"They turn into a devil? Is that not like...turning into an entirely different species of sapient being?" Leareth looks mildly surprised, and curious. (He is in fact not very surprised at all.) "How does Asmodeus manage that - what does the transformation look like?" 

(And he pays close attention to her thoughts, again, because he doesn't expect her to be honest about this at all.) 

She already explained this to Lacie, when she asked why the paladins hated them. Maybe he's playing a game, maybe it wasn't conveyed, maybe she's misunderstanding the question or Lacie mangled her first explanation in conveying it -

"It takes a long time, decades or sometimes centuries. It is referred to as being - reforged. I think it is partially physical, learning to take a new shape in the world, and partially mental, fixing - the original error introduced in people, that makes us have random goals and priorities and frailties and not follow through on things. It hurts. It is inherently painful, to come to terms with your weaknesses, to see the places where you fall short of what Asmodeus requires. A lot of people are scared of it, because of that. But - I've never met a devil who thought it wasn't worth it. And lots of valuable things hurt. And I wouldn't rather keep being weak."

"Ah. - I think this is related to the part I am not sure Lacie conveyed to me right, because it was very confusing. The...fact that humans in your world at one point did not have 'free will', and then it was introduced, and...this is the inherent error that Asmodeus works to correct in His souls in Hell? I - am confused, I think, because the way the phrase translates at least does refer to a concept that philosophers in our world have studied, but I am not sure it is the same one. ...For one, our philosophers have sometimes disagreed on whether free will really exists at all or whether the whole world, including the living beings in it, is predetermined by physical laws." 

"Yes, that's right. The translation is probably not exactly right, it's sort of about -" and she repeats the explanation she gave Lacie, almost word for word, about how constructs can be without free will and what it was like to be a human before free will and how free will broke things. This is the sort of thing that's better to recite word-for-word because if you introduce any new ideas you might accidentally say something heretical.

Leareth nods along as though this makes sense, even though it DOESN'T and he is very concerned, especially about the thought regarding accidentally saying heresies. 

"I see. I think I understand how the concept fits together in your world, but...I confess I am unsure how to interpret it in this world, in the scenario where it turns out to be impossible to ever contact your world and its gods. I - do not think we have any equivalent time when humans lacked free will, and to be honest I do not think any of Velgarth's gods have goals that are more worthy than what sapient beings want to create and build for themselves. Do you have any thoughts on that?" 

Leareth does his best to sound genuinely unsure and thoughtful, which isn't hard because he is feeling both of those things and he can fold the other, by default much louder feelings to address later, not in Carissa's presence. 

It is very strange to imagine concluding that none of the gods's goals matter. It seems very pathetic but if you are a thousands of years old wizard that might make it not pathetic, you don't need to worry about dying... "Probably your gods' goals would...seem more valuable if they communicated them. But, uh, if they can't explain why you should care and they lack the resources to make you care then I guess it's their own fault, if you don't care, and maybe they don't care about whether you care? Not being of any value to any gods sounds - awful -  you'd have no one with a reason to make you keep existing - but if they haven't got a reason to keep you existing then I guess that's the hand you were dealt and you should, uh, become immortal about it, which." Tight smile. 

He returns the smile, small and tight and brief. “Exactly. Though - I have not yet succeeded at sharing my immortality with others. The gods seem to oppose this too, though They do not care to tell me why. And from what Their actions reveal of Their goals, I - do not care to serve Them. If Asmodeus existed here it might be different,” the ‘might’ and his remaining uncertainty make this not quite a bald-faced lie, “but - in fact this is the world I have. Perhaps I am an ant beside them, but They have not stamped me out yet.”

He sits back in his chair. “This may be relevant to you as well, since from my preliminary study of the magic I detected on your arrival, it will be incredibly difficult and perhaps impossible to replicate.” This is not quite a lie. “So this world and its gods might, if we are unlucky, be all we have to work with. And - I think that nobody should ever stop existing, if they prefer existence over not - I think that our gods’ failure to care about this is Their greatest fault, and a terrible tragedy in need of correcting. What do you think of it?”

It's a bizarre frame, considering it a fault that the gods care about different things than people. Probably the things the gods care about are more important, even, but - it's hard to blame him, for wanting his things, when the gods haven't even said what they want.

Or it's a lie. It's a very convenient story. If they've been reading her mind it wouldn't be hard to guess it's a cause she is sympathetic to. 

Either way it's smarter to play along. "Do you have ascension here?"

“Well. Not a preexisting known route, but - in fact I have a plan, here. Not to ascend personally, per se, but - to create a god of our own, who does care to make use of human souls. Given our magic this is not harder than ascending myself, and allows more control. I have been working on this plan for a thousand years and am currently preparing for the final execution of said plan. It will be very costly, but - worth it, I think, in the end.”

She forms no opinion at all on the truth value of this claim. "Wow. I - that's a clever plan. I see why you are curious whether Nefreti meant to enable it or disrupt it or - what."

