"Nefreti did basically read me in on - what was actually going on.  It's safe to talk in front of me.  You can truthspell me about that part, if need be, and my oaths still matter to me even if I've been Atoned to not-Lawful."

"True Neutral?"

"To start with!  I'm helping Osirion against Cheliax for reasons that include my actually wanting people not to suffer and not just Osirion paying me tons of money and my incredible searing hatred of Asmodeus!  Might start detecting Neutral Good any day now!"

"I'll - have your oath then.  If you're offering it.  Truthspells - seem like they'd just be meaningless against anybody who wants to fool them."

"You know by now, right, that an oath doesn't send me to Abaddon if I break it?  It's just - me.  Trust.  Things like that mattering."

"I've been told.  Seemed to matter to some people anyways, at least."

"I, Ione Sala, oracle of Nethys, of the library's curse, do swear to you, Keltham, by Nethys and by our friendship, that Nefreti Clepati read me in on what she told me was the meaning of all of this.  Enough that you could have somebody to talk to, about the parts you figured out - though that is, itself, something I've been told, and not something that I know."

"I can't say it.  I'm sorry.  If you don't - tell me yourself, show me that you know - then I don't dare say it.  There's too much at stake."

"And I don't know, without asking Nefreti, if she'd even tell me, how much you've figured out, by today, so I can't go telling you things myself either."

"Though you're not running your glibness pin, which - on my read of you, you're not sure of anything, yet."

"I wasn't trying to use you as an oracle, Ione, it's just - there are things, I'm trying not to think through, not here, not right now, not yet."

"I'll still be here, after you have."

"Noted."

"On a more fun note, I used my Osirian money to buy a Teleport scroll so I could Plane Shift all over the planes or at least the ones worth visiting and then Teleport back to my library once I returned to Golarion!  And then Nefreti told me I was going to get myself in trouble and she'd have to Gate me back and she only told me that after I bought the Teleport scroll!  And it was very annoying but not as annoying as being in Cheliax!"

Outside the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye in Sothis, a group of men pushing a fruit cart stop, because the cart has broken down. One of them climbs under the cart to try to realign the broken axel; the other two give him advice.

They picked this approach, rather than Invisibility, because there's no question that the target -- and his escort -- will have True Seeing up. But here, there's nothing to see; just three men dressed for the hot Sothis weather and a cart full of melons. Their Osirian isn't even accented.

The person exiting this Temple looks rather worn, but not as worn, perhaps, as he was reported to be going in.

One man Fireballs the fruit cart. It turns out that inside these melons were, rather than fruit, some kind of alchemical bombs; there's a deafening roar that stuns everyone for fifty feet around, except the three men, who, it happens, rendered themselves deaf in advance. 

The second man casts Slow on the target and his escort. 

The third flings himself at the target, grabs him, and Plane Shifts with him.

Will Save: failed

Then they'll land in an opulently decorated private demiplane with a vaulted ceiling through which golden light is streaming. Only the man who grabbed Keltham came along; the others were to try to Teleport out themselves. 

"I apologize for the inconvenience," the man says. "Our only desire is for an opportunity to speak with you and learn more about you, and unfortunately this was the only way to enable that."

"And who the Hell would 'you' be, then?"

"We represent the Padishah Emperor Kalish XXII, the ruler of Casmaron from Qadira to Zelshabbar, an empire much larger than any in Avistan or Garund. The Emperor would like to speak to you of how you and he could benefit each other."

He's - more surprised, shaken, than he thought he would be - at a prospect he thought he was ready for; he'd been told the chances were against this actually happening to him.

But his means of suicide are about him.  He need only find out as much as he can, about what they know, about what they ask and what they want, before he uses it.

He'll report one last time back to Osirion, from Axis, and then be reunited with his recently sundered wife, having died in the sort of cause that doesn't get you dinged for Evil...

He really did think he'd be readier than this.

Back in the Temple, the real Keltham is asking Ione, now, about what Project Lawful was - actually like.  From the inside.  What she knew before Nefreti's intervention, without spoilers, if that's something Ione can say.

If Ione had any idea herself, before Nefreti, about how much of the Carissa that Keltham loved, was real.  If she would have actually cared about paying an INT 14 Osirian woman's tuition to the Temple of Nethys, or setting up factory-sanctuaries for women who want to earn their way out of the country.

That's something Ione is permitted to tell him.  She hasn't known the Truth for long; it's not hard to remember how everything looked to Ione-of-two-days ago, to pretend to be that Ione in her own mind, and speak what that Ione would've said.  It's not a lie if she tells Keltham that's what she's doing.

So that Ione tells him everything, starting from being a wizard student in Ostenso, taken on very short notice to a seduction mission.  (Ione has not, in fact, been briefed on everything Keltham's already been told by the others just before he left Cheliax, there's a transcript but Ione hasn't seen it and Keltham has held off on reviewing it.  Neither of Ione knows that Keltham has already heard a version of this story from Asmodia.)

There's new info anyways.  Ione's story is longer, told in private and under less time pressure.

She tells Keltham about how they were forced to sell their souls - probably explicitly in the wake of Ione being oracled, when they realized that might happen to others - that was the first time Carissa failed to sell her soul - yeah, she failed to sell her soul the second time too, though the devil who said it wasn't allowed right then tried to lock in a price of three Wishes for later -

"They faked the soul sale."

"Yes, I think by having her do a Permanencied Detect Magic -"