Leareth was watching with scrying for part of it, but stopped after Aroden's questioning ended, because it had really seemed like there wasn't anything new and because it was - weirdly upsetting, mostly the part where Vanyel was so visibly distressed and awkward about it. He's realizing that one of Vanyel's decade-long friendships is alongside the other collateral damage of the Star-Eyed's hatred for him, and - it seems unfair.

He's a little surprised by the offer, but nods, smiling faintly. "Of course." 

So he walks back out of the Dome with him, Plane Shifts them, lands in the enormous vaulted room where the trolley lines come through. It's full of people. The local population of Aktun is only about a quarter humans; among those waiting for the trolleys are gnomes and dwarves and dragons and drow and crystalline sparkling machine-people and blueskinned, bipedal aliens ten feet tall with too many eyes, and clouds of glowing metallic dust which Leareth's thoughtsensing nonetheless informs him are people.

It's incredible. Leareth lets go of Khemet's hand after the Plane Shift and just stares around for a full minute, absorbing it. 

"What are all of the species?" he asks eventually, looking over in particular at the glowing metallic dust. "Are some of them the outsiders here?" 

"Yes. The ones that look like clouds of dust are axiomites, they're Axis's outsiders - like archons and angels in Heaven, or devils in Hell. Some of the metal people are also axiomites, they can shapeshift and generally give us something to work off, out of politeness, when they're talking to us.  The other metal people are called aphorites, the axiomates made them to be more psychologically similar to us to simplify trade. They come across as - not outside the space of humans, when you talk to them, if weird and foreign ones. That -" he points at a machine person - "is called an inevitable; they are also a created species, designed to defend Axis against extraplanar incursions. The blue ones are called mercanes. They're an evolved species like humans, but from another world, and the ones we've met are merchants who travel the planes arbitraging magic items. There's a couple million of them in Axis, mostly in their own districts - other species cluster and humans sometimes even cluster by ethnicity, people like familiar things -"

It's very much - well, the opposite of everything the Tayledras are, in a way, but to Leareth it feels beautiful and triumphant and comforting, it eases some sort of pressure inside him... It doesn't make it seem okay to die permanently, that he's now Lawful Neutral and would probably end up here, it's still - losing - but it does make the prospect a lot less unthinkably awful.

Abadar's divine realm. It does make him feel safer, if not entirely safe, he's not sure he's capable of that, and it's - less lonely, in some sense he has a hard time describing. 

"Thank you for bringing it to me." It feels like the words aren't nearly sufficient to convey it. 

He smiles very slightly. "We want to get on the 7," he says, gesturing up a flight of stairs at a platform where people wait to board the magical trolleys as they sweep through.

"Of course." Leareth follows him, still looking around at everyone with Thoughtsensing extended, not to read thoughts per se - it would be incredibly overwhelming to try - but just to bask in the sense of there being so many flourishing people all around him. 

The trolley runs along the northern edge of Aktun where it butts up against one of Axis's underwater districts; the view to the right is of a crowded bustling city with eyepopping storefronts and the view to the left is of a smooth placid lake, except where green or purple smoke bubbles burst through the surface. Thoughtsensing confirms that there are tons of people below the surface of the water, though all ordinary vision can catch is the occasionally moving underwater light. 

On the right, the buildings are taller than it'd be possible to build on Velgarth or Golarion, at least not without magic: twenty or twenty-five stories, some of them. The trolley climbs above street level and glides between them on elevated rails. 

"This is our stop," Khemet says after a while.

Some parts of the Eastern Empire are a little like this, it has no shortage of magic, but that always came at the expense of everything else about the Eastern Empire being terrible. 

Leareth nods, still kind of speechless, and follows Khemet off the trolley. 

He points at a building across the street. "This part of town is called Newspaper Row, because the publishing industry is concentrated here. The building is 15 Shore. It's thirty three stories, the tallest in Aktun, though they're kind of cheating, it's only twenty-seven stories all the way up, and then some little towers, and there are other buildings that are twenty-nine." He starts crossing the street. "I could not get us a reservation on the top floor on short notice. It's one of my favorite things about Aktun, how I can't get anything nice on short notice because most people here are richer than me."

