It's hard to speak the words, for all that they mean giving up.

But everything he's giving up now is just an illusion in the first place.

"No.  This is also not reality."

"Aspexia Rugatonn, highest priestess of Asmodeus, who is god of Hell and god of compacts.  I invoke my compacted right to leave Cheliax, without interference, and to bargain without interference for my passage."

Sevar?  This is, to the end, your own command.

There's no further move, though, is there. They are indeed compacted to let Keltham leave. As he now wants to do. 

She isn't sure that the game is over - suspects, actually, somehow, that it isn't - but this act certainly is. 

"As you wish," Aspexia Rugatonn speaks aloud.

There is slow clapping from an armchair in the corner. 

It turns. 

"The problem," Nefreti Clepati says to Aspexia Rugatonn, "with attempting plans that complicated is that someone's pants will end up all the way across the continent."

"Oh, I'm sorry, was this plot supposed to be complicated?  At, what, four levels of recursion?  Well, I suppose we're hardly inside of reality now, so maybe I'm criticizing all y'all too early."

She halts a first impulse to yell "KELTHAM THAT'S THE REAL ONE!"

...is that the real Nefreti Clepati, Ione isn't even sure at this point.  Ione Sala is not out of Cheliax yet.

Rugatonn's power is about her already; she knew that to pretend herself Clepati was to court the real Nefreti Clepati's attention, but gambled on no worse than this coming of it.

"I suppose I should thank Nethys.  Thanks to Him, we've had Keltham for rather longer than we might have otherwise, and Cheliax is now greatly advantaged compared to many possibilities that might have been.  I don't suppose you know what He was doing, or Cayden Cailean, and would care to explain?"

"Right, wrong, technically right, yes, yes, no."

Ione takes a deep breath.  This is it -

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.