Sure ain't.

Instead she is facing a sort of tavern, if taverns had no visible stock behind the bar, and were made of remarkably nice materials without going for a particularly high-end aesthetic otherwise, and had a window displaying - the night sky with frequent brilliant explosions? - through the wall to her left, and -

- had exactly one patron nursing a mugful of beverage, dangling his dark blue wings and tail off the back of a barstool.

She's not where she's expecting to be and that guy is Evil and powerful. Powerful enough to do--whatever this is--in the middle of a fortress. He doesn't look like any kind of demon she's heard of but there are a lot of kinds and a lot of unique ones.

Samora tries disbelieving this whole situation. It's a very easy situation to not believe in but that doesn't make it go away.

She can't go get reinforcements or someone else who might succeed on their save; the chapel only has one door. She could start blasting, but the probably-a-demon is probably expecting that, and also "start throwing combat spells while inside your own fortress while it's very plausible you're enchanted" is a stupid plan.

She slides her shield from her back to her arm and says, "What is this? What did you do?"

"- uh, I don't control the door, but it's some kinda interdimensional bar situation. I think you can turn around and close the door behind you and it'll go away, if you want?"

That's a tempting suggestion. It's really tempting. But it would not result in understanding how this "interdimensional bar situation" got into the fort.

"Who does control the door? And who are you?" She's got one foot keeping the door open and is listening as hard as she can and there's nothing that sounds like the rest of the fort is being attacked.

"The bar is a person and she refers to the mysterious door-controlling entities as 'the landlords'. I'm a demon."

"Yeah, I kinda figured that last one. Been wondering why you haven't attacked me yet." Come on, brag about your plans. Or monologue about something else until Samora figures out what's going on.

(The bar doesn't detect as Evil. She has no evidence it's a person. No idea why the demon would claim it was one of it wasn't, either, but demons often have reasons for their actions that don't make any sense. Also, this one seems . . . tireder and sadder than she's used to.)

"...why would I do that, it's not like I even own the place and you've just, like, walked in and talked?"

"Because that's what demons do." If this one isn't doing murder and torture and destruction, it's because he saw an opportunity to do more murder and torture and destruction later and had enough impulse control to go for it. Or he's just having fun with how confused she is.

Even if he really didn't create this demiplane-or-mindscape-or-something, between the impulse control and the being a rare or unique type and his aura strength she is not at all confident she'd win a fight if she started one. He looks completely sincere and has this whole time, but that just means he's splendid enough to lie really well.

There's still no sign that the rest of the fort is being attacked. Apart from the wings, the demon looks weirdly human, more like a fleshcrafting experiment than an outsider. The room and its strange window don't look like something a demon would design or like something a human would design. Nothing here adds up; her best model of the situation still has no explanation for most of what she's seeing.

Inheritor, give me the wisdom to understand this situation and how to deal with it.

"If you have only previously encountered bound demons and buy all the racist propaganda about why it's important to summon responsibly, I guess you'd come away with that impression. I'm basically just a guy though."

???

Is he actually unaware that the other side of the door is a Worldwound fortress? If he is unaware, that's--probably good and she should stop him from finding out?

"I don't know why you'd expect me to believe you about that, regardless of what circumstances I've previously met demons in. . . . Though you are a very unusual one."

"I'm actually sorta surprised you've met any. The bar claims to be interdimensional. I guess it's possible your dimension has humans and demons in it by total coincidence."

Good thing she already decided not to tell him. Also, ugh, deception is even harder when she's fishing for information at the same time, all her instincts are pointing the wrong way even more than they normally would.

"Have you met humans before, then? I didn't think the Abyss had any." Oh, maybe he used to be human and remembers enough of it to recognize her as one. At least she didn't give him a clue to where they are, probably.

"I don't know of any languages that call my home that but it's only demons there, I just accept lots of summonses as a general habit."

"And they don't all just ask you to kill their enemies?"

"No, the planet I usually get summoned to is very peaceful, they want me to like make spaceships or islands or whatever."

None of this makes any sense, presumably because it's a pack of lies. But even then, why this pack of lies?

"Supposing I believed all of that," she says, trying and failing to sound like she's considering believing it, "what are you looking to get out of this interaction? I don't want any spaceships or islands," she adds, trying and mostly succeeding at sounding like she knows what a spaceship is.

"...uh, I don't have very high hopes for this interaction because you seem pretty racist but in general I'm hanging out here waiting for someone to walk in who can do resurrections. I was most recently summoned to a world that is not my usual and they were having a war when I got there and a lot of people're dead now."

"I can only do Raise Dead anyway," she says on bewildered autopilot, and then mentally kicks herself for revealing what circle she is. This demon has a weirdly good model of what humans want. Even succubi usually don't have much repertoire beyond sex/wealth/power. 

"...uh, speaking as a guy from a universe where that's not a thing, what disappointing limitations have you just implied exactly -"

Huh, maybe divine magic varies between planets enough that she didn't just give away her power level. Or he already knew which of them would win in a fight. 

It's such a reasonable question to ask if he really does want people resurrected, is the thing. And such a roundabout way of getting more details on her abilities. And she doesn't, actually, have a better idea for getting less confused than hearing the rest of the lie.

"I need an intact body."

"Ah, fuck."

" . . . If you're telling the truth, I'm sorry." Not convinced of that enough to offer to help him get in touch with a seventh circle, though.

"Not like it's your fault."

She's seen that expression. On the faces of people whose patrolmates have been killed by demons. This is, she reminds herself sternly, how they get you. They look guilty and sad and say they regret their Evil deeds and want to make amends, if only you'd help them out a little by providing some resource that you absolutely should not give them.

(But then, why did he claim to be a demon? With his face he could have claimed to be a tiefling and then like as not she'd be in full problem-solving mode trying to help him by now.)

