Word reaches him and Malduoni is, in fact, interested in a closer look.

He would like to observe them under stress-test conditions. Get a closer look at how they reason during a fight. Hmm, particularly in a fraught situation; he has enough information already to pass them on his competence bar, it's their judgement that he wants a real assessment of. None of the current invading outsiders to be dealt with are particularly interesting, so he alerts his contact in Abaddon. Who, one assumes, think they work for someone Evil, because why would anyone else provide helpful supplies and intelligence to Abaddon. 

Some daemons show up. They have captive souls with them. They make it quite far during the night, before Malduoni directs the promising adventurers their way.

Malduoni is present, within range of Detect Thoughts (and quite a number of other senses that wizards usually do not have permanently.) He's also invisible, undetectable by any known kind of magic, and additionally hiding behind a rock. 

He observes. 

Their wizard identifies the souls, notes this to the sorcerer who apparently has telepathy, draws his summoned creatures away because they might smash the remaining souls. Directing the summoned creatures requires nearly all of his attention, he notes to himself to think about later that it's very unusual, for daemons to have souls here -

The ranger (Aroden is powerful enough to override the amulet) is likewise entirely absorbed in killing these things faster without smashing the souls - well, almost entirely absorbed, there's one thought that he might as well spend his fancy deadly magical ammunition now because it's not like he'll be using it in the war in Cheliax, where even with a Merciful weapon it'll be damned difficult not to kill anyone...

What. 

Until this point he's been mulling on various other logistics in the back of his mind while watching, but the situation now has his complete attention. It's - not impossible for someone to have guessed - he chases down half a dozen possible observations and threads of inference someone could have followed. But he's surprised. 

The sorcerer's able to hedge out his permanent Detect Thoughts, though maybe he just got lucky. Normally he would leave it at that, two out of three, but it's suddenly a lot more critical than usual that he understand fully, that he be oriented. 

(It took him many, many years, but he eventually obtained enough permanent magical senses that he feels mostly oriented at baseline.)

The sorcerer is very distracted and Malduoni can cast more subtly than most, he doesn't think the man has any way of noticing a second attempt. He casts Detect Thoughts as a separate spell. It's one that he's optimized significantly, and his version is far more difficult to block out than the usual one.

The sorcerer apparently ALSO has permanent Detect Thoughts and Detect Magic, somehow, because he's scanning the area, trying to check if he's currently being observed. He is under the impression that he isn't - he's thinking about some type of magic he calls a Gate, though the mental image of a glowing doorway doesn't look like the kind of Gate Malduoni knows, and how he's still not going to risk using it, not that it'd be useful anyway. 

He does, however, switch to using some sort of complex immobility spell, unfamiliar to Malduoni both as a sorcerer capability and as a spell at all, the shape of the magic is very odd. It makes it a lot easier for the ranger to shoot the daemons without damaging any more of their captive souls.

And then they can head on over and get the souls. Mahdi and Leareth are talking about whether there 's a way to get them somewhere safe. Releasing them will just send them back where Pharasma thinks they belong - which is probably Abaddon, though sometimes daemons do grab souls they're not entitled to.

If Aroden made the daemons in this area more active just to train up his army to invade Cheliax then that's impressively fucked up, he thinks, as they make plans to leave the souls somewhere safe in Sothis.

....What.

Malduoni does not do much speculating on the spot. It would be stupid to let himself be distracted, even if the adventurers show no sign of having noticed him, and should not be capable of it. (But how do they know - he's missing something huge...)

They know about Cheliax, fine. They also know about Aroden. Or have guessed. He's not at all sure what chain of inferences could possibly lead to that destination.

He watches and waits for them to finish up here and move on. 

The wizard teleports to Sothis and back. The sorcerer offers to refill his spell slots, which is not at ALL a thing sorcerers can ordinarily do, but they agree it's probably not worth it. They walk back towards their camp instead, vaguely planning to take the souls to Nirvana once they have their party cleric back.

Malduoni follows them back to camp, invisible (he is not especially limited on invisibility), at a distance but within range of all his permanent magic-senses.

He's thinking that maybe they should have teleported, it's so much less annoying. And that he misses Fazil and hates having to carry water for the day. And wondering whether it's worth the money for a Ring of Wizardry like the one the wizard he was talking to here has, it'd be fun but he's going to retire after they save the world or whatever and how much added utility is it, really, when he's retired - honestly too much of his wealth is wrapped up in magic items useful to adventurers anyway, what if the Age of Glory obviates them or something, it'd be - objectively very good and all but quite a financial hit -

He is thinking that Pharasma should die in a fire (this is not a new opinion of his) and wondering whether Mahdi took the souls to Mahdi's house or to the pharaoh's palace, the pharaoh will probably make some eerie guesses from that - actually the pharaoh is probably spying on them all the time now that he can target Hagan's companions and not just Hagan himself and also possibly now that he's gotten a look at the amulet and guessed who he needs to have scrying if they want to stand a chance. He is pretty sure the pharaoh will not ask Abadar for help finding Hagan, that'd be cheating, but cheating every other way would be completely within bounds, and he's got to be desperately curious. 

Well, maybe they'll have news for him as soon as tomorrow.

They get dinner. They bathe. They talk about what to tell the adventurers who are under geases and therefore probably read in about Cheliax. He thinks they should go with 'Leareth has an army' and claim that Leareth could use the army to seal the House of Oblivion. Which he probably could - the pharaoh said he didn't have the resources, not that it was impossible in principle...

Malduoni's feeling about the fact that apparently the pharaoh of Osirion knows about this, what, secret undercover mission to find out if Rahadoum is invading Cheliax or if Aroden is in charge there, is DISPLEASURE. Also confusion. 

- the part where they noticed the adventurers under geas is clever. Someone is doing a very good job of guessing, from the outside, at his security precautions. Impressive. He is not particularly happy that they've guessed it but he is nonetheless impressed.

Also the bizarre alien not-sorcerer supposedly has an army, and he is pretty sure no one on the planet could conceal an army without his eventually finding out about it. 

The army's from another world as is the sorcerer but he's honestly barely thinking about that, it's old news.

With the cover story they've agreed on, the sorcerer is saying, it will look much less as if they know an alarming number of probably-Aroden's secrets. 

:Yeah. And, like, at this point I am leaning that we want to work with this guy whether or not he is Aroden and whether or not he is you - though admittedly it looks likely - so may as well not have everything rest on the most bizarre and hard-to-prove part of the whole thing.:
 

Which is startling enough that Malduoni nearly loses concentration on the spell he's re-casting to read Leareth's mind again (which is his last of the modified and optimized ninth-level Detect Thoughts), that almost never happens. 

- whether or not - he is - you - 

He doesn't even know how to parse that. This is possibly the most confused he has been in the last century and he is not pleased about it at all. 

At this point he should probably break off soon and make actual plans, but he observes a little longer, they seem to be settling down for an uneventful night after a tiring fight, but he'd like to be more sure than he is. 

Leareth thinks they don't have much reason to think Rahadoum is going to war with Cheliax if it's not secretly run by Aroden - right, it is Vanyel that Hagan explained his logic to, two weeks that feel like two lifetimes ago, and he's pleased with how well the prediction held up -

- I think Rahadoum's going to go to war with Cheliax, he'd said at the time, because they're recruiting under tighter conduct standards than make any sense for handling evil outsiders in the desert in Thuvia - you ask for that kind of thing when there are going to be civilians, and civilians you give a shit about, and Rahadoum will still think of their lost northern province as their own people...

He was (probably) right about the general picture but he will concede that he was wrong about one thing, Leareth and Aroden are in fact the kind of people who'd probably care about that just as much if they were invading Thuvia or - Valdemar - or some other place they'd never had a claim to. Lawful neutral, but not like Abadar, disinterested in the war of Good versus Evil - the opposite of that, really, doing a bazillion astoundingly Evil things for the side of Good, he wouldn't have guessed you could swing it but - maybe you can. 

They go to sleep.

Malduoni switches from invisible to his usual illusion-disguise; he prefers not to do most of the hands-on work as himself. He discreetly asks some people he trusts a reasonable amount to keep an eye on that tent and alert him if anyone inside moves. 

He teleports himself out, back to his usual base, already with the beginnings of a plan in mind. He gives some orders, collecting a few people who he'd like to assist him with this - it's not that he doesn't trust the random camp guards, they're recruited to a high standard, but there are levels of trust, and they can't cast the spell he needs anyway. Also he doesn't want to explain why a random group of adventurers requires kidnapping at all, much less with this many layers of contingency. 

He gets some sleep - he's had a Ring of Sustenance for a very long time, so two hours is plenty - and that gives him a lot of remaining night, to prepare spells, and go over what could go wrong so he can patch it. 

He teleports back to the camp an hour before dawn, invisible. The wizards who are helping him are arriving separately. He points Detect Thoughts and Detect Magic at the tent. 

He is just waking up to prepare his spells for the day. He makes himself a magic light and begins. 

The amulet of nondetection is hedging out the one who wears it, and the other one is also blocking him, but to the wizard's eyes they're both sound asleep.

Now. 

He casts a quickened heightened mass Hold Person, it should hold all of them for a few seconds and then there's a high likelihood of at least one of them throwing it off, they're all powerful casters, and so he needs to move faster. He Plane Shifts Leareth, the not-sorcerer, out first, as planned - the unknown quantity here, the most baffling member of the party.

Leareth struggles against it but does not successfully throw it off, and he's gone. 

- he prepares for his second round of spells–

He identifies the spell and can guess, from that, at what's being brought to bear against them, and he's unsure whether it's in fact wise to fight but this doesn't stop him from throwing off the Plane Shift and then the paralysis - he's thinking he can jump a short distance without any spells prepared, and then if he can get a Teleport prepared he can get to Sothis -

Their wizard is very impressive, honestly, but also there is no way he's going to throw off all of the wizards he brought casting Hold Person at him, even if theirs aren't as powerful, so he signals to them, and uses his second Plane Shift to grab the ranger next in case he's about to pull anything unexpected. 

Then he does not get the chance to do that. He does think angrily in probably-Aroden's probable-direction that if anyone hurts his snake he will murder them about it.

He feels a little apologetic but not very; he's not intending to harm the snake, why would that help anything. 

He Plane Shifts the wizard, who is very Hold Person'd. 

He appears in the library and the Hold Persons stop working, though not before he collapses to the ground. 

Mindspeech doesn't work, which is deeply frustrating, but at least he seems unhurt, having fallen on one of the rugs and not headfirst into a bookshelf. 

There are additional thuds. 

Leareth rises in a crouch, he's settle for using just his eyes to look around. "Mahdi, Hagan?" It does appear to be both of them, and no one else yet. Not that he'd know if there were someone hiding in a bookshelf, since he doesn't have Thoughtsensing. 

(He is somewhat ticked off about being thrown in an anti-magic demiplane for the second time this week.) 

"Mahdi, Hagan," agrees Mahdi - they're no longer going to have a language in common. 

Hagan does not seem to have a good angle on throwing the paralysis off and is going to fling his head at it to little avail for a while.

Leareth would help, except for the fact that he definitely cannot help because he currently lacks magic. He says something apologetic which of course Hagan can't understand, but hopefully the tone comes across. At least it looks like Fy was, as usual, snuggled up with Hagan and was hauled along. 

"If you just let it expire of its own accord that'll give us some information about his capabilities," Mahdi says. "Not that it matters very much."

"Yeah," he says when it finally wears off, "I think we can characterize them as 'sufficient'. How long was that -"

"Two minutes and ten, twelve seconds."

"Clepati couldn't do that."

"All of those were seventh-circle spells prepared in ninth circle slots. I've seen the concept before, though not with ninth circle slots obviously. A ninth circle caster specializing in enchantment -" he glances at Leareth, then remembers Leareth can't understand him. "Also he had a rod of greater quicken spell, he must have, or it would've taken him longer. And at least four other casters."

