"I mean mechanically, although I guess I don't know if you have fancy summon-control spells or how well they'll work on me."

"If I were - someone with a lot more resources who was trying to have more of a handle on you from this starting point - I'd probably try to keep you on an antimagic demiplane with, like, an adjacent demiplane where time moves very slowly but your magic works fine. I am not that someone, I have kind of few resources, and also I'm seriously entertaining the hypothesis that it was, actually, supposed to be me, which would mean that something about me makes me the right person to try to do this, and also personally I would hate being stuck on an antimagic demiplane and I'd much rather -" Shrug. "That sounds like the kind of sentence I'll think is stupid when I'm smarter. The Worldwound is - big, okay? I was trying to pick something big, something that wouldn't feel like it was just - 'probably better than not that' - we are losing ground against the fifty-mile-wide portal to the Abyss through which demons that want to devour the world stream, our world's richest countries are diverting most of their strength to slowing down the rate at which the demons gain ground, it is the most important problem that it is safe to solve. Probably. We might attract the specific personal enmity of a demon lord but we might not, and maybe if we did we'd have allies in Hell -

- if you'd rather do something else I'm listening. I realize that it will be terrible for my lifespan if you resent me. But I - really do not think I'm the constraint on your ability to have fun, here, I really honestly think - you can check, if you have some way - that if you go around trying to have fun here then someone will just turn you into a toad or trap you in stasis in a gemstone or possess you or leave you on the Elemental Plane of Fire with no way back or, I don't know, stick a helmet of Opposite Alignment on you so you can be more of an asset to Cheliax, that might be what Asmodeus would do. Which I guess I should be rooting for, except - obviously I'm not the tool by which he'd do that -" She trails off, a little lost. "....I don't know if this is exactly answering your worries but -

- maybe I just need to try to answer more questions. I don't know."

"If you put me in an antimagic location and it recognized me as magical at all instead of figuring I'm an exotic law of physics, it might just annihilate me on the spot, I don't run on biology any more. FYI."

" - well. I can kill myself if you get captured? Because they're definitely going to try that - I guess you can warn them not to - I'd be more thrilled about this plan if we'd set up some backups for me first."

"Backups like?"

"Well, that's why the first thing I did was give my teacher a diamond, right, if he heard I died he might resurrect me to ask where I stashed all the spellsilver and magic items. But - more people. More credible people. In some places you can buy a contract for it from the Church of Abadar, I think, I've heard people at the Worldwound mention it. Maybe my mom, if she had the diamond on hand I think there's half a chance she'd do it just out of nostalgia. There's also a spell called Clone, seventh-circle, makes an inert flesh duplicate of you that wakes if you die. And Contingency, at sixth."

"Those sound fine. I don't suppose the hard part of Clone is creating an inert flesh duplicate of you, because I could do that part."

"I mean, that will probably save some labor but the seventh-circle spell is to tell my soul to go there instead of to Hell. - it's allowed, Asmodeus isn't in a hurry. If you're doing it specifically to evade Hell that's problematic but if you've just got stuff to do here, it isn't any different than wearing armor."

"I'm only instrumentally interested in not antagonizing your hellgod."

"I don't know exactly what distinction you're drawing there but Asmodeus's legitimacy comes from the fact He owns and can destroy us, yes."

"That's not really how I use the word 'legitimacy'. Or, uh, 'owns'. Jury's out on 'can destroy' - for me, not for you."

"Asmodeus's grounds for telling us what to do, if you like that better."

"You haven't gotten any direct instructions from him, just from his theocracy. I don't actually know how much of a direct line they've got."

"He picks the priests and high-level ones can commune with Him for answers to important questions. Mostly we're just not all that worth trying to communicate with but He approved His holy book, the Disciplines, and He sends specific devils as advisors to important people in government. I think Cheliax is run close enough to the way He wants it run, with divergences for anything we either can't correct or which isn't worth His time to correct."

"Uh-huh. Shall we stop off at a church of Abadar, buy you some insurance?"

"I want to finish the headband first but if it still seems like a good idea after that, yeah."

"All right. Do you have research suggestions?"

"Whether there's something like lead you can do for spell resistance so we can't get Wish-kidnapped. Whether there's anything really good in the lost lore of ancient Azlant. If anyone has taken notes on how to make mind-buttressing armor. Notes that definitely do exist on more advanced headbands, I could figure that out but it'd take me a while....what happened to Aroden."

"On it!" he chirps, writing all this down in his open letter to his research team of several million demons who think Golarion is very exciting. "This will, again, be easier if I can conjure computer formats instead of solely littering paper everywhere."

"Can you explain computers to me."

"...it would take a long time if you want a version of the explanation that isn't simplified lies."

"Long enough I should finish my headband first?"

"You're not gonna let me conjure computer formats till I explain it to your satisfaction, are you."

"It would be pretty stupid to let you do things I don't understand at all."

He sighs. He takes off his headband and offers it to her. "So I can go a little faster."