Well, you only get to have the great fun of revealing to someone that you're much more important than they thought if they don't in fact handle your requests appropriately for the security clearance and information they have, that's the rules of running a functional military.

Carissa heads back.

Keltham is cleaning up his face using Prestidigitation.

"Enter," he says, with an obviously hoarse voice, when Carissa knocks; he has enough dignity not to try to hide the evidence.

" - hey. Got confirmation, the god-war is over for now...are you all right?"

"Basically.  I was - crying, actually, I'm sorry for sending you away like that, if it was something that would have been important for you to see, and I'm also sorry if being sent to run errands like that isn't the right way to treat the best spellcrafter at the Worldwound, I basically actually did it because I was afraid I - would do something in front of you - that your concept of things - says somebody like me shouldn't do."

" - I doubt I'm the best spellcrafter at the Worldwound," she says because she wants to give her brain a little more time to catch up on the rest of that. "At my installation, yeah, but I'm third circle, there are things you can't even begin to understand until you can cast Permanency and Create Lesser Demiplane... which, you know, just give me a decade, I'll get there.... uh. It's not important to me to see you cry, if you prefer not to have people see you cry, or prefer not to have me see you cry, specifically - 

- and I think Chelish people do do less emotional expression where other people can see it than dath ilani people do -

- but if this is about, uh, scripts for our kind of relationship, well, I think a lot of the appeal, to people who want someone who's all theirs, is that they don't have to do a lot of concealing vulnerability and adversarial playing? And can just, you know, cry or whatever, and not think, 'well, is she going to think less of me now'. I think that's at least part of the point."

"Okay.  Good.  That's the same way in dath ilan.  If I'd seen this possibility coming which I would have if I'd bothered to consider possibilities for six seconds then we could have had this conversation in advance instead of afterwards.  Sorry."

- hug?

Hug, yeah.

After a bit -

"So, what did you mean, 'for now'."  Beep beep, trope alarm, his brain would be doing it louder if his brain generally and that section particularly wasn't so tired.

"Apparently Zon-Kuthon is locked away in a vault, rather than dead. Immediate implications: the war will last much longer and be much bloodier, because His clerics will still get spells. I asked why we did that rather than just destroy him, but all the people who might possibly know that are very busy. Might be because - it would've taken twelve days -"

"Yeah.  Legit.  Fair.  Valid."

Trope-based prediction:  Zon-Kuthon remains a threat, is going to be a recurring problem, and can only be killed permanently by a true Golarion Civilization that has ascended far enough to do more quickly what would take the current gods twelve days.

...why does that thought make him feel so tired.  He doesn't, doesn't really want to live in a world based on tropes, actually?  When his sexuality exists again he'll ask it about this whole rental concept and see if the entire Queen situation can be defused by people just being sensible people, and then if that works it will be absolute proof that there are no tropes and he won't have to worry about tropes any more.

Yes.  Keltham is aware that this is not how the Law of Probability works.

"Need to lie down for a while, I think.  Would prefer somebody to cuddle while I do that.  Feel a bit bad about using one of Cheliax's best third-circle wizards for it, but I might want to talk to my cuddle pillow at some point and there's not actually all that many people here with at least average intelligence."

Carissa looks very convincingly baffled. "....I'd be happy to cuddle you."

She is so loudly baffled that even Keltham is able to notice!

"Paracountess Isidre Several Middle Names Thrune told me, well, a bunch of stuff not gonna go through it all, but somewhere in there she mentioned that I was not entirely aware of who'd given herself to me and tried to remedy that some."

"I think she likes you, in the way of somebody wearing an overpowered intelligence headband who reads interesting reports about somebody else and decides they like them."

"Huh. Well, they say it's good to have friends in court, if you're going to be in court. 

They also say to avoid being in court if you can, but I think that's mostly advice that was true in my mother's time and isn't as true anymore."

He takes her by the arm, gently because he's not questioning his own impulse to be gentle about it, and draws her into the bed with him.  No chains.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Asmodeus.

Does Otolmens have any idea how fucking tired Asmodeus is right now?

Tired is the exhaustion of all available resources.  Since Asmodeus continues to function, Otolmens does not see how He can be tired.

The anomaly is out of the anomaly containment zone.

Move it back.

Why is His life like this.

I was not responsible for the anomaly leaving the containment zone, Asmodeus sends back to Her.  With Otolmens it is necessary to explain many things that other gods would simply deduce for themselves.  I did not choose it.  I did not expect it.

Zon-Kuthon, a known existential threat, attacked the exact location where my mortal followers had secured and contained the anomaly.

My anomaly-storing followers validly deduced that this meant that Zon-Kuthon knew about the anomaly, knew where the anomaly was being stored, and was targeting the anomaly.

They knew that if Zon-Kuthon had attacked the anomaly at this location before, Zon-Kuthon might attack the same location again, more forcefully, and perhaps breach containment.

They therefore moved the anomaly to an even more protected location which Zon-Kuthon might not know to target, though they are protecting it without trying to make that assumption.

Since You had only recently declared the containment zone and I was busy containing known existential threat Zon-Kuthon, my followers did not know, while making this decision, that they were leaving Your containment zone in their choice of new location.

I realize that this is not the outcome You desired, Otolmens.  But I, Asmodeus, have not acted with intent to contravene the spirit, let alone the letter, of your Pharasma's-Name Edict, and the subsequent events will clearly be legible to Pharasma or any other sufficiently informed gods as being how I described them.

Asmodeus goes legible so that Otolmens can see that He is being completely sincere.  Look how legible Asmodeus is.

Zon-Kuthon is now SEALED, meaning that ASMODEUS's work is now OVER.  OTOLMENS, on the other hand, continues to be responsible for monitoring or containing 2,885 other active existential threats, which you do not see Her being 'tired' about.

There is now nothing preventing Asmodeus from giving instructions to Asmodeus-obeying mortals, such as, for example, instructions to move the anomaly back to the containment zone.  Where Zon-Kuthon will not be able to attack it again, since Zon-Kuthon is now sealed.

Therefore Asmodeus's reasoning, however valid it may have been YESTERDAY, is currently NOT VALID and Asmodeus should instruct His mortals to move the anomaly back to the designated anomaly containment zone.

What Asmodeus is trying to say here is that this is not Asmodeus's problem.  This is Otolmens's problem.