"Well. I guess turnabout is fair play."

"I guess.

Wish he'd - hurry up - but I guess there's no need, now."

"We might have to wait a day. I'm not gonna attack him but he doesn't know that, and I am armed, sort of -" he sleeps with two daggers and with Fy - "...if I were him I'd want all my spells."

"Maybe put the daggers conspicuously far away from you." He sighs.

Checks out the books.

They're real books. The ones he pulls out mostly seem to be histories, and treatises on subjects like mathematics and economics. 

There are also other bookshelves protected by something like frosted glass, except definitely unbreakable, that seemed to be locked with magic. (And cannot be unlocked by magic, at least not by any of them.)

He gestures at the whole setup. Asks Leareth, "Leareth?"

It's very irritating not having the translation working, but some questions don't need additional words to communicate. It's been the main thing Leareth has been thinking about over the past several minutes. 

He can't communicate the intricacies of his reasoning, of course. Or how incredibly jealous he is that this kind of thing works in Golarion's magic and not in Velgarth's. 

He nods, emphatically. 

He pulls out his daggers, moving very slowly and nonthreateningly, and sets them down on the ground on the other end of the room, and retreats over to where Mahdi is looking at a book about economics. "Does he have good taste?"

"I hate reading economics with my headband off, I don't really know. It's a pleasanter distraction than thinking how long it'd be until anyone missed us -"

"I bet my darling brother checks on me every day. But - it's gonna be fine. The person who did this is gonna invade Cheliax. So the more ridiculous stuff he can do, the better, really."

He sighs. "I guess," he says, again. 

And Malduoni stands only a few yards away, invisibly. His rod of security lets him hop to an extradimensional space where the outside world is paused. For twenty-four hours, and only once a week, but this is a place where it's clearly worth it. He's slept, he has all of his spells again, and he hasn't exactly resolved his deep pit of confusion, it's going to take asking questions to do that, but he's - clarified it, yes. 

He can read Leareth's thoughts more easily, here, which is interesting; the not-sorcerer seems to have been supplementing with some sort of magic item, now disabled. He's thinking about how - all of this - is very much his own style, very - in character for himself - and this is in the abstract a baffling line of reasoning, but it accords with the other baffling piece, so there's no additional confusion it adds. And the structure of Leareth's thoughts are - it's not exactly how Malduoni thinks, it's the product of an entirely different life history, but - the resemblance is still clear. Leareth is also coping very calmly with being imprisoned here - they all are - but Leareth's particular flavour of frustration at lacking his magic is a very familiar one. 

(Malduoni had considered at first whether it could have been the case that, when Aroden died, his memories returned to more than one person - a god is a very big thing and His death involved fragmentation, after all. But it doesn't fit, because 'Leareth' plainly isn't from their same world at all, he had already pieced this together from sideways references and now Leareth is thinking about it much more directly.) 

They know his identity as Aroden. They knew to seek him in Rahadoum. They have a man with them - a man with powerful alien magic carried from another world, and apparently an army waiting somewhere - who claims to be, clearly in some more abstract than literal sense, the same person as Aroden/Malduoni. He must have the relevant pieces, now, but he's not yet succeeding at piecing them together. 

...

A few seconds later, a figure suddenly appears. He's - very old, white-haired, his face lined. 

"I apologize for my rudeness," he says. "I wished to speak with you. Since none of you are stupid, I assume you can guess why." 

He is the first to say -

"Hi. Did you do something so Leareth can understand us -"

"Ah, yes, I will take care of that now." Casting Tongues before he appeared would have made his presence very apparent, but he does so now. Nods to Leareth and repeats what he said. 

Leareth looks him in the eye, levelly. "I am not surprised at all, and it would be unhelpful to be offended." 

"It seemed more likely to work out like this if we were right than if we were wrong."

"I have to congratulate you on your subtlety in spying on us," Leareth says. "I assume you had someone watching us after all during the fight - or were there yourself, perhaps. And were - eavesdropping on my Mindspeech? You would not have used this much overkill if it were only that I have abilities a Golarion sorcerer ought not." 

The man smiles. "Also I was reading your thoughts. You in particular made it very difficult, so, I must offer congratulations as well." 

Leareth nods. Doesn't return the smile. "I assume this place is an absurd level of secure, but - may we speak openly here?" 

"Of course." 

"Aroden. You survived, right? And - rebuilt, it must have been from nothing..." Leareth shakes his head. "If you were reading my mind," (he would one hundred percent be offended and scared if it were anyone else but he can't really be, here), "then - you must be very confused about who I am." 

"One might say that. I have gathered that you come from another world and have an army at your beck and call - presumably you left them behind in said other world, or I would have heard something. Also you and your friends seem to believe that you are the same person as me, which does not make very much sense." 

"It does not. We - lived the same story, I think. In two different worlds, which I am sure left corresponding differences in us." He glances at Mahdi and Hagan. "They can help explain better." 

"Three weeks ago an acquaintance of Leareth's from his world, called Velgarth, landed in ours by a magical accident, we don't have more details though we think it was an accident on our end not Velgarth's. He was aware Leareth was working on a large-scale plan that as one of its steps involved conquering his country, but he didn't have more details. Eight days ago we hired the High Priestess of Nethys in Sothis, Nefreti Clepati, to kidnap Leareth from his world so we could ask about them. She did. Before she did, she said - my notes are in my Bag of Holding and my headband is disabled so this may be off - 'the same stories repeat themselves across worlds. Young men who think they're immortal, because they are, because they were, but everything else was not, everything else was lost, a price they did not know they'd need to pay, and time erodes even the mountains.'"

He's still, not answering, for a period of about five seconds. 

(The centrepiece of the puzzle is falling into place and quite a lot of the confusion is resolving with it. Although not in a direction that he is exactly pleased with.) 

"You are telling me," he says slowly, "that Abadar knows everything you were thinking, when you came here to investigate, and so does Nethys?" 

"Not everything. On my part, I told the pharaoh - who is not, in fact, personally Abadar, though I am sure you knew that already - that I suspected Rahadoum was preparing to fight Cheliax, and that I could make inferences about the person leading because they were an alternate version of someone I knew in my own world. I suspect he guessed I meant myself. He - may have been pressing me for information later, no, almost certainly was. I do not think there is any possible way he could have made the leap to your being Aroden because it is, from an outside view, absurd." 

"And yet you believed it, on a hunch, enough to travel here undercover and learn more." 

"...The entire history of my life is from an outside view absurd, so." 

"You haven't actually told us your history, beyond that it matches," he says to Leareth. "- and that he was, uh, trying to build a god who'd fix everything wrong with Velgarth."

"I see." Malduoni does not look surprised at all. 

"I suppose I ought to tell you, to - make the case better." Glance at Hagan and Mahdi. "And, at this point, I see little reason to hold it back from either of you. My world had a Cataclysm about two thousand years ago. Two powerful mages fought. One of them was myself, the other my teacher and mentor. I lost most of my memories and do not have surviving records, so I am unsure of the details, but - I did not want to fight him and I certainly did not want to kill him. I was winning the war, and then - things went very badly out of control, he destroyed his own stronghold to prevent my reaching it, and handed a weapon I had not known existed to some of his allies, who used it to murder me. In the process setting off said Cataclysm, which left the world badly damaged for millennia. I had already arranged immortality, and so I - came back." 

"...Yes. I see certain similarities." A piercing look. "Are you still planning to solve your Velgarth's problems with a god." 

"I will do the obvious thing for when one has discovered an entire new world, which is stop and orient and reassess all of my plans in light of this." Sigh. "And - in light of the knowledge that, here, it did not even work." 

"I am sorry." 

"Do you know what went wrong? We figured you didn't. Because - banning all the gods from a country - is what you do when you don't know what you actually need to do."

He says nothing. Which is an answer by itself. 

"For what it is worth, I do not think that it was Abadar. Though perhaps I am over-updating on the fact that he - offered? requested? - to make me his cleric. I assume he would not, perhaps could not, do that if he were against the sorts of goals that someone like me - like us - would hold." 

"Really. I assume you did not accept." 

"We had a mission to Rahadoum scheduled first." 

"I bet He knows."

"About Aroden– Oh. I suppose He might have all of the requisite pieces. From what I told the pharaoh, and - if He spoke to the gods in Velgarth, and asked about my history, He might learn a great deal... And I am not sure if He thinks in the right way to - put it together that way, a mix of human stories and the way gods think, but the pharaoh is brilliant." He ducks his head. "I am sorry. I did not think of that." 

"It seems the pharaoh of Osirion has been offering you substantial help. What is his goal here." 

"To help conquer Cheliax? He has his doubts that it is possible even given the resources you have - I assume you have copious additional secret plans, I would, but I did not tell him that. I suspect he also hoped to benefit from being on friendly terms with the mage from another world, which he did." Glance at Hagan. "You might be able to guess more." 

" - he's my brother," he says to Aroden. "I think that's probably pretty much it? Leareth can do reasonably cheap permanent teleportation circles - well, an equivalent thing - and they've got the Healers - he wants to build Axis in Sothis, now he's closer. I don't think he'd guessed when we left but it wouldn't surprise me if he's pieced it together before we get back."

"Also Nefreti said to Hagan 'your brother would love him, if not for the burdens they have both taken up and cannot put down'. And said that Abadar loved you, and that Leareth would be safe here even if he recognized him."

(He had finally started to be less confused and now he is more confused again and still does not especially like it.)

"So that is why you came here," he says, heavily. "To offer your help. I can tell that you are not lying, but it nonetheless seems - rather too convenient." 

"Yes. I know. The existence of other worlds - the fact that the first person to come to this one had a very specific relationship with me, but also made a much better first impression than I would have... I am not sure what it means. Only of the facts I observe. I do not think my existence was engineered by the gods of your world, much less whichever one betrayed you." 

"Buncha things were convenient. Vanyel has to fight a dragon, the day he arrives here. The adventuring party that gets sent to help includes, uh, me. We find the buried palace of the pharaohs of ascension, which gave us the crystal ball and the way to kidnap Leareth. But it really kinda looks like if anyone was steering here they were steering at - you succeeding. If Abadar knew enough to do all that and wanted to fuck with you he could just, uh, sell the information to Asmodeus."

"It does look that way. Though, sometimes the gods' plans can be very indirect - less so since prophecy was lost." 

"It is not lost in my world. The gods use it quite effectively." He frowns. "Nethys, we think, sees all worlds. Thus recognizing the similarities in our stories. If any of your gods could have engineered this, it would be Him, but - my impression is that He is not so much one for engineering things at all." 

He goes still for a moment. "I see." 

"I don't suppose you could fix our headbands."

"I cannot re-enable yours while you are here - and I hope you will understand why I wish you to stay here awhile so I can think. I can lend you some of my own spares, if lacking them is distressing to you." 

"I have only had mine for a week, it was a bribe from the pharaoh, but - all else being equal, yes, I would like that." He is incredibly not surprised and can't muster any offence that Aroden is intending to leave them here for a while. 

"I would too." He is only slightly more surprised.

Surprised is the wrong word but he likes it when people who are imprisoning you put bars and say 'because I can', instead of putting libraries and saying 'I hope you will understand'. He doesn't say this; it won't help.

He goes to one of the locked cabinets beside the locked bookshelves, unlocks it presumably with some sort of magic, and takes out a couple of headbands, which he offers to Mahdi and Leareth. "Hagan, did you want one as well? I should not be too long. An hour or two." 

"Uh, sure, why not."

He can have one too, then. 

Leareth notices right away that the headband is definitely better than the one the pharaoh gave him. Interesting. 

"I will return shortly." And he Plane Shifts out. 

"Could've gone worse. I guess. Presumably you have a better read on how likely he is to panic and turn us into stone statues until his war is over."

