He nods. Pulls out an appropriate diamond. Waits for Malduoni to start.

Malduoni nods and starts casting the Contingency scaffold that will describe when the Resurrection part should trigger. 

Leareth watches intently with mage-sight. He's seen Contingent spells cast before, with Khemet's researchers, the complex weaving of two spells into each other, but not one that mixes divine and arcane magic. It's fascinating to watch. 

It takes about ten minutes. The diamond is consumed - wasted, if Malduoni does not happen to die before the spell reaches the end of its duration, but that's much less of a worry now that they can be manufactured, and would be a reasonable expenditure of resources anyway.

Malduoni is very competent with his magic, which, well, that's what you would expect.

It's very awe-inspiring, honestly. 

And then the spell is cast, and Malduoni thanks the pharaoh courteously for his help. 

"You are very welcome.

Do you feel comfortable with speaking directly of your question, here. I do not know of any way we could be observed."

"Yes. Though if Leareth wished to cast some additional privacy-precautions from Velgarth, I would not mind." 

Leareth is in fact already doing this. 

He'll wait for him to finish. 

"I am confident in the broad strokes of this," he says when he's done. "The details were hard to interpret, and in particular there is, apparently, a secret mortals are not allowed to know and Abadar had a hard time figuring out how to give you information relevant to it without me having enough information to derive it.

In the moments before you manifested in Cheliax it ...became possible to derive, somehow, that your destruction would break Foresight in Golarion. A number of attempts were made at telling me how that was the case and I'm pretty confident at this point I just cannot understand it, but - many powers had attached a great deal of powerful magic to various foreseen future events, under unusual conditions for Foresight - it was fraying from interference - and anyhow the gods suddenly knew that if you were destroyed then there'd be no more Foresight, ever again. 

There are a number of gods who, when presented with this, thought it was good. Important. Worth it. That - a world where the gods could not steer, a world with a chance of going places no god would ever steer it towards, was worth more than the thing you were trying to do. They had specific things in mind, about the space of worlds that gods wouldn't steer for, but I don't understand them.

Abadar knows who was in the coalition that decided this. It was most of the chaotic good gods, in the end, I think. He doesn't know which of them you were counting on, but he had a guess. There's a chaotic good god of revolution, of the fight against unjust rule. You made her. Milani. She has a domain in Axis, in your city, for people who - worked very hard all their life to make it there and then realized they were in the wrong place, I guess. I don't think - can gods make a mistake given the information available to them? It seems like the kind of thing Abadar couldn't do but I don't know whether that's just him. Anyway I don't think she thinks she made a mistake, but she has spent all her resources for the last hundred years trying to get Cheliax free - intervened in Andoran's independence movement and in Galt's, uh, first two revolutions, supplies the internal resistance in Cheliax, has something afoot in Kintargo...and Abadar thinks that if she knew you were alive she would be very very happy.

And that - this is the part that touches on secrets mortals aren't allowed to know - all of them would back you, if you came back. Because they didn't prefer you dead in the first place, just considered it worth it. Though Abadar says that Pharasma's mad at you, for making the river of souls overflow, when you died, and that if you do it again with this war you had better not come back right away."

Malduoni listens in silence. His expression is impossible to read. 

Leareth listens as well, and despite himself, most of his mind is churning over - what is he thinking? What is he feeling? Leareth's alt, the version of him from another world with a longer and deeper history, who succeeded in what Leareth's worked toward his entire life - and it still wasn't enough - and four thousand years later (twice again the time Leareth has worked, it's almost hard to imagine) he lost. And now he knows why. 

...What price would he pay, if he could destroy Foresight in Velgarth forever? It gives the gods power at the expense of mortals, and - something that nudges the gods toward being less comprehensible to mortals as well, less transparent, because their plans are based on a sensory modality that they literally cannot share. And if Foresight here was anything like his theories of it in Velgarth, the gods see it from a distant, alien angle, as though looking down on the world from the void of space, they don't see individual humans lives... Without Foresight, here, their interventions are clumsier, more blatant, but - also more transparent, right, it's much easier to infer the motives of the gods in Golarion now. They try harder to communicate their plans to mortals, even if they're not very good at it. And this world is certainly - more the kind he wants to live in, than Velgarth is. Abadar is a kind of entity he can cooperate with. Maybe that was true before, too, he isn't sure...

Either way, what a price to pay.

He can't tell, looking at it from the outside, whether Malduoni would endorse it as having been worthwhile.

