"Well, far be it from me to discourage anyone from religious observance but if that makes you lawful I'll eat my holy symbol."

"I don't want to overshoot, see."

"Heaven's so bad even lawful good people don't want to go there."

"That's not why."

"No? I'm curious, actually, the church talks up Axis, you're planning to professionally talk up Axis..."

"My family'll be there. Of course I'd like to make Axis. But - I think people ought to do good, if they can, and have faith that it'll work out however it's meant to. Maybe I'll end up down to neutral once I've retired, or someday need to do something counted Evil, or maybe they need me in Heaven, in which case I don't want to try to arrange to be unavailable."

"Do you have particular reason to think there's that much micromanagement going on, even of clerics? Especially with prophecy broken."

"I don't know. I think there's some, at higher levels, with the sort of complicated stuff we're getting into. Abadar has part of himself in Osirion, right, reading policy papers and listening to debates and all that - I don't think the gods make arrangements with a specific destiny in mind, but I expect they know what tools are available to them."

"Yeah, all right. It does seem a little odd to be sitting yourself in the heavenly toolbox when your own very god receives his worryingly literal mail in Axis but I suppose the philosophy could hang together."

"Good needs the help more, frankly."

"I don't disagree."

"Well, it's good to have you aboard. We'll see you in the morning?"

"See you."

She takes her leave. She's back at dawn all dressed up for an adventure.

And they can flying-carpet out of Sothis and on north. Hagan lets his snake hang out of his sleeve and watch the horizon. Takes the mask off once they're well clear of Sothis. 

"What's the deal with the mask?"

"When I was very young I ran into the man who is now the Grand Vizier Of Internal Affairs picking his nose. I immediately backed away, but he turned around, and saw me. My face is etched in his memory, and his in mine; I will always recall the chilling hatred with which he looked at me before I vanished into the crowd. I am the only one who knows his shameful secret, and if he ever sees me again he'll surely have me killed."

"I like how you have a lever attached to you which reads 'pull for a funny story'. How long before you start doing repeats?"

"As a ninth level ranger I get three a day and can't come up with new ones until the next dawn."

She cackles.

"Saint Hadassah, over there," he says, and points.

"Heck of a place to live out the rest of your days. How are its stats?"

"Eighty-eight percent success rate, which is below average, but they get all the hard cases. People who were randomly assigned here versus somewhere else do six percent better here."

"Good on them, that's barely worse than the national rate including all its unsupervised randos."

"And their population is starting more than half evil and more than half chaotic. Our friend the Dread Dagger was of course both."