"I think unlikely. He was definitely reading all of our minds while he was here, and I default less to massive overkill the more information I have about what exactly is going on. I suspect a great deal hinges on whether he believes my claim that we are alternate version - I could say alts - of the same person. I believe it, though, and he would have seen that."

Leareth's eyes narrow slightly. "I suspect he is uneasy about Nethys - and Abadar though less so. I do not think he is so spooked by this that he would refuse our help. He might want to place us under a geas, I suppose." 

"'s just - trimming," he says to Hagan.

"And there's a kinda trimming I'm allergic to and my life has been nonstop that, lately."

"I think you did the right thing."

"I know I did the right thing."

Leareth is confused what Hagan is upset by and would usually read his mind about it, except he can't due to not having Thoughtsensing, which is maybe a good thing. 

"Hagan, what is bothering you? The geas?" Slight shrug. "I - apologize for being like that?" 

"I don't care about that."

Leareth narrows his eyes. "...I suppose you do not have to tell me. If it is not important. I - I feel that Aroden is being very reasonable here, since I would be a similar level of very alarmed if I stumbled on some people infiltrating my organization with the level of secret knowledge we have of his, and we did - come here knowing what we were up against. Still, it is objectively a hostile act, keeping us here, and I would not be bothered if someone were angry about that so I assume he will not be either." 

"You don't have to - I'm not going to do anything stupid."

"I am not worried about that I am just rather confused." 

"I spent - twelve years - a prisoner in the palace and I hate it there and I also hate places that are - nice, and pretty, and important, more important than you'll ever be and so obviously it makes perfect sense for them to - the more sense it makes the more I hate it, since I can't even be upset for a reason like that something is bad. And I'm not going to fuck anything up and so it does not actually matter.

Okay?"

"Okay. Yes, that makes sense." 

He falls silent. Starts poking around at the books. "I wish I had a place like this just to keep my records in. These are presumably not the highly sensitive ones, but - this entire place is more secure than anything I could build in Velgarth." 

"You could pick up wizardry. It'd take a while but it sounds like lots of things you do take a while."

"That is true." He has to assume he would lose at least much of it with each new incarnation, but Mahdi and Hagan won't know more on that (Aroden presumably will), and as a general rule he doesn't talk about his immortality setup with, well, anyone.

"Clerics also get Create Demiplane," he says. "And Plane Shift to get there, though weren't you figuring you could do that with a Gate? Or you guys could share. I feel like once he's warmed up to the idea he's got to see the appeal of having two of you. He can throw off an occasional permanent demiplane for you and you can move his armies all around the world."

"It would be a fruitful collaboration," Leareth agrees. "Also, he must think quickly. I would wish for much longer than two hours to consider this situation! I have had over a week and that is still not long enough to be adjusted to it." 

"He probably has time dilation. Or could've put us in it, conceivably. Demiplanes don't have to track time on the Material Plane."

That has so many implications, he's not even going to bother going through them now. He keeps looking at books. 

...Unsurprisingly, he decides that he likes Aroden's taste in books. 

Shocking. He will read about math while he has a classier headband than he could ordinarily afford.

He checks whether the fanciest headband fixes his reading problem but he already knew it wouldn't. He takes off his shirt and stitches up the spear-related hole, instead. Fy gives him hugs so he stops having stupid breathing problems related to the situation.

Malduoni (who was once Aroden, but for the most part no longer thinks of himself by that name at all, not now, not yet), sits in his private office in a different place, and thinks. 

...He believes them. Specifically, he believes Leareth. On too little evidence, perhaps, but - he's seen enough pieces, and none of them fit before but the tale Leareth gave does, in fact, hold it all together. Leareth originating from an entire other world is the simplest explanation for his bizarre, un-sorcerer-like powers. Leareth being, somehow, an alt of himself is the simplest explanation for his entire mind being the way it is. And for how he and his allies could have made an impossible inference. 

He's going to take precautions and seek additional evidence anyway, of course, but - he leans toward putting some qualified, caveated trust in Leareth, and extending that trust to Leareth's allies to the extent Leareth does. There's a huge upside here, if Leareth is telling the truth about his army - which, as far as Malduoni can tell from his thoughts, he absolutely is. It's not an upside he can really afford to ignore, because victory isn't overdetermined, here, not as thoroughly as he would prefer, and some of the paths to victory would bear a cost far higher than he wishes to pay. 

He's not at all happy, though, about Abadar's obvious involvement, or the pharaoh of Osirion's knowledge of this. It could prove to also be an upside, and - if this is all some elaborate plot against him, it's not Abadar's work. His god-translated memories of Abadar are set on that; it's not his style, it's not a kind of scheme he's really capable of at all. Mainly he feels unhappy because there's a mystery, there's a player on his gameboard that he can't see and doesn't understand, and he isn't keen on mysteries at this stage of his planning. 

He's even less happy about Nethys' role. If all of this is a scheme against him, it would be Nethys' work. Nefreti is involved. A significant chunk of the information that Leareth and his allies are reasoning from comes from Nethys directly. Nethys...might actually have the foreknowledge, stolen from other worlds, to interfere in a subtler way than the other gods are capable of in this era. He doesn't understand what Nethys is working toward. 

Two gods know about his survival and his plans, and this is a deeply concerning thought, because - if it's two, it could soon be a lot more.

He doesn't think any of that changes the bottom line with Leareth.

If anything, it nudges toward moving faster. For a decade, now, he's had his pieces in positions where he can move on a week's notice. The question is whether Leareth also can, but - well, if they're the same person, or same template, then Leareth may have made similar plans.

So. One decision that he has the information and cached reasoning to make now. The question of what to do about Abadar and Nethys is still unresolved. 

His prisoners know who he is; for the next part, he doesn't need to hide it deep within a corner of himself. 

Just over an hour later, Aroden Plane Shifts back into his demiplane. "I apologize for the wait." 

He sets his book down, nods. He is thinking that this whole situation involves far more risk than he feels comfortable but at least if they don't all die of it they'll learn some fascinating things about magic. 

He is thinking that libraries are terrible. This is a very unreasonable way to feel but it is how he feels. Probably libraries are much less terrible if one can read.

"I wish to accept your offer to help with Cheliax," Aroden says, levelly. "I will shortly transport all of you out of this place. However, you have already inferred that everyone in my organization who is aware of the true mission is under geas. I will place a geas on all of you before I Plane Shift you out of here. This is not an indication of mistrust; it is based on my outside-view observation that if I do not take this precaution, secrets inevitably leak." 

Slight sigh. "This is not the order I prefer. Usually I would explain the full conditions of the geas before I consider bringing someone in - from a pragmatic perspective, a geas is not a good strategy for obtaining someone's cooperation when they did not give it voluntarily. Unfortunately, you already know everything. I am aware that this means the geas is no longer voluntary, and this is not ideal. I do consider it fair play, given that you came here as spies, and knew the possible consequences of spying on someone like myself." 

He lays out the conditions of his geas before actually casting it, though it'll be spoken out loud then as well. They must not reveal the secrets to anyone not similarly geased or explicitly whitelisted by Aroden. (The pharaoh is approved; Aroden feels unsure of this and spent a solid chunk of his hour of thought on it, but at this point it would be an adversarial move not to, and it's not really going to give Khemet information he doesn't already have.) They must not betray him, directly or indirectly; there's an additional paragraph of conditions fleshing out this clause. They must not resist spells he casts on them - this is there for Aroden's convenience, to reduce his spell-preparation overhead.

In public Aroden goes by Malduoni. They will refer to him and think of him by that name only, unless he specifies otherwise. (He does not assume that he's the only one who can read their minds.) 

Neither of the Osirians seem very upset; it is an improvement on being turned into a statue for the duration of the war and maybe forever. Mahdi spends a while trying to think of loopholes, not particularly expecting to find any and not particularly expecting to use them if he does, but it's good to check; Hagan is mostly thinking that letting them talk to the pharaoh makes it much less likely the pharaoh has it taken off the minute they get home, which is too bad.

Leareth is nodding along and smiling very slightly. He is so unsurprised. He's considering the pros and cons of geases versus standard Velgarth compulsions. He's also trying to predict the pharaoh's reaction, and modelling what Aroden must be thinking there. Wondering how annoyed he is about Nefreti. Leareth himself is mostly intrigued by her, but he has a lot less personal baggage with the Golarion gods, Nethys included. 

It would be very wasteful to turn people who came here hoping to help into statues. (Though he might do it anyway he were any more in doubt that their goals are aligned with his.) Aroden is also aware of the pharaoh's incentives here. And of the fact that Leareth's main feelings toward the pharaoh are of respect, even warmth.

"Before that," he says, "who else knows? I imagine that others in the pharaoh's court are aware of the Cheliax aspect, at this point. And you had others in your party. The cleric you did not bring with you, and - Vanyel? Leareth's acquaintance from Velgarth. Where are they now?" 

Oh. Right. 

"If all went well, they are in Velgarth now. Vanyel's kingdom was expecting an invasion from my army; they misattributed his disappearance as my doing, and were then very suspicious of communications from him to the contrary. We expected that sending him back in person would be the best way of resolving this. There were delays there," he probably doesn't need to explain the whole difficulty with Yfandes, though he does expect Aroden is right now reading his thoughts about it, "but they planned to leave at the same time we departed Sothis. Fazil and Vanyel both know the Aroden aspect and also that we suspected you were my alt. This was - fairly relevant information, in their decision to trust me as well as consider helping you." 

"I see." He waits a few beats. Glances expectantly at Mahdi and Hagan. "Is there anything else in this vein that I ought to know?" 

"We haven't involved anyone else." He's not feeling so cooperative as to try to think through all of the things that might have happened that'd be useful to Aroden, probably if you want to be a god you can do that yourself. 

He is thinking that hopefully Aroden won't see fit to kidnap Vanyel, who has really been through enough recently, as has his whole country. "Van did not expect Valdemar would help you with Cheliax but he thought they'd help with the Worldwound. If it needed it. I'm now assuming that you have a plan there."

He does but not to the point that he would turn down help. "I see. I am not sure of the best way to handle that; this is all a very unexpected complication. I imagine it is likely that Vanyel told his government of your speculations about me, as part of his attempt to defuse tensions with Leareth." 

"That is plausible. I - would not have felt that I had the standing to order him not to, and also his - our - recent decisions make very little sense without that context, and providing a sensical explanation to Valdemar's leadership would have been critical." 

Aroden lets out his breath, slowly. So it's too late to quarantine the secret from Velgarth. That pushes even harder toward moving fast, he thinks. 

"Leareth. I imagine some of your subordinates also know." 

"They know some of it, yes. A small number, all of them under a voluntary geas-like spell of loyalty to my mission. Not dissimilar to yours, actually." 

"How unsurprising." Aroden is quiet for a moment. "All right. Leareth, I will consider your subordinates already geased for this purpose. Ideally I would like to meet Vanyel and Fazil and request it of them as well, but that seems logistically difficult, and I hardly think I can impose it on Vanyel's superiors in Valdemar. What is the current state of communication between Velgarth and Osirion?" 

"Abadar is in communication with the local gods. It is possible to scry in Velgarth with a crystal ball and the pharaoh may be doing so. I believe Fazil was the only human approved to Plane Shift there." Leareth glances at the others for confirmation. 

"It wouldn't surprise me if the pharaoh has another attuned focus for his own people but Fazil is the only one I know of."

Aroden nods. Thinks, briefly. 

"Well. A number of elements of this situation are not ideal, but it also includes unexpected resources and help, so on the whole I suppose I cannot complain. I will place the geases now, and then we can go elsewhere and discuss further."

He does so, starting with Leareth. Each geas takes ten minutes to cast, so it's going to take a while. 

It's one of the few spells there's no defense against, and he'd really like to watch, but without Detect Magic up he won't actually learn anything, so he reads instead. 

