"...he's going to take psychological damage from doing something like blowing up Cheliax and sending everyone there to Hell, if it does end up necessary, so it's a cost to his functioning as well as a benefit, and he doesn't have any idea the magnitude of the cost but thinks it might be large?"

"...maybe? I guess?

That means I should not suggest my other bright idea, which is that he go to Axis, kidnap someone there, and feed them to a daemon, so he understands a trillionth of what he plans to do."

"I don't think you should suggest that idea. Would you even want him to take you up on it?"

" - yeah? I think it'd reduce the odds he destroys the universe by more than one in a trillion."

" .... it's okay for humans, who aren't gods, and who don't have godlike abilities for what they do not to change who they are, as well as not having godlike abilities to assess situations, to be unwilling to do awful awful things that math suggests are justified. It is usually correct."

"I don't see why I should be held to a lower standard than Iomedae. It's fair to say I'm actually worse than her, and so shouldn't do what she'd do because of my own actual failures, but I don't think the bar should be any different."

" - well, that's not a reaction I've ever gotten before to the 'why you might not want to follow the math that says you should do something appalling' talk. ...if you want to, you can try to be exactly like Iomedae, but Iomedae also wouldn't go kidnap people from Axis to feed to daemons because She wouldn't learn anything from doing so, and I think Keltham probably aspires to also be the kind of person who wouldn't learn anything from doing so."

"And he might well be the kind of person who wouldn't learn anything from doing so but I don't think he can be 99.999% sure he wouldn't!"

"...and yet, I'm pretty sure Iomedae, if She could show Keltham something, would definitely not show him that."

" - yeah, okay.

Do you just not personally want to hurt me or do you actively recommend against my getting hurt for some reason."

"I think we don't have a ton of time and you aren't going to be using it very well if you try to get tortured every time you handle something badly. And I think that part of being an adult is to - screw up, and know you screwed up, and have nowhere to look for forgiveness or for punishment, and keep going because there is very nearly as much to fight for as there was yesterday."

"You know, I'm kind of starting to think Iomedae got a raw deal in Chelish propaganda."

"I'm sure Her church can just write Abrogail Thrune and get that straightened out in the next edition."

Carissa turns herself into a bird and flies around in case Nirvana's on to something and that helps you have more universal human compassion, writes a list of arguments for delay and strategies for delay which she will make if Keltham seems like he's in fact possible to persuade about that, and then soothes herself with Abrogail assassination plans until Keltham comes out of his tent.

He comes out!  Lookin' great!

"Hey. You are right that probably it does not advance our goals to just blow up Cheliax, and I appreciate you not responding to that by telling me I was too much of a child to be here and letting me figure it out myself. I know that it is really hard for you to work around the ways I am unpredictable to you."

"Well, don't expect any forgiveness for it.  Both of us are under too little stress and have had too much time to relax already; cutting each other any slack would only make things worse."

She stands there blinking at him for solidly several seconds. 

- he's joking. And he made it really really blatant so you couldn't possibly miss it.

"Yeah, okay. I have some ideas related to buying more time but I think there's some confusion I need to resolve first about why it feels like my ideas for delay are - not landing, or are threatening to hear -"

"Sorry.  I worked that out, once I had time to stop and look back.  It's because I want so much for all of this to be over and done, and I'm glad that the story gave me a time limit because it means there's only so long I have to hold myself together."

"Oh. Well, maybe you want to see Carmin about that or something, if it's - not the kind of thing that stops being true once you notice it."

"Carmin is not able to help me on issues like that.  Nor Fe-Anar, nor she who calls herself Minor Character, nor Sarcini, nor Ione Sala when I see her.  Help me think about plans, yes, about other people, yes, internal issues no.  If I cannot solve them myself they are not solvable by their advice."

"I will at least decide consciously how much risk I want to take of unnecessarily destroying the multiverse in exchange for doing this faster, including as a selfish bargain within myself, rather than making that decision unthinkingly."

"I realize this is a mode of thinking you're uncomfortable with, but given that the story is forcing you to work by persuading me, anything genuinely important that you need to persuade me about, is something I can probably be persuaded of.  It is not the slightest bit uncommon for the big villain of a dath ilani story to get talked out of it, there just has to be some clear reason the villain didn't think of the argument himself.  And tropes aside, it is very hard to get a dath ilani to just shut you out and stop listening by making one mistake at him, when we already have an established relationship like this one.  That element of the story may come with time limits for you to think of the right argument, but it won't be sudden-death."

Exactly what he said except replace 'dath ilani' with 'me, Keltham'.