Sevar, Rugatonn, Sala is defecting for real do we stop her.

Can they? Nefreti Clepati is here and might have some opinions about Nethys's oracle being prevented from defecting.

If Clepati's not acted before, she may be constrained, probably is, but I would not care to gamble -

Telepathy isn't a free action; Ione Sala is now already talking.

"Keltham, I think that's the real Clepati.  Not sure, obviously."

"Also, that was me breaking with Cheliax for real."

"Ione Sala, oracle of Nethys, of the library's curse.  I don't know what Nethys is doing but I expect He means me to follow you, wherever you go.  I've hated Cheliax since long before I was allowed to think that to myself.  I spoke to you that way in the library because Nethys had just cursed me, and I thought if I didn't - make it hard for Cheliax to vanish me - I'd just be vanished.  Security, Elias Abarco, gouged my eye out afterwards, as a punishment, and I lay there and hurt and was so so glad I wouldn't go to Hell."

"In the event that any of THIS is real, would anyone care to explain what I'm doing in Golarion and what's up with Snack Service."

"Unfortunately, I can't be helpful to you in any way!" Nefreti says cheerfully, and to Ione, "your Possible Doctrines of Nethys are incredibly popular in Sothis. Someone carved them on the Moon."

"I - my - WHAT?"  Wait, if Nefreti Clepati can't help them -

Lazily, with one hand, she opens a Gate in front of her, while simultaneously with the other hand she casts a Zone of Truth. "You know, sometimes I think about casting a permanent Zone of Truth over all of Cheliax," she says. 

Sure, he'll cast Detect Magic to figure out what that was... looks like an area version of his truthspell compulsion without the indicator on it, if he's passing his Spellcraft check.  But then, obviously, the Conspiracy can fool his Detect Magic.

She doesn't say anything out loud about 'wait are you not taking us with you', because that is a very stupid thing to say in front of the High Priestess of Asmodeus when your own High Priestess is possibly abandoning you -

Can she possibly have a Nondetection to screen her own thoughts for a time, at least?  And Keltham could use one of those too.

((See, this is why Asmodia didn't immediately defect.))

"Ione," says Nefreti, "the day might come where the best way for you to learn all the things you want to know is to plunge ahead right into them, with Keltham.

But today the best way for you to learn all the things you want to know is to ditch this entire horrible story and come with me to my library.

So I extend the invitation."

"However, it is a law of exiting this story here for now that you must first reflect aloud, under a truth spell, on your relationship with Keltham. Otherwise that's some unresolved plot, there, and unresolved plot can really catch you where you least expect it, if you aren't me."

"I'm -"

Not being able to speak untruths is inconvenient, when it comes to claiming what you need to know, and apparently only want to know.

"I ask first if this is what Lord Nethys wants."

"And also - I do care about Keltham, and don't want to just abandon him, if I can continue to help him in building Civilization, correctly this time, without my getting horribly tortured."  Oh she can say it under truthspell.  She genuinely wasn't sure she could.

"That you speak of Keltham, if you're leaving? Much more of Nethys wants that than wants most things. That you leave? Nethys wills that you leave and that you stay and that you explode and that you endure; which of his wills do you find in yourself?"

"I've started to like Keltham, and I genuinely do want to - keep him out of trouble - in a way that I've never wanted to keep anyone else out of trouble before.  If the whole trope thing, works like that, I might come to love him, which is something that I - might want to have, I think, if it's possible to me."

"I want nobody else to ever grow up the way I did, being forced to cast Acid Splash on children so I'd end up damned to Hell.  Helping Keltham, outside of Cheliax, seems like it might work toward that."

"But if my trying to follow Keltham right now, results in my not getting to do that, and then being horribly tortured over the next several days until my curse kicks in and kills me, then I'd rather go with you to your library, yes."

"In that case you should come along, and let Cheliax's self-defeating torture habit fall where it'll weaken them and not where it'll weaken us. For reasons I'll explain once we're offscreen, it doesn't serve much of Nethys, or the Good in you, for you to help Keltham too much, in the second act of his story, and it sounds like you are one of the Iones who'd be very helpful to him. Though he can visit you at the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye, that's fine."

"...right then."

She kisses Keltham goodbye, briefly.  It's not her first kiss, just the first one that means anything.

Keltham does not particularly know if anything is real right now, and does not kiss back.

Ione turns, and walks quickly into Nefreti Clepati's Gate before it can close and leave her in Cheliax.

She isn't crying, either from sadness or from desperate desperate relief, because she's still in public and who knows what happens to you if you show weakness, and also because she isn't weak.

"First sentence on the random page of the first book you'll grab is 'We found ourselves, Desna be praised, in the evergrowth, a verdant swampland in northern Katapesh which our mapmakers had through neglect or ignorance left off their maps,'" Nefreti says to Keltham. 

She can't actually usually do that but you can't just pass up an opportunity to show up Aspexia Rugatonn.

And she, too, departs through the Gate.

Well he's obviously going to go check that, looking through a set of books to fix their titles in mind, picking a number 213, then computing which book is 213 mod that number of books, then opening that book to a random page.

Then he's going to check the page before, and the page after, and flip through other parts of the book, checking against the title he just picked to verify that the title makes sense in context, and that the other titles would not make sense in that context.

"Hey Ordinary Asmodia, if you're still in there, how'd the Conspiracy do that?"

What is she, in fact, supposed to do now?