That's - confusing and concerning but there's nothing she can do about it? Like, she can try to ready a spell, but what's she gonna do, aim a ray of frost at whatever invisible force has silenced them? She's not even a hundred percent on making cantrips work right yet.

- probably someone has reported her for something and she is about to be taken into custody and then tortured to death.

She stares at her dinner plate and tries to look like someone who is much too unambitious and devoid of capacity for desires to have broken any very important laws.

The door flies open. 

These people are foreigners and speaking a different language when they cast, but the spells might be recognizable anyway; that one is Dimensional Anchor and that one is Bestow Curse and that one is Hold Person and they look around the room with weapons drawn and smash open the next couple of doors and.... now these people are having a heated sign language argument. 

       No one else here. 

Then - the kid?

      When did he die? 

               Nine years ago. Timing works. Barely. 

       He - showed up in Cheliax, hooked up with someone, left?

               At some point they're gonna make their save, you know. 

        I'm not sure they will. Not sure they're trying. Look at them.

Fuck.

        We can't kidnap a kid.

We can absolutely kidnap a kid if someone else is going to murder them within a day if we don't. 

       We don't have to kidnap the kid - lemme talk to her -

The Silence spell ends.

"Heeeey kid," says the masked man with a shortbow and a knife, in very good Taldane that's nonetheless clearly not his first language. "Wanna save the world with us?"

The kid looks like this is the best thing that has happened to her all day, and then looks plaintively at the young woman across from her. "Can I?"

" - who are you?"

"Kind of a long story and we're expecting company," the masked man says. "There was an angel named Teriesh, dropped by around nine years ago, maybe vanished mysteriously shortly after that? He was the only person entrusted with the ability to open a gate to a Deep Plane, and now cultists are tracking down his descendents to force the gate and summon Rovagug to eat the world, you know, as you do, she's the last one and I'll tell you more as soon as we're out of the damned country. You're her mother?"

"I - no? Sort of - what - "

"She's my aunt. Mom's dead."

"Condolences. Why don't you grab your stuff."

She runs off to throw stuff in a bag.

There is absolutely no way this is going to go well for either of them. There's no way for most things to go well for them, really, other than not being noticed, and obviously someone has noticed them. If they stay then law enforcement will - but if they cooperate it could be even worse - maybe if she screamed she could still convince the responders that none of this has anything to do with her or with Zara - no, these are real spellcasters, there would be a real investigation, they'd force her to speak the truth and then everyone would know everything, and then -

" - how much time does she have - "

"To get her stuff? She looks pretty quick on her feet, I bet she'll be back in a minute or two. You coming too?"

" - well I'm not giving her to you."

"Okay. You do anything - evil - you're only gonna get her hurt, understand?"

"You're not evil?"

"No? I guess we haven't made the best possible impression here. Nice lawful good party here, only, this is an emergency and the last couple times we weren't here soon enough and also I'm not even sure you can be lawful good in Cheliax, what with it being...unlawful... to be good... why don't you get whatever you're gonna need that's not an icon of Asmodeus or whatever and we'll talk more on the road."

Opposing them would be suicide and screaming would be a different kind of suicide. Her options are to abandon her niece to these - people - or stay with her and hope to escape later. 

Abandoning her is unthinkable.

She pushes herself away from the table and packs a bag. She spitefully packs her copy of the Asmodean Disciplines in it. She wonders if it counts as an act of obedience if you do it while being partially motivated by spite. Or if you do it while giving in to intimidation on other matters. But she's a human, with all the weaknesses that implies. Asmodeus does not forgive, but neither is he surprised at the weakness of mortal hearts.

She's ready after Zara, but not very much after.

They have a flying carpet and an illusion that hides it. He lifts Zara up and then turns to her and offers his arms for a lift, somewhat uncertainly.

She's - never boarded a flying carpet before so fine, sure, whatever.

Lift. And they're off. They do magic so it's not as cold and windy.

He takes off the mask and looks out at the night. 

" - well. Hi. I'm Hagan. What's your name, kid?"

"Zara. That's Korva."

"Nice to meet you. You been up on a flying carpet before?"

"Nope! It's cool."

"It's great! We have the spell 'Fly' too! Maybe once we're in Andoran you can get Mahdi - this is Mahdi, he's our wizard, his Taldane is kind of rusty but he's following along - to cast it for you and then you can try flying. Pretty sure angels are supposed to be able to fly."

"Well I'm not a full angel. Only some."

"I figured. If you don't wanna fly you don't have to."

"No, I wanna fly."

