"- hi. Wow, that's fancy. This isn't a movie set, is it? SSA puts out dummy circles for theatrical and cinematic purposes."

She only understood half of those words which is weird because, not speaking Abyssal at all, she has Tongues up. "Glad you like it. I don't actually need anything, just wait until my instructor comes by and signs off. I guess if you know people who like summons and take pay in, like, puppies, I'm about to be in the market but I'm not expecting much because, demon." He's actually weirdly human-looking, compared to the one the other student got, but probably that doesn't imply any less chaotic. Devils publish their pay scales because law is objectively better than chaos.

"I know a guy who wants puppies! He's hoping for a Lunar Aired-

- what language is this?"

"...presumably Abyssal? I've got Tongues up."

"Pardon?"

"Since I am using translation magic, I have no idea what language you're speaking. To me it sounds like Avistani and it would even if you were speaking, I dunno, Azlanti."

"Avistani, got it, okay. And the one you don't speak very well is - is that Abyssal or something else -"

She flinches. "I got fine marks in it. Infernal."

"No, yeah, I could probably read a newspaper in it, it's just notably not a comfortable fluency level - and, ah, where the fuck am I, please?"

"Egorian. Cheliax. ...Avistan," she adds, reading his facial expression. "..planet's Golarion. Plane is Material."

"Fascinating! And you have summoning classes and everything! What is the nature of the disinformation campaign, I wonder..." He starts reading the circle.

"I served five years at the Worldwound, you're not gonna convince me that demons are actually friendly and I don't need that circle there at all." One of the devils had tried, but without any real zeal. 

The circle binds him to remain within it, not using magic or supernatural abilities or magic items on his person, until they've negotiated a deal, and to abide by the deal if he agrees to it. Possibly in this culture everything else is negotiated aloud?

"No, many demons are unfriendly and I would be scolding you if you'd managed to do this without a binding. You were not planning to negotiate a deal, just show me to your teacher?"

"There's a verbal exam before that part and it's next week. But you're supposed to do a run of summons first so you're not tongue-tied about demons. Which is not a problem I was expecting to have because I served five years at the Worldwound."

She waves her hand to try to get the instructor's attention. He is, however, distracted by another student who seems to have messed up stupidly and is now being - eaten? By a bat-thing of some kind? "- ah, shit."

"- oh my god what the fuck!"

"Wow, sorry, I bet we're going to be here for an hour." There are cold-iron lines between the apprentices, she's not worried for her safety.

"Is or is not a fellow being devoured by a bat monster!"

"That sure does appear to be the case! I guess he fucked up his circle."

"Shouldn't someone be - doing something -" He twitches, a little, but the circle holds him.

"I didn't prep combat spells."

"Why didn't your teacher have something prepared for this? What's the point of doing it in a classroom setting if not to catch - augh - look I have medical quals if you let me I can maybe patch him up if he's still alive -"

"Probably the teacher thinks it was a very stupid mistake and not one whose consequences he should be protected from? We do have healing on-site. - you're a demon with healing?"

Someone has, by now, in fact banished the bat thing. 

"Is your healing going to be here fast enough - god, how is he breathing -"

"- do you not see a lot of casters, we're tougher than normal people -"

There are some robed people walking in now; she kneels mid-sentence.

"Is that the healers."

Shrug. Why does this demon want to know so many things. Is that a good strategy wherever he's from.

The cleric of Asmodeus looks over the circle to understand the mistake before healing the most critical of the student's injuries and leaving him there. Carissa is relieved the situation was handled so reasonably; presumably the demon will not be able to generate more questions about that.

"I could patch him up the rest of the way if your healers can't improve on that. Or, uh, won't as a - disciplinary matter?"

She nods at that last bit. "If you just fix it how's he going to learn. If he'd screwed up that badly and hadn't gotten hurt somehow they'd have to whip him."

"He has already been bitten! A lot! By a bat monster! I don't think not dripping additional blood on the floor today will prevent learning from taking place!"

"You have a lot of opinions!"

"You have an abusive educational system! Are you going to, what, fail your test if you let me make him some replacement skin??"

"Fail my test? If I make a deal with a demon who claims to have medical abilities to heal a student a cleric already saw because I am feeling squeamish about all the blood on the floor? I will not just fail my test for that, I'll get seen for whether I've lost my mind! I would report someone for even being tempted!"

"It's me who's concerned, you evidently are perfectly at ease with the decision to let him twitch there marinating in his own plasma! If you're that worried about being tempted why did you even let me talk?"

"...it seems like it'd be pretty hard to negotiate with demons while pointedly not speaking their language. I think good summoners in fact aim to establish rapport, which, I'm getting a sense of why that's hard with Chaotic creatures."

"Is that another word for 'prefers people be uninjured'?"

"...no. Uh, Law and Chaos are forces the gods see in the world, and humans don't understand them perfectly, but punishment is part of Law, and obedience to hierarchy, and not having a lot of opinions.  Thinking you should just personally do whatever you like is Chaos. I guess it might just be you. I haven't interacted with any demons before. At the Worldwound we just fight them."

"Is the bat monster," says Cam, "a 'demon'?"

"Yes."

"Interesting. Uh, I'm not sure you're going to do very well on your test, because I'm not the same thing as the bat monster."

"There are lots of different kinds." But her eyes anxiously dart down to read her circle.

"When I'm at home some people around me go in for, like, digitigrade legs, antelope horns, claws, designer color schemes, but not 'being a bat monster', that's a little too out there."

"...the Abyss is infinite, mostly cliffs and valleys of rock and sludge, there are also infinite demons but they tend towards...developmental stages, recently dead people are kind of larval worm things...does that sound like the place you are from."

"Nope. Hell is infinite, mostly vacuum, there are a few billion demons, most occupants aren't dead people to begin with and the ones who are look like they did in life plus anything they add on like wings."

"Hell is a different place, not infinite, nine layers, ruled by Asmodeus, devils do look more human than demons. I don't know what share of them are dead people but I think it's got to be most of them, if you go back far enough." Despite all these differences she relaxes slightly; she will fail her test for somehow summoning a devil when she meant to get a demon but she won't be suspicious.

"That doesn't sound like an infinite layerless vacuum of anarchy to me."

"....no. Uh, the Maelstrom is an infinite layerless vacuum of anarchy but its inhabitants are even less human looking..... I still think you might be from the Abyss, just some weird pocket of it that doesn't know about the rest of it?"

"That would be hard since we have some very aggressive media curators conjuring for all the recorded media across the dimensions we've heard of, which is why I was so startled I hadn't heard of this place."