“Indeed. And - whatever Nefreti’s aims were, I have my own agenda here, and information as groundbreaking as the existence of multiple other worlds calls for a thorough reevaluation of  how I can best accomplish my goals. I think - five years of research at least, on learning your magic and on studying the feasibility of contacting Golarion, should it turn out that I wish to do so.” 

His eyes rest on her, piercing, unreadable.

She nods.

Five years is a long time. You wouldn't need her for all of it, but - but you might keep her around for all of it if it didn't cost you much. 

"I would be delighted to help."

"I am glad to hear it." Leareth sighs, then stands. "For now, you have given me a great deal to think about, and I shall go do that. - Is there anything else we could get you, here, so that you will be more comfortable?" 

She needs to stop doing the thing where she has rock-bottom expectations, people pick up on that and are more than happy to treat you as poorly as you expect. "I'd like some different kinds of ink, I'll need to test if any of the inks you make here are the right kind for spellbooks, and high-quality paper, and some swords or daggers of good make if you want me to try enchanting them for you. They can be blunted on purpose so I can't use them to stab people but they can't be shabby and blunt on that account, the metal will be irregular in the middle and the spell won't stick. I'd like to occasionally go swimming, and probably prayer to Asmodeus doesn't reach him from here but if I can set up an altar I'll feel more at home. And if you have anything that's protective against magical explosions, it's possible in principle to rederive spells I don't have in my spellbook but it's risky and it'd be awfully silly to take risks with my life here, so I'll probably lean towards not doing that unless we can work out adequate precautions."

He nods. "We can certainly give you a variety of inks and good-quality paper, and a writing desk to make that easier. And I will have some quality daggers brought - I am not especially worried about you stabbing people, though I would prefer you not enchant them with spells that allow them to pierce magical shields. Swimming will be difficult since we are in a very cold climate, here, and there is no liquid water outdoors at this time of year, but if it is very important to you we can arrange to build an indoor swimming pool in the unused basement section, my staff would enjoy that as well. We do have Work Rooms with protective shielding, but I think I want to wait on that until we have the chance to further discuss plans for your spell research. What would you need for an altar?"

(Leareth is very sure that prayer won't do anything from here, and that if it did, the presence or absence of an altar (which it sounds like is not a divine magical object, since she could make one here at all) won't matter one way or another.)

"It just needs to be a clear stone space at least a few feet across that I can decorate and where I can light candles." If they build her an indoor swimming pool that'll be significant evidence of his thousand-year-old wizard claim; it could of course be someone else very rich and powerful, but it'd have to be someone very rich and powerful and they have the least reason to lie.

"Sure, all right, I will think of a place that could go." Building an indoor swimming pool is really not that hard if you have magical construction and already have a lot of empty underground basement space, and he's not sure why she thinks it's so impressive. "Do feel free to pass on requests for other things. I should have the paper and ink for you within a couple of candlemarks." He nods to her. "And, thank you for answering my questions." 

He leaves. 

...And finds a comfortable spot to sit on the other side of the shielded stone wall and read her mind through his shields. He has the impression that she's cautious about possible mindreading if there's someone right there, but not when she's alone in the room, and hopefully that will continue to be the case so he can take advantage of it. 

She indeed relaxes somewhat once he's left. You can read peoples' minds through a little bit of stone but not if it's thick, with her kind of magic, and also you have to keep casting the spell again and again; it lasts only a few minutes each time. Probably if the walls aren't too thick they'll try to mindread her sometimes but she doesn't expect it continuously, and probably if she'd been mindread last night she'd have been punished for it today, though she's going to be more careful about thinking anything adversarial now that she's met scary wizard. Non-wizard. Scary mage. 

The overall goal makes sense, even if the ambition of it is mind-boggling. None of the gods can use people, so you make your own, that can. And you could make it use all of the bits of humans that are even usable in principle, more bits than any existing god bothers to use. She half-expects he won't like the result, if he's gotten so accustomed to being an instrument only of his own will, but that doesn't make him wrong to do it.

And if he's telling the truth she wants him to succeed, obviously, so she gets an afterlife.

She does not know how to make progress on figuring out whether he's lying. She can learn more about the magic system and mindread the servants, but they won't know if he's thousands of years old or pretending at that. If she plays things really carefully she can eventually ask to go visit nearby cities, where people will indubitably have all kinds of stories about the immortal wizard, people have all kinds of stories about even mortal ninth-circle wizards. 

Does it matter if he's lying? If he instead wants to learn magic for some normal agenda, conquest and slavery, it's not as if she has an option of not teaching it. If he's lying, it's because he thinks she'll be easier to use while she believes him, and - she wants to be easier to use, at least insofar as that doesn't contradict with 'taking a long time to teach them anything so she has the chance to learn more magic herself and maybe have a shot at escape if it's needed'.

...she should be realistic. If the man is the equivalent of a ninth circle wizard -

- well, you can't escape a ninth circle wizard. You can Teleport off but they have Trace Teleport and better range than you, and if they are alerted too late to trace you they can scry you, and they can get a scry through Nondetection because they're just that powerful, and they can teleport from a scry, and -

If Nefreti Clepati wanted you, what would you do? 

