She is assigned to the command of someone she’s never heard of, not that she’s read many Shining Crusade histories, and invited to swap spells if she pleases with the other Crusade wizards. She decides not to sell them all the improved spells she has; it sounds like the kind of thing that might get back to Arazni. Lilia has a healthy respect for Arazni and would prefer never to come to her attention in any way. 

She saves up for a scroll of Discern Location. Myrabelle has a crystal ball with Telepathy and a very impressive caster level, not of her own make, something she mentioned offhand she’d possessed a very long time. It’s not identifying. It also wouldn’t, in fact, be sure proof even if someone here possesses it; Myrabelle could’ve purchased it from someone. 

But she has nothing to do but try things. Lilia never bothered to figure out who she’d be without orders and she finds herself especially motivated now not to have to find out.

Nothing.

She saves up for another one, tries an ancient staff she once touched that burned her fingers off. 

Nothing.

That's all of them they have in Absalom, so she commissions one.  She witnesses one of Iomedae's sermons because it'd be more suspicious to decline to attend it. She handles it as she would a succubus; you just mustn't interact at all with the sounds they're making, even as much as to turn them into words, or you'll lose your mind entirely, probably. Lilia already has a purpose. 

The third Discern Location she tries a different staff, a smooth and beautiful wood one that you'd have taken for a peasant's walking-stick if it didn't radiate the most powerful magic she'd ever seen.

The fountain courtyard, Alfirin's Gardens, Alfirin's Garden Demiplane.

Alfirin’s one of the crusade wizards. Eighth circle, supposedly.

It’s far from definitive. It is - certainly enough reason to give Alfirin a closer look. Lilia knows her mother better than almost anyone - certainly better than anyone alive in her day. They worked closely together for twenty years, when Lilia was young and an idiot and required it, when they had to invent ways for Lilia to beat truth spells and Detect Thoughts, when they needed her to master Chelish court politics and to grow into her proper shape and harden in it and not require further instruction.

Myrabelle and Catherine de Litran present very differently from one another, and a lifetime spent in Iomedae and Arazni’s orbit would surely present differently still, but - Lilia thinks she’d recognize her. On enough exposure.

She asks if Alfirin takes apprentices.

She has ever taken apprentices before, but not recently. You'd be better off trying for Arazni, she's less picky. And nicer. And knows more to teach.

Lilia feels a prickle of defensiveness on her mother’s behalf at that - these idiots have no idea what studying under her mother can offer you - even though Alfirin may or may not actually be her mother and even though Arazni in fact knows a lot more than her mother, or at least wasn’t a fight her mother expected to win.

She writes Alfirin. The note reads, 

I’d like to apprentice to you. I have what I consider good reason which is secret and which I do not intend to tell you even if you agree. I think there’s a moderate chance this is very much in your interests and no plausible way it could harm you, aside from wasted time. 

I would consider it a favor if you did not convey this offer, or anything you learn about me as a consequence of it, to the leadership of the Shining Crusade. I do not believe myself to have acted against their interests in any way but would prefer not to have their attention. 

It is the kind of note that would work on her mother. Her mother would be curious, and would enjoy having something which was hers and not the Crown's, and would not discard it until she had determined whether it was worthwhile. 

With other people - well, it runs a serious risk of getting her handed over to Arazni, who will learn everything Lilia knows and then definitely execute her for having put anything on her agenda ahead of 'telling Arazni about a plot against her life'.

She agonizes for a while about whether to actually send it. 

Then she remembers that prophecy exists, and does some divinations instead of agonizing. Then she sends it. 

She checks that it's not an assassination attempt before replying. (It's not.)

I have not taken an apprentice in many years and did not expect to take another for the duration of the crusade. Time spent can be a not insignificant cost and I am reluctant to waste much on an apprentice, if waste it would be. I will evaluate you tomorrow at noon if you come by my quarters.

If all is as you have represented it I do not currently intend or expect to inform crusade leadership of this offer. In the event that I do take you on as an apprentice I will report that.