Leareth is also a little irritated that he can't watch with his Othersenses, but Aroden is being sufficiently reasonable here that he can't be annoyed with him about it, so the annoyance isn't directed anywhere in particular and is just sort of floating there. 

Aroden finishes. 

"As soon as we leave this place," he says calmly, "I am Malduoni again. I am going to Plane Shift you to a small demiplane that is linked to my office in Azir by a permanent portal. Your possessions are already there. I would like to speak further, of course, but I am sure you would all like breakfast and a chance to regroup, and - I will not stop you from preparing spells and teleporting back to Sothis immediately if you wish. If you decide to stay and discuss more, I will be available all day and you can return to my office when you are ready." 

How many permanent demiplanes can a person have. 

(The geas on which name to think of him by is very intrusive; the rest isn't.)

He takes Hagan and Leareth's hands for the Plane Shift.

Aroden takes Leareth's hand -

- and Malduoni arrives in the other demiplane, the three of them in tow. This one is a lot more boring; it resembles an ordinary hallway, with an ordinary door at the end. There's a nice carpet, a couple of tasteful paintings of nature scenes on the walls, and no other decor. 

Malduoni releases Leareth's hand, gestures at the door. "Go on." 

Leareth glances over his shoulder. Notices that there's also a door at the other end of the hallway. He wonders vaguely where it goes. It seems very rude to run and try to check while they're here with Malduoni, so he doesn't. 

They can walk out through the indicated door instead.

It goes to a sort of lobby area with a few armchairs arranged in it, and two doors. Their things from the camp are neatly packed up and waiting on said chairs. 

Malduoni strolls past them and opens one of them. "This is the way out. Not the way back in when you rejoin me - you will want to go in the front door and ask the guard. 

Once they've gone through, he'll re-lock the door with magic - it's not completely proof against wizards getting in, of course, but it's at least very inconvenient - and then take the other door himself. 

He inventories all his belongings before speaking. 

"Well. I guess that went well."

Leareth, for his part, checks that his Gifts and Othersenses are back in working order, as well as the artifacts he's wearing and his intelligence headband. It is disappointingly not as good as the one he left behind in Malduoni's demiplane-library. (The geas is quite obtrusive here for him too, but hopefully he'll get used to it.)

"I think so, yes." He finds himself smiling, involuntarily. He's feeling sort of exhilarated, almost giddy with it. 

"I want to prepare spells before we go meet him, but I don't think it makes any sense to run back to Sothis at this point."

"It really doesn't."

Leareth nods.

:Well, I am pleased that I was right on all of my inferences: he sends in Mindspeech. The geas seems fine with that level of indirectly-thinking-about-it. 

:You sure were. Also Vanyel really hit it on the head when he said he figured you'd do the same thing in his shoes.: 

Leareth nods. "I do not think I have any particular preparations to make, so - I am ready to go back when both of you are." 

"I can just prepare half a dozen now, if we're likely to spend the day in meetings anyway." He has already started doing this; it feels good to have magic in his hands again. 

"I would not mind at all if you wished to take longer to prepare and neither would he. Up to you, I suppose." 

"I mean, leaving some slots open is also added flexibility later. - you should ask if you can watch him prepare spells sometime, I bet it'd be fascinating. I've never seen anyone stabilize a ninth circle spell."

Leareth's face lights up, albeit in a very muted way. "I am definitely going to ask him. Flexibility makes sense." He waits for Mahdi's half-dozen spells to be prepared, while absentmindedly digging out and consuming some breakfast from his pack. Leareth isn't especially fussy about what he eats. 

He prepares a quarter of his spells. And then they can go get directed to wherever Malduoni is when he's not skulking around invisibly kidnapping people.

Malduoni's public office is a spacious, comfortable room with lots of natural light from a skylight and windows. It has plants in pots. He's reading something at his desk; when they're ushered in, he slips it into a drawer and stands. "I am glad to see you back. Have a seat."

There's a small table set out for them, with comfortable chairs around it. Malduoni ducks out from behind his desk and shuts the door before sitting at the table as well.  

To Leareth's Othersenses, it's obvious that the room is thoroughly shielded. He has more experiencing in parsing the very weird appearance of Golarion arcane magic; he would guess that this spell is permanent rather than cast for the occasion, it has that extra-stabilized look to it, and it blocks Thoughtsensing and mage-sight thoroughly; he would guess that it also blocks scrying (and incidentally Farsight) and prevents sound from escaping. Where he would use multiple layers of different shield techniques for the same purpose, this is a single, very complex spell. 

Mahdi knows the spell, can cast it himself, and is slightly pleased to learn that it's in fact the gold standard for this and you don't need anything more complicated. There has been enough feeling completely outclassed for today. (There is definitely going to be a lot more, realistically, but.)

Malduoni hasn't negated the clause in their geas about what name to call him and think of him by, which hints that he doesn't feel quite as secure here as in his personal demiplane where magic only works for him, but it's hard to imagine many things as secure as that.

"So. Leareth, if I wished to advance the timeline on the invasion and also to take you up on your offer, how quickly could you have your army ready to move?" 

...Wow that is diving right into things and also why is he surprised. 

"My official contingency-plan is for four days. That is assuming nothing goes wrong, which is a dubious assumption, and also does not take into account the existence of other worlds or the fact that I do not think we have yet mastered inter-world Gates. So, a week." 

Malduoni nods. "I imagine this draws on your easily available forces, not all of them. How many." 

"I could give you twenty thousand soldiers on that much notice. Assuming it becomes feasible to transport them. Three hundred mages."  

"And you think Valdemar would lend their forces for the Worldwound, if not the invasion itself. How many?" 

"I am guessing there. Both at their willingness and their available numbers. My not particularly justified estimate would be five thousand troops and - perhaps thirty to fifty Heralds with combat experience? Not all mages but they have Gifts of various types." 

"We can get them back if they die here, right, this is probably relevant both to commitments of forces and to whether Van will do that thing where he can die and kill everything around for half a mile -"

"...Did he volunteer to do that?" 

"I think," Malduoni says slowly, "that I am going to need a much more thorough explanation of your world's magic, Leareth. I assume you have already put some thought into clever ways it might be combined with ours." 

Really that should go without saying, so Leareth just nods. 

Malduoni turns to Hagan. "And do you have a prediction of what the pharaoh will do? In general, and also in the scenario where I decide to move a week from now and with Leareth's aid." 

"Osirion doesn't fight wars. I think he'd probably raise people for you, though someone will have to supply him if you needed more than a few of them, and I think he said he'd be willing to do infrastructure in Cheliax afterwards. Abadar could probably coopt a bunch of the Asmodean church unless - are you planning to be a -" he runs into the geas and makes a face. "I think you should talk to him. I'm not clear on Abadar's constraints." 

"Noted." Malduoni frowns. "I am not sure whether Velgarth natives can be raised if they die here. And I am not sure of, well, a way to test that less costly than the most direct test." 

"That is also something that Abadar might know." Leareth drops his gaze. "I was expecting to end up speaking with him anyway, after this mission. If we are going to be coordinating on this anyway, then I suppose I could ask ask him some questions on your behalf." 

Thoughtful nod. 

"What is the state of secrecy on the capabilities of Velgarth magic?" 

"A number of the pharaoh's researchers know of it. Not everything, but a great deal. They have been asked to keep it to themselves, but are not under geas, so - my guess is that it is secret now and will not remain so indefinitely. Velgarth's existence is less closely held but is certainly not widely known at this point." 

"Another reason to move quickly." Malduoni lays his hands on the table, briskly. "All right. I think we had best cover the intricacies of Velgarth magic now. Hagan and Mahdi are already quite well-informed of this, I imagine, and so might as well be present to help generate ideas here." 

"They worked closely with Vanyel for a time, so I imagine so." Leareth looks over at them. 

"To a first approximation they can do most arcane magic that's not transmutation or conjuration, where they're limited because they have to do all the work themselves, they don't have access to any scaffolding that enables things like polymorph effects. I've wondered whether they could be taught to use the thing we use for scaffolding but I haven't given it a serious try. Instead of teleportation they can open a portal to somewhere else on the same plane, they call that a Gate. And all of it's much more flexible since it doesn't have to stabilize but maybe sorcerers here are like that too, I've never watched one closely and I think mages in Velgarth get a lot more specialized training in the use of their magic than sorcerers here. They can imitate a Pearl of Power for wizards, not for clerics. They can dispel magic in a clever way that looks like a very minimal power expenditure and they can do very very low-power enchantments. They are bottlenecked on how much they can do in a day mostly by exhaustion, which responds normally to Lesser Restoration if you have any way to get that here."

"We also have magic-specific senses, similar to Detect Magic but present in the background unless we are shielding them - they do take a minimal amount of effort to use, but comparable to, say, standing up, it is not something one will ever be too tired for except in very unusual circumstances. I can directly observe magic as I cast it, and as your casters work. This is how we can disrupt your spells with less power expenditure, by seeing the most brittle part and aiming there. We have many varieties of shields and wards, many of which are lower power than yours - thus perhaps easier to dispel with your Dispel Magic - but correspondingly cheaper to place, and also quite flexible." 

(He is perhaps going to wait until he's alone with Malduoni to discuss blood-magic and the implications there.) 

"There are also a number of other, more specialized Gifts in Velgarth. I have Mindspeech, which is a form of permanent telepathy, receptive and projective. We have our own variant of Healing - actually, this might be of great use to you, since you do not have clerics. It is not as good for injuries, but is in many ways more flexible, and also comes with a type of Sight useful for diagnosis and triage..." 

He goes through a list of all the commonly-known Velgarth Gifts.

"–and Mindhealing can also work similarly to compulsions, though that is not its main use in Velgarth," he finishes. 

Malduoni's expression goes still again. 

"Is it also visible to our spells for detecting enchantments." 

"...I am not sure, I do not have it myself and have not tested it. I suspect not. It is not visible to mage-sight. I do think that enchantments would be clearly visible to the specialized Mindhealing Sight." 

"Interesting." A long pause. "I wish to politely request that you keep this between us, unless the pharaoh asks directly. Though I suppose Abadar may know of the Gift's existence via the Velgarth gods." It's not necessarily going to be salient, though, or packaged in a form useful to humans anticipating his moves. 

....he is increasingly suspecting that, like, a significant fraction of important people in Cheliax are already mind-controlled which is terrifying and kind of brilliant.

Malduoni hears that, of course. He doesn't smile. 

(Leareth has been assuming this for a while, mostly on the grounds that it's what he would do.) 

"We have at least several more hours of catching one another up to do," Malduoni says; it's directly mainly at Leareth. "I do want to briefly touch on what your plans will be after that, in case that needs coordination." 

Leareth mulls on that for thirty seconds or so. 

"...I think I must return to Sothis. My mage-scholars are there, and in the absence of a workable interworld Gate-technique, the only way I can actually return to Velgarth is with Fazil, or," his lips twitch, "by asking Abadar nicely." 

"Do you think you can invent an interworld Gate in a week. It seems that bringing your army over is not feasible without that." 

Leareth thinks in silence for even longer, this time. 

"I would place nine out of ten odds that I can, if I throw enough of my own and my mage-scholars' time at the problem." 

...Nod. 

"I can work with that." Glance at Hagan and Mahdi. "And what would your plans be, by default?" 

"Uh, pick up consumables and study the geography of Cheliax. We could do that more usefully with more knowledge of the invasion plans but obviously often work with less."

"I can give you some amount of context."

Malduoni intends to give them exactly the level of context he feels comfortable with Abadar knowing. He will probably give Leareth more, because - well, he's at this point placing a lot of trust in Leareth's judgement. Not with the most rock-solid justification he can imagine having, but...for this, he thinks it's enough.

