"It's also possible he visited or had information from a different world in the same plane. One assumes there are lots."

"Oh, yeah, I guess, if you have a bunch of planets. It would be kind of weird if they had basically the same spread of races and classes and stuff, but I guess - weirder things have happened, right?"

"Yeah, I think at least a few weirder things have happened."

"Yes," he agrees solemnly. 

Mahdi finishes the scry. He says something to Fazil in Osirian, quietly. 

- he nods. 

"Is it ready?"

"Yeah. It's - you don't have to look, if you don't want to."

" - I'm gonna look."

"Okay." 

He thinks she's in what they call Hell.

I gathered that. I'm gonna look.

Mahdi steps a bit out of her way.

She looks.

Her mother's in a dark but not pitch-black cell, with dirty stone walls and a dirtier stone floor. She's chained to a wall. There are rats nipping at her bare feet. Her feet have chunks of flesh taken out of them.

"Hey Zales," she calls, "Mom's in hell, you wanna see for yourself?"

"Is she really in hell, or are they just giving you a magic light show?"

"I don't know, do you wanna see or not?"

She comes over. She looks. She doesn't say anything for a while.

They think the scry spell works, right?

Yes. 

Well that sucks. - and it's confusing, right, the crosses and holy water repel vampires, you wouldn't expect the salvation story to be a lot of nonsense. I guess I dunno whether any specific person believes -

But she was as far as you knew Christian?

Yeah. Not Catholic. Very Protestant, I didn't want to tell her I'd converted. But - valid baptism, very concerned about Christian morality, and stuff. Got us all to do neighborhood volunteering. I'd figured she was in heaven.

God's an enormous dick and should be violently shredded into nonexistence, because even the most evil entity in the universe doesn't deserve the kinds of fates he inflicts on everyone else. This is not the time to say that.

I'm sorry.

Yeah. Thanks, I guess.

"Can you check where anyone is? Any dead person?"