"Cool. Soon as we're out of here."

"D'you think anybody noticed you?"

"Not sure. We've got some backup plans if we need them, though."

Nod. "Why'd anybody wanna wake up Rovagug? Everyone hates him."

"Well, see, reportedly he'll destroy all the worlds."

"...right, so, waking him up is stupid."

"Unless you hate the world and think it'd be better if it didn't exist, which some people do."

"That's stupid."

"I think so too. Might be best to pretend you think it's a noble cause if they happen to get a hold of you, though. Mostly they say things like that so much of human life is suffering that it can't be worth it at all."

"'S a whole lot better than not life. I guess if the next people to kidnap me have tooth masks I can pretend it's less stupid than it sounds, though."

"I don't think we're gonna lose you. Just - better to have a backup plan.

Why did you live in Cheliax?"

"Why's anybody live anywhere? S'where I'm from."

"I just woulda, like, expected them to be racist against aasimar or something. Since they worship Asmodeus - they do worship Asmodeus, right, I'm not working off a horribly racist outdated stereotype here?"

"We worship Asmodeus. But I don't even know how anybody knows I'm an aasimar! It's supposed to be a secret! I look almost human, it's just the no shadow - and when I cry it looks like mercury, but I don't cry, so I don't see how anybody could know from that - "

"It's not anything you did, with the people coming after you now. They're tracking the blood of your father."

Sigh.

"What's gonna happen now?"

"We're going to get out of Cheliax, first thing. And then we're going to figure out some sort of solution for you to be safe. For now that will probably mean you have to stay with us, and we might be tracking down some half-brothers and half-sisters of yours if there are any more. And hopefully in the long run we'll figure out who's funding and supporting the evil cult and we'll get them arrested and it'll be safe for you to go anywhere that you want to go, with a cool story to tell your friends."

"All my friends are in Cheliax."

"Well if you want to go back to Cheliax once no one is trying to kidnap you I won't have any right to stop you."

"But they'll notice we're gone. People'll ask questions. It won't be safe anymore." She looks at Korva. "Right?"

Nod.

"I'm sorry. - good news, literally everywhere else in the world is better than Cheliax."

"Isn't there a hole in the world that leads to the Abyss and has a bunch of stuff from the Abyss streaming out of it all the time?"

"Okay, fair, I mostly mean all the other countries are better countries not that all the other places are better places. But I'd rather my kid be there than in Cheliax, honestly. If I had a kid, which I do not."

"Why?"

"Cause if a little kid gets eaten by some beast from the Abyss, they're going to go to the true neutral afterlife, and be given time to grow up and make something of themself and pick whatever afterlife makes them happiest. But if they're raised in Cheliax, they're going to go to Hell."

"I dunno if any of the afterlives'd make me happy."

"Some of them are pretty awesome."

"Nuh-uh, which ones."

He glances at one of the other men on the carpet. "Fazil, you're not listening, right?"

             "Hmm?"

"That's the spirit.

So Elysium is all wilderness, oceans and impossibly tall mountains and hidden valleys and secret passages behind the waterfalls and rivers that rush all the way from the sky to the ocean, and people travel in small groups with their friends, exploring, because there's no need for civilization since you can never go hungry and you have everything you need to make everything you use to live. And there's music everywhere, and minor gods of art and song and love, and titans and havoc dragons and a place called the wave-walking court out across the waters that I've only seen pictures of, and I think it'd be all right."

She considers this.

"Can't have any cities decorated for festivals, if it's all wilderness. Or libraries. Or ships going to port. Better than being eaten by Rovagug, but not as good as here, I don't think."

"If you want a library you can build one. Or a ship."

"Then it can't be all wilderness. People would build things."

"I haven't been there but I think it's so big that it's still a lot wilderness. Even when they build everything they want."

"I guess that might be as okay as here. But you'd think if people could build everything they wanted then they could build countries, and some of the countries'd end up being bad. - I guess maybe they don't let people who might build bad countries in."

"Yeah that's how the good afterlives cheat, they only let people in who won't build bad countries and they probably don't let you into Elysium if you're a country-building sort at all."

"Then it sounds like maybe you can only have everything you want if you don't want that many things."

"Nirvana's nice, too, I just don't know as much about it, and it has countries and cities and so on."

"Don't you forget who you were if you stay there long enough?"

"Grownups don't remember being babies but I'm not sure that's a strike against grownuphood or babyhood."

"I'd wanna remember being a baby if I could! I wanna keep knowing all the things about what I've been like!"

