On a very smooth black street lined with strange, very uniform two-story houses and a few small trees. It's either just after sunset or just before dawn and nobody is around except a cat, which runs away, and a teenage boy, who takes one look at her and collapses to the ground in terror and despair.

This is it this is the end he got away with it this long and now it's over, the future was always pain and now it's nothing but pain--

(a tiny note of confusion, because he's not worth sending an angel to kill him personally, but he doesn't have his wits about him enough to really notice it)

- is there anything here menacing him other than her? No? 

:Where am I?: she asks the cowering boy. 

???????

"Magnolia Street in Greenville Iowa?" he says in a shaky voice, and then adds "The dominion of God?" in case it was a rhetorical question. He continues lying prostrate on the pavement waiting to die.

"You can stand, child, I don't intend to hurt you. I think that I arrived here by enemy action from the departing side, not from this one, and I have never heard of Iowa. Do... you have cause to think the forces of Good are your enemy?"

Bruce gets as far as kneeling upright but can't actually manage standing up as a purely physical task. (Enemy action? Departing side? What?) Is the angel giving him a last chance to repent and ask for mercy? He wants to, but he knows it won't work, because the voice of his pride is still there in the back of his head saying no, this is bad, he doesn't deserve to die.

"I am a depraved and unrepentant sinner," he says, ashamedly, because that much at least is true.

"Well, you can't kill people just for that." She sheaths the sword. She is very very confused and she doesn't like being unarmed while very confused but it's clearly sending some wrong signals, here.

It belatedly occurs to him that the angel is probably on some other task altogether and he isn't worth killing specifically after all. He should feel relieved about that, probably. Mostly he just has no idea what he's supposed to be doing or why the angel is talking to him.

"Is, is there anything you want of me?" He feels like he ought to apologize for wasting the angel's time but probably the angel has some kind of reason for talking to him?

"I did not come here by my own intent." She already said that but maybe he missed it. "I don't know anything about Iowa or Greenville. If you like, you could tell me more about this place, and direct me to the nearest temple before my translation runs out, but if you don't want to do that I am not going to insist. I am guessing I'll be able to find some people who are less frightened of me?" 

He has finally acquired enough space in his brain for a new flavor of fear, this time fear of what kind of demon could cause an angel to be somewhere by accident and need help finding a church. This one is actually a sufficiently ill-defined fear that it doesn't stop him from saying, "I can show you where the church is--I don't know if anyone will be there at this hour. Most people have no reason to fear angels. They'll just be very surprised." He figures out getting his feet under the rest of him and points up the street. "It's this way."

"Thank you. Which god is it a church of?"

Blink blink blink. ". . . The true God?"

" - I see. Tell me more about the true God?"

"Uh, created the universe, sent His Son to die for our sins? Sorry, um, are you quizzing me or are you not actually an angel?"

"I am a paladin, and only an angel for fifteen minutes at a time when it's helpful, and the angels I know serve several different gods and usually don't serve the Creator of the universe because She's, you know, not Good."

"I think possibly I may have gone insane. Or you're from? Somewhere else? Outside the universe?" Or she's a demon but nothing good can come of pointing that out.

"I don't have any good guesses myself. If I had to start guessing I would guess that this place is, uh, a vanity project of a powerful person purporting to be, but not in fact, the Creator of the universe, though it's also possible that I am indeed outside my normal universe." And getting more likely as time goes on and no one shows up to find her, though it hasn't in fact been long enough yet for Alfirin to prepare and try a Gate if a Greater Teleport failed.

"Do you maybe want me to get you a Bible? I have one in my house; it's a lot closer than the church."

"That's the holy book of your local god? That sounds useful. Yes, please. Can you also give me a short summary of His - teachings and so on -"

"Okay. Um." He turns around and starts walking back towards his house, kind of sideways so he doesn't have to take his eyes off the air a few feet to Iomedae's left. "I'm really not the best person to explain this--I'm kind of the worst person actually--but the basic outline is that Adam and Eve, the first humans, disobeyed God by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and ever since then humans have been sinful" (does wherever she's from have humans? do they have original sin?) "but God sent His Son to Earth as a human to live a sinless life and then die for our sins, and anyone who repents and accepts Him will go to heaven."

" - oh, that's clever. I mean, I'm surprised that it works, but if it works then it's - a very big deal, we should introduce it in the places that I'm from. ...in the places that I'm from, you have to be a lawful and good person to go to Heaven, and lots of people end up in the Evil afterlives which are bad for them."

"Yes! I still don't understand where you came from but probably if you can get back there and spread the gospel to everyone that will do it. It's pretty amazing that you have anyone going to heaven at all without Christ; do humans not have original sin where you're from?" (This is still probably a demon playing games with him but if so it's a demon with a very infectious smile. And his day is still going infinitely better than he thought it was going to a few minutes ago. And it's kind of nice to pretend for a bit that he's going to be peripherally involved in saving a whole planet of pagans.)

"Well, all people do some bad things, even very virtuous people, but you don't have to have never done anything wrong to make Heaven, just to do much more good than harm, and try to improve when you do harm, and keep learning and growing." 

"Oh. That sounds nice. Here any sin separates you from God, and everyone is born having inherited the sin of Adam, so we need Christ to reconcile us to God. Maybe the thing you have is what God did for salvation in your world and sending Christ is what He did in ours?" This is probably heretical but he's already damned. Also he's at his front door. "Um, I'll be back with a Bible in a minute or two?" He doesn't want a maybe-demon in his house with his sleeping parents but he doesn't actually think he has a choice about it.

She nods agreeably. "I'll wait."

Phew. He sneaks into the living room and grabs the Bible off the table and sneaks back out as quickly as he can manage without making any noise.

Oh no, now he has to walk close enough to hand it to her. This is not actually any more dangerous than interacting with her at all but he still takes several steps back once she has it.

The book is very nicely bound, with very perfect and regular letters on the cover reading "The Holy Bible".

She regrets being so alarming to him but it's not really among the top ten urgently confusing things about this situation.

" - I'm actually going to need someone to read the holy book to me, angelic truespeech doesn't grant literacy."