Probably surrender. But if that wasn't an option - if she's running because she's pretty sure this Leareth is going to kill her -

- the Dome in Sothis is unscryable. Hard to get into but they say the pharaoh has hundreds of pretty slaves. Maybe you go for that. Maybe you go to the temple of a rival god and ask for shelter. Maybe you arrange a resurrection and then kill yourself. Maybe you arrange a temporary transformation into a rock, or a pool of mud, and hope that throws off the scrying and by the time you transform back Clepati has better priorities - okay several of these don't work not because she's ninth circle but specifically because her god is omniscient, that's not an operative constraint here, maybe she should be imagining that Morgethai, the elf wizard in Andoran, is the one trying to kill her for some reason...

- maybe you get a hat of disguise and hang out in a crowd and when they Teleport in they still have to do a lot of work to pick you out from a thousand people, when you're wearing a different face than they saw on the scry. Maybe you go to a wizard rival. 

She needs to learn more about the world, to learn who she'd run to if she needed to run. But she shouldn't assume that there's nowhere and no one. 

She uses dancing lights to check the room for invisible people again. It's almost relaxing.

She's not dead yet.

A new person brings her lunch, and at the same time another couple of staff carry in a desk for her, and put a box on it which proves to contain a huge variety of inks and several kinds of high-quality paper, including one that looks more like resin-impregnated cloth, and which one of Leareth's staff shows her is waterproof and nearly impossible to tear - that needs a wax pencil to write on, ink won't go in, but it's good for taking notes during messy magic experiments if she ends up doing that, and there's also a non-resined version that has the toughness but works with ink. 

Another couple of hours after that, Lacie is back. :We're getting a swimming pool!: She looks genuinely delighted about this. :I never would've thought to ask for it, but gods I miss swimming in the quarry back in my hometown. Anyway, you can come watch the mages build it if you'd like. Leareth was guessing you'd enjoy seeing more of how our magic works: 

:I would enjoy that!:

They lead her out of the room into a stone hallway - the floor thoughtfully has a rug on it - and down a narrow stone staircase to a long, totally unfinished basement room. Three people who are presumably the mages are just finishing measuring out a rectangle on the floor in chalk, it's about fifteen yards long and maybe eight wide - not huge, but enough to swim back and forth in. A gaggle of other staff have brought in stools to sit against one wall and observe; they all seem just as excited as Lacie about this development, and give Carissa curious and impressed looks. One of the young men offers her some of the snack he brought, a little bag of dried apple and nuts. 

No one looks very worried about keeping a close eye on her or anything. 

(Lacie, however, is absolutely reading Carissa's mind the whole time, while doing a very good job of keeping her eyes and apparent attention on the swimming-pool spectacle.) 

Carissa is tracking the extent to which the people seem to consider her a prisoner (obviously she is, but it matters how many people think of it that way), and wonders at the size, Stone Shape on Golarion is around twenty cubic feet - it's a fourth circle spell for wizards, third for clerics - and this will be...5400, if it's five feet deep...

The mages finish up their chalk outline and then arrange themselves like three sides of a square on one end of the area, glance at each other, close their eyes and raise their hands and breathe for a moment - 

- and if Carissa is watching with Detect Magic, she'll see them pulling energy into the air from - themselves, and from somewhere else, and forming the energy into sort of dense sharp vibrating blades, and in synchrony they bring these down on the stone. 

It's soft as bedrock goes, not limestone but some sort of sedimentary rock, and their energy-blades cut through it without huge difficulty. It makes a lot of noise, and rock dust starts to go everywhere; one of Carissa's neighbours amongst the watchers, apparently also a mage, makes a face and then casts some sort of bubble-like barrier around the work crew, which contains the dust. (The crew themselves have some sort of subtle shield or barrier around their faces and are untroubled.)

They get a cut down to a depth of about a foot within a minute, then switch to less directed chiselling and hacking at the centre; the stone is brittle enough that it cracks into large shards and fragments under this treatment, which are floated out and set to the opposite side. 

(Lacie is enjoying this, her eyes fixed raptly on it, but she's mostly curious about Carissa's reaction.) 

She has no idea how you'd do that with Golarion magic. They're not using more magic than she's ever seen thrown around, but it's not a pre-stabilized spell, and so they're pointing all the magic directly at the stone and they have such finesse with it - she tries to think how you'd design a spell for it and she thinks you just can't, magic won't cooperate -

- she's delighted and very very jealous and it is tragic that she cannot, herself, be a sorcerer and do that...

They spend a while doing this and forty-five minutes later, when the mages take a break to drink some water and have a snack - they're noticeably a bit tired-looking and out of breath - they've excavated half the surface area marked to a depth of about eighteen inches, which one of them measures with a stick. There's a large pile of crumbled stone up against the wall, which presumably someone else will cart out and dispose of. 

Lacie gets up from her stool. :The rest is just going to be more of the same, it gets repetitive and it'll take them the rest of today, so I reckon we can leave them to it: She's clearly expecting Carissa to accompany her. :Fun to watch, though, isn't it?: