And Iomedae did not, in fact, put in her calculations, "well, if something happens to Arazni, it will be easier for me to ascend because Aroden will make me his herald."

Because the memory Arazni sends isn't of that direct, but it's of - 

- Her, looking back, and remembering all the little incidents, all the little tells, all the moments when Iomedae pushed Arazni to take risks where someone else who could be resurrected shouldn't - all the times she proposed moving faster - all the little instances where help arrived faster for everyone else than for Arazni -

- And, of course, the sudden Sending when she disappeared and Arazni's straight wish me back response between all her attempts to bend her will as god and mortal to escape Abaddon, and then - 

And then nothing.

"We tried. To Wish you back. It took us three moments, because Mathried had the only scroll on the field and his Telepathic Bond had been disjoined. I did a Sending to him and he - thought it might be a ruse, to get us to burn a Wish for nothing - did a Sending back for confirmation - and - then he did it, but too late, nothing happened.

I did not anticipate Aroden would make me his herald afterwards and it was the second-worst moment of my life."

She's going to try to read the relevant memories.

(They hit like a hammer-blow.)

Ugh.

But - "It put you in a much better position to ascend." The Hero Who Won The War is a much more - heroic - figure than The Hero Who Won The War's Young Assistant. She knows that.

(There's another part of her, because she is mentally enhanced, that knows exactly how stupid she's being, holding on to her hate even though it is literally a fabrication by her worst enemy, she knows that and she hates herself for it, but - she was dead and that wasn't supposed to happen.)

“If it seemed like a good tradeoff for me to be Aroden’s herald or, gods, even for you to die - we would’ve discussed it. Because we were allies. And it would be bad for my aims if my allies feared betrayal, so I don’t betray them. It’s not complicated, whether betraying your allies is a good predictable tendency to have.

And it would have mattered to the story but - not as much as that, right? We were letting me be the face of the crusade in Oppara because I was the one who wanted to squeeze liberated Encarthan out of the Emperor.”

" - I know your claim that you don't betray your allies, I know the arguments for not betraying your allies, what I don't know was whether or not you betrayed your allies."

(She does, but she's behaving badly anyway... no, there's actually quite a lot of evidence. Admittedly all the tests are coming out the same way but - even cursed Iomedae is very persuasive.)

"Because you'd persuaded me you should be, yes." And she's not persuaded she should have been, it's a giant waste to have her doing diplomacy, considering she both dislikes it and can spend any time she isn't spending adventuring crafting or binding demons.

“I didn’t persuade you of things, generally. One of us would propose them and then we’d discuss them and we nearly always agreed and it was more often because you knew something I didn’t than the other way around. And we weren't trying to be convincing, we were trying to figure out what we had missed. You are both smarter than me and actually more splendid. Do you think Arazni was wrong, to let me handle the politics, by her values?”

She's frustrated, and would generally under circumstances like this conceal it but isn't able to. It's terrifying and disconcerting, being subject to mind control not all of which she can identify; she's pretty sure some of her wants, here, aren't her own, and it is taking a lot of self-control to avoid resisting the possibly-suspect thoughts with all her might, and also taking some self control to not just dive out of the antimagic field even though that achieves nothing she wants and might not even be possible. She's not used to having counterproductive impulses. Probably the fearlessness often handles them. 

Part of her had hoped Arazni would be convinced by now and give her a hug and everything would be okay. That's not fair; you can't undo centuries of manipulation in one conversation. 

(She misses her so badly.)

(It is entirely her fault, in a sense, just not the sense notArazni thinks it is. The sense in which it's her fault is that she isn't strong enough to save everyone who trusts her to save them, yet, that she is not a god and so prayers to her go unanswered, and even when she is a god they will still go unanswered because saving people who trust you isn't the best way to end the Evil afterlives. It still hurts.)

There's a way she'd usually continue the observation that they weren't trying to be convincing, which is failing to come together without her splendour. She thinks the real Arazni would've appreciated it. Something like, splendour doesn't impress Tar-Baphon, so we didn't tend to use it for decisionmaking about plans meant to work on him. She thinks Arazni, if she says it now, will interpret it as manipulation, not an expression of a shared principle.

It's not that Iomedae was trying to persuade her of things, it's that somehow, everyone ended up persuaded of what was most useful to her for them to believe, whenever it was even slightly practical and sometimes when it wasn't.

"And I was both smarter than you and more splendid. Was, not am."

She is convinced, horribly; she can see all the required complications on the world where Iomedae is faking it, and it's wholly possible Iomedae is consciously or subconsciously rewriting her memories and thinking the right thoughts, she's met self-deluding people, but -

"And - I don't think my past self was wrong, I just think that it would have been very good evidence you weren't plotting to murder me to help in your ascension if it wasn't the case that, mysteriously or not-so-mysteriously, everything in this incident as in all other incidents happened just so you would enhance your reputation further, allowing you to be remembered as the sole, solitary hero who defeated the greatest evil the world had ever known, founded a country, and then ascended to godhood. It would have been good evidence that you weren't scheming your way to power if any event had occurred in a manner distinguishable from what would have been ideal if you were."

"I haven't taken Urgir." They'd talked about it. It'd be a horrible nightmare and a hundred thousand people would die but the ones in Urgir would be orcs, no one in Oppara would care and they'd have a sky-citadel for the Crusade and for the eventual state in liberated Encarthan. They'd agonized over it. Among the reasons against had, in fact, been the one notArazni just named. That probably the noblest crusade ever should in some respects look different than a very carefully executed play for power. 

Among the other reasons against had been... the kind of reasoning that'd let Arazni die. Wanting to win gloriously rather than just systematically drive down the probability Tar-Baphon could win and then eventually nail him. Believing they could do without Urgir, do without sewing the thing up systematically, believing they had the luxury of caring about anything other than winning. 

She doesn't actually know if they made the right call. But it is true of her, if it happens to be the thing one is looking for, that she didn't take Urgir.

She needs to think of some reason that isn't just a gotcha ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh

"Taking Urgir would strengthen the crusade. It would strengthen your kingdom in Encarthan. Would it strengthen you, in your quest for godhood, if we imagine for a moment that that's what you're after, and you won't actually make any real use of it worth mentioning?"

"The country being stronger helps the god. Or am I being theorized to care only about whether I ascend, and not how powerful of a god I am? For that, killing you seems obviously counterproductive. It might help my story a little here on Golarion, but the most important thing is what the gods think of me, and one of them might see what happened, even if I can hide it from Aroden somehow." How exactly is Arazni imagining she's hiding this from Aroden anyway. Or is she imagining that Aroden also betrays his allies if it seems like a good idea at the time.

"... Of course Aroden sacrifices His allies if it seems like a good idea at the time? He did that. He could have rescued me, and He decided that that would sacrifice too many other people, and so He did other things. That's why He's Lawful Neutral. Because He does horrifyingly evil things for the sake of His ultimately Good goal. He's never advertised Himself as anything else."

But she'll grant the point about the other Good gods being less inclined to support Iomedae in ascending if she sacrificed Arazni. Grudgingly, wondering why she never thought of that and knowing the answer, she'll grant it.

Sacrifices is different than betrays! She doesn't expect that Aroden would have helped Iomedae get Arazni killed for some greater purpose Arazni would not have agreed to be put towards, even if He would only have expended so much to stop her. (And it couldn't possibly have been much of an expenditure to stop her; saying 'I see that, I'll stop backing you' would've done it, in this insane world where this is something Iomedae is doing and hasn't made her fall more automatically than that.) The problem with sacrificing Arazni isn't that it's Evil, it's that it's unLawful, it's a tendency you'd prefer not to be known to have and would gain from being known not to. And Arazni is a god, more than Iomedae, and could've seen it coming, making it a stupid move unless Iomedae also had some way to hide from prophecy.

If they could by sacrificing Arazni end Hell both Iomedae and Aroden would do it, but also if Arazni saw in Foresight that they'd do that it wouldn't make her their enemy because she'd be in favor, and would do the same to them.

"I asked Aroden not to use me against my own purposes, and He agreed. I suppose I imagined you'd asked Him the same, and that being used in a way you'd approve of would not include dying to make good propaganda for my ascension."

"Depends how much your ascension bought us, doesn't it? Aroden clearly made a mistake somewhere, given that He died, and overrating your contributions seems like the simplest one for Him to have made."

If Aroden would've done it if Arazni would've endorsed it, then the fact He did it suggests she'd have endorsed it, right, in which case they could've just talked about it and maybe faked her death or something. Iomedae isn't confident enough this logic holds to venture it out loud; she knows Arazni knows that with the headband suppressed Iomedae's not going to successfully keep up with a detailed argument about Law, and she suspects that nonetheless if she gets anything wrong it'll be taken as proof she's trying to trick Arazni.

"I did not have a good route to win the Crusade without you. The most likely outcome of your death was my death. Had I been steering selfishly I might have aimed to discredit you, persuaded you to work under me, but getting you killed was far more likely to cost me everything than to gain me anything I couldn't have at lower risk."

