It is an honor beyond description, of course, for one’s god to name one as their herald. It is an honor that has never on Golarion, as far as the history books tell, been extended to a mortal while they were still mortal. 

It is an honor that Iomedae never wanted, but only because that place was taken. By her mentor, her most powerful ally, her closest friend. 

It is possible, Iomedae is well aware, that by far the most important effect that her life will ever have on Creation is that she robbed Good of a god.

It seems entirely likely that the loss when Arazni fell at Vaishali Pass is a greater loss than Iomedae will ever be able to deal her enemies, that it would be better if Iomedae had never been born. It is not a useful kind of analysis to dwell on but she knows.

There is a spell that has been broken and can never be cast again, a kind of triumph that this could have been and never will be, a gaping wound in the fabric of Creation that will endure forever, probably, though Aroden was not exactly unambiguous about it. And it is Iomedae’s fault, but Good would gain nothing if Iomedae suffered for it, and so for the most terrible mistake of her life she gets a promotion. 

She would be blazingly furious with Aroden, for handing her such a poisoned gift like this, except that of course it isn’t His fault and it isn’t a gift. She needs this power, to complete this work; no matter how stupid, how foolish, how unworthy, she is, no matter how little she would have chosen to pay what she has now paid for it.

There is just as much work as there was before, and fewer people to do it, and in the end that is the only analysis.

Beneath them, the men are cheering, stomping their feet, waving their banners as she passes overhead. Iomedae executes some aerial gymnastics in midair. If their purpose is primarily to serve as a distraction so that she can catch her bloodied eye with her elbow and wipe a tear away before anyone sees it, well, the only people who will ever know will never say. 

And then she’ll ask for a scroll of Mage’s Decree, and wave the broken sword, and tell the very abbreviated story of her triumph over Erum-Hel to everyone for miles and miles around, Aroden’s strength about her, positively glowing with it, and then drive their enemy back with glorious ease.

She leaves future historians a lot of notes but not enough that they’re ever able to figure out what exactly the third sorrow was.  

(Three years later)

(Virlich, somewhere)

This army of zombies is marching on these terrified people who are desperately trying to make it across the river in little rafts before the zombies catch up!

In the air over them appears a woman who was, briefly, under Mind Blank and inside a Forbiddance and is truly, fantastically, confused. She doesn't look like a legendary hero, at least not to anyone who can't see through her habitual Disguise Self, and in fact her hair is still damp, since she only just got out of the bath.

That does not, however, stop her from dipping into godhood a moment and telling the universe that all her spells last twice as long as they should, and then stopping time. When she comes out of it she's no less confused, but she's also very invisible and immune to most magic, and a great wall of fire stretches between the river and the zombie horde with an astral deva and a trumpet archon floating in empty space about forty feet from her.

"Protect the refugees and destroy the undead."

The astral deva and trumpet archon will quite happily do that! The refugees cry out gladly! The zombies, too stupid to flee but not too stupid to stop short of the wall of fire, advance on it and then stand there confused and then are mowed down!

- a Teleporting wizard appears in midair above the refugees, takes in this scene which is completely different from the scene he feared he was Teleporting in on, and hovers uncertainly while he conveys that and waits for orders.

Her first instinct is to teleport out, but that's an instinct for someone who is not only now just realizing that this is too bizarre to be a trap. She was in Aktun, and now she isn't. She'll fly closer and read his mind, unless he has Mind Blank up.

He doesn't! He's reporting that the refugees should, uh, be able to make it across the river fine, because someone before him put up a wall of fire and summoned an astral deva and a trumpet archon. Where 'someone' ...pretty much has to be Alfirin, that's two ninth circle summons right there, except it's a weird thing for her to not mention she already handled?

He is instructed to ask the astral deva. He'll do that. 

"Excuse me, holy warrior, who summoned you?"

They don't know, which was the point of going invisible first.

Also: Alfirin? Arazni hasn't even thought about her in... centuries, it must be. Is she even still alive? She'd have to be a lich by now, wouldn't she?

The astral deva is in fact extremely confused about this whole situation but figures the zombies being destroyed is better than not that and the refugees getting across safely is better than not that. Does this wizard have more context? They're under orders to protect the refugees and destroy the undead but can benefit from context. 

...right. The context is that this is an army of Tar-Baphon's, and sacked a town on its way across this bit of Ustalav, and they decapitated it in a strike this morning but didn't have the resources for cleanup because of an enemy counterattack on their own main force. Destroying it is indeed the thing to do. He's authorized to do a Mansion for the refugees if and only if nothing else goes horribly wrong today.

(He'll report all this, somewhat more urgently. What are his orders.)

Hey, you didn't randomly burn a bunch of spells saving some villagers in Virlich, did you?

No, I'm still in Absalom. And would probably tell you if I wasn't going to have spells available later.

I would have expected so. 

We have a claim from one of our wizards that someone summoned a trumpet archon and a monadic deva to defend some refugees from some zombies in Virlich. Weird thing for you to do, weirder thing for Tar-Baphon to do. 

Orders to the Teleporter:

Permit the scry she's ordering. It should land now. There. 

Ask the civilians if they saw anything. 

(They did not). 

Get the civilians that Magnificent Mansion, we don't want to look to this ....ally?.... like we're going to expend fewer resources ourselves because they're helping.

And then, uh, shout 'hey, are you willing to tell me anything about yourself? I'm a spellcaster with the Shining Crusade, I fight the undead too!'

That sounds like such an awkward thing to shout but he's not sure if Iomedae's exact words are important so sure.

Magnificent Mansion for the civilians. 

"Hey, are you willing to tell me anything about yourself? I'm a spellcaster with the Shining Crusade, I fight the undead too!'

With the Shining Crusade.

This is plausibly a dream. She knows outsiders can mysteriously appear, but - 

- A powerful outsider didn't mysteriously appear in the Shining Crusade - 

- If that's true, Aroden's alive - 

- She's going to fly in a random non-wizardly direction and toss a Greater Scrying on... Salis Enhefel, that's a random name of someone who she knows fought for most of the Crusade, survived it, was cremated after death, and became a Good outsider. The hardest sort of person to raise as undead, recruit for an evil scheme, or disguise as a mortal.

Hanging out at the camp of the Shining Crusade, doing archery practice. 

ARODEN THE AGE OF GLORY WON'T WORK YOU DIE AND ASMODEUS TAKES OVER CHELIAX

The fragment of Aroden that listens for prayer in the material plane is a relatively small and specialized attention-fragment, but even so, it's obvious that the mind calling out to him is...well, for one, not mortal, though it seems to be praying to him in the manner that a mortal would. Outsider, and - maybe a demigod, but if so a very very weird demigod. Either True Neutral or Lawful Neutral, which for a powerful Outsider should not be ambiguous in that way.

Figuring out what to make of that, and unpacking the content of nonstandard but very important-seeming prayer, calls for more of Aroden to parse. The prayer-listening fragment makes a call to the larger Aroden, prioritizing more attention to the situation. 

A moderately larger coalesced portion of Aroden's attention picks apart the content of the prayer. This not-mortal is presenting Him with new critical information about how His plans will go badly, in a way that is absolutely not verifiable in Foresight even now that He knows to look. Moreso, it's presented with an outlook of blinding urgency, even though - as far as He can tell - this is about a plan scheduled for almost a thousand years in the future. 

This calls for a substantially larger resource allocation. More of Aroden is pulled in. The dedicated machinery for granting cleric spells and passively listening for other prayers is still doing that, but most of Aroden's active intelligence turns toward this new and utterly out-of-context entity. 

...Aroden recognizes Arazni.

Aroden now has additional questions. 

- on closer examination, it's not Arazni. Or. It's sort of shaped like Arazni, enough to recognize. It's very definitely not His Arazni.

Obviously, because His Arazni is lost, dead, more dead than mortals can die - though not gone, or at least complicatedly gone, threads of Foresight that He couldn't communicate to Iomedae - but not this, even the partial Aroden can tell this is different, not even slightly connected to that part of the web of Foresight - 

Aroden reprioritizes and draws in even more of Himself, attention usually aimed at passively observing and monitoring what He can see of the material and other plans, and then a large fragment of the almost-fully-coalesced Aroden splits off to look back in Foresight, where did the anomaly originate - 

The part of Aroden's attention now examining Arazni is uncovering more detail on the strangeness. She is a demigod, but she isn't praying to him as one; her godsenses and godpowers are clamped down, except for a few tiny tendrils of power aimed at boosting her direct spellcasting, and she has yet to establish domains for herself to draw power from. Which is very understandable, because up close it's clear that her mind is - incoherent, in conflict with itself, which (to some extent, usually not this extent) isn't odd in a mortal mind but is odd in an Outsider, let alone a demigod. No wonder her alignment is unclear; the underlying nature would be Lawful if it were whole, but it isn't whole, the demigod part of her has no domains, and the entirety of her isn't - fully sane.

- and the fragment of Aroden following up on threads of Foresight is determining that warped future Arazni, or the entity masquerading as that, does not appear to originate from within Pharasma's Creation. Or, at least, not this instance of Pharasma's Creation. 

This is out of context in just about every imaginable way, and if it's real then it's incredibly critical information -

(And a paranoia-focused corner of Aroden's mind is noting that if any of the Evil gods could somehow fabricate an entity that resembled a broken and partly-insane Arazni from a future where the Age of Glory failed and Aroden died, it would be very much in Their interests to convince Aroden not to attempt it at all. Or, possibly, just to prompt Aroden to pull all of His attention in, away from whatever They don't want him to notice right now...) 

(If Aroden finds out that an opposed god did do this, it would almost have to be a Chaotic god, because it has to be in violation of a huge number of godtreaties, and also all of the Lawful gods including the Evil ones would be with Him on stopping Them by any means necessary...) 

Aroden continues to have so many questions. 

If warped-maybe-Arazni were operating as a demigod, this would be straightforward to approach, with the channels of communication that gods use between Themselves; Aroden could simply offer an information-packet of questions and a shockingly large payment in godresources for answers to them. Aroden is almost inclined to do that anyway, because while warped-Arazni is clearly deliberately not unfolding her godpowers, and it looks like she might be right that bad things would happen, approaching her as a mortal isn't obviously a better idea, her mortal mind looks...very easily shreddable, right now...significantly moreso than should have been the case even for the Arazni of a very long time ago, a powerful outsider but not yet a demigod... 

She is wearing some minor artifacts that should be in other places, and other fragments of Aroden's attention quickly confirm that they are in those places. These are duplicates. Not similar but distinct artifacts of the same type, exact duplicates. Some of them are enhancements; in mortal terms, her Wisdom is currently enhanced by +6 - but the underlying native Wisdom is at least 10 points below what it should be. 