They have invasion plans to discuss (he doesn't know exactly where he would put Mahdi and Hagan, yet, but can at least describe the general shape of what he'd want them to do), and magic theory to discuss, and this will easily eat the rest of the day. After lunch, which is a not-very-fancy meal brought in for them, Malduoni very politely shoos Mahdi and Hagan elsewhere so he can talk to Leareth privately. 

They will head back out into Azir. It feels a little surreal, to be back in a normal city where people are going about normal lives. They don't talk to each other. There's not much that wouldn't be dumb to say, out loud, out here.  

"I miss Fazil," he says eventually.

"Yeah. Maybe soon."

Leareth extricates himself around sundown. He's equipped with half of a set of paired magic mirrors, a communication method that's apparently very secure - this is obnoxious to pull off with Velgarth magic - though of course only insofar as the two ends are. Given who's in possession of the two ends, though, he is kind of less worried about that. 

(Well, Nefreti Clepati demonstrably can rob him of all his possessions, but he doesn't actually think she has a motive to do it again, and also it wouldn't help her or Nethys that much, neither of them are going to be able to impersonate him even as far as the proving-his-identity questions.) 

After a really extensive amount of back and forth, he has Malduoni's tentative agreement to trust his judgement on Abadar. Which is, currently, that Abadar is probably worth allying with, if allying is what Abadar wants to do here. There are quite a lot of pieces there, and caveats, but - ultimately it's not favourable to Abadar's goals to have Cheliax in the hands of Asmodeus, and that seems like the strongest driver here. 

He goes to find Mahdi and Hagan. 

They haven't wandered too far. "Back to where we left from?"

"I think so." 

So he takes their hands and then they're back in the winter palace. Not literally right where they left; the palace has an effect that redirects teleportation to a specific spot. 

Interesting. Leareth would really like to know how that magic works; he can't tell just by attempting to watch their landing. 

They should let the pharaoh know that they're back. Not only is Leareth disinclined to trust anyone else in the Palace with their news, he's literally geased against doing so.

(Malduoni did not explicitly whitelist Vanyel or Fazil. If they decide to trust Khemet fully then this isn't going to be more than inconvenient, but Leareth still wonders if it's intended as an incentive for Vanyel and Fazil to themselves accept the geas, or just as an additional preventative against more information spreading to Velgarth. Whatever it is, he's sure it's not by accident.) 

The pharaoh comes over about twenty minutes later. "Sit comfortably," he says. "How was it?"

"Educational." Leareth isn't sure of the most graceful way to ask 'well, did you guess it while we were gone'.

"If I am right, you have already made some inferences about what we found there." His intonation is almost but not quite a question. 

"The history of Velgarth is suggestive. As are the gods' complaints about you these days. They resent what a mess you make of their Foresight.

Here, of course, it was worse than that."

The pharaoh's face is unreadable and his mind is a blind spot to Leareth's senses, and Leareth is seized by a brief, absurd temptation to attempt to remove the top of his head or something - he desperately, screamingly wants to know what he's thinking. 

"Yes, some events went very badly here." He sighs. Leans forward a little. "I was right in all of my guesses. I offered my help and it was accepted. - I am not sure if that is information Abadar has already, but for better or worse, at this point He is welcome to it. We plan to move a week from now." 

" - a week. All right. There will be no more Plane Shifts to Velgarth; I can hold a Gate for two minutes a day and would not be astonished if your acquaintance can do even better. I don't know how many people you would want to bring over."

"If I do not crack inter-world Gates - of my variety - inside the next week, I wish to bring about three hundred mages, and ideally their support personnel, but if three hundred is pushing it that would suffice. If Valdemar agrees to help with the Worldwound, I am estimating they could spare about fifty Gifted Heralds." Pause. "If I do, which I think I can, then I am bringing twenty thousand troops across. Whatever the Velgarth deities have to say about it, they will not be able to interfere." 

He looks down. "Did the Velgarth gods simply change their mind about Plane Shifts, or did something - go wrong?" 

"Vanyel and Fazil landed in Iftel, and after a brief and unproductive interaction with the locals, Vykandaes set them on fire. They are fine."

"They are in Haven now, where everything is thankfully going much more smoothly. We would predict that Vanyel will be in a position to return, if you have an account of what you want them to do that's sufficiently in line with their sacred national mission."

"I should have warned them– sorry." Leareth lifts a hand. "About Iftel. And the fact that Vkandis likes to set people on fire. He has tried to kill me that way twice. I - Iftel, as well as its impassible shield-barrier, has a magical effect that causes people to find it very boring and forget its existence. It is less effective on me but - still effective." 

"Huh. - one second." He goes to the door, says something to someone, comes back. "Until we know that's not in effect here I want to be told it every hour," he says in explanation. "It would have been useful for them to have been warned in the sense that Fazil could have made them immune to fire, but it's not obvious to me that Vkandis wouldn't have escalated. I guess ideally they would've Plane Shifted back out immediately."

"I am not sure even I would have predicted that Vkandis would escalate so quickly with a Herald present. I suppose He must have been very alarmed by the otherworld magic." Leareth frowns. "We would appreciate their help by the Worldwound. A plan exists already that should make it somewhat less risky for them to engage. Though - it is relevant whether your Raise Dead and Resurrection will work on Velgarth natives if they die here."

(He is not even going to suggest the idea he had unless the answer is yes.) 

"It will work fine if your people die here. Though you will have to supply the diamonds; I have very few of them and would not want to have none left over in the event that this fight has as much collateral damage as the last one."

"I will check back with my organization about diamond procurement, but we should be able to do so. Raise Dead takes a smaller diamond, no? So if some Heralds are killed in action they would be cheaper to raise immediately." His eyes narrow. "Does the diamond need to be mined? It is not a standard use of Velgarth magic to artificially make diamonds but I would not be surprised if Vanyel in particular could do it." 

"Making them with our conjuration doesn't work but our conjuration is temporary. If you are proposing, uh, putting the right kinds of rock under the right kind of pressure... we should try that right away."

"That was my idea. I know our magic can be used to smelt metals and such - it is not very scalable except in places such as the Eastern Empire with a high rate of mages. For this - there is an adapted force-net spell for crushing things; I am not sure that I could overpower it hard enough, though I do not mind trying, but this is exactly the area where the strength of Vanyel's Gift would be key. He can channel...five times, maybe ten times as much power as I can."

(Well, this, and the size of fireball left by his suicide.) 

"If we had access to as many diamonds as we needed we can commit to raising anyone critically necessary same-day and everyone you lose within two months. If you manage to leave the continent in one piece. I don't know how much he told you about the events of a hundred years ago, but they were very very bad."

"He told me enough." Leareth looks down at his hands. "That is - certainly not the plan, but all of us are aware that plans do not always stay on track." 

"Especially these days.

Is he going to take up the Starstone afterwards? Much of the support we can offer is in replacing the infrastructure of the church of Asmodeus in Cheliax and that looks substantially different, depending. Also Abadar implied it would change His plans in other ways."

"He has not made a final decision on that. - I apologize, I know it would be helpful to know now for planning. In - the best case scenario, yes. I think not otherwise." 

"So then we should expect to need to provide clean water and healing. And to redo the whole currency situation immediately, I learned what Asmodeus is doing to make sure that almost every person in Cheliax is Evil."

"Oh no, did he do something very clever and also horrifying with their currency? That - makes interacting with it at all an Evil act in a nonobvious way?"

(The fact that this is possible is making him feel like the whole alignment-assessment situation is deeply unfair. He thinks it's pretty fair of it to assess him as Evil, but - an entire country of mostly very normal people...) 

"It is possible to take a dead soul captive and confine it, magically, in some fashion. It is then possible to trade, steal, or sell it, and to use it for magical power. The trade in souls is Evil, fairly enough. 

Does your world have the concept of currency that is not worth the face value of its metal but backed by a promise from a nation to redeem it for metal at any time?" 

"Yes, though not implemented in most places." The Eastern Empire has that setup. Valdemar doesn't. 

"The currency of Cheliax is backed by souls. 

They do know this. It is mentioned in schools, it is scribed on bills: backed by House Thrune, by our Patrons, by the Souls of the Damned, for the Greatness of The Chelish Nation. It wouldn't work if they had no way to know. Abadar didn't - see why it was unfair - when gods know things they know the things, the thing is everywhere it needs to be in their model of the world -"

"I..." For once, Leareth is lost for words. He's angry. This is not an emotion Leareth feels often and he has to ride it out for a moment, let it run its course before he can speak. 

"I - see why Abadar thinks that. I think that my mind - works that way, most of the time, because I wish it to and have had centuries of practice. But. Also. From the perspective of humans, I do not feel it is particularly fair." He lets his fingers tighten together in his lap. "We will win this war and we will fix it." 

"If there is anyone I could believe that from, I suppose it would have to be you.

He and I probably should not speak; I can't think of conditions acceptable to both of us and even if there are some we'd waste time coming up with them. But if he needs anything -

- I want to help."

"I know. I told him so. I - persuaded him, and it took some doing, that it is worth trusting you to the extent that you want to help."

(It's a complicated case, right, because he isn't entirely sure that Khemet and Abadar are on their side. He would bet nine out of ten odds on it, higher even, but - for a more normal scenario, the downside risk of being wrong would be too high to risk. And yet. This is a case of a sufficiently terrifying potential - probable - ally, where if he's right of Abadar's alignment with their cause, not cooperating with him has a downside risk as well - of stepping on each other's plans, or of whatever updates Khemet and Abadar might make from said distrust. And it would be different if their victory were more assured, but - it isn't, there's a lot of overkill in store but not nearly as much as either of them would feel really comfortable with.)

"I am not expecting you to know but I figured I might as well ask. Do you know which of Them betrayed him." 

"...several former allies helped kill him in the end. After three weeks, when he had clearly and thoroughly lost but he kept - trying to pull the pieces back together - he didn't have enough left to know what effects it was having on the world but there wasn't going to be any mortal civilization left if it didn't end. Honestly they should have done it sooner. Is that what you mean?"

"Oh."

"...I am not sure. He is certain he was betrayed, but unsure by whom; that is why he drove all the gods out of Rahadoum." 

Leareth is thinking, almost plaintively, that - he would, he would unwittingly tear apart the world just out of desperately unwillingness to die, to have it be over - and Leareth thinks that he would have wished it, too, for his allies to end it sooner, to stop letting him destroy everything around him...

"I can ask Abadar if He knows more." He has been talking to Abadar too much lately, it gives him a headache under the best of circumstances and when done repeatedly it makes the Material World feel blurry and sharp at the same time, and very very distant. The pain is worse if he puts it off but he's been using Delay Pain every day to at least schedule it for the point where everyone not possessed of a Ring of Sustenence is, unlike him, sleeping; then he can lie there in the dark and quiet until the pain ebbs and he sleeps and wakes up with a mind that remembers human things. 

- obviously worth it, if this is all going to be over in a couple of weeks.

"I would appreciate it, if it is not too much trouble." He lets out his breath. "Also transport to Velgarth in a day or two, if we have not figured out our Gates by then. I will try to synchronize it with Vanyel's movements if possible to minimize the overhead for you." 

He takes a deep breath, slowly lets it out. "And - I am considering Abadar's offer to me. We had a very long discussion and then he said he would leave it to my judgement, whether it is a good idea." 

"Your caution has been - warranted many times over, in Velgarth."

"Right. You have learned some things about my past." He wrinkles his nose slightly. "Well, translated via two sets of gods, which must be quite something to absorb as a human, even an extremely clever one." 

For a second he looks tired, more tired than most people who are thirty or for that matter on their first lifetime can look. 

"Your set has even less to work with, I think. Abadar can usually understand and answer my questions fine, even if I don't always understand Him."

He hesitates. 

"No one told me in advance that, uh, you do not actually become an aspect of a god. I hadn't met my grandfather before he became pharaoh, and he was very smart, and it made sense, that Abadar would want to shape someone in such a way He could easily communicate with them. I believed it. I think Abadar does want that but He doesn't know how to do it."

