"No. Not that I imagine it needs much help."

Mahdi looks at Fazil. 

"Tomorrow," Fazil says, "I want to save my remaining spells until we're out of here. - we're leaving. We got what we came here for."

She lets Verita go and follows.

The passage they entered through is blocked by debris, now. They venture off down a different hallway instead. It has a smoking, recently-destroyed altar; there's no signs of anyone still in the room. 

The ground shifts suddenly and the hallway cracks and tilts, like a drawbridge. Fazil grabs Verita.

She yelps and clings.

She falls and drops her bag and ends up stuck in the other half of the hallway, separated from Verita and the other casters.

"Three fine!" Fazil calls faintly from somewhere where he is no longer visible.

"Two fine," Hagan calls back. His injury has opened up again and left a streak of blood on the floor but perhaps 'fine' encompasses minor details like that.

He looks down at the ground, at Korva's bag. 

He picks up the Asmodean Disciplines. 

He hurls it into the abyss where the hallway used to be. There's a satisfying thump.

"Why don't you pick a different fucking god, all right?"

She trembles a little. Then she glares.

"Why, because you said to?"

"No, because he's evil and tortures people eternally!"

"Wow! I had no idea! I'm so glad I have you to enlighten me about the most basic tenets of my faith!"

"Look. You're a shitty fucking person. That's not really your fault. You were born in a place that tries to make everyone a shitty fucking person so they'll go to Hell, and mostly succeeds, and most of them never once in their lives have a chance to be anything else. But you're out. We're not going back to Cheliax. And if you wanna wander around through the rest of your life watching good people risk their lives for you and rooting for Hell all the way, just because it's what you grew up with, at some point that's not on Cheliax, it's on you."

She glares. And then she laughs, bitterly.

"You really think it matters, at the end of all things, which side you were rooting for?"

"Yes! It's pretty much the only thing that does!"

"Well it doesn't. You can pretty up Desna's shrines all you like, and your friends can revere Abadar and Nethys until they're blue in the face. And you'll die, and you'll go somewhere all right, and you'll think it mattered, for a few hundred, maybe even a few thousand more years. But it won't have. Don't you see? We thought it mattered, who we served. We thought we were safe. We were like Fazil, pointing at other countries and saying, Thank the gods that could never be us. 

"But Aroden is dead. Humanity's protector was killed at the height of his power, at the moment he had promised to return to us. And we fell apart. For thirty years, our children starved, our people bled, our hopes were crushed. And by the time the devils came to take us we understood, you see, that there was no fighting them. That there had never been any fighting them. That all our greatness was something that Asmodeus could tear apart in moments, if he chose to, as he murdered his brother for bestowing free will on mortals at the beginning of time, as he murdered Aroden, as he set himself as supreme ruler of all that was, when he forged the contract of creation and had all other deities sign it in agreement with him. You are nothing, and I am nothing, and Cheliax and Osirion are nothing, the moment Hell wishes that they cease to be. And just because they're giving us time to spin our sad little mortal webs today doesn't mean that there's anything we can do to stop them.

"I'm not rooting for Hell to win. I'm accepting that it already has."

" - I guess it makes more sense that Asmodeus was able to sell that than that he was able to sell 'actually torture is fine'. 

Have you considered that maybe Asmodeus might say he could beat all of the other gods if he wanted to and is just letting them have the upper hand right now for fun... even if it was not, in fact, true?"

"I'm sure Aroden and Ihys are both just hiding."

"Aroden took prophecy with him, when he died. I've heard people say they figure that something was going to happen which he couldn't live with. So he - fucked around with fate, somehow. Maybe that's not what happened. Maybe he was preparing for his glorious return to rule over the world and left an opening, maybe there was a big-enough coalition of gods opposed to that glorious-return-to-rule-over-the-world thing. I would've voted against it, honestly. We have enough rulers.

But even if it happened exactly like you tell it, who loses two battles and goes "ah, from this we can determine that the whole war was always hopeless and we'd better start fighting for the other side"?"

"Most people don't fight for anything."

"Yeah they do. Not big stuff. Dumb stuff, maybe. But they fight to get their kids married well and their taxes lowered and the taverns open longer and their names well-respected and their ancestors proud of them, and they work to earn their afterlife, and if their country is invaded they fight for it - the whole world together, sometimes, when things are really terrible -"

"For things they think they can achieve, maybe."

"I wonder why Asmodeus would try to tell them they can't achieve anything."

"I wonder why Abadar would tell you to treat your women like slaves and children."

"Cause he's never been human and doesn't know what it's like to be vulnerable, probably. I didn't say pick Abadar."

"Then who, Desna? Wander aimlessly wherever luck takes you until you leave this world behind and forget about all of its cares? Be one of Calistria's wasps, that live on after stinging and die in a few weeks' time anyway? Sarenrae, who fought harder than anyone for free will, heedless of the damage that mortals would choose to do to each other? Shelyn, who imagines that a song and a painting can rehabilitate the god of torture?"

She stands up and dusts herself off. She doesn't go for her pack.

"No one's offering the things I want, and even if they were, I think that temporary personal gain is a very shallow reason to choose a god. I'm sorry if that offends you."

"Offends me? It doesn't affect me, so long as you're not sending regular updates on our movements to our enemy."