She repeats this.

"Supposing I don't," he says lightly.

"What do you want for it? I can get you a better headband."

"Yeah, so can she if she lets me keep making her supplies, I'm guessing."

The priest looks baffled. "- yes? But we have far more resources, and can arrange things sooner, and she works for us."

"I mean, you won't have far more resources for very long, if she lets me make her stuff."

"...Hell backs Cheliax. Even if you made her a mountain of spellsilver, we'd have more than that - and be able to do more with it - did you know her before she summoned you twenty minutes ago -"

"Nah."

"Do you want to transfer negotiating authority, work with us, rule a duchy, and also fuck the girl, we can arrange that."

"I have this weird, rare kink you may not have heard of where I'm only into consenting partners, so, uh, go jump in a lake."

"I wonder," says Carissa, "if you are too perfectly made in our Lord's image to appeal as a target to this apsel. Here in Egorian, surely no greater force save Asmodeus could have intervened to bring this unlikely thing to pass, and I am the one it was bound to; perhaps there is something in me that makes the apsel willing to negotiate. We serve Asmodeus even in our weakness. And if I become a heretic you can always just kill me."

"You're very opinionated," the priest says, in nearly the same tone Carissa said it to Cam, earlier.

"I want to use it to see Cheliax triumph at the Worldwound. I would collaborate with Good, for that, because Asmodeus would, and has. I've been there five years. With this, I could end it in five more. Kill me or get out of my way, but stop alienating my valuable resource by trying to find common ground that does not exist between the two of you, because in being worthy of Asmodeus you've made yourself pure of it."

"You had better hope you're right that this is as valuable as you think it is."

"If it wasn't you'd have killed me already."

"What, uh, is the Worldwound."

"There is a big hole in the fabric of reality and demons keep streaming through it trying to destroy the world. And everyone, Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, whatever, disapproves because we live here. So it seems like a place where I expect we have common ground."

"Sure, that does sound like real bad news."

"I need to pray on this."

"Of course. I can finish my summoning exam in the meantime. - I pass," she adds to her teacher. "There's nothing wrong with the circle."

"There does not appear to be anything wrong with the circle," he confirms.

Cam applauds lightly.

The priest departs. 

"You're going to get yourself killed," Carissa's teacher observes to her.

"I noticed. Want a diamond? You could raise me, if I got killed some way other than righteously for deserving it and you wanted to know where the treasure was buried."

"I'd need a bigger diamond."