"Okay, I don't have a theory, then. Probably the planar studies people will." She looks unhappy; glances over at the teacher to see if he's busy.

"What do people normally want bat-monster-type demons for? - you can call me an apsel to distinguish."

"Demons can't be poisoned or harmed by lightning so they're useful if you're going up against that, and they're easier to pay than devils because a lot of them just want slaves or magic weapons or to eat a sacrifice alive or whatever."

"How... charming... what is it devils normally want?"

"Souls, children, holy things, power or land on the Material Plane, some of them have contracts that look straightforward but aren't..."

"And what does one summon those for?"

"Well, sometimes you want to sell your soul, right, or you want - riches, advice, a bodyguard, combat help..."

"...I've never especially wanted to sell my soul, why would one want that?"

"If you don't expect to make a particularly good showing in the general population when you die and go to Hell you might preemptively sell your soul to someone who you think can make good use of you. Or if people are questioning your loyalty, not a lot of questions about your loyalty once you've sold your soul..."

"Does, uh, everybody go to Hell?"

"Pretty much. If you're Chaotic you go to the Abyss instead but in Cheliax that's awfully rare, we have good Law here. And the cultists of other gods go to those gods' afterlives sometimes."

"And what is Hell like, for the dead people?"

"In Hell you are perfected and made a worthy tool of Asmodeus's project." By rote.

"...uh-huh. How's that work exactly."

"Hell has expertise in correcting the flaws in human minds and hearts and using as much of us as we make available in rebuilding us into devils."

"...by what methods."

"If you are squeamish about students getting eaten when they make mistakes you probably won't like it."

"Thanks, I appreciate the accommodation of my tender sensibilities. Uh, apsels, like me, are normally summoned - in the place where we are normally summoned - because we can make arbitrary material objects."

"Huh. With what duration?"

"Pardon?"

"How long does stuff last when you make it."

"Forever? It's a problem, back home the cities are all built on heaps of out of fashion crap."

"I need to figure out how I got - you - instead of the thing I was trying to get -"

"Yeah, I don't know, this doesn't look like a traditional apsel circle but it's still clearly working..."

"The question is whether we can reproduce it." She has pulled out a notebook and is copying it down. "If it grabs a random demon and grabs an apsel sometimes then that's going to be practically useless, because there are infinite demons, but maybe we can also summon apsels by name - do you know if things you make can be used as spell components -"

"I don't know. I can show you a traditional apsel circle -" He grabs his computer off his belt and looks one up. "- which includes the option to try for specific ones by name -"

Her expression has spent the last minute toggling between terrified and fascinated but the computer pulls it over towards fascinated. "What is that?"

"Chiplock computer! State of the art, apsel-proof..." He finds what he's looking for but then blanks the display rather than open it up. "Now, uh, I'd really like to get out of this circle, have a look around, explore the world."

"I am considering it possible that this is some kind of loyalty test and I am being bribed with fabulous wealth and unfamiliar magic to contemplate letting a demon loose in Egorian with the supposed ability to bury it in rubble."

"I don't really go in for that but I suppose I don't know if you have any way to, like, detect lies."

"That's a cleric spell. I - yeah, what I should do here is get them to come over and verify your story." She looks terrified, but only for half a second. 

"If they decide they don't like the look of me then what?"

"If people aren't supposed to know about apsels then I guess they'll kill us both." She folds up her notebook and tries to wave for her teacher.

"I'm immortal."

"I figured, only the Material Plane has mortals."

"So, I'd bet against them being able to kill me, but I'd rather they didn't kill you either, what's, uh, best practices on that."

"...why do you have a preference about that at all?"

"One minute!" her teacher calls at her across the hall.

"Call me squeamish," Cam says.

"Well. I think you should mostly shut up and let me talk, and I'll say that you claim to be an apsel which is a weird kind of demon whose supernatural ability is permanent conjuration, and if apsels aren't previously documented I want to do a research project on them, for the greater glory of Cheliax and of Hell, and you can say what you'd want in exchange for some permanent conjuration, and it should be something - expensive enough that it doesn't feel like there's necessarily a catch, like rare magical creatures or albino gnome slaves or something."

"Can't be, like, 'the run of the place'?"

"I mean, you can ask for that, but I doubt they'll go for it."

"Okay, so as a backup what's on offer, I don't want anything sapient but I could unload a magical animal or object at home."

"There are probably thousands of magical animals and objects I could get you if you can make spell components. Or if you can't do that but you can - build fortresses and bridges and such. Adventurers tend to like mental and physical enhancement, Rings of Sustenance, spell resistance, bags of holding..."

"Ooh, mental enhancement sounds fun. I can do fortresses and bridges and such... what sorts of things are spell components?"

"Diamonds. Also spellsilver. If you can do either of those then I can get you whatever you want."

           The teacher walks over, peers at Cam and at the circle. "What kind of demon were you aiming for?"

"I specified magic-user, and didn't otherwise. He says he's an apsel, and that they do permanent conjurations."

            The teacher squints at Cam. "Chaotic Good," he says after a moment, his tone very cold.

"Ah," says Carissa. "That explains some things. Should I kill it?"

           "What things does that explain?"

"Well, why I'd never heard of that kind. And it was very upset about the student who failed to contain his demon."

             "It leaves unexplained how you summoned it."

Carissa's face has gone very blank. "I'm Lawful Evil. You can check."

              "I have. - I'm going to get the priest. Stay here."

Carissa nods.

"...Good and Evil are magically detectable things?"

"Yes. Did you also not know that, of course you didn't know that."

"We are mutually ignorant of so many things about each other. I can do diamonds. I don't know what spellsilver is but I can try if you let me."

"I think I'm kind of in a lot of trouble but I'm sure someone'll let you. Spellsilver's what we use to make magic items. I have some here -" She reaches into a bag on the floor and pulls out a little vial with oil and a lump of a silvery metal floating in the oil.

"I can't tell by looking if it's something I can make, I'd have to try it."

She looks uncertainly over at the door the teacher left through. 

The question is what this is testing, if it's a test. Presumably her obedience. Presumably getting the demon to make a lot of diamonds is failing the test. Of course, if the demon can make a lot of diamonds, then it's not a test at all, it's real, and in that case - she doesn't want to get in trouble - she's already in trouble - being unambitious was always a good way to be more of an asset than a liability but now suddenly a Carissa who's merely a fourth-circle caster is quite expendable in the face of what she's gotten herself into and she needs -

- she reaches for her headband. "This is, to the best of my fairly reliable knowledge, a headband that increases the intelligence of the wearer. I'm not offering anything yet but I'm interested in negotiating a deal in which I give it to you for four Raise Dead grade diamonds and enough spellsilver to make another one, are you potentially interested in a deal along those lines."

