She is slower than the mirror-faced snake, and for some reason it is choosing to chase her, and she is not in dense enough forest to lose it by going up a tree or between a couple too narrowly spaced for it. So it catches her before emergency services can turn up.
And then she is somewhere else, in a not particularly attractive room next to a person who looks sort of off somehow.
"Excuse me," she says, taking a step out of his personal space.
"...I don't know. I suppose you could test it on me and I could see if I have a spike in stress hormones but some edge case tolerances vary even within a kind of Elf."
"Not the whole planet. Osirion has signed some treaties that ban things such as executing them with the spell that sends them directly to Hell regardless of their behavior in life."
"There's a spell that does that? Who comes up with these things?"
"Talented devils who do magical research, I assume. In principle it ought to be possible to come up with a similar one that sends people to Nirvana but I don't know it to exist."
"Oh, I was assuming the arrangement was sufficiently perverse that the comfy ones would kick people out if they didn't get there by checking off enough tickyboxes in life and the awful ones would take anyone they could get."
"Two of the good afterlives are selective - Heaven will only take lawful good people and Elysium will only take chaotic good people. But Nirvana will take anyone. There are trials when the complicated dead reach Pharasma, to determine their fate, and regardless of the circumstances of the dead person Nirvana sends its contingent to the trial to argue that the person is neutral good and, if they win, to take them home. They have a rehabilitation program in Nirvana, too. It's really very, well, good of them.
The evil afterlives do take everyone because they eat them or torture them and you don't need to be selective for that."
"How does your afterlife system work?" he asks Cam. "...and how do people come to be aware they have an afterlife system."
"I came to be aware of it when I died. In principle somebody could spill the beans at any time but it keeps not happening and I can't do it because when humans where I'm from summon me they do not let me talk. There's three kinds of daeva with our own worlds, all perfectly nice to be in, and Limbo, which is boring and disappointing and inconvenient but can accept imports from the other three on a regular if infrequent basis to patch some of the inadequacies. You become a daeva if you were a summoner in life and go to Limbo otherwise."
"Same. I'd be mildly surprised if even the magic around here could fix me if I died in a magic accident, those don't leave corpses. Though I tried a spell here and it didn't work."
"We could try scrying on your afterlives but I haven't yet successfully scried anyone's home planes so I do not expect this to work."
"Is someone just trying everybody's in the background? How many things have been checked at this point?"
"This spell has some failure chance anyway that's hard to distinguish from failure due to the plane being unscryable without trying and failing a lot. We tried Mirelótë's plane five times, because it'd be particularly useful to get into contact with if we could. We also tried for Cor's Arda twice once he arrived, and for yours twice. All failures. Aitim and Pelape should name a person to check on if they want me to try their world. Preferably a little kid if you know any, they can rarely resist scrying."
He nods at someone. "Okay. - which brother? That's not necessary for the scry, I'm just curious."
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