"I'd like to hear the full story, if it's one you're willing to tell." Maybe he'll say something inconsistent or something that gives a clue as to what his plan is. Maybe she'll keep him talking until everyone realizes nobody has seen her since prayers and . . . Sendings her or tries to open this door from the other side or something. Maybe she's just asked a really sad person to explain all his problems to someone staring suspiciously at him. Which is very unlikely but also the best possibility apart from how rude she would have been being this whole time.

"I mean I can't claim I love the idea but if someone does show up who can help me I will probably need to do the full disclosure thing and maybe it'll suck less if I practice," he sighs. He finishes whatever's in his mug. "Are you going to stand there with your shield up the whole time, I don't even know what your demonic threat model is here. Though I suppose of course you shouldn't believe me if I tell you it wouldn't help."

"There's plenty of things a shield won't help with, and there's plenty it will. If you haven't enchanted me already, which I haven't ruled out."

"That's not a thing my kinda demon can do. We just make stuff. Well, 'just'."

Shrug. "I figure that either everything you've said is a carefully designed lie, or I don't need to worry about you suddenly attacking me."

"It sounds like you can't help me, and if you don't want any stuff I probably can't help you either, so if you want we could simply not talk."

"What I'd really like is some way to figure out what's going on. Which I guess boils down to some way of knowing whether you're telling the truth or not."

"Well, I certainly can't convince you of that, and it actually sounds extra unpleasant to relate my tragic backstory if you are going to relate to it as a probable malicious lie. You could talk to Bar." He pats it. "She doesn't speak, she does a thing with napkins."

That's potentially a good idea except that she'd have to let the door shut behind her, and also--"As in, napkins appear with writing on them? I could probably tell whether it was you or the bar making them, but I can't actually read whatever language we're speaking right now."

"I'm speaking English and I'm going to wildly guess that you are not. The place has a translation effect. I'm not sure Bar needs it, mind, she might just know all languages in her own right. If you can't read at all I'm not sure if she has a failover."

"Oh, if there's translation magic other than mine going on and it works on text then I'm all set." And that was a helpful, relatively easily verifiable statement. Which would require her to let go of the door to actually verify it.

What is she actually worried about, if she lets go of the door? Number one, that it will shut behind her and she'll be trapped in here with a demon. She's already trapped in here with a demon; the only option she's preserving is the option to make him chase her into the chapel. Which is only a useful option if the bit about the demon not controlling the door and it disappearing if she leaves and closes it is true. Number two, the reduced ability to hear anything going on in the rest of the fort, but if this was a diversion for an attack on the fort the attack would have started already. Number three--actually the previous item was number three and this is number two, if anyone comes looking for her she'll be easier to find like this than if she lets the door close. Probably. 

"Hm. What happens if someone tries to open this door from the other side? Either right now or if it's closed."

"...do you want me to ask Bar for you since you're really attached to standing over there?"

Another little note of confusion in the model where he's lying--he could have just said whatever the lie was without pretending to check. There's no proof of anything either way, but the part of her that's living in the world where he's lying keeps being surprised and confused and the part of her living in the world where he's telling the truth keeps having each new statement slot neatly into place.

"I would like that. Thank you." Possibly nobody will realize she isn't with someone else until her patrol shift, which is inconveniently not for several more hours, but surely at that point they'll raise the alarm.

He shrugs - his wings ripple a little - and he turns to the bar. "Hey Bar, while she's holding the door open what happens if someone tries to open that door in her world from the other side?"

A napkin appears.

He picks it up to read. "It won't open, if they try to destroy it Bar's not sure what happens because she's really really old and that doesn't happen often enough to be in her window of clear recollection and it might not be consistent anyway, you and them might be able to holler a conversation insofar as you'd be audible to each other if you were standing on opposite sides of the closed door," he reports.

That sounds like the sort of thing that could happen. There are other things that would sound almost as much like the sort of thing that could happen and would be a lot more useful for most possible schemes. Going in would still be doing something she has reason to believe a powerful demon wants her to do.

Ultimately the thing that decides her is that, if the bar is in fact a person, they might need help and she might be able to help. She takes a step into the room, lets the door close behind her, and starts walking towards the bar. 

And then spins around at maximum speed and yanks the door open again, for just long enough to make sure it didn't seal behind her or start opening onto the Abyss or anything, and then approaches the bar for real.

The demon observes this with a sort of glum unimpressedness.

Welcome to Milliways. Can I get you a drink? The first one's free.

Neither the bar nor the demon reacts when she gets within twenty feet, so most likely neither of them is possessed or an Evil summon.

"I'm going to cast Detect Magic, all it does it let me see spells being cast," she says, because having a divination mistaken for a combat spell by a demon unfamiliar with Golarion's magic would be the stupidest way for this to turn into a fight. If this draws no objections, she casts it, then turns to the bar and says, "Not right now, thank you. Can you tell me about the nature of this place? Where it came from, why and how it moves, what sort of people inhabit it?"

THE BAR IS REALLY MAGIC

THE DEMON IS TOO

I'm afraid I can't remember anything quite so subjectively long ago as all that. The establishment itself is stationary and the door, which connects many worlds, seems at times to have "whims" and "moods", but not ones I can get to know by anything other than observation. Sometimes people stay here for extended periods for one reason or another, such as the giant squid in the lake in the backyard, though because of the time dilation effect between mutually unobserved areas there could easily be thousands of years passing for someone down here while a patron in their room upstairs experienced only an eyeblink.

Ow ouch her whatever Detect Magic uses instead of eyes. She was at least able to determine that the appearance of the napkin originated with the bar, not the demon, before she loses the spell.

". . . Does time dilation mean if I go back out the door it might be hundreds of years from now? What happens if the door doesn't exist any more?" This was not in her threat model and it should have been, fae do that sort of thing so there's no reason demons couldn't.

Almost always, while the door is not open to a particular world and someone from it is in Milliways, time will not pass in that world.

Well, if she believes the bar, which is definitely powerful enough to have an alignment aura and doesn't ping as Evil but either of those can theoretically be spoofed, about the time dilation at all, there's no reason to disbelieve it about it working that way with the door. She goes and checks the door again anyway; it still opens on a chapel that looks exactly the same as it used to look.