"- yes! I don't know if I can make the spellsilver but I will be happy to try."

"Is that enough of a specification of how much I want or do you need a weight or something."

"I need weights for the spellsilver and for the diamonds."

"One ounce of spellsilver. A Raise-Dead grade diamond weighs - I have never thought about this, sorry - seven thousandths of an ounce? And is this big across." She gestures at about the size of diamond one might find on a wedding ring. "I propose a deal in which you use your supernatural abilities only to attempt to make two ounces of spellsilver and four pure diamonds that reflect your best understanding of my instructions on their size and shape, and in exchange, regardless of your results, I give you my headband, which I have strong reason to think magically enhances intelligence."

"I'm okay with that deal."

She's not certified yet and also panicking and it's possible that she just said something very stupid actually, but also the default outcome at this point is that she's under a ton of suspicion - 

- "Deal. Then."

Diamonds. - Spellsilver. "Uh, that didn't allow me to make the vial with the oil, so you might need to get a spare of that."

"I know how spellsilver oxidizes, I'll be able to tell if you really did it. And I'll only lose about five percent of it." She's staring at it, wide-eyed. 

"- I"m not Good and I'm not about to be but if you wanted to help me out you could - not tell them how to summon more apsels, or summon you back -"

"Noted."

If it's a test that would be - failing quite spectacularly - but while she's a bit too panicked to reproduce her reasoning she remembers having concluded that if it's real, it wasn't a test.

She hands him her headband and immediately feels stupider and watches the spellsilver oxidize.

The priest comes back. Carissa kneels.

The priest reaches for the holy symbol at his neck and says something incomprehensible. Carissa shivers.

"A Chaotic Good outsider showing up in this summoning circle," he says thoughtfully. "Did you do it deliberately?"

"I voluntarily answered the summon."

"Are you usually able to answer summons targeting demons?"

"I am usually able to answer summons targeting apsels, my variety of demon."

He looks at Carissa. "Did you deliberately try to get an apsel?"

"No. I didn't know apsels existed. I assumed when it arrived that they were some rare undocumented kind of demon I'd gotten by lucky chance."

Back to Cam. "What god or lord do apsels answer to?"

"We're too chaotic for that sort of thing."

"What do you want?"

"The opportunity to run around and see the world, do magic for personal use and for others as the whim strikes me, magic items." He puts the headband on. "- ooh, I like this one."

"You gave it your headband?"

"The apsel's claims seemed of momentous import to the Crown and the Church if true, but plausibly some sort of horrible Chaotic game, or a ploy by our adversaries, so I negotiated a trade of a personal item for spellsilver and diamonds so as to know whether it was worth your time. The result strikes me as evidence that it isn't a ploy; had our adversaries such abilities, we would be charged with preparing to defend Cheliax or defeat them preemptively, and we are not so charged."

"It might turn back."

"Detects as nonmagical. And it's oxidizing. I won't know for sure until I try to use it, but - the Chaotic planes are infinite, it follows almost necessarily that there are infinite multitudes among them which could be useful to Asmodeus in some way..."

"Hand it off to me, we'll look into it further."

"Can you instruct me in how to do that, I have never handed off negotiating power with a bound outsider before."

"Ask him to accept me as negotiating in your stead under the same conditions as established in the circle and verbally previously."

She repeats this.

"Supposing I don't," he says lightly.

"What do you want for it? I can get you a better headband."

"Yeah, so can she if she lets me keep making her supplies, I'm guessing."

The priest looks baffled. "- yes? But we have far more resources, and can arrange things sooner, and she works for us."

"I mean, you won't have far more resources for very long, if she lets me make her stuff."

"...Hell backs Cheliax. Even if you made her a mountain of spellsilver, we'd have more than that - and be able to do more with it - did you know her before she summoned you twenty minutes ago -"

"Nah."

"Do you want to transfer negotiating authority, work with us, rule a duchy, and also fuck the girl, we can arrange that."

"I have this weird, rare kink you may not have heard of where I'm only into consenting partners, so, uh, go jump in a lake."

"I wonder," says Carissa, "if you are too perfectly made in our Lord's image to appeal as a target to this apsel. Here in Egorian, surely no greater force save Asmodeus could have intervened to bring this unlikely thing to pass, and I am the one it was bound to; perhaps there is something in me that makes the apsel willing to negotiate. We serve Asmodeus even in our weakness. And if I become a heretic you can always just kill me."

"You're very opinionated," the priest says, in nearly the same tone Carissa said it to Cam, earlier.

"I want to use it to see Cheliax triumph at the Worldwound. I would collaborate with Good, for that, because Asmodeus would, and has. I've been there five years. With this, I could end it in five more. Kill me or get out of my way, but stop alienating my valuable resource by trying to find common ground that does not exist between the two of you, because in being worthy of Asmodeus you've made yourself pure of it."

"You had better hope you're right that this is as valuable as you think it is."

"If it wasn't you'd have killed me already."

"What, uh, is the Worldwound."

"There is a big hole in the fabric of reality and demons keep streaming through it trying to destroy the world. And everyone, Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, whatever, disapproves because we live here. So it seems like a place where I expect we have common ground."

"Sure, that does sound like real bad news."

"I need to pray on this."

"Of course. I can finish my summoning exam in the meantime. - I pass," she adds to her teacher. "There's nothing wrong with the circle."

"There does not appear to be anything wrong with the circle," he confirms.

Cam applauds lightly.

The priest departs. 

"You're going to get yourself killed," Carissa's teacher observes to her.

"I noticed. Want a diamond? You could raise me, if I got killed some way other than righteously for deserving it and you wanted to know where the treasure was buried."

"I'd need a bigger diamond."

"True Resurrection-grade diamonds are...twenty-six thousandths of an ounce, and this big across, you can use your supernatural powers only to make one of those in exchange for coming back to my dorm and sightseeing along the way, deal? It's not a very long way and I don't know it to have any interesting sights."

"What, so you can bribe this jerk?"

"I think calling it a bribe implies a level of inexperience and incompetence with it that makes one a worse collaborator for it and makes it more expensive. But yeah, I want to arrange for people who might know the reasons they might want to resurrect me to also have the means, since I am doing a thing that might get me killed."

"Who's going to kill you?"

