"Huh. 

What is the afterlife situation, here - the Iftel civilians seemed to have only the vaguest idea -"

Well. That's especially interesting. 

"Most people have little idea." Leareth frowns. "I want to make sure I understand your afterlife situation right, so that I can explain the differences. In your world, souls - go the the afterlife run by the god they worshipped or served? Divided according to the axes of Law versus Chaos and Good versus Evil. And the souls - stay there indefinitely, as approximately the people they were in life - and in some cases change over time to be less human - but only return to the material world if resurrection magic is used?" 

"When you die you get sorted by Pharasma, god of the dead, off how Lawful or Chaotic or Good or Evil you were. There's nine Outer Planes, and you can get sorted to any of them. Sorting takes a while and people don't remember it clearly but it involves appraising your deeds in life, and your goals with those deeds, in addition to which gods you served. Most people who do anything of note are Evil - you are - but people who specifically spend their lives trying to be Good can usually wrangle it I think. In the afterlife you become - something more closely aligned with that plane. In Hell you become a devil. In Heaven you become an angel. In the Abyss you become a demon. Abaddon just eats people because Abaddon's horrible. And yes, you stay there forever unless you get resurrected, which has to be done promptly after death."

Leareth nods. "I see. In this world, souls are usually caught by the god with remit over them, held for a time, and - according to my current knowledge, at least - are usually eventually sent back. But generally attached to infants, and the soul itself does not contain all that makes up a person, so reincarnated mortals generally recall little if anything of their former life. Or lives. There are some ways around this, as I mentioned. And occasionally gods will deliberately return mortal souls to a vessel created by Them for that purpose, with many memories retained. The Companions that bond to Heralds in Valdemar are an example of this." 

Leareth is paying very close attention to Carissa's thoughts as she reacts to this. 

Wow, that seems really unfortunate for the locals! Never getting anywhere, just - being born again and again - unless you're very loyal and useful. She can see why the gods would set it up that way - presumably they find creating new souls costly - but it seems like a system in which it'd be very terrible, being mortal. It seems obvious to her not to say this, not really for information security reasons but just because sympathy for strangers is a ridiculous sort of thing to express. "I see," she says. "I don't think that'd serve our gods. They benefit from their afterlives being full of conscious intelligent people who serve them, and creating new souls isn't that hard on our plane."

"That makes sense. I am not sure how hard it is for our gods to create new souls; it is obviously close to impossible for mortals." 

...Leareth could do it, probably, if for some reason he wanted to. It's a different kind of project than building a god from scratch but it's not totally unrelated. Most of the expertise would transfer. 

And - all right, he's going to make a bit of a gamble, here, because it seems like the situation is escalating fast, and he may have a very limited window of opportunities when he can speak without anyone reading his thoughts. 

He yawns again, not especially feigned but it helps make it seem less serious. "I have considered," he says lightly, "how I might change that state of affairs, here. It is - not what most people would choose, if they had a choice." 

"Asmodeus would, I think, make better use of these people, and Hell would be a better place for them to go. I don't know what He would need, in order to achieve that."

"I imagine that the active cooperation of a local would help." Leareth smiles. It's not entirely a genuine smile, but he thinks his exhaustion should cover that. "What does Asmodeus use people for, exactly? What would that look like for the people in question?" 

And, again, he's paying a lot more attention to her thoughts than to the actual words said. 

"He wants Cheliax to be wealthy and influential, and to combat threats to the world like the Worldwound. And He wants Hell to be powerful and wealthy and organized, so it can fund Cheliax and so it can expand into the other afterlives."

She is in favor of Hell's control of Cheliax, which seems to straightforwardly benefit everyone there - they are richer, and get to be wizards if they have the talent. She's heard of other countries and they seem worse in every way, except their people believe it's worth it since they're less likely to go to Hell. Hell's plan to expand and conquer the other afterlives is in the distant future, and she doesn't know much about the details - no one living really does -- though it's tempting to wonder if this situation is at all related.