"I'd like that too! But it doesn't make Nirvana worse than this world, at least."

"But it means that if it is worse, nobody there would know."

"It takes thousands of years to forget who you were in life! That's plenty of time to compare and mostly people say they're really happy!"

"People mostly say they're really happy in Cheliax."

"Yeah, my issue with Cheliax is that then you get tortured. I'm sure it's a neat place in itself."

"I wonder if anybody'd know if the good gods tortured some people."

"Pretty sure they would, yeah. Someone'd get a resurrection and go 'hey, what the fuck'."

"Well, they could pick people who didn't have anybody who wanted to resurrect them. But I guess they'd have to want to first."

"My home country scrys a random sample of dead people to check where they ended up. And I think if you want to then you're just not a good god, that's kind of what it means."

"I guess."

"If you want tomorrow we can spy on an afterlife."

"Woah."

"Mahdi knows the spell. And we kinda owe you one, don't we."

"I dunno. I didn't wanna be killed by cultists of Rovagug either. Might owe Korva."

He glances at Korva.

She's praying very quietly in Infernal.

Well, that's a way to be.

"You okay?"

"I don't have any other pressing emergencies."

"We're not gonna hurt you. If you decide to be maximally inconvenient in every way we might dump you on a street corner somewhere where you speak the language with ten coin but you'd have to have tried to murder us kind of a lot."

"That sounds very pointless."

"Agreed."

Their captors sleep in shifts, with one person piloting the carpet at all times. They make quick progress out of Cheliax. At some point the temperature control spell wears off and then it's uncomfortably cold and damp until dawn.

She gives Zara her cloak and shivers.

At dawn, Fazil wakes up and pulls out a golden holy symbol and prays over it for an hour in intense concentration. Mahdi prepares his spells but this involves less intense concentration and more irritated scribbling and sighing at his notes. 

"Gotta be over the border," says Hagan, frowning at the ground.

           "Yes, I think so," says Fazil in stilted Taldoran. "I am not sure it's wise to visit any cities here, though."

" - ugh. Yeah, probably not. One of us can walk in and get food?"

           "That seems wiser."

"What kinda food you gonna get?"

"Dunno, what do you want?"

"Pastries and meat. And nuts. And I guess maybe vegetables, but only if they can be roasted."

"We can do that! And Mahdi, while I'm out you should let her scry some place."

       "There might be a fight."

"You prepared it, didn't you?"

       "Yes. You had offered."

"Awesome, thanks."

Off he goes.

Bounce bounce. She looks expectantly at Mahdi.

"What do you want to look at?"

"Can I see where mom is?"

"No."

"S'not your spell."

"I can do that. Do you have a picture? I can do without but the failures are higher - the failure chance is higher."

She digs through her bag and produces a small ink sketch with no color. "Does this help?"

"Couldn't you - try her father instead - "

" - do you guys know where she is?"

"No."

"No."

"Maybe you can look first and if you think she shouldn't see -"

" - thank you. Yes."

"This'll take me an hour. I'll let you know when I'm nearly done."

And he pulls out some water and a silver mirror and starts doing magic.

She combs her niece's hair out and puts it up into cute little braided buns.

She lets her do that. She looks up and watches clouds, and sometimes she watches Mahdi.

He comes back with pastries and ham and cashews and some carrots, which he starts a fire to roast.

Oh cool! She likes all of those things. Especially cashews, they never get to have cashews.

Oh good. Cashews are neat.

"Korva says they're too expensive."

"Well, adventurers make lots of money. Also spend lots of money, and the universe cares what percent you spend on charity and doesn't care if you have a lot of work expenses, but still, it's a pretty good gig."

"Sounds like one. Apart from the dying a lot."

"Personally I have never died at all. Fazil used to prepare Raise Dead and then got sick of never getting to prepare something he'd actually use so he made a scroll instead."

"You can be more careful than adventurers usually are, and retire once you're successful enough to just sell the occasional spell and support your family, and not die," Fazil says. "It's not perfect, but nothing is, and you should aim to follow a god who you trust enough you wouldn't be annoyed if they wanted you early."

"I don't think I have any of those."

"Well, if you'd like to hear about mine, or Mahdi's, you could ask us sometime."

"Who's yours?"

"I follow Abadar."

"I guess Abadar's not awful. Still be pretty annoyed if he wanted me to die."

"Abadar will someday reunite my family in eternal peace and safety and if he needs me to get there sooner for some reason, then I trust he knows more about it than I do."

"I don't think anyone's gonna do that for us."