"I mean, plausibly kind of a lot of people? Cheliax has enemies, probably some people benefit from Cheliax having to save the world from the Worldwound and don't want it closed, there are people who mine spellsilver who might end up out of a job....also I might get determined to be a heretic but obviously then he won't resurrect me."

He sighs. "Deal." He presents her with the diamond. It's pink because why not.

"...I don't know if that'll work," says the teacher dubiously. 

"The new research possibilities are endless."

And she walks out.

Cam follows her, tail aswish.

They walk out the door and down paved streets with five or six story brick buildings. No one looks particularly startled at the sight of Cam, though most of the locals look like normal humans. Carissa rounds two corners, opens a locked door with a metal key, climbs three flights of stairs all in silence. Opens another locked door. Closes it. Locks it again.

"Well. This is my place. If you don't need anything immediately I'm gonna figure out whether stuff you conjure is in fact usable for magic item creation."

"I would like permission to conjure my correspondence and some reading material."

"Conjure your correspondence?" Her apartment is three rooms, the bedroom and sitting-room rather sparse and the office full of books and diagrams and paper and jewelry, and also quite nicely decorated. She sets the spellsilver and diamonds down there, puts them in a box, closes it with magic.

"It's how apsels mostly communicate - one writes a letter, the other conjures a copy."

"Can you conjure anything that is itself magic, explosive runes, scrolls..."

"Nope."

She of course shouldn't fully trust him on that, she doesn't have Zone of Truth. "You can conjure less than one bottle of ink and less than one this-sized sheaf of parchment paper, with the ink configured on the paper in any nonmagical way you'd like, as part of ongoing negotiations about how to close the Worldwound and advance other shared aims."

"...yeah, I can make do with that." He doesn't immediately conjure any correspondence; he pulls out his computer and does stuff to that instead. He seems to be controlling it with his mind.

She has no expectations about how else you'd control an extremely fancy illusion-thing, if you possessed one. 

She checks whether the spellsilver works for enchanting. It behaves...totally normally. Also working on enchanting is much less stressful and she's kind of tempted to just work on it until she's not terrified but that's a bad plan that'll probably get her killed.

What isn't a bad plan that'll probably get her killed?

"Uh," she says after giving this question kind of a lot of thought. "Probably we should talk and figure out if we have any non-Worldwound common interests. Maybe in making a lot of money, since you can do all kinds of things with lots of money?"

"You can do all kinds of things with money. I am currently interestingly limited in what kinds of things I could do with money."

"I mean, you can - I don't really know what Chaotic Good people like - free slaves? Buy lots of fancy magic items? Commission statues of yourself from great artists? Get really drunk on Nefreti Clepati's wine? Explore the stars?"

"I could do those things if you let me go shopping. I can't if you don't."

"So my plan here is to close, and end up ruling, the Worldwound, and I can only do this plan if we have lots and lots of common ground so you can assume you will get to do lots of shopping."

"...the Worldwound is a desirable territory to rule?"

"No, it's a horrifying void opening on the Abyss and horribly mangled by the century of demons warping it and everyone who used to live there is dead. But we were planning to fix that, right."

"I mean, yes, but has it got, like, a great location, or is its virtue mostly being currently very undesirable so you can get in on the ground floor."

"Oh, it's really far north and landlocked and kind of sucks in every way." 

"Gotcha. Uh, are you planning to rule the place as an extension of this abusive authoritarian theocracy situation or do you want to, like, defect once that's safe and run the world's richest exporter of everything, because I will kind of be wanting to bottleneck your resources in the first case a lot but have no problem with enabling the second thing."

"- I wouldn't be doing people a favor, if I shaped them all wrong for surviving in Hell."

"And you seem so concerned about doing people favors, I can see why that would be a prohibitive concern."

"So, what, you think I should, like, make the Worldwound some kind of fucking Cayden Cailien paradise and rack up a lot of Good points and fuck off to Elysium personally and figure I'll be able to adapt fine once Hell conquers it, and fuck over everyone who lived there for all eternity? ...do you really get the Good points if you do it that way?"

"I'm not familiar with your cultural references or your point system."

"Cayden Cailean is a Chaotic Good god. His primary interest is in drunkenness, and he reportedly ascended because he'd hooked up with Desna, who is another Chaotic Good god whose thing is wandering the stars. I have no particular reason to believe designing a society inspired by either of them would be a good place to be, but presumably you would get lots of Good points for it, which means you get a Good afterlife, until Asmodeus conquers it, and He'll probably take a long time to get to Elysium because, like, it's infinite and also not really worth bothering with. I guess if I really desperately wanted Elysium I could try this but it seems like a very stupid thing to try and I don't especially want Elysium anyway."

"Have you considered that Asmodeus's impending conquest is under the circumstances reasonably likely to be propaganda? I have no special knowledge here," yet, "but it seems probable."

"Everybody's got deployments at the Worldwound and we did talk and their argument against Asmodeus conquering the other afterlives was "okay, he did kill Aroden at the height of His power and take His country and all its people and He is getting more powerful every generation but that shouldn't be used to form any expectations about the future!""

"I suspect your interpretation of being uncharitable but, okay, you are at least interpreting a non-propaganda source. Is the resistance to Asmodeus predicated on things like... spellsilver, diamonds, powerful outsider allies, technological advancement..."

"I don't ....think gods fight with any of those things. It'd be like ants trying to decide how to intervene in a human war and being like, maybe they need really really big piles of ant food, maybe they need to be really resistant to ant poison, maybe we should build rafts with our bodies to carry them across that stream over there..."

"Okay, so this is all small potatoes, but we will still work far more cooperatively if you are not planning to run a satellite arm of this shit, at least provisionally before I have had a chance to talk to someone from somewhere, uh, else, and integrate multiple perspectives."

"Okay. Just the Worldwound, no plans for what happens with the Worldwound afterwards yet. In that case I think I need - Boots of Teleport, which they sell in Absalom, and a scroll of it to get to Absalom, and then we can go north and get to work."

"I can't make the magic things."

"I can buy them with spellsilver. I think it's best to leave pretty soon, I'm going to leave a letter affirming my loyalty and swearing I won't cause them any trouble and then we can head out."

"...'kay."

Probably judgment from a Chaotic Good entity is actively a good sign about her reasonableness.