"- That is rather a wonderful thing to be true about it, yes." Leareth follows him across the street, still looking with something close to awe at the building and its neighbours. 

The building has a spectacular high-ceilinged marble lobby where he requests and receives a key for the 23rd floor, and a bank of elevators, which carry them up to it. "I used to want to just own an apartment up here, but my grandfather thought it'd be bad for me. Knowing it exists is all right, but - maybe it's unhealthy, living with a foot half in the grave already -"

The room on the 23rd floor is a tidy three-room apartment. The living room looks out on the rest of Aktun. He locks the door, goes to sit down on the couch. "I want you to make me a permanent Gate-threshold in Sothis so our tourism program is cheaper. People save for twenty years, for it, and I think it's worth it, but -"

Leareth stands at the window for a while, looking out at the incredible view. "That makes sense. I - had never imagined having the problem that the afterlife is too nice and it is perhaps unhealthy to - be too established there, in life." And he understands a lot better, now, Khemet's insistence that he doesn't want immortality. He approximately has immortality, by Leareth's standards, everyone in Golarion does - well, except the poor people who end up in Abaddon, and those in Hell might prefer they didn't... 

"A permanent Gate ought be feasible," he smiles a little, "though I will of course ask the usual price for it. We need to fund Cheliax's schools somehow." 

"Awww, can't get anything past you even when you're overawed. I have schools to fund too, you know."

"But the Gate will be cost-saving for your country in the long run, so you still come out ahead." Leareth heads to the other end of the couch and sits. 

"Van very politely scolded me this morning because he was worried about you. And he helped me notice I was being - cautious in the wrong directions."

"- Oh?" Leareth hadn't realized Vanyel might be worried about him, and - isn't sure how he feels about it, but he's not bothered, exactly. 

"You were really sad. He didn't like the idea of you being alone, today, while he sits with his former friends."

"Oh." Has everyone been noticing how disproportionately upsetting this series of events was for him? Leareth was trying not to be obvious about it because that won't help anything.

Leareth mulls on it for a moment and has to concede it's not surprising at all, actually. Most people are going to find being murdered very upsetting, and - he wasn't exactly very composed right after being brought back. 

"I was very sad," he admits. "I - am not sure why, the situation is objectively not that bad, just..." 

"The thing I said to Vanyel was that you tried, uh, having allies, trusting people, expecting that there was a way to be safe other than being ten steps ahead of everybody at all times, and they figured out your immortality method while you stood there working on helping them with magic and then severed it and murdered you and -

- I don't want you to have to be ten steps ahead of everybody else all the time! But we don't - we don't know how to ask you not to do that, if we can't actually keep you safe -"

Leareth tries to say something, and - fails, because suddenly all the emotions from earlier are hitting him again in overwhelming force, and he's remembering how he hadn't even realized until it was gone how...restful, it was, not needing to at every moment be on the lookout for betrayal. 

He scoots across the couch and hugs him. 

"I wanted to give you that. I wanted so badly to give you that. And - I'm so angry that I couldn't."

This is definitely the most unexpected hug Leareth has ever received, and he freezes for a few seconds, and then - well, if he's not safe here, in Abadar's divine realm - Abadar, who had a strong enough claim on him to have held off the Star-Eyed, who is going to retaliate, who was smug about that...

He relaxes, the first time since coming back that he's let himself relax fully, and then inevitably the thing that happens is that he starts crying again. Which is really inconvenient because he wants to say things and he still can't Mindspeak the pharaoh. 

He holds him and doesn't say anything.

He's going to have to un-relax eventually - someday - but right now all Leareth is aware of is that he was in pain, and he wasn't even able to notice it properly when he was holding himself on alert, he could only look at it head-on once it eased. 

"I - thought it was unfair," he says finally, without moving. "To - ask that of you - to be paranoid enough to - hold off all of the enemies I have made in two thousand years. I - apologized to Abadar. For, for failing to be on good terms with the gods of Velgarth, I - am sure - it is inconvenient for Him..."