"That is more traditional and will be more convenient, though I will confess that I enjoy your popping in."

"Good, I am glad I have not been irritating you this whole time."

And he heads out, departing by Gate as soon as he reaches the underground Teleport zone.

Aroden waits another two days after Leareth's return from Osirion, arranging the various logistics for temples of Abadar and the provision of metals to mint the new currency, before, once again, returning to his demiplane.

He prays. He hopes Milani is paying some amount of attention to him, given the circumstances, which would make it easier to get Her attention. 

Lurching, falling -

- and then standing before a woman, half-elven, silver-haired but otherwise looking very young. Her face is still and glassy for a second while the fuzzy grey background of the metaphor is made to stop distractingly swimming, and then her attention flows into it.

She falls to her knees.

"I'm so sorry."

"I am not angry with you, Milani." What would be the point? "I - do wish to make sure I understand, truly, why you made the choice that you did." 

- nod. She takes a moment, trying to compose herself.

"I told Iomedae - I think Foresight is a weapon Evil can wield better than Good. Because the most powerful sources of coincidence are - disease, untimely death, dangerous magical accident - we assassinated people so much more often than we saved them for some greater destiny, it was cheaper - and the paths to conquest always easier to see than the paths to freedom and democracy and discovery - and so much of it wasn't Good or Evil at all but just self-serving, people got crushed because they were making it hard to see, or because they might threaten our long-term plans, someday, and it was so much cheaper to get them out of the way than to try to bring them on board - I think when we have to work through mortals those of us who have more goals in common with mortals will win more.

And then there's - you checked lots and lots of worlds, right, before you became a god and again as a god, for ways to fix Golarion - Foresight works everywhere, right?"

He nods, slowly. He has things to say, but he'll hear her out first. "To a first approximation, yes." 

"So this had the potential, suddenly, to be the only place - that gods couldn't steer. The universe hadn't had that, and on most trajectories wasn't going to have that, anywhere, ever, and - it was important to me, that it exist somewhere, a world that was free in that way. 

I didn't think you'd survive it. I'm glad you did, obviously, but I wasn't - doing it thinking that everything else would be recoverable. I figured it wouldn't be."

Slow nod. 

"I - am glad. Not that I died, obviously, but - that you made the decision accepting the full cost, what it could have, perhaps should have been. You still thought it was worthwhile, and - that is the shape you are, that is the shape you always were, if someone had pulled me outside the stream of time and asked me if, given such and such conditions, you would choose as you did - I would have said yes, of course."  

He kneels as well, in the metaphor. Takes her hands. 

"I think you were not wrong. We were - manipulative, before, even those of us trying very hard to hold their best interests at heart. Even me. We followed our incentives, because that is what beings with goals do, and - this shifts it, you are right, it means that more of the straightest paths to victory will be cooperative. Obviously, given the last century, this does not prevent Evil from winning sometimes. And - I cannot say if, by my own values, it would still have been worth it in the world where I truly died. I am not sure who else would have fought for Cheliax, or when, or if they could have succeeded. But I do not fault you for what you did. I do not trust you less, even; I already knew the shape you are. And it took courage, to make such a choice." 

She closes her eyes.

"Seemed very - convenient - to believe you might say that. I tried not to - need to -"

And she opens her eyes again. "And you might believe every word of that and still be a shape-that-retaliates, as a god. I know that. I'll back you, when you come back, and you can figure that out afterwards."

Aroden nods. (He doesn't think he's that shape, as a god - or, in some ways, maybe, but he doesn't think this one. Still, he isn't currently a god, he can't hold the entirety of who he was even in his very intelligence-enhanced human mind, and so he says nothing.) 

"I do wish you to know that it hurt," he says, quietly, without heat. He brings the god-memory of it to the surface, showing it to her. The searing fragmentation of it, what felt like centuries of desperately fighting to pull the pieces together, and only being shredded for it, again and again and again until finally, almost mercifully, it was over. 

She is still, for a moment. Godmemories are immersive in a way that nothing he showed her from his human life could be. 

"I'm sorry. I wish that I had been offered it at some other price."

"I am not the one who paid the highest price. Cheliax did."

He remembers a decaying toddler's body, clinging to its dead parents on a sodden mattress under the fallen roofbeam that killed them. Remembers drowned fields and starving people and then nearly a century of Asmodeus' reign, and every. single. person. who went to Hell and is now there forever, unless he fixes it - until he fixes it - and they wouldn't have been, in the counterfactual world where Aroden lived. 

"Yes. I've been there, it's what I've been doing, prying bits and pieces of it free - and I don't know if it would ever have been enough, if you hadn't lived.