"And you've been here, and been a, a wooden structure, for as long as you can remember? How long has the demon been here?" She considers asking the demon his name and then realizes she was just thinking about not having fae magic her threat model, and fae are one of the few kinds of being who might falsely claim to be a demon.

I've been a bar for as long as I can remember, yes. The demon has been here for about two days.

To Cam: "Why did you tell me you were a demon?" (She expects the response to be informative whether it's true or false.)

"I didn't actually expect you to know what that was since I expected you to be from a different universe and I would not expect most universes to have us. Or something that translates as us. And I am one."

What possible world could produce that statement? What possible set of beliefs this person could have that would produce that statement? What possible set of beliefs could that statement be intended to cause Samora to have?

"What are the other demons you've known like as people? What's the plane they live on like?"

"They're just folks. Immortal folks, most of whom never had childhoods and just started existing one day, who have always been safe and always had pretty much everything they wanted if it was made of atoms. They get into, like, music or gardening or theater or whatever. The plane had nothing in it to begin with. Just empty space, no air or anything. We made everything in it."

"Then why, according to you, have all the demons I met attacked me immediately and only stopped when I chased them off or killed them?" That only hints that she's been at the Worldwound to someone who knows what the Worldwound is, she thinks.

"I think you probably have a different kind? Especially if you can kill them. An unusual run of assholes could explain the behavior but my kind cannot die."

"Is it possible that the translation magic has gotten confused and you are actually a type of fae?"

"I can't vouch for the translation magic but in my home cosmology fairies are the guys with bug wings and they move stuff instead of conjuring it. There's also angels. Feathers'n'transmutation."

"Archons, Agathions, Azatas, Axiomites, Psychopomps, Proteans, Devils, Daemons?"

"I know some of those words but not as like. Things that are."

"What do those words mean where you're from? Can you tell me all the planes you're aware of?" (He hasn't dodged a single question that wasn't about the war.)

"I think 'archon' might have been like... an ancient civilization's some kind of rank, I'd have to look it up. Psychopomps are mythical guys who conduct dead people to afterlives but in my home cosmology that just happens without any guys. Devils are also mythical though sometimes equated with demons - we take our name in the language I'm speaking from the same body of mythology, it's a human language. Daemons are, like, there's this series of fantasy novels where people have souls that take animal shape outside of their bodies, and the animal souls are called daemons. Demons and angels and fairies each have our own planes, there's one for dead humans who do not get to turn into anything cool called Limbo, there's the regular human world I'm accustomed to, and the place I was with all the war dead I need to fix is named Arda."

". . . A lot of that kind of sounds like something I'd expect to hear from someone whose civilization had lost touch with everywhere else centuries ago and the meanings of a bunch of words had drifted and been forgotten over time." If he's actually a tiefling that would really explain a lot.

"I do not think it is that because some demons are really into history."

"Hm. How many planes do you know?" she asks the bar.

Regrettably I can't count that high.

"What's the highest you can count to?" Because the answer might be six, for all she knows about interdimensional bars.

I think the last time I tried this the person who was interested in a similar question stopped asking in the octillions somewhere. I believe I can go higher than that but haven't tried recently.

Samora puzzles over unfamiliar morphemes through two different translation magics. "Octillion is--eight millions? Is that mostly demiplanes or are you only counting entire planes or is that a dumb question?" 

Possibly she should get a wizard in here. Not until she's more confident it's safe, though, the strongest wizard this fort has is third circle so if it's not she'd be making the problem worse.

An octillion is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Eight million would be 8,000,000. I do not distinguish demiplanes specifically, but I can sometimes tell when multiple worlds form a "sheaf" with local means of transit between them that doesn't extend to outside worlds.

That's so many! Unreasonably many. There can't possibly be that many planes even if you counted every bag of holding, rope trick, portable hole, and coat of pockets as its own plane. Even if they were making a thousand planes a day for a thousand thousand years.

"How can there possibly be that many? Can you explain the sheaf thing like I'm a bit stupid?"

For instance, you appear to be from a sheaf, with regular if throttled correspondence between the Material and e.g. Axis, but no obvious documented ability to venture to most of the other worlds that I contact. His world is also a sheaf with the worlds listed and summoning/death as transit between them but no out-of-sheaf travel by native methods. Most worlds are not part of any sheaf, in my experience.

So either the winged person is a demon allied with a very powerful Neutral or Good person and telling a really complicated lie, or she's outside Creation with one Evil and one nonEvil aberration. Aberrations also usually attack her on sight but she's pretty sure they're not inherently Evil like fiends, just really weird.

"So you're both claiming to be from outside Pharasma's Creation? And to be--the kind of people who can make moral choices and change and grow over time and decide who you want to be?"

I am from outside Pharasma's Creation. I think I would describe myself as having moral agency but a relatively fixed nature.

"I have never heard of Pharasma and whatever that is has not discernibly claimed credit for anything I've previously encountered. Asshole who runs Arda is called Eru and my place is anonymous work if it didn't just emerge without a creator."

"If this isn't an extremely elaborate trap it's one of the most interesting things that's ever happened to me. Also, I'm pretty sure you're not a fae at this point, so do you mind telling me a name I can call you by?"

"I'm Cam. Is that something you're not supposed to ask fae?"

"It's one of the things they say about fae, yeah, if you give them your name they'll keep it. You can call me Samora."

To the bar: "Do you go by anything?" 

Just Bar.

Samora still hasn't lowered her shield, but her expression has been gradually shifting from "confused suspicion" to "confused curiosity". "I don't suppose either of you have anything that would be conclusive evidence you're from outside Creation even given it's your idea?"

I'm afraid my perspective on your own world is limited to things like published works and beverage recipes so I'm not sure what would constitute such proof.

"I dunno, did you change your mind about wanting any stuff? Or are people who can make stuff all over the place there, I wouldn't know."

