Nidal launches a massive desperation assault, targeting the wedge of Chelish forces near the Kintargo front, Black Triune come forth at last.

Aspexia Rugatonn is ready for them, as are some non-Chelish ninth-circles with very old grudges.

Late that night, when all of them are low on spells, they get a panicked message from the commander of the second-to-easternmost Chelish fortress at the Worldwound. One of their patrols reported they'd been injured and were going to overnight at the most easternmost Chelish fortress at the Worldwound. 

Routine evening communications with that fortress failed entirely. Its Wardstone is still holding - the lack of that would be obvious - but that might not be true for much longer. 

General Gorthoklek will obviously send a major investigation, in force, immediately.

A pit fiend never runs low on self-teleportation.

There are a bunch of cheerful paladins manning the fortress! They explain that nearly all the Chelish soldiers decided to renounce Asmodeanism, atone, and leave the Worldwound to live a better life elsewhere; of course, they didn't want to desert their posts, so they asked if the Iomedaeans would be willing to cover for them until the handoff to a new batch of Chelish soldiers could be arranged, which the Iomedaens gladly agreed to!

They are happy to swear to this. 

"Is there any particular romance-novel trope you know about that -"

"Burn.  Burn them all.  Burn everything."

"You cannot attack -"

"The tropes."

"I shall stand here wasting my time until you are ready to make constructive suggestions, then."

"This has to be related to Project Lawful in some way.  Everything odd that has happened in the last three months has been related to Project Lawful in some way.  The question is how."

"Iomedae did, in fact, see something in Peranza's mind for deconverting Asmodeans, which She was permitted to inform her worshippers about?"

"Too obvious."

"Abrogail."

"I'm serious.  It's too obvious.  I would consider it if not for the clear trope involvement, but as it stands, no, this will be something else."

"We do need to be more cautious until we figure out what happened.  I don't, quite, believe that its only meaning is a tactic to make us cautious.  That too, I think, would not be the tropes' way."

Orders on what to tell Keltham about this, if anything at all?  Where the reality is that Nidal launched a desperate counterattack, Cheliax was ready for them, and the war is looking to end within weeks.

"I think we intended to tell Keltham that the war was going poorly and we wanted to make an unsustainable push on spellsilver, as setup for the pause."

"Sounds like we tell him nothing, then?"

"I think so. The war straining Cheliax's resources is a useful excuse on several fronts, anyway."

"Sir, I don't have clear orders until you tell me 'Yes' or 'those are your orders', not 'I think so'."

The Chosen was doing better about this, recently, until just now.  Hopefully this backsliding does not indicate the Chosen being distracted by anything she should not be distracted by.

Distracted? Her? That would be pathetic. "Those are your orders. Convey to our forces, or those of them allowed to know who I am, my congratulations, and not my annoyance they didn't take long enough about it I could reasonably petition Abrogail to be archduchess of Nidal."

"Sir, you also need to explicitly tell me that you're joking, otherwise it's an actual order."

"I'm joking." Not even with him; with Abrogail. "Is there anything else?"

Funny thing happened at a Worldwound fortress recently...

The Queen of Cheliax is of the opinion that they're meant to think this is Iomedae getting access to an Asmodean-deconverting idea from Peranza's mind before she died, but that the reality will be something different, because this has been too foreshadowed to be a valid plot twist.