Is that her mother’s answer? In Cheliax, obviously not, because in Cheliax people don’t behave this way, and wouldn’t have sent a note like Lilia’s. On the Shining Crusade, where they’re all pretending to be Good - or maybe legitimately Good, who knows, fighting Tar-Baphon has to count for a lot -

Maybe? It is more like her mother than most possible answers. It is enough like her mother that she finds herself yearning desperately to be found a promising apprentice, though she is fifty-five and even with magic restraining old age is far too old for such nonsense.

Alfirin’s face will tell her nothing at all but she can’t help searching it, when they meet, for her mother’s peculiar focus and ruthlessness. She dips her head. “Alfirin. I’m Lilia.”

"You're older than I expected. Disinterested in botany?"

Botany? - oh. Arazni, when living, specialized in arcane plant magic. Lilia learned this a month ago, repeated as something everybody knows. Vigil is full of living things. Vigil, in Lilia's day, is not full of living things.

 “They say Arazni is a god,” she says, neutrally.

"More than some and less than others. This is disagreeable?"

Her mother hated all the gods. Hating all the gods is probably illegal.

"I find it terrifying. And -  if the gods wished known the things I want to know, then the world would look very different.”

"You are unlikely to learn from me any secrets which the gods wish hidden... Most people particularly terrified of demigod archmages would be somewhere else."

“If left to his own devices I think Tar-Baphon will not courteously leave some continents aside for those who fear him.” Nor will Iomedae, but that's a much more provocative thing to say.

"How pragmatic. What are you hoping to get out of an apprenticeship that is not a secret?"

“I don’t have any high-magic tactical sense at all. People say you do.”

"Many wizards do. One typically picks it up before one can teleport."

"I got here off court politics."

"Did you, now? On which plane?"

"The Material."

That is not a satisfactory answer to her question!

"I do not know of any mortal court which could produce such a result. A number of possible explanations occur to me - you may be from another planet within this plane, or from Sarusan, or I may have wildly misjudged Isfahel - maybe you are a long-preserved survivor of Azlant or another buried empire. Or perhaps the people of the first world consider 'The Material' to be a perfectly honest label for their realm." Or she's lying about one thing or the other. Sometimes people do that. "Would you confirm my guess if I happened to chance across the right one?"

"I am happy to confirm that I am mortal, and of your species, and that the place I am from is I believe ruled by the same laws of magic as this place. I do not want its name known; I made a lot of enemies. None can follow me here, unless someone goes looking for them. Perhaps when we are better acquainted that is a risk I will be more confident is minimal or worth taking. 

I could, were I inclined to open our acquaintance with a lie, tell you that I attained my powers in a more ordinary way, adventuring. I could say so under a truth spell, even. Court politics would be a great deal less exciting if no manner of evading those was known to us."

"I see. You are dismissed."

Is it her mother?

The woman could have turned out to be someone who definitely wasn't Lilia's mother; someone forthright and communicative, or someone devoted to the gods, or someone stupid (probably not, as an eighth circle wizard, but you never know). Someone warm and affectionate, someone trusting, someone kind. The woman did not turn out to be that. 

But most people aren't Lilia's mother. Even most intelligent dangerous powerful archmages who keep their own counsel and are not devoted to the gods and trust no one and have little time to waste on the tedious foolishness of ordinary human beings - even most of those aren't Lilia's mother. A resemblance can rule it out, but it would take a far more granular resemblance to rule it in. And it is easy to deceive oneself in an important matter. If it felt like Lilia's mother, in a few moments, Lilia's mother's specific impatience - well, that simply doesn't mean very much. 

If it's Lilia's mother she might follow up on her own, do some investigation, run a Legend Lore which (Lilia checked) is almost wholly uninformative, the deeds to which Lilia is attached being ones outside history here (but also, for a fifth circle wizard a Legend Lore wouldn't be expected to turn up anything in particular). If it's not Lilia's mother she also might do that. Knowing things is hard. Only Lilia's mother will have the means to read Lilia's mind in her sleep from a distance - unless Lilia's mother hasn't yet invented the means to do that. Only Lilia's mother will see in prophecy that it would go well to reveal more to Lilia about herself - but why would she even think to check that?