Hmmmmm. "Could you make a holy weapon? I don't think the Evil kind of demons can do that." Or at least she's quite sure she couldn't enchant anything to be unholy for reasons that seem very likely to extend to outsiders.

"Is that magic? Magic is not, so far as I know, stuff."

Everything that interacts with alignment is in one or another sense magic. She's not thinking of anything else an Evil outsider couldn't make that somebody else could.

That's because she's thinking about it all wrong. She shouldn't be listing things that can exist and  asking whether demons can make them, she should be looking for things that can't exist. Something that would make her go "What in Creation is that?" and accept the answer "it isn't". Something that can't be spoofed by illusions or temporary conjuration. Something that works whether he's creating things from nowhere or teleporting them from somewhere else. 

She has an idea. It's ridiculous, but anything that works is going to be ridiculous.

"Could you create a statue of me made entirely of diamond? I am entirely aware of how insane that sounds."

"No, that's easy, but like if it's full size that's going to be annoying, I can't get rid of it."

He's still saying things people from anywhere she has ever imagined would not say. "I assure you, if it is real diamond I will have no trouble getting rid of it." 

"You must be a lot stronger than you look. Sure." Bam. It is posed just like her at this very moment, shield and all, and it glitters with genuine diamond fire in the cozy lighting of the bar.

That's uncanny. In multiple ways. 

"Thank you. Is there somewhere I can go experiment on this where you're not looking?" Not that she can perfectly verify he isn't looking, but making it more inconvenient can't hurt. "And can I have a diamond file too, actually? I need to scrape a sample off."

File. "You could go in the backyard? Or rent a room if you can drag it up stairs. It's, y'know, solid rock."

"Thanks. Back in, uh, however long the time dilation makes it be I guess." She pockets the file, tries doors until she finds the one that goes to the backyard, then finally hangs up her shield so she can grab the statue by its shield and drag all 600-odd pounds of it outside. 

Samora flips a copper piece several times to pick several different places on the statue and files off a little bit from each until she has enough for a Restoration. She breaks the head off and files off some more from inside the torso in case only the outer shell is real, as if that would make this any less impossible. If this works, Petrai is going to have to wait until tomorrow to recover from his life drain, but if this is real she has a diamond larger than any Golarion has ever had and Petrai will not care about the wait. 

The spell goes off exactly as normal. She hasn't been life-drained, but she can feel the lingering strain in her arms from dragging the statue fade to perfectly rested freshness.

If Cam hasn't been observing the backyard, the next thing he'll see is Samora dragging the statue back inside, opening the door to the chapel and shoving the statue out, then staring at him with more emotions than should be able to fit on a human face. Shock, joy, fear, something like awe and a sort of desperate hope.

"I apologize for my earlier rudeness. You wanted resurrections, right? I think I can get you that. Do you have partial remains or none at all, it's going to matter for who I need to call in."

"The entire planet they were standing on was destroyed and you can't get too close to its unrecognizable residue safely."

That's a lot of war. Maybe enough war to make almost anyone read Evil. Which is both very bad, and in a particular narrow way better than someone who can make diamonds from nothing being Evil because he likes being Evil. 

"There are people who can do it with no remains. They're very powerful and very important but if you can make diamonds I can get their attention. Because powerful spells consume diamonds. If the statue was, somehow, a trick, you should probably tell me now before we waste their time."

"...no, it's just a big diamond statue, though it was maybe like kind of rude of you not to be like 'by the way this will empower me beyond the dreams of my brethren, I don't simply happen to like shiny rocks and know how to identify diamond'. Uh - it's possible that getting any one of a specific subset of the dead would let that one get the rest of the million-odd ones I can't fix out. But if we're trying that, I need to fix the ones I can fix, first, in case they're, uh, mad enough at me to interrupt. - I should maybe around this point tell you the whole story."

"You have a point about the rudeness; I wasn't tracking that adequately because I didn't think it was going to turn out to be possible and now that it is I kind of doubt my ability to pay you back. Also I can't personally use it for anything that I'd expect to harm your interests. If you want to set conditions on what purposes I can give parts of it to other people for we can talk about that, but I'm not going to actively work towards using it for anything I would rather destroy it than use it for."

"Maybe I should like, consult Bar about what things it's useful for, and maybe it's all good and you merely have a massive security problem on your hands. It can wait, time's paused." Shrug. "So - Arda. I got summoned. By a kid. Some of the Elves were leaving their planet, the twin suns of which had recently been put out by the one outright evil god in the pantheon, because they had a disagreement with their not evil but rather noninterventionist gods about whether they should be noninterventionist too. Kid was one of the departing cohort. They were underresourced to do this, would've needed to make a few trips, after some ado I filled out their wishlist and went with them to the other Elf planet." He at this point pulls his computer off his belt and produces a little illusion of the binary sun system and a dotted line to another. Dot dot dot dot. "I'll pop right home if anything kills my summoner so I take a detour with the kid and his folks and a few extra people so they aren't lonely, I make them a little planetoid way off away from everything to sit the war out." This he doesn't illustrate; instead he zooms in on Second Elf Planet. "Evil god has set up here. He's got a client species, they're in constant pain, they can swear unbreakable oaths - Elves can also do that, and the gods, the big ones are Valar and there are littler Maiar - millions of these orc folks," photo of an orc from a newspaper, "they're fine left on their own, they function startlingly well around the chronic pain, he just threw that in to be a dick, but the oaths had every one of them old enough to talk, so they were the shock troops, suddenly called back into service by the reappearance of their god. He had pulled this shit before, centuries back, created the orcs back then by capturing and torturing and raping Elves till he got them to come out how he wanted, and the other Valar eventually got off their butts and locked him up, but they set a finite sentence and he waited a little while on parole and then put out the suns and did some murder and skipped the system. - how much of this are you following. I haven't tried to tell it before."

"I think I'm following the important parts," she says grimly. 

