Derrina leaves again, returns again.

"It's underway, and they shall give us notice when it succeeds or fails."

"Hello, Carissa Sevar.  How have you been."

" - well, thank you. I hit fifth circle and sold my soul and renounced Irori and I think I have a plan to fix Hell."

"I'd usually congratulate you on having renounced Irori, but I did not, in fact, miss all those other parts."

"Say more?"

"I sold my soul to Dispater for fifteen Wishes, this artifact headband, permanent Tongues and Arcane Sight, and the souls of everyone on Project Lawful and options on most of Chelish Security, and compacted with Asmodeus for all the souls that enter Hell calling my name to be mine, once I've done a lot of conquest for Him, so long as I am judged by Him to not have fallen into His despite, which may or may not be at all compatible with anything else I'm planning to do but, hey, it's an option. 

I think - I think I shouldn't speak to you of more of my plans, without your word you won't use it against me, or against Keltham."

"I think I'm jealous of your talent.  You were only a cleric of Irori four months, and already you've renounced Him and gotten into more trouble than I have during my entire life."

"If I'm permitted to repeat the news you've spoken so far, it's going to move some prediction markets, as they say around here.  Do you want me to see if they'll let the Prince Merenre enter here - he is the master of those markets, if you knew that not - so that you can see his face as he tries to update all his probability estimates based on that new information?"

" - that sounds entertaining but I'd sooner give Keltham the chance to tell me if he's got some really compelling reason why the compact with Asmodeus should remain secret, before Osirion -

- oh, gods, it's the markets, isn't it - can they communicate with Abadar that way, the way Asmodeus can see corrigible people - is that how they've been spying on us - I don't expect you to know the answer to that -"

"Well, I can avoid repeating what you've said so far, then."

"I've decided.  I do offer you my word that I shall not use anything I learn from you here, against you, or against Keltham, without your further consent given explicitly, freely, and deliberately.  Our hosts have already told me that nobody else is listening.  In part because they did not want to risk what you might say to anyone not deaf; but they also, I think, suspect you of needing somebody to talk to."

"It's kind of possible that I need someone to talk to! Or rather, I think you can, with enough Wisdom, do that thing to yourself anyway without actually having someone to talk to, but talking to someone will be faster, and I think we don't have all the time in the world -

- anyway. 

I think Keltham's going to try to kill Asmodeus, and I think Asmodeus is going to let Rovagug out to eat Golarion. Because He's the god of pride, and He hates losing, and He - sucks, actually, he's horrible, I genuinely cannot comprehend that I heard that prophecy about how He'd end the world if he didn't like it enough and still thought He could possibly be worth serving -

- anyway - He'd rather end the world than be defeated by the worthless little worms that someone gave free will. 

Of course if Otolmens knew how this would go she'd squish Keltham. Not just Her.  Achaekek eats people who are on a trajectory to threaten the gods, maybe he can't get into the Dome. Or He could but He'd have to, like, chisel his way in, which seems kind of beneath His dignity. I - thought about warning Otolmens, when I realized, but -

- but I couldn't just - give up, on all the space that there is here for something to be better, and I couldn't give up on Keltham, condemn him to be - deleted - and Cheliax would conquer the world, if Otolmens just took Keltham out, and I don't think Cheliax should do that actually -

And I think that the Good gods - well, Cayden Cailean, though I'm confused about why it'd just be Him, and suspect it isn't - I think that they're trying to see if there's - a way for Keltham and Asmodeus to negotiate something that Asmodeus prefers to destroying the world. All the interventions on the Project - they weren't aimed at Keltham, his trajectory wasn't very changeable. There was nothing we could realistically have shown Keltham such that, when he learned about Hell, he wasn't like 'wow I'm going to kill the guy in charge of that'. They were aimed at, well, me, and at Pilar. 

It's the most Asmodean thing in the world, in a way, to kill your boss because you want His job. I think Good's angling for some kind of defeat of Asmodeus which - which is Asmodean enough, if that makes any sense at all, that he prefers it to unleashing Rovagug. It's what I was trying for, from a different angle. My compact - there are some conditions on that, it's going to be hard to use, but - it's what I was trying to do, follow the rules and do the thing Asmodeus respects and also make Hell less stupidly horrible - although I'm not sure Good objects to the same things about it I do -"

"So... from Keltham's perspective, those Lawful Evil are already condemned to Hell, to which nonexistence is preferable, and he thinks that they would, if they knew, approve of his plan to risk all existence in order to slay Asmodeus and - make himself the new ruler of Hell?  Make you ruler of Hell?  So he's trading with them, but not those of other alignments who'd get the risk without the benefit?  I admit, none of this is really squaring with my sense of who Keltham is, or who you are either."

"- it hadn't even occurred to me that Keltham might think nonexistence was preferable to Hell, though you're right, it's totally the kind of horrible ilani thing he might think. - I figured out enough of something that was coherent, didn't leave me with as many confusions as I feel right now, and that's when I set my course for the soul-sale, but I deleted my memories and I haven't rederived it all yet. I should be able to once I have some time to think."

"I expect that Keltham will be on his way here within two rounds after he hears that Osirion holds you.  If you want time to think before then, you should kick me out, or tell our hosts to tell Keltham to take his time."

"Do you want to avoid me telling you other things that you wouldn't have known when you made your plans and then deleted your memory?"

"No, please do tell me, I'm pretty sure I can pass the Keeper-test now where you can say what guess you'd have made in advance so you're not going to make it harder for to rederive what I was thinking, and I'm desperate to know what's going on."