- why does warped-maybe-future-Arazni think this is so desperately urgent (which implies it might not keep long enough to be communicated via the more, safer usual channels) - 

Straightforward enough; she's afraid of being killed at some point in the next couple of minutes, there's no strong indication that the information is spectacularly time-sensitive from Aroden's perspective but communicating it immediately must have felt incredibly time-sensitive to her - 

(The emotions that a god has are not especially like human ones, and Aroden kept - more of His human nature than the pre-Starstone ascended gods, but not all that much - but Aroden is having some kind of godemotion about this situation, for the very brief interlude before He decides this is not a current priority and shuts that process down.) 

Aroden will brush warped-future-Arazni with the lightest touch possible of His presence, just enough to communicate that Her prayer was, in fact, heard and received.

(And split out some of his attention again, to start charting out the ways He can communicate this information to His mortal agents and try to ensure warped-future-Arazni's near-term safety. Aroden is not committing to keeping her alive at all costs, because it might be a trick, and because even if it isn't it might not be a good idea for - whatever Arazni became, later - to be acting in the world. But that's a decision for later, to be made with thorough consideration and a lot more information.) 

- Okay, message received. She's going to try to send Him the rest of the urgent information, shaping her mind so as to make communication easier; she expects that if she survives the next several minutes she's going to go to Aktun or Aroden's realm in Axis to operate from there, unless there is a really good reason not to.

First: Arazni is from a future she is desperately trying to avert because barring one fantastically implausible miracle that will probably not repeat, it is Very Very Bad.

Second: Arazni's memories HAVE BEEN ALTERED. Anything a hundred years in the future-from-this-date or before that date should be discounted as plausibly altered by an alternate timeline Geb for his purposes; anything less than a couple days in Arazni's subjective past should be similarly-but-less discounted.

Third: Arazni does not know who kills Aroden. Everything went about as He had planned except for the part where there was an unexpected shift in the balance of power and He died.

Fourth: Aroden's death triggers the breaking of prophecy.

Fifth: An unprophecied god- or very-strong-demigod-level (beat Barbatos in a fight, beat Arazni in a fight, beat the whole of Avernus in a fight) Chaotic Good outsider probably from the Dark Tapestry showed up about a century after the breaking of prophecy; She was on track to end Hell and defeat the forces of Evil. Arazni requests that Aroden sell all information about her that might help locate her to Desna, Her name is Lucy Whitman, here are Arazni's clearest memories of Her all in a bunch, She can do mass resurrections and used this power to resurrect everyone dead in Ustalav, in Geb, in Avernus, and in the entire river of souls. (Arazni was in Geb.)

Sixth: The Shining Crusade is unreliable according to Arazni's memories and its leadership is untrustworthy/unreliable. Her memories are probably lying but if they aren't this matters; a Starstone-ascended Iomedae takes over Aroden's entire powerbase after He dies and screws everything up until Lucy bails her out.

Seventh: Arazni herself gets resurrected by Geb as an undead lich and demigod of despair, this is a fate much worse than death, assuming this is after Her death she is going to try to destroy Her this-timeline corpse to avert it, if this fails for some complicated reason and She dies she requests that Aroden destroy it in such manner that He is confident there is no remnant in Pharasma's Creation.

Eighth: Arazni does not expect to die but thinks her death would be Very Very Bad; most likely sources are whoever dropped her here, inevitables annoyed she's from another timeline, and Geb if he notices she has duplicates of some of his magic items, this is why she's trying to give Aroden all the key information as fast as she can.

Everything about this continues to be spectacularly out of context but Aroden is, in a sense, less confused now. That - is a possible story that would explain warped-Arazni's actions since appearing from outside (this instance of) Pharasma's Creation. Not an incredibly plausible story, one with several gaping holes and a glaring instance of "and then an inexplicable miracle happened", and it leaves entirely unexplained how the alternate-timeline-Arazni ended up here, but it is a sequence of events that mostly follows the logic of cause and effect. And "Arazni is resurrected by Geb as an undead lich and demigod of despair" does explain the Foresight tracing that Aroden had been unable, or at least unwilling to spend the required attention cost on, communicating to Iomedae. 

(He is not taking for granted that the sequence of events described is the actual process that produced an apparent warped-Arazni relating said events to him; it's obvious that she is experiencing remembering this, but not impossible that could be faked.) 

Arazni should almost certainly not retreat to Axis. If her story is true, then she's in violation of the rules laid down by the inevitables, and her Foresight path if she stays on the material plane looks - well, not clear or safe, His Foresight channel is full of noise (and the fact that this being Arazni is not doing anything to reduce that noise is, itself, incredibly worrying as to warped-Arazni's internal coherency and continuity with the Arazni he knew, the Arazni He knew was unusually legible to Aroden.)

Though normally Aroden would be able to guarantee safety in His own divine domain, in this case He's less sure it would be safer overall. Not to mention, He might be able to keep her presence - well, not quiet, the Foresight disruption will hit everyone, but at least keep any details back from the other gods - the ones that He isn't selling information to, at least - from here, but from Axis would be more difficult. 

Communicating this to Arazni directly would be...expensive. And plausibly bad for her, especially if the Foresight noise is hiding a threat such that it would be very bad timing for her to be incapacitated right at this moment. 

There is someone else who Aroden can communicate with unusually cheaply, because Iomedae is his Herald. And who is already praying to Him, presumably having already heard something about the situation happening. 

(It is very obvious that warped-future-Arazni does not like Iomedae at all. Which isn't entirely unreasonable, given the events that led up to her initial death, and the rest could be because, as she mentioned outright, her memories have been edited. It also isn't by itself enough to shift Aroden's planned response.) 

Aroden will very carefully (though less carefully than He would have to be for any ordinary mortal) reach out to Iomedae's mind, and drop a few key facts. 

- The powerful Outsider who just materialized appears, to Aroden's direct senses, to be from outside of Pharasma's Creation.

- The powerful Outsider claims to to have originated from an alternate later-timeline Golarion, to be aligned with Aroden's goals, and to have critical information on future plans.

- The powerful Outsider may or may not be what they claim to be, but should be protected, including at very high cost, while Aroden gathers more information.

- The powerful Outsider will be less safe in Axis and should be contacted and told not to attempt to travel there. 

(Aroden is, separately, very upset about a wide range of aspects of this situation. He is not dedicating any attention to this; unlike for mortals, gods can just decide as a primitive action to set those processes aside without impairing other reasoning. The situation is very upsetting but now is not the time.) 

- and it looks like warped-future-Arazni is, absent other orders, about to do something very noisy. Aroden wouldn't necessarily object on grounds of Foresight noise alone, but it risks making it much harder or impossible for the Shining Crusade to contact her and relay the rest, and that risk isn't worth taking. 

He will burn the intervention-budget cost of passing a single, very short and simple instruction to her.

(Which, even done incredibly carefully, is still going to be quite disorienting for Arazni.) 

WAIT.

OW.

(There's a part of her that flinches and reaches for her divine senses to extend herself into while she's disoriented, to protect herself and to cushion the blow, and she clamps down on that part of herself as hard as she can...

... And there's another part that remembers she used to be able to take much more complicated messages without problems and misses it like a lost limb, and it's much harder to clamp down on tha tpart.)

Message received. She's just going to buff more, charge up her staff with some of her cheapest wands, and circle around the area moving unpredictably so she's harder for snipers to aim at.

The Shining Crusade wizard is in the middle of setting up shelter for the refugees when he gets new orders. 

" - sorry," he says to the refugees, and flies as quickly as possible back off towards where he first saw the summonses. "Uh, summoner?" he yells into the void. "Aroden has an urgent message for you, I'd prefer not to just shout it but I don't know how to speak to your privately or if you're still watching this location!"

I am. Telepathy.

(She knows a lot of obscure spells, by this point.)

Right. Okay. My orders are to protect you at any cost and tell you you're not safe in Axis and shouldn't attempt to go there right now. 

And to Iomedae, Contact with some entity claiming to be the powerful entity in question. 

Acknowledged. She'll order someone to ask Aroden for confirmation they got the right person; she only gets the free Commune in a Time Stop once a day, and just used it. 

Oooh, Iomedae's planning to assassinate her!

... That is probably a paranoid delusion.

Any reason I should believe you not obviously apparent to me? What's the wizard's alignment?

Lawful Good. (Arazni might have a vague recollection of who this wizard is, depending how well she remembers wizards who were fifth-circle when she died in the Shining Crusade). 

I don't know what you know or who you'd believe, he says. The message is from Aroden, and He's a Lawful god. He would have spoken to his herald, though, Iomedae, the Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade. She's a paladin. If you're just wondering whether I'm lying about the orders I received you can land some spells if you'd like. 'protect this person at any cost' obviously entails 'let this person kill you or worse' if the person won't otherwise trust them; if Iomedae had meant something different she'd have said something different.

Understood. She's already got Detect Thoughts active and permanent Arcane Sight. She hits him with a Greater Dispel Magic, then Feather Falls him. And, descending with him,

Do you Lawfully swear that you have accurately represented your orders. He's Lawful Good, if he goes to Nirvana it's not the end of the world.

(And 'these orders are direct from Iomedae' is... not great... but there are people in the Crusade whose job is to keep an eye on her, even if they aren't that good at it. And Iomedae still can't murder her without an excuse.)

That's fucking terrifying. I so swear.  Still Lawful Good.

Understood, thank you for verification. What is the present headquarters of the Shining Crusade?

Fort Lorrin, on the Path River. I can take you there. They can protect you from - anything anyone anywhere can protect you from.

Teleporting there myself now.

And she does.

They've built a new set of outer walls, in the three years since she last saw it, and they are in the middle of construction on the castle in which her remains were kept until Geb stole them. They've also spent a lot more money on Forbiddances, by the looks of it. The banners of the crusade are fluttering above the in-progress castle. 

The city has fairly comprehensive defenses but it's not going to detect a Mind Blanked invisible person immediately. 

Anyone important in range of her telepathy?

That would mean important people were in places where Tar-Baphon could get line-of-effect to them, and identifiable while being there! That's not how the new and more traumatized Shining Crusade does things, outside battles where you need the important people leading. Instead, they are either disguised or inside the walls.

- until she gets word that the outsider Aroden says it's extremely important to protect has teleported here, then she'll in fact put up the best available defenses and go out flying on angel wings, looking.

Arazni's instinct is to head over to the castle and see how close she gets to her body before she runs into someone relevant, but there's Iomedae.

She puts up some Dancing Lights, and, with Ghost Sound coming from a short distance behind it (she is not a short distance behind it, and has a Staff Of Immune To Targeted Magic in-hand), says in a voice that is not Arazni's, "Here."

Iomedae has a bit of a lingering headache. She has been more confused than this in her life but never when something good was about to happen.

" - hello. I'm Iomedae, Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade. My god says we should help you. How can we do that?"

"I know who you are. I am at risk of assassination from either Geb or inevitables, initially estimated as one to five percent for each independently but if I am not safe in Axis that significantly raises my probability on the latter. We should talk somewhere private, Marit and Arnisant should be there."

