"Yoooouuuu say that but that shop's got a racing broom of flying and I'mma buy it if you don't admit you want it in the next five seconds."

"No, you can have it.  You need it more.  What with you not being able to cast Fly yourself."

"No takebacks!"  Ione rushes into the store to make what will later turn out to be the worst purchase of her life.

Why does the thought of - participating in this awful madness herself - feel as terrifying as it does?

Why is it important that she label in her thoughts as 'madness' what has started, over months that felt like years, to make an awful kind of sense?

Why does she need to call it awful sense?  Why not just sense?

...this is usually where Snack Service would step in and say something.

...maybe Snack Service is hiding itself away, on the Elemental Plane of Fire where prophecy still operates.

Or maybe it's just that Snack Service knows Pilar can figure this out on her own, and needs to do that instead of being told things.

A fiery being with the head of a giant snake, the lower body of a giant snake, and a humanoid torso carrying a spear, comes over and tries to bother Pilar.

"You need to speak Infernal, or I can't understand your attempts to bother me," Pilar says in Infernal, and then goes back to thinking.

...it's probably her looming sense of horrible dread about whatever Comes After This For Pilar.  As might be gated behind her asking to participate.

How about if the Salamander tries to bother her with a SPEAR?

Harm.

Quickened Ray of Frost.

When Ione comes out, she'll see the collapsed body of a Salamander, not moving.

"Pilar - that's -"

"Outsiders don't get afterlives.  They can't be resurrected.  They don't have souls, they are -"

"Did you - forget?"

Pilar holds up the Merciful Metamagic Rod she just bought.

(Obviously Pilar just did it that way to avoid entanglement with local law enforcement, and not because Carissa Sevar would've cried pathetic tears about it.  Pilar is not Sevar's student anymore.)