"Right. So, we have a war. He's - sandbagging - his name is Melkor, the evil god, and he's got a Maia lieutenant who's also a real piece of work, Sauron. They're... you're from some kind of sword and sorcery tech background, and the Elves had interplanetary ships better than the kind I had back home but otherwise were a ways back from where my world's at - but I can tell the difference, they're doing things that look like, say, poison in a water supply, but are actually ridiculously more sophisticated than poison, the implied capabilities make having orcs running around carrying weapons obviously just something they're doing to be horrible and inflict moral injury. There's a Maia-ruled kingdom that's under a - barrier thing - nobody goes in and out without her say-so, so they're safe, for however long she holds up, but they're not helping -

"- anyway I'm running around doing supply and also demoralizing shit like installing a city's worth of suicide devices that the Elves there can use to blow up their souls, they have these physical souls in their heads, if the bad guys get their hands on them they can use them to torture them, they can copy them a billion times and torture all of them, most of the people in the world are copies of souls they're doing this to and I never tried to get more specific on the number because I did not want to give the slightest hint that I was responding to that information -

"- and the bad guys want to make a deal. With me. I'm the only daeva in the universe. Once I showed up, the Valar decided that shouldn't be allowed and changed the laws of the universe to patch whatever fluke I slipped through, whatever weird glitch made that one summoning circle work. Nobody can get another one. Which incidentally means that the two mortal species who aren't natively immortal and don't have those physical souls - which send backups to the Vala of the dead, so he can get them resurrected whenever he feels like it even if they explode and even if he doesn't feel like it for a million years - are permanently annihilated when they die, and I can't try hooking them up to my really very nice afterlife arrangement instead.

"I say no, obviously, because I can't trust anything they say. They can make binding oaths but only if they talk out loud with their mouth words, they can also make sound illusions, they could bullshit me."

Ah. Samora can see some of the shape of where this is going. If she had a copper for every time she's met someone who had very sympathetic reasons for doing a bunch of diabolism that could be resolved by bringing dead people to life, she'd have two coppers.

"I'm still following. And--I'm sorry to hear about all of this. That it exists and you had so few options for dealing with it."

"Thanks.

"...more shit goes down but the important thing is that the Maia running her isolationist kingdom helps out with a test. See, demons are pretty good at conjuring specific things we want, with reference to what really exists. Surroundings of this, complete works of so-and-so.

"And it turns out I can separate out genuine versus illusion recordings of audio statements.

"And the thing he wants to cut it all out forever, all of it, every fucking thing he does short of animal cruelty and verbally being an asshole, for him and every evil fucking Maia who works for him, airtight oath we labored over for ages -

"- is the rest of the Valar dead, and he was willing to bet that as long as I didn't warn them a black hole would do it, he swore to pay up if I tried even if it didn't work, even if I fixed it. He didn't know, also, that I could bring dead Elves back. Demons can't usually make minds. I can make a snail, it'll be normal, I can make a dog, it'll be as dumb as a snail, etcetera, but there's a workaround, with the physical souls, that I can do. He didn't know that.

"So I went."

The Illusion, which has been flipping through occasional illustrative slides, winks out rather than show it.

"And I made them new suns somewhere else, and a new planet, and I'm about halfway through putting the Elves back, but there were about a million Maiar."

Okay. That's. Kind of the best case scenario in terms of working with him? Terrible in a lot of other ways. But as Evil beings go, 'made some deeply questionable decisions under a lot of stress and is working to fix it' is really good.

"I am suddenly realizing that it's possible our resurrection magic won't work outside Pharasma's Creation if the souls go somewhere different when they die, but I think it's still worth trying. I should probably give you some context on what's outside my door, to start with. Also, did the Evil god verifiably stop or is He still a threat?"

"He stopped. The orcs are free. The copied souls are paused. I did have to allow self defense."

"And--all of their Good and Neutral gods are dead? That's going to be even less likely to work, even here there's nothing to be done when a god dies--how much of an immediate crisis is that, if all the gods died here there'd be shortages of clean water and no-one to bless the crops--?"

"No, not all of them. Some, uh, good and neutral Maiar, were on the other planet. They're grieving. They weren't using their gods for... crops or water?... they were using the god of the dead to back up the souls, so I need to do the resurrections myself and I don't know if the backups will be in working order if he shows up again and I don't know if them not being so would give the Valar any pause in interdicting summoning again. Also there's a stage of pregnancy I can't restore and have the baby turn out right, I can restart it from an earlier point once anybody's recovered enough to ask me but that's not really satisfactory to an Elf. Also all their animals smarter than snails, that's recoverable with some work on the population level but it'll take a while and doesn't help for anybody's pets. Also the planet had an anti-decay effect I couldn't replicate where they could just, make the next fifty year's worth of sandwiches in one go and leave them all out on the counter and they'd all be fine."

The extent to which Cam has taken over the functions of a dead pantheon is pretty disturbing, but, well, it's better than those things going undone and he is trying to get them back.

"What's happening to the babies' souls? There's magic items for preserving food, though not enough to deal with an entire planet that's used to having the effect everywhere and it will take time to make more. If the Valar interdict summoning again do you go back to your home plane?"

"The physical soul forms partway through the pregnancy. After that point, I do the trick I do on everybody else's souls to make it come out properly and they're fine. Before a few weeks' gestation, I make them naively and they're not past the snail threshold yet and develop normally and they're fine. In between I'm just making the replacement bodies for their mothers not pregnant so they can decide when they're ready to pick up again from pre-threshold. Also doing that with some of the others if their families recommend it, they're going through a lot and it's not, you know, great timing. I think the Vala of the dead cannot actually improve on this even if he really wanted to except that I think he might be able to pause a pregnancy midstream and I can't do that. They're not going to go hungry, they're just out their conveniences. I have no idea what the Valar would or could do with me regardless of whether or not they interdict summoning."

"Okay. So you want to finish resurrecting all the elves before trying to resurrect the Valar in case you get banished--is there anything you want help with on that front, and how long is it likely to take? And then in parallel we can work on getting in touch with the people in my world who can cast True Resurrection and Wish, which are the spells that might be able to help bring the Maiar and Valar back. The main problem there is that the door is currently impersonating the only door out of the room I was in and that if I understood you correctly it will disappear if I let it close while I'm outside."