Also she needs to destroy her corpse but she can't do that without an explanation, she doesn't think.

" - I understand. I'll ask them to join us somewhere secure enough we'd at least have some warning if Geb or inevitables come after us. Can you enter a Lawful Good Forbiddance? I can take the damage for you but only if I can see you and you don't have spell resistance up."

"I can take the hit." She can also shrug it off with spell resistance. And, telepathically, Don't react to my appearance.

(She's still going to try to avoid being within 120 feet of Iomedae, but at some point Iomedae will look at her with True Seeing up.)

Then Iomedae will escort her to the castle-in-progress, and to the underground, Forbiddanced area where Iomedae herself sleeps. The hallway to get there is narrow.

THAT'S ARAZNI ARAZNI IS ALIVE

(She keeps this reaction entirely internal.)

If it were that simple, Aroden's instructions would've been different. Something is terribly wrong and dangerous here, and - and Aroden still said to protect her while he figured out more.

Geb is involved? How did Geb get involved?

Her face determinedly neutral, Iomedae will lead her guest past symbols of healing up on the walls to inconvenience the undead, guards with dogs and See Invisibility and Aura Sight, an unavoidable antimagic field, and then a hallow consecrating the place to Aroden with an invisibility purge attached.

She will point the spells out before they enter the invisibility purge, in case her guest wants to change any of her disguises or put up Arazni's Invisibility which the purge won't get. 

Yeah, before she gets into a tiny tunnel in range of Iomedae's sword where Iomedae can kill her and claim it was an accident, 

Will you swear that you and your agents have accurately represented Aroden's instructions and intend to carry them out?

I have not shared all of what Aroden said to me about you, but I have shared all of His instructions with respect to you, and I swear that I have shared those accurately, and that I intend to carry them out.

Thank you. Not that she likes saying thank you to the person responsible for her death.

But she'll go through. She's fine with the invisibility purge; it will reveal her to be a maximally stereotypical young woman from Geb. (Someone who can see through illusions as well as invisibility, but not transmutations, would see a Tian halfling.)

... She's kind of skeptical about the antimagic field, though, either being in it in sword's reach of Iomedae or people seeing her or -

How difficult is it to obtain information from the guards and anyone else you have watching this antimagic field?

I can send the guards away, including the ones observing at a distance. 

I think you should. Tell me when you have done so. Will there be more antimagic fields?

Just the one. Done with a Miracle, in the midst of Erum-Hel's reign of terror, it is a shell encircling the whole secure area, though of course almost everyone believes that it's just a permanent emanation right here. 

"Step away and look away, including those of you observing remotely. Confirm when you've done so."

      "Knight-Commander," says the guard, "step yourself into the antimagic field, so we can identify you, and permit us a moment to confirm that you're expected here, and then you can give orders."

She does this. She looks the same in the antimagic field, less the angel wings. They confirm it's her. They'll step away and look away. 

When you're ready.

Iomedae has already seen this spell, other people shouldn't.

She draws an invisible cold iron scepter out of one of her bags of holding and, carefully to obscure the details of the working, casts Aroden's Spellbane, a ninth-circle spell known in this world by exactly two spellcasters since the fall of Azlant. One of them has ascended and one of them has died, and neither ever used it when they did not face risks so severe that it was worth risking the sight of the spell. She used it against Tar-Baphon, and she should have used it more.

She walks through the antimagic field, then dismisses the spell, because she really does not trust Marit enough to let him see it.

It's not Arazni, not exactly. If it were Arazni her orders would be different. It would be wildly inappropriate and unhelpful for Iomedae to react in any way to this powerful outsider as if they were Arazni. 

There's a thick, airtight steel door. Iomedae drags it open; most people couldn't, and it's slow even when she does it. The room inside is not large. Precautions like these are expensive.

This entire situation is very obviously a setup for a powerful outsider to murder the leadership of the Shining Crusade and he is deeply unhappy about it. (Maybe Aroden would notice that and would've given different instructions, but the instructions Aroden did give were notably ambiguous about whether he trusted this outsider's representations about itself!)

It makes matters mildly better that it's not yet public that Iomedae can't be mind-controlled, but only mildly. 

"Pleased to meet you, and welcome to Fort Lorrin," Arnisant says, as everyone else is apparently too stressed for manners. "Whoever's after you, they'll have some trouble getting at you here."

"Maybe Geb, more likely Otolmens or Jerishall. I am pleased to see you both."

(She's still communicating via Dancing Lights and Ghost Sound.)

"Is it presently correct for me to assume that no one outside this room, except for possibly Aroden, is listening to this conversation?"

They're in a Mage's Private Sanctum and a Forbiddance, surrounded by an antimagic field, with an Invisibility Purge ambient in the whole space.

"No one else we know of is listening."

"Right."

"I'm from a future I want to avert, or a timeline identical to yours but ahead of it, or I was modified by some entity to think this, or I'm somehow hallucinating all of this. I think Marit will think of lots of other possibilities, starting with me lying and going on from there."

"In my timeline the Age of Glory fails. Aroden dies. Asmodeus takes over the Western Empire, Susumu is running a quarter of Shu, a portal to the Abyss eats Sarkoris, Lirgen and Yamasa are destroyed by hurricanes, various other things go badly."

"I have no idea how or why I showed up here, since ten minutes ago I was in my Aktun, but inevitables unhappy about this might show up to object to me existing anyway."

"Are you, to your own memories, the person you look like to me, or did you pick that form for some other reason."

"Closer to the first."

If Iomedae wanted to specify who that is she would have done that. "All right, say we want to prevent that future, what are you asking us to do?"

"Prevent me from dying long enough for Aroden to tell me what to do next; I trust Him, and told Him the most urgent facts about the crisis I know; hopefully when the situation in Axis is sorted out I can move to His realm or to Heaven, where I'm harder to assassinate and can communicate with Him better. If a very powerful extradimensional outsider named Lucy Whitman who turns back and forth out of a giant diamond crab shows up, she's a Chaotic Good Sarenrite and the most powerful asset Good possesses."

Iomedae is very visibly having Emotions. Are these about how she gets to eat her cake and have it too? Did she rationalize this? Or is this just one more place where Arazni's memories are lying to her?

Well, whatever the answer.

"The other important thing to cover."

Arazni is tired. She's very tired. She hates being Arazni. She knows she must not have hated it once but being Arazni wasn't hateful, then.

"A century or so from now, after the Shining Crusade wins and Iomedae ascends and the new crusader state you founded is at the peak of its power, it picks a fight with Geb. Geb notices, and so wins."

But Iomedae can't keep it from her friends and the first time Marit casts True Seeing he'll see it himself, and the same for every other powerful wizard or cleric, so best they get the full story.

"He reanimates the paladins you sent as graveknights and sends them on a counter-raid to steal Arazni's corpse, which Geb stitches together and reanimates into an undead super-monster and puts in charge of running His kingdom. A bit under a thousand years later - after Aroden dies - Lucy Whitman resurrects her as a living approximately-mortal as part of picking a less dumb fight with Geb."

"She plane shifts to Axis, tries to figure out what to do with her life, and wakes up in the past."

"Hi."

"Well, I'll be," says Arnisant. "That explains some things."

If you believe it which you obviously shouldn't.

"My read is that you did not come here for a reunion with old friends, don't want one, and we should proceed as if you were any other ally who needed our protection temporarily?"

"Except that I really, really want to Disintegrate my corpse."

"That makes sense. Is it all right if I think for a minute about - adequate alternatives - if we sent it to Aroden, or to a secure part of Heaven -"

"Aroden's realm falls when he does. But yes, feel free to spend a minute."

She thinks.

She wants Arazni back. It is a dull ache in the back of everything, and it's worse now because not-quite-Arazni is right here but it never went away. Destroying Arazni is - declaring that it'll never be fixed, right when they learned it's possible to fix. Possible for something called Lucy Whitman to fix. "If it turns out we're able to contact or locate Lucy Whitman immediately, and she could raise our Arazni?"

"Reasonable, if immediate; risks are very high compared to the benefits with a longer delay." She is NOT HAPPY ABOUT THIS but she can't deny that any alternative to this is "the universe should be destroyed so nobody might ever have to go to Hell again," and while she personally probably endorses that in most cases, she agrees it's worth spending time considering alternatives now that absurd and arbitrary miracles have occurred.

"Understood. Would it be useful to Whitman if we prayed to her? Tried otherwise to contact her with magic?"

"I think She's from outside of Pharasma's Creation, but that's best determined by asking Aroden, I told Him all I know of Her. Her Sarenrite nature was - determined on arrival."

"Do you think that our Arazni, if she knew what had happened to you, but also knew that we were going to avoid getting Geb's attention, avoid having her here where her body could be stolen, and attempt to find a way to save her, would prefer nonetheless to be destroyed, if we didn't find a way to raise her immediately?"

Her immediate response is NEVER AGAIN.

But, honestly...

"I think that storing her body in Aroden's court with a non-miracle dependent Disintegrate that will trigger if Aroden dies would be an option she would prefer."

Even if she SHOULDN'T, because if she thinks that anything is worth the risk of spending most of a millennium Queen of Geb, she is wrong.

"Then I would - very much prefer to do that. It is also the more reversible option."

And less concerningly "it would be better for no one to exist", which seems like a direction Geb could twist Arazni in which would cause a lot of the gods to want to kill her.

"Understood."

(Arazni's pretty sure most lives that actually occur are worth having, just not the ones that end up in an Evil afterlife or with centuries of undeath. Whether the risk that this will happen to any individual means having children is presently unethical, or whether the hope of ending Hell is still worth keeping the world around for, are very different questions.)

"Does 'understood' mean you are all right with that? I'm not, in fact, in much position to insist, if you're telling the truth; I'd have paid for this information even on the condition that you get to burn Arazni's body."

"- I consider an even share of the gains from trade from telling Aroden this and obeying His instructions to be that Aroden lives; I am here as a product of His negotiations, and tell you how to help Him for His sake, not your own."

And the godlings are being godlings at each other again and he's not sure he follows. That does suggest it's Arazni, though, anyone else responds to Iomedae saying things like that with 'sorry, what?"

Iomedae just nods like this makes perfect sense to her. "Then I'll ask Aroden and if He approves we'll send her body to His realm. Is there anything else you know yourself to immediately require, or anything else we should ask Aroden when we ask him about that."

(That was actually a very upsetting thing for Arazni to say in a complicated way but she's not going to be ludicrously unprofessional and get upset about it now!)

"Nothing urgent. I'll want to write up a summary of recent history for the Crusade and the Church of Aroden to make use of," she says, "and I can scribe scrolls while I'm here and tomorrow I can prepare spells for the Crusade; the defeat of Tar-Baphon is a shared interest of ours. I have ink, but not enough for much of a stay."

"We can get you ink." Everyone will be so glad you're back - no. We have another archmage now, you can run Teleportation Circles together - no. Would you stop being frightened of me personally if I threw aside the sword and armor - absolutely no.

