"Not necessarily as long as you want."

"I want an hour. To -" concede everything to you with some dignity " - to -

- I could skip the hour if you were to swear to me that you have been working in this interaction only towards my interests."

"As you know, I have not been, and a god's work, at this expense, only towards your interests, is something you will only have if you become a god."

"Uh huh. But I want someone in the room to be checking on Carissa's interests, so I want an hour."

"I understand." And she goes still, in the chair, supernaturally so.

- and now she can collapse to the floor and sob until she vomits.

That wasn't her plan? Her plan had been to write out the actual arguments and which pieces she needed to verify and which promises she wanted? However, mortals are pathetic Carissa is unskilled and so here she is sobbing until she vomits instead.

Does she believe any of that?

...yeah. She actually suspects that a Lawful Good goddess can't lie to her, not in the straightforward way of saying false things. She bets all the things she asks Cam to check will show up the way Iomedae implied. And some of what she said was just actually obvious, once you think of it, like that Lawful Evil doesn't want rivals and Lawful Good benefits from other Lawful Good powers because selfish entities are less benefitted by someone else with identical priorities than selfless ones.

The phrasing, of course, was very carefully chosen. Iomedae is probably not actually the god who just happens to sing to every impulse inside Carissa's heart, but a god, who can therefore see and choose to pluck on every impulse inside Carissa's heart. And probably, if careful words had been sufficient to get Carissa to agree to attacking Dis, Iomedae would have called Cam down to gracefully accept Carissa's permission, and then gone to work on convincing Cam. Or maybe she's doing that simultaneously. Probably that. 

Carissa wants to be that cool when she grows up. 

That is, of course, among the bribes Iomedae offered. 

I will back you in becoming a power in Heaven, if you sort yourself out enough that you'll be competent at the job, which I expect you will.

It can't possibly be an offer that gets made to just anybody. So it's a bribe because Carissa is in a position to be sufficiently valuable to Heaven, except it wasn't actually conditional on helping with the Cam situation, just on - sorting herself out. Which she supposes would predictably if you're a god entail realizing that Hell is terrible and that she wants to give Cam broad permissions to work with Iomedae on tearing out of Hell every person she or anyone else sent there within the range diamonds can help with.

But Heaven didn't have to offer her this, in exchange for that. They would've seen they could have that either way. 

Well, that's confusing and she can ask Iomedae some more questions about it.

What else is confusing?

What Iomedae was aiming for, once She'd communicated that lawyers could be arranged and prevented Carissa from killing herself, which would be a loss by Iomedae's interests. No, She said that She wanted to convince Carissa to not set up suicide-markets about the continuity of Chelish rule. Which is reasonable, Carissa looking back on it in fact thinks it'd be insane to kill herself to protect the Chelish monarchy. The Chelish monarchy absolutely wouldn't do it for her. And - rule by Iomedae or Her Church is not, in fact, rule by an uncomprehending alien who feels only contempt for the actual priorities of the actual people of Cheliax. Iomedae is quite obviously banned in Cheliax because otherwise almost everyone would worship Her. A local goddess of - strength, and will to succeed, and other things Asmodeus prizes, a god who would hurt you to make you stronger but who believes hurting you doesn't usually do that.

Though it's not as if She was being gentle, with Carissa.

...Iomedae was in hindsight probably also aiming for 'Carissa is unwilling to kill herself over a swing in the markets on the destruction of Dis'. That...feels like a direction in which Carissa has maybe unendorsedly been moved? And she's mad about it, if that is what Iomedae was aiming for. It's one thing to try to convince Carissa to invade Dis, that's only fair, but trying to convince her to feel conflicted enough about it she won't kill herself feels underhanded. 

She can ask about that too.

She is still confused about Cam. Iomedae...didn't seem confused about Cam, and seemed to think the problems were mostly Carissa's fault, but - actually, did She think that? She seemed to mostly have advice for Carissa. But that could've been because Carissa is the one who wasn't getting what she wanted, more than because the situation was mostly Carissa's fault. Or because Carissa was the one She could mindread so the one whose errors She could see. Carissa finds that she cares quite a lot whether Iomedae thinks the situation was mostly her fault or not, even though she can also see that caring a lot about that is the - gesture Iomedae warned her against, it's the kind of caring-about-something that doesn't have a win condition and gets in the way of winning.

Well. When you have a god answering your questions, you may as well ask all of them.

She has a headache from all of the crying. She - weighs the upsides and downsides and decides she'd rather have a headache than ask Cam for a glass of water.

She stares at Iomedae's face. She's aware this is kind of a weird thing to do. It's not just that it's a Chelish face; it's one that looks strikingly like Carissa's. No one would be surprised to learn that they were sisters. 

Was that intentional? Probably. 

When the face moves Carissa startles.

"It has been an hour."

"Right. Thank you. I wanted to know what percentage of people in Heaven become what I'd probably call a Power in Heaven."

"Perhaps one in ten thousand, at some point, though it is true of a much smaller share at any time. It is more common in Heaven than in Hell for a Power to retire, and pass along their strength to another."

"Do you sponsor anyone who wants it?"

"No. That would not be a good use of resources."

"Then why the offer."

"You are, in fact, a deeply unusual person with an intensely felt area of concern not presently strongly represented in Heaven except by entities like me that work from a reference copy of all human values, construed as best we can into complex cases no one can ask humans about."

"What, not murdering people?"

"Yes. I am imagining you would also kick up a fuss across Creation about familiars dying when their spellcasters do and not getting an afterlife, and about that spell that makes a magic item intelligent but only for ten minutes, and about similar phenomena. Worlds where for whatever reason no one gets afterlives, species that don't get counted as having souls. It is a wrong in the world, and one I'm not shaped to address, especially."

"There are worlds where no one gets afterlives?? There are species that don't get counted as having souls????"

" - see, I think you'd do quite nicely."

"Why aren't you on that??? Isn't this Your job??"

"My job is purchasing as much for everyone as I can with everything I have. Life is among the things I try to purchase; life, and knowledge, and freedom, and happiness, and health, and space to grow in. It's your decision, right now, Carissa, how many resources I have to purchase things with."

"Yes, yes. A few more questions first. Were you pursuing this conversation with the objective of getting me ambivalent enough about Dis that I wouldn't kill myself if the markets say you're doing it."

"No. Your existing authorizations wouldn't be sufficient for what we'd want to do; you'd have to either agree to doing it or not do that. Or snap Cam's binding or issue him a very general authorization. I was not steering for those outcomes, because my extrapolation of what you'd want wouldn't permit that."