"The Elves and the orcs, orcs have physical souls too. I'm going about as fast as I can, I guess if 'as fast as I can' can be faster I could be done in a smaller number of months. And then I want all the extant Dwarves and humans, who don't have physical souls, to do a summon, at least until such time as one of them who has done so dies and then I guess we might find out it won't help. Do you have a window?"

"Sorry, why does everyone doing a summon maybe help in a way you'll only know about if someone dies? Is that the thing you said about getting people into your afterlife arrangement?"

"Yeah. Where I grew up it turns out that by default if you die you go to Limbo, but if you summon anybody you turn into a daeva, one of the three types. Arda humans and Dwarves don't show up in Limbo but I have not ruled out that they could be daeva."

"Hm. My world's afterlife situation is a bit of a mixed bag. I have every reason to believe I'll see my ancestors and get new powers and continue working towards my goals, but a lot of people are going to end up much worse off and maybe redirecting them into your system would prevent a lot of suffering. Or maybe the Creator won't allow it. Also when dead people die a second time they just cease to exist, so having them summon to get another go could be good if it doesn't come with mental changes or anything."

"It does not appear to. We are very indestructible which some people consider a drawback. Though the Valar have not had a go yet so I don't know how absolute it is."

"I hope they don't try to execute you after you were necessary for bringing them back; that would be terrible incentives."

"Yes, well, expecting they might obviously isn't stopping me."

"I'm not saying it should, just that it would speak poorly of them. But nothing to be done about it this hour, I expect. I should get on figuring out how to get out of the room I was in without letting the door shut or having someone kick it down. I don't suppose 'an additional door in what was previously a solid wall' counts as something you can make?"

"I could interpolate a hole in the wall."

"That's going to alarm people but it's probably the best option. Are you willing to hold the door while I get someone else to trade off on it? It might take a while; the building is a fortress defending against our kind of demons and everyone else will be as suspicious as I was."

"Can't, if I hold the door it's my door."

"Hm. You could go and get someone but I'm worried about--does your plane have a concept of alignments? Good, Evil, Law, Chaos?"

"The words translate but I'm hearing, uh, capital letters?"

"Does that mean you have them as ways actions or people or cultures can be but not as fundamental magical forces?" This conversation is going to end up resolving several millenia-old theological debates, isn't it.

"That is a good summary though it understandably lacks details of what things it's idiomatic and polite to attach the words to."

"Yeah, I expect it would be pretty different. The thing is, a lot of people in the fort have the ability to magically detect Evil beings, and you show up as both Evil and really powerful, and everyone is on edge all the time about demons trying to get into the fort and kill everyone."  Which is extremely reasonable approximately all of the time! But right now she's trying to do diplomacy with an aberration who could potentially help them fix a large fraction of everything and she doesn't want anyone messing that up! "If you make a hole in the wall I expect I can get someone's attention by shouting and I'll explain that you're not out to get us so you don't have to deal with it again."

"I could make a little flying machine that could transmit your voice, or if that would freak people out it could carry a letter, or I guess that still might."

"If shouting doesn't work a little machine with a letter should. Someone might stab it but I expect they'd read the letter afterwards."

Is Samora going to notice a napkin?

Yes, immediately. What does it say?

Please note that violence is strictly forbidden in the main bar area and anyone attempting to stab a person, rather than a nonperson flying machine, will be prevented and subject to Milliways security protocols beginning with brief cooling off periods in the security holding cells and culminating in expulsion from the establishment.

"Oh, that's good to know and I'll make sure anyone else knows before they come in here. And it applies to everyone? Does violence include--enchantments, divinations, really bright lights, giving someone the flu . . .?" It's an aberration bar, she's not going to just assume they have the same commonsense definition of violence.

In the typical case, enchantments yes, divinations no, bright lights only if they are in fact impairing and aimed at that end or with the knowledge of it, and the flu yes.

"Only one of those we might have a hard time avoiding is illnesses, because we can spread those by accident. We can keep anyone with symptoms out but it's hard to be completely sure."

Oh, accidents don't count, and also anyone sick will find the infirmary categorically adequate.

"Oh wow, I should get Petrai in here, I owe him a fix for his life drain. Which isn't catching. Oh, and Cam, if you'd like to set any conditions on the use of the diamonds I'd like to figure that out now before I show it to anyone else. Not because they wouldn't abide by the agreement, they would, I just don't want to get anyone's hopes up."

"Uh, most of my concern at this point is that you do not have adequate security for that quantity of diamond and it'll wind up in the hands of bad actors."

"I'm fairly concerned about that myself. This is a fortress, but not one equipped to hold off the kind of forces that would come for that diamond if it was known to be here. My plan is to break it into pieces and arrange to transport the pieces to a much more defensible location within a few hours, and then delay bad actors finding out about it as much as possible. Or get a scroll of Plane Shift brought in and take most of it to Heaven, which would be significantly more defensible than anywhere on Golarion but harder to deploy it from."

"I do not have strategic advice about this considering that I don't know your magic system but if you want it broken into pieces I can do that."

"That would be great! Can you do about fist-sized pieces? Though I think even cut up it won't all fit in my bag. . . . What happens if someone tries to prop the door with an inanimate object? I won't try it if you don't know." She opens the door for diamond disassembly.

"I don't know." He interpolates the statue into chunks a bit at a time.

It will sometimes work but it would not be advisable to count on it.

"Not doing that, then." She squats and scoops the wealth of nations into her bag. She can't even fit half of it in there. What is her life.

"I think that's everything before I stand here and have an awkward conversation with one or more officers who think I'm enchanted. Can I get that hole in the wall now, please? And then if you want to hang around and listen and get asked a hundred questions that would be helpful but if you'd rather wait in the backyard or something I totally understand."