Do you blame me - 

Iomedae closes her eyes and opens them again. "We believe this place to be safe against everything our enemies know how to throw at us. The Forbiddance does not apply in the area fully enclosed in that pillar of stone right behind you - just a Teleport Trap which permits outbound travel with the codeword 'frong', so if you're cornered here and think you'd be safer somewhere else, Disintegrate the stone and then you can head out. You may of course lay yourself any alarms you wish, and any spells on the guards whose sudden expiration could alert you to their being dispelled or to their deaths."

"I understand. Thank you."

She has food and drink in one of her bags of holding (since her ring of sustenance is still charging), she has enough paper for a while she can ask for more when she needs it... she will want to cast Mage Armor on the guards, that's a good idea...

What is she missing? She's much worse at remembering everything since she died, she knows that much.

"We should go before our absence and inaccessibility by telepathy is conspicuous. I can have some angels in to keep you company if you'd prefer that to human company under the circumstances."

- so Marit was also getting the sense that Arazni does not want Iomedae to stay and give her a hug and ask her a million questions about Aroden most of which she'll refuse to answer.

It's fine.

"I'll manage, but it's a kind offer, and in other times I might accept." She'd rather hide in a corner and write reports for Aroden that interact with people. Arazni is so tired, and all her clever plans for becoming less tired are running into the wall that she is aware that she is miserable and also needs to sleep because her ring hasn't started functioning yet. 

Then they'll leave.

"It's quite plausibly an elaborate gambit aimed specifically at messing with you."

"I know that."

"She was older than you, smarter than you, and if resurrected intact will happily agree that she was being twice as much of an idiot as you. If this is an entity that hates you that is a respect in which it is not Arazni."

"Did she hate you? She seemed pretty stressed but I wouldn't have necessarily said it was personal."

" - she brought both of you in on this rather than be alone with me."

"I guess she did do that, didn't she."

"I am going to ask that we discuss strategic, and not personal, implications of this situation in which apparently Aroden dies and the Western Empire ends up ruled by Hell and which is therefore, fundamentally, not about us."

"She's damaged or she's lying and that is in fact part of the strategic picture of this situation. Imagining her to be reporting more or less accurately, while also damaged - we need a lot more details to guess how to stop it."

Arazni cannot, actually, enjoy being alone, because she's being sleep-deprived in the middle of a bunker waiting for inevitables to try to kill her, or Geb to notice there's a triple-greater headband that exists that he made and doesn't remember making, 

She can take some security precautions and lay wards and cast endure elements on people, she can charge her staff more, she can see about looking at all the enchantments on it and wondering how she could replicate it, which she thinks she used to enjoy, and she can write the report in more detail, discussing the history of the world since the present, the breaking of prophecy, the sealing of Tar-Baphon, the fall of Shu and the rise of Lung Wa and the fall of Lung Wa and Aspex the Even-Tongued and all the other nonsense that just keeps happening and doesn't stop, including various warnings about her memories probably being unreliable and how none of this is eyewitness because she was in Geb. It's a very long report. She doesn't know any stupid mistakes she made, but she's tired. She'll pray on it to Aroden, because it would be so embarrassing if she died before letting Him know, and then let the guards know she can send it to Aroden's Herald so she can hand it on to him better.

Then she can start copying out very brief notes on all the spells that have been improved in the remaining near-thousand years, which she suspects Iomedae will want for the Shining Crusade, and at some point in this she'll realize she's becoming completely cross-eyed and can't focus on the words in front of her, tuck her notes into her bag of holding to review when she can focus again, and curl herself up and if nobody needs to talk to her she can get some sleep, if hazy sleep that ends every time she hears any sound that might be Geb's strike team.

Geb's strike team does not come in the night. They do stay up ready for it. Iomedae thinks they stand - not the kind of chance one wants to take very often in the course of one's life but not a bad chance, with Arazni back and fighting, and Alfirin (who is staying at a little distance from the situation; her being at ninth circle is the weapon they have in reserve if not-Arazni is bad news), and a lot of paladins exceedingly specialized in fighting undead archmages who can do the impossible but can't do the impossible while they're being chopped into sufficiently small pieces. Geb's a ghost, but that just means they hand out ghost touch weapons. 

In the morning Iomedae goes in to bring food and check on Arazni, accompanied by Marit since Arazni didn't want to be alone with her. 

Arazni is bleary and paranoid, having been woken two hours into her needed eight hours of sleep by people not deliberately trying to sneak as they entered the room in which a very paranoid mythic archmage was sleeping.

It is not hard for Iomedae or Marit to tell that she's sleeping with her staff in one hand and her sheathed rapier within arm's reach.

"- Morning."

"Morning." She'll set down the food and - back out, if she interrupted Arazni's sleep.

Arazni will sleep another six hours, then, and only then notice the food exists.

She'll check it for poison and magic (the check for poison is admittedly superfluous at her level, but her belt doesn't do Constitution) and then eat, and prepare spells appropriate for fighting off choice of inevitables, Geb's minions, or Tar-Baphon (with some spare slots for a Mansion or two) and see what the options are.

... She feels useless. She wants to help. She doesn't want help. She wants nobody ever bothering her, and nobody to die on the Shining Crusade, and more sleep. And there being somewhere, somewhere anywhere in the universe, actually safe, for her to live.

Ugh. Well, enough feeling sorry for herself. Once she's done preparing spells, she can read over her report, make minor corrections, and go back to writing down new spell descriptions for Iomedae for when she shows up again.

Twelve hours later. She has no idea what notArazni's sleep schedule is but she seemed wiped when they last came in. 

She brings more food.

Then she'll find Arazni writing busily.

"Iomedae. Marit." She nods. "Iomedae, I've finished the report on the future for Aroden; everything in it is for His cause, and thus for you to use as His herald. I've also done a general summary of the most important new and improved spells that will be developed over the next eight hundred years; I can start scribing them for your wizards once the tactical calculation of what you most urgently need has been made."

" - thank you." She should say something about the Aroden's herald thing but everything seems impossibly inadequate or just impossible. Aroden could take Arazni back as His herald if He wanted; He hasn't, probably because this isn't exactly Arazni. "I will convey everything to Aroden. Marit will be more useful than me at evaluating the spells. If there are any purchases you'd like us to make on your behalf, or anyone you'd want to talk to, we'd be - honored to have any way to help, really. 

And if there is some promise I could make you that would have you more at ease here I would - want to know of it."

It is wholly possible that Aroden will take her back as His herald after Iomedae has ascended; right now, being Aroden's herald is an important part of her building her reputation so she can ascension to godhood and start making huge and enormous blunders. Or it's possible Arazni's sufficiently broken that she'll have to give up on that for a while, or just that it isn't efficient compared to Arazni operating independently. Either way, He's obviously not going to do it now, not when it would mean demoting Iomedae.

"Paper and ink for scribing scrolls. Information on the situation in Axis. Information on whether or not Geb will intervene, his demiplane is invisible to prophecy but he might use resources from Geb where scries would pick up unexpected changes on troop movements. Maybe sounding out Heaven for information on whether I should take shelter there instead of here; I certainly want to support the Shining Crusade as a mage, even if it's most efficient to do it from the back line, I have my own grudges against Tar-Baphon."

"But -"

"- My memories have been altered by Geb, as the historical summary states, and are highly unreliable. They have, I know, been altered for the specific purpose of making me less inclined to think of you as a potential ally, and so that I would have no attachments to anything so that I would resist Geb's control less, and I do have memories in which you were a benevolent, competent person trying to do good, who I even got along with."

"But, bluntly, off of the facts I know about the world, trying to ignore that I in particular was the victim, you took insane risks with the Shining Crusade that got your immortal demigod ninth-circle wizard killed, and then you failed. You do not, actually, destroy Tar-Baphon; a miracle of Aroden seals him and he spends the next eight hundred years trying to get out of Gallowspire, with most of your crusaders' efforts for the next eight and a half centuries just being spent on keeping him from sneaking a world-domination scheme out through his minions. I think my memories that read as you deliberately trying to get me killed are probably doctored because Aroden hasn't stripped you of your paladin powers yet, but, you know, He is the god of making hard but necessary sacrifices to accomplish the final defeat of Evil."

"So, I can't think of any promises. There's probably something I'd accept that I'm not thinking of, my Wisdom's been shot ever since I died. But I really don't trust you."

"We have paper and ink for you. I will get you a report on Axis, and on Geb, and on Heaven."

"- Thank you."

And she can give Iomedae the report on history for Aroden.

"Marit." And she can give him the report on spells. "Don't let hypothetical evil me get away with using anything in this to enslave or murder you."

"I will not intentionally allow that," he says dryly. He has thought a lot about how to stop her if she's an enemy and - the odds do not seem amazing. 

Just get her in an antimagic field with Iomedae for a few rounds, she didn't wear a pointed hat as queen for some odd reason, and in melee a staff's nothing but a stick and a wizard's nothing but a fool in a dress.

Actually, while she's thinking about it - "A replacement hat would be helpful."

Marit in the spirit of maximum pessimism assumes that Arazni's Spell Immunity probably cancels Antimagic Fields. (Normal Spell Immunity doesn't, because they don't permit spell resistance, but Arazni can break a lot of other rules.) Also, antimagic fields just don't affect gods, and Arazni might count. 

"I'll get you that as well."

Very fair of Marit, but in fact she needs to cast a special spell to beat antimagic fields, and she's carefully not using her godly powers. "Thank you."

And they'll go.

Great.

Arazni will spend a lot of time praying (not really with the expectation of a reply, just - this is what it felt like when this happened, this is what she saw on her brief trip to Axis, this is her best explanation of why she hasn't re-ascended at all...) and copy down more brief spell descriptions of things like "rope trick at second" and "magic missile now casts five missiles" and "people who are not me have figured out how to do some of the things I do with Fireball in a more teachable manner" and hopefully get a report back soon about which of these she needs to scribe more scrolls of.

She is, actually, ready to teleport off to go murder Tar-Baphon, if Tar-Baphon attacks, or at least ready to stop time, cast quite a lot of spells, and then go murder Tar-Baphon. She really doesn't like him.

... She should probably get a Clone. And a demiplane, if this is going to last a while. She doesn't know if she counts as sufficiently an outsider that a Clone wouldn't work, but having a spare life hidden in a demiplane would still be useful, even if it will take a few months to work.

"I think you're probably making a predictable mistake from the perspective of you with slightly more Wisdom, and should maybe swap out headbands if you aren't just going to identify it yourself," he says to Iomedae once they're in a different Mage's Private Sanctum. He still thinks there are decent odds Arazni's spying. 

"You mean the refusing to do any emotional processing relevant to how a distorted tortured version of Arazni is back but hates me personally and may well be a manipulation aimed at making me do something differently?"

"Yes, that."