"That - makes sense. It sounds very difficult." He would definitely not want Khemet's job, for multiple layers of reasons.

Leareth hesitates, but only a little. "- If it would help, to have a history of Velgarth, and my life specifically, in easier to understand terms, I - would not mind telling you, at this point." 

"I would certainly be very interested."

Leareth sits back. 

"I should start at the beginning. About eighteen hundred years ago, by Velgarth's calendar, there was a powerful mage named Urtho, who was called the Mage of Silence - and a boy, Ma'ar, who was his student..."

He doesn't give a very detailed summary. If only because it would take too long otherwise. He mostly includes things that he's pretty sure the gods of Velgarth know, and so Khemet could know them via Abadar but it's only polite to not make him work so hard for it. 

He is a good listener; he looks emotionally invested, and sad and angry at the right parts, which are most of them. He moves his chair a little closer, a couple times, though they're still at well more than arm's length apart. 

Two thousand years is too long for magic to bring anyone back to life. 

"The gods of Velgarth," he says wearily, "are not totally sure what caused the Cataclysm but technological and magical progress was definitely some kind of element in some way. So they're trying to make them not happen again so the world can't get destroyed again. Also, and of at least equal significance to them, because it's noisy in its own right. Probably if they weren't so upset about the noise they'd put more effort into figuring out what specifically and precisely needs to be banned from now on, because it's not sanitation. - Abadar has tried to argue this and not gotten anywhere."

"It is - complicated, I think, what needs to change. What underlying process, I mean - the decisions of individuals are always a random factor. I made a mistake in not de-escalating the war. Urtho made a mistake in - building whatever weapon it is that he used, I still know little of the details there, all the records were lost. But that is not really the level at which I would want to remove the cause, if I were a god. Still, I think our gods are using a rather broad, blunt-force strategy, here, and if They could talk to humans, They could do better." 

"Abadar does not have your records. I'm sorry; I asked. He's saving everything from Velgarth now but he can't step back in time to do it."

"Oh. ...I understand. I was not expecting him to." 

"He had all of Aroden's. It would've - helped, a lot, right - with - 

- you're afraid -"

Leareth blinks at him, his expression very still. He's pretty unclear on what Khemet is trying to communicate, so he just waits, expectantly, to see if it'll be clarified. 

"I care about what you're trying to do. I want to help you succeed at it. I know that part of what you're trying to do, right now, is assess whether we are on your side. Whether Abadar could reach your records or not would not, actually, be informative on that front, I don't think. But you're also - even if you think you should try to be his cleric, it's a very difficult thing to do if you desperately don't want to. I wish I could help with that part. ...also with the trust part, but that seems harder. I'm a very good liar. In your position I would be less sure than I'd like."

Leareth nods. "I think the best way you can help with - trust - is by answering my questions, and not otherwise trying too hard in a given direction. I...also would like it if I could - reason more neutrally about it. I am not sure if my experiences with Velgarth gods are applicable here, even, it is just - hard to disregard centuries of habit. I suppose you could tell me more of what it is like, what he is like, since you are also his cleric? Also of the upsides. I currently have a vague understanding that it would grant some powers but not how much." 

"When humans started out, at least in Golarion, more or less all of them travelled in small groups, gathering enough food to survive, and when sufficiently bad things happened they died, and - they had other skills, some were better at them than others, but the world didn't have the thing Abadar valued in it, yet. And then, in the places where food was plentiful enough, grew easily enough, it made sense for people to start to specialize, and then it did, and then he tried very clumsily to nudge it down that route, for a long time. He is credited with having brought about civilization but I think really he didn't have many of the right places to intervene on, not back then. - the power of gods is related to their age and experience, and their number of worshippers, and the strength in this world of the underlying concepts they stand for, and He wasn't weak but he couldn't possibly have done something like Osirion...and even less of the gap had been bridged, between how we understand the world and how gods do. 

People say that Abadar is the god of cities and commerce. Cities - specialization. The thing that matters is specialization, gains from trade - there's a concept, I don't know if your world has it, that even if one person is the best in a whole city at every trade he's still better off trading with all of the other incompetents, because there's something where his advantage is largest and he can maximize how much stuff he has if he focuses there and buys everything else -"

"We have that concept." Or, at least, he does, and some books written under names that were his once, and the scholars of the Eastern Empire. "'Comparative advantage'?" He had wondered about Abadar's goals; from the start, Abadar has seemed - if not aligned with him, exactly, at least much closer to a god he could work with, have a productive alliance on shared goals. Maybe. Unclear. 

"Abadar wants that. With us. He wants to trade with people. And - in the theoretical case it just works, right, but in practice it's hard to have positive sum trades with toddlers, and in related ways hard to with gods, and He saw that He needed a lot of other things to be in place first. He made the vault of all human creations. He made it safe to Plane Shift to his domain in Axis - one of very few places in the Outer Planes that are safe for any mortal to visit, any time - so we could see His city and learn from it and take things home to copy if we wanted to. He played a significant role - it's hard for me to wrap my head around their negotiations but it was a major driving force - in the setup for clerics, in the gods coming to an agreement on intervention taking a form that people request deliberately because it'll advance their goals, and that the gods offer because it'll achieve Theirs. That's - what it is, to follow a god, or at least what He sees it as, to expect that working with Them will make both of you stronger."

"That - makes sense. Your clerics are a good system, I think. Certainly better than anything our gods have set up." 

It's a kind of alliance Leareth knows how to have, even when he doesn't trust someone entirely (and he almost never trusts someone entirely, that's an absurdly high bar), but - qualified trust, an expectation that someone will at least behave predictably according to their goals and incentives - knowing that given the right situation and context, their goals play nicely with Leareth's.

He knows how to do that with people. It still feels - terrifying, to attempt it with a god. 

"What do you want from Him? What would you be trading for?"

"My goal is to fix the many issues I have with Velgarth's current management. I - have evidence now, albeit a very odd kind of evidence, that my initial plan might not go as smoothly as hoped. Also it is very costly and I would prefer a world where I avoid that cost. I am not sure what kinds of trade I might make with Abadar, on this, but - it does seem he is already trying to help." 

"It it less straightforward than we would like for Abadar to operate there. But He is certainly trying. And it seems like more resources will make your plans less costly and more likely to succeed, which would be very definitely a good thing. Powerful users of divine magic can imitate most of arcane magic, which as I am sure you would have noticed by now is very useful; you can summon and command outsiders as allies; you can heal very serious injuries and treat magical exhaustion from your kind of magic; and while Abadar does not exactly approve of your immortality system He thinks your cleric powers would carry over through it."

"Fair enough. I also do not approve of my immortality system. It was always a backup - I think it was my fourth layer of contingencies that I set up during my first lifetime, and at least one of the others might have worked if not for the Cataclysm destroying nearly all permanent spells in multiple different planes. I was - mostly very reluctant to modify it with all of the gods of Velgarth watching me as closely as They do now, and...I am hopeful, actually, that having access to Golarion will give me more options, after we have finished dealing with Cheliax and I can spare months for research." 

"Aroden was unaging, before He ascended, though I think it took him hundreds of years of research to accomplish that, and our world has lots of contingent healing and contingent-breath-of-life spells that can be used to ensure the body survives injuries that should kill it. Apparently his - ultimate backup plan - was not much different, but I think it was much, much less frequently employed. There are certainly grounds for optimism."

Leareth hadn't actually known that; the conversation with Ar with Malduoni was mostly on the topic of the current war and Leareth's magic. (The geas is kind of irritating right now). He nods, though, keeps all signs of surprise from his face. "Yes."

Pause. "Something else that it might help to know is–" he's not exactly sure how to put his question "–what is the experience like, when He interacts with you." 

"Asking for spells doesn't feel like anything. There's an aspect specifically for that, it doesn't - contain very much of Him. You get what you ask for. Like picking things off a shelf, kind of, with a sense you didn't have before but not interactively. If you really really need something else you can concentrate on trying to get more attention than that to explain why you need something unusual but my understanding is that if you're not running His country for Him this doesn't even usually work. 

Talking to Him feels like something. I do not particularly know how to describe it; I remember thinking, the first time, it felt kind of like sticking your head underwater if you'd never encountered water before. It usually gives me a headache, particularly if I do it too often, because god-thoughts aren't very shaped for human heads. He has never done it to me, I have to - reach for him - though occasionally He'll make me aware that He has something I need to know. I do not think He particularly expects that you would want to talk to Him."

...Leareth nods. 

”I think that is all the questions I have, and - I need to think on the answers.”

"Of course. There are some things I should do too, in light of the timeline you've proposed. We can speak more later."

Leareth nods, stands up. “Thank you.”

"Of course. Good luck." And he heads out.

Leareth goes back to his room and thinks in silence for a little while.

It’s getting pretty late, but he goes off in search of Nayoki anyway; she often works long days. Irritatingly he is geased not to speak to her about any details, but at least she knows the broad strokes of his guesses before, and he can give her the timeline and leave the reasoning behind it implied. His troops don’t actually need to be told why they’re preparing for a mass transit by Gate.

Nayoki is with the magic researchers; they are comparing various forms of mind-affecting magic between their worlds.

"Leareth!" She looks relieved and pleased to see him. "How was the mission to Rahadoum." 

"Fruitful. We have a deadline. I wish you and Narva to redirect all of your research time toward inter-world Gates, with the goal of having a working method inside the next five days. I will of course work with you when I am available. You can communicate with others in Velgarth using the crystal ball if this will speed your work, though please try to be somewhat cryptic in your communications. I will obtain some of the one time use code-books at whatever point it next makes sense to visit Velgarth in person." 

Nayoki absorbs that for a few seconds. Glances over at the magic researchers. "I apologize, we will have to postpone this line of study." 

"Of course," they say, glancing at one another. They head out.

Nayoki casts a privacy-barrier. Glances expectantly at Leareth. Waits.

”Are you planning to give me any more context.”

“Unfortunately I have - constraints. I think this outcome is not unexpected. You should have all the context you need for your current assignment.”

She studies him thoughtfully for a moment before nodding. “I understand. Are you also going to require my particular expertise when the deadline is passed?”

“Very possibly. I will discuss that with you when it becomes relevant.”

Nod. 

”All right. Gates.” She reaches for paper. “What ideas have you had so far...”

Fazil reads to Vanyel from The History And Future of Humanity. Aroden's personal history is in his other holy text, Tomes of Memory; this one is broader and starts earlier - the history of domestication and agriculture, the invention of magic. The reasons that empires have collapsed or destroyed themselves, over the Ages. What some of the better ones were like, before they were lost, and what they would have needed to be like, to have survived. What can be achieved in the Age of Glory.

Not all of it makes Vanyel nod along - the writing style isn't that similar, for one, for one - but a number of passages do. Yes, this part reminds him of Leareth; yes, that passage does. In particular, the reasoning behind his claims, the why of it, is very reminiscent. His vision for the future isn't identical, but that could be explainable just by the fact that the two worlds have different conditions, a different set of gods - completely different setups after people die...

It's hardly conclusive. Maybe people with similar goals would write similar things either way. But it still feels like evidence, that points in one direction. 

"I'm not even sure exactly what question I'm trying to answer! What does it mean, for people to be the same person... but it does seem like something." Sigh. "When should we bring up to your king that we can see whether Golarion's magic heals him."

"Hmm. Not sure if I want to do it before or after I bring up the, er, thing with Yfandes. Which I should do soon. I think Melody's right and they aren't going to get upset and trust your people less, but..." 

"I don't really know anything about how to interact with royalty but I will take your word for it."

"It's not really like–" Vanyel isn't sure how to explain it so he just shrugs. "Anyway, I'll wait to talk to them at all until they're done discussing and ask for me, but Yfandes thinks they'll probably plan a meeting for tomorrow morning. I can try to figure out then what's a good order to mention things in." 