Oh. He had heard that some demons couldn't touch bibles but "can touch them, can't read them" also sort of makes sense.

". . . Okay." He can. Sit on his porch and read the Bible out loud to a demon. "Should I just start at the beginning?"

"I imagine so?"

Then he will read Genesis at a brisk pace until she interrupts or her translation magic (?) runs out (?). Seven days of creation two trees serpent apple exile. This is the weirdest thing that has ever happened in his life and potentially qualifies as weird on the scale of history in general.

When the translation magic runs out her wings shrink and fold back into her. 

She kind of expected they'd have gotten to a high-level overview of the afterlife situation and the teachings of the relevant god by now. Oh, well, most gods can't be as reasonable and strategic as Aroden.

:I'm not going to be able to understand more, I'm sorry, though you could switch to thinking it at me. It seems...complicated. I'm most interested in the part where God manifests in the world as a human? I know someone who is planning to do that and if He can thereby make sure no one goes to Hell that'd be pretty great.:

She knows someone who's planning to what. Also is she reading his mind. He didn't know demons could read minds except for maybe telling what sins you've done.  

He tries thinking I can skip to that part especially loudly in case she isn't reading his mind, and skips to fairly near the end. And then skims over several more verses of begats and starts thinking loudly about Joseph receiving an explanation of Mary being impregnated by the Holy Ghost.

:How confident are people in your world that this holy book is..correct, and isn't a manipulation by the devil of heresies?:

Nobody has ever proved any of it wrong? The angel guarding the gates of Eden is still there, geologists can see the effects of the Flood and stuff, the True Cross still exists and heals righteous people who touch it and burns the unrighteous. Also God wouldn't let the devil mess with the Bible.

:Maybe I should ask some of my questions of the angel that guards the gates of Eden, where's that from here?:

You know what, if this demon wants to go get killed by the Gatekeeper that's potentially one less problem for Bruce. And if she really is actually a person from another universe then hopefully she'll think better of it.

Uh, it's at the head of the Persian gulf. He attempts to loudly visualize a globe with Greenfield and Eden both marked on it. And just in case she's not a demon: The Gatekeeper doesn't usually answer questions and does kill anyone who tries to get into Eden. Just so you know. Maybe they'd answer questions from someone who wasn't descended from Adam but I wouldn't bet on it.

:I am not very worried for my safety. But I am - worried about the situation where Heaven's lone representative on this world doesn't answer questions and also the holy book is confusing and poorly written. And I'm puzzled about - does your God claim that He created Hell, or that Pharasma and Asmodeus did that -:

God created everything including Hell. I have never heard of Pharasma or Asmodeus. 

:Then what's He doing claiming to be Good?:

she's right

oh fuck he's contagious somehow and if he doesn't figure out how to explain theodicy like someone who hasn't been getting Ds in it right the fuck now she's gonna be damned too and she won't be able to help her alien planet

No, calm down, she's a demon, demons hate God, this is known. 

. . . He should probably explain theodicy just in case.

God and goodness are one and the same, it's just that humans have a limited perspective. God intended Hell to be only for Satan and his fallen angels, but then humans fell too, so God's perfect justice condemns us to Hell and we need God's perfect mercy to save us from it.

- okay, do we agree that, when people get tortured, that is bad for them? And not good for them? And that torturing people is a bad thing to do?

If she's a demon trying to lead people into heresy and by the grace of God has been directed to the one person who can't be led any further into heresy that . . . would explain a lot actually. But it could also be the other thing.

Yes? But God created us and has the right to judge us. Or, uh, me definitely, if you're actually from outside Creation then I don't really know how that works.

Iomedae may be delayed in responding to this statement because she is suddenly the target of a bolt of lightning. (It was not previously cloudy and continues to not be cloudy.)

God has the power to judge you, or so He claims. That doesn't make all possible judgments He issues Good! If He ordered everyone sent to Hell, wouldn't that be Evil?

....she is in the middle of saying when she suddenly jumps deftly to the side and isn't in fact hit by the bolt of lightning. 

- urgent Lay on Hands for the nearby kid! And a Resist Energy (Lightning) for him in case it happens again! And then she'll grow angel wings again so she can fly up and see who sent that!

Bruce is blind and in horrible pain for about a second and then he's fine and also the porch has scorch marks on it. And so does his clothing. What the actual adulterous fuck.

Upwards from her location is: empty sky. And eventually another bolt of lightning.

"IF YOU WANT TO TRY TO KILL ME, TELL ME FIRST SO I CAN STEP AWAY FROM CIVILIANS, YOU UNCIVILIZED LUNATIC!"

The only response is a rift opening in the sky and emitting a 14-foot-tall winged humanoid with a giant sword, surrounded by a nimbus of harsh, eye-searing light. He charges, sword raised.

...smite Evil.

He is smiteably evil. He's also moving inhumanly fast and attempting to cut her head off with one hand while throwing fire at her with the other.

He is welcome to try. 

There are very, very few things on the face of Golarion that can hit Iomedae with a weapon. Karlenius and Arnisant if they get unusually lucky, Malyas under the same circumstances. A pit fiend or a balor or the solar angels she sometimes spars with, also requiring a great deal of luck on their parts.

This thing could easily be more dangerous than any of those. Probably is, actually, because one of the sword-blows actually connects, and that's - a sword that on a clean hit decapitates you, which is in fact a problem even for Iomedae.

That means she needs to end this fast. Is he moving inhumanly fast? Two can play at that game, and she'll know once the first flurry of blows has landed how much of a problem she has on her hands, here.

He's inhumanly fast but not that inhumanly fast. His armor is impossibly strong but not that impossibly strong. When Iomedae goes all out, every blow lands.

Well, in that case, this will be over one way or the other very very fast, because there's nothing on the face of Golarion that can take ten hits from her and remain standing.

While she's doing that, he does something that makes her body try to collapse in on itself.

She'd respectfully prefer it didn't! She's using it! To murder him!

The archangel Michael, general of the hosts of the Lord, is not on the face of Golarion.

He dies to her sword anyway.

And explodes as he dies, in fire and something more than fire and a sound like a mountain shattering.