"I am aware that I'm doing that."

"Maybe when we're out of crisis mode."

"We are stepping precautions back to sustainable levels, you have a report from Aroden, there are no urgent further steps."

"I don't actually - it bothers me, obviously. I am trying not to try to draw lessons from it, given the source. We have already done a dozen failure analyses and this isn't a good prompt for a new one. I have no particular urge to stomp my feet and cry. I do have an urge to go argue with her but that is a terrible idea. Or to go let her kill me which is an even worse one."

"That does sound hard to solve just by deciding it's a priority. You could try the Wisdom headband."

"If you insist. ....I could write a letter to her and not send it."

"Even odds she is spying on us."

"Right."

"You could ask Aroden. If it's worth you talking to her. If it'd go well, if we could have her - back - it's worth the question."

" - yeah, all right. I'll ask."

And so it transpires that when Iomedae comes with dinner four hours later, she is not armored and not carrying her sword, and is carrying a bunch of books and some maps and a deck of cards. "I gave Aroden the report. I hope you don't mind, I also asked him if it would be a terrible idea to talk to you."

Has Arazni ever seen Iomedae not armored before? Just after a resurrection, maybe, but then she grabbed Heart's Edge as fast as she could and - 

"- I have faith in Aroden but I'll admit I'm somewhat surprised." Is that actually Iomedae? She's not under mind blank which is tremendously creepy, and that suggests an imposter, but she reads as Lawful and Good as a paladin of a nonneutral deity should and those are about the magic auras you'd expect with Iomedae's known gear, but all that says is that there's a False Aura effect... "I suppose this is the conversation where we agree that since we are both on the same side and neither of us is Evil we should work together towards our common goals?"

" - well, it'd be a hard risk to strategically justify if there weren't enormous upsides to us concluding that, but I was mostly expecting you to throw a lot of spells at satisfying yourself of - the truth, however you end up feeling about it."

"I don't have cleric spells or deva powers and I'm not functionally a demigod until I reascend, it's wizardry or nothing."

"Enchantments don't work on me anymore unless you know a clever way around that, but I figured you might, and you may if you can, and Discern Lies and Share Memory and so on work fine. If you are really set on enchantments and don't know a way around what I have it's expensive for Aroden to renounce me temporarily, but not out of budget, for something this important." 

What the - 

"- I've got to say I find this very confusing."

"I care about you, because you were a close friend of mine who died and who I thought was gone forever and who was, apparently, in some sense instead horribly tortured for hundreds of years. I want you to be able to trust in your knowledge of what happened to you, and while this has obvious downsides if you decide to send me on a murder spree, I'm less scary against Good people, less scary unarmored, and - I believe you won't. I am sure I will nonetheless be absolutely terrified, if it is necessary to get the magical immunity to such removed. But - I loved my friend, and I miss her, and I want you, the person going around without magical fear immunity all the time, to feel safe."

"Give me an hour to prepare spells, I didn't have anything prepared for this." Well, she had Detect Thoughts, but only on general principles.

"Of course."

And she'll leave notArazni be. It is not a spectacularly productive hour. She puts the armor back on and paces and decides to test how much weight she can lift over her head and does that for a while and gets tired and paces and asks Aroden again if this looks like a good idea and takes the armor off and goes back.

Right.

Arazni has her spells prepared by this point, and she's wearing her Amulet of Thought-Sensing (she misses Aroden) instead of her Amulet of Natural Armor, and has tracked down her curse-wand (she needs to start conjuring...) and has all the appropriate spells prepared.

"You should take off any magic items you're worried about."

"I did that before I came here." She isn't scared, she's a paladin, she can't be, but she can - feel it, more than usual, that the shape of her mind has been pulled very far from where it would naturally fall in this moment, that she is unafraid by magic rather than by temperament. It doesn't matter. 

True Seeing. Greater Arcane Sight.

Disjunction. Antimagic field telling the universe that this antimagic field will permit enchantment, divination and necromancy. Sure Casting. Bestow Curse on ability to resist magic. Sure Casting. Greater Bestow Curse on ability to resist magic. Sure Casting. Dominate Person, order Iomedae to stop resisting Arazni's spells. Implant Urge (tell Arazni the truth). Greater Bestow Curse on Splendor, skill at deceit, and skill at persuasion. Conditional Curse visibly on her strength and visibly on her health, both of which will be extremely obvious if they trigger. (The triggers are 'attempting to deceive Arazni' and 'lying to Arazni'.) Conditional Curse against acting on 'trying to harm Arazni', while she's at it.

She would also kind of like to turn Iomedae into a goldfish but then a lot of Iomedae's magic would keep working, so. Limited Wish for Zone of Truth so she can keep that up and Detect Thoughts at the same time.

The antimagic field takes out the paladin immunity to fear - this has probably always been true and she just never noticed because she is mostly either walking through an antimagic field for security reasons or else fighting in one and very very distracted.

In this case neither of those apply and so she is just blankly and wholly terrified, and not accustomed to it, so it takes a bit to figure out it’s not one of the curses. 

This is the decision she made, for reasons she knows, and it’s fine, not in the sense it’s sure to be fine but in the sense it was her best bet in expectation and you have to just take those and then not waste your thoughts revisiting -

She is having trouble breathing, which is bizarre. She doesn’t see why Arazni would have made the air stop working.

She manages to conceal all this near perfectly until Arazni rips out her Splendour and capacity for deception and then she starts crying.

Arazni is extremely creeped out! It is very hard to model Iomedae as someone who keeps doing things like crying and being afraid and having friends, instead of a remorseless servant of righteousness!

She's not going to stop casting spells just because someone's crying, of course, so she'll finish her list of spells and then read Iomedae's thoughts.

It's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine calm down it's fine this is embarrassing. Tell (not)Arazni everything. Calm down so you can tell Arazni everything she wants to know. Not fair to (not)Arazni, to be visibly - possible to injure by this - (not)Arazni is not doing anything wrong and it is wronging (not)Arazni to make this have the semblance of hurting someone, only she's still not succeeding at ceasing to cry. She wants to tell (not)Arazni everything but (not)Arazni hasn't asked anything. 

Time to try more aggressive concealing-distress measures. She will bite her tongue half off and hold her breath so she ceases the stupid rapid-breathing-that-doesn't-feel-like-it's-getting-her-any-air. She will - there's got to be a way to do this that isn't Splendour and isn't deception but is just Law, presenting (not)Arazni with an interface that it is fair for (not)Arazni to expect she can interact with which isn't human and isn't in pain and isn't afraid - that is her duty, and she doesn't run duty on Splendour -

"Sorry," she says, mostly steadily. "Did you have questions?"

She casts Remove Fear on Iomedae okay it is really weird to have these astral deva reflexes, it wouldn't help anyway, she's in an antimagic field against abjuration spells.

"Have you lied to me since I came here?"

"No." Hardly requires any thought; she never lies, unless you count giving orders aloud to a person which you are simultaneously countermanding by Telepathy but which a listening third party that's a spy for Tar-Baphon will believe.

"When you asked Aroden to send me to the Shining Crusade, what were you thinking?"

"We couldn't win otherwise." She had been broadly far too eager to demand things of Aroden, because she'd half-suspected that He wasn't really trying to win and that He could afford to do things to help and often didn't bother. She hadn't understood, back then, that Aroden and the forces of Good on the Outer Planes had a budget, that doing things traded off against all the other things they did including empowering paladins and arranging miracles. She'd asked Him for things He'd been right not to grant her, things she wouldn't have asked knowing the costs.

But the reason she'd asked for help was because she could see it wasn't winnable without it. They had no good counter to Tar-Baphon Himself, and lost every fight He deigned to pay attention to. If they did cobble together enough reasonably high level wizards to counter him, He would pick them off one by one; the wizards knew that, and refused to be cobbled together thereby. The Crusade was not winnable, and worse than that it was visibly not winnable, so no one who only chose winnable fights would fight for them. 

They could win with Arazni, and more than that they could make a rallying point out of Arazni, and have everyone who'd fight in a war that might win and not in a war that would lose. She tried to lay it out clearly in her head for Aroden, and asked in the Commune if they could win with Arazni's help, and if so if they could have the High Priest cast a Gate and Call her. 

"A rallying point."

- of course Arazni's reading her mind. That's good, it makes telling Arazni everything easier. "Yes. The wizards who refused to sign on would sign on to meet you, watch you fight, learn from you, tell their friends they fought alongside you. It was much easier to recruit the people we needed most to win the war."

"The people you needed to win the war." What's Iomedae thinking?

She's a little calmer now that they're talking about something concrete. She's confused about which parts of it stand out to Arazni. Of...course...they wanted to recruit powerful adventurers to the crusade? Because that's how you win crusades? Arnisant had been the one possessed with any political savvy, back at the beginning; Iomedae had been twenty-seven and not yet spoken Taldane like it was spoken in Oppara. He had explained patiently that it was often well-advised to tell people about your glorious victories so they'd want in for the next one. Arazni was not particularly a fan of wasting her spells on fireworks in Oppara but Tar-Baphon had access to a dozen people at eighth circle and they needed to make up the difference. 

"We wanted the Teleport capacity for a mobile force of a couple hundred, we talked about opening up a second front. Support for you so you could save your power for the things only you could do. We wanted to get some of the helpful priesthoods without a ninth circle cleric the opportunity to level one. We wanted so many archers."

Arnisant and Iomedae had... agreed...

She's going to send Iomedae a memory of their first meeting with Share Memory, when Arazni was Called to Golarion.

(The first thing visible is the grey fog, that fills everything; not a fog of sight but a fog of senses; Arazni sees everything in dimmed colors, true, but more than that all her thoughts and emotions are shaded, worn down with grit and exhaustion as the angel Arazni's had not been.)

(The second thing visible is that everything Iomedae says or does is wrong. All her movements are precise, planned, calculated; her eyes are the eyes of a visionary, not an angry young woman, seeing beyond the world to something beyond it.)

(The eyes of a woman who could very easily sacrifice a great deal, for an important enough cause.)

(It was just Iomedae making the decisions, then.)

Iomedae remembers that. She had been arranged a meeting in Oppara with the only ninth-circle priest of Aroden (the priest who'd done the Commune for her also present), to plead for her Gate. Her Taldane is barely mutually comprehensible with his, and he can't quite disguise his impatience. 

         "I think Tar-Baphon means to defeat us and force Aroden to come fight Himself. And it was a close thing, last time."

"No, it wasn't." say both of the priests at once. "Aroden is a god, and cannot be threatened by a delusional corpse -"

                   "It would be a travesty were it to be necessary, but no true threat to Him."

        She is pretty sure she's right but she cannot afford to argue. "I apologize if my speech is foolish. I am ignorant of many things. Nonetheless I think we serve Aroden poorly, if we force him to show up himself. And we're losing."

"There's all kinds of good news from the front," the priest demurs carefully. 

       "We're losing! No one says it because then they won't send us more money!"