"Sounds good."

The Senior Circle does, in fact, call for Vanyel the next morning, without Fazil. 

He's fairly stressed about the meeting. This seems merited when the first thing Randi brings up is the blood-magic use. The verdict, though, is that nobody has time to worry about this right now. Savil has already provided all the context, Randi thinks it was a not-unreasonable response to an unfair situation that he feels terrible about putting Vanyel in, and also can Vanyel please never ever do it again thank you. 

(Vanyel can reassure him, honestly, that he intends to never ever do it again, it was dreadful).

...He tells Randi he has some maybe-good news and some worrying news, which would he like to hear first? 

Sigh. "Let's get the worrying one out of the way first." 

So Vanyel recounts his troubles with Yfandes, in the order they rehearsed together multiple times. He hopes it was a weird fluke to do with Leareth's sudden revelations to them on top of all the other stressors of the moment - in which case it's hopefully moot now, since Leareth is busy doing other things - but it seems like the core thing was discomfort with disrupting the gods' current systems, and that could come up again given that Abadar is in negotiations with Them now, and - well, given their bad experience in Iftel, it seems like there's some potential conflict. Whatever the problem is, it's fixable, as evidenced by Yfandes being fine now, but it would be very inconvenient if it were badly timed, so he and Yfandes have tried to figure out what the Heralds can do to steer around it.

This goes smoothly enough. Randi looks worried, and very tired, but he doesn't seem at all inclined to anger or blame toward Vanyel. He looks like someone who has heard enough ridiculous complications and would like it to stop. 

A while later, Yfandes Mindspeaks Fazil. :Everything went reasonably well. They’re sending someone to get you now, want to ask questions about your Healing:

He is nervous but waits patiently for them to do this!

A servant comes and gets him maybe three minutes later, and walks him back over to the same central wing, but a different, smaller meeting-room this time; only a subset of the Heralds are there.

“Thank you for coming.” King Randale is as neatly dressed as the day before, but looks more visibly stressed and weary. “You can have a seat. Van mentioned you have healing magic from your world that might be able to help with, er, my problem.”

His expression is quietly unhappy, and like he’s trying not to show it.

Shavri, eyes downcast, places her hand over his.

"I would be delighted to help if I can. I can't guarantee anything. There are some illnesses that would require more powerful magic than I have, and very rarely some our magic cannot address at all. But - if someone in our world were sick there are a lot of things we could try. None of them could make you any worse, though of course some percentage of the time people get worse after they are cast anyway. Your Healers could observe, if they wanted, to see what the spells did, and if any of it helped maybe to imitate it."

"We deeply appreciate the offer. Seems worth trying, at least." 

Shavri leans forward a little. "Could you explain a little of how it works? It's - from your god, no? Do all clerics of all different gods get the same kind of healing magic?" 

"All clerics of Good gods, and Good clerics of neutral gods, and most neutral clerics of neutral gods - they get to pick - can convert the divine power we get from our god, whatever spells we currently have it packaged in, into healing magic. It's very good for injuries, or anything else where our magic can find a healed state to restore someone to. It's worse for diseases, we have a separate spell instead, for that. And for - slow problems with the body that don't seem to be caused by a disease - we have Lesser Restoration, and Restoration, which take many of the effects away but do not usually fix the problem. ...my father, for example, drank for too many years and would have died of it years ago and if I cast Lesser Restoration every month he'll live to ninety but there's no spell that'd actually fix it. Restoration is the most powerful healing spell I can cast; I can also raise the dead, but that doesn't help here at all. If Restoration isn't enough, there are even more powerful healing spells we could arrange back in Golarion. At the upper end, the most powerful clerics can just - use all their power to directly request the intervention of their deity to fix the problem. That usually works. I am not anywhere near that powerful, though."

Shavri nods along. Halfway through she looks like she wants to speak, but holds off until he's finished. 

"That makes sense. I would be very interested to watch your spells. Randi's illness - we don't know what it is," an apologetic, almost ashamed glance his way, as though this is personally her fault, "it's - slow cumulative damage, from some source I can't See. My Healing can slow it but not reverse it. It's not bad, yet, it's only affecting him a little - and there are still more things we can try, I've only known for six months." Her lips don't smile but her eyes light up a little. "I could probably fix your father's problem, though. Not fully, not back to a healthy person's state, but we can repair it enough that people live decades with it if they're careful with their diet and such." 

"That's very kind of you, and I'd be very grateful." He looks very awkward about it, though. "Uh, from that description, I would expect Restoration - maybe even Lesser Restoration, if we're lucky - can reverse it a little bit but cannot make it permanently stop happening. But I don't have nearly as much expertise here as your people do. Would you like me to try now?"

"Sure! If you don't need anything special for it." 

"Like a lot of powerful magic in my world it uses a diamond as a focus, and destroys it. But a small diamond in this case; Sothis will reimburse me. I will need to touch the person I'm trying to treat," he says to Randi.

"Of course." Randi gets up and shifts his chair to Shavri's other side, so he's close enough for Fazil to reach out and touch his arm. 

Shavri watches, rapt. 

Vanyel watches too, though his Healing-Sight isn't nearly as well trained as Shavri's; he can use mage-sight as well, though, he's curious about the spell-structure itself. 

He touches him, and pinches a very small diamond in the other hand, and then she can see energy flowing into Randi and Van can see the whole fourth-circle spell structure directing it. The diamond crumbles.

The energy flows for about twenty seconds, then stops.

Randi sits up straighter, looking amazed.

Shavri watches intently for a little while longer, and then turns and beams at Fazil. "That definitely did something! It was very marked. He's - I should take longer to look properly, after - I don't think it's gone, whatever's causing it, I think you were right, but if I didn't know exactly what to look for I'd call him totally healthy. Randi, love, how do you feel?"  

"I did not realize until now that I've been tired all the time for the entire last year." Randi leans back in his chair. "I don't know how long it'll last but I feel great." 

"Thank you!" Shavri looks relieved and giddy and also like some small part of her maybe wants to pin Fazil to a board and study him like an insect. 

Vanyel is relieved and happy as well, but more quietly. 

He is also super relieved and happy! He can maybe offer to do more healing which Shavri can watch later. "I'm glad I could help a little," he says, and leaves off the 'your majesty'.

The Heralds glance around at each other. 

"This seems like a reasonable time to take a break," Randi says (even though he currently feels like he could keep going all afternoon, the lack of background inexplicable fatigue is amazing.)

"Later today, though, I think we ought to discuss whether there's anything Valdemar can do to help your world." Sigh. "I am not generally in favour of wars, especially wars of conquest, but - I just learned about the existence of your Hell and it is horrible and I think all of us Heralds would very badly like to - do whatever we can, here." 

"Good for you. I will - think about that, and maybe have some ideas I can suggest when we reconvene."

Savil slides her chair back and stands. "Van, ke'chara, you and Fazil are welcome to join me for lunch if you'd like...?" 

"Thank you, but I think I'm going to take a nap or something." :Not sure if I literally need a nap: he tells Fazil, :but - it was really stressful, earlier, even if it went totally fine. I can catch you up on it if you want?: 

:Sure.:

Vanyel walks back with him to the guest wing - wondering privately if it makes sense for him to stay there or if he should go back to his room, but he doesn't really expect them to be in Haven that much longer - and he explains Randi's reaction to the Yfandes issue in Mindspeech. :'Fandes was right, I think, it's sufficiently not the weirdest or most concerning thing he's learned about recently that he couldn't be bothered being upset with me over it: 

Aaaaand he should probably explain the blood-magic incident, too, which Yfandes thinks he also got off on very lightly due to everyone having bigger fish to fry. So he does. Along with a little of the background on his conversations with Leareth and previous soul-searching on whether using blood-magic could ever be justifiable. 

: - wow. We don't ...have anyone who can do that. I think it might be bad if it were advertised that it's possible, lest it's also possible with our magic and not widely known...:

:Mmm-hmm. I'm guessing that Leareth didn't mention it and that's probably part of why: 

:He did not mention it. Which, yes, seems very sensible, though he also may have been trying to give us less reminders about what he's done. Probably if it could be done at all with our magic Evil would have advertised how but not necessarily.... for what it's worth I'd expect it to not be Evil, or not very, in the circumstances you described. Kick you right out of Law, though."

:Are all the other Heralds Lawful? Yfandes wondered if I was right up until that. Though - in hindsight something like that had been brewing for a while, she thinks: 

Almost all of them. All the other Companions are. You - reason about the world more like neutral good. But it's possible that you were Lawful, before that; I would think being part of something like the Heralds is a strong push towards Law even if it's not exactly the same thing.

Vanyel nods. :And - I reasoned like this less before, I think. I got a lot of it from Leareth: 

:Who is himself Lawful! But I guess distinctly not using the Heralds' system, and probably with a long list of objections to it.:

:And I'm not sure I can do the thing he does. I'm - not careful enough. Possibly I'm just not smart enough. And Yfandes thinks it might be important, here, that he's millennia old. He's had a lot of time to develop his personal code and flesh it out for all contingencies, right? Whereas I keep - ending up in situation where I really should have thought through what decision process I'd use, and I didn't because it never felt like there was time. Sunhame...isn't the first time that happened and I was unhappy with what Heraldic ethics said to do. It's just the first time I acted on that: 

Nod. Adventuring is bad for Law for the same reason. The world is complicated, it can be really hard to - figure out how the rules even apply, let alone whether you really believe in them.

:Yfandes keeps complaining about that. The world being complicated, I mean, and it not being clear how any given standard would even apply. I - guess she always really believed in our rules, before this, she was made that way. It's pretty confusing for her to have that suddenly stop being true: 

:...yeah. I can imagine.:

They reach their rooms. Vanyel rings for a servant and asks for lunch to be brought.

"I don't know what makes sense to do next," he says, leaning on his doorframe. "I wish we could expect to hear back from Leareth and the others soon, but they're probably going to take ages." 

"I think it's probably worth talking with Valdemar about plans for the Worldwound in the case where Leareth's right and there'll be a simultaneous invasion of Cheliax and also the case where he's not and we're just joining the existing forces trying to do things about the Worldwound. It seems like maybe Velgarth magic would still let us do something about the situation."

"I think so. The Worldwound is the one where there's a lot of Abyssal-related damage to the land, right? It - occurs to me that we should maybe contact the Tayledras, since they have techniques for fixing magic-damaged land here." He rubs his chin, thoughtful. "I'm also still curious if your Abyss is the same as our Abyssal Plane. And if so, why we can access that from Velgarth but not any of the other afterlives." 

"There's a lot of damage to the land, yeah. And whether they're the same thing - and whether the other Outer Planes can be reached from here - seems worth looking into, though I don't know how you go about checking, exactly."

"Can you, er, tell by watching if someone is accessing your Abyss? We - have a technique for summoning Abyssal demons here in Velgarth. I am not technically trained on it but I could derive it from other Elemental summonings. Unfortunately then I would have an Abyssal demon on my hands and they're terrible, so." 

"Well if the Abyssal demon were not chaotic evil that would be decisive. If they were, I'm not sure how I could tell whether they were from our Abyss or a different one."

"Makes sense. I don't think that's a high priority for right now or anything, I'm just curious." 

"I am too! It would be nice to be able to - situate Velgarth in our model of the universe a little better, even though with planes that kind of thing is almost always very confusing. And if you are near enough to summon from the other Outer Planes once you know about them, Good outsiders're very useful and can often be paid in things like - a promise to dedicate a month to helping the poor, or the time and attention of an evil person who wants to repent or a detailed tactics-focused summary of a war."

"Huh! Why do they wanted detailed summaries of wars?" 

"Well, Heaven fights lots of wars, and there are tactician-archons who mostly want to learn how to get better at fighting wars, and would be interested in another world mostly for the details of how it fights wars. It would be sort of a disturbing thing to be obsessed with if Hell weren't, well, what it is."

