An adventuring party recruited from Osirion teleports into Azir on the 8th of Desnus. Rahadoum's recruiting contact in Osirion wrote ahead to note they were expected. Couple of guys he's known a long time - a wizard, a ranger - and a new guy, sorcerer, probably to replace the cleric they usually travel with. They spend two days in Azir getting oriented and head out to the front. The ranger wears an unusually high quality amulet of Nondetection; the sorcerer wears a headband for intelligence, which is a bit unusual as sorcerers usually don't need it to cast, but some variants do; they are otherwise unremarkable. Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, no reading, which could mean neutral or 'hiding it'. They work quickly and effectively, manage resources reasonably well, get recommended to higher-ups for a closer look on that account.
"You are certainly Aroden's daughter! I hope someday I will be lucky enough to have a daughter like you."
He should probably ask Khemet too, for activities in Aktun that are more romantic than trolleys. He found the trolleys romantic but he's unusual. Leareth spends the rest of the time before the appointed dinner thinking about what sort of magic jewellery he ought to get her, and being kind of nervous.
Carissa goes back to her apartment and finds out the landlord rented it out again when she left town even though she'd paid up a month in advance. She hadn't left anything important there but she's still in a bad mood about it. She tries to think in a public park instead.
She would like Leareth to be less nervous. He never seemed nervous when she was spying on him. She is a bit confused by it, and a bit -
- all of her feelings are silly but probably not listening to them still won't work -
- in the version of this in her head he was pleased, and already had a ring, and - and wanted her, and that would have been nice. It is also kind of silly, it's not like he knows her yet - in the version of this in her head he said that he wanted to get to know her better and then kissed her. This is in itself really trivial but it's probably indicative of something that's not really trivial. That's still worth doing, obviously, but - it will be missing something that would have been nice.
That's okay. She is mature and responsible and careful and can take care of herself and she doesn't need him to figure this out on any timeline or in fact at all.
She goes and finds a new apartment and this leaves her with very little budget for a dress for dinner but she has a former classmate in the city she can complain to, and then ask to borrow one from, and she'll have to do her hair herself but, well, who is she kidding, he won't even notice probably.
Leareth is weirdly tempted to try to invite Khemet, just so he can look at Carissa and (non)-magically tell what she wants and then inform Leareth of this via Telepathic Bond, but based on their earlier conversation that isn't going to help Carissa's feelings at all, and it's also sort of silly. He can manage.
He pays slightly more attention than usual to selecting what he's wearing, and he's there to greet her when she returns to the palace, and show her the way to Aroden and Parmida's rooms.
"Would you like a hug?" he asks her. Khemet would just be able to tell by looking at her. Maybe Leareth should get magic items of enhancing-reading-people. He can't read her mind because of her shielding, and - possibly that's the sort of thing that one's wife would be offended by anyway, at least doing it without asking.
" - sure." Hug. "I had a frustrating day, my landlord let someone else move into my apartment when I left for Vigil even though I'd paid up for the month."
"Wow. Is that a common occurrence here? One would think it would hit him for Law."
"It has never happened to me before but in Corentyn I mostly rented nicer places, and knew the landlords. I will go threaten him for my money back tomorrow but I didn't feel like it today. How was your day -"
"It was not nearly that frustrating. I thought about - I would like to take you on a proper date, at some point, if you would like that." He offers her his arm to walk over to Aroden's suite; he's seen couples doing that in the street, he thinks.
She takes his arm. "That sounds nice. I haven't travelled, except to Vigil and the Worldwound."
"Well, I will try to think of something appropriately exciting. Would you prefer I tell you once I have ideas or for it to be a surprise?"
"I can generally execute projects such as military campaigns rather well, I think, so I will have to see if that transfers to dates."
He walks her to Aroden's rooms, making conversation by asking her what Corentyn was like.
Aroden greets her warmly, and not with much formality. "Welcome back! Delightful to see you again. He ushers her in. "Parmida you met before. This is my daughter Zahra."
Corentyn's a big port city. It was badly damaged during the civil war a century ago and all national investment in fixing it has been focused on the fortresses, and on the port, so the city's downtown is still badly damaged and there aren't big nice public works to speak of like in Egorian. But it was a pretty safe place in another way, you weren't terribly likely to come to anyone's attention and the schools were good and people from all over the world would pass through the Arch of Triumph - the Arch of Aroden, she corrects herself nervously, it was returned a month ago to the name the rest of the world knows it by and the name it had in Cheliax a long time ago.
"Your majesty," she says, and nods to Parmida and Zahra. "It's good to see you again. I hope everything's been going smoothly."
(Leareth doesn't seem bothered at all by her referring to the Arch of Aroden by its name under Asmodeus; internally he's a tiny bit bothered, but not at all because he thinks she misspoke, just because it's a reminder of the century during which Aroden had lost.)
"Yes, thank you. There remains a great deal of work to be done but it is mostly proceeding according to plan."
He hopes Parmida can tell if Carissa is still nervous, because he can't.
Carissa seems much less nervous! Even in infernal Cheliax people who could kill you any time they wanted don't usually invite you to dinner parties to do it.
Leareth pulls out a chair for her at the dinner table; he's seen Parmida do it for Aroden.
He feels like he has no idea what to do, here, and it's not even just a matter of being unsure how romance works; if he were just trying to make friends with her he'd be out of his depth too.
Aroden asks Leareth how he's been finding Abadar's new human-friendly interface; he tries to pause every so often and glance at Carissa so she feels invited to participate.
Leareth isn't sure how to discuss it without getting very technical about the details of his god-plan that he transferred over to Abadar, but if Carissa seems interested he can break it down into small pieces and do his best to explain.
She probably doesn't have all the context to follow along but it seems important to him so she'll try. It's wildly impressive. She isn't even sure where she'd start on a project to make it easier for a god to have a human-friendly aspect.
Parmida, should we change the subject to something else that she can participate in better, Aroden asks his wife after a while.
Then once they've reached a more graceful pivot point in the conversation, Aroden segues it over to asking Carissa about her own magical background, and whether there were any particularly interesting puzzles involved in making her sword-hatpins.
Oh that's a good idea, why didn't he think of that. Leareth is also genuinely curious to know, and still getting up to speed on the intricacies of arcane magic enough that it's a bit of a challenge for him to follow two wizards talking about their magic.
She didn't do anything that wasn't a variant on something she saw at the Worldwound; she was there for three years and saw a lot of bizarre arrangements high level adventurers or foreign armies made. That's how she learned that it was possible to make a magic item for a spell that wasn't even a spell wizards could stabilize (like Glibness), and where she learned how to get things to not interfere with each other, and then there wasn't actually much innovation involved in the hat pins besides knowing what materials would have the requisite reserves at a size that small. Then when she learned from Jisa that Velgarth mages could see 'life force' she was at loose ends for a little while, trying to think how to project the right amount of something she couldn't see, until she remembered that the size of gem required for Soul Bind and the material components required for Scribe's Binding varied with something called life force, maybe the same thing, and obviously she couldn't cast either of those but she could go look up how it was done - infernal Cheliax made the details of Soul Bind a secret for obvious reasons but she was in the military and there were some permitted uses -
- Aroden, who presumably has both of those spells, might know a much easier way than the one she jury-rigged -