The priest who did the Commune looks at the ninth-circle priest over Iomedae's head. "It doesn't matter. She purchased the right to run the Commune, and the answer was yes. Maybe we could win anyway, maybe Aroden agreed for some entirely unrelated reason, but it is His will we call His herald. And if I was somehow in this deceived, she simply won't answer."

" - I need not be implored to do Aroden's will. I'm happy to have the girl-Knight, too, if she'll speak of the things she is knowledgeable of and not things she is ignorant of."

       "I need not speak, sir, but I would be honored to be present."


----

"Just don't venture theological opinions," Arnisant tells her, that evening. "Or at least only in a one-on-one conversation, not to a room full of people. They can't let it go, under those circumstances."

       "I understand, sir, and I'm sorry."

"I think it's one of your great strengths, that you built everything up yourself from scratch and then asked Aroden if He'd go along with it. In Oppara it is not one of your strengths. It's - threatening, right, if the generals of the Shining Crusade get very opinionated about things outside our remit. - and they're probably very jealous, because Aroden has answered your petition for aid."

.       "He'd have answered anyone. I'm just the one who bothered to look into our options and figure it out and ask."

"Maybe. But no one's going to believe that. They're going to look to you and wonder what Aroden sees in you, and 'blinding political ambition' is a bad answer to that question. The blazing righteous determination to defeat Hell itself is fine, you can lean into that."

        "- they're the same thing, sir! I want power so I can defeat Hell!"

"Iomedae, no one in all of human history has ever wanted power so they can defeat Hell, gotten power, and then used it to defeat Hell."

        " Sir, you could've started that sentence however you wanted and it'd still be true. - I'm sorry. I hear your counsel, I'll try to follow it. ...I hope Arazni isn't like this."

"Oppara is its own beast. Angels would wilt in it. I bet you'll get along with her splendidly."

----

Iomedae is kneeling anxiously on the floor venturing no theological opinions. Arazni invites her to rise, and she does, unsteadily, because of the ridiculous ceremonial armor. She wonders if Arazni is judging her for the ceremonial armor. She's judging herself for the ceremonial armor. 

"I'm told you are the noble paladin with a plan," Arazni says, "to save the world."

And she can't help herself. "Not just the world. I mean - there's lots of them, right, I assume you can't save all of them, so I wouldn't have asked if - if the plan even if it works only saved one -" Her face is burning, but it doesn't matter, because in a few hours they'll be free of Oppara and she can hear from someone much much smarter than her all the reasons why her plan is actually very stupid. 

- She doesn't remember that.

Not the face burning. Not the shock. Not the youth - Iomedae was so young -

"You had a plan to ascend."

"Yes. It's what Aroden told us to do, to follow Him, because He couldn't fix it all Himself. I figured that if I survived the Crusade I would become extremely powerful, and then I could try the test of the Starstone, if Aroden said I had good enough odds it was worth it. And that I probably wouldn't survive the Crusade, so it was early to do that much planning, but - the thing I'd been holding out for, when I tried to find a paladin order to join, was - some account of how if they did everything they wanted to do that ended in a true victory. Knowing that - most of those plans wouldn't happen - was one thing, it felt poisonous to not even be aiming for it, to be doing things without any account of how, if they went well, if they got lucky, we would actually win. And 'ascend, fix whatever's wrong with Shizuru' was - closer to that account than anything else I'd thought of."

"...unless it can only be one every thousand years for some reason, but even if that's so, we're due," Iomedae concludes her explanation of her plan to the herald of her god who is much older and wiser and probably has noticed by now that Iomedae is not actually intelligent, even if she can fake it when she concentrates hard enough. "And it's weird Aroden would've misrepresented it that much - why are there even trials around the Starstone, why not just put it out there and let people Commune and ask their odds."

        "I am not going to answer that," Arazni says, and there's a bit of detectable tiredness at this point because it is the thirty-fifth question Iomedae's asked to which that has been the answer. 

" - should I stop asking things? I'm sorry. I ask Aroden when I can afford to but that's not all that often. I - well, I don't understand why you won't answer, but I believe you that there's a good reason."

        "I haven't asked you to stop," Arazni says. "But I don't expect you'll achieve much, and I hope that's not what you were trying to achieve here."

" - no! No! You need never speak to me again, if you don't wish to! The command has far better sense than I of what we need an archmage for.  I just - wanted to be clear. About what the plan was. So if it's very foolish you can tell me to knock it off now before I've done a lot more planning."

         "It's not obviously very foolish. It'll probably fail."

"I do know that. I - it's fine if I die. I just want to be doing something where if enough people are doing that thing, we actually win."

Arazni remembered different words. She remembered Iomedae with a burning desire to know - to cut straight to the answer, to jump the curve, you could do that or you could win - angrily demanding because she needed to know to plan, no apologies because she's never -

And she shared her memory.

"I haven't asked you to stop," said the exhausted angel to one more mortal doomed to die but one more mortal with a strand of destiny that made her not quite a mortal, "But I don't don't expect you'll achieve much, and I hope that's not what you were trying to achieve here."

"I'm trying to win, however I have to to stop Hell, and I need to know if this plan won't work so I can find another one."

- It was the Arodenite virtue that Geb knew best, probably.

"It will probably fail." Slightly testing.

And, confident, burning, "It's fine if I die. But someone has to do it."

That's not impossibly wrong.  It's not as if Iomedae did not, at various points, try intimidating people into getting out of her way with her aura of destiny. Not her allies, because you don't treat your allies like that, and not her commanding officers because that just seems stupid, but - there are probably plenty of minor Taldane nobility who remember her that way, because they were getting her people killed. 

If you do that to your allies you end up unable to benefit from any cleverness but your own and Iomedae's isn't adequate, actually. She needs people to tell her when she's being an idiot. 

Also saying sorry as a strategy just outperforms being unwilling to do that. The apology Iomedae makes most often is 'I am sorry I haven't conquered the Evil afterlives yet', in one form or another, and it works very well. 

"I'm sorry," she says aloud, at that point. "For - being an idiot and making the decisions that got you killed. And - if you wish I'd never asked, then I am in a sense sorry I did, though - I don't know that I'd follow a different rule next time about asking."

"- I trusted Aroden, trusted the shape of prophecy that he saw better than me. I thought I saw clearly enough." She didn't think she'd die. She thought she could beat him. (She'd thought that she was invincible.)

There's a good deal she wants to say. 

"- The decisions that got me killed. How do you remember them?"

Because Arazni knows how she remembers them.

They were so close. They could spend another five or ten years marching the whole army across ghastly Virlich, at immeasureable human cost, but they had Tar-Baphon on the defensive, they were actually outgunning him in some fights after miserable years of having less spells and fewer casters but more ability to use what they had and more willingness to spend everything on this. 

They talked about it. They all understood that they were taking a risk. But they didn't feel it in their bones. They felt in their bones that they had triumphed and triumphed and triumphed, that they'd paid in blood for twenty years and were done paying, that there would be an ambush in Vaishali Pass and it wouldn't matter because they were most of the way to being gods. They did have procedures, for these things, they put numbers on it, they debated the merits of different plans, but it was very very hard to contemplate putting ones' nose to a grindstone of bleak horror for ten years when one considered it overwhelmingly likely that a straightforward assault now would succeed, or would fail recoverably, maybe cost them the four diamonds they'd accumulated for the fight at Gallowspire. More diamonds, they were pretty sure, than Tar-Baphon had. The worst-case scenario they seriously considered was that they'd burn all four in a retreat (or in True Resurrections of people lost in that retreat) and then have to do it the slow way. 

Which wasn't that much worse than just doing it the slow way in the first place. 

They contemplated scenarios where Iomedae died, where they lost Aroden's Shield or its bearer, where they lost a bunch of the wizards and had them raised as enemies.

They thought Arazni was invincible. They thought Aroden would see and warn them, if that were wrong. And it felt like a betrayal, of sorts, to send men to their deaths not to save their kingdom from Tar-Baphon, as they'd originally been promised, but to make it so no one important had to take any chances. (This logic feels like madness, to Iomedae now, but she knows she felt it at the time.)

Arazni thought she was invincible, too. At the point where you're a ninth-circle wizard, an astral deva, and a demigod, there shouldn't be things that can land a spell or sword on you, for any spell, for any sword. 

It turns out "Disjoin her and then have a dragon push her through a Gate into Bloodrot, where most of his army and also Urgathoa's were waiting" did it.

... That happened, right?

Yes. That happened.

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.

"- And I am sorry, truly, but that does not, right now, motivate me."

"I'm sorry. I am aware that it should. What motivates me is personal loyalty to Aroden and a personal dislike of Tar-Baphon and that I need something to occupy my time."

"Maybe I'll recover. Maybe I won't. But I haven't yet."

She cannot say that it's all right, because it's the farthest thing from all right imaginable. 

She is not really sure it's the sort of thing for which an apology is owed. 

Her Arazni is dead and instead - no, that's not really a fair-to-this-person way to think about it -

"Do you have more questions for me."

"... No." Absent some kind of truly extraordinary way to edit her own memories, Iomedae probably did not intend any of this. Arazni's life is just a lie.

Give Alfirin a hug, she could use it half as much as you can "Goodbye."

And she'll lower all the spells and the antimagic field.

Is Iomedae going to kill her now?

And she's herself again, not afraid, not a child, someone who can go on whatever she loses. Arazni's habitual disguise is helpful; this could really be any person, in a sense, and it doesn't hurt anymore that most people aren't Arazni.

"Let me know if you need anything. We're working on plans to take advantage of having you back, we'll bring you everything that seems like a serious possibility."

Arazni, herself, is recovering, now that her headband is back to functioning.

"I need a way to take down Tar-Baphon that doesn't rely on him casting Death Clutch - Tar-Baphon invented it, it rips peoples' hearts out - on Arnisant while he bears the Shield of Aroden, causing the shield to explode and also be teleported inside the Tyrant's hand, incapacitating him with holy fire long enough to build a seal around Gallowspire. Your state will be much less useless if we have that. This probably means Dominate Undead or Trap the Soul, but while we haven't gotten any solid hits through his spell resistance yet, but with some rabbit sacrifices and preparations and being slightly a god I might be able to land a hit before he teleports off. I've done some research on magic but I haven't gotten anything that gets around his spell resistance and his will, unless we can get ahold of his True Name which is presumably still not Tar-Baphon."

"I also need information from Aroden on the state of affairs in Axis, and should probably be crafting magic items while I wait."

"Dominate Undead?" - actually, of course Arazni-undead-ruler-of-Geb would've been doing some spell development relevant to their present interests. "Alfirin tosses a Threnodic Dominate Monster at him sometimes when she has the chance but it's obviously never taken. If you had a way to do it more cheaply that might be really valuable. I get around his spell resistance and his will, if you have anything that lets me deal the undead nonlethal damage.