The secret mortals cannot know... He's burningly curious, and it feels like he should be able to derive it. It's related to the process of ascension, obviously. The Starstone... Maybe he should have officially taken notice of his slight confusion sooner, dived into it, but he's been busy. Anyway. It was found and set up by Aroden in the distant past. (The geas lets him think Aroden's name in that context, just not link it to Malduoni now in the room with him.) Four gods have ascended. Varying alignments. The three others, after Aroden, certainly don't seem like what Leareth himself would have chosen... The Starstone guarded by absurd magical protections, that kill most people who attempt. Also seems suboptimal. You'd want that resource gated, but 'power' isn't what he would choose to filter on... 

All the gods would back Malduoni (gods, his brain is so confused with the stupid geas, well-done compulsions are much less irritating than this). That matters.

Coalitions of power, implicit contracts between the gods. Abadar said earlier that he can't just give the pharaoh more power, or else Asmodeus would take it. Why does that feel related?

...His own cautiously-laid plans, balance of power in Velgarth, his god needs to be able to negotiate with the others - negotiate in a similar implicit, outside-of-time sense, of course, the kind of agreements you can have between minds that see past and future sprawled out, that see the patterns of each other inherent in it. He needs the final stage of power-increase to be fast, that's why he needed ten million lives as fuel, he couldn't do it over a hundred years with node-energy. But even then, he needed it not to be the case that the other gods would all unite to crush his. 

Malduoni was only going to try for the Starstone in the best-case scenario. What's different there. More living worshippers is one. Maybe a prediction that the other non-Evil gods would be pleased with him rather than angry.

Malduoni must not have any doubts at all that he can reach the Starstone and ascend, but - he still needs something else. And the very slight expression of relief, at the end, is telling.

A newly-ascended god comes into the world fragile. Balance of power; the other gods need to approve of letting them in. If they don't, then... Why would Aroden have preferred to kill those not strong enough? A key difference between Leareth's world and this one: dead mortals live on in the afterlives, many of them nice. Murdered gods - maybe don't. Maybe are gone forever. (Except for one, who had already taken precautions.)

He's not exactly clear on why mortals aren't supposed to know this, but he certainly isn't going to ask right now. 

"That was all. That and - he wishes you success." Tight smile. "Obviously."

"Thank you." Malduoni ducks his head. "That - I suppose it is really the best news I could receive, given - everything. I deeply appreciate your efforts to seek the answer and interpret it. I know it is not easy on mortals, speaking to gods." His breath lets out, a very slight sigh. "I cannot make any additional promises that, should we fail, Osirion will not suffer for it. I can say that I had made every effort to overdetermine success, or at least not abject failure, and that was before Leareth's arrival." 

"Well, we have a lot of diamonds. If I am not satisfied with how things turned out I will keep dragging the two of you back to life to fix it."

Malduoni's eyes flicker briefly to Leareth's quietly fond expression. "I see. I appreciate your vote of confidence. And Abadar's."

He looks thoughtful. "...I imagine you would like it if you could bring Nefreti Clepati into this, given limited capacity for True Resurrection. I - had already decided that if you learned the answer here and Nethys was not one of the deities involved, I would no longer endorse my unease with involving His cleric. Based on recent occurrences, Nethys cannot be entirely unaware of what I am doing. I very much do not wish Asmodeus to obtain more information, even at this late date, but - if Abadar is comfortable that involving Nefreti will not increase the likelihood of this, I am comfortable with you doing so today. Otherwise, tomorrow is fine, since we will be moving very shortly afterward anyway." 

"Thank you. Nethys was not involved, it's not clear he has an opinion about Foresight."

"I do see why He might have less of an opinion than the others." 

Malduoni exchanges a long, meaningful look with Leareth. 

"Agreed. Your incentive here is toward the war going better rather than worse, I think, and you are not stupid. I will," with a flicker of reluctance, "trust your judgement on this matter." 

It is maddening to be unable to guess what they're thinking when they glance at each other, he usually never has that problem. "Thank you. - do you want a similar resurrection arrangement for Leareth."

- Leareth had somehow not thought of that, which on reflection indicates he must have been incredibly tired yesterday. 

Malduoni, however, evidently has thought of it. "If you are willing, and it does not trade off too steeply against some other need, then certainly." 

"It trades off against an additional Herald or Companion for the Worldwound, I suppose. But the difference is more than made up if you are able to bring in Nefreti a day or two sooner and she is willing to help."

"I think she will be. She was being very helpful earlier, it sounds like - if in an obscure fashion." He pulls out another diamond.