"I'm sorry."

"Just have to do a lot before I'm done, I guess."

"Do you know what you want to do?"

" - well I had some stuff to do in Cheliax but I guess I can't do any of that now. I wanna get better at casting spells. And I wanna know about this stuff about people wanting to kill me so I can see if I oughta do anything about it."

"Get better? Can you cast spells already?"

"Yeah! - well, sometimes."

"Cool!"

"I think so! I can only do a couple every time I try, but I'm getting better."

"Do you want to show me?"

She focuses. Says something. Spins something up between her hands.

It's a crude little toy, vaguely horse-shaped. 

"I can do that one, and I can clean and color things, and I can do mage hand, and sometimes I can do ray of frost."

"And you're, what, eight? That's really impressive!"

"Thanks!"

And Mahdi finishes his scry. 

"You want to come look?" 

She looks.

Her sister is floating in a crystalline forest next to a boiling lake, looking up into a vast expanse of shapeless floating islands whose structure defies mortal geometry.

"She can look."

She looks.

"That's the Maelstrom? The one where chaotic people go?"

"I think so," says Mahdi.

"Looks like it to me."

"I guess there's worse ones."

"There are," says Mahdi. " - we should keep moving."

"Yeah, I guess."

Nod.

"Thank you."

"Sure thing. We can check her father, too, if she wants."

"Do angels go anywhere, when they die?"

They glance at each other. 

"I was taught they don't," says Fazil. "But we can check."

Nod.

They keep riding. Their captors confer in Osirian. Hagan brought food for lunch, too. 

She eats. Occasionally she prays. 

She makes fragile little toys for herself and has them do glorious combat until they beat each other into oblivion.

"So it looks like we're not immediately being pursued," he says when they're done conferring. "They still have a few ways they might be tracing you; we think we've countered them but we aren't confident we know them all. We'd like to go home. We can lie low for a little bit, restock, pay our bills, and then head out if we get a lead on any additional siblings or an indication they're on our trail again. Does that sound all right?"

"Where's home? - like I guess you guys are the kidnapper part of this group so you kind of get to decide where we go, but."

"Osirion. If you're like 'oh I hate Osirion anywhere but there' we'll figure something out. We weren't actually intending to kidnap you, we thought you were already a prisoner."

"Oh. - I don't know that much about Osirion."

"It's okay in some ways."

         "He's the most down on it of anyone I've ever met there," says Fazil. 

"Lawful neutral. Lots of interesting stuff to fight out in the desert. We have a pharaoh. You shouldn't believe anything anyone tells you about the pharaoh because they're not allowed to say he sucks. That's not to say I have a reason to think he sucks, just - notice patterns like that and be suspicious of them -"

          "I could gracefully decline to discuss politics," Fazil says. "I would, if I thought the pharaoh had made a mistake."

"The thing that makes Osirian useful is that we know how to sell our skills for money there and we're low on money," Hagan says bluntly, "and also they'll return you two to us if you escape and other places might not. I think you'll be comfortable and I can take you exploring and I don't think you'll be miserable and if I'm wrong we will try something else."

"Why'd they return us to you? You're, like, kidnapper people. Accidental kidnapper people, but still."

"I mean, if we explained everything they would not return you to us. But if we say we're allowed to have you they'll believe us, at least while you don't speak the language, at least in towns where spells aren't easy to find and people don't speak Taldane."

"Isn't it more likely you just kidnapped us if we don't speak Osirian?"

"People don't usually go to Cheliax and kidnap people from there! It's an objectively very weird thing to do!"

"Well, yeah, but if you found someone with two Chelish people who couldn't speak the local language and who were trying really hard to get away from the people who said they were supposed to be with them, what would you figure was happening?"

"They'd figure we were slaves."

" - oh."

"You aren't. We just - we've been chasing this thing for a year now and we're not in very good shape to keep doing so and we need a little bit of a break to get into a better position. And then we'll talk about what to do next, as a group, all of us."

"Okay."

"If you say not Osirion, we'll go somewhere else," says Fazil. He looks exhausted.

"We can try Osirion first. - if that's okay with you."

"I don't have a preference for anywhere else."

Sigh. "Thank you."

They turn the flying carpet over the water.

"We'll be there by dawn."

She sleeps, cuddling her niece.

In the morning they've landed the carpet in a bustling port and only Hagan is there. He has jerky and cashews and fried vegetables. "Morning."

...she eats.

"Fazil's getting a place all set up so no one can scry it and Mahdi's selling spells. Do you want to buy anything while we're here?"