She writes,

In my capacity as unit wizard in Her Majesty's Eleventh I witnessed how the necessity of defending the Worldwound weakened Cheliax. I think it was with the intent of freeing us from this burden for a greater destiny that Asmodeus delivered the apsel into my possession, and I intend to with its powers close the Worldwound. How this can be achieved should be self-evident to any Chelish citizen with the slightest imagination, so it seems likely that the apsel was delivered to me not just for my capacity for this task but for other positive qualities that equip me to carry it out -- and, perhaps, for negative ones, such as whatever makes the apsel like me.

I have been a proud soldier of Cheliax since I came of age. My parents are the proud owners of a merchant company in Corentyn, and my older brother intends to succeed them. My sister followed in my footsteps in the Corentyn Academy of Wizardry, and intended to follow me in the defense of our nation northward, though now I have no doubt you'll deploy her elsewhere. I am a subject of Queen Abrogail II and a soul seeking Asmodeus, and it is in my dedication to their service that I intend to close the Worldwound, so that our great nation can set its sights elsewhere. It is a mission in which I expect many enemies of our state will oppose me, so I will be employing the apsel's extraordinary abilities to secure my own person in your service. It had been my intent to delay my departure, despite the urgency of the situation in the north and the urgency with which Queen Abrogail II has charged us with her service, so as to arrange good lines of communication, but my apsel has made me aware it has the ability to conjure instances of letters addressed to it, and presumably also to me, so it seems wisest for me to depart in advance of my orders, eagerly awaiting them.

Cheliax does not raise weak-hearted children. It has the strength to raise great ones.

Your loyal servant,

Carissa Sevar

All her possessions fit in one suitcase. She packs them.

The apsel is doing stuff with his illusion-stick-thing. He peeps at her letter. "Carissa. That's pretty," he remarks. "I'm Cam."

'Figure out whether the apsel is flirting with her' goes on her to-do list which is already excessively long. "Cam," she repeats. "Can I convince you to wear a shirt so you're less conspicuous?"

"You can if you let me make one. I could put a coat over the wings and tail too, if you like, they fold up real small."

"That would be convenient. Using only cloth, and less than 40 square feet of it, you can make a shirt and coat pursuant to ongoing deals."

"I was gonna go for leather, is leather conspicuous? It'll hide the wings better."

"Leather is fine. I'm just supposed to specify something so you can't do, I don't know, live dragons. Using leather and cloth and less than 40 square feet of it, you can make a shirt and coat."

Shirt! Coat! "That would have required further annoying rigmarole if I needed to have any of this stitched as opposed to just behaving like it grew on a very oddly shaped cow," he remarks.

"Do apsels even how cows, I feel like if your conjurations are permanent there's not a lot of reason to bother."

"Some people have cows as a hobby but we do not cultivate them for cheese and shoes."

"I guess bullfighting would still be popular." She hands him her suitcase. "Let's go."

"You probably don't want me to carry this, I'm liable to trip a lot without my extra appendages loose for balance."

"There are magic items for that, too." She takes her suitcase back and heads down the stairs.

"Snazzy." He follows along.

She heads for the magic shop not too far from where she lives where she takes commissions. Brings her new spellsilver, now jarred, to the counter. "I want to trade you for a scroll of teleport."

"- I've been warned you've picked up a counterfeiting hobby," the guy says. 

"Counterfeiting spell silver? Do you want me to turn it into something in front of you?"

"...I've been warned that, as you're suspected of counterfeiting, I shouldn't sell you the means to leave the country, whether or not you pay for it in counterfeit."

"Want to come with me?"

"Get out of my shop."

She bites her lip, takes Cam's arm, and -

- they're in an alleyway somewhere else. "Probably means they have decided to arrest me. I need to think."

"If we fly there very fast in a vehicle I know how to make and pilot does that work? Uh, I don't think one will fit in this alley but the average back yard will work."

" - probably. How fast. Is the middle of the road enough space?"

"I can do, uh, three, four times the speed of sound safely in atmo but we won't go that fast immediately, have to accelerate, and yes."

"The speed of sound? You can make anything standard for a flying vehicle that can get us to Absalom, in the road over there."

"Sound has a speed, that's why lightning is visible before you hear the thunder, light also has a speed but it's much faster." He steps into the road and appears a shuttle. The door opens.

She lugs her suitcase onto the shuttle, looking like she'd be very impressed if she wasn't very stressed.

The door closes behind her. The shuttle lifts off. The window turns from a window into a screen display that shows what's under them in one pane and what's in front in another. "Which way?"

"East. And a bit south." She's trembling. 

"Which way is that, I don't have GPS here."

"Uh, I always lose my sense of north when I Dim Door - uh, if you see the ocean, that runs east to west, and it's got a strait on the west end, and Absalom is an island on the eastern part where it opens south..."

"And we're north of the ocean now? Okay," He goes higher, and they accelerate.

She grips the window and looks down at the world. "Hopefully they won't call ahead to the Worldwound? I bet they won't."

"And if they do?"

"I'll...pray?" She doesn't say this like she strongly expects that to work. "I - if they think I'm going to turn on them they'll send assassins, if they think I'm not going to then they should stay out of my way, I feel like reasonably they should stay out of my way if they're not sure as long as I might not turn on them, because if I get halfway through then at least I've gotten half of the work done for them, but also I guess I'll get harder to assassinate and they might feel a need to get on it while they still can. Quite possibly they just meant to Geas me and now I've escalated by running off, only, it doesn't feel very stable, to be trying appeasement rather than cooperation -

- I should check the wording of the Worldwound treaty, maybe they can't assassinate me there."

Cam makes it for her, on parchment with ink.

She reads. "I think they can. They can't, like, assassinate the paladins, but every country can handle discipline internally in its usual fashion and, well, it's hard to argue that ours isn't occasionally assassinating people for getting dangerously out of line." She is tempted to ask her apsel if he thinks she's dangerously out of line but this answer would be pretty much no information, really.

"Can you officially defect, get under another country's protection?"

"Yes but - I would prefer not to, if there is another way to be safe and get anything done. My family's here. Cheliax is - most countries wouldn't've trained me as a wizard in the first place. And Cheliax is the only place guided by Asmodeus and Asmodeus is going to win."

"...should we stop and grab your family on the way out?"

"Well, then I'm definitely making myself a threat, right, if I offer them hostages and then immediately go and steal them all. And I don't think they'd appreciate it. I wouldn't appreciate it, if one of them had decided to get into a stupid fight."

"...okay. Can you... get shelter from another country without formally defecting to it, or is everyone at the Worldwound going to hand you over on account of this treaty."