And I'll pass along everything Aroden tells me to, and the things we'd most benefit from in the meantime are probably ninth circle scrolls, or metamagic rods if you've picked up crafting those." 

"Sixth circle." That took a lot of work, but she wanted to be able to use normal-strength metamagic rods on it. "Nothing for nonlethal. I also have a spell for tearing them apart that targets their body instead of their mind and has some lingering effects after they wake up, with a mass version - fifth and ninth - but that won't stop Tar-Baphon, just make him know something funny's going on." It is total coincidence that the spells Arazni happened to be best at working on were the ones she found most interesting were the ones most useful for crushing rebels against her rule, which would also incidentally be very helpful if she got the chance to rebel against her rule. "There's also a first-circle spell that only lasts for a round to help you get through spell resistance."

(She considered that all this might be a hallucination, and came to the conclusion that though she's somewhat worried about Dominate Undead getting out, the only people who could do anything with them detrimental to her interests are the Whispering Way, and they aren't competent to throw her into a dreamscape. And if she is still trapped in Geb and this is an elaborate loyalty test, she has no objections ot the spells getting leaked to where they can be used against her.)

"I do not have metamagic rod crafting. Been focused on other things." She has people for that; there's quite a lot of vampires in Geb running magic item workshops to pay for whatever their evil schemes are.

A sixth circle Dominate that works on the undead is a massive improvement on what they currently have but it doesn't, actually, mean their sixth circle spellcasters could if they got lucky enough land something. They don't think Alfirin has ever gotten past Tar-Baphon's spell resistance, and are sure that the eighth circle spellcasters haven't, even Mathreid who is an elf and has robes of the archmagi.  If there's a spell that'd give them a chance, even only a mediocre chance, it'd open up a lot of possibilities.

"We should probably get some more people in here if we're going to plan in depth, but with you dead he has been operating comfortably under the assumption that we more or less can't touch him with spells, and I think we want to conceal hints that we can until we have an ambush ready that we think is quite likely to actually win the whole thing. How good's the spell to help get through spell resistance?"

"Two circles, about. First-circle, needs to be quickened if you want to get it off fast, only works for one spell. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Alfirin designed it for this purpose, it was around when I came back."

"Was Alfirin? Around when you came back?"

"She wasn't active in Geb or any country next to it, if she was around elsewhere she changed her name."

"If she's considering lichdom I'd recommend against it."

"I would appreciate it if you don't bring it up with her. We - can't afford to fight. So we don't. We are careful and everything goes very smoothly. After Tar-Baphon is dead, you can try to convince her, if you want."

Well, that's going to be fun to navigate. "Understood."

Iomedae doesn't think it's likely Alfirin will quit just because not-quite-Arazni has shown back up but it's not completely impossible and it's more likely if she feels like it means she's under a microscope from someone more qualified than the paladins to notice what her plans are. Iomedae does suspect she has some. 

"Shall I schedule a time for Alfirin and the rest of the command to come think through plans with us? I would really expect this to be sufficient to take him down, though I'm not thinking immediately of any plans that feel to me like a good bet rather than just one worth taking."

"Sounds reasonable. I also have an ninth circle Discern Location variant for phylacteries that searches for the soul using a fragment of the body as a focus, if you've got any bits of Tar-Baphon lying around, though ninety percent odds his is too well concealed for that."

"- oh, clever. We have some pieces from the last time I killed him on the battlefield, in case we ever needed it for scrying though of course scrying him is ludicrously dangerous."

She nods. "Probably won't work, but if it does..."

"We can take as many long shots as we want, if they don't tip our hand. I'll have them brought here." 

She hesitates. "And -" And she draws her knife and slices off a lock of her own hair. "In case you need to scry me at some point. I'm told I make it annoyingly difficult." It's an understatement. If she's prepared for combat she to a first approximation will resist any spell.

"- Thank you." She's aware of what this means.

She'll take it and quietly tuck it away in a Bag of Holding.

(In the opinion of Arazni, the correct way to open every fight is with Disjunction, followed by something that will kill or incapacitate your target unless they get spectacularly lucky. This is, of course, what Aroden's Spellbane naming Disjunction and Greater Dispel Magic and Antimagic Field is for, which is one of the reasons Arazni spent so long convinced she was completely invincible in any fight whatsoever.)

Iomedae does not believe she is invincible. No one who lived through the last three years could believe that.

"I need to head out to coordinate everybody," which she can't do from inside the Private Sanctum. Also they'll be worrying about her. "Expect us back in a few hours, if that's all right, and of course you can send somebody if you want us sooner."

"I'll get started on the scrolls."

And Iomedae heads off to meet with the command of the Shining Crusade. 

She looks calm and okay, but only if you haven't known her for decades. "I think that went well."

Did it though.

She doesn't think it did, no. "Say more?"

"Arazni had tampered memories suggesting that I had deliberately had her murdered so that the triumph of the Shining Crusade would play more to my personal advantage at home. This required tampering with most of our interactions and a lot of our decisionmaking. I think she does not believe that now, and while she is very much not all right, she wants to stop Tar-Baphon and has some useful spell development done during her centuries of lichdom."

"Oh. Does she have similar tampering for the rest of us, would it be better for someone else to be the one to talk to her - ?"

"I think it was definitely aimed most specifically at me, and she will probably have lots more fun spellcrafting with you than planning with me."

"- she knows Alfirin's at ninth, now?"

"Yes." Iomedae does not mean to sound defensive about this but is only mostly succeeding.

"It was not going to be meaningfully secret for long - we could, I suppose, if we'd been treating her entirely adversarially, we could have concealed exactly who, but she'd know we had someone because we haven't lost yet."

"Knight-Commander," says Arnisant, "no reasonable being would think you should go submit yourself to an interrogation and then not actually say anything we didn't want known. It's fine. She's not our enemy; if she were, this was the best shot she'd have gotten."

"She's not our enemy. She offered to do some Teleportation Circles but - we probably want to see what a full strength surprise effort to take Tar-Baphon down with two archmages looks like before we reveal that we have that."

"Yes, better to keep her in reserve - She can actually land spells on him, we've got the threnodic rod, I think we'll want to catch him by surprise if we can - "

"That is also how she was inclined, yes. She knows a first circle spell that makes a spell cast the next round cast as if it's from a more powerful caster, might let you land things on him occasionally too. Also she has a sixth circle Dominate Undead! I suppose it's not surprising that Geb's priorities have some overlap with our own."

"Sixth-circle? And we wouldn't need the rod - "

"We could probably take out a lot of old friends that way. Not Tar-Baphon, but - if we got everyone who can cast sixth circle enchantments to prep them all, one fight -"

"That's thirty eight people. I don't think it's worth spoiling the surprise for Tar-Baphon but it might, actually, be fairly decisive all by itself, if we ripped the fifteen highest value targets away from him."

"Let's please not, the second we get Arazni back, start dreaming of glorious overnight victories -"

"I think it's not a good idea to think of it as Arazni back. In case that helps serve as an antidote to dreaming."

"Well. Shall we go talk to her?"

Arazni is, in fact, starting with a scroll of Sure Casting, because she absolutely has the wizard's reluctance to letting people look at her spellbook. She'll move on to Dominate Undead once she's gotten that.

"Ready to discuss strategy?" she says.

(She sees no reason to stop scribing yet. She's good at what she does.)

"We are."

"I'm starting with a scroll of Sure Casting you can copy because that's fastest, once I have that I'll start on Dominate Undead. I can start Locating phylacteries once I don't need to use all my spells at ninth for hypothetical-Inevitable-and-Geb-defense. I can't fight like I could but I'm a ninth circle wizard. I'd like to start on a Clone when the most time-critical issues are out of the way, but I don't think we can afford to wait for it to mature unless you have a time-dilated demiplane I can borrow. I don't know the military map, hopefully Tar-Baphon didn't spot me last night. And I still don't have a response for whether inevitables are after me unless you've brought one." She thinks that question is PRETTY IMPORTANT, actually.

"Aroden is very confident no inevitables will bother you here, is negotiating for no inevitables to bother you in Axis, doesn't expect he'd know one way or the other about Geb sending lackeys, does not expect Geb in person. We brought maps."

"Tar-Baphon could've noticed the interventions yesterday but they could've been Alfirin and we've seen no sign he's reacting as he ought to if he thought you were back."

"If he thinks Arazni is back he ought to sacrifice the armies he'll be leaving exposed and try to set up what he did last time, and if he's doing that we wouldn't see it. Do you have a counter to that now," he adds to Arazni.

She feels oddly warm about Aroden making sure Axis will be safe for her, which is odd, because it fits her model of him perfectly well.

- Oh right, goddess of despair. That.

"I can be resurrected, now," she says drily. "Other than that, nothing I didn't have then. Has he tried it on anyone else?"

"No. He sent Erum-Hel, the next time he tried to decapitate the Crusade, and since that failed and Alfirin hit ninth he's been making himself pretty scarce. I assume it was outlandishly costly for him. We have trained and assigned spellcasters to throw up a Wall of Force blocking any similar attempts, but they're only mostly reliable in training and will presumably be less so in the field."

"As of yet, he has not made any serious targeted attempt on me. A number of unserious ones and an offer of immortality if I defected, but nothing expensive - I suspect he's been working on something slower and less expensive, or at least less expensive in the long run if he expects the Crusade to keep finding replacement archmages, which he might."

"Most likely," she says. "- I can cast ninth-circle Summon Monster an unlimited number of times a day, by the way, so if you have any plans that could be solved with a dozen trumpet archons, let me know."

Arazni is not going to bring up the offer of immortality. She can comment later about how her undeath was much worse than nonexistence for her and for everyone else.

Karlenius did not know about the offer of immortality and is making a face slightly like he would've expected Alfirin to take it. 

Oh, come on, even if Alfirin wanted lichdom she wouldn't want to be indebted to Tar-Baphon for it. She's competent to do it herself. And she shouldn't. It'd be awful for her. 

" - an unlimited number of times per day? I'm sure there's a good setup to pick a fight with a horde of archons, have the enemy hang around and give us the three minutes assuming they'll have a better time once those leave, and then be very badly on the back foot when they get replaced."

(Arnisant is disinterested in Alfirin-related psychodrama. She hasn't betrayed them yet, and if she does, they'll fight her too.)

"It's not quite as fast as if I could just cast forty ninth-circle spells in a row, but yes. - you can thank Geb."

"I - would honestly not have expected that was in even Geb's powers and still can't exactly fathom how."

"Hopefully Tar-Baphon can't either."

"Just that or any other ninth-circle spells? Any restrictions on what you can summon?" Thank you, Arnisant, for keeping on the important topics.

"Other spells, but none of them ninth-circle. Plane Shift, Mage Armor, Invisibility, Lesser Dispel, rather a lot of firepower."

"First use will want to be in the fight where we see if we can take Tar-Baphon alive with two archmages, but after that I actually bet the summons would be extraordinarily useful for training. Past a certain point the men aren't learning that much from sparring with each other and real fights are often not very well designed for challenging people."