"There's time dilation, I don't know how much that'd help. But if it comes up that they all want to hear the whole Arda thing I'd be much obliged if you could handle that yourself and maybe supplement with newspapers from Bar." He produces a mirror and sticks it out the door she's holding to get a view of the adjacent wall, and the stone crumbles out of the way obligingly.

"I can do that. I appreciate you telling me the whole thing the once."

And she sticks her head out the door and calls, "I have good news but it's very strange good news, someone get Commander Arnisant in here? And tell him he has to come through the hole in the wall, not the door!"

There follows a, yes, long and awkward conversation, in which Samora does a lot of insisting that she will submit to as many Break Enchantments, Protection From Evils, truth spells and if necessary Dominates so long as the door does not at any point close with everyone from the fort on this side. Chunks of diamond are waved around incredulously. Cam's vicinity is targeted by several Detect Magics, Detect Evils, and Detect Fiendish Presences. Samora repeats Cam's backstory, neutrally and accurately except for mispronouncing a couple of the proper nouns, to two different people. Eventually someone Sendings Vigil for an emergency Commune question: Should we cooperate with the person who has introduced himself to Select Samora at Araval's Fort as Cam?

Yes.

"Well call me a fish and throw me in a lake," says the fort commander, but he commandeers a bigger bag of holding for the rest of the diamonds and authorizes the use of a Teleport scroll for one of the wizards to take Samora and optionally Cam to Vigil. Losing Samora, the wizard, the soldier holding the door, and the soldier stationed in the bar in case anything happens to the guy on the door is going to mess with the patrol schedule something serious, but if you can't abuse Keep Watch for an opportunity like this, when can you?

"- I can't go to Vigil, I have to stay here till the - I should get some Elves in here but they still would have a hard time finding a replacement to do all the resurrections, I can't make it possible that I become unavailable."

"Could someone here summon your kind of demon as a replacement? Ah, no, then the replacement would become unavailable if they died. I'll try to be back today and if I'm not back by tomorrow morning I'll try to Sending you an update."

"You don't have to actually send me updates, just write it down under the words 'letter to Cam' and I'll check whenever I'm wondering what's keeping you. - uh, I'll make you some stationery since you don't like actually know English and I don't have your language to designate a new mail label." Voilà.

If these folks would let the door shut for a second Cam will open the door to a different universe and call Alassëo in and give him an explanation and send him to sing in the backyard and kill time.

They're fine letting the door shut if they understand correctly that Petrai will be able to open it again when he's done in the infirmary. (They're killing two birds with one stone. The patrol schedule is a harsh mistress.)

The infirmary is categorically adequate to his needs!

Excellent. Off to Vigil! Or rather to a designated teleport arrival zone a short walk from the main gate. 

"State yer business."

"Select Samora, fifth circle, delivering a donation to the treasury and I need to meet with someone who can get me in touch with the Archbanker for a related matter."

There ensues appropriately rigorous procedure to make sure that that's on the up and up and then she can go through.

Once they're through the gates, there are additional Forbiddances to walk through on the way to the treasury, where a clerk asks for the value of the donation and who it's from. 

"I'm afraid that's classified, tier 3, and if it's at all possible I'd like to deliver it directly to the Exchequer, ideally already in a vault."

"Your oath this won't endanger him? You'll have to walk out the same way you went in."

"I swear the valuables are not significantly dangerous on their own sitting in a vault, or in my hands even if I meant to do ill with them. They could be dangerous given to someone else."

"The Exchequer won't be free for another three hours."

"I can wait." An attempt to claim it isn't scale-of-hours urgent dies on her tongue; there are people risking their lives at the Worldwound and people being damned in Cheliax and at this scale those--not matter, they always matter, they need to be taken into account. "But if you interrupt him, he'll be glad you did."

The clerk looks at Samora's headband and her face and says he can't guarantee anything but he'll knock on the exchequer's door. 

As soon as he's out of the room and out of earshot, Samora takes a minute--the first calm minute she's had since she opened the chapel door--to kneel and stop controlling her facial expression and pray. (She isn't completely alone, but the wizard understands. He's praying too.) It turns out what her face wants to be doing is a mad hysterical grin and her prayers are hardly more coherent. 

Iomedae--look! Goddess of decisive strikes and broken stalemates, warrior whose eyes are always searching past the horizon for the path to victory, this is Yours, this could matter. Thank You for everything You've built to turn resources into Good. Thank You for the guidance I've had in my life that let me get this far. The other worlds may be beyond Your reach but I know they are not beyond Your concern. Please help me be equal to everything ahead. 

There's no answer, reassuringly. By the time the Exchequer arrives, Samora is on her feet and composed again. 

The Exchequer has a neat gray beard, keen gray eyes, and the slight hunch of a man who's sat at a desk for decades. "Alright, what do you have that you think is so important."

She opens the larger bag and holds it out. "It is what it looks like. It gets weirder from here."

"Weirder, you say."

"I need to talk to someone who can cast True Resurrection." The Exchequer never leaves Vigil and has clearance for practically everything. "Or possibly Wish, if True Resurrection doesn't work outside Creation."

"You need to give a full report to one of the Precentor Martials first. What manner of madness is it?"

"Extraplanar and diplomatic."

"Hmmmm, I'll drop it on Jimmy then. That's His Excellency Count Jamanthor, Precentor Martial for Diplomacy to you. I'd better walk you up there myself so he doesn't decide you're insane. After I get that bag of yours squared away."

"Thank you very much, I keep looking over my shoulder for pit fiends." She holds out both bags. "There's, uh, more than fit in one bag."

His Excellency Count Jamanthor, Precentor Martial for Diplomacy is wearing a headband as good as Samora's and is old enough to be her grandfather, and he listens to her full story in complete but highly attentive silence and then asks about fifty questions.

"How confident are you in Cam's intentions?"

"More confident than I am about most parts of the whole business. I don't know much about other Creations or physical souls, but I know what sort of person does what he did and is doing what he's doing."

"How good of a judge of character are you? Be honest not modest."