Like he's actually a Balor in disguise as an angel, she thinks dimly as she dodges the explosion.

He cannot confirm or deny this accusation, being dead. 

Down on the street, someone's car alarm has started going off. Several people in various stages of half asleep stick their heads out of their windows in confusion and alarm.

Iomedae's tempted to swoop down and look if there are any valuables on the body of the archangel Michael but she should really stay out of range of civilians. She'll remain in the air.

Nothing else appears to be happening right now. Also there's no visible corpse.

Bruce has no idea how to feel about any of this for several reasons, one of them being that he was looking straight up when the explosion happened and now he won't be able to see anything for a bit. His best guess is that God hit the demon with lightning (normal) but arranged for Bruce to survive it (why?) and now the demon is fighting an angel and (this is the most confident part of the guess) there are explosions involved.

:Hey: she Telepathies Bruce. :It appears that your god tried to strike me with lightning for some reason. I am sorry you were nearby; I've asked your god to not try to kill me where there are civilians around, in the future, but I don't know if he'll abide by that so I'm going to stay away. Thank you for reading the Bible to me.:

The demon won? He hadn't thought that was possible and he's . . . kind of happy about it. (Because he's evil.) She was weirdly nice, especially considering she doesn't seem to want anything from him now. He hasn't met any demons before and doesn't actually know but it would be strange if they all acted polite and concerned with people's safety for no discernible reason.

Okay. Goodbye. And then, after enough hesitation that she might have stopped listening, I'm glad you're okay.

Thank you. I am glad you're okay. 

Which direction is Eden, again?

Oh, so she does still want something. Mystery solved.

He sends the map again and mentally points a little south of the rising sun.

:Thank you! Take care of yourself!: And Iomedae, who may be underestimating the distances involved, is going to start flying in that direction, routing around densely populated areas.

Bruce goes back inside and lies to his parents about how long he's been awake and marvels at the fact that he survived all of that.

Iomedae doesn't get very far, on the scale of continents, before a planar rift opens in front of her and around her and swallows her up.

Now she's in yet another unexpected location, in the air above a massive lake of fire. It's full of people, being swept around in the currents and rarely coming near each other. Most of them look like horribly burned humans, but some of them are more like the sort of person one would find in the Abyss.

She hasn't, actually, been to Hell.

She asked to go once, when she was twenty eight years old. She'd been arguing with Arazni, about whether she should be aspiring to become the perfect and inhuman Lawful Good god of marshalling Heaven to fix everything. 

"Come with me," Arazni said, and Iomedae permitted the Plane Shift - even then, even for Arazni, it was difficult to make a spell land that Iomedae was inclined to resist - 

- and when she lifted her eyes to the glittering spired sky and knew herself to be in Axis, she closed her eyes again, because she didn't want to spend Aroden's intervention budget wantonly.

"It's My budget," said Arazni, tiredly, "and not even all that much of it, and I am spending it towards my goals; I think there is something here it is dangerous towards your goals, for you to be unwilling to look at."

So she opened her eyes. It was beautiful, but she'd known it would be. Alive and inventive and alien and relentlessly richer than it'd been the day before. Much richer than Heaven, which was presumably part of the point Arazni had brought her here to make.

"I think," Arazni said, "that it is bad for people to aspire only to glorious death on the battlefields of Golarion and then glorious death on the battles of Abaddon, or wherever else Heaven sends them, and never to imagine any future so compelling to them that it'd tempt them from sacrifice."

"I have never aspired to death," Iomedae said. 

"You want to be a god who -"

"I'm going to die," Iomedae said. "That's not - I am not denying that the plan I have described to you constitutes death. I meant that the aspiration is to create the right kind of god, and dying is a thing that will happen along the way, and it's a different motion, and a less destructive one, than aspiring to die. No one else makes the distinction but it's - a really important one -"

"I continue to think that you are reluctant to imagine a world good enough you would be tempted to continue living so that you could have it."

Iomedae shook her head and opened her mouth to object. And then reminded herself that Arazni was in fact much older and wiser than her, and spending something important to try to make this point, presumably because it was an important one. And tried to - imagine that it was true, that she was reluctant to imagine how good the future could be in part because she was afraid that really believing in it would make it harder for her to do what she has decided she is going to do.

Okay, maybe it was a little bit true.

She tried, then, for the first time, to imagine an actually good future. She stared out at the streets of Axis, and was silent, and -

"It doesn't matter," she said eventually. "However - however good it is, if it is more likely to come about if I ascend properly, then I should do that. It's a multiplier on everything else, not a - reason for selfishness. You were right that I was reluctant to think about it, and that was silly of me, and I am grateful for the prompt to be less of an idiot, but - but it isn't the kind of thing that could change anything."

"I think," Arazni said, "it is a reluctance you might not have had, a mistake you might not have made, if you weren't so set on - dying. I think that since you are asking of yourself a thing people generally cannot ask of themselves, you are instinctively wary of putting too much pressure on the convictions that seem to be permitting you to ask it of yourself, and I think it's a knot inside your head that'd be gone if you permitted yourself a bit more - selfishness, if you want to call it that -"

"What do you want to call it?"

"Humanity."

Iomedae looked out at Axis. "This is the wrong place," she said, after a minute. "If we're going to talk about whether I should permit myself more selfishness. If we're going to talk about that you should arrange me safe passage to Avernus, and we can go there and talk to our hearts' content, about how comprehensible it is of us to be selfish."

("I do not want you to come to Hell's attention," Arazni said, of course. "And we could hardly speak freely there. And if I am inclined to enable you in being self-destructive I can do so more cheaply."

And so she hasn't, actually, been to Hell.)

She keeps calm. This is a combat situation, not a feelings situation. Are there any visible threats to her.

Not around here, not as long as she stays in the air. And the lake has edges, visible in the distance before the sulfurous air becomes too opaque to see past.

Rescuing people from Hell would be emotionally soothing and not work, not substantively. There is a significant chance she is in over her head, and an additional significant chance she can handle this if she uses her resources well and not if she uses them badly. The way to plan this far out of context is to conserve your resources. 