"So my bet would be that someone just got anxious and told the magic item store not to buy me counterfeit while they hauled me in to posture at again and maybe collect a bribe, and since that failed they'll read my note and decide to just tell their superiors that I seem to have intent that serves Cheliax and the ideal time to assassinate me is once I'm done serving Cheliax or once they figure out how to summon apsels themselves on purpose. And so I predict that the people at the Worldwound won't have been told to hand me over and it'll just go fine. But maybe someone had already staked their credibility on me being a problem, which would be a stupid thing to do without me in hand but sometimes people are stupid, in which case they'll probably have assassins at the Worldwound? And I can just kill the assassins and write home being like "I knew that evil foreign agents were going to oppose Cheliax in the great work of closing the Worldwound! and then that person will get kiled and someone more sensible will be in charge.... they're probably not going to double down all the way up the chain of command on their soldier who is closing the Worldwound and hasn't any heretical opinions being a public enemy. At least that's how I was betting. But I guess I could get killed before it makes it all the way up the chain of command. Maybe I can spend some time in hiding, making magic stuff, before I go to the Worldwound. Think about this when I'm less stupid."

"Okay. You could, uh, hide in Absalom, or wherever, and I could go fix the Worldwound by myself? You'd be useful as a native guide but I can probably find someone else."

"I don't really think you could fix the Worldwound by yourself and also that sounds like it'd involve giving you very broad making-stuff rights without any ability to check if I like the results. Or way to, like, make you stop making things if you get mind-controlled by some of the demons at the Worldwound."

"...mind control! Yikes! Suppose you tell me about that."

"Enchantment is a school of magic. It lets you make people find you unnaturally compelling or trustworthy, or do what you say, or kneel in your presence, or just stop taking actions, or whatever. Most demons are not possessed with a lot of subtlety but scary ones've still got Dominate Monster, which just makes you do whatever they want, and if you manage to also make the enemy of devils, which you seem like you somehow might, they can do subtler stuff."

"Are there magic items about it."

"Yeah. I don't know how to make anything that'd make you persistently immune but I could learn, maybe, once I have an in with extremely powerful wizards."

"Can we buy something for it in Absalom. If I make you more stuff."

"We can buy things that'll help. Total immunity is - I haven't actually heard of an item with that effect, probably you'd want something off Mind Blank which is eighth-circle, and continuous, it'd be - few enough people in the world who can make it that I wouldn't expect to find one for sale in Absalom no matter how much we pay for it. We could commission it, I guess, and I could try to learn enough about how it ought to work that I could tell if the person who filled the commission left a backdoor..."

"Okay. Let's load me up on things that would help. You have left me several openings to kill you, the binding's working but it's not that great, and if someone got ahold of me just so I could destroy the planet."

"Asmodeus wants the planet around, I don't think you'd be permitted to destroy it. But we've lost continents before and that would be very very awful if it happened again."

"Yeah, I could do that too, though it would actually be slightly more labor-intensive, so if someone carelessly got ahold of me and wanted a continent gone..."

"The continents have different magical traditions and if you destroy one you might lose information we could use to get you good magic stuff," she says neutrally, as if 'reasons Cam shouldn't destroy continents' is the thing they were discussing and that's probably the one he'd find most compelling. 

"I don't want to destroy any continents, Carissa, you have just told me that mind control exists!"

"I am going to do my absolute best about the mind control but it seemed worth also making the case that the continents are useful, I don't know how obvious it seems!"

"I don't want to destroy continents, I assure you."

"Cool! Me neither! We'll just keep them all, maybe add a few new ones. Do you want to teach me how to make deals better so there are no openings through which you could be obliged to destroy a continent?"

"You haven't left me continent-destroying openings."

"Well, that's good I guess.

Was there other stuff you wanted to know? About Golarion?"

"...yeah, sure, suppose you were trying to explain Golarion to someone with a totally different, uh, cosmology and magic system."

"- I guess that follows. Uh, Golarion is a planet, it's one of thousands maybe millions of planets on the Material Plane. Accessible by magic from Golarion are the Inner Planes - so called because they're also adjacent to each other, and there's a sort of popular plane-configuration where they're sort of inside ours - of Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and positive and negative energy, and the Outer Planes, of which there are nine, defined in god-terms but comprehensible to humans as representing every combination of the god-forces of Law and Evil. Law is the tendency to follow rules, to do things for reasons, to have hierarchy and obedience and goals and to sacrifice in the present for a better future. Chaos is the force of freedom and randomness and doing whatever you want. Evil is the tendency to - want to have results in the world, to try to do things, to be willing to make sacrifices towards a greater goal. Good wants everyone to live uneventful lives as farmers or gatherers, I think. So the nine afterlives are Lawful Evil, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Neutral, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil, Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Good.

The gods have domains in the afterlives and intervene sometimes in Golarion, mostly by naming the priests who can do miracles in their service. That's one kind of magic. Another kind is my kind, which just involves shaping magic to do your will; that's called being a wizard, or some people get an innate faculty for it and do it without study and are sorcerers. Alternatively you can make pacts with extraplanar entities less than gods for power. There are lots and lots of other kinds of magic users but I think most of them are basically some specialized version of one of those things."

"So, uh, your description of evil sounds totally unrelated to your abusive authoritarian theocracy situation, but if you'd asked me to guess, I would have suspected based on the word that those were closely related."

"I mean, it might be? You were upset about there being punishments for incompetence, that's the kind of thing that's Evil, and about people pursuing their own goals instead of dropping them to go rescue someone else, that's the kind of thing that's Evil."

"I have been known to have results in the world - on purpose! Things that were actually substantially opposed to a widespread farming or gathering lifestyle! - and make sacrifices for them. And I read Good, apparently."

"Huh. What things?"

"Ended material scarcity for billions of people."

"- huh. I guess maybe it depends how you go about it but I would've expected almost all possible ways of going about that to be Evil."

"Oh? Just because it's ambitious?"

"And because - Good's awfully narrow, right, there's such a tiny list of ways of doing things that's Good-approved, and in the course of doing anything actually ambitious I'd expect you'd have to - step outside the lines, even if you started out more sympathetic to Good - or more squeamish - than I am -"

"I suspect that's why I read Chaotic, but I didn't have to hurt anybody."

"Lots of things are Evil that aren't hurting people. Or that hurt people but aren't bad for them, like dentistry."

"What things are Evil that aren't hurting people?"

"Making a lot of money. Worshipping Asmodeus, or convincing other people to, or worshipping some other Evil god, or convincing other people to. Casting Evil spells, including infernal healing, which is the only healing spell we have. Necromancy."