"Over-under on how many astral devas Iomedae can beat at once?"

"Ten."

"Under, but I won't bet much on it. Over if Iomedae can pick out something from the evil weapons we haven't destroyed yet."

"Depends how hard she fights," Arazni says, "But I'm inclined towards the over."

"Beyond that - we're not that starved for healing most of the time, we do have people waiting on Regenerate, I'd have to look up other useful things sufficiently powerful summoned outsiders can do. 

Taking Urgir with a horde of summoned angels would have only about half the disadvantages of taking Urgir any other way, though I'd still rather not."

A moment of confusion, and then - "Yes. They're just as dead whichever way."

Angels could avoid killing anyone who wasn't fighting back, but there won't, in practice, be many of those in Urgir. No one there has the slightest reason to expect a surrender to be recognized; they might flee instead of fighting, but that's probably still most of a death sentence. 

But the soldiers wouldn't have to do it. And if she's wrong about how bad it has to be, about the willingness of orcs to surrender under the right circumstances, about their options if they were to flee, it'd be only as bad as it had to be, and not as bad as she believed it had to be, and that counts for something. 

Not for enough to make it worth it unless there's no other way. 

"So first we try ambushing Tar-Baphon and trying to end the war in one stroke, and then if that fails we do what we should've done three years ago and do it the slow miserable way, is that the proposal here?"

"Maybe not. Three years ago we didn't have Teleportation Circles, that might make the slow miserable way unnecessary regardless."

"My insane proposal that won't work is that we fund the war by selling teleportation circles between Shu and Xopatl, borrow enough money from the Church of Abadar to buy a dozen diamonds, kidnap all his liches' phylacteries with Wish and Locate Phylactery, and then he'll be a lot easier to fight."

"I like proposals to rip out his servants because they feel a bit less like one shot that if it fails leaves us weaker than if we hadn't tried it. I do not expect you can make a dozen diamonds' worth of money selling teleportation circles in a way that doesn't come to Tar-Baphon's attention. ...I guess we could pretend Mathriel made ninth."

"With that kind of budget I'd be considering asking Pharasma to flood all Ustalav with positive energy for a hundred years," says Karlenius. 

"It'd destroy his armies but the spellcasters would be able to protect his more powerful servants when they need to leave gallowspire - also it would probably kill all the civilians, too much positive energy is dangerous."

"How good is his spy network on other continents? How good is his spy network on Sovyrian, if we want to try to find some elfgates that will work for us, or in eastern Kelesh, or Somal? We've got a world and change to build teleportation circles for, and if Xopatl isn't producing the occasional ninth-circle wizard, I did something wrong."

"We know notably less than we did when you were alive. If I had to guess I'd guess that his intelligence is distinctly mediocre outside Avistan but whatever resources he does have are very much attuned to the question of whether there are any archmages cropping up. It's our best guess that he was putting a lot of work into making sure there weren't any the Empire could conceivably call on, before you first arrived."

She nods. "Unfortunate." Arazni... honestly Arazni wants to stop thinking, because the more she thinks the more it hurts, and go murder some undead. 

She'll drag her brain back to work. "What access to Communes does he have? Do you know if he's growing the incense in a demiplane, or has Teleport-trade with Vudra?" Which is definitely relevant for how long they can keep her secret.

"Urgathoa, definitely, and we couldn't easily deny him that, he has many clerics of Hers in his service. Probably just Her, on a routine basis. We did end up destroying Temerezzer," morlock seventh-circle priest of Lamashtu, the only one they know Tar-Baphon to have access to. "You suspected he didn't have good demiplanes for it, last time we spoke of this, because our own eighth circle wizards couldn't master getting the conditions right without your coaching, and had trouble with the conditions deteriorating over time even with it." Arazni, of course, became an archmage doing arcane botany and her demiplanes grow things precisely as she intends.

Arazni could do that.

When did - 

(To the Sense Motive of most of the people here, Arazni looks like she just discovered she'd forgotten she had a left arm.)

"If we can Dominate any captives who know his teleport routes..." To his next courier getting a Dominate Undead or Trap the Soul when they try to pick up supplies from Vudra or wherever he's buying on the chain of exporters. Which will thus indirectly make him more reluctant to use his precious incense, making it harder for him to know Arazni exists.

"I can send you proposals for a couple raids to pick up people who'd know his Teleport routes." Raids are wildly riskier and costlier without Arazni but they do still do them; the alternative is even worse. 

Is Arazni all right - what a stupid question. 

Arazni seems profoundly not all right and there is absolutely nothing productive to do about it except be prepared to kill her if they have to (and they probably can't.)

Arazni seems a bit odd but probably having been a lich will do that, it's hardly worth making a fuss over. 

"Sounds good." She nods. "The obvious question seems to me to be how much of what I can do we reveal. Some of it he'll get if he asks Urgathoa, some of it he won't, but he won't get the summon and that's the cheapest thing for me to do."

(Only half her mind is on the conversation. The other half -

- Arazni spent most of the first millennium of her life on botany. It was where she started; not even as a wizard, just as someone trying to make plants grow, before Aroden taught her the magic that was the only thing he had to give to a broken world - a world he'd broken and was spending a thousand lives fixing -

(- She was the first wizard to do it since Azlant and since she died she hasn't been able to stabilize Entangle. There are undead druids, she knows it isn't impossible, but that was something she - lost - beyond all hope of recovery -

- It's been several hundred years since she tried to do it last, but she can wait a little longer.)

"I think it's worth trying quite hard to conceal having you until we can try ambushing and soul-trapping him, if we have a plan with realistic prospects of achieving that. If not, I don't think it's worth being so cautious we forgo Teleportation Circles on other continents. Maybe anything that'd let him be confident it's you specifically."

"If he asks Urgathoa, he'll know." She's the goddess of undeath and that means she has eyes on Arazni if she thinks to look - much more than she did when Arazni was first alive.

"And I think we don't have a plan with reasonable prospects of ambushing and soul-trapping him without running the Teleportation Circles or maybe taking out a loan against our intent to do so. Even if ten soul-trapping gems will do it, we have to purchase them."

"If he thinks I've just been resurrected - or recreated - by an act of Aroden, that doesn't tell him I have Dominate Undead or Sure Casting. But even with a rod and Alfirin's Disjunction that's just a shot and a half before he teleports out."

"I got a little better with a sword while you were out. If he's relying on the boots, I can be sure of cutting off his feet fast enough. If he's relying on allies you can cut them off with a Time Stop. If he has a secondary item - and he'd be foolish not to, and near-equally foolish to have it somewhere where he needs to be able to move to access it -"

"Disjunction and near-simultaneous Time Stop, a Wall of Force under him so he doesn't just drop to the ground on you and then a Forbiddance on the location, then Arazni's specialist Time Stop carrying him along as well so his allies can't intervene while Arazni burns through the gems and Alfirin counterspells him and Iomedae tries to keep him from moving. I don't really expect it to work but it might get you ten tries."

She nodded. "I don't need Trap the Soul gems to Dominate Undead but I don't know I'll have time to teach anyone before we need to take him."

"And almost certainly no one else can land it even if they learned it easily. Though if you don't need gems then that inclines me more towards hiding that we have you until we can ambush him."

"Ten moments, four to one odds - plausible. Not overdetermined, but plausible."

"Alfirin's good with enchantments. With Sure Casting maybe it'd be worth her trying also, though without it I think she's never landed anything -"

"She could borrow Mathriel's Robes of the Archmagi." 

"The robes are Neutral." Marit would bet money if he had to that Alfirin is Evil.

Arnisant is of the opinion that Alfirin is a lovely young woman who has been crusading practically since childhood and is probably Good and just stonewalling them on principle,  but there's nothing to be said on this topic that hasn't been said already.

Alfirin is going to stay out of this conversation, actually.

It's been most of a millennium! She knew Alfirin for a few years! "I am significantly less tough than I was as an angel, and would appreciate cover." Also, as both of the wizards have no doubt noticed, her belt - being made for a lich - doesn't do health.

"Absolutely. - I would say 'or you can have someone else protecting you if you want' but that'd in fact be stupid, I'll be substantially better at it. You can't take your summonses into a Time Stop without counting them towards the four people that can be in it, right?"

"I cannot."

Iomedae would either take advantage of this to murder her, or, more likely, is substantially better at guarding her than anyone else would be. She's Iomedae.

Iomedae will make tradeoffs where it's cheap so Arazni doesn't have to be around her (if it hurts, that's her problem) but having someone other than her do this isn't cheap, and maybe when Tar-Baphon is soul-trapped Arazni will feel a little safer. Or she'll flit off to another planet and never see them again which is still much much better than what they expected.

Head to Axis, get her head in order, figure out what to do from there. Arazni thinks making plans for Future Arazni is generally unwise, she knows she's in terrible shape.

(She is at least tempted to head to Nirvana and see if the plane can put her head back the way she knows she ought to, but right now Axis is safer; it's not an active combatant.)

And no, it is not cheap. So they're not going to do it. They're just going to kill Tar-Baphon. Arazni is really looking forwards to him not existing!

(once they make him disassemble his phylactery. Or maybe just metaphorically not exist if they can feed him to Nirvana, it's not a good impulse but Arazni is no longer a Good person, so there.)

Iomedae is a Good person but the kind who is fine with feeding Tar-Baphon to Nirvana if it is the best way to win. 

She closes her eyes and tries to look at the plan in smaller pieces, see if it still holds together that way, if they're missing anything -

- no, it actually just seems like a good plan. 

"All right, then, let's plan on that. Can we do it in two days, if we can separately get him to show himself then? Keeping Arazni secret will get harder the longer we have to do it."

"I can do my part." She just has to prepare the right spells for day after tomorrow. "Might be tricky to get him to fight us." He did a lot of running away, the first time Arazni was here. She pauses. "Also, I'll want to borrow the robe if Mathriel and Alfirin don't need it. Never made myself a black one, alas." What she has on now isn't a robe of the archmagi, just gives her a little fire resistance and makes her fire spells a little stronger. She'd always figured she'd build a major magical item eventually, and had managed to put off making it something protective for several hundred years by the time her trial came and she, fortunately, failed it.

Because she's Neutral now. That hurts a lot. "I think Mathriel can loan it out for one raid. 

If we've succeeded in keeping from him that you're back, it might not be too hard to get him to fight us. He's been readier to show up. - not that eager. But if he thinks he knows where Alfirin and I are, he'll drop in for a round."

She nods. "Logical. Thank him for me when it's over." And the situation with Arazni can be admitted, and she knows who's thanking her.

"Will do. I'll see what other preparations make sense, what we can do that you don't already know about...I can probably get a summary written up of what capabilities we have now that we didn't when you died. Though a lot of it's just - straining to cover gaps - I learned to cast your Heroism and your Haste -"