"In my adventuring days I made truces with multiple sets of Chaotic Evil mortals and I've never been betrayed where I didn't expect to be."

"Think he'd take an Atonement?"

"Take one, yes, but if you'll excuse me, your excellency, he'd think less of us for wanting it."

"How so?"

"He's never had to think about going before the Judge. It would be--interrogating him on personal matters, purely to satisfy our fears, when we'd already represented ourselves as believing him and willing to cooperate."

"What do you think this Bar person's goals are?"

"Limited to within Milliways, I think. Within that scope, generally benevolent, though in a way where I wouldn't expect her to be less benevolent towards bad actors. The Landlords are more mysterious, but providing an infirmary and forbidding violence are more good signs than bad."

"And he said he could make documents based on the title?"

"He said he could check anything I wrote on this stationery and that if he knew my native language he could 'designate a new mail label'."

"Hrrrm. I'll need to meet with some people about that."

"My colleague said you were fifth circle?"

"Yes, your excellency."

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen."

"When did you hit fifth? This morning?"

"Shortly before my enlistment, your excellency."

"Been leading an interesting life, haven't you. Tell me more about those deals with Chaotic Evil mortals."

The eventual upshot of it all is that Samora is relieved of her post at Araval's Fort and appointed the Ambassador to Milliways. The position comes with permission to live at Araval's Fort indefinitely, a salary of "I don't have time to get one approved and I doubt you care", and permission to classify things Tier 5 except the fort commander has to be told if he needs to know. Also a letter of introduction to Felandriel Morgethai and a teleport to Almas.

Almas! The greatest city in the greatest city in the greatest city in the woooooooorld Andoran!

"I'm afraid the Provost is teaching a seminar right now, you'll have to come back later."

"If you interrupt her, I expect she'll be glad you did."

"I can't interrupt her, the seminar is in a demiplane and I don't have a fork. I can see if her familiar is available."

"Alright. I'll wait here until she's available." She sits in a corner and writes an update for Cam on one of the papers, using her shield as a lap desk.

Eventually the secretary leaves with Samora's letter of introduction, comes back, and says Morgethai is in her office. He gives Samora a token that opens a secret door which leads to a winding passage and another door which opens into a starry night with no discernible floor or ceiling.

Ooookay she will stick a foot out and see if there's a floor.

There's a floor! It's just invisible. Duh.

Fair enough. Archmages. She shuffles out into the starry void. 

It's rather pretty.

And the next time she blinks, there is an elf, ageless and lovely and robed in blue and white, with hands that can sweep away armies and eyes that have seen the sun rise over other worlds. 

"Hello. I'm told you have an interesting problem."

This is so much more intimidating than either of the previous times she's told this story but here goes.

Morgethai interrupts with questions about every twelve seconds, evaluating her story with a mind before which the world is a system of equations. 

"Did you feel the air temperature or pressure change at the moment you opened the door, or the moment you stepped through it? Were there any ways in which you might have benefitted from a Planar Adaptation while inside?" 

"Was the demon's magical aura composed of a multiple of seven 12-5 torus knots?". . . "Fair. Did it look more like this illusion or this one?"

"Did the diamond appear all at once, or start from a single point and grow from there? Was the air warmer afterward? Same questions about the napkins."

"Did the statue include details of your appearance the demon appeared to be unable to see?"

"The translation effect: did it work by making the napkins appear in your native language, or by giving you the ability to understand the language they were in?"

She has answers for most of those! Not the magic aura ones, because she lost the spell almost immediately and probably wouldn't have remembered the structure that well even if she'd had ten minutes to stare at it, but everything else she was paying careful attention at the time.

"Fascinating. What you have described is flatly impossible."

"Yes, madam provost. I believe I am not enchanted because other people have behaved as though they perceived what I was perceiving at all points when there were other people present, but I have no way of guaranteeing it."

"I don't suppose you'd agree to a Dominate Person, just to check that there's no-one else in there already."

This is unmistakably Felandriel Morgethai. It's not as though she couldn't just knock Samora unconscious and then land one if she meant ill. "If it's just for that, I'm alright with it."

She reads a scroll. "Answer truthfully: have you been acting of your own free will for all of today, and have you lied to me?"

"I have obeyed the orders of lawful superiors but have acted entirely of my own will otherwise. I have not lied to you, or made any attempt to cause you to believe any false thing, nor have I attempted to conceal from you any truth I believe you would find important. I do not believe my memory, perceptions, or goals to have been magically altered with the exception of the translation effect."

Morgethai snaps the spell. "Thank you. I appreciate your indulging my paranoia; your story seemed too perfectly designed to lure me out of my tower and use up my ninth circle spells. I'm sure you know Cheliax would love to catch me out of position. But if the time-pausing effect works as advertised I should be gone for less than a minute, and return freshly rested."

"Then you'll come and see it? And potentially do the resurrections?"

"Of course! The only reason I would possibly pass up a chance to see a time-warping demiplane from outside Creation and throw around dozens of Wishes without endangering my country would be if it was a trap--and even then I'd aim to break the trap in a way that still let me see it. Visualize a convenient teleport location and fail your save, please. Detect Thoughts. Excellent, this way."

And as soon as they're out of the demiplane, Morgethai taps Samora's hand and they're in the chapel.

Guy on the door is still on the door. Comes to high alert when he sees the archmage, relaxes a little when he sees Samora smiling reassuringly at him.

Cam's been sitting around letting people interrogate him and is stress-eating his way through a basket of popcorn chicken and fries.

Once the door guard has been convinced to close the door for Andoran national security: "Hello Cam, I'm here to resurrect your dead acquaintances in exchange for the diamonds to do it with. One per day, but with all the time magic floating around--" dismissive hand gesture. "Also I have roughly a thousand questions about your magic, if you're willing to answer them. How's your algebraic topology?"

"I have math only in support of engineering and medicine, so, bad. I am not ready to resurrect the people I can't resurrect myself yet but I can set up an assembly line in the backyard."