"There's no point killing demons this side of the wards," a very bloodied paladin shouts back at him. "We'll accept a ride out, though!"

I am somewhat concerned about evacuating all of the defenders and leaving the demons here, but if you are sure it will not be a problem... 

Malduoni cannot Teleport all of them out. It's a very frustrating limitation, especially now that he's been introduced to Velgarth Gates. He has some magic items he can hand out, though, and he can make a couple of trips if he has to, with scrolls of Teleport (of which he has so, so many.) They need to be efficient about it, though, if he wants to get everyone out before Hold Monster wears off. 

They can be efficient about assembling for rescue. There's enough healing to go around that everyone is at least capable of walking on their own and taking someone's hand for a Teleport. "Is the wardstone at Callien still holding?"

"Last I checked, yes. Where do you want me to bring you?" 

"There."

Malduoni's been there before; he's spent plenty of time at the Worldwound, much of it during his several-decade period of getting as much combat as he could in order to reach ninth circle, but some more recently. He can bring them there. 

They throw him baffled glances, thank him, and head off to join their compatriots.

Malduoni doesn't stick around. He Teleports back to his office. 

Sits in front of the crystal ball for a while, looking at the Prismatic Wall he left in place but not really seeing it. There are a dozen different things he should be doing, right now - first of all, it's very rude at this point to just leave Leareth and Carissa Sevar in the magic-blocked demiplane - but, in this moment, he can't seem to find the impetus to move. 

...Eventually he shakes himself a little. Focus. He wants Parmida, very badly, but - not yet. One more obligation to fulfill. 

He closes his eyes, and prays to Iomedae. Something he's thought about doing hundreds, thousands, of times, and never found the courage... 

It feels a little bit like dying as a god felt, being torn apart by forces he should be able to understand and can't. Though very briefly. 

Then they're sitting in a cabin in a rain-swept Chelish village and Iomedae is sitting there next to him. She takes his hand. 

"If I gave you some paladin levels you'd stop being scared," she says. "You're still not Good but I think I could swing it."

He had planned what to say, before. There are a lot of time-sensitive matters they need to talk about. 

And yet, somehow, now that he’s here, he - just can’t. 

He’s been so afraid. For such a very long time. And for some reason, right now he’s finding himself imagining how scared Leareth must be. Abandoned in a demiplane that blocks his magic - that blocks his senses, it was incredibly clear in Leareth’s thoughts how distressing that was to him, and it reminds Malduoni - 

- no, Aroden, he's Aroden here...

It reminds him of how it felt in the days and months and years after he woke up in a human body. Blind. Deaf. Helpless. Cut off from every avenue to accomplish what mattered. 

"I am so sorry," he manages to say. "I - I missed you -" 

And then he finds himself crying, even though this is not going to help with anything. 

Iomedae, or whatever part of Her is here, pulls him into Her lap and wraps Her arms around him and strokes his hair, and doesn't say anything for a while. 

(This is because She can look through his memories without interrupting his experiences.)

"I thought you were gone," she says. "I thought that hole in the world would be there forever. And many of them will, but - not that one."

Aroden's mind holds a century worth of human memories, and the earliest of them are still the most vivid. Walking through rain-soaked devastation. Three decaying corpses on a bed, crushed, and the more-recently-dead toddler clinging to them. A little boy sobbing, I can follow the rules I'm not too little. Emaciated children's bodies in the streets of Sothis. A young woman with a pockmarked face, too thin, holding Aroden when he woke up sobbing in the night...

The early triumphs. Each hard-earned spell. Rebuilding, piece by piece, brick by brick, and there was satisfaction in that but always pain as well. So much was lost and he had so little, he was so little - 

Before that are only fragments. Aroden remembers his death, vividly - it went on for so long and it hurt so much and he remembers the terror, and worse-than-terror, as his sense of self was torn into smaller and smaller shreds - until the only thing left was a relentless desperate desire to live - 

Clinging to the knowledge that he had been betrayed by someone he trusted, not knowing who, but holding tight to the gnawing confusion of that uncertainty - 

"...Enough of me is gone," Aroden says dully. "Enough of my people -" 

Are in Hell, but even now, even here, he can't quite manage to say those words out loud. 

"One would be enough to grieve for the rest of time. And all but one would be enough to keep trying."

"I know. I am never going to forget. But - I - it hurts..." 

He takes a deep breath. "...You spoke to Leareth. Can we trust him." 

Leareth, who was left so traumatized by two millennia of constant opposition and relentless sabotage by the Velgarth gods that he had a panic attack after his attempt to reach Iomedae worked. Who did it anyway. Aroden...is willing to admit, at this point, that he kind of had that one coming.

He didn't expect it, didn't even think of it as a possible infosec leak - why not? Just because Leareth reads as Lawful Evil, and he assumed the man wouldn't be able to reach Iomedae at all? What does it mean, that he could anyway? 

"You can trust him. He's very like you. You'd have chosen him in a heartbeat, when you were a god, and then he'd be less like you, because part of what you're alike in is the aloneness. - I think he reads Evil because his immortality method awakens him in the body of a child, one of his descendants, and he seizes it from them."

"...Oh. I see." He chuckles, quietly, sadly. "Something else we have in common. ...You know, it is probably good that I came back with no spell circles at all. It meant that at least I was no longer Evil by the time I had a detectable alignment." He takes a deep breath. "Is he all right - should I be hurrying back? I know that he finds it terrifying, having no access to magic - I suppose I know the feeling." 

"You should send him home with an apology and send Zahra, who knows the plan and won't mind if he reads her mind about it. And you should give both him and Carissa nice headbands, and tell her to go to my clerics, who you are fetching and sending to Velgarth to set up for me, and arrange a Resurrection if she dies so she can think about literally anything else. Then you should come back here, because I think we have quite a lot to talk about."

It's oddly comforting, being told what to do by someone he trusts. Someone who can see much further and more clearly than him. 

There's one more thing he needs to check first, though.

"...Why. Milani. Why did she do it. Am I - still in danger -?" 

"To destroy prophecy. You'd - gotten tangled with it, it was under so much pressure at the time - actually, I'm not even going to try to explain this in human terms. She saw at the last moment it would destroy prophecy and She thought it was worth it. She doesn't want you dead. You are not in danger from Her."

"Oh." 

It almost hurts more, knowing that. But - now isn't the time to dwell on feeling betrayed. 

"I will do those things and then we can speak more." And then he closes his eyes, and leans on her for just one more moment. "...I am sorry. That I was too afraid to tell you sooner. We could have done this so much faster, together." 

"We could have."

And she holds him for quite a while before she thinks he's actually ready for her to leave.

And then he's alone in his office, still in front of the crystal ball. He feels very shaken and has the slightest edge of a headache; that was a long time to spend with a god, even a god who used to be human. 

He can't afford to spend all day calming himself down - but Iomedae suggested he send Zahra with Leareth. Which gives him a good excuse to go home, at least briefly. 

He sighs, stands up, and Teleports to just outside the front door of their house in Absalom. Knocks, gently. 

Zahra gets the door with a cane in one hand that's also a rod of spell absorption. "Oh, you! I wasn't expecting you."

"Some things happened." He says it very tiredly. "Is Parmida home?" 

"I think she's napping. Moooooooom, Dad's home!"