"Like what."

"I don't know? Games? Favorite foods? Clothes?"

It is the will of Asmodeus that his servants have no will but his. This requires being able to discern the will of Asmodeus. It is not his will that the world be destroyed by Rovagug; Asmodeus himself set aside his differences with the other gods, even with Sarenrae, to prevent the world from ceasing to exist. She is not rebelling by cooperating with the enemies of Rovagug, if they are in fact telling the truth about their goals.

It is not his will that she be comfortable, or happy, or concerned for her own comfort or happiness, except insofar as it makes her more effective at achieving his ends. Perhaps she was complacent in Cheliax. Perhaps this is a trial meant to bring her closer to perfected selflessness.

"Zara likes books. If there are any in Taldane."

"There probably are somewhere. Zara, what does your aunt like -"

"Uh. Books, I guess?"

"Cool. Foreign bookstore, presumably here somewhere." He picks up his extremely heavy backpack, puts his mask back on, and herds them both into the city.

Sounds good! She grabs her pack and follows.

She ties a scarf around Zara's head to protect her from the sun. 

The city has winding narrow streets full of shops, with no shade except from the buildings In some areas, there'll be a door to the shop on ground level and a staircase to a shop on the second level and a basement to an underground shop, with no space for nonsense like storefronts. It's crowded and busy. Some people jostle her and Zara as they pass and Hagan turns to snarl at them. He sounds strikingly like a wild animal. 

As they keep going the streets straighten out and get wider and the storefronts get fancier. Eventually he finds a satisfactory bookstore, and shoos them in. 

"Taldane?" he asks the shopkeeper.

      "Sure! What are you looking for?" he says in cheery Taldane.

"Stuff about magic. And about other planes!"

So the shopkeeper points them to some memoirs about epic adventures on other planes, and some children's books about Axis and the other afterlives, and an adventurer's guide to the Underdark, and some translations to Taldane of Osirian theological texts, and some books about the history of magic.

History of magic, history of magic, ooh Underdark, and maybe one of the epic adventure memoirs, sure.

He pays for these. They're quite expensive.

Out they go. "Thought of anything else?"

"I think this is good?"

"She could use a hat. For the sun."

"Two hats, then." 

"If you want."

"Is she just like that as a person or is she really scared of me or something," he says to Zara.

She frowns at Korva appraisingly.

"Kinda both."

"Oh."

"Soooo where do we get hats?"

"I bet there's a women's hat store around here somewhere though I don't know exactly where."

"I guess we could look around?"

"Yeah, it won't be far. Just keep an eye out for fancy hats."

"I dunno if we need fancy."

"The ones in the window will be fancy even if they sell normal ones."

"Oh. Okay."

So she'll walk around and look.

There's a hat shop! They walk in.

Hagan immediately gets into an argument with the proprietor, somehow. 

" - let's find a different one."

She follows him out. "What happened?"

"He was rude! So we'll take our business elsewhere. That's how commerce works. Rude shopkeepers improve or go out of business."

"Okay, I guess."

They can look for a different one?

They can find a perfectly satisfactory hat shop whose proprietor does not offend him. 

Zara and Korva can both be fitted for hats.

(She doesn't actually care about hats that much but probably Korva is trying to look out for her and she should try to cooperate with that.)

She has some hat opinions for Zara. She doesn't have very many for herself. Something plain.

"What's your favorite color?"

Her favorite color is blue.

"Black."

This woman is so intensely concerning but you can't, like, dress your prisoners up in clothes they said they didn't want because you think you knew better. Plain black hat it is. 

And then they can walk a while through the city to the place where they've rented an apartment for the month.

That seems fine.

The apartment is up four flights of stairs. It has two bedrooms with a bed each, and windows open to the outside.  It's miserably hot. Hagan taps them both on the shoulder and casts something and then it is instead a wonderfully pleasant temperature. 

"Anyone home?"

       "Yes," Fazil calls back. "We should be good here."

"Have you checked in with your temple?"

       "Not yet. I'll leave once Mahdi's back. Are they okay?"

"We got some books. And hats. Maybe you can grab dinner while you're out. What kind of stuff do you like, Zara?"

"Meat stuff, pasta stuff, cheese, sweet breads, regular breads... I can try whatever, though. I guess."

"We have all that. Does she like those things too?" He nods at Korva.

"She'll eat it all."

He nods and translates the food items for Fazil. "I guess you two can...pick which room you want to share?"

Nod.

Zara inspects the rooms and picks one.