That's a really good point, except for the obvious, which is -

"An argument that would have landed much better if I had arrived to find the Crusade in crisis, instead of coming from a world where it had defeated Tar-Baphon to find it on the road to its eventual victory." For certain very low values of victory.

"I thought you said we didn't really win, and only that by a miracle of Aroden's. We were in crisis, then we pulled through, but we still don't really have the means to decisively win. Alfirin's at ninth, now, that was the biggest contributor to pulling ourselves together, but no one's told you because we wanted to have it in reserve if you turn out to be an enemy." She was not expecting to say that until it was being spoken and wow is that a deeply unpleasant experience. ...actually, they should as part of training put people through magic-using interrogations, so they know what it's like, it is a difficult experience to comprehend the details of not having experienced it - not the time -

"The crusade loses; Tar-Baphon is sealed by Aroden's divine gift and so the Crusade can never truly end. Iomedae wins and ascends and becomes a god. This is my objection to Iomedae, and what I have been saying for a while. For every good, Iomedae wins and that good loses."

"And that was quite sensible of you, we should do some teleportation circles once I'm out."

"Most possible ways for the crusade to fail would have been very bad for my goals. I would've had to, before having you killed, had some way to expect I'd get something that looked to everyone at home like a victory, under circumstances where I knew I couldn't obtain an actual victory.

And - what did I win? You know the god I wanted to be. Are you claiming I also managed to pretend to turn into that kind of god, while secretly turning into a god who just really selfishly enjoys being a god? Or that at some point in the future I have a revelation and tell everyone that an unselfish god is the wrong kind of god to be after all? Or that a person can repeatedly betray the cause of good for personal power, and then still ascend into a god that cares for itself only instrumentally towards the cause of good, but then which nonetheless as a god somehow keeps doing things that cause good to lose for its personal benefit? None of those sound like ascensions that would work. I do not understand your concrete theory of what objectives I had, here."

Arazni wasn't like this. Arazni was better than this. She misses Arazni. This is not helpful to think about.

Yeah, she misses Arazni too.

"You won one more Good god, for whatever that was worth."

"- I miss Arazni too."

"I know -"

"- All my memories are lying to me. But it's very hard to realize that when -"

Another memory of Iomedae's ruthless ambition she hasn't shown her yet.

(At some point she's going to run out of second-circle spells.)

"Can't even tell you I wouldn't be like that, if it worked, but in reality I learned pretty fast that if I steamrollered people smarter than me then we lost battles instead of winning them. And that actually one of Good's biggest assets is that we like each other and don't have to waste effort on stupid infighting, or protecting against betrayal, or planning it, and that wanting to win didn't look like - throwing away every - asymmetric advantage for Good, every tool only we get to wield -

- I would have done this to you, for enough. Not for one more god, even if somehow it'd have worked for that and I really really don't think it would have. Not for anything for which I wouldn't also have destroyed myself, because it's not obvious to me from my current state of knowledge that my expected ability to get things done is higher than yours. Not for anything you wouldn't have agreed was worth it.

But it's not - the ambition - that'd let me  - it if it bought enough. It's -" Arazni has taken her ability to make pretty words away. She feels dizzy. She probably needs to do some more breathing normally. "You know," she whispers instead. "Arazni knew. It was - why I loved her - because she understood - because I had not been sure until I met her that I was not wholly alone in knowing -"

"That there's tens of trillions just like us, burning in Hell, and more in Awaiting Consumption and the Abyss, and their suffering is just as real as ours is, and it's only a matter of chance that we aren't them. So we need to win for their sake, not ours."

When Iomedae was fourteen she got into a shouting match with her parents. Yelled at them - more or less exactly that, except she didn't have any idea of the numbers. 

"You can't take the fate of all Creation onto your own shoulders," her father said. 

"I wouldn't have to," she screamed tearfully back at him, "if you'd take any of it onto yours!"

She doesn't think about her feelings very much anymore. She is old, and knows what she's doing, and knows how to do it, and is doing it. It is not that she is oblivious to her ancient injuries, and the way they shaped her, it's just that she doesn't need to repeatedly examine them in order to account for them. 

But when she met Arazni she had believed that she might be alone, in all Creation, and then she wasn't. There was something inside her that had hardened itself to eternal loneliness that woke up and clawed its way desperately to the surface.

And it was safe, then, to look at how much it had hurt, and it had, it turned out, hurt very badly, being alone in the world like that.