"They cast a powerful spell and appeal to Iomedae personally and ask Her to - realize, on the level that matters for judgment, my change of heart and rejection of Asmodeanism, and if She thinks I'm sincere then I stop being lawful evil and I'll go somewhere else when I die and they won't have to kill me. I can maybe ask for Abadar to be appealed-to instead, I'm not sure, because it's so expensive they'll be really mad if I ask for it and then I don't count as sincere enough."

"Why is it expensive? Can't they pray for free?"

"It requires a lot of rare incense. I don't know why. Maybe the gods imposed the rule so people wouldn't be demanding their attention for Atonements all the time?"

"Huh.

Can't you pray for free?"

"I guess so. Gods mostly only act through people who are one alignment step away from them, though, I don't know if Iomedae would hear me. I guess it can't hurt to try."

"Abadar's closer? Right? - maybe I should try this."

"Maybe you should. You could look up and try a bunch of them, since you don't know your alignment."

"Why don't they, anyway?"

Shrug. "You can only tell alignment for powerful people. I think the theory is everyone's got it but usually too faint to pick up, and once you're powerful it's not that faint anymore."

"But what is 'powerful' supposed to mean?"

"You've - changed the world a lot, I guess?"

"I guess I haven't done that."

"Wizards don't get it until third circle, so, you can be quite accomplished in your field and still not count in the way that gets a reading off alignment. 

I wonder if it goes away. If you're never allowed to do anything ever again."

"I wouldn't know."

"How... does one... pray?"

"You kneel, ideally at a church or altar or something dedicated to the god but I think in principle anywhere will do, and you close your eyes, and you clasp your hands and you think about the god and imagine everything that they are, seeing you, and choosing to notice you, and then you think whatever it is you wanted to think at them."

"That... sounds weird."

"It would be sort of surprising if your world had people do similar things what with how there are no gods."

"I suppose that's true enough."

"Maybe if we got the paladins to pray with us it'd be louder, since they're the right alignment. And I bet they'd love and feel so smug about it."

"I was actually thinking of trying Abadar but really don't want to ask Fazil."

"Oh, yeah, that makes sense. I can do that one with you if you want? Abadar should be able to hear me, since He's neutral."

"...sure, okay." ...kneeling.

Carissa tries to think what she knows about Abadar. Lawful neutral. The founding god of Axis. God of wealth and commerce, shows his favor with successful voyages. This is not even definitely treason, though - it feels terrifying.

She conceded, in the argument earlier, that it seemed plausible that Axis was better at inventing things than Hell. 

She tries to reach for - what does it mean, to give yourself to the god of wealth and commerce, what does Abadar want from the people in his shining city -

Nothing.

Law. She believes in Law. In - rules, that you are punished for disobeying and not punished for obeying - in it being possible to do things right. She's mad at herself now, for not having a better articulation than that, because she knows that's not it -

- I want to do valuable things. I might want to do valuable things for You, if I understood...