And yet it is the only question that matters, so she must keep chiseling away at it. She starts saving up for another Discern Location. She is almost but only almost out of ancient weapons she knows her mother to have possessed. 

Alfirin isn't entirely sure she doesn't want to take Lilia as an apprentice. The initial meeting wasn't an assassination attempt (She checked beforehand, of course) but that doesn't mean it's not part of some larger ploy beyond her limited ability to foresee - 

- if Lilia was being truthful, she wasn't being honest. She gave only cursory reasons for choosing to apprentice under Alfirin and for avoiding Arazni; If those had been the sum of her reasons she would have picked any other eighth-circle and not requested secrecy in her introduction... Probably Lilia has more reasons to avoid Arazni's attention, and chose Alfirin as the wizard most likely to go along with the request for secrecy. Alfirin has never been to Arcadia, maybe the court in Xopatl really is a place where you can get to fifth circle. Or perhaps she's Azlanti and avoiding close acquaintances of Aroden's - either way it leaves the question of why she's here with the crusade in the first place. Most fifth-circle living wizards of Lilia's apparent age aren't selfishly worried about Tar-Baphon's eventual victory in twenty years, if it comes at all. Altruism would be an unsurprising motive but for some reason Lilia didn't mention it - if she's being literally truthful the reason might be that it doesn't move her at all. Interesting.

What if she wasn't being truthful? If it's all a lie - then Alfirin knows nothing, except that someone has gone to the effort to weave a very confusing deception to no clear end. For the sake of being mysterious, to be bait in a trap, perhaps, but the trap would have to be one that works even when the bait is recognized as such - 

"Curiosity, remind me tomorrow to research demon lords, I vaguely recall there's one obsessed with puzzles..."

- Is there anyone else who'd set a trap like this? Tar-Baphon probably not, at least not for her, it might be a play at Arazni - it could be one of those hags from Brevoy, if they weren't all dead - she should confirm that they're all dead - nobody else comes to mind who'd mix this degree of convolution with this degree of unsubtlety. (It's pretty out of character for Tar-Baphon too...)

...And the third possibility, what if Lilia was being mostly but not perfectly truthful? If there was one lie, or two - Where she is from and/or whether her enemies can follow her, Alfirin thinks.  The first world, or the city of brass, or Hell. Most likely the first world, though in that case probably there were no lies after all and it was all technical truths...

The next day, Alfirin goes and finds Marit.

"I would like to give you certain information, conditional on your agreement not to use that information outside of particular circumstances."

"I so agree, though I may or may not use it under those circumstances. What?"

Glitterdust.

She hands him a fat sealed envelope. "Contents to be read with my future permission, in the event of my suspicious death," which of course just means 'death', "disappearance, apparent enchantment, or other circumstance of that kind which you think I would have listed if I'd foreseen it and taken an hour to list every possibility. The password is 'jackalope'. You may do whatever seems wise with it in the meantime, so long as that is consonant with keeping the contents and their relation to me secret... don't give it to Arazni. You may have someone who doesn't speak Kelish copy it. If I ask for it back and you have no other reason to believe I am enchanted, I would like all copies given to me one month later."

"All right." He takes it, and slips it into one of his bags. Squints at her, though it would only be slightly useful in determining whether she is already enchanted and acting oddly. "Anything else?"

"That was it. Thank you."

He has it copied, by someone who does not speak Kelish and lives several hundred miles from the front lines; he puts one copy in a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere in particular and keeps the other on his person. And he watches her. 

(Not because of this. She's among the people he just watches closely anyway.)

"I have decided I will teach you. What can you do?"

She's leaning yes, to the only important question, but she is not yet committed on it. "A great many things but most of them enchantments, and so less applicable here." She has considered what can be shown off without suggesting that she is a time-traveller. That she can touch a magic object and make it appear nonmagical without casting a spell, sure; that she knows an astonishing variety of torture spells, probably not. That she can speak to a sleeping person in the same room and learn their secrets without their recalling it, happily; that she can do it from across the continent, no. 

She can also do all of the sensible things there's no excuse for a fifth circle wizard to be unable to do, like Teleport, or Dimension Door without moving or speaking, or turn into an invisible cloud of gas. She knows her magic silently and without motion but not at range; it is very nearly impossible to startle or frighten her, but she in fact has no experience on a battlefield and this is very readily apparent. Her instinct in a fight is to flee it.

Alfirin brings in a cleric of Abadar unannounced on the third day, so Lilia can tell her under a truth spell that she hasn’t lied to her. She’s not surprised when Lilia can, and doesn’t seem to take it as very much evidence about Lilia’s honesty, but of course one way to beat a truth spell is to have everyone convinced that you can beat a truth spell and there’s no point bothering; it would be foolish not to at least check. She warns Lilia that someone will probably try looking into her past, once they notice that Alfirin has an apprentice who’s lasted a week. 

She's sure.

She was sure right away, really, but held back her judgment for fear of being sentimental. 

If she were wrong she’d be betraying her mother’s secret to a powerful wizard so she waits to make sure she’s really, truly sure.

But Lilia spent decades as her mother’s student. There are differences, of course, but they’re the differences you’d expect from someone pretending to be an Asmodean Chelish archmage compared to someone pretending to be an idealistic crusader. 

There aren’t two people like her mother. If there were, the world would look very different. 

At some point the risks of waiting for more certainty are higher than any conceivable benefits. They'll look into her, and she should fear that this will somehow turn up that she’s sold her soul, though she’s in fact not sure if she has sold her soul or not, in this timeline. She still has her arcane sight. Everyone’s been assuming it glued on by magic. She’s not sure if devils can reclaim their gifts if you go off and time travel with them.

…reason to tell Myrabelle-Alfirin sooner, so Alfirin can figure out if Lilia is worth protecting and if so how to protect her. 

"I'd like to explain my secret reason for wanting to work with you. Is there a good place for us to speak privately?”

"How much privacy do you need?"

“It is important to me" to you, therefore to me, "that Arazni could not overhear us if she wanted to.”

“That’s a high bar. I do not believe her to be able to listen in on a telepathic conversation inside a private sanctum inside a full rope trick.” But of course she can offer no guarantee.

“Let’s do that, then.”

Alfirin casts the spells and readies a dispel, then waves Lilia into the rope trick.

What's so secret, then?

I am from either a different Golarion or this one, nine hundred years in the future. In my memories, with which my possessions are consistent, I was the spymaster of Cheliax, which declared independence from Taldor in 4081. Aroden failed to return when prophesied. He’s dead. Arazni died in the Shining Crusade and was raised by Geb to rule his country for him in retaliation for Lastwall annoying him. Cheliax’s monarch came to power through an infernal pact with Asmodeus, and the country serves Hell. I don’t know which of these things your divinations might reveal, but - several of them might alarm your allies, obviously.

Yes, some of those are very alarming claims. That she doesn't particularly believe, not until she's figured out a way to check them. I could ask a number of questions but perhaps the most important is why you are telling me all this?

My mother was a Lawful Evil archmage. Myrabelle, in that lifetime, but I know she'd lived many prior ones. She wanted an agent in Cheliax, and I joined their government on her orders. When I arrived here the first thing I did - once I had determined that I had not been followed and would not be retrieved, and where I was - was look for her. 

I didn't have a list of previous lives, so it took me a little while to be sure. But I am sure now. You are her, and so I am at your disposal. She knows her mother, so she knows that the thing her mother will do about this is curse her insensible and Dominate her to learn everything she wants to know without an intervening person with an agenda. She knows too that it might be she is a liability in this lifetime and will be destroyed once her mother has learned all she can. She would be less useful, if either of those things mattered to her, so they don't. 

That is... less unbelievable than some of the other claims, and somehow more upsetting. All of it is horrifically, deeply upsetting to imagine might be true but this is - personal. Almost accusatory apart from how 'Lilia' gives no indication of objecting to her treatment at all. (Well, she is very good at hiding things.)

Suppose it's false. Why? To make her doubt herself? Probably not worth the investment if it's a high-investment scheme... what she's already seen is enough to qualify it as a high-investment scheme. The doubts this would inspire would not particularly help the Crusade's enemies, nor can she think of any personal enemies with the capability, inclination, and motive... It could be intended to reach ears other than her own and cause a breach between her and the Crusade. Still probably not worth it, but getting closer - worth it if there is in fact a plan Tar-Baphon expects to remove Arazni from the field soon, except insofar as this plot reveals that plan, unless he predicts her response to that would be to retreat to Heaven which is just as good from his perspective -

...Suppose it's true. The answers to 'Why?' are obvious enough; 'How?' and 'What to do about it?' less so. Lilia might know how, speculate on that later. What to do? Warn Arazni, first. Then... she doesn't know what, then. She has plenty of time to figure out what then.

First, to check whether it's true or false. If it's false and the most likely plot - she probably won't be able to tell on her own. It's worth checking with a dominate, but hearing under compelled honesty that Lilia's telling the truth won't actually be enough to be sure Lilia's telling the truth - she is not confident in her own ability to identify and unravel every possible means of deception, but she can question Lilia now and consult with Arazni after - 

- unless she can't - 

Don't resist. Greater dispel magic. Dominate person. Stay here.

She flies out of the rope trick, through the door, and shoves a set of spectacles into the hands of one of the surprised sentries outside the door. "Pink lenses, anything that leaves the rope trick is a lich." Phantom Steed, Haste. And then, after a few breathless moments careening through the halls of Overwatch,

"I need to speak with Arazni. Now."

They'll check it's her and let her through.

"Alfirin." She is, separate from the person at the door, determining it's really her, but more subtly; she'll gesture everyone else out of the room.

The fact that she did not barge in on an assassination in-progress (or already completed) does make the worst outcomes seem less likely. She relaxes slightly.

"I have information that suggests there may be an imminent serious attempt on your life."

She casts a selective Antimagic Field so she can Plane Shift out from her own Forbiddance, but leaves an illusion just across the room to keep talking to Alfirin. "I don't perceive one. Is there more I should know?"

She steps out of the antimagic field at the door and casts her own major image.

"I had thought it might be timed to happen before I could warn you, and came here before gathering all the information I could," says the illusion. "If it doesn't happen in the next hour I have no reason to expect it to happen in the next day.

...I would appreciate advice on how to verify the honesty of a person who can convincingly lie under a truthtelling, and on how to definitively check someone for extensive memory alterations." There is not really any way to ask that without strongly implying it's related. Ah, well.

"Most ways for someone to lie under a truthtelling without it being detectable involve very persuasively claiming the truth spell confirmed their story when something slightly different happened, maybe with a Suggestion. If you're sure it wasn't that, it was likely done by having an item or a spell concealed. I could do it in an antimagic field, or you could strip them very thoroughly of spells and polymorph them to an ooze or something that can't conceal implanted items. Or you could do it in Axis. Most extensive memory alterations aren't consistent on close inspection with mindreading. Most that are wouldn't be in place in an antimagic field. For ones that would...I'm not aware of an easy way to check, at that point. Shelyn could probably do it as a Miracle."

"Truth spells are harder to evade in Axis?" This isn't surprising but it's not something she'd heard before. "By what mechanism?"

"Well, Abadar feels strongly that people shouldn't evade truth spells, and it's expensive for Him to smite them for it on the Material, but most quarters of Axis will actively pay him to do it there."

That sounds probably sufficient. "I see. Thank you. Should I send the others back in?"

"Go ahead." Arazni's illusion will sit back down at her desk in case anyone comes in to try to assassinate it.