"Makes sense, though. Is evil people repenting a thing that happens much?" 

"Does it not happen in your world? Lots of people do evil things but regret them, in ours."

"We might have less infrastructure for 'repenting about it' to be a very productive thing to do. And I guess I've always...personally defined what 'evil' means, as doing bad things and not regretting it." He looks down. "I've done a lot of things that harmed people. I think most of the Heralds have things we regret, after the war." 

"Hmmm. I've done things that hurt people because I didn't see a better option. I would like to have had better options but, well, I didn't. I've done things that hurt people and had a better option I was too young or inexperienced or overwhelmed to think of, and I regret that. That doesn't usually make you evil, assuming it's more like 'we were attacked by bandits and killed them even though in hindsight we could've taken then alive with more experience fighting' than 'we murdered some people in a botched robbery.' But, like, lots of people murdered some people in a botched robbery, and they kind of wish they hadn't done it, or they try not to think about it, and they're still going to be Evil until they actually spend a long time - changing as a person, and making the world better, and trying to make it up to the people affected. And it's mostly that group of people you're trying to convince to repent instead of doubling down and deciding they're fine with it."

"Mmm. That makes sense." 

Food arrives. Vanyel takes his with a smile for the page bringing it. The young man looks kind of scared of him. When his back is turned, Vanyel grimaces slightly about it. 

"Anyway. I think I should Gate to k'Treva and ask them that. And - if I'm doing that anyway, I might as well find out what they know about the history before the Cataclysm." 

"Sounds good." He casts Delay Pain for him.

"...At some point I guess I should test if Nefreti is right and Gates don't hurt unless I'm expecting them to. The problem is that if I try without Delay Pain I will be expecting them to even if that's circular..." He makes a face. "And I'd better eat, and ask Savil if there's anything she wants me to pass on to them."

"We could do it where I secretly flip three coins and cast Delay Pain unless they all come up heads, in which case I cast something else that doesn't do anything? I'm not sure that's the right approach, though." He takes his lunch.

"Maybe? I'd have to not watch with mage-sight or else I could tell it wasn't that." 

Vanyel takes his own food and goes to eat quietly in his room. After a while he Mindspeaks Savil. She agrees that the Tayledras definitely deserve to know everything and that's a much better use of his afternoon than sitting around in meetings, especially since Fazil is the one who knows the answers to any questions the Senior Circle is likely to have.

He has Yfandes pass this on and then Gates to k'Treva. 

Savil does, in fact, turn up to collect Fazil a candlemark later. 

He is happy to head over with her. Well, 'happy to' in the polite sense not the emotional sense.

King Randale seems genuinely happy to see him! (Shavri still kind of looks like she wants to pin him down and study him all day.)

They can occupy the afternoon asking a lot of questions about his world, mostly more background detail on its different kinds of magic and its gods and its geopolitics, in both the material plane and the various afterlife planes. 

His world has lots and lots and lots of kinds of magic users, it's quick enough to explain the things that ninety percent of them are doing and hopeless to get to all of the other ones.

There are five continents, but travelling between them is hard even with teleportation (you need a seventh-circle Greater Teleport and to know where you're headed), so people know only vague things about the distant ones, called Arcadia and Tian Xia. Some of the same gods are worshipped there, and some different ones.  He knows Gerund, where Osirion is, quite well; it has various neighboring countries and the Mwangi Expanse of dense jungle and the Mana Wastes, scarred by a war between powerful wizards four thousand years ago. North of Gerund is Avistan, dominated by Cheliax, its colonies, and its former provinces which have broken loose at varyingly terrible costs. North of that there's the Worldwound.

East of Gerund is Casmaron, dominated by the Kelesh Empire of which Osirion was a tributary until Khemet the 1st took it back in a nearly bloodless coup three years after Aroden's death. 

Their world has a lot of gods; he mostly only knows the ones who are worshipped in the Inner Sea region. Asmodeus rules Hell. Axis has lots of different cities, some of them claimed by gods and some not, each of them with a well-defined legal code but not all with the same ones. Abadar's is the biggest, and the face of Axis to the rest of the multiverse because he's made it safe to travel to. The many districts of Axis are connected with portals, so even though it's a massive sprawling city of unfathomable size no two parts are actually far away once you learn your way around, which reportedly takes centuries. 

Heaven is the Lawful Good afterlife, and dedicated to the study of magic and tactics so Evil can be defeated and moral philosophy so that people can figure out parts of the pursuit of the Good that are more complicated than whether Hell needs to be fought. Nirvana is neutral good, and a significant portion of it is dedicated to healing and recovery, and to the redemption of evildoers - Nirvana attends every trial for every soul, and argues that they belong in Nirvana, and sometimes they win and get lots of people who are not neutral good by any conventional definition. Elysium (chaotic good) is an infinite wilderness, dotted with magical cities and settlements and academies and so on. Both Elysium and Nirvana intervene in the Material World as much as they can, not in armies like Heaven but individually as advisors or assistants or rescuers or teachers. 

The neutral afterlife is called the Boneyard. It is mostly full of babies, because lots of people die as babies and in lots of countries it's legal to kill them, especially before they're born. There are also people who lived a long life but didn't acquire an alignment at any point during it, but those are rare; Pharasma prefers to send someone on even if they're only loosely a fit for one of the afterlives. The chaotic neutral afterlife is called the Maelstrom, and its reality is so fluid it's hard to describe it as having any particular traits. Over time the dead there mutate into things called chaos beasts, which are terrifying and confusing but not intrinsically unpleasant to become, necessarily. 

Hell is lawful evil, organized into nine layers, ruled by Asmodeus. Mortals are mostly enslaved to advance the aims of Hell. Abaddon is neutral evil. They just hunt and eat all the petitioners sent there. The Abyss is - it might be the Abyssal Plane, they're not sure, but it's at least similar enough that they're not sure.

The Heralds listen attentively, and take notes, and look thoughtful about Nirvana, and seem deeply incredibly horrified about all of the evil afterlives. They're fascinated by the concept of afterlives that actually intervene in systematic ways in the mortal world (and the appropriate amount of disturbed about Asmodeus' interventions in particular.) 

Vanyel is gone all afternoon. When he Gates back, after dark, it's with Starwind and Moondance k'Treva both in tow.

:We're back: Yfandes relays to Fazil. :They have a lot of questions. Enough that Van brought some of his friends from there over to talk to you directly: Pause. :Well, probably tomorrow. It's late: 

:I don't actually know very much about the Worldwound but I'd be happy to try to answer them.:

Savil is honestly shocked that the Tayledras couple were willing to leave their land (and also their eight-year-old son), but she goes to catch up with them, and gets them set up with a guest room.

The next morning, they have a meeting to discuss the Worldwound, at least what Fazil knows of it.

It opened up shortly after Aroden died, in a country he thinks was called Sarkoris at the time. It was a tear that opened into the Abyss, rimmed by black flames. Creatures poured out of the Abyss and quickly overwhelmed Sarkoris's defenses; the whole country was lost by the end of the decade. Eventually some powerful casters put down four wardstones of nearly unimaginable power that maintain a magical barrier over the whole area. Demons frequently try to destroy the wardstones, but they're defended by armies from the surrounding countries. Some demons are powerful enough to cut, fly, or teleport through the magical barrier, but they're usually quickly brought down on the other side. Occasionally a crusade is called and the armies fighting the Worldwound try to gain ground; if the wardstones could be moved in to cover a smaller area the magical barrier would be correspondingly more powerful and fewer demons would have a way to cut through it. But gaining ground is difficult because the land has been defiled and is now magically distorted, full of rifts and cliffs and hard to advance through. Also full of demons, of course. The fourth crusade wound down a few years ago basically a failure.

Cheliax has committed substantial forces to guarding the Worldwound, which means that if there's a war with Cheliax - and they think there probably will be - then it'll abruptly lose about half of its defenses, which has the potential to be disastrous. 

That sounds like a terrible situation and they're sorry to hear his world has a such a predicament! Their own magically-defiled lands are difficult and dangerous to clear but they've at least been able to make slow progress on it over the centuries.

The Tayledras don't have armies to offer. They do have scouts and powerful mages who are experienced with work in magically-distorted, treacherous land. They also have a small number of specialized magic users called Healing-Adepts; his partner Moondance is one. Healing-Adepts have a sense for the magic inherent in a patch of land, called 'earthsense', and can use a number of secret techniques to cleanse it. 

k'Treva would consider lending Moondance to help with the Worldwound, under the condition that the rest of a plan is in place to make it not unduly dangerous for him.

Also, (and Moondance half-glances in Vanyel's direction, apologetically), they've heard from Savil that Golarion has magic to raise the dead? If that would work for non-natives killed there, it would make this considerably less risky an offer for k'Treva to make. 

Yes, Golarion has magic for that, and has confirmed that it works for people from Velgarth who die in Golarion. He can do it personally as long as there's a body and Osirion would likely be willing to commit to doing it for everybody who comes from Velgarth if Velgarth can supply the diamonds though that's not actually a guarantee he can make himself. Probably they should wait for an update via Mindspeech-through-a-scry from their allies in Golarion, and can ask for that at that time.

That makes sense. They can wait to hear. 

Meanwhile: Moondance has been trying to answer Vanyel's questions about the Cataclysm? (Starwind and Moondance also just learned today that Vanyel has been TALKING TO LEARETH, his destined enemy, for TEN YEARS, and they are kind of in shock about this, but the Heralds seem to be taking it in stride.)

If Leareth is claiming to have been around at the time of the Cataclysm and even been involved in it, he was probably the mage who fought Urtho, a hero and forefather of the Tayledras people, which cannot say good things about his character and they're pretty worried. Their purely oral histories are incomplete, though. The Shin'a'in keep written histories and probably do know more of that awful time in their past. 

That is indeed what Leareth was claiming. They would love to talk to people who might know more.

Moondance has had a feeling that it would be good, if they knew more. Unfortunately the Plains are about eight hundred miles south of Haven, and none of them have been there before in order to Gate there. 

Golarion's magic allows Teleporting off a map but there's substantial chance of landing in the wrong place and they really cannot risk landing in Iftel again, probably Vkandis will escalate from setting them on fire if setting them on fire didn't work to keep them away. ...the pharaoh could get them to a location on a map with perfect precision from his palace in Golarion, and then they could Teleport home when done, and might agree to this, he too has an interest in learning more about Leareth...

It seems like a big outlay of resources on the pharaoh's part, and like it'd be time-consuming - and maybe dangerous, he isn't sure - but Vanyel does think it's a good idea to do some discreet research into Leareth's background if they can. 

If they can arrange transport, Starwind is happy to accompany them with Moondance and provide an introduction to the high shaman in Kata'shin'a'in; they haven't actually met, but the Shin'a'in and Tayledras peoples do maintain some level of relationship. 

It would indeed be a substantial expenditure of resources but he can at least mention that it's an option as soon as Mahdi and Hagan return from Rahadoum.

How long is that likely to take? 

Vanyel looks over at Fazil. "We really don't know. I think they signed on for a month, we're hoping they get word back to us of what they've found sooner than that."

"They can do a Sending any time they're not being closely observed and I suspect they will once they have a good guess one way or the other. And if anything happens to them I expect Sothis to contact me."

That makes sense. Starwind and Moondance will stay in Haven and wait, unless it ends up being weeks in which case they'll have to go back to k'Treva and have Vanyel or Savil fetch them again. 

Well, they've covered most of the strategy stuff for right now, so, pending hearing from the pharaoh or from Mahdi or Leareth, would Fazil be up for healing some other patients at their House of Healing and in the process letting Shavri study his healing magic more? 

He’d be delighted to! He can tell her a little about how healing works in his world, too, though he’s a combat healer which is a really different specialization and he doesn’t know all that much about treating normal peoples’ normal illnesses.