The Valdemarans meet and plan. Savil does a second Gate to bring over more Heralds. Depending on how things go, hopefully tomorrow she'll be able to do a Gate once they're on-site and bring over some of the Guard troops, who are still getting into position. 

Vanyel goes to bed early. (Which, inconveniently, is going to have him waking up stupidly early, his Ring of Sustenance is working better after a week of higher-quality data.)

He should arguably be nervous, about tomorrow, but he mostly feels relieved. 

In Rahadoum, armies are in place. Two hundred of Leareth's mages, everyone strong enough for a long-range Gate, have acquired locations they can Gate to in Cheliax, from carefully-drawn pictures and from memory.

Malduoni, in possession of a Ring of Sustenance, does not need much sleep. 

Leareth is in possession of a Ring of Sustenance now, because per Malduoni this is trivially worth it, but it's not quite in effect yet. He's not a wizard who needs a solid night's sleep in order to prepare spells, though; he can catnap and push through on stimulants and they have an option lined up for a break before the fighting starts in earnest.

Nayoki handed off her Gate-duties at noon and spent the afternoon sleeping, so she's ready to go. 

Malduoni takes both of their hands and teleports them to a pre-planned location in a major city in Cheliax. 

Velgarth compulsions are detectable as enchantment, albeit very low-powered ones. So Leareth doesn't cast any on the Cheliax nobles they're here to sneak up on, invisibly. He does, however, have range, and Thoughtsensing, and he can find quite a few minds and lay some delicate contingencies, unnoticeable until the right events occur.  

Velgarth Mindhealing is not detectable as enchantment. 

Most Mindhealers don't use it as that, of course, but Nayoki works for Leareth. And she's been studying Golarion magic for a while, now, and most recently with Malduoni's people. 

She can lay a cautious Mindhealing set-command on the leadership in question, designed to imitate almost exactly the same geas that Malduoni's original plan called for. Quite a few less important nobles are under geas already, people who don't matter enough to be regularly checked for enchantments, but Malduoni left this part until right before the final move.

It's not instantaneous, it's a complicated set-command, but they've got time, and Nayoki isn't limited on spell slots. Surrender, she tells the nobles. When this and such and such happen, the obvious thing to do is to surrender. 

Malduoni isn't going to not use his prepared spells, so he hits some other people, and double-covers some, they've tested that this won't cause interference. 

And then, invisibly, they teleport to the next place on the map. 

The cities are dark and quiet and peaceful. It doesn't look like a country under the command of Hell and Asmodeus. It also doesn't look like a country that, just hours from now, will be at war. Appearances can be misleading, though. 

This is quite a lot better than his original plan, though his original plan should already have been overkill, because of course you want to - have to - have overkill, in a case like this. Malduoni's mind holds the various implications, traces out the paths and ripples of this change.

It takes them only a few hours to hit everyone on the list. 

Shaphe wakes up at the right time every day even though at this time of year, at the Worldwound, the sun rises late and stays in the sky only a couple of hours. Her first few years here she didn't, and felt constantly off-balance, waiting for some signal of morning that the sky was not going to offer her. But she got used to it. 

She steps outside her hut, for a moment, to feel the wind on her cheeks, before she goes back in to pray. The barrier is visible from their camp, in the middle distance, a haze stretched across the horizon. Sometimes demons burst through it. There's no way to make a spell as big and permanent as the wards holding back the Worldwound also strong enough nothing can punch its way through. But the demons who manage to do that are rare, and easily tracked down on the other side. Except when they aren't, and zip or burrow or fly off to wreak horrors on the rest of the world, and -

- nothing they can do about that. 

No.

She has been trying to develop the habit of not saying that to herself, even though it's tempting, even though they are in fact surrounded mostly by things they can do nothing about. Iomedae wouldn't say it. She's not quite sure what Iomedae would say instead - grapples, often, with the nagging sense that Iomedae would chase down the demon and say 'see, it wasn't that hard', which is not an example that's easily followed - but it wouldn't be 'there's nothing we can do'. Maybe 'there are higher priorities, today'. 

It is also not clear what Iomedae would say about the legions of Hellknights who hold the Abyss alongside them. Or maybe she's just flattering herself that it's unclear, because the holy texts really aren't. If you find that your work serves Hell, you're doing the wrong thing, no matter how elaborate your rationalizations. 

