you for warning me.  That- may have been very bad."

"You're welcome."

Khalida grabs her notes and adds another couple sentences of furious scribbling (she underlines something three times).  And then unless Artigas has any more HORRIBLE REVELATIONS she is going to FLEE THE ROOM while she still has a moment or two left on the Owls so she can do whatever coming down from Owls feels like IN PRIVATE.

He's not going to stop her!

Coming down from Owls, unsurprisingly, fucking sucks.

She makes it back to their guest room before she actually starts crying, curls up on the upper bunk with the blankets pulled over her head and thank Sarenrae the guys are out at a different fort overnight, so at least she can melt down like a child without anyone fucking looking at her.

After a few minutes, dawn breaks.  Her channels refill, and she is Known, the Presence is there, quiet and infinitely patient and ready for her to ask and be granted.

-she snarls wordlessly through a fresh bout of sobs and shoves at the Presence, tries to twist 'away' from it, how dare He show up like this like nothing's wrong?  She remembers being Wiser Khalida and realizing that Nethys works by the same rules as the rest of the universe, that if she's angry it should be at Pharasma for making it so, but- she can't hold onto the feeling, not when He let her believe He was the one god who didn't make demands or bargains, let her think she could trust that, that he'd never judge her and find her wanting-

(She can be angry; the Presence is still there; in her anger she is Known.)

Fuck that and fuck You, she snaps in the prayer-direction, knowing it's childish and not caring (knowing He won't care) (knowing it's safe) 

All the years of 'nice girls don't' and 'be careful of your Law' and 'you have to remember your eternity', all the desperate compromises, all the half-sleepless nights wondering if she was already damned, if the next close call would be her last chance-

She'd thought she was done with that, (He'd let her think-) that first moment the divine light had poured into her and through her and the ptarmigan took wing-

(she'd thought she was free-)

(She can still feel the Knowing, calm and implacable, infinite and eternal.  He is the All-Seeing Eye, He will never stop knowing every breath in her lungs and every moment of every possible future...)

Khalida spends a while longer just letting herself cry, but after a bit she leans back into the Presence instead of away from it.

Because the thing is.

She has options.

But if she takes that other option- if she borrows the Rahadi philosophy and refuses to let Pharasma dictate her actions- if she decides she's willing to accept never feeling this again, going back to just knowing the fact that Nethys Knows her like she knows elves are from Castrovel and crocodiles are a kind of lizard instead of feeling it incontrovertibly in the bones of her soul-  

She's.  She's maybe shaking a little bit.  

Because that way lies what she realized after that last fight, that Wiser Khalida dragged her attention away from, the yawning pit that she can't stop looking at now-  

It's not just her squad.  It's not just Eleven.  At least a dozen forts, hundreds and thousands of men just on the border here (and Nethys alone knows how many back in mainland Cheliax), who maybe have a chance now to drag themselves back out of Hell if they can buy enough time, and a finite but still country-sized number of demons eager to deny them that time-

She can't stop.  She can't stop and she can't be there in time every time she's needed, any time she's needed, everything she can do is not enough and will never be enough and she still can't stop because stopping would be worse-

how the fuck do Iomedaeans ever do anything but scream.

(silent, constant Presence)

So.

She's going to have to be fucking careful of her fucking Law.

 It's going to SUCK.

She does, even in this case, still have Options.  But she doesn't actually want to do nearly enough Evil to counteract healing at the fucking Worldwound as her whole job, even if she does still kind of want to break things or kick a dog or something right now.  Especially since Wiser Khalida apparently thought it was really important that she not fuck any men until she'd at a minimum talked to Txell about them and ideally either gotten Alter Self somehow or spent a week tossing around the question of whether she wants to be celibate.  (It had not really occurred to Regular Khalida pre-Owls that this was an option she might want to take, but... she sure has not in fact done it since she was chosen, and Tariq hasn't pushed, and she's learned some things about her taste in girls these past couple weeks...) 

And... she doesn't, actually, know how close to the edge she was- to either edge, really, although it's not like it's a hard guess which one was closer- and even aside from her channels (which would APPARENTLY be gone EITHER WAY fuck Pharasma for that she's still mad) it's much much worse to slip too far in the Evil direction.  She could still die here- if she lost her cleric powers, she'd be way way more likely to die here- and Elysium is fine, Nirvana is supposedly nice, the Boneyard is boring and full of babies but at least that's the worst people say about it... but to go to any Evil afterlife (like everyone here, like Txell like Cabrera like Aleix the idiot who likes cheesy stew-)

-she bites down on her arm again and leans into the being Known until she stops feeling like she can't breathe.

(the Knowing is here.)

So.

(this suuuuuuuuucks)

(hey Nethys are you seeing how much this sucks)

The first thing to do is to figure out whether she's actually strong enough to read now, or whether cleric and wizard circles don't stack and she has to wait until she reaches third circle the regular way.  Somebody probably preps Detect Chaos for demon reasons, if she can get in on that that's the first step;  if she doesn't read, it's... probably not worth asking around and trading favors to get someone to Detect Law at her, she really can't imagine she's still Lawful after these last three years, even if she ever was.

She is known and she has always been known and she will always be known, in whatever planes and times her paths take her.

Unrelatedly, in this place and this time it's an hour past dawn, and she has the same orisons today that she had yesterday.