Alfirin returns to her quarters, sends the guard back to the door, and flies back into the rope trick. 

Lilia is trying to figure out why, if Alfirin wanted to do something else first, to leave her conscious, which is not very important to figure out. It's definitely her mother and that's the important thing.

(She has not moved at all. She can't move at all, so this isn't very surprising.)

Answer all questions truthfully and without withholding information or attempting to mislead.

Have you lied to me at any point?

No. I was frequently misleading.

In what ways?

I'm a sixth circle wizard. My aura reads Lawful Neutral but I am Lawful Evil. Before I had determined that you were my mother I spoke about my origins so as to conceal that I was a time traveller. I implied that if someone went looking for them, my enemies might follow me, but I'm reasonably sure they can't. I implied that I wanted to fight Tar-Baphon because he was going to take over the world. I don't care about Tar-Baphon, and was only here to look for you. I implied that I was afraid of Arazni because she is a god. I fear her mostly because I expected her to detect, and punish, knowing of a plot against her life and not revealing it, and possibly also having sold ones' soul to Hell, which I have done. I cast spells at third circle that I know how to prepare at second to avoid you suspecting my story. I believe that to be a complete account. I have not attempted to mislead you in any respect once I determined that you were my mother.

Do you believe your soul-sale to have remained valid through whatever brought you here? What do you know of how you came to be here?

I don't know, and am not aware of any way to check. I know the devil's name and could Call him, but he's a devil under Mephistopheles, and I am not confident that'd produce a true answer, and I wasn't sure if you're working with him yet or not. but If the soul-sale remained valid, the negotiations that gave you controlling rights over my soul might also have remained valid, or might not have, I don't have a way to check that either. 

I Plane Shifted. Nothing about the situation in which I did so was in any particular respect unusual. 

When and why did you sell your soul?

4677. I sold my soul because you wanted me in the court in Egorian. You have to be soul-sold, to get anywhere there. 

Have you done anything to check whether your memories prior to arriving in this time are real?

I have a spellbook full of spells that work as I remember them and that are in many cases more advanced than those available for sale in Absalom or in Oppara, and spells you taught me that are secret. Some Teleport locations known to me work - some don't, as the place is too different. You were raised to my attention as a candidate to be my mother because I cast a Discern Location from a scroll on an item I had touched, which I knew to be yours and very old. Some other Discern Locations I'd attempted did not work. The Shining Crusade is proceeding approximately in line with my memory of it though I was not a student of it and know only the very broad strokes.

I - knew how to expect you to behave, how to expect you to react if I revealed myself, though I did not expect you to run off. I know how in my day you assumed new identities, and if I know it correctly then that would be additional evidence.

And how is that?

When you were ready to assume your next identity you arranged the murder of your present identity. She did not go to any afterlife. You then possessed a child - you'd targeted her specifically, for political convenience - either newly born or still in the womb - and were dormant for a few decades. No divinations connected your old and new identity; I was only told it, two decades later, so I could protect it if necessary and obey it once it was established. You replace the host over time, and recover your powers as an archmage - I think technically as an archwitch, actually, but that part I didn't need to know.

She is tempted to ask what the distinction is, as understood in Lilia's day, but that's a question that reveals more than she's inclined to.

Tell me more about Arazni's death.

Alfirin asks to meet with Iomedae and Arazni the next day. Just the three of them.

Arazni hasn’t alerted Iomedae that something is seriously wrong with Alfirin but she is immensely relieved. 

Iomedae’s just curious. Until she sees Alfirin, then she’s worried.

Alfirin straightens her back, assumes a more than usually carefully neutral expression, and begins her report.

"My apprentice Lilia revealed to me yesterday that she is my descendant - my daughter, particularly - from eight hundred years in the future. She also told me a number of other important things, but her being from the future somehow is her explanation for how she knows them. She has told me, under truthtelling in Aktun, that she has made no attempts to deceive or mislead me since identifying me. To the limit of my and her ability to verify, her memories have not been magically altered, and she knows versions of some spells consistent with centuries of refinement.

The most pressing intelligence that she provided is that, in history as she learned it, you are successfully assassinated by Tar-Baphon sometime after the completion of Fort Lorrin. The most important is that when the Age of Glory was expected, instead Aroden died and the greater part of the empire fell to the service of Asmodeus.

So I think we want that miracle from Shelyn, if we can get it."

...questioning look at Arazni -

"I would expect that a Miracle of Shelyn could determine confidently whether a person's memories were altered or fabricated," she starts to say; Iomedae nods by halfway through the sentence so she doesn't finish it. 

"Assassinated how?"

"You are forced into Abbadon somehow. She did not know more. Some decades later your body is stolen and you are reanimated as a lich by Geb, which may be related."

Arazni is, for a few seconds, too distracted for facial expressions.

It's uncanny, like she Plane Shifted out and left an unmoving clone here, except when she does that - and she may well have done that - she makes the illusion move, because it's not exactly that much harder.

Then she's over it. "I agree that we want the Miracle of Shelyn."

"Shelyn has a ninth circle?"

"Not on this planet. I can make a candle, or go find one, I'll check which is wiser."

“And she  - came to you to warn us, knows we’re verifying her story, and will cooperate with Shelyn's priest and with our undoing any memory modification?”

"She came to me to give me information she thought I'd want to have. She expected me to check that she was being honest and that her memories had not been falsely planted. I have not mentioned to her the Shelynite miracle in particular as a means of achieving that and I - I cannot think of a way of asking her about it which would elicit her genuine preferences."

There is something about how she says that which is very, very odd. 

And it can't be a problem that'd be solved by mindreading or Alfirin would probably just solve it with mindreading. Or maybe not, with her daughter, but at least she wouldn't assert that she couldn't think of a way -

The empire, in the service of Asmodeus. 

That would - probably do it - right?

"There aren't - free people - in the world that she remembers?"

"There are. She was not one of them."

"I think that Shelyn will be able to check whether - the thing that Shelyn cares about, with respect to respecting the will of a person whose mind was altered - is true."

Iomedae is worried that the thing Shelyn cares about might not be the same thing as the thing that Alfirin cares about and it's Alfirin's daughter. She is not quite willing to say this - it's not her business - but she's willing to not try very hard to conceal worrying about it.

"If any other test has occurred to you in the last day - or just now - which would better answer the operationally relevant question we should of course do that instead." What Alfirin cares about is not operationally relevant and also gone, gone, gone. She is trying not to think about it right now. She keeps her gaze on Arazni and tells herself it's because Arazni's the one she's expecting a technical solution from.

"There are things I can try but there's no reason at all to think I'll be better at it than Shelyn and many to think I'll be worse, doing right by people who have been extensively modified not being a core faculty of mine. I suppose it'll need to be, if I am raised as a lich by Geb. ...I am planning to modify some of my contingencies such that I think my destruction would be really very unlikely to leave a body, but in the event, do go to considerable lengths to recover or destroy it."

Iomedae nods, a bit choppily.

"I'll make arrangements with Shelyn," says Arazni, and departs to do that.

(It doesn't seem like future Alfirin is a lich. Liches can't have daughters. She could've become a lich more recently than that but if she made it eight hundred years without doing it, she didn't do it after that.)

“I’m - glad you live,” says Iomedae quietly. “In the terrible tragic future we are going to absolutely prevent.”

She blinks. "Oh. I - " didn't expect that. Regret who I become. Plan to keep living anyways. Don't know what to do differently, apart from saving Arazni and Aroden.

She's not sure which of those to say and doesn't say any of them instead.

It is probably an excessively personal thing to have said. Followups definitely would be.

Iomedae nods, and stands, and leaves.

A part of her wishes Iomedae would have stayed, but of course she has other things that need doing - especially in light of today's revelations - and doesn't have the time or inclination to deal with Alfirin being emotional.