Then Hagan and Fazil will hang out in the other one and give them some space.

She flops on the bed.

"Are we ever gonna see Kanir again?"

"I don't know."

"They seem okay. For kidnapper people."

"I'm sure worse kidnappers exist, yes."

"Are they gonna hurt us?"

"I don't know. If they're telling the truth about the Rovagug cultists, then - I don't understand the situation but it seems like the simplest way to keep you from doing anything is to kill you."

"Oh."

"Which - doesn't necessarily mean they will. They could need you for something. Even if they don't - if they really are good, good people aren't like Chelaxians, they won't do the smartest thing for the world or for their people or for themselves if it'd keep them out of the afterlife they're aiming for."

Nodnod.

"You should read the books. Probably. I think they were pretty expensive."

She can read, then.

Mahdi comes back. Fazil goes out to run his errands and get food. No one bothers them until dinnertime.

She prays. She tries reading Zara's books. She paces.

Fazil comes back with stuffed pork pies and an odd flat pasta dish and a sweetbread for dessert. 

"So. You guys must have - questions."

"What're the people you're hiding from trying to do? Like, specifically."

"On the occasion where they got their hands on a descendent of Teriesh they attempted to drag her to the Crown of the World, where they could use her to open the gate. Opening the gate does not release Rovagug or anything, but the gate is the only way to reach a plane that most interplanar magic doesn't affect and which they seem to think it's important to control. We've been calling it the Deep Plane. We don't know much about it except that it's beneath the Underdark. It might just be that if they controlled it then it'd be harder for people to interfere with subsequent steps of their plan, or it might be that they think they know a way to get to him from there. Or there might be powerful weapons or allies there, or something."

"Oh.

"So... what're you guys gonna, like, do about it?"

They glance at each other. 

"So we'd like to figure out what's on that plane. Maybe we need to be able to open the gate ourselves, because there's some stuff going on there that's important to address or thwart or assist or something. Maybe there's a reason Teriesh, who was the only person with the power to open it, went around having a bunch of kids who'd inherit his powers."

"Sounds pretty dangerous. And possibly very ill-advised."

"We're not going to open the gate ourselves without very good reason to think we should do that. But we had a couple of leads on histories of the Deep Plane, and we dropped them all when we found out about the descendants of Teriesh. One option now is to pick them back up."

"I guess that makes sense."

"- but you don't like it?"

"Oh, uh, I just don't really know everything that's going on? And that was kinda fun on the flying carpet but I guess now we just kinda. Wait."

"Nah, tracking down those leads will be lots of travel. We just have to wait for, like, two weeks, so we can be better supplied when we go out."

"Oh, okay. I vote for that one."

"Cool. Me too, I hate this city."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It has a lot of laws. And a lot of people. I don't really like laws. Or most people."

"Why not?"

"Well, a lot of laws are just about who's allowed to hurt who and which things you're allowed to count as hurting you. And a lot of people treat children very badly and treat animals very badly and treat slaves very badly and treat their wives very badly and so on."

"Huh."

"You don't have to hate the city, though. Most people like it."

"I dunno. I've only been here a day."

"And we didn't get to see very much! Tomorrow maybe we can go see more. Maybe with local clothes for the two of you so you don't stand out."

"Okay!"

Well she doesn't have anything else pressing to say to these people, really.

"There's gotta be something in the city you wanna see," he says. "We've got - a big featureless black dome you could stare at?"

         "Hagan," says Fazil.

"I'm trying to be culturally sensitive!"

"What... else does it have."

"There's the port, there's the canals, and the canal district which mostly has canals instead of roads. There's the Bazaar. There's museums - there's a museum of the pharaoh and a museum of commerce and the Osirion National Museum which is mostly about history. There's a theatre. There's sports - kayak racing and airball and alligator wrestling and mudputt and shortthrow. There's a big replica of Aktun you can wander around in - Aktun's Abadar's district in Axis, this place tries to get everyone to Axis so they'll try to sell you really hard on it. There's the national public library. There's ancient catacombs that have been cleared out of everything interesting so that tourists can visit."

      "We could enter the lottery for a tour inside the dome," Fazil says, "but we probably won't win, they only take 100 people every day."

"Also it's just fancy rich person houses inside, I've heard," Hagan says. "Pretty boring."

"Museums and sports sound okay. And maybe we could see the catacombs. Or the replica of Aktun."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Okay."

"Anything else you wanted to know?"

She looks at Korva.

"Who, uh, are you guys?"

They look at each other kind of sheepishly. 