"Wow, making a lot of money is evil? Do people mostly take vows of poverty if they wanna be Good? I guess I didn't happen to make any money. I don't know enough about your gods or magic to guess at the others."

"I think they mostly give their wealth to their Good church? Paladins are mostly allowed their fancy Evil-slaying gear but you wouldn't expect one to have, like, a nice house. Maybe you just happened not to break any of the rules but you'd have gotten really lucky. What if someone had tried to stop you from ending material scarcity and you'd had to defend yourself, would you have?"

"I did operate in secret for that reason! Later someone found out and was mad and murdered me."

"Ah. I guess if material scarcity is solved and you can just have resurrections in lieu of self-defense that also might create a society in which people aren't Evil."

"- oh, no, I wasn't resurrected, I turned into an apsel instead."

"Ah, okay. Do you like it?"

"I do! I was pretty bummed about being out of touch with my parents but now they're dead too."

"I've heard it said that it's better to die young but," Shrug. "There's not a known fact of the matter about it."

"Why is that said here?"

"Uh, because you're not really useful alive, unless you're a very unusual person, and everyone can be useful, in death. And because to the extent you are useful alive it's mostly as a young person, right, when you can be a soldier and have children. And also because you might develop habits of mind, in life - stubbornness, quiet personal heresies - that are going to make it harder than it needs to be to fix you afterwards."

"Yikes!" Since they are on a shuttle Cam shrugs out of his coat, though the shirt stays on, and stretches his wings. "Well, things don't work that way where I'm from."

"There are places that aren't like Cheliax on Golarion! They're all worse, but they exist."

"Worse how?"

"Well, uh, in most of them women don't have rights! Cheliax is the only country that'd pay for me to go to school. Nidal worships the god of torture and they just torture everyone all the time, not even because it improves them in any way but just for fun. Andoran has like half their kids starving in orphanages because they banned abortion suddenly. Taldor has a civil war every five years, sometimes they're in a hurry so they do it every three. Osirion's a theocracy under the pharaoh who has, like, three hundred concubines and no one's allowed to talk to him directly and it's illegal to doubt that he's literally a god. Thuvia is being invaded by daemons from Abaddon. Katapesh has half their human population enslaved.  Numeria is ruled by a drunk barbarian who ordered all the nation's grain made into an enormous alcohol pool for him to paddle a raft around in. They lost almost everyone under five that winter, a guy I met from there said. Galt has overthrown its government like ten times in the last twenty years. They execute people with special guillotines that trap the soul so it can't make it to an afterlife."

"Half their human population, that's specific."

"Cheliax doesn't have human slavery at all." Smugly. 

"I'm not, uh, impressed with you for enslaving gnomes or whatever instead."

"Well, if I were a gnome I guess I might be upset about gnome slavery, if people got kidnapped into it or something."

"I am generically anti-slavery, fun fact. I don't think 'chaotic good' will mostly make especially fine-grained predictions about me but in this particular case I, uh, assume the standard chaotic good opinion is anti-slavery? If it's not you have some pretty cut-rate chaos and good."

"Chaotic good people are extremely against slavery. In Andoran they raid the Underdark to rescue slaves, hijack ships, all that stuff."

"Cool, good for them. All they need is competent social services and they sound like they'll be all set."

Carissa looks skeptical but doesn't comment. She looks out the window instead. "That's probably Absalom. The one shaped kind of like a star."

"It's neat looking! Do you have an idea where I should land this thing or do you want me to hover it and give you a parachute?"

"Most of the island's uninhabitable, I bet we can get right near the city and still land somewhere people mostly won't notice. We should hurry just in case Cheliax does send assassins."

"Sure, point me at something you like the look of." He descends and puts up a picture of the island that grows as they approach.

As promised it is dead volcanic ash right up to the edges of the city. 

She puts her hair up and points out a landing site. "You can if you'd like make half a pound of spellsilver in vials identical to the one I first showed you, in exchange for a fancier headband and any anti-mind-control items I can find and purchase for that price in Absalom."

He assembles them in neat little rows on the floor. "Are you putting up your hair as a disguise, do you want, like, a quick amateur makeup job, prosthetic elf ears - do you have elves - hair dye -"

"I'm gonna do an illusion, but it's easier if it has less to cover. We have elves. An illusion can do my ears but if you want to do clothes that are, I dunno, typically Galtan, that'd be helpful."

"I know fuckall about Galtan clothes, name a Galtan about your size and I can grab whatever they're wearing today?"

"...I don't actually know the names of many Galtans.... can I have that headband back for a second." 

He hands it over.

"...Marie-Louis Emilia Lucia Champlain de Cortesar. Thanks."

He offers her an outfit.

She strips and puts it on, apparently unselfconsciously, and then does the illusion. It makes her look somewhat more northern European, in Earth terms, and less pretty, and about ten years older. "All right. If I'm not back in an hour and you didn't take any actions that predictably would've had the consequence of delaying my return you can do conjuration necessary to find and rescue me, if you feel like it." 

And off she goes.

Cam hangs out in the shuttle and does some background reading. Does this planet have newspapers? Let's read newspapers.

The planet does have newspapers. Big broadsheets covering the latest triumphs of Galt in the River Lands and the flight of Grand Prince Stavian's traitor cousin from Taldor and a royal wedding in Korvosa and a series of ships lost at sea off the coast of Katapesh. In smaller print there's lots more: fashions, news updates, products for sale, religious evangelizing...

He skims newspapers, getting a feel for the place. Then he checks up on his correspondence, which hopefully has been busily researching the world for him in massive parallel - ah, yes - he has to be careful with his paper allotment, he does it in really small print.

They've found out a lot more! The executive summary is that the gods seem to be real, for the most part assholes, and Asmodeus-ruled Cheliax among the worst of the lot on that front (though admittedly not on the other fronts Carissa quoted him on, like child mortality and material scarcity and women's rights). Good and Evil mostly track the very obvious things - helping people is Good, charity is Good, defense of the innocent is Good, mercy and generosity and so on - but there are some confusing exceptions, like necromancy being Evil despite not to Hell's moral sensibilities being very bad. Abortion is Evil because the afterlife is full of neglected babies with no one to look after them, half-raising themselves. 

In Carissa's Hell people are tortured for centuries in the course of being shaped into devils. Almost everyone from Cheliax goes there. They have routine mindreading for loyalty and execute outliers. 

Wow, yikes! Do they know anything Carissa didn't tell him about dealing with all the mind-affecting magic -

There seems to be lots of it, mostly done by spellcasters and powerful sapient creatures. They haven't found any references to sure ways of blocking it. He could live on the Moon and do everything by drone, that's one of the best ideas so far.