...All right, so people in other countries think that being under Asmodeus' remit and ending up in His afterlife is bad in itself. Leareth badly wishes he had a better sense of why. His only other context, here, is what the translation magic seems to want to translate their term for it as - but the Hells as discussed in various Velgarth mythologies do not, as far as Leareth knows, actually exist. And he doesn't know how the translation conventions work. 

"I suppose what I mean is more - what would a dead soul's day to day look like? Would a farmer in life continue to do farming work there - does that concept even make sense, I am not sure what the physical laws or material constraints are like in Hell...?" 

"Devils don't farm, they don't need to eat. I think Heaven has farms even though they don't need to eat but just because farming is virtuous. There are cities, in Hell, they have mining and manufacturing and magic item making and the defense of Hell against extraplanar incursions and they spend a lot of time on the Material Plane, trading with people. I want to do magic research." The process of becoming a devil hurts, and takes a long time, and some of the middle stages look quite ugly, but she thinks it's stupid how much people emphasize that, and she has no interest in mentioning it.

"Farming is virtuous? That is - an odd definition of virtue." 

Leareth did not at all miss Carissa's thoughts, and it fits. It makes sense of why the translation spell wanted to pick that particular word. 

"Why does Asmodeus wish to extend Hell to the other afterlives? I would expect your god of sorting dead souls - Pharasma, was that what you called Her? - to have some objections." 

"I mean, yes. Several other gods will have objections. It's a long term plan. But the other afterlives are stunningly wasteful with their souls and Asmodeus doesn't mean it to go on forever."

"I see." 

Leareth does kind of see why Asmodeus would want that, at least. He doubts the souls in the other afterlives would be on board. And he's dubious just on priors that this is a genuine, actually-feasible plan as opposed to, well, propaganda. 

...Another high-variance, but possibly revealing, question is occurring to him. 

"It seems your gods are in general more willing to communicate with mortals. How would I go about speaking with Asmodeus directly about - possible cooperation on this, if He were interested in that?" 

"He doesn't talk to mortals directly, he sends devils to advise them. You could - request to speak with the Queen's devil advisors -" which is a stunningly bold thing to do and also incredibly dangerous and she'd never dream of it but probably this is in fact the sort of thing they'd want to concern themselves with. 

...if things get such important attention she'll be under a lot of scrutiny, if she said anything wrong that biased Leareth against this alliance. She spends half a second frantically thinking back through what she's said so far, then - no, that's unhelpful, either she's made a horrible mistake or she hasn't, but she should try not to make one going forward, and probably either way they'll be at least slightly hesitant to execute their combat wizards in the middle of a war.

"I will keep that in mind." 

Leareth is slotting some more pieces into his picture. It's an incomplete picture, still, but the outlines starting to form are...worrying. His error bars on what Cheliax is really like are starting to narrow down, and at this point he's eliminated the more optimistic end of that spectrum. There's still a lot of uncertainty, of course, a range where the truth could lie, but. 

He's trying not to have emotions about it right now. It won't help. Attempting to reassure Carissa also won't help, both because their relative positions - and all the information Leareth is concealing about himself and his abilities - make it difficult and confusing to convey, and also because most of what he would want to reassure her about are worries he knows because he's reading her mind. Which she doesn't know about, and it should stay that way. 

He's also incredibly tired. He can push through for a while, forcing his brain to work against the resistance of sleep deprivation and lack of food, but it has a cost, and his headache is back. 

"...You said the food ought be here soon?" he asks hopefully, and then puts his forehead down on his knees. 

"Should be."

They're actually running a bit late. Possibly the farmhouse was deserted and they had to go one farther, which was authorized. Possibly they encountered opposition. ...possibly, having been denied permission to take a girl back but not specifically denied permission to take a girl on the spot, they're doing that, in which case Carissa should scald the tips off both their dicks when they get back, that'd be stunningly unprofessional.

