A youngish winged woman, clad in a flowing white dress, steps out from one of the empty archways as if it was a Gate.

"Welcome!" she exclaims, raising her hand.

Is he dead? The panic is gone like it'd never been, but the last thing he remembers is being ran over in the middle of a demon attack. Now there's a pretty outsider waving at him.

He waves back, cautiously. She doesn't look like an Agathion, and she's not androgynous, so probably not an angel.

Even if it's not Nirvana, he still made it to Paradise, and now everything will be okay. He should feel worse about failing, but something deep inside him has relaxed, and he realizes just how scared he's been of the evil afterlives, ever since he was a little kid who learned what Hell meant.

This is a Good afterlife, and not Nirvana. Maybe he'll even see his mom again.

"I'm glad to meet you!  Would you like something to drink, or some time to look over the gardens, before we talk about what might come next?"

She waves her hand, and a warm steaming mug of something that looks like tea nestles in a cupholder of his couch that wasn't there a moment ago.

(If he looks closely, some of the wickerwork might look a bit reminiscent of the topology of magical spells?)

That's so cool and he wants to spend more time looking at the sofa. Is it Outsider magic, the kind that takes thousands of years to learn? Can you replace the somatic component of a spell with specialized wickerwork, the way that one Tian school makes spellbooks out of knotted string?

There's no rush. There's this feeling of years, centuries, millennia opening before him, full of love and spellwork and the slow cultivation of enlightenment. The gifts of eternity have never felt so immediate. This is really happening.

"Thank you." He takes a sip of the tea to conceal how his eyes are tearing up a bit. Deep breaths, Lac. "Can you tell me where I am?"

She sits down slowly on the chair next to him, furling her wings.

"This place has many names from many people seeing it through many stories, and I'm happy to accept any of them.  Whatever it is, it's... a place between the stories, between the worlds, a place to watch and think of what might best come next.  And, for some," (she gives Lac an expectant look) "a place for more."

What?? That really doesn't sound like Heaven or Nirvana! The thing about "many names" sounds Chaotic, did he end up in Elysium? Or fuck up all the way to the Maelstrom somehow??

"...Elysium?" Please don't be Maelstrom please don't be Maelstrom

Ah, Elysium, the fabled land choosing the blessed and heroic; the fabled ideal of happiness!  (Yes, the Will of the Multiverse chooses others too, but.)

Of course nobody has a specific place in mind when saying that; they're talking merely about a vague image which something might come close to matching up to... and this has come closer than anything she might've imagined when she was first brought here.

"Elysium," she almost laughs, smiling in agreement.

She smiles, opens her wings wide, and waves her hand.  Something like a dragon appears in the sky above, diving and then vanishing as if to go through a distant Gate.

Elysium! He really didn't see that coming, but it's still a paradise! Is that a real life havoc dragon??! He strains his eyes to look, but it's already gone.

He grins back. "Well, it's not what I was expecting, but Elysium is wonderful! Are you here to help me get oriented?"

"Thank you - though you've hardly seen most of it, just my one garden here!"  Not that he will be seeing the rest of it.  Which he might be happy about if he knew - she herself frankly doesn't like the offices of the Worldbuilding or Diplomacy Departments at all.  They usually aren't bad to work with, but she prefers to do it by messages.

"And yes, I'm here to get you oriented!  To here, and..." She pauses half a moment; it's probably best to not just spring all the surprises about reincarnation on him... "... about what might come next.  Don't worry; I've seen so many people who're at least as surprised as you are, I'm sure."

Most people aren't theology nerds, so that isn't surprising. What is surprising is that Lac is Chaotic??

"It's not urgent, but I'd be interested in seeing my Trial transcripts, if they're available." And even if they aren't. Maybe he can find a ragtag band of Chaotic Good lunatics to loot Pharasma's offices for him?

"Trial transcripts?" she asks, pursing her lips in a bit of confusion.  Was there some trial in his life that she hadn't heard about?  Or is he talking about the way the Will of the Multiverse selected him?  But either way - "I certainly haven't seen them - I don't think anyone ever gave them to me -"

(Not that she read all of what she was given.  Of course she read about Lac's home planet's level of magic and technology, and at least the quick summary of his personal life.  But there're always other things various Departments insist on including which are basically never useful...)

She pulls a small book out of her dress, flips it open, and glances at the Table of Contents.  "... No, no 'trial transcripts'.  I could make a special request for you if you're really interested, but I'm not sure it'd work.  And really, is there any reason to care about that now that you're here?"

"I want to understand why I'm Chaotic, but I could find out another way if requesting the trials takes up intervention budget or something." Hopefully he isn't inconveniencing this helpful... Outsider. "Can I ask your species?"

"I was human once; now -" She shrugs.  "An angel, I suppose."

"And as for why you're chaotic..."  He isn't the first person to ask about his psychological state, even if he's the first person to do it so calmly and quickly.  "I'm afraid that's something you'll need to figure out yourself, though I could help."  She shrugs.

Apparently not all angels are androgynous? Lac wants to be a non-androgynous angel.

He's trying to figure out what the scope of her responsibilities is, and how much he would inconvenience her if he asked for something outside that scope. "I guess I have plenty of time to figure it out. Did you have plans you wanted to get to?"

... Huh, that one point in the report from the Diplomacy Department is referring to Lac with a plural pronoun?  Was that a mistake, or was someone trying to be gender-neutral?  But it doesn't matter.

"At some point, though if you're still feeling unsettled about yourself or your death, or if you have other questions...?"

"Well, I'd like to figure out what I did to be judged Chaotic. Besides that, I have a lot of questions about Elysium itself. How do souls find each other in an infinite plane? Are there wizard academies?" Wizard academy in Andoran was so boring he dropped out to self-study, but probably Elysium is better. He tries casting Light, expecting the mortal magic to fail but dreading it all the same.

... What?

"An infinite plane?  This's large but not infinite - and where'd you get the idea this's infinite?"

Is it somehow implicit in his world's idea of Elysium?  Her mind's jumping to make the connection, and she can see how someone in some story might have fixated on it; hopefully the comedown won't be too nasty...

(And yes, the Light cantrip does fail.)

He expected that, but it's still disappointing. It might take centuries to retrain just to first circle. He really hopes that Outsider magic is fun. Lac still wants to be an archmage, but not if magic is a miserable grind now.

"At least two well-documented Commune results from Desnans, definitely others I'm not remembering." Was the wording wrong? Or maybe Elysium (the paradise) is a finite landmass floating in Elysium (an infinitely large plane, mostly empty?) Something like that?

"Commune results" - "Desnans" - what's he talking about?

"I don't think anyone in your home world knows about us for a fact; that would surely have been in the writeup I did read --"

Wait a minute, is he saying that some people there (at least) are actually sure they know something about an Elysium as a definite place!?

Her wings quiver and droop.

"You think we don't know about Elysium? A paradise for the Chaotic Good, mostly idyllic wilderness, home to Azatas..." He trails off. It feels like the ground is dropping away and he's just started to fall.

Sexed angels apparently exist. Elysium is "large but finite." What the Hell is going on? Are all Commune results bullshit somehow? What about the casters who visit the afterlife planes?

"That's - not here."

Horrors - that sounds like a definite place!  A ball of shame wells up in her throat.

"This isn't, um, that Elysium.  When I said 'Elysium'... I thought you just meant a figure of speech!"

And through the horror, a note of concern, for the angel, who looks so afraid, and guilty-

"Please. Tell me where I actually am."

"I am, to be clear, dead?"