The Good gods allied with the Evil ones, once, before the beginnings of time, to stop Rovagug from eating the world. Before Iomedae was a god, but presumably she wouldn't have been the lone holdout if she had been. Or maybe if there'd been enough Good gods they wouldn't have needed to ally with the Evil ones, for that, at whatever price was paid that the histories don't speak of. 

She tries not to go back inside in the morning to pray until she has ten questions she badly wants to ask. Not that prayers are answered that directly, not for ordinary soldiers, but - it seems to go better, somehow, when she's leaning in to the questions, hurting with them. This isn't ten questions but they're unusually weighty ones. She turns to go inside.

Aroden teleports into place. 

He's wearing his old face now, with Alter Self. Or at least what the histories and sculptures and paintings claim he looked like, how would he know, it's too many thousands of years in the past and a god's mind doesn't think in terms of human features anyway. In any case, he no longer looks like an old man, and he mostly doesn't move like one either. 

He is, however, at the moment still invisible.

He lands with his feet apart and Taver, the Groveborn Companion of Valdemar, at his side.

He takes out a diamond. 

Taver waits. 

He's done a lot of setup. He's laid out the wording very, very carefully. This plan was conceived of decades ago and ready to move years ago. 

The first Wish that he casts does nothing visible to the eye, yet, though it'll be very obvious to anyone with Detect Magic up - the beginnings of some sort of vast scaffolding, stretching over a hundred-mile radius around the Worldwound. He feels the magic falling into place.

The diamond is consumed. The first Wish takes exactly six seconds, and he's instantly drawing out another diamond and onto the second. 

- she notices. She's not sure what prompted her to put up Detect Magic, but it felt right and she did it and -

She's not armored, not now, but she calls a magical greatsword to her hand out of nowhere and turns around, trying to figure out where it could be coming from -

Aroden is still invisible. The magic is centred on the Worldwound, not on him. 

The second Wish adds to the scaffolding, tightening, shaping. The third completes it. As far as Aroden knows, no one has ever done this exact spell, in the entire history of the world.

He takes out his last diamond. He says the words that he planned, so carefully, years ago. 

And for a moment it almost, almost feels like wielding magic the way the gods do. The way his mind still remembers, strains toward, though it gives him headaches even to remember it too clearly. 

...

Across a vast hundred-mile radius all around the Worldwound, every Evil creature - and only Evil creatures - is the target of the spell Flesh to Stone. 

- she watches and she doesn't understand and -

- that doesn't matter right now -

- she backs very silently into her hut and wakes everybody -

He drops the invisibility over both of them. 

:Aroden is here. Aroden is alive: 

A voice speaks into the mind of every non-Evil creature within that circle; Taver was able to learn to discriminate straightforwardly enough. The voice is male, but clearly not human; it feels like ringing steel, like the blue-white light of an ancient star. 

People are pouring out of their encampments to see what the fuck is going on!! This includes all of the paladins of Iomedae and most of the forces of Mendev and most of the clusters of random adventurers and approximately the quarter of the Hellknights who managed to resist petrification, the latter category very very angry -

At the voice they all stop. Stare at each other in confusion. 

"Someone ask," someone snaps, and Shaphe doesn't have the spell Commune but you don't actually need the spell, and she sinks to her knees and lays the sword across her lap and reaches out with all of her mind -

- is it true -

- it's like something is ripped away from in front of her eyes, from in front of all of her senses, and she can seehearfeel clearly for the first time and it's blinding - it hurts - whatever she's found here is vast and fast-moving and uninterpretable but she would swear it's mostly confused -

- something takes hold of her and she stands up, walks back outside - the sword clatters to the ground - her eyes are unfocused -

"It's true," Shaphe says, and collapses to the ground, and then mumbles something else that no one can catch.

Aroden stands where people can see him for a long moment, the wind in his hair, dressed in the clothing that everyone will recognize. 

:Aroden has returned to take back Cheliax: the alien, ringing-steel voice announces. :His allies will be here shortly to attempt to close the Worldwound. You may stay and aid them, or join his efforts at...: 

Taver goes on, instructing all the non-Evil creatures within a hundred miles of the Worldwound of approximately what's going to happen next, and where they can join up with Aroden's forces and allies to make themselves useful. 

(The placement was carefully selected so that non-helpful forces showing up, such as the surviving Hellknights if they tag along, can be prevented from causing trouble, though none of the Hellknights should have heard Taver's instructions.)