She stands up and goes to the clear window in the floor of the Rope Trick, watching the surrounding forest for any signs they're on their way (or in a fight).

It's - well, not actually that unusual for soldiers to do things like that. It would indicate suboptimal discipline and recruiting practices, maybe, but not necessarily an unusually evil leadership. (This is one of the places where Leareth sometimes makes use of voluntary compulsions.) 

He doesn't have deep enough Thoughtsensing access to see through Carissa's eyes, but he notices that she's worried. "Is something wrong?" 

"Not that you can do anything about, even if so."

It's probably nothing, and if not it could be any number of things, but possibly it's a rescue attempt. 

...If Leareth were capable of MOVING, he now knows how to get out of the pocket-in-space. And then, if he were allowed to Mindspeak deliberately, he could try to contact his people. 

He's so tired. He's almost hoping that it's nothing and the party is about to get back with food and then they'll let him SLEEP. Unfortunately, if he sleeps he'll definitely lose Thoughtsensing on Carissa, and he's not sure he could manage to get it back again unless something startles him again. 

Head down, eyes closed, he waits to see what Carissa will do next. 

Think through the possibilities. They're doing their job but it's taking a long time. No action needed from her. They're fucking around. That's a discipline problem, she can handle that. They were attacked by Iftel's forces and either killed or just sensibly decided to draw Iftel's forces away from here. She should - monitor closely and use an illusion to hide the rope if anyone gets near. Leareth's people attempted a rescue. ...same implications as Iftel, except if they do find her surrender is more viable as an option. (Not very viable; in Leareth's place she'd probably kill the hostage-taker just so Cheliax didn't have a scryable point of contact in their territory, and if they can grab her they can certainly grab other wizards who can teach them Golarion magic. But not absurd like surrendering to Iftel would be; she could assess it on the spot.)

Another possibility: a god interfered. She should....do nothing about that, probably, it is pathetic to try to fight the gods.

They continue not returning.

If it's Iftel, Leareth doesn't want to be captured by them but he could ask Carissa to give him new instructions, so the compulsion will let him use magic; he's confident that he could hold off any reasonable number of soldiers, that way. If it's his own people... He should stay put. If it's a god - well, Vkandis got him into this situation in the first place, if Vkandis is messing around with it more than Leareth has no idea what He even wants. 

Also saying anything to Carissa, to nudge this one way or another, risks arousing her suspicions, and she probably wouldn't listen anyway. 

He waits, and hopes - muses on whether the magic of the 'Rope Trick' would be visible for a distance - tries not to fall asleep, and waits... 

The prisoner is apparently asleep, which she doesn't trust but which would sure be convenient. The burn on her wrist hurts. She presses herself against the viewing window with an illusion at the ready and tries to think how long it's been since the First Arcane left. Not very long. Nine and a half more hours until she can reasonably expect rescue.

A few minutes later, several people approach the place where the Rope Trick is hanging in the Ifteli forest. 

Three of them are wearing the same drab, unobtrusive uniforms as the other mages accompanying Leareth the previous day. 

One of them is Valverde, being herded along, apparently under some kind of magical control. They're moving in almost complete silence, thanks to a discreet sound-barrier cast ahead of them. 

They stop. No spoken words are exchanged; the presumably-mages just look at each other, tersely, and then one of them turns and glares at Valverde, and then they turn and head toward the clearing where the Rope Trick is set up. 

Shit. Okay.

Surrender isn't certain death but it's awfully likely death. Running away without the prisoner is - also probably death, at different hands. Running away with the prisoner -

- she takes her bag and pulls it over his head, and then over the rest of him, and then picks it up; it's not any heavier. That's how Bags of Holding work.

She goes invisible.

She casts Fly.

She grabs the stupid goddamned torture rock she's supposed to use to practice combat spellcasting with. 

And she swoops out of the Rope Trick and flies as fast as she can away from the clearing. 

It takes at least a couple of minutes to suffocate in a Bag of Holding. She's pretty sure.