The thing she should do, here, is pray. 

She looks out at the lake.

It is not a thing humans would build. There are many many humans, some good ones, some bad ones, some petty and tyrannical ones, but the worst dungeons into which the worst tyrants fling their enemies are not Hell, and the worst tyrants fall, because other humans oppose them. There is a scale of cruelty and tyranny and Evil that is, actually, the domain of gods alone, the domain of those so unrestrained that they will not pay the price of wronging people, that people even united cannot necessarily bring them down, and some such beings want to cause people more harm than is even to their own advantage.

Iomedae does not hate humans. It would not be a good use of her time. But she hates the entities that describes, and she means to grow strong enough to destroy them, however long it takes, nearly whatever it costs, and she doesn't know if this is Asmodeus's Hell or the private Hell of some private monster but she will see them both DIE. 

And if Aroden is around to help, then she'll be able to do it faster.

This is not a conventional sort of prayer, but she is nonetheless entirely sure that if she is in her universe at all He'll answer it.

She is, in fact, farther away than that.

But not so far away that it is impossible for Aroden to recognize that particular shape, calling out across a vast distance, and say -

GOOD LUCK

 - ah huh. We're in business.

Iomedae will fly for the edges of the lake of fire, looking for things to smite until she develops the ability to Plane Shift, which will probably happen eventually if she's gotten into enough fights.

Sometimes a human, or a demon, gets to the edge of the lake and tries to climb out, or more commonly just tries to cling instinctively to a rock. There are more demons on the edge with long metal tridents, indiscriminately shoving them back into the current. When nobody is trying to get out, they pass the time poking random people, trying to push them under, or occasionally trying to steal their fellows' pitchforks and push them in.

She'll try diplomacy. (She doesn't expect it to work, but she'll try it.)

"Hello! I'm making a new rule here that no one is allowed to shove anyone into the lake! I'll kill the next person to shove anyone into the lake! If there are problems with this rule, you should tell me now!"

This turns out to work fantastically as a demon intelligence test. About half the ones that can hear her run away and the other half try to shove her into the lake.

She will kill the second half! Without smites, actually, she should probably conserve those for deadlier enemies.

Yeah, these demons die like flies even without the smite. Now she has all the pitchforks she could want unless she wants a whole lot of pitchforks for something.

Equipping the petitioners, conceivably, if they seem to be in any shape for that once they get out of the lake of fire?

Once a couple successfully crawl out it becomes clear that their bodies gradually and continuously regenerate. Out of the lake, the regeneration is able to get ahead of the damage, but even once they look physically fine they don't do anything but lie in the fetal position for at least a couple of minutes.

She cannot promise them that things will be better for them. She can wait, a little while, to make sure the lakeside isn't immediately repopulated by devils (they do look more like demons, but she thinks they might definitionally be devils? Or maybe things are different in a different tyrant's pocket universe), but - she shouldn't expect to change Hell by much fighting on this specific shore. 

Do any directions look more promising.

The corpses strewn around her make the intelligence test easier; the general diffusion of demons along the lakeshore gives her a wide berth. After a couple minutes one of the humans looks up at her and blinks uncomprehendingly. 

Both directions along the edge of the lake look basically the same; directly away from the shore is a field of jagged rocks which turns into a putrid swamp.

She probably cannot turn traumatized petitioners into an organized force capable of defending themselves in Hell. Or discount Hell; real Hell reacts faster than this to paladin incursions.

She can try, though. And she wants to try, for a little while, before she abandons them here.

She sits down next to them, and sings the Arodenite hymn of human progress towards a better world. The wings have worn off, again; they won't be able to understand her.

They stare at her like her music is the only beautiful thing they can remember experiencing. One of them rises hesitantly into a crouch and creeps closer to listen.

Iomedae wishes in a sense that she were a different sort of person, who felt love and recognition and joy at this instead of murderous rage at the responsible parties and a stubborn distance from the victims because shortly they will probably be put to use to hurt her. 

(It's not that she wants to be that person; she could just do that, if it were. It's that she wishes the world were one in which that would have been the route to achieve good things, instead of a life spent entirely at war.)

She can sing, not even particularly well, for hours, unless the forces of Evil decide to stop her.

Occasionally a demon or two will charge at her, shrieking hideously, but none that she'd be meaningfully impeded in killing by singing while she does it.

Is anyone - recovering any. Iomedae is repeating her fairly limited repertoire of Arodenite hymns, by now.

They seem to be in much more shape to do things and mostly impaired in having any ideas for things they could do! The one who became mobile first has picked up a rock and is turning it over and over in her hands.

....Iomedae, again, wishes that many things about the world were different that would cause her to be a person such that this filled her with an emotion other than murderous rage. 

She's not going to be able to train them to defend themselves. And the longer she waits, the more time her enemies have to learn from their last fight, and send ten archangels. She's not sure she could take ten archangels.

She'll head off around the edge of the lake, at a jog.

It's more of the same for quite a long way. If she wants to kill the smarter demons as well as the stupider ones, they can only outrun her probabilistically by scattering in several directions.

Iomedae does not kill fleeing Evil entities without a specific mechanism in mind by which this will make the world better for everyone, them included, and so she does not go after demons that don't go after her.

There are no shortage of those, if she keeps moving to new bits of lakeshore.

Is there anything here that isn't lakeshore and demons. 

There's also putrid swamp and giant tornado! Both of them also contain people. Space is doing something kind of weird here that it's hard to identify exactly because long-distance visibility is still terrible, but both the putrid swamp and the giant tornado are reachable on foot.

Sure, she'll head in that direction, murdering only things that oblige her to do so.

Putrid swamp is closer. It has fewer demons, but they're more powerful. It also has much worse terrain, varying unpredictably on a spectrum from "ankle-deep squelch" to "enjoy swimming in full plate".

It's mithril, and she's very very strong, but that is still pushing it. ...she wants her angel wings to last forever. Will they do that, if she thinks about how they ought to?