The lag would be terrible! Also he would need Carissa's permission!

He checks the computer's clock when it feels like it's been about an hour of reading.

It has in fact been an hour.

...and Carissa and her surroundings are -

Alley in the city of Absalom. Her clothes seem - kind of shredded? But she looks intact and on her way in a hurry.

Is there anyone around her, how far away is she -

Maybe half a mile. There are some people nearby and...maybe some farther back in pursuit?

...okay. Optimal extraction protocol...

...probably he could just fly over and yank her into the ship with bungee cords, honestly, but that might not be a great idea, slightly exposed.

He lifts off for line of sight, makes a telescope, and gets a bead on her direct enough that he can conjure onto the scene. Pursuers still pursuing?

A couple of them, yeah. They seem to be - uniformed?

Carissa ducks into an alleyway and illusions herself again into a crippled beggar and huddles against the wall.

Hmmm, does it count as part of rescuing her if - okay, little speaker in her collar. "Do you need me or do you have it under control?"

- startle. " - life goes by so quickly," she mumbles to the wall. "But you do always get there in the end. You just want to make sure you don't have any unwelcome company."

"I'm going to take that as a deal-with-uniformed-pursuit? I can see you, you can nod or shake your head."

Nod.

Uniformed pursuit is tied up. He tries to time it to make it a soft landing.

Carissa proceeds out to the shuttle at a run, apparently unpursued now.

He takes off as soon as she's aboard. "What was that about?"

"Someone tried to mug me and I wasn't sure if they were just a mugger or an assassin and I'd bought a necklace of Fireballs so I detonated one. They were just a mugger. You're - allowed to use lethal force in response to violence but apparently not Fireball, in Absalom, because they worry about fires, which is reasonable enough of them." Sigh. "I got two bags of holding, one for each of us, and two necklaces of proof against detection and location which should make it more inconvenient for Cheliax to spy on his, and I got you a ring of Mind Shielding, which makes you immune to mindreading and Discern Lies and Detect Alignment, but doesn't do anything against mind control. One man told me he'd heard of mind-buttressing as an enchantment you can do on armor. He didn't have any on hand but I'm an armor enchanter and can make it for you if I can learn enough about it. He wasn't sure anything had been written about it - it's a rare technique - but you could check, right? And in the meantime this is a Rod of Absorption, you have to hold it ready - I can show you how - but then it absorbs spells directed at you. And this is a Cap of the Free Thinker, which improves your odds of throwing off mind control."

She is breathing hard and her breathing isn't especially slowing down now that the emergency is past; she's starting to get kind of flushed as a result. 

"Sounds like a good shopping trip till the mugging. Uh, are you... okay... I assume you'll turn me down if I offer you anxiolytics or anything..." He starts putting things on.

"Oh, I'm fine, I'm just having a shock reaction like a fifteen year old in their first combat situation, probably because it's been a long day. What is an anxiolytic? We do in fact drug fifteen year olds who are having shock reactions about their first combat situation, if the combat situation is ongoing. Interferes with learning from it but that's not always the top priority." 

"A class of drugs that reduce shock reactions."

"You can make me one you are pretty sure reduces shock reactions but does not kill people, not mixed with any other substances."

"Uh, if it's not mixed with any other substances I have to put it direct in your bloodstream, they're normally made in pills that have fillers to make them stay pill shaped."

Carissa doesn't really have a threat model for this but presumably he could've just not told her so that seems...fine? "- sure."

"And I will also require permission to treat you for allergic or other adverse reactions. In the manner considered best practices at my medical school which was oriented towards arranging the well-being of human patients."

"Actually, probably I will just be fine in a couple of minutes, thanks." She has taken classes on how to not get summoning-management related decision fatigue and make bad decisions. ...arguably this is a bad decision but she can't think of a way around that.

She clasps her hands so they stop trembling. "Thank you. For coming after me."

"You're welcome."

She slides down against the side of the shuttle and tries to think. She'll be better at it once she has a headband. Maybe that's step 1. A headband and a try at mind-buttressing armor for the apsel. Gives Cheliax more time to figure out what to do, but - the more assassinating her isn't possible to do, the less they'll be willing to decide it's what they should do, lest their supervisors be disappointed with their inability to get the results they claimed were necessary....

She promised to conjure for orders. 

"How sure are you that you can't make magic things?"

"...I can't make magic things of the kind I'm familiar with but I guess maybe I could copy these things if I tried it."

"I'm worried they might have put explosive runes in the letter I want to conjure, with my orders from my government, it's probably what I'd do. What's a good way to check... we might need to land, if they did the runes'll blow the shuttle apart."

"I could make it far away? Or you could let me try to copy these artifacts and if I can't that's suggestive."

"Explosive runes go off when read, it'd be safe until then. You can try to copy your headband."

He tries to copy his headband.

There's a headband!

Carissa does something with her hand, like brushing a hair out of her eyes except about a foot in front of her. "It's not magical."

"Yeah, that's what I would expect. Do you want me to fly off somewhere and conjure the orders and read 'em, I can't be exploded."

"- you have a force damage immunity? I've never heard of anything with a force damage immunity. Ghosts don't have a force damage immunity."

"...do you want to try doing some force damage to my wing, which I can take off and replace if something does go wrong with this experiment, just to be sure?"

"Probably a good idea but I don't prep combat spells...I should've grabbed some beads of force instead of the necklace of Fireball, then I'd have been following the law in Absalom, too - I guess I could try to sleep and we could do it in the morning."

"Okay. Should I fly to the Worldwound while you're napping, or get up in orbit so we're hard to chase, or what."

"Orbit?"

"Around the planet? Like the moon."

She misses her headband. She thinks about it for thirty seconds. "We should do that. I think it'd make it very difficult to teleport to us. If we are by a miracle dragged back to Cheliax in the morning will the shuttle plow into the planet like a moon and make it uninhabitable? That was very bad for magical progress last time it happened and I don't think it'd serve Asmodeus at all."

"I can tell it what to do if I stop giving it instructions, and have it land on the moon or something."

"I expect that would be a thing where we have a common goal."

The shuttle goes up up up.

Carissa pulls a very thin bedroll out of her suitcase and tries to fall asleep. She does not really succeed at this but, well, eventually it'll work, probably.

"...I bet the answer is no but: sleeping pills?"

"I'll pass. Thanks." She has at least mostly stopped trembling.