The sky is blue and cloudless and has a sun, as if it were Earth; the ground is the same muck-spoilage--goo as in the last place, and hard to move in. But she's very fast, and before too long there is -

- something like a soap-bubble, or like a lightning strike stretched with some giant hands out across the whole horizon, crackling with energy and permitting light through - but very distorted light.

The demons are mostly avoiding it.

Hmmm.

That's probably bad news, on the grounds that this is hell and one imagines that there is probably very little good news in hell, but it's different from the other things and she would like to get her bearings. And there don't seem to be any... trees, or animals, or anything else she might be able to use to warm herself, in this area.

She heads towards the soap-bubble made of lightning, staying lower to the ground the closer she gets to it.

On the other side there's a - fortress? Wavering, in the soap-bubble distortion, but maybe human-sized. 

A demon barrels through the soap-bubble and - with excruciating slowness - rips through it, out to the other side. And people fire on it, from the fortress, flaming arrows and strange bolts of light. 

The soap bubble snaps back to its previous configuration.

Hm.

There's really no reason to believe that the people on the other side of the soap bubble are any nicer than what she has over here, but they do have buildings, and she would very very much like to be inside a building right now. 

She runs parallel to the soap bubble on her quite-possibly-frostbitten feet, looking for a place to attempt breaking through that doesn't have a fortress immediately on the other side.

It's a very very big soapbubble! In many places the fortresses are quite far, not even necessarily visible.

Then she will find a place where the fortresses are far away, and charge the soap bubble with all of her strength, before "all of her strength" stops being a very impressive amount.

The soapbubble hurts. It feels like it is - trying to strip away something that's not in fact on her - and piling a lot of things onto her head all at once, sticky and gluey and - actually, kind of like the thing that happened immediately before she died -

And then she is through it, and lying stunned on the ground, and there's a team of flying people swooping in towards her. 

Well that was utterly and completely awful and she's not sure she's going to be entirely capable of doing much thinking about anything for the next - several seconds, anyway, although it seems important enough that after that she will try once again to push through all of that.



........the flying people are people?

Yep!

They seem to be having the exact same realization and being equally confused about it. They're hovering, now, squinting at her. Someone shouts something in a language she doesn't speak.

She pulls herself into a crouch that she can spring up from if she needs to, and then raises her open hands to show that she's unarmed. In case that helps anything. (Not very sure what happened to that sword, in the crossing. Probably dropped it.) 

These people are so incredibly confused! They try more languages. They hover and confer among each other, anxiously.

Then one of them lands and walks towards her, his hands out with his palms open as well (though there's a weapon holstered at his side). He asks an incomprehensible question.

She's shivering. And kind of freaking out about it. But she's not going to be the first person to attack, not humans.

"I don't know that language."

He reaches into a different pocket at his side and pulls out - a vial of something red. Maybe blood. Sprinkles it on his hand and takes hers, as if this is a very normal thing to do -

- and then suddenly she's - not injured? She still feels terrible in a dozen different ways but her feet aren't bleeding or frostbitten and her fingernails aren't ripped and a bunch of things that were hurting now aren't.

He looks at her consideringly and then scoops her up into the air and rejoins his flying friends.

Mrrrgh.

She doesn't love having witchcraft used on her, and doesn't love whatever else is still wrong with her, and also doesn't love being in the air where she can't control the situation or escape if she needs to (how much magic does it take to fly, as a human?). But this is at least superficially and temporarily better than the previous situation.

She lets this happen to her. But she keeps a close eye on the weapon at his side, in case she finds herself needing to go for it.

They seem in a hurry to get back; maybe flying is expensive. The one carrying her is slower, and his spell fails just as they approach the nearest fortress; he grunts irritably to himself, sets her on the ground, and proceeds at a quick walk. The others have already alighted on the battlements.

After a minute of walking the fortress doors open and someone comes out, towards them. 

Incredibly confused conversation! 

- but only a little of it, before she turns to Chola and says in fluent Italian, "did you end up inside the wards somehow? Who're you with?"

"I don't understand the question.

"Do you have clothes."

"Yeah, of course, come on back to the fortress and we'll get you something. You don't understand the question 'who're you with'? Like - which King, or which church, sent you to the Worldwound..."

"That's the tear the demons are coming through?"

"That's the one."

She makes a thoughtful sound and remembers that there are places where hell manages to puncture the barrier between itself and the human world. Hellmouths. That must be the sort of phenomenon in play here. Which must mean -

Hm. You probably shouldn't go around admitting that you've just died and gone to hell. At least not until you've gotten some clothes.

"I don't know that I'm with anyone, right now. I'd like some clothes."

"Well. We're always recruiting, if you want to help - how are you alive - no offense, but you don't look like you can rip a demon apart in single combat -"

They reach the fortress and are waved in. The Italian-speaking woman does something to make the muck that Chola is dripping vanish from the floor behind them as they walk. And then - "here, these are my exercise clothes, I don't wear them much. I can get you armor, too, if you're accustomed to it."

"Occasionally. I'd look at what you had, if you have spares."

She takes the clothes, and begins putting them on. Not much reason to find a place to change if you're already naked.

"What part of the world is this?"

"The Worldwound? It's really far north. Far enough that the sun doesn't rise all winter, and doesn't set all summer. I can show you a map, if you'd like."

"I'd appreciate that."

She fetches her a map. "The Worldwound's here. This is Avistan, that's the Inner Sea, that's Casmaron, that's Tian Xia - you look Avistani, though - here's Cheliax and here's Taldor and here's the breakaway Chelish provinces and here's Varisia and here're the River Kingdoms..."

Well, some things are vaguely the right shape, but there's no Italian peninsula, and she feels like that's usually kind of hard to miss. 

"How accurate do you know this part to be?" she asks, and points to the center of the northern edge of the Inner Sea.

"That's, uh, my country. So I'm pretty sure of it."

"Hmm. None of these are where I am from. It's - possible that when I came back through the hellmouth - your Worldwound - I arrived in a place that is beyond any map I have ever seen. I suppose."

"It's the Abyss on the other side, not Hell," she corrects her absentmindedly. "I guess you might have. The Abyss is infinite and probably people from other places can go there as well. ....though mostly they'd immediately die."

"It looked like that sort of place, yeah.

" - do you have any food."

"Oh! Of course, I'm sorry - the mess hall's this way -"

It's not serving a meal right now but they leave leftovers out for people returning late or still hungry; there's some cold stew and some bread.

Might as well be a feast.

Her training has not precisely covered how you go about coming back from starvation diets responsibly, so she scarfs down everything she can get her hands on. Slayer constitution being what it is, this doesn't go as terribly as you might expect.

"Thank you," she says, when it occurs to her. "You've been very hospitable. I'm sure I'd be politer under other circumstances, but it's been a very difficult few days, recently."

"We're very glad to have you! And I have a million questions about the sword, but that can wait until you've slept."

"Oh, did the flying men pick it up? That's convenient. Wrestled it off a demon, I don't know much about it in particular."

"I enchant magic arms and it's very well made. I don't think demons can do that kind of work, so probably they stole it at some point?" Shrug. "I bet you can keep it, if you're willing to help at the Worldwound. ...you know how to use it? It looked, uh, very successfully used."

"Well, I ran a few of them through with it. It's not what I'd pick out of an armory if I had access to anything, but it was a big improvement on fists, I can tell you that."

"....I guess it....would be. What do you want, I could melt down the sword for a light weapon and have enough spellsilver for three enhancements probably."

"Well, I do like lighter, faster swords when I use them. I'm actually most well versed in the use of a stake, but you only really want them when fighting vampires, they're not best for any other types of demons. What's it do in its current form, do you have any idea? I confess I wasn't looking very hard when I was freezing to death."

"It's a called weapon - you can teleport it to your hand - and it's mimetic - steals other creatures' energy resistances - and it's sharper, moves quicker and hits harder, like all magic weapons do. I can put other stuff than that on it, though." Carissa really wants to get to play with the extremely expensive sword.

"You can teleport it to your hand??"

"Yeah. Uh, if you've already had it for more than a day, it needs some time to learn you - otherwise it won't work yet."

"Ahhh. I don't think it's been a whole day since I got it, but that does sound very useful. Awful to be without weapons, really. I don't know what taking energy resistances looks like, can you say what it would look like in practice - ?"

"Uh, demons are resistant to physical damage - fire, cold, acid - and immune to electricity and poison - and the weapon, when it injures them, can copy that, like the spell Resist Energy, protecting you - do you usually fight without a wizard or a cleric -"

"Christians don't rely on wizards. - I suppose you've probably never heard of us, if you're so far away that I've never heard of you. I know on occasion some of the watchers - the members of the organization that trained me - have resorted to use of the dark arts out of desperation, but that's the sort of thing that always goes badly in the end. Anyway, none of them go into combat with me, they're strictly preparatory support. And we've got priests, of course, but I generally don't call on them for combat situations unless there's an unquiet spirit involved."

"Your god...prohibits working with wizards??? Are spell-like abilities in swords allowed or it supposed to be no arcane magic at all."

"I'm really not an expert on all the different types? I'm really kind of specialized. It'd be better to have studied more, but I'm always so busy. My watcher would know if he were here, that's his job. I don't think swinging a sword is the sort of thing the Almighty would object to in itself, not unless it's one of those intelligent dark swords that steals your soul or requires you to make a pact with it or tries to convince you to end the world or sacrifice babies or something - it isn't one of those, you don't think, is it - ?"

“It’s not intelligent and I don’t think sacrificing babies would even improve its function, they don’t have energy resistance to steal. This is a ….Lawful Good god?” It sounds like it, with all the very stupid rules, though the cleric said the girl herself reads Lawful Neutral. (And strong; the kind of fighter who’d run with sixth circle casters, if she is indeed a fighter).

"I don't know what your classification scheme is for your own. I'm not sure He'd fit within it at all, He's not even really the same kind of power as any of the other ones people worship or go around making pacts with. - oh, I'm a terrible person to introduce you to the concept, really, but I suppose I'm the only one here."

“Does He grant his priests the ability to do miracles and have teachings people follow and gather the souls of his followers to Him when they die?”

"Yes, all of that. But that doesn't make other gods His equal, if that's your next thought, even if they also do all of those things in some measure. A human can communicate and think and alter the world around them, like a god, and it doesn't make them equal, even if they have some abilities in common."

"I agree with that. What about your god makes you say that the other gods aren't His equal."

"He created all universes and humanity, for a start."

“….that seems kind of unlikely. Why would He create lots of gods opposed to Him.”

"You might ask the same question about people. My understanding is that all of the powers whose cultists I encounter were once loyal to Him, but that when given the capacity for free will, some of them rebelled against Him and sought to overtake Him in glory, even though this was impossible."

“Maybe because of the prohibition on magic,” she says because it seems both rude and fraught to argue theology further. “There’s a treaty among the gods at the Worldwound, do you expect your god to want His followers to abide by it?”

"I suppose I'd need to know something about its terms, to take a guess." She furrows her eyebrows in confusion. "But wait, one of us is confused about what 'magic' is, and knowing my own level of ignorance on the subject, I'm not sure who I think it is. The other powers wouldn't have rebelled because they wanted to use magic. It's fine to take advantage of powers that were granted by the Almighty, as all of theirs originally were. That's no more wrong than a person using their own hands, I don't think, since all of them were gifts from God in the first place anyway. It's not fine to worship other gods in exchange for power, or to call on dark or demonic powers for information or protection instead of relying on Him."

“Oh! That’s much more reasonable - uh, in the classification system I know, that’s be witchcraft which your god prohibits, and being a cleric of other gods, which, I think most gods prohibit that, mine certainly does. Being a wizard isn’t that, it’s - learning how magic flows in the world and how to harness it to do things you want to do. The gods don’t grant us arcane magic, except I guess insofar as they granted us intelligence and free will. You can’t sell your soul to become a wizard, you’ve got to actually learn it.”

" - huh. I suppose I have heard people call it a prohibition on witchcraft before, and maybe even more often than calling it a prohibition on magic. I don't know whether that's using different words for the same thing or making a distinction that matters.

"I really wish I'd had time to learn more about this sort of thing.

"Normally I'd want to ask - someone who knows more about magic to figure out what it is you're doing and what the rules about it are. Unfortunately I seem to be alone. I'm - not sure I trust you to be right about what it is you're doing, or what it calls on, but guess I don't really trust myself to be sure, either."

“I guess we can make do with that for now and maybe your priests will clarify later if it’s important. The Worldwound treaty is - well, treaties between gods aren’t things mortals can understand, but the part we are individually accountable for is that we will not attack or enchant each other, or incite the demons to, or take measures to leave each other vulnerable to attack, that we’ll render aid as we would to our own forces, that we can expel each other from our territory with the minimum required violence - mostly it’s that even if your god and mine are at odds, we won’t stab you in the back and you won’t stab us in the back.”

"I suppose that seems fairly necessary, given your - situation, out there."

She is not taking that as agreement, so she is not going to push further on the Lawful Good god thing. "It's not a very good situation. It's been that way for a century and it's mostly not getting worse but - we've lost more ground than we've gained."

" - are you saying that the hellmouth out there has been open for more than a hundred years?"

"Yep! We hit a century just last year. Had a commemorative event of some kind, I think, though I only got here a couple months ago so I wasn't there for it. It opened when Aroden died. 4606."

"Well that's - awful, and I don't immediately know what can be done about it, since I don't know how to contact the watchers or where this place - is. I suppose I should thank you for keeping the world intact this long."

"...well, you know, we live here. I'm sure we'd be glad to have your help, though, if you think your god would want you to follow the treaty. Sometimes demons do get through and if you get to them quick enough they're pretty helpless but it's a hundred miles across, the territory the demons control, and it's hard to get everywhere quickly enough."

"Well, I suppose this does sound like the sort of thing that ought to be my job. And even if it weren't, I feel like I ought to offer something to repay your people for quite possibly saving my life." If that's a thing she has anymore. She's honestly still very confused on this point.

"What ...is your job exactly?"

"I'm a vampire slayer by calling. The name's a bit misleading, though. I specialize in vampires, normally, but it's really my responsibility to hunt down and slay demons of all kinds."

"Well. We sure do have a lot of demons around here. - I'm Carissa Sevar. I'm the secondary unit wizard for His Majesty's Eleventh. It's nice to meet you."

"I'm Chola. Uh, Chola the Vampire Slayer, I suppose, if it's ever necessary to disambiguate. It's nice to meet you, too."

"Do you want, uh, a bath."

" - yes. Absolutely. Never so much in my entire life."

"There's only one bathhouse, shared with the men, but I can stand at the door and shoo them." She starts walking that direction.

"I see. That's really very considerate of you." She has in fact heard that lots of pagans are much more hospitable than you'd expect them to be, being pagans and all, but she's never really had any contact with pagans who weren't also trying to murder her and she keeps being surprised by it. Maybe it has to do with mostly being around their own sort of people. Or maybe it has to do with the treaty surrounding the hellmouth.

Either way, she's pretty sure she's still got filth in places that she didn't know filth could get to, and it'll be good to get to something resembling clean.

(It does occur to her that they might attack her while she's distracted. But she's not any less unarmed while she's wearing her new clothes, and if she has to she can always pick something up and hit people with it. Or punch them. She's pretty good at punching people.)

If they wanted to take down the high-level fighter they'd in fact try magic, not stabbing, but that's not in Carissa's orders at all, yet. Instead once she has reached the bathhouse she waves Chola in, shows her where the soap is, steps right outside, and casts Detect Thoughts.

Soap and water are lovely. Yes. Much better than her previous circumstances.

- okay she should really actually think about her circumstances and how she got here and what it implies about her current metaphysical status. She thinks she died. Probably. Except she doesn't seem very dead? If you die you're supposed to be dead, right, in some identifiable way, not still wandering around in a body that's indistinguishable from a living person's? She has a heartbeat and a pulse, and her flesh is still warm, that doesn't seem very dead at all. She's certainly not undead, although she's not sure that that's the same question.

And why is she not in hell anymore, if she died and got sent there? She was very much under the impression that people couldn't, at least under ordinary circumstances, simply walk out of hell again and come back to earth as if they hadn't been killed at all. Possibly the open hellmouth is affecting this. But it seems like it would have to be enormously unlikely, to happen to fall within walking distance of one after dying, and happen not to get stopped on your way out.

Maybe she didn't die? Or maybe she did, but she - was sent here intentionally? It certainly has all the earmarks of divine intervention, being taken out of a dangerous situation and thrown into a worse one only to walk out into the very place where you should have been focusing your efforts in the first place, if you could have gotten there. Maybe she hasn't failed. Or maybe she did, but she's being given a second chance to do better, and be less prideful, and do more in service to her creator. Whether the brief stint in hell is a sign of her character or not, it seems impossible that she came to be here by accident. Which means that she is meant to be here, and must comport herself as well as she can, with the understanding that this is her assignment, one given to her nearly as directly as God ever gives assignments to anyone.

That seems like it might be right, anyway.

She's honestly so confused.

Soap is great. 

Well, she'll ...write that down. 

She's kind of confused but not in a way that seems like an emergency. And the woman is ....kind of inspiringly religious, actually. Of course probably when you're sufficiently high level it's easier because it's plausible that your god is paying you specific attention and has plans for you. 

Eventually she finishes washing herself and puts her clothes back on. She is SO clean. Or really she was just very dirty for several days, but in any case, her mood is much improved.

"Thank you for that. I feel - much more like a person again."

"Our pleasure. I should - explain to my superiors what you explained about where you're from and who you worship - does your god have a name we should use -"

"Honestly I usually just call Him 'God'? Um - oh, you ought to say that I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, I think, that ought to be disambiguating. That's the name that was given to Him when He became a human in order to walk among us and secure for us eternal life."

"Huh, when someone tried that here it didn't go well at all. And - do His followers who are purest of heart go to Heaven?" This seems like a more promising avenue than asking about Lawful Goodness. "Where there are angels, and archons, and they war with Hell?"

"They all do, if they trusted in Him to save them."

"Ah huh. Why don't you bunk in my room for now, and I'll go explain all this to my superiors and maybe they'll know if there's any of that religion anywhere they've heard of, they've been here longer than me."

"All right! That's very generous of you."

Someone has not been straight with this kid about how valuable her high-level fighter services are. Carissa will join that someone in not being straight with the kid about this. "His Majesty's very generous. Most countries don't send much force to the Worldwound or underfund them but we try to take care of everyone." And she'll walk Chola to the bunks; it's not far.

Pagans are really impressively civilized about things sometimes.

She'll head to the bunks and then get to praying before she goes to sleep, probably, she feels like she has a lot to think about.

She casts Detect Thoughts and listens in on that too, seems potentially relevant.

Dear God,

I want to thank You for protecting me from the vampires when I was not capable of protecting myself. I want to thank You for bringing me to this threat to the world, so that I can use the power that You have given me in an attempt to put an end to it. It's a really big threat to the world, though, I don't actually know what you're supposed to do about a hellmouth that's opened this far. Sorry. Uh. I want to thank You for delivering me into the hands of hospitable pagans, and for watching over me during my journey. Thank you for Carissa Sevar, and her help, and her ability to speak Italian, which I should ask her about.

I ask that You help me be a good representative of You to the pagans here, and that You watch over me and guide me towards Your will in all things. I ask that You deliver these people from the hellmouth that has plagued them for more than a century, so that they might bear witness to Your power and greatness. But if that is not Your will for this place, then I ask that I be directed to whatever it is. 

I know that I have not always been a perfect representative of You. I know that I have been disobedient and childish, at times, and slothful and stubborn, at others. Is stubborn kind of the same thing as disobedient? Should those be grouped differently? Sorry. I guess my worst fault has always been pride, in thinking that I know better than You what ought to be done. 

Perhaps this is a chance to learn humility. Should be easy. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing here. I guess maybe that's also pride, thinking it'll be easy. Well. I'm not very good at deciding what to do on my own, and I've never really been this alone, so I'll probably need lots of help.

Please be with mother and father and Anselm and Tullia and Novella and Isotta and Ciosa and Maria and Agnella. Keep them safe, and, if it is your will, let me come home to them in time. Please be with the pope, and all his cardinals, and all Your priests, and help them to avoid summoning demons and worshipping false gods and patronizing vampires, at least right now while I'm not in Rome to put a stop to it.

Uh, please help someone deal with that vampire I didn't get.

Amen.


Man, I miss my watcher. Ugh. 

.....awwww??

Also, how young is she?

They've sent someone to swap out Carissa on guarding the door; she heads back to make a report on all of this.

The unit commander is a man in his late thirties; he's discussing something with one of the clerics, but afterwards has time to talk to her, if it's important.

"The patrol team on the south side found a naked teenage girl, looks Avistani, running out of the Worldwound earlier today. Lawful neutral. They called me out for Tongues. She's from a place she couldn't pinpoint on the map, couldn't explain how she got into the Abyss but thinks she might've got there by dying - she's alive, though - fought her way out and then all the way to the edge of the wards and then through them. She had a +2 mimetic called sword which she used to kill some demons on the way, and which she says she took off them. She's asleep in my bunk now." Carissa has no idea if this is important but it's definitely weird and it feels like the reprimand for not mentioning it would be much worse than the reprimand for three unnecessary sentences.

"She's Lawful Neutral but believes she entered the Abyss by dying?"

"She didn't say that but it's what she was thinking, yes. She didn't know what the classification system was and wasn't clear on the difference between the Abyss and Hell so maybe where she's from they just know people go different places and don't know why? - she's religious. Lawful Good god called Jesus Christ who claims to be the creator of all the universes."

He raises his eyebrows a bit, at that last part, but doesn't immediately comment on it.

"Any idea what she was doing when she died? Something that could have interfered with the process?"

"Didn't ask. I can in the morning, if we're admitting we're reading her mind or if I can manufacture some other reason to ask. She said she wants to stay, fighting demons is her sacred duty or something."

"Mmm. Anyone who can fight their way out of the Abyss with no weapons or armor is certainly best aimed in that direction. It's not obvious from what you've said whether she can function effectively with other fighters, but if she can follow orders, we're certainly recruiting. See if you can determine that. And why she might have been in the Abyss, even if it's probably just an adventuring scrape. I'd think she wouldn't be suspicious if you asked for more information about how exactly she arrived here."

"Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."

Carissa goes and looks at the beautiful sword for three hours straight until she's sure she could remake it from scratch and then begs off her mindreading shift as she's been mindreading the strange new arrival and then goes to bed herself. 

Chola wakes up well-rested and delighted that nobody here has tried to murder her at all yet. She says some morning prayers. And then she waits for Carissa, at least for a while, although if nothing happens promptly then she might have to determine where to source food and water and useful work on her own.

Carissa is awake not that much later than her but has to do her own morning prayers - the bedroom has an altar to Asmodeus set against one wall - and then her spell preparation, which will take a while. "There'll be breakfast in the mess hall if you want to go ahead," she says once she has Tongues up.

"All right! Shall I come back here when I finish?"

"Sounds good, I can take you to the armory and try more at figuring out how you got here and then we can figure out a team assignment for fighting demons."

"All right! Thank you again!"

And she can head off back to the mess hall to eat breakfast.

Breakfast is porridge. There are a lot of smartly uniformed Chelish soldiers milling around eating and speaking their unfamiliar language; some of them look curiously at her. Most of them are men, but there's a handful who aren't; they're in the same uniforms.

The religious symbol for their pagan god seems to be a red pentagram.

Hmm. Looks demonic. She doesn't like it. And doesn't trust their religious inclinations one bit, or the amount of magic they have casually flying around. But she supposes they can't be expected to know much better, with no one here to tell them otherwise, and they have been fighting all of the demonic armies pouring out of their hellmouth, which is brave of them.

She eats three bowls of porridge, if they don't object to giving her that much, and finishes them in a concerningly small amount of time. She thanks them for the food, bowing a little, in case that helps the sentiment be understood. Then she heads back to Carissa's room.

Carissa's still preparing spells; she's sitting on her bed with a thick spellbook full of colorful ink diagrams open in her lap, her expression intense, her fingers moving in the air like she's playing an invisible instrument. 

She doesn't even notice Chola until she's done, and then she reaches out for her arm and does some magic that feels like - stuffing a lot of new words into Chola's head?

" - what was that."

"Sorry, I meant to explain beforehand but Tongues had run out. Yesterday I was using Tongues to speak your language, but it lasts less than an hour, and I can only cast it twice a day. Today I wanted to give you our language, the language of Avistan, so that you can also talk to other people, especially to the people you're going out to fight demons with. I can do that every day and it'll last all day."

She looks somewhat distressed. "I - see why you would want to do that."

"We can figure out something else if you think you've got a religious prohibition about it. I could probably make the sword give you Comprehend Languages? Wouldn't let you talk, but it'd let you understand people at least." She cannot see under what religious prohibition that would be all right when the spell isn't but gods are hard to understand.

"I should probably start aiming to learn the language here as quickly as possible. I'm sorry, I don't even actually know whether the thing you're doing is a problem, it's just that I don't think I've ever seen magic in practice that wasn't also witchcraft, and that didn't have obvious harmful effects half the time and subtly harmful effects the other half of the time, and it just seems right to be extremely cautious about letting people - cast spells on me, if that's what you're doing."

"Probably someone can get you language lessons, it'll save me a spell slot anyway. People usually give their allies in combat spells that make them stronger and faster and safe against possession and so on but I guess you can stand out of range while they do those."

"I would appreciate that, if it's possible. At least until I've come to a better understanding of what's happening."

"I'd heard it about Good, that it's doing everything at a terrible handicap because the way it's done matters more than what happens, but I hadn't actually encountered it before. But if it's what you're doing that's your lookout. Let's get you armor."

"I'd appreciate some."

She should probably just ignore the comment about handicaps but -

" - it is entirely possible that you've just figured out something very smart here and I'm handicapping myself for no reason, but I've met an awful lot of people who delved into the dark arts and then were possessed or went insane or ended up sacrificing their firstborn or turning into zombies, and I'm not an expert, I just don't touch anything that seems off, like - wild mushrooms, or something - "

"That's reasonable! I think that ....even if you're not a wizard you can get possessed or turned into a zombie. I guess wizards become adventurers and are near dangerous situations more, but also they can defend themselves. A powerful wizard is much harder to possess than a random person, they've learned how to slip clear of mind-affecting magic. And I bet wizards kill their children much less, since they can afford people to look after them. But I didn't mean to say you were being foolish, just, I'd heard that said about Good, and hadn't encountered anyone going for Good or any examples of it, and maybe this isn't one, but it sort of seems it, if your god bars magic even when it doesn't involve sacrificing your firstborns or going insane or getting turned into a zombie."

"Hmm. I think it's more reasonable than that makes it sound, but I don't really know enough about where the lines are to say, and I've definitely heard that there are lots of people who think they know what their power costs and then they don't at all. Not to say you're obviously one of them. But I think I'd certainly end up there, if I went around accepting every kind of magical aid that was offered.

"...what else can you do with the sword, do you think, with your magic that you're very sure isn't witchcraft -"

"That's my assignment here, I'm a weapons enchanter and I'm supposed to learn from everyone here with a cool sword or armor, learn how to make it. I only recently got here but I can do enhancements to make it deadlier against demons, of course, and I can make it flaming or Lawful or generally deadlier or make it drink of your own blood to do more damage, which sounds like something you would be opposed to, really, or I can make it better at shielding the bearer or capable of damaging incorporeal creatures - ghosts, that kind of thing -"

"Oooh."

"And I've heard of more stuff than that, and should be able to learn it eventually, all kinds of powerful adventurers with good weapons and armor come to the Worldwound. I'm not very good at getting them to talk to me, yet, but I just need practice."

"What kinds of stuff?"

"You can make them ignore armor and shields and strike the body directly, you can make them stay in the bearer's hand even when they're gravely injured, and help them recover consciousness, you can make them store spells and cast them when they strike..."

"Hmmm. I suppose something defensive seems potentially the most powerful, if you fail to hit something you can try again but if something hits you hard enough then that's it and you're dead, right? But on the other hand bursting into flames would be so useful for vampires, and it's terribly annoying not to be able to do anything about ghosts... of course I could never really compensate you for any of this even if I wanted it, I don't have, uh, things - "

"Well, the sword has enough spellsilver for three enhancements, or a more major one, and I'd have lots of fun reworking it to have whichever specific ones you want. And if you enlist you will, you know, get paid, though it's not fourth-enhancement money. And I guess you always have the option of robbing more demons, though I think they mostly don't have magic swords. Maybe when I go ask high level adventurers if I can look at their stuff I can also ask them where they got it, and maybe some of them know of some place with a lot of vampires you could kill and take their stuff. Ustalav's got lots of vampires, though it might be illegal to just stab them if they aren't doing anything? Maybe you could go around looking like a very innocent twenty-year-old and then, when they try to eat you, you'd be within your rights."

"Hm. I don't think it would be right to leave the Worldwound while it's in this condition, vampires are awful but they're not quite as - large."

"I don't actually know anything about going for Good so feel free to ignore me but if having better equipment would make you better at killing demons then possibly it'd be worth doing more mercenary work for a while and coming back when you're richer? Even if you just want to do as much demon-killing as possible? I don't know if that's allowed." They've reached the armory; she opens it and shows Chola a fairly wide range of armor, most of it evidently sized for men though there's some chain mail where it wouldn't matter too much.

"Huh. I hadn't thought of that. I guess I've always had all of my equipment provided."

Chain mail seems probably like a good way to go, here, she doesn't have any real experience with plate armor and wouldn't want it to limit her movement much. Or maybe just a breastplate and she can guard her limbs in chain mail or leather, that might be best for a real battlefield where you can't expect to stay ahead of everything all the time. And she'll need a helmet. That seems important.

The helmets are too big. "We could sew something into them or go ask the Calistrians, they have women's sizes."

"The Calistrians?"

"Worshippers of Calistria, the goddess of vengeance. Chaotic Neutral. I don't talk to priests of other faiths and I think Chaos is terrible but I went and talked to their fighters and wizards about arms and armor enchanting, and they were friendly, and a lot of them are women 'cause Calistria takes in women fleeing bad marriages or wanting abortions, stuff like that."

She makes a bit of a face. "It'll - probably be fine to sew something in?"

"If you'd rather." It is valid to be suspicious of chaotic gods. They can grab the smallest too-big helmet and some padding for it.

She can sew. Learned that before she was called. It shouldn't be very difficult to get it into a serviceable state. 

Carissa will make conversation while she does that. "So, do you have any idea how you ended up in the Abyss? What were you doing immediately before that?"

"I was fighting a vampire."

"Well, vampires don't usually have Plane Shift, but I guess there's no reason one couldn't..."

"What's that?"

"A spell that can be used to send people to other planes. I can't cast it, it's seventh circle, you'd have to be a very powerful wizard."

"Hm. I feel like if he had been a powerful wizard he would have... done wizard things, during the fight. I suppose he might have felt that he didn't need to."

"- no, I think I'm with you, there aren't a lot of wizards who fight hand to hand if they can possibly avoid it. Clerics have Plane Shift too? Or maybe it wasn't him, some kind of - magical trap or something -"

"Honestly I think he might have killed me? But I'm not very sure of this because if I'd been killed I would not really expect to be capable of... walking out and going on just as I was before. But I've never encountered an open hellmouth before."

"And usually people who die and go to the Abyss on that account are...transformed into little grub demons. I'm pretty sure. And you're Lawful so you shouldn't've gone to the Abyss, though I guess sometimes souls fall out of the river or something."

"I don't really know what it means when you say that I'm Lawful."

"There's - things that unspool into much bigger things only the gods understand - and Law and Chaos, and Good and Evil, are those things. Law is - duty, obeying authority, knowing your place, keeping your oaths. Chaos is - doing whatever you want, resisting authority, rejecting obligations. Demons are chaotic. Good is - well, I don't really get Good, personally, but I know that there's lots of rules about how you do things, and they say their afterlives are nicer, and you can't be very Good and very ambitious - Evil is ambition, and -" Chola's prayer was actually kind of about this - "and pride, and greed - trying to do things in the world, trying to make things your own -"

"Hm.

"What do you try to be?"

"I'm Lawful Evil. That's what my god is, and it's what Cheliax is."

"Why?"

"Why is it what Cheliax is? Because my god saved it from a horrible civil war and made it his, sixty years ago. Why is it what Asmodeus is? Probably for god reasons that wouldn't even make any sense to me if He tried to explain them, because He's greater and smarter than me and understands things about what Law is and what Evil is that I can't. Why is it what I am? I mean, because I am Chelish and am devoted to Asmodeus, in one sense, but in another one - practically everyone who tries to do things in the world is Evil, Good's a very narrow path. And Law is - order and civilization and the lack of barbarism, I'm in favor of all of that."

"Hm.

"I suppose it is true that goodness is a narrower path than evil," she says, after she's paused in her sewing a moment to think about this. "And that everyone ends up there without intervention, really. Your reason is that you're resigned to it?"

"Well, if everyone ends up there, then it seems awfully silly to spend a lot of time trying to not end up there, instead of figuring out how to have the things that are important anyway."

"No, I think that everyone ends up there without help. That's not the same thing. I believe that everyone is stained with evil, when they come into the world, and that the world itself is stained with evil, and that humans aren't strong enough to break free of the cycle of evil alone. This is why it was necessary for Christ to come to earth, and be a human, so that He could die - so that He could be sacrificed, for our sins, and take on the weight of them by entering hell Himself, for paying the price for each of us to attain salvation despite our wickedness."

"Well, He might've done that, but everyone I know who died still went to Hell."

"Yes. Our greatest duty is to spread His word to those who have not heard of it, and do not yet know to ask Him for it. But unfortunately I'm not very prepared for this, I'm - mostly good at fighting demons."

"Well, fighting demons seems more important, there's nothing wrong with Hell."

"You don't think so?"

"No. I mean, it's not comfortable for mortals but neither is Heaven, mortals just aren't very suited for what gods require of us and it takes a lot of teaching and that part hurts."

"I've never particularly heard that hell teaches one anything."

"It teaches you how to be a correctly shaped obedient servant of Asmodeus."

"Why do you want to be that?"

"I mean, probably if I could live forever I would? But I can't, and I don't particularly think being shaped for Heaven would be nicer than being shaped for Hell, and Asmodeus has a plan for the universe and I'll have a part in enacting it. And I'll probably get to do lots of cool magic, if that's how I'm most valuable."

"Hm."

Her immediate instinct is to say that going to heaven is living forever, but she feels like that might not be very convincing for someone who believes that going to hell is basically just as much like living forever.

"Well, I think that God certainly isn't without a plan for the universe."

"I guess someday we'll see who wins. - if Asmodeus wins then everyone will be reunited in Hell. Is that true the other way around?"

"I'm not sure. I've heard that people who go to hell stay there forever, but - well. I think that my limited personal experience with the afterlife was not precisely what I was prepared for."

"Huh. If that's so, then I think we'd better hope Asmodeus wins, if we want people to all be in the same place and not having an eternal stupid war."

"I think the war will end eventually. But - I am under the impression that being in heaven is actually really nice, once you get there? And I think that being in hell involves a lot of suffering, just sort of forever. - well. I guess I've heard that some people go to limbo and that that's probably not as terrible as the rest of it. But still."

"I think suffering is - fine? Pain is the body learning from mistakes, if you never suffer you're never - adjusting course."

"Hmmm, I think that's true about some kinds of suffering? But - I don't think you'd want it to go on forever."

She looks down at her helmet.

"I think it's all sewn in now."

"Well. Then let's go introduce you to your team."

Nod.

So Carissa will introduce Chola to the team that responds to demon incursions right at the fortress, since Chola has a religious objection to flight. They’re three heavily built men older than her - though maybe not that much older - and a woman in a priest’s robes, her hair cut like a boy’s. 

“The fortress protects the wardstones that power the protections everywhere else,” she says in a clipped voice. “Most days nothing happens except the fighters spar with summons for practice; some days they come by the hundreds, and we have to hold on until everyone else can get here. It’s irresponsible to put your life in danger outside a rush like that, understand?”

"Yes, I understand."

"All right, then."

It's mostly boring. They have someone on surveillance duty, watching through the shifty wiggling soap bubble to see if demons are moving their way en masse; the job gives you a headache and every half hour they switch out. The people not on surveillance duty play cards, or do equipment maintenance. By midafternoon when nothing interesting has happened the priest announces that she's going to use a summons. "Do you know how great a height you can fall from without significant injury?" she asks Chola.

"Not specifically. I've fallen a few stories before and been fine. I landed on my feet, though."

"Okay. I'm going to summon a hala demon; you're going to try to fight it. It's under my control, but that doesn't mean it's not dangerous; if you don't know how many hits you can take, better not to get hit. Got it?"

Nod.

And she reaches for her pentagram and closes her eyes and flicks her wrist and - 

- it's birdlike, about seven feet tall with a twenty-foot wingspan; it appears in midair and when it flaps the wings the roar is deafening. It has a single blood-red eye and its mouth is full of sharp teeth. It lunges at her.

Big one. If it were grounded you'd go for the legs, and in the air you'll want to break those wings, if you can get to them. 

She dodges and doesn't let it hit her at all, as instructed; when it passes near her she brings her sword down on the front of one wing, where she expects to find the light and easily broken bones that birds have.

They don't shatter as easily as a bird's would, but they do shatter to that big sword. The windstorm it seems to generate blasts her in the face as it gets near; the creature, now grounded, lashes out at her with its talons.

Those look potentially very sharp, so she'd better hang back and make sure it doesn't hit her, again, even if that's a little more time consuming. Hard to say whether it's very strong or mostly just big, and she's trying not to find out this way.

She circles it and waits for an opening and goes for the legs when she thinks she's found one.

That lands, too. It tries to bite.

This time she blocks it with her sword; she's too close and it's too fast for dodging to make sense. When she's interrupted the strike, she runs her sword deeper, into what she hopes is the soft tissue inside its mouth.

The sword goes in, deep, and then the creature - vanishes, and her sword is moving through plain air.

" - huh."

She kind of thought that only vampires did that.

"Summons aren't really the creatures themselves, just magical constructs - copies, sort of. When damaged enough they vanish. The creatures coming out of the Worldwound aren't summons, they're the real thing, and should die normally," the priest says. "That was good. I'll do one more if we get to evening with no trouble on the horizon. We have sparring swords, in the meantime, if you want to spar with Feliz and Antoninus."

"Over here," one of those (they're hard to tell apart) says, and pulls swords - gleaming, high quality metal; it's not clear what makes them sparring swords - off a rack behind them.

"What makes them sparring swords?" she asks, in case there is an actual answer to this of some kind, even if she's honestly perfectly willing to spar with metal ones.

"They're merciful weapons! They do nonlethal damage." 

"Huh. ...what is that."

"Uh, it'll bruise you rather than cut you, even though it's sharp, if it'd run you through it'll knock you back instead...you still can kill someone with it, like you could kill someone with a bendy stick if you hit them hard enough with it, but it's harder."

"Do you spar like you're trying to kill each other, then, and only let the sword keep that from happening?"

"Yes."

"Wouldn't want there to be any misunderstandings. I happen to have killed a lot of things with wooden sticks, so I think I'll treat it like it's a normal sword until I have a handle on it, if it's all the same to you."

"Sure thing." They only look like they think this is absurd overconfidence of her a little bit.

Well, it's always possible that she'll embarrass herself somehow, which would be awful, but she really thinks the much more likely failure mode here is accidentally killing someone, and that seems like it might put a damper on the pagans' hospitality.

She wants to test a sword for a few minutes and then is ready to spar with anyone who's interested.

The sword feels like - a good sword. Well-balanced, light, moves easily. Not scratched at all, despite being a sparring sword. Maybe that's the magic.

One of the younger men will spar with her.

She bows to him, as she's been taught to, and then will spar with him.

Its honestly kind of a different art, fighting with a sword like you don't mean to kill someone. She sees why you might benefit from being able to fight like you meant it. But she'll try it this way first, at least until she has a sense of how the weapon works on her.

He's - much much better than a human who isn't the Slayer should be. Not as good as her, probably, not if she was trying, but - faster, stronger, with better precision with the weapon and a dozen nifty tricks for moving with it.

Well that's confusing. Sort of delightful, but confusing.

She'll see if she can win the hard way, first, by disarming him or getting the blade against his neck or his inner thigh, because she said she would and because challenges are fun and she wants to know if she can. But maybe she'll reconsider for the next match.

He gets in a couple hits before she manages to disarm him. As promised, they feel more like getting the wind knocked out of you than being stabbed, and leave bruises rather than cuts. She does manage to disarm him arguably before any of them would have killed her even if it'd been a real fight.

Another bow.

"You're stronger than I expected a human to be. If you think you'll be all right, I might like to try using the weapons as intended after all."

"Do you mostly fight civilians? Yeah, I'll be fine."

"I mostly fight vampires. Which you fight like you're trying to kill, and then you kill them."

"One on one? I would not fight a vampire one on one." Shrug. "Let's do this."

This time she fights him like he's a vampire. Minus the trying to cut off his head instead of running him through.

This time she wins. Not effortlessly, but she's better than him, when she's trying to hurt him. He seems delighted about this. 

Another bow. The watchers are very particular about following the proper forms, probably moreso than they are about knowing how to fight.

"Thank you. That was valuable."

The other soldiers want to try too!

She's willing to try again! Although if they manage to land hits sometimes then she will presumably at some point want to rest her bruises, at least for a few hours.

They do manage to land some hits; they're getting better as they learn her fighting style. It's reasonable for her to need a break but also infernal healing can patch her right up, if she wants it.

"No thank you. It won't take very long for them to stop hurting much anyway."

Then they can rest, and get lunch at some point - lunch is a stew with meat in it, and fresh-baked bread - and then spar some more. Two on one?

She's willing to try it! They're good enough that fighting two of them at once is the sort of thing you ought to avoid in real life, but of course real life is not always convenient like that, and it seems like an excellent thing to practice that would be very difficult to arrange under other circumstances.

In real life during the times when the demons rush the perimeter you often end up fighting several of them at once and it's indeed terrible, and usually deadly, but practice helps a lot. 

(They can pretty reliably beat her, two-on-one, but not always, and not walking away uninjured.)

Then she'll be learning a really unusual amount from this!

(Is what she tells herself. And them. She is not actually used to losing - anything, ever, to anyone, but it would speak sort of poorly of a person not to be able to handle that after she's been beating them all day, she thinks. Even if it's kind of unfamiliar and upsetting in some ways.)

Eventually it's dinnertime. One of the men puts his hand on her shoulder in a familiar sort of way. "The mess hall'll have stew again, but I know a guy that has steak, and drinks, want to come?"

"Stew is fine," she says, uncertainly, because she thinks he might be asking a different question than that but is not entirely sure what it is.

He lets it go.

The stew is fine. Carissa is there, talking with another wizard.

Acquaintance!!

She will take some stew and sit at Carissa's table and listen to what is being said if it doesn't appear to be secret in any way.

Not secret, just abstruse; they're debating whether you can do a particular complicated thing with weapon enchanting or if it'd have to be textiles.  When they're at a stopping point Carissa waves at Chola. "I see no demons have eaten you yet!"

"Not yet! We only fought one summon, we spent most of the day sparring among ourselves. They're much better than I expected! They can almost always beat me two on one."

If this is meant as a backhanded compliment she's being incredibly earnest about it.

"Huh, are you not very typical where you're from either? I assumed there was just some ridiculously good women's fighter order out there somewhere."

"Oh, there is! But only one of us at a time is called, and I've never heard of a man who could stand against a Slayer. Well, not a human one, anyway. At least not without witchcraft."

"Huh, only one at a time? Well, fighters as good as Cheliax's at the Worldwound aren't common, but you get heroes in stories, soldiers who could cut through whole armies of the undead themselves, and you get people who - aren't that, but travel with high level wizards, because a Fireball isn't going to leave them a smouldering pile of ash on the floor. And you improve quickly at the Worldwound."

"Huh. Well, I've never met humans that good before, even after training for years. It's very impressive."

"I'm glad you got along with them. I'm still meeting everybody, I don't know all the fighters as well."

"They seemed friendly enough. And one of them invited me to dinner, but I didn't really know how to handle that, so said I would eat here."

Snort. “Probably smart. Even if you like him, give it a month, so he doesn’t think you’re easily impressed.”

"I see. Thank you for the advice. Do you know what sorts of things people usually do in the evenings here? I suppose I should probably work on learning the language, but it seems good to at least check whether there are other things I should be participating in."

"Well, I mostly hang out learning magic from the older wizards. I think people mostly drink, or play games, or tell tall tales about how old fights went down. Or, you know, go out with each other but like I said, give it a month. I was actually advised to give it six, when I got here."

"Hm. It sounds like I should mostly focus on learning the language, although I'm not very sure how to best work on that while I'm currently able to speak and understand it perfectly."

"I'm no good at languages, I wouldn't know, sorry."

"That's all right, I just wanted to ask since it was your, uh, spell. I'll see whether I can find anything that sticks, I guess, and if I can't I suppose I'll just have to wait until it wears off. If you wanted to talk more about what things you could do to the sword and why you think they aren't witchcraft, I would also be interested in that?"

" - sure. So, I have heard of witches, though it's discouraged in Cheliax, it's when you have a powerful extraplanar patron and they grant you a bonded creature of some kind, a familiar, and you commune with your familiar to learn spells and hexes and so on. They are doing things with not their own power, with their patron's power. Wizardry isn't using anyone else's power, it isn't using anyone else's structure, everything that a spell does, it does because you put there. When I enchant a sword, the thing I'm doing is transferring the property of spellsilver where it acts as a reserve of arcane magical energy. That means that over time there'll be magical energy in the sword, and then you can draw it out in a particular pattern in order to get a particular effect. It's not different from how you can move a spinning wheel, except that you're moving magic around; gods could intervene in your spinning wheel, and they could intervene in your spell, but they aren't part of how it works, except insofar as they made the world operate by physical laws in the first place. Most of magic is figuring out what pattern you want to draw the energy out in to get a result you like."

She mouths the words 'property of spellsilver' to herself and looks like she is thinking very hard about this.

"Is it - sort of more like alchemy than witchcraft, maybe?"

"...you can do lots of the same stuff with alchemy I guess? I haven't talked in depth with many alchemists either. I guess it's more like alchemy than witchcraft in that alchemists are also doing their own work."

"Right, I mean, you're - using the existing natural properties of things, when you enchant them, is that right? But altering their shape to serve your purposes? Like the spinning wheel?"

"Yeah. Using spellsilver, and how it absorbs magic, to make weapons that absorb magic, and then using the ways you can - route and pattern magic - to make it do stuff in the world. It's all made of parts, like a spinning wheel."

"I... think that sounds allowed. In principle. I think we would not call it spellcasting. And I've never heard of anyone using anything like it with anything near the success rate or power or variety that I've witnessed here."

"It takes a long time to get anywhere with wizardry. Years of study even if you know exactly what you're trying to learn to do. I don't know when it was first invented, it was before the Age of Darkness, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that a place that didn't have it just didn't invent it. I think sorcerers would be more common, they can do some of the same things on instinct, because of magical blood."

"...I think I have heard of sorcerers. I'm - embarrassed to say that I think I honestly have no idea what the specific differences between sorcerers and wizards and witches and oracles and - any other types of magic users are."

"Well, I don't see how you'd know, if no one taught you. Sorcerers can do some of the same things wizards can do - usually only a couple spells each, but across all sorcerers they've been demonstrated able to do most things wizards can - but they're not doing any of it deliberately, they have an inborn instinct, sometimes because they have outsider blood or are part fae or were cursed as a child or are distantly descended from dragons. Wizards learn magic on purpose from first principles and anyone smart enough can learn. Witches have a patron, and get spells and power from their patron, usually at a price. Oracles are chosen by the gods, and usually have enough of the gods in them it's in some way crippling - they might be blind, or deaf, or unable to move from the spot, or able to see only on the astral plane, or burn at the touch of water, it varies but having enough of the gods touch your mortal form isn't any good for it. Clerics are chosen by the gods in a more normal way where they can ask for miracles and get them. Alchemists do magic but come at it differently, through the manipulation of substances with magic-friendly properties."

"Huh. I just feel like I really ought to know more about it, spending so much time fighting the forces of darkness. Although I suppose it's not actually very important to know how the people I'm aiming at got their powers, as long as the watchers have studied it enough to understand the implications. Maybe it's mostly important to be able to kill any forces that need to be killed, since they're never going to be anywhere near as good at that part."

"Or maybe they don't want you to know lest you start disagreeing with them about who needs killing."

She eats several bites of stew with an expression that suggests that this is one of the creepier ideas she's encountered in the past few weeks, even though they have mostly consisted of walking through the Abyss and the Worldwound naked and hanging out with devil worshippers.

This tiny naive child who is going to get herself killed. "You're powerful, people are going to want to use you. You gotta pick people who gain from you being stronger."

"Pick people?"

"...or go it yourself but I think that'll get you killed too? Like, find patrons who benefit from you being alive and benefit from you getting stronger, and work for them, not for other people."

She considers the various pieces of this. She's not very sure how she would apply it to the watchers. You can't just leave the watchers. She was chosen by God, and the watchers are the people who explained to her how to use her powers to slay vampires and demons, which is obviously one of the most important things to do. And it makes sense to trust people who devote themselves to killing demons, because demons are evil and kill people, and people who want to stop them are trying to do something good. Although it's true that she's heard of people fighting holy wars and also murdering other people for reasons that were not good. That seems different but she's not immediately sure why.

The watchers also aren't here.

"I - think that makes sense as advice, at least in my current circumstances, while I'm here and don't know anyone. Although I am not very used to thinking about that sort of thing.

"I think the forces at the Hellmouth benefit from me being stronger because they are killing demons? And my job is killing demons."

"Yeah, I think we're good people to work for. We benefit from you getting stronger, so we'll try to train you to get stronger, and we won't steal your expensive sword, and we'll get you made armor in your size, and if you're injured we'll nurse you back to health because your labor is valuable. Cheliax taught me to be a wizard because it strengthens Cheliax, having wizards. Just - you do have to keep track, of whether people benefit from you being strong."

"Hm.

"All of that makes sense, but the watchers also mostly had me kill demons? And sometimes people who were supporting demons."

"Why did they want you to kill demons? Were the demons at war with them or something?"

"Because demons are evil and kill people? - I know you told me that you think of yourself as evil but I think I am trying to talk about something much more obviously evil than that, they, uh - mostly do a lot of killing and torturing people in painful ways because they like killing and torturing people in painful ways, as far as I can tell? And I don't think they can stop wanting to do that."

"Outsiders can't change their nature, yeah. But I mean, why did the Watchers care about this, were the demons going after them? Was it revenge? Are they a - government - so the demons were interfering with their sovereignty, or their national wealth, or with ...morale?"

"Um... they are an ancient order devoted to supporting the vampire slayer in standing against all of the forces of darkness that are constantly attacking and encroaching upon humanity?"

She sounds kind of like she is genuinely unsure whether this is the right answer and is, like, taking a guess in a classroom and waiting for the teacher to confirm it, or something.

"Well, you clearly did get really good training. But you aren't expecting a resurrection - they can't afford it?"

"What?"

"Uh, sufficiently important people can get raised if they die. If there's only one vampire slayer and an ancient order dedicated to protecting her I'd think that might count. But maybe not? It is expensive. Cheliax can't afford to raise its soldiers who die at the Worldwound."

"Are you are talking about the thing where some people can turn dead people into zombies, or the thing where God can actually bring the dead back to life in basically the same condition as when they died, if He wills it, or a different thing."

"Second thing. Necromancy is distinct from resurrection."

"Okay. Um, I know about that happening but I don't think it happens very often, and I guess if it were going to happen to me it - thinking on it maybe it did? But I don't think I will - wake up where I died, I think that the most likely explanation for me being here is that this is where God wants me to be.

"The watchers will begin training the next slayer, I think, the one who was called when I died. If I died. If I did not die then I guess they will look for me."

"Huh. Does your god command the Watchers in doing all these things?"

"I... think so?"

"I guess that makes sense." She sounds slightly but not very doubtful.

She eats her stew in contemplative silence, for a bit, and then -

" - I'm so stupid!"

She's significantly above average, actually. Detect Thoughts can tell. "...hmmm?"

"If I have died, then the watchers will be looking for the next slayer, who might be in Italy but might also be anywhere else in the world, and assuming that this is part of the world, which it seems to be, even if it's a very distant part of it, then there must be watchers here, not to find me but to find any other slayers who happen to be called near here, and probably the ones in this area are already watching the Worldwound, because that just really seems like the sort of thing that watchers would be interested in watching, and if there are watchers here then the thing I ought to do is find them and see if they have any better ideas about - well, what to do about anything that's happened.

"I have absolutely no idea how to do that."

"If they're a part of the church of your god, then probably we'd have heard about your god if they were here. There are some Lawful Good churches here but they don't sound like your god at all, Iomedae is like a thousand years old and doesn't even claim to have created the universe and Erastil's older than that but his focus is, uh, agriculture, not demon-fighting, and I don't think he claims to have created the universe either."

She folds her hands and considers this.

"...I think it is possible that there are watchers who are not Christians. And it is also possible that there are parts of the world that don't have watchers and that the slayers who appear there mostly just go untrained until they die. But I should at least see if there's any way to tell."

"Well. Part of my job is to go around asking people to show me their gear. You can come along and ask about your watchers, we can look out for each other."

"All right!"

Carissa prays, that night, that Asmodeus's will be done with respect to Chola, whatever it might be, and decides in the morning that it probably involves Chola knowing any things about the world, since Cheliax wouldn't educate people if it wasn't Asmodeus's will that people be educated, and Chola seems very not educated.

Chola knows how to kill lots of kinds of demons (although mostly not ones that Carissa will have ever heard of), is proficient with nearly every weapon the people here have on hand, and knows at least several dozen stories about saints or weird demonic phenomena.

She cannot read, write, handle money, or do math more advanced than counting on her fingers. Also, her ability to assess people's intentions is garbage.

She is very appreciative of all attempts to fill gaps in her knowledge of the world, and thanks God several times for sending her to Carissa, who has looked after her and taught her lots of things, some of which are even obviously true once you know them.

She works very hard at learning Taldane and improving her ability to kill summoned demons and spar with the other fighters. She waffles constantly over whether to let Carissa do anything to her sword and what she might want done to it. And she follows Carissa around whenever she's asking to look at people's gear, and tries to learn both more about this area of the world in general and about whether there might be any watchers or systems for supporting vampire slayers around here.

Carissa asks about watchers. People haven't heard of them. And she asks about magic items. People are often willing to show her them, though usually they want to flirt about it, which she totally expected and intends to take entirely in stride but it's a bit of a balancing act taking it entirely in stride without giving everyone the impression that you're a slut, you know. Luckily Chola is incredibly oblivious.

There's a Qadiran man with a really impressive necklace of Detect Thoughts that he's happy to show her. He quizzes her on design principles for magic armor and seems satisfied and goes on about her age (22! not many third circle wizards who are 22!) enough to make her slightly uneasy, though he doesn't actually hit on her. He's very impressed with Chola, too, when he hears she's been fighting demons, and insists on tagging along to watch her spar with summons. 

"I don't like him," she says quietly to Chola.

"What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know! He didn't even hit on me! I just think you should be, you know, cautious -" "do you even have the concept" would be mean -"uh, where I'm from, sometimes people give warnings like that and it doesn't mean any drastic action just not letting your guard down. We're at the Worldwound, there's a treaty, but you know, if you get drunk - I wouldn't like explaining to someone that I thought it was all right to be foolish because there's a treaty."

"I don't think I've ever been drunk? But that makes sense. I'll - try to keep my guard up." 

She mostly understands keeping your guard up to involve being on guard from physical attacks from someone, but she will at least do that.

The Qadiran man watches her fight a demon with great fascination. He doesn't say anything to her.

That's... probably fine then? He's probably never seen a Slayer fight before. She guesses that it would make sense to want to see one.

Nothing out of the ordinary happens for a few days. She trains and learns and eats her meals with Carissa.

And then, in the dead of night, a figure touches her. She wakes up immediately, but not fast enough to call her sword to her before she's transported somewhere else.

The somewhere else is dimly lit, but brighter than the bedroom was. She sees the figure standing on the top of a wall, though she herself is in the air and not quite conscious enough to do more than lash out wildly and miss him. It's the Qadiran. She falls, landing on her back. She springs to her feet, but a ceiling grate snaps shut above her before she can make a real attempt at - she doesn't actually know, running up the wall or something. It gets rid of most of the light they had.

They're in a cell. More like a pit, actually, it's deeper than it is wide, maybe six feet by six feet on the ground and twelve feet deep. 

"Carissa!"

Carissa is a heavy sleeper. This is practically a job qualification; she's a wizard on the front lines of a war and if she doesn't get eight hours of sleep every night she's useless.

She wakes up at that, though. 

- jumps to her feet. " - where - what happened -"

"Qadiran got into the bedroom somehow. Teleported us. He's up there, above the grate."

She tries summoning her sword and nothing happens. Kind of figured. It's probably too far away.

She tries to Detect Magic. Is the grate magic or just a grate -

Carissa doesn't detect any magic.

Chola is checking herself for anything resembling a weapon and then cursing herself for having slept without a secondary one just because the primary one teleports.

"Antimagic field. Want me to try to toss you up to the grate and you can see if you can rip it down -" This probably only gets Chola out but Chola is a tiny idiot child and might actually come back for Carissa even at personal risk?

"Yes."

She's not really sure that she expects Carissa to be able to get her up high enough to bring enough force to bear on the gate to rip it open, but she can't think of anything better to try, not immediately. (Maybe she could - rip her clothes up and try to make a rope, is there anything she could do with a rope - ? This will take time and they might as well try the faster thing first, in case the Qadiran is planning to do another ritual in the next minute and everything is about to get even worse.)

Antimagic field if it's the spell not a permanent one lasts an hour, maybe two, by caster, so whatever happens next will probably happen by then.

She's not in fact that strong but probably she can manage to get Chola standing on her shoulders? It's an emergency and she doesn't need to not injure herself or anything.

This gets her just high enough to reach up and get the tips of her fingers through the holes in the grate, although this turns out to not be very useful, because whatever the grate is made of isn't budging at all. If it were iron she would feel it bend, at least a little, and she doesn't. 

Pushing it up off the walls of the pit (which are rock, not metal) seems potentially more doable, except that she doesn't have quite enough height for that and doesn't know how to get it. Can't do it with just her fingertips, she needs to be able to push with her palm against something that won't give, which means probably not Carissa. Maybe she could angle herself off the walls - but no, she's not going to be able to get the angle right, not with nothing to actually stand on. 

She tries a few more things and then jumps back down to the ground.

"Nothing. Do you have anything metal on you?"

"...my buttons?"

" - mrrrgh. That's good to have if nothing happens in the next hour, but it's not going to help us during it, I don't think. I can try again if I can find six more inches, either a block to stand on or a stick that can take a lot of weight. Other than that I'm only thinking of - I think we could tunnel out eventually, but not on a time scale that's helpful if they're planning on doing anything with us. And I know how we'd make a rope, but not a strong one, and the way the grate's attached to the rock it's not going to come down, not with how strong it is, it's going to have to be forced up. So I don't know that that gets us anywhere."

She rips off the lowermost of Carissa's buttons and hides it in her mouth, while she's thinking of it. In case they get separated and she doesn't have anything else she could possibly tunnel out with besides, like, her fingers, which sounds like it might not go well for her fingers.

"I assume you're going to be better at lifting me but that I won't be able to do anything useful once up there?"

"Yeah, I doubt it. Maybe if you had a dagger or something to try jamming in the space where the grate meets the rock."

"I don't sleep armed. There's a - treaty -" it's of course ridiculous and pathetic to feel indignant about that but she kind of does. "I guess we could try - negotiating - IS THERE ANYONE UP THERE?"

"Someone's down here?" says a female voice. It sounds like it's shouting but being muffled by distance and walls, so it isn't actually very loud or easy to make out. "Next pit over, I think."

"Where are we? How long have you been here? Who's in charge here?"

"Don't know, I think more than three days and less than a week, I'd guess the wizard who's doing the kidnappings? Although I guess he could be working for someone?"

"Do you know what he wants?"

"No. He won't answer questions. Where'd he get you from?"

"The Worldwound!" Indignantly.

"But there's a - " Pause. "Do you think someone will notice you're gone?"

"Yes! - how about you, where were you taken from -"

"Almas University."

"Are you a wizard?"

"Yeah."

"Did you meet him before he kidnapped you? What was he interested in?"

"I think he was disguised at the time, so I don't know for sure? But someone foreign asked if he could look over my research with me. Close enough in time that I think - yeah."

"What was your research in?"

"Cantrip creation."

"Huh.

I don't suppose you have. Hair dye. Or a makeup kit. Or things usable for that."

"Uh, no. I was taken when I was asleep."

"Do you know if there are other people here."

"I think there must be? None close enough to talk to, but sometimes you can hear yelling through the walls. I guess I don't know for sure whether we're the only prisoners."

"Has the antimagic field been up the whole time you've been here?"

"Yeah. Well. I haven't noticed it go down."

"Do they feed us?"

"Yeah. One big meal, keeps appearing whenever I'm sleeping."

"If we are being recruited for something it seems like they're not trying very hard to make the pitch compelling."

"Yeah, obviously not."

She turns back to Chola. "I want to try to talk to Qadiran guy when he gets here but presuming that doesn't work, what are our escape options if we have a couple days?"

"A normal person obviously can't tunnel out with a button in a couple days, but it wouldn't be much stone at the top, and it's possible I can bring significantly more force to bear in a way that lets us make a hole big enough to use to force it open on that kind of timescale. Pretend to sleep and attempt to get up there really fast when they open the grate to feed us, if they open the grate to feed us. Probably a lot of other stuff if they intend to let us out of the cell at any point."

"I'm not an adventurer, my spells mostly aren't meant for this kind of thing, but if we get out of the antimagic field and I've slept and have time to prepare them I can make you stronger, and I can use Detect Thoughts to tell who's around, and I can make falls not fast. It's not worth waiting for that if we have an opening, though, it takes a while."

Nod.

"I guess right now we don't have anything to do other than start tunneling, then? Or - I guess you might not have been done sleeping."

"I was not. ...not sure I can sleep right now, though. Can I help with tunneling?"

"Yeah, I'll need to be lifted to the top again."

Carissa, like most 22-year-old women, and most wizards, does not have very good strength. She will try, though.

Yeah, it's not a very fair thing to ask of her. But she doesn't really have better ideas and - well, Carissa could probably tunnel out with a button, too, given enough time, but she's not sure they have enough time.

She's also not sure they have enough time to do things this way. The button is definitely scraping some rock off - the color changes with enough scraping, and if they can make it an hour or so there'll even be a visible indent - but, uh, this is going to take a while. A long while.

This is HORRIBLE SUFFERING. HORRIBLE SUFFERING is supposed to be character building but she's worried it has to be specific and strategic horrible suffering and horribly suffering at random doesn't even make you a better prospective devil. 

- she's going to not think about that.

HORRIBLE SUFFERING does make you a better prospective devil and in Hell everyone will be impressed with her composure and give her all the good promotions. 

She is having trouble breathing normally because her entire respiratory system is doing very stupid things.

Mostly only her arms hurt, one from bracing herself against the ceiling and one from trying to put as much weight behind this button as possible. She is trying not to mentally complain about the button being stupid and tiny because really they're extremely blessed to have anything to tunnel with at all, given the circumstances of their kidnapping.

Carissa doesn't sound very good, though.

"Do you need to take a break?"

"It - hasn't - even - been - very - long."

(She's not remotely stopping tunneling to have this conversation, if she's up here hurting Carissa then she figures she'd better be spending that time tunneling.)

"You're probably going to need to have some strength left over to make it up after me. At least enough to hold onto a rope."

"Maybe - can - tie it - around - my - arm - and you - can haul - me."

And she collapses.

She lands on her feet and then checks Carissa's pulse. Seems fine. Checks whether she's hit her head.

No. Just kind of buckled. "You should - step on my hand or something -"

"Why?"

"Because if the pain stops when I stop doing the hard thing then my incredibly stupid subconscious will have less endurance."

She pats her shoulder.

"When you've recovered some we should put you at the top and see if being able to keep going as long as we need to makes up for the strength difference, in terms of speed, and you're going to need your hand for tunneling."

- nod. Sigh. 

"In Hell the pain doesn't stop when you stop doing the hard thing so you can just do hard things all the time."

"I'm pretty sure there is actually a point where you can't get up anymore no matter how much it hurts."

"Possibly not once you're dead."

She chews her lip for a bit.

"Pain is the body learning from mistakes, right?"

"Think so."

"So - we should find the thing that is the least mistake, that still gets us out of here. I think."

"Hope that works." She sits up and makes a face.

She tries sitting with her back against the wall and finds that it's actually really uncomfortable and not restful, and then tries lying down.

"What do you think they want?"

"Don't know. Expensive setup for holding onto wizards, they expect to hold wizards prisoner without magic for a while. But why - wizards are useless without magic. If you were enslaving wizards you'd probably - geas them, and let them make magic items all day - or take relatives hostage - what's a wizard worth in an antimagic field? Can't be espionage, I don't know very much yet, there were more senior people who'd be as easy to grab. Can't be anything specific to Cheliax, Almas is in Andoran. Unless that girl's lying to throw us off, which she might be."

"I am also... not... a wizard."

"Also that! Very confusing. At least more obvious why you'd want a fighter even if you're keeping them in an antimagic pit. Maybe this wizard has....a weird fetish for girls with class levels."

"Seems like a lot of effort to go to for it. But I guess people do that sometimes."

"People do all kinds of bizarre things in Chaotic countries."

"Is Qadira chaotic?"

"I don't think they've got an alignment? Most places don't. He could also not really be Qadiran. No reason to be traceable to your real location."

"Oh. I guess not.

"I don't actually know anything about Qadira so I guess this shouldn't bother me either way."

"it's part of the Kelesh Empire. They're more sexist than Cheliax - but that's not saying much, most places are - I think they worship...Abadar, god of wealth, and Sarenrae, goddess of redemption, and ...dunno who else. The rulers are called satraps. That's not very helpful, I guess. They don't have people at the Worldwound much."

"Hm."

She can't really muster the interest to ask more questions about it if he's probably not from there anyway.

She starts ripping up the bottom of her nightdress for rope material.

 - yeah. She can try that too.