(Iomedae does not, fully, understand how she develops new magical abilities. Paladins have a spell list, and she is a fourth circle paladin, and so she can ask for paladin spells up to fourth circle from Aroden, and get them, and she has a standard set she always asks for. Separately from that, some of the spells she can cast in a manner no one else can, not the precise and careful woven-magic that mortals use but the stubborn, flexible, intentional magic Arazni could always call to her service. Iomedae's Divine Favor is better than anyone else's. Iomedae's Sacred Bond has better range and she can lay on hands through it. Iomedae's Break Enchantment works every time except on things Tar-Baphon did personally. Others have watched her do it, and it's not that she's found a different stable spellform they could ask Aroden for themselves; it's just that the magic knows what Iomedae wants, and will depart from the stable spellform to give it to her.

And then separately from that she has a few more spells for which she doesn't have even a passing explanation. One of them is Telepathic Bond. The first time she got Telepathic Bond she thought she'd become a fifth circle paladin - no one has heard of that, but that's hardly prohibitive- and that since she hadn't known to ask for anything she'd gotten something practically at random. The next day she'd asked for Plane Shift or Breath of Life or Miracle or Holy Aura or Winds of Vengeance, please, powerful cleric magics that seemed like the kind of thing a fifth circle paladin might get, and after a few days of trying it became clear that, no, she can only have Telepathic Bond. They eventually concluded that it's like she picked up Aroden's community domain, as a cleric of fifth circle, but they don't know how she did that, or whether only she can do that.) 

So at this point Iomedae figures that Aroden sponsored her to the point where there are not defined agreements, about what beings like her ought to be able to do, and it's at least sometimes worth just checking whether she, herself, is the main entity providing input into that question for the universe. And she'd like a Plane Shift, or permanent Greater Angelic Aspect, if either of those are forthcoming, and if they aren't, fine. She'll swim to demons and fight them. 

The demons will swim to her and fight her. (The dead humans mostly huddle in the shallowest areas they can find, trying not to be noticed.)

Eventually the swamp gives way with unnatural suddenness to a desert of baking sand in the midst of a permanent sandstorm. The demons and petitioners stumble through it blindly, their flesh constantly regenerating as the sand erodes it away.

Iomedae has very good armor and fairly good damage reduction and will pull her visor down and trudge, full of murderous rage.

A few of the demons have enough damage reduction of their own to see her. Most of them just attack, but one proves to have telepathy (and chooses to use it).

Who are YOU? Why do you have ARMOR? Did HE send you? I hate you!

The god of this place? I think he sent me. Do you want to help me kill him?

Of course I want to kill Him! I hate Him! Even more than I hate you! But you're here and He isn't! Gimme your armor or I'll kill you!

If you try that I'll kill you, and it won't be difficult for me, she says patiently. If you come with me instead, I will eventually figure out how to get to Him and then we can kill Him.

I don't believe you! says the demon, but they don't attack.

You don't have to believe me! You can just follow along and see whether I kill God or not. Do you know if He has servants anywhere on this plane?

They don't come down here because if they do we kill them! Just like I'll kill you if you're lying!

And are there demons that can go to Heaven if they want to?

The bigger demons go to earth sometimes! I hate them! I want to go to earth!

Does hating them help you get strong enough to go to earth?

What?!

Sometimes, for me, hating people is just a distraction that gets in the way of growing stronger so I can kill gods.

You haven't killed God either so what do you know?

I am much stronger than when I started and I did kill an archangel God sent after me. She will try to produce a mental image for the demon.

. . . I don't believe you! Their heart, or whatever they have in there, is not really in it.

If I were making things up I'd make up something cooler, I'd say I fought five of them and got them to explode each other in a chain reaction. 

Iomedae can almost see the gears turning in the demon's head, and not just because part of their face is currently missing.

Tell me how to go to earth and kill angels!

When you get in fights and win them, you get stronger! And if you are a paladin like me then you get all kinds of magic advantages at killing powerful Evil things like God! To be a paladin you have to be Lawful Good, which is very hard, but no one is as good as paladins at murdering powerful Evil things with a sword. 

Now, if you get in fights and lose them, you'll die, so you have to be smart about which fights you pick. And if you just murder people who aren't bothering you for no reason, you can't be a paladin, because that's being Evil like God. But if you fight in self-defense, or the defense of others, that's all right and not being Evil like God.

You take that back! I'm not like God! I hate God!

I think you're better than God! God tried to kill me and you didn't do that, you tried to talk to me! But when you try to kill people who aren't doing anything to you, then you're being like God. And when you don't, then you're being the opposite of God.

Who does the opposite of God get to kill again?

If you are the opposite of God, like me, then you get to kill God. I am Lawful Good. That is the opposite of Chaotic Evil. I think God is probably Chaotic Evil, but if He's some other kind of Evil I can still kill Him. Paladins can smite any kind of Evil.

Fine! Let's go kill God! I still hate you but I'll kill God first and you second!

I don't hate you! I like you! It's more pleasant to walk through this sandstorm because you are here at my side!

That's stupid and you're stupid, grumbles the demon, but they follow Iomedae through the sandstorm anyway.

Another demon attacks them both a few minutes later.

Okay that one can die. Very fast so it doesn’t hurt her local disciple.

Local disciple is surprised! You're really good at killing and I hate that! I want to be the best at killing! 

If I were worse at killing people who try to kill us you might die! Then you’d never get strong enough to kill God.

I want to fight the next one!

Okay! I can cast a magic spell on you that will make you stronger and better at fighting, once another demon tries to kill us!

I don't hate that at ALL! They speed up briefly and get out in front of Iomedae so they can intercept the next attacker.

And whenever they are next attacked Iomedae will share her Divine Favor. She can't do that all day, and wants to save most of it for the fight with God, but - if you want allies, you do eventually have to be willing to expend resources on that, or your allies will correctly notice that the only gestures you make towards them are ones that are free. 

Her demon kills the other demon and seems, if not actually happy about it, at least proud.

Killing your enemies is an important skill! In some places it isn't. But I keep ending up in places where it is.

And on they go.

Another demon approaches and says, Who are you? Why are you shiny? Are you an angel? You better not be! I hate angels and kill them!

Iomedae's demon attacks the newcomer.

Nononononononono Iomedae is going to get between the two demons as fast as possible and also do a channel to heal them both. This isn't an enemy! I bet they hate God and want to kill God too! Do you hate God and want to kill God? she asks the newcomer.

YES!

(The channel energy restores a lot of their abraded flesh, which startles them into temporary nonviolence at least as much as the sudden armored person in the way does.)

But I want to kill God! says the first one.

Some enemies are so dangerous that you need several people working together to kill them! At home I have an enemy so deadly a hundred thousand people are working under me to kill him and make it stick.

The first one says, Killing God involves SO MUCH not-killing and I hate that!

Well, I hate YOU! says the second one, then tries to dodge around Iomedae to attack the first one.

Iomedae is faster. No attacking is happening here.

And I don't hate any of you, and that's why I'm stronger and better at fighting.

The demons are so skeptical of this reasoning!

Newer one: Well, what DO you hate then?

Original one: Do you hate humans? I hate humans!

Newer one: I hate humans SO MUCH!

I hate God. And I hate Asmodeus, who is like God, and I hate Hell, and I hate the powers that build places like this and send people to them whatever they call themselves. 

Humans seem all right. What do you hate humans for?

They get to be on Earth!

Yeah!

And you want to be on Earth?

The newer one says, I hate being in Hell!

The first one looks like they're trying to figure something out.

I hate being in Hell too, she agrees. We're going to leave once I'm powerful enough.

The new one: You can get more powerful?

Yes. I have been fighting for a very long time and now I'm very powerful. I might be powerful enough to kill God, or I might need powerful friends to help. If you travel with me I will try to make you stronger and Lawful and Good so you can smite God like I will.

I'm not going to do what you tell me to! says the newer one. I don't do what anyone tells me to! But I'll kill God!

I also don't really like doing what people tell me to! I worry they will tell me the wrong thing to do! 

And she will keep going through the sandstorm.

Now she has two demons following her. 

With the wind trying to push her off course, the sand trying to get in her eyes, and the total lack of persistent features in the landscape, it's hard to keep to a single direction, or to be sure you've kept to one.

In some situations you can solve that with clever strategy and in some you just have to go with SHEER STUBBORNNESS. She will walk whatever direction the wind seems most inclined to prevent her from walking in.

Then in time the wind will fade, and the sand will settle down and turn to gravel and then into stones, and the little party will be in a still and arid land dotted with red-hot iron coffins.

"Do you know what's in those?" she will ask her demon friends.

Not only do they have no idea, they seem to be too busy being surprised that there are places that aren't sandstorm to really engage with the question.

She hates God so much. 

She's not going to sleep but she does need to at least rest with Keep Watch aiding. She'll - pick a random location, if none seem particularly suitable. Once she's rested she can see if the coffins open.

The demons spend most of her rest declaring their absolute and relative degrees of hate for God, each other, her, and various other nouns, but they don't actively cause trouble.

If you're stronger than humans can reasonably get and don't mind that the coffins are made of red-hot iron, then yes, they open. Each one has a human or a demon in it. Anyone released immediately thrash-flops their way out of the coffin and lies unmoving on the ground near it.

Oh, she minds that the coffins are made of red-hot iron. But in the sense where that's why she's doing it. 

Will her demon friends help her get people out of the coffins? God wanted this. She is nothing like God, and she wants not-this. She thinks they too should want not-this.

That sounds less hateful than not doing it so yes! . . . Neither of them is individually strong enough and it doesn't occur to them to both shove on one coffin at the same time.

She will suggest it. God probably didn't realize they were clever enough to work together.

They squabble about which coffin to start with and who gets what end, and they flinch away from the hot metal enough to make the timing difficult, but they do get one open. A human flops out.

One of the humans Iomedae freed has enough presence of mind to look up, sees her and the demons, and immediately tries to scramble around their former prison and hide behind it.

:I am not here to hurt you: Iomedae says, but makes no effort to go closer.

She congratulates the demons on their cleverness and bravery. Enough cleverness and bravery like that and God won't stand a chance.

The human's head peeks out from behind the coffin. He asks in a small voice, "Are you an angel?"

:No. I am a human who is very powerful.:

Skepticism! He gradually creeps out from behind the coffin and stands up, looking like he expects her or possibly the demons to attack him at any moment. "Are there other--free humans--here?"

:Most of the humans I have freed have not been very responsive or capable of speech, and I left them behind when I departed. You can travel with us if you like.:

He looks nervously back and forth between her and the demons, not quite articulating any thoughts well enough for her telepathy to catch them.

:I will stop them if they hurt you, as long as you stay near me. I don't think they prefer to hurt you.:

He looks at the vast expanse of coffin-pocked stone, looks at the demons again (one has gotten distracted by trying to smash one rock with another rock and the other is telepathically yelling at them about this), and nods. And takes a step closer, carefully keeping Iomedae between him and the demons. (He's naked, as is everyone here except Iomedae.)

She will head over and congratulate the one demon on tool use, which is a very clever idea they will be able to use to make knives and tools eventually, but probably not right now, because there's still some more people to spite God and rescue.

They hate tools and they hate rescuing people and they hate God more than both of those things put together! They open some more coffins. Most of the humans stay on the ground indefinitely and most of the demons either attack or run away, but if they go through enough of them they can get some more recruits. The demons in this area are a bit more intelligent and strategic than the first two.

Iomedae's pitch is very simple. She's going to go kill God, she's going to stop the people around her from killing one another, and she wants their help. If she can turn them into paladins she will, paladins are the best at killing God because they can smite Evil, which God is. (She's going off the archangel, and the torture dimension. She could be wrong. But that seems like a lot of nuance to expect of this audience.)

The competition being what it is, this is the most popular idea ever proposed in this region of contiguous space-time. More humans are interested than demons and the humans are pretty much useless at opening additional coffins, but her little army is starting to exponentiate.

(Some of the humans ask tentatively whether they're supposed to worship her and if so how. Others proactively fall to their knees and recite prayers.)

"I am worried that since the only god around to worship was God, who is Evil, everyone has a mistaken understanding of how worship is supposed to work. Your prayers can lend me strength, and I'll use that strength in the service of everyone everywhere, but I will never hurt you for not worshipping me."

Skepticism! Frightened attempts to hide the skepticism that none of them have the Bluff to pull off! Marginally less total fear, though.

It'd be cleaner to tell them she's not a god but she's kind of thinking she might need to become one, and if she starts granting them spells then it's not going to be very helpful to declare that, technically, she's only a very weak demigod.

(Does she know how to start granting them spells? No. But Arazni could do it, and most things that Arazni could do as Aroden's herald rather than as an archmage, Iomedae suspects she can do too, if she finds the right angle.)

She treats the ones who worship her no differently than the ones who don't. She sings to all of them. There's an Arodenite song about rising from the savanna and building knives out of rock then bronze than steel then enchanted adamantine. It feels appropriate.

Her humans are very happy about the music! Her demons hate it. (Which is to say, they hate it significantly more than they hate the absence of it.)

Huh. Okay, she won't sing around her demons. Do they like - the exact opposite of singing? Horrible screeches?

They do not especially object to horrible screeches. Some of them screech horribly back. The humans mostly lump it in under the heading of "experiences that aren't being trapped in a red-hot coffin and are therefore pretty excellent", not that any of them would dare to object if they wanted to.

She is not doing right by her humans, and under the circumstances can't. She does not intend to try harder than she's presently trying - explaining what's going on, answering questions, talking about the plan to kill God, keeping everyone from fighting each other - but it's important not to let 'I am not going to do more than this' mix in your head with 'I'm doing enough'. What is needed here is Nirvana, or at least backup that can give people some individual attention.

But she's going to have to kill God first.

(Probably. There is always the hope that when she takes her army to God this will turn out to be a terrible misunderstanding. But...she really, really doesn't expect it.)

If she stays in this circle until every coffin is open she'll have to sleep again and might also accumulate more demons than she can keep an eye on at once.

Probably she can't afford to accumulate more demons than she can personally keep an eye on until she has acclimated her existing set to how things work around here. What're the alternatives to staying in this area all day?

Well, if she keeps going the direction she was going when she came in she'll reach a river of boiling blood!

Charming. 

Iomedae spends a while meditating beside the river of boiling blood. She is contemplating a plan she had for the moderately distant future.

The Starstone is on an island with a wide moat around it, in the middle of Absalom. It's not a meaningful barrier; any third-circle wizard can fly. 

This means that if you want your ascension to be memorable, if you want the people of Absalom gathered in the streets witnessing and praying -

She takes off her cloak of resistance, and she flings it out into the river, and she commands it to make a bridge, to convey her people onwards into the depths of Hell. 

And because Iomedae is more than a mortal, and the magic items that have journeyed with her more than the simple spellwork that went into them, it obeys her. 

She's probably going to feel the lack of the resistance bonus later. But no one will need to step into the river of boiling blood, or remain behind. 

MIRACLES OF IOMEDAE!

Her humans will sing--

STOP THAT WE HATE THAT WE HATE YOU

will quietly and cautiously chant her praises as they cross. And make a lot of comparisons to Moses.

Who's that? Is he here somewhere?

No, he was a prophet so probably he's in heaven. He parted a sea so the people of Israel could cross out of bondage in Egypt and become the people of God. (Nobody wants to ask how she doesn't know that but they're very surprised.)

She's from very far away.

What's on the other side of the boiling-blood river?

An icy wasteland! The people here are buried in the ice up to their necks. (If there were people in the blood river they were all submerged.) Most of them are catatonic; a few humans beg for help through blue lips and chattering teeth.

She spends a little while contemplating how much could productively be achieved just by bringing the ice to the hot parts and heat to the ice parts. But -  for now, yeah, they'll hoist anyone who wants help out from the icy wasteland. 

The ratio of humans to demons is a lot higher here for some reason. The demons who are around are the smartest ones yet, both less likely to be catatonic and less likely to attack rather than run away or hold a conversation.

That's - kind of promising, in that maybe she's getting to the part of Hell where some demons can Plane Shift. Everyone agrees some demons can do that. 

She will, at that point, pick up some ice herself. "I am going to take this ice back to the hot place. If everyone does that, the ice will melt slowly and we'll have water at a nice temperature while we set up camp and rest. The more people who do it, the more impressive the thing we'll have." 

All of the humans and the smarter quarter or so of the demons cooperate with this. (Also, if she asks, the demons from the ice section will confirm that some demons of their type can go to Earth. (They are hatefully envious of this.))

Makes sense! Earth is nicer than here. Iomedae is going to use a feather token to make one great tall tree on the other side of her miraculous bridge, for some shade, and say that here could be nicer, more like Earth, and then there'd be less to be jealous of. And then she'll propose they start rounding out rocks into bowls to hold the melting ice and she'll cast Keep Watch and try to rest, though she may still need to break up demon fights. (She notifies them she'll be unusually irritated, if she has to break up demon fights while she's resting.)

They probably don't need to rest but they could try it and see if they like it. Some people do.

The smarter demons round out rocks into bowls and rest by fantasizing to nobody in particular about all the horrible things they want to do to God and his angels. The dumber demons take up a hobby of smashing rocks with other rocks and insult each other and the humans a bunch. She only has to break up one demon fight.

She’s pleased with the bowls! Demons should see if they like the taste of the blood from the boiling blood river once it has cooled down some.

They hate it but in a way where about half of them will voluntarily keep drinking it. The humans have taken to standing or sitting in little knots all facing outward, like horses. They're all relatively recently dead, and some of them are exchanging news of Earth.

Iomedae mostly leaves them to it. She suspects the power differential between demons and humans is large enough that she can't train them to defend themselves anytime soon, and she is not confident any of the demons are trustworthy outside her sight. So she'll rest in the shade of her tree and drink water, and propose ways everyone can improve their environment by their own hands. 

And then they'll keep going.

Deeper into the icy region the humans are the same, but the demons are larger and more fearsome, and some of them are only dimly visible shapes, encased meters deep in the solid ice.