Fazil answers. "I'm a priest of Abadar. I grew up here, in Sothis, and it's where my family is. I became an adventurer when my sisters and brothers were grown up, and that's when I met Mahdi and Hagan. We've been adventuring together for seven years. Mahdi grew up here, too, and Hagan won't tell anybody where or what he's from."

"Once upon a time, there was a wizard who was experimenting with variants on Polymorph. He cast one on a seagull that had flown through the window and it turned into a man. That man was me."

"Well at least you made something of yourself."

"Yup! I do all right now. How about you guys, who're you?"

"Uh. I'm eight. I'm gonna be a sorcerer someday, though. And I'm at the top of all of my classes, and both of my parents are dead, so I live with Korva Tallandria and until a couple months ago with my brother, who I guess maybe I am not gonna see again."

"I work in a nursery. Or did until yesterday."

"We could get your brother. Or message him, though I don't know if that'd put him in danger."

"He just went off to school. Maybe eventually."

Nod. "Will he be in danger if your name gets back to Cheliax for your involvement in saving the world?"

"Mayyybe? I don't really... know how the law works..."

"It's possible. I'm not sure whether he knows."

"So you might wanna pick an adventuring name, then. Group of Osirian adventurers, it'd be a leap to guess you were...you."

"Oooh. Like what?"

"I don't know! Some people go for all kinds of melodramatic nonsense. 'The Wizard of the Stars', someone told me he was once. He just liked stars, he didn't have any powers related to them."

"Stars are pretty cool. Though I guess that one's taken now. Also I'm not a wizard. Yet, anyway."

"Stars are pretty cool! Mahdi has promised that if we're all still adventuring when he has Interplanetary Teleport he will take us to other planets."

"Woah."

"That's a long way off, mind. We don't even have a regular teleport yet."

"I have time. But I guess I still need a name for now."

"Yeah."

She puzzles over this. " - see, if I make it something about why I'm important then people'll know who I am, and if I make it something that doesn't have to do with anything then it'll sound dumb."

"Your mother thought about calling you Verita, when you were born. She thought it sounded too - angelic, I guess."

"That sounds okay."

"I like it. Okay. One for you too, Korva?"

"I don't know."

"I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked."

        "Hagan."

"Sorry."

"I suppose you didn't have to give the decision a moment's thought."

"I don't really give things thought. You hafta be smart to be a wizard and you have to be wise to be a cleric but you don't have to be either of those to shoot things and that's what I do."

"I'll think about it."

"Take your time."

"I'll think about it for longer than any of us probably want to sit here."

"Is there, like, some way of kidnapping you that would not have made you this sad or was that just a hopeless cause for us."

"I'm not declining to make snap judgements about what I want to be called because I'm sad."

"I know, sorry, I've just been wondering that all day."

"I don't think people generally go about kidnapping people if they aren't willing to make people sad."

"I can live with my choices. I just like tips, you know, so I can do better next time or whatever."

"I don't have meaningful critiques of your kidnapping skills."

Fazil elbows him. 

"Okay. Museum tomorrow. If something scares you in the night, shout; nothing should be able to get in and I don't want you to stay up worrying but if your intuition says something isn't right, wake us up, we won't be upset."

Nod.

"Okay."

"Take care, okay? We're really glad we found you."

"Sounds like it'd suck if you hadn't."

"Yeah. G'night."

Then they can sleep.

Them too, in the other room. 

Nothing attacks them in the night.

She wakes up very early and practices prestidigitation for a while and sees if she can get it to do anything that's enough of a light to read by (she can't), and then eventually reads by the sun, and then sees if she can get ray of frost to work (it does, at least, cool her room down a little), and then heads into the other room to see if anybody else is awake.

Fazil is praying and Mahdi is preparing spells.

She should prooobably not disturb them.

She'll just go hang out with Korva.

"Thought of a name yet?"

"I don't think so."

"It's not that important, is it? Parents name kids without having any idea what they're gonna be like, right?"

"I suppose not. Maybe if I can't think of anything you can pick something for me."

"Maybe."

She periodically checks on Mahdi and Fazil.

They're done shortly. 

"How're you doing?" Fazil asks her.

"I'm okay. I think Korva's still sad about leaving Cheliax."

"Do you think there's anything we can do to help her?"

"I dunno. She likes... having stuff to do, I guess."

He frowns thoughtfully. "If we tell her to do things will that make her happier or would it be, like, threatening - since generally kidnapping people and then giving them work to do is, well, slavery -"

"I think maybe it doesn't work if you tell her to."