"I don't know, and our hosts, not the kinds to dissemble, do speak of their own confusion and concern.  Keltham arrived, apparently in something of a distraught state, given to excuse himself for sudden fits of weeping.  He was strongly advised to rest, and recover; he did neither of those things, visiting the Sothis marketplace and asking women what they thought should become of Osirion's customs, he sponsored one such for magic lessons at the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye.  He has often visited Ione Sala there in privacy."

"According to our hosts, Keltham said he feared that the story enfolding him would rhyme, from his being betrayed in the story's first part, to his betraying others in the second part; and therefore Keltham wished to trade only with Lawful Evil partners who would keep their compacts, but not trust him otherwise, whom the story could not force him to betray.  He expressed much concern about whether any persons including gods were still reading his mind.  He asked a number of pointed questions about how Abadar related to mortals.  He put on a Splendour headband and requested a Fox's Cunning and Owl's Wisdom, and soon after lost, or severed, his connection with Abadar, greatly to the distress of our hosts.  From there, Keltham mostly stopped saying anything about his thoughts or reasons, but pursued the same policies he'd expressed earlier."

"Those are some of the points I'd expect to be relatively less known; I'm skipping over things that I'd expect Cheliax to have already told you, like Keltham recently changing his course to forge a supply contract with the Kelesh Empire."

"- working with the church of Iomedae? Nethys? Cayden?"

"He visited Ione Sala often in Nethys's temple.  Aside from that, I do not, myself, know of any contact between him and the churches of Iomedae or Cayden Cailean."

"Cheliax hadn't heard about that either but I hoped he was successfully hiding it from them. If he's not working with them -

- well, if Good's plan is for Keltham to defeat Asmodeus in some way that leaves Asmodeus willing to not destroy the universe, and Keltham's not allied with them, what's he doing that even Good wouldn't get on board with? Iomedae'd kill Asmodeus if She could even if it risked the world, wouldn't She?"

"I think you'd have to ask a priest of Iomedae that.  But I imagine, if I were Iomedae, I'd probably think to Myself, 'But maybe there's a way to kill Asmodeus without risking the world' and then I'd try for that.  Now, I am not Iomedae, but She did become a god even if by cheating at it, and had some respectable accomplishments before then; She can't be that un-Irorian."

" - huh. Possibly Iomedae is substantially less horrible than I always assumed. - do you know why Keltham did a show of scrying me, a couple hours ago?"

"I had not even known that he attempted to scry you.  Nor do our hosts know, I suspect, if that is a thing that should be made known to them."

"If that event is what brought you to Osirion, an obvious thought is that Keltham did it, in fact, in order to bring you here... I am curious about how that happened, if you have no more urgent tasks about you than satisfying my curiosity."

"Pulled me to a safe house, where I wasn't being mindread so I rederived my plan - I am pretty sure when I came up with it in the first place I was confident in my ability to rederive it once not being mindread, and not sooner - at which point I realized that the world might be at stake and I needed to get to Keltham before he did something really stupid, so I talked them into going to Hell where I could kill them and come here. I don't think the previous version of me that came up with the plan was in contact with Keltham, though of course if we both have good enough predictions of each other we don't need contact - that's what I want, to be that good, but I don't think I am yet, and if Keltham is then it's weird he wasn't here waiting for me."

"It's not impossible that Keltham meant you to have some time to think to yourself, before asking you to meet with him again, after this much time, and after so much has passed between you."

"I wanted to - make sure he was better off for having met me. I am pretty sure it's why I wanted to buy the Project girls and why I wanted to have 30 Wishes. I think he's going to make some kind of horrible mistake, if he tries to do this alone, and if he has any reason to listen to me I can talk him down from it. And we can overthrow Asmodeus in some nice reasonable way that isn't going to have catastrophic consequences. What's even the point of being smart if you just have to surrender even more of what you care about than when you were weak."

"I am not sure that better off for having met you is something you can accomplish with just fifteen Wishes.  Keltham was in rather a distressed state, I am told, when first he came from Cheliax to Osirion.  I am told that he mentioned possibly wanting an Atonement to Neutral Evil so he had 'a way out of this reality' at any time, and apparently took some convincing that Axis would also let him end himself if he wished."

"If that was not already a pose on his part, then you really messed up that young man, Carissa Sevar.  Even if under threat of Hell, it was still by your own hand.  I know you've renounced Irori, but I'll say nonetheless that His Way includes the Way of cleaning up your own messes."

" - he -"

She's so confused about why Keltham, even with his theory that people just go somewhere else, would think that other place will probably be nicer; most possible ways a place could be are much much worse than being a valued and much-competed-over asset in Golarion.

There's no point in arguing that with Derrina, and it's not really an argument anyway, just a quiet note of confusion amidst many. 

"Obviously if Keltham wants to stop existing I'm going to fix that!"

"I don't think he currently does, for what it's worth, or he'd already be gone.  He is doing many things, not all of which I know or Osirion knows, buying scrolls and magic items and trying to hire Lawful Evil wizards.  If Keltham wanted himself dead he'd be dead, now that he sees himself as having repaid his debt to Abadar.  Whatever he's trying to do now, it is something greater than his own suicide."

"- I am somewhat reasoning off a vision I had of you and him, from Irori.  My vision of Keltham was of a boy out of his natural place, trying to use everything that fact made him.  That was months ago, but still."