I don't know if I was wrong, to think that Evil will have less power, this way. I think probably not, on a longer timescale, but I am less sure than I was a hundred years ago. If I was wrong, it would be the most important thing anyone has gotten wrong in all of history. And even if not -"

And she sends a concept, having despaired of coming up with words for it. There are strict victories, right, where everyone is not worse off, or at least everyone whose wellbeing she values; there are victories whose proceeds are mostly evenly distributed, there are victories that strengthen alliances, because their dividends accrue mostly justly, to people who worked hard for them and trusted in them and were allied in obtaining them. And then there are victories that flip the board and send good and harm flying everywhere and leave many people much worse off and other people much better off, with no rhyme or reason, and yet are still victories, if there's more good in the future after than there was before. The goddess of revolution, people started calling her, after Andoran and Galt and Varisia and Nirmathas and Molthune broke free of Cheliax. The goddess of that kind of victory. And it's an awful kind, none of the clean satisfaction of Aroden's war in Cheliax, but - but sometimes the board is unwinnable unless you flip it. 

And sometimes flipping the board starts an endless cycle of violence and destruction, eats its young and burns its libraries - Galt was a disaster - Cheliax was a horrifyingly thorough victory by the forces of evil, all her work notwithstanding, and it might never be better off than it would have been if she'd stayed out of it -

And people will despise you, and not trust you, and not want to work with you, and kill you if they can, and it's tempting to consider that a conclusive counterargument but it's not really, right, just a weight on the scales - he taught her that -

He's still holding her metaphorical hands. "Yes. I understand what you mean. And - well, this is the world now, and I am here, still, and now it is on all of us to make the best of the gameboard we have. And if it is not worth it yet, well, perhaps we can still make it worth it someday." 

She nods. "I love you," she says.

And she lets go of his hands, and withdraws from his mind.

Aroden sits in his personal demiplane for a long time. His hand, when he lifts it, is trembling slightly. 

He doesn't go back to Cheliax that night. He eventually sleeps, and has formless godmemory nightmares that haven't bothered him a long time, of dissolution and terror and every part of him clinging on, frantically - he knows now what damage he caused to the world, by holding on for so long, but the pattern of an Aroden was never going to die quietly or willingly.

He prepares his spells and then returns to his country. 

In Egorian, they repair the damage. Temples are reopened, to Iomedae and Abadar and any other churches that want space. 

Once the announcements are definitely spread to every living soul in Cheliax, Taver spends most of his time there; many of the other Heralds have returned either to the Worldwound or gone back to Velgarth, Valdemar and Karse are in need of help too, but Taver doesn't currently have a Herald, going back for Tantras isn't going to improve anything, and this world is still benefiting so much from his help. He helps coordinate, and he skims minds, gauging the tide of public opinion toward Aroden. 

People mostly believe it, now. They're shaken, and they're scared, and they're not really clear on whether rulers other than Asmodeus actually won't have you executed and eternally punished for the slightest flicker of internal doubt or disloyalty (or whether they just prefer acting like they wouldn't, so as to get you to let your guard down), but they go about their lives and follow the law and mourn relatives who were clerics of Asmodeus and sign up for Atonement once it's on offer. The church of Abadar does its offer of tours of Axis. They're popular. 

People are unsure where the money is going to come from, for the universal education and universal childcare that Hell paid for, now that Hell's not paying.

Honestly, right now most of it is being subsidized by Leareth, as they try to maintain as much continuity as possible with the education and childcare institutions (though of course anything done through the church of Asmodeus needs to be replaced wholesale). Leareth was planning on a war in Velgarth that he expected to be a lot costlier than this one, which was basically over in two days, and after that to be setting up an empire, and since he's no longer planning on doing that, he can afford to instead throw his resources at Cheliax. For a while. In the longer run he needs something that's actually economically self-sustaining; he should really schedule that meeting with Khemet and his advisors to get advice from them, but right now he's very busy. 

He can pay for some of it by hiring out the mages in his organization to do Gates for other countries. He can even negotiate to set up permanent Gates in some locales, for an exorbitant price.

People are absolutely willing to pay an exorbitant price for that!! It's still going to be cheaper in the long run than moving cargo overland. Some are worried that they're just setting up the infrastructure for Cheliax to conquer them once it's back on its feet, but his status as a cleric of Abadar is unreasonably reassuring on that front, and, well, there are plenty of customers for whom riches now talk louder than worries down the line.

Almost a month in, when the evacuations to Hell are over and closed and Rahadoum's army has been returned to its new administration and Egorian is feeling reasonably safe, Aroden Teleports to Absalom, to just outside a house laden with familiarity and nostalgia. He can't Teleport directly inside; among its many protections, it's only possible to Teleport out, not in. 

He raises the fancy bronze knocker and lets it fall, and waits for his wife to answer her door. 

Before it opens Detect Scrying informs him that he's being examined with several kinds of divination magic. 

Then it opens.

"See? Here I am, home safe yet again. I assume you have heard that we won." 

"I did hear that! People speak of nothing else." And she steps forward to hug him. "I never doubted you for a moment." This is absolutely nonsense, and she knows they both know it. "Was it very terrible?"