Sigh. "That's very reasonable but makes it a bit trickier. Okay. Thank you. We'll think about it."

"Yeah. What're you going to do today?"

"Mahdi and I are going to go uptown and sell spells. It's a pretty quick way to make money when you have some advanced spells. Hagan doesn't, so he was going to show you guys wherever you wanted to go. Does that work?"

Nodnod.

"Did you practice magic?" asks Mahdi.

"This morning. Ray of frost is still only fifty-fifty. Cooled things down, though."

"There you go. Fazil and I will head out once you and Korva are ready to head out."

"I think we're ready whenever?"

"Cool. Hagan -"

He rolls out of bed and into his strategically positioned shoes. "I'm ready."

She's up. She can follow people wherever they're going today.

A kayak race and the national museum and then the catacombs and the model of Aktun if there's time.

Kayak racing is cool but maybe not as cool as alligator wrestling sounds. Still pretty cool. Museums are cool. Catacombs are cool. Aktun is cool and since she's probably not going to go there ever it's nice that she gets to see the model and stuff.

It's fine.

...are there plaques at the national museum in Taldane?

Mostly no unfortunately. There's a place where you can pay for Comprehend Languages. He gives her the coin for it.

.......she'll pay for comprehend languages and read the plaques.

Osirion was founded by the man who slew the giant beetle whose corpse sits in the center of the city, hollowed out to serve as a shelter for the palace, noble estates, and essential government buildings. Many of its early kings, seeing no prospects of a good afterlife, had their bodies entombed in pyramids, waiting on the day when a Raise Dead that worked on death of old age would come along; it never did, and the pyramids remained, extraordinarily difficult to enter without the instructions the ancient kings had entrusted to descendents or servants, guarded by undead slaves and traps and monsters who'd set up their lives there in the intervening centuries. 

Osirion was occupied by other countries for a while; a great deal of the focus of the museum is on the strike for independence that returned the pharaohs to the throne. Everything has been much nicer since then! More people than ever make Axis and crime is down and business is booming and Abadar's favor has allowed the nation to prosper and, perhaps, to return to its ancient seat as a world power. 

("Your woman?" someone says to Hagan behind her. 

"Yes," he says curtly.)

....this place has weird creepy norms and she doesn't understand them and that is terrifying. You could of course also say this about Cheliax's norms, probably, if you were visiting, but she knows what things mean there and therefore they are much less terrifying. Or maybe equally terrifying but less - icky.

She's not sure she believes anyone about them not being slaves.

The museum is okay.

Next are the catacombs! They are spooky but at no point feel actually dangerous; at the end they sell memorabilia.

She has no need for souvenirs.

She's not going to specifically ask for any either.

Well they can have some spending money if anything catches their eye.

They can just hold onto it. Better to have a little money anyway.

That's valid.

Fake model of Aktun? It's very shiny and precise and mechanical and he hates it but most people think it's fascinating. 

It's pretty neat! She's not sure she'd want to live there but she's probably never going to so it's a moot point probably.

"Lawful neutral's not that hard to get. I think you should aim higher personally but, like, almost everyone in Osirion manages lawful neutral."

"I'm not Osirian."

" - okay I agree in Cheliax it's hard to get lawful neutral because Cheliax is run by devils trying to make sure everyone gets damned."

"Seems kind of unfair, that it matters so much where you happened to be born."

"It's super unfair! It's awful!"

"Why don't the gods make it less awful?"

"So the theories, from most charitable to least charitable to the good gods, are 'everything is a complicated negotiation with the evil gods and if they push for too much the evil gods will let the world be destroyed, and they're working to change that and once they do they'll go save everyone', to 'everything is a complicated negotiation and they are resigned to this', to 'they don't actually care about the suffering of evil mortals', to 'they think it's good that some of the afterlives suck because they're punishments for being evil'.

I think probably the good gods kind of suck."

"Korva thinks so, too."

" - kind of feel like it's different to think that because you worship the evil ones but -" Shrug.

"Not all of the evil ones."

"I don't want to - fight with her about it."

"...okay."

"D'you have a god?"

"Not a good question to answer in Osirion unless you're lawful. Maybe ask me once we're out and about."

Cheliax lets you talk about whatever other gods you follow, as long as you always say you follow Asmodeus or the other lords of Hell first. But maybe not everywhere's like that.

"Okay."

And in the evening they can pick up dinner on their way back. 

"You want to check if anyone's home?" he asks Zara when they reach the apartment, standing in the hall outside.

"How come?"