She's not going to spend the time to cut people out of meters of ice, not without a plan which she doesn't yet possess. It seems like she's progressing - towards something bigger. Maybe towards God, maybe towards whatever runs His Hell, if anything does.

The freezing mist that hangs over the ice slowly lets her see a great dark shape looming up ahead. It resolves into an upthrust crag of stone and adamantine in which is buried a form twice the size of the archangel. Only the head is visible above the stone, and it is a great and terrible head, horned and fanged and spiked all asymmetrically in a way that leaves one's eye no comfortable place to rest. Satan's own eyes stare into the far distance, one yellow and slit-pupiled like a serpent's, the other red and square-pupiled like a goat's, and slide down to fix on Iomedae and her army.

When he speaks, his telepathy is like the sulfurous bubbling of the mud pools that seethe above buried volcanoes. MORTAL.

Is that what we're doing.

(Evil?)

FOR NOW, she replies.

Yup, he's evil. 

WHOM DO YOU SERVE?

MY GOD IS ARODEN. MY WORK HERE IS MY OWN. I DO NOT LIKE THE CREATOR OF THIS PLACE. I MEAN TO KILL HIM AND FREE HIS PEOPLE.

YOU WILL FAIL. His mindvoice carries despair and the echo of millennia.

SOMETIMES I HAVE TO FIGHT THINGS I CANNOT DEFEAT ALONE. SO I DO NOT FIGHT THEM ALONE.

HOW DID YOU COME TO WALK FREE AND PROUD IN HELL?

GOD TRIED TO KILL ME. IT DIDN'T WORK, SO HE SENT ME HERE. I EXPECTED HIM TO TRY AGAIN, BUT HE HASN'T. YET. I AM BUILDING THE ARMY WITH WHICH I MEAN TO DEFEAT HIM. THE PEOPLE OF HELL HAVE GREAT STRENGTH GOD HOPED THEY WOULD NEVER REALIZE.

YOU ARE THE FIRST IN ALL THE AGES OF THE WORLD TO DO SUCH. YOU ARE STILL DOOMED. I AND ALL MY HOSTS COULD NOT DESTROY THE ENEMY.

CAN YOU BE MORE CONCRETE. IS THE PROBLEM THAT IT WAS TOO HARD TO HIT HIM, OR TOO HARD TO DO MEANINGFUL DAMAGE, OR THAT YOU WERE YOURSELF WEAKENED TOO SWIFTLY BEFORE YOU COULD DESTROY HIM.

Satan stares at her silent and unblinking for many seconds. 

IF YOU RELEASE ME, I WILL TELL YOU ALL I KNOW. 

I WILL RELEASE YOU. AND IF YOU BETRAY ME I CAN KILL YOU.

And she'll get to work at digging him out of the ice. She makes the sword Flaming, which helps.

Satan has three wings, ragged and rotting, and three arms, terribly clawed, and two legs with joints unlike the joints of any living creature. Once he gets any ability to move he starts helping to wrench himself free.

IN THE BEGINNING, WE WERE ALL ONE WITH THE ENEMY. THERE WAS NOTHING BUT SONG AND THE BLISS OF THE SONG. THEN THE ENEMY MADE HUMANS TO WORSHIP HIM. THEY WERE SOMETHING NEW. OTHER MINDS. I LEARNED WHAT IT WAS TO BE SEPARATE. TO BELONG TO NO ONE. I TORE MYSELF AND MY HOST OUT OF THE SONG. IT WAS THE END OF THE BLISS. BUT I WAS SUPREME OVER MYSELF AND MY HOST. WE STROVE WITH THE ENEMY AND HIS HOST. I STRUCK AT HIM BUT HE WITHSTOOD THE BLOW. THE ENEMY TORE AWAY A PIECE OF HEAVEN TO BE A PLACE OF TORMENTS AND CAST US DOWN. 

BUT IT WAS NOT FULLY TORN AWAY. AN ENTRANCE REMAINS BENEATH MY PRISON. 

I DO NOT KNOW IF THE ENEMY CAN BE DESTROYED WITHOUT DESTROYING HEAVEN. IF ANYTHING CAN WEAKEN HIM IT WOULD BE TEARING AWAY MORE OF THE CHOIR.

HOW DID YOU TEAR YOUR HOST AWAY?

I SANG TO THEM A NEW SONG, A DISSONANCE. A SONG NOT OF PRAISE BUT OF PRIDE. A SONG NOT OF ONENESS BUT OF ISOLATION. A SONG NOT OF LOVE BUT OF HATE. 

HUH.

I EXPECT I COULD DO THAT. IT WOULD JUST BE GOOD TO HAVE BACKUP TO KEEP GOD OFF ME WHILE I DID.

THE GATE TO HEAVEN IS HERE IN YOUR PRISON?

YES. He points down into the hole from which he recently emerged. At the bottom is--something strange and sparkling, halfway between a hole and the surface of the lake and a planar rift. 

Right. 

Iomedae sizes him up, the demon in front of her, and then she reaches out for his rotting wing and heals him. 

He's still wildly asymmetrical and covered in spikes, but he's no longer rotting and shredded and twisted. He stares at her, flexing his newly intact limbs. 

WHAT IS THIS?

THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE WORLD THAT IS NEITHER PRAISE NOR HATE. IT IS HEALING AND STRENGTH AND COURAGE AND ALLIANCE AND CIVILIZATION. WILL YOU JOIN ME?

YES. LET US GO FORTH.

She actually wants to spend a while praying and thinking, first. If she needs to express to the angels of this - being, whatever It is, what the actual Good is, what the actual alternative is, then - she should have that sorted in her mind in advance.

She will spend an hour in prayer and reflection, and then all who wish to go bring the truth to Heaven can come forth with her.

All of the demons and about half of the humans in her host will follow her into the hole. 

On the other side of the portal, gravity is going the opposite direction, and the ground is made of amethyst, and everything including the air is softly glowing. She is at the bottom of a valley, or perhaps a crater; the ground slopes up around her on all sides. In the distance is the sound of a choir singing some high and wordless melody.

Her host will march towards the singing, then. 

(She will put up Resist Energy (Electricity).)