Aspexia, you swore to come back for me, is her last thought.

There's a tall woman, ghostly pale, in what another world would recognize as judge's robes. Dath ilan has no particular tradition of their judiciary wearing special clothes, so the implication will be lost on any dath ilani appearing in this court.

"Do you know your name?" she asks.

"Athpechya," she says. The sensation of hearing herself is more like the sound of her voice in her own head than actual vibrations in the air.

"Do you know where you are?"

"Top hypothesis is a rescue simulation, probability forty-five percent. Do you need to hear my other eleven?"

"That'll do. You are dead; this is your soul's trial, to determine what afterlife you will be sent to. Do you—"

"Objection," says a horned red-skinned man to Athpechya's right. "She was Maledicted; this is not a soul trial. The defendant in this trial is her." He gestures at the armored Chelish woman sitting to Athpechya's left.

"Sustained. Lady Iomedae, you are accused of the theft of this soul, which Hell claims as its rightful property under the Malediction Act of -8762. How do you answer?"

"She died in my domain and I'm allowed to keep her. Abbadon's Case, 4077."

"That's not what Abbadon's Case says at all and you know it."

"Implication from what it doesn't say. The judgment of the court condemns Abbadon for, quote, 'the unlawful theft of souls from the River of Souls'. No mention of the soul farm they're running with a population four times that of the largest city in Golarion."

"Hell and Heaven alike condemn the senseless wastefulness—"

"In which case I will concede this case when this court permits me to raze Awaiting-Consumption and evacuate everyone there to Nirvana."

"To Hell, for Evil souls."

"No."

"The court proposes a compromise: Axis, as befits her actual alignment, and the Malediction penalties against resurrection remain in place."

"With Grand High Priestess Jacint Subirachs as the Maledicting caster of record, not the second-circle who got lucky with a scroll."

"Speaking of which, I have some proposed rule changes for saves. That was some bullshit."

"Objection: immaterial."

"Sustained. Lady Iomedae, please confine your remarks to the matter before the court."

"How about I just pay the cost of a Miracle and we send her back to Heaven alive."

"I'll allow it if Hell agrees."

"We'll assent if she can explain how she created a ninth-circle cleric in the middle of the Grand High Temple of Asmodeus at zero intervention cost."

"Immaterial."

"Not entirely."