"Mmm. You're not wrong but it sure does feel backwards, you getting attacked in the middle of the night and then staying awake while I go back to sleep." She'll close her eyes and rest her head on Iomedae until she's calm enough to sleep properly. "Miss being the most powerful wizard on the planet, things like this never happened when I was the most powerful wizard on the planet."

"Well, you'll just have to become the most powerful wizard on the planet again. How hard can it be?"

"Harder than airplanes prob'ly. Easier than pharma."

Iomedae is very tired in the morning but she drags herself up and to the workshop because if the invasion of Cheliax is starting in the spring they can't afford any delays. Also presumably Cheliax did this to her so as a matter of spiting them she has to be twice as productive today. If the crafters in the workshop and the soldiers in testing notice that she seems shaken up, they don't say anything. 

It happens again the next night. This time the indescribable thing that lunges at her in her sleep tears a fist-sized bloody chunk out of her shoulder and leaves a long scratch down her torso; she heals that one before the clerics show up. And then cries. A lot.

Alfirin doesn't go back to sleep this time, just stays up through the night holding her. In the morning she's tired and cranky and demands to know what Lastwall can do about this, because if it happens every night Iomedae is not going to be functional after too much longer.

"Well, we could try protective spells overnight, though that would get expensive pretty fast - Or she could just skip sleep, there's a spell for that that paladins can cast for the people on the night watch. I can see if someone can use that on her tonight -"

"Why didn't you mention this yesterday?"

He blinks. "I'm sorry ma'am -"

"Don't be sorry, just fix it." She storms off to go work on learning magic building engines testing smokeless powder mixes experimenting with ink compositions for the prototype ballpoint pens, because that's probably safe to do when she's tired.

Today some people do notice that Iomedae is miserable and exhausted and ask if everything is all right. She tells them to stay on task and then feels bad about how instantly she is obeyed. 

All right, she needs to figure this out. She isn't going to be able to run the supply work for a war while this much of a wreck, and the sleep deprivation isn't helping but she doesn't think it's all the sleep deprivation. What is it. 

She wants to know if she's making horrible mistakes or not. She wants to know if she's wronging people or not. She gave up on directly asking and addressing it indirectly is more respectful of everyone's time but it means she doesn't get any feedback about whether she's doing it right. She wants to be safe, but she chose to do dangerous things. She wants to know whether that decision was a mistake or not, but they aren't looking closely at the Wish incident and what mistakes she made until Cansellarion knows whether the people who risked their lives to protect her were caught and are in Hell -

(She hides in a supply closet and cries for ten minutes.)

She wants to be able to defend herself, but she's picked a fight with people far stronger than her and she's probably never again in her life going to be capable of defending herself against the caliber of people who want to kill her. She wants Aroden back, she just doesn't feel the same way about her god-self and in any event no one seems willing to tell her how to surrender herself to her god-self's service even if that would possibly be the best way to limp through the next four months. 

She hasn't slept much in two days and she'll probably feel better once she has except the current plan is for her not to sleep tonight and she's not sure when the plan next involves her sleeping. 

She prays for strength and is not sure it's helping, which is weird, because it usually helps a lot. Eventually she decides that if twenty minutes of desperate introspection hasn't untangled her then the thing to do is to stop trying and do her job and not think about it until something goes wrong - no, okay, that's clearly a stupid plan. Not think about it until Alfirin has gotten a restful night of sleep and can help her. 

She is not at her best but she does work for the rest of the day, mostly on things like figuring out the supply requirements for a weapons-training regime where she doesn't need all that much trust in her own judgment.

That evening after dinner one of Lastwall's wizards comes by their suite to cast the spell on them. "You still need to rest, the same amount of time you'd usually be asleep, but you'll still be awake for it. No vigorous activity, but you can still read, talk, take light walks - stare out into the dark looking for oncoming orc raiders - whatever. Starts when I cast it, if you break it you'll have to sleep the rest of the time as normal."

"You don't look like a paladin."

"I'm…not? I mean I've sworn some oaths, but I'm a wizard."

"I see. Thank you."

Iomedae quirks an eyebrow curiously at Alfirin once the wizard has left.

"...what?"

"Why were you expecting him to be a paladin?"

"When I asked about what could be done about this I was told paladins had a spell for skipping sleep and still getting rest."

"Oh. Right. I was there for that. …I had a really, really rough day today. I think it's probably mostly the lack of sleep but not only that."

"Yeah. Tell me about it?" Iomedae keeps her hair too short to braid so she'll just run her fingers through it repeatedly.

"I think I don't feel able to - close the loop or something - on the Wish attempt without figuring out what I did wrong and of course we don't know yet because it presumably depends on whether Cheliax caught the people who warned us and I feel sick when I think about that and I want to - figure out what I did wrong - but it's hard when everything is secret. I could also settle for being told what I did wrong but Cansellarion really does not seem to consider instructing me to be in his job remit at all. Which makes sense because a week and a half after I joined his paladin order we accidentally provoked Abrogail Thrune into an act of war against half the continent and now he's supposed to be conquering Cheliax in the spring, and I can't imagine that much of his war planning from before we brought him guns is usable without some serious adaptation, and I really really don't want to waste his time, but I'm not sure anyone else in the world has enough context. I miss Aroden and probably I should try to learn enough about Iomedae to figure out if I - want to trust her the way I trust Aroden - but I don't have time, but it turns out it was kind of psychologically important to love and trust my god, and I'm very aware that these are all childish problems to have and if I tell anyone in Lastwall they will probably be like 'yep, that's the problem with putting teenage girls in charge of your weapons development program', and I rankle about being parsed that way but also I do feel too young for this. And I won't get to grow up, it's all going to be over so fast and at the same time it's never ever going to stop." She pauses. "Just that, I think. How about you, how was your day."

"I wasted it on ink because my judgment and reflexes were too impaired to work with explosives or power tools. I'm fine, really. I don't think your problems are childish, exactly. I think it's normal, to want to be able to love and trust your god, or to want to know how badly you messed up when you make a mistake, or wanting to be treated with respect by your coworkers - it does rankle, a bit, every time I notice them noticing that we're girls."

"I wonder if they have any priests that do…pastoral care…or if that's even been invented yet. It probably wouldn't help if they're not authorized to learn all the secrets. I miss Evelyn because she would not think this was my fault at all and would be upset that all of the benevolent well-intentioned institutions had neglected to look after me properly and I miss my father because he'd think this was my fault but that I could do better. …I miss the idealized version of my father I've been consulting in my head for five years, my real father was probably substantially worse."

"It would be pretty weird if they haven't invented the concept of priests listening to their parishioners' problems and advising them. Maybe not as weird if they had it but not in a way that interacts well with secrecy, or maybe they do it in some overly-structured military theocracy way...

...do you want my thoughts on what you did wrong, or is it not the same coming from someone who's not actually an authority at all."