"Probably good. Obviously if you can pick it up from Ma'ar there'd be days where it was worth the diamond or the volunteer, but - I wouldn't like, at all,  the effects it'd have on the world were it widespread," and she wouldn't really like the fact that Alfirin'd go on forever knowing how to do it, but it's not, actually, sufficient reason to not bring Alfirin in on the Dis plan, or even close. 

"Anyway, Ma'ar had consolidated the northern territories and invaded one small kingdom and some disorganized tribal lands, there was a taboo on blood sacrifices, he was ignoring it, Tantara got nervous, they invaded - they had ten times the forces, maybe more than that, and were wildly richer, they've got permanent Teleportation Circles everywhere, this place is incredible - but their army hadn't been at war in anyone's lifetime, and Predain's had hardly known peace, and Ma'ar is a genius, and Tantara was losing.

I told them I'd see what I could do. They still had vastly better numbers, I'm not useless on a battlefield, Urtho was delighted for me to take over the parts of his job that involved commanding armies and not studying magic - it'd fallen to him after Ma'ar took the capital with a planted artifact that drove most of Tantara's senior leadership to flee their posts in abject terror and in some cases die of it -" See, she really does think Alfirin's going to like this man.

OK at this point this is not an accident. Surely every single thing he does isn't like this, which means Iomedae is, what, deliberately emphasizing the ways her new lover is exactly Alfirin's brand of Evil??? Why????

(That confusion can go sit somewhere away from her conscious thoughts along with the rest of her feelings about Ma'ar)

"Impressive. I look forward to getting to know him better."

She's emphasizing how much they have in common so they can be friends! (Urtho still has her headband. You can blame this on that, if you want, or on what could be characterized as an emotional blind spot). 

"Anyway, I presumed that if I wanted prewar borders I'd have to win some fights first, but I sent over a request for a ceasefire immediately, you know, on principle, and Ma'ar accepted, sent back a bunch of nitpicks about our proposed maps, we signed.

And then some of his soldiers were caught surrounding a Tantaran camp unambiguously on our side of the border. We had approved monitors, they told them to stand down, they started shooting instead, I went out there to take them all down ideally nonlethally though without divine healing the locals are really fragile -

- and Ma'ar Gated in to tell them to surrender, and surrendered himself. I was very confused." 

Ah, see, that's much less confusing, this seems like the sort of trait Iomedae would find admirable. Alfirin would never do something like that.

"To preserve the peace, I assume? That's very noble, especially if he didn't know your reputation and wasn't expecting an afterlife."

Iomedae is sworn to secrecy and is the kind of person who takes being sworn to secrecy incredibly seriously and will to the best of her very good ability react as if that's exactly what was going on. "I don't think he expected to survive it, no. We had a fairly predictable conversation while I held him at swordspoint about why I think that ideally one wouldn't run their country on mind control and blood sacrifices though I did not intend to pursue the war with the objective of stopping those things, and then he notified me that his spy-network notified him that a disloyal Tantaran general who'd been working for Ma'ar, and who'd orchestrated the ceasefire violation, was on the move and probably attempting a coup."

And she will relay events from there, up through Urtho's near assassination and discovering the superweapons and promising that she would propose to Urtho's government that Conn Levas get a duchy and the superweapons getting stolen and getting Bestet's help with surviving the superweapon and giving Ma'ar her ring of evasion and being rescued by Ma'ar from a boiling ocean -

"I remember thinking, while boiling, that if I had a single Teleport-capable ally in the world I'd be fine, and I did, and I was, so -" She shakes her head. "It was a fairly unpleasant recovery because they don't have good magical healing. And then the Star-Eyed's people wanted to talk to me..."

And then she recovered thanks to maybe-Sarenrae's divine intervention and they got to work on interworld Gates and "I'm sorry I scared you so badly.

And - I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Ma'ar before you met him. I meant to, and then we were having a very high stakes conversation about whether I was an inverted horror that could maybe kill you if it gave up on trapping you and it didn't seem the right moment."

"It is entirely forgiven. There was no good time for it, and it wasn't the most important thing - I mean - obviously he is very important to you. But, the particulars of your relationship aren't - strategically important."

"Not strategically important," she agrees. 

"But - when I was younger - I was an idiot, in ways that hurt you, and I never really apologized, because - because it wasn't an adjustment to my decision procedures, it wasn't a lesson I could learn, I just wasn't a good enough person to not hurt one of the two of us. And I think I am, now, thirty years later, and in your place I'd be a bit miffed about that, and so I meant to warn you."

"We were both idiots and if you're telling me now that we weren't both hurt that's news to me."

'I didn't leave because I was hurt, I left because I was afraid,' she wants to say, but she can't because if she did she would have to explain what she was afraid of and - she's not ready to do that now. She's never going to be ready. Maybe if things had gone differently, but - Iomedae will be the goddess of defeating evil. And Alfirin is no longer indispensable.

"It was - a surprise. To see you with him. But I'm not upset, you deserve someone who makes you happy and isn't sworn to your service."

And she shouldn't push on 'you'll like him too', that's just not going to work from this starting point. So she just smiles vaguely and looks down. "All right. Dis planning - a Time Stop would be ludicrously helpful but I don't want to push you on being directly present if you aren't sure, it's - obviously if this goes badly enough the people present aren't getting out of Hell -"

"I'll be there." She doesn't want to, she did not - do everything she did, to stay alive, just so that she could throw herself into Hell, but -

She doesn't know how that thought finishes, other than that she'll be there.

Iomedae had been entirely sure of that. "The best option for getting from Avernus to Dis may be a Wish but - I don't know if there's something we should expect to specifically go terribly wrong, using a Wish for transit into Hell -"

"It's probably rare enough that Hell is looking out for it. I don't know if Dispater could interfere with the wish personally. I suspect Asmodeus could, if it got escalated to His attention.

...This is a terrible idea but I'm going to say it anyways - we might get less interference with an inter-hell transit wish if we contracted it carefully enough from a pit fiend."

"I am worried that if I try to contract anything with a pit fiend then they will be moderately suspicious, and you are a known associate. ...though, a Lawful Evil known associate who might be desperate now that the crusade is without me...

....it's probably not worth it, but perhaps we shouldn't entirely rule it out.

The alternative to a Wish is of course to just blast through a fortress of Avernus, presumably while Time Stopped as much as possible. I...don't know a ton about whether they're in fact set up to stop that, or just to raise an alarm about it in time to close the portal -"

"Yes obviously when I said 'we could contract with a pit fiend' I meant 'I, personally, could contract with a pit fiend' - If we do go with this plan, you should check, first, that I'm actually lawful evil -

- You do realize that when History and Future mentions Aroden freezing time for eight hours to hold negotiations in the middle of a pitched battle that that's - not a thing normal wizards can do, right. We'd be lucky if I got half a minute. And everyone but me would be frozen too."

"Well, we'd be in your bag. I have spent fairly little time thinking about Hell's security because it was always an exercise in making myself utterly miserable to no benefit so I have no idea if half a minute would be enough. I guess if I were designing the security I'd specifically try to have it be the case that archmages couldn't force it in the duration of a Time Stop. Unless they were Aroden."

"Extended, maximized I could do a full minute. Except that as far as I know that's impossible. And I know they say every archmage can do two impossible things but that's not one of mine."

"...How available are diamonds on this planet? I bet with some time, and at least one diamond to test, I could figure out a wish wording to pull someone else into my time stop. And maybe a time-stopped Velgarth mage would be able to gate to Dis, from Avernus. Maybe with another wish enabling that."

"There's a lot of diamonds. No resurrection, they don't use them for anything. Urtho was happy to bring me a couple dozen as soon as I mentioned they're useful.

Multiple novel Wish wordings sounds terrifying, but if - and I suppose you can afford to enhance yourself, first, too....

I....think I might be able to do the Commune with Aroden for negotiations once we're there while borrowing Aroden's Time Stop powers, so we have time for that part. Don't - ask me why I think I can do that. I just have ever since the fight with the Star-Eyed had a vague sense I can Commune with Aroden now and that it wouldn't - take any time.

Arazni could."

"If this works - 

- gods, Alfirin, I've been trying not to - distract myself too much, get carried away, but if this works - "

"I know. I was - confused, obviously, when you said it was acceptable to lose the crusade, but -"

" - Oh, right. In the spirit of not getting carried away when there's still work to be done. Marit is probably going to order a commune to ask about our plans soon. The last thing I said to him was that this didn't seem to be a trap, but - I don't think I gave him enough information to be sure I hadn't been dominated or something. I think it's too late to do anything about that, almost certainly if we make contact to tell him not to ask Aroden about what we're doing that will make things worse, but I thought I should tell you, in case you had any bright ideas. Might want the headband back from Urtho when he's awake."

"Oh, hmmmm. ...there's plenty of things I think I could say to him, but they would in fact require me showing up in person, and - it's probably not worth the risk of anyone being curious.

We could Wish-nap him, especially if you know when he usually sleeps.

I do -

- it's worth losing the crusade, but it would grieve me very deeply to lose the crusade, and if we steal Marit now we do lose the crusade, in a - very horrendous way - unless we send him right back. I guess maybe I could persuade him that everything is fine and then send him right back.

I definitely want the headband if I'm going to try to evaluate under what math that tradeoff would be worth it."

"If you need it for math and not the words for convincing people you can borrow mine, but -

Wishnapping Marit doesn't just lose us the crusade, it won't even help, Karnelius is less paranoid but he's going to want a commune too if first you, then me, then Marit vanish. Especially if he's been read in on your original sending to me, which was not the least concerning sending you could have sent."

"Right but if we send Marit back with a soothing explanation he can handle Karlenius. This assumes we can successfully soothe Marit without the whole truth, but I'm optimistic if I can talk to him. I guess someone might notice him vanishing first - 

- I think if they Commune with Aroden He'll say 'she's really far away but busy and full of determination'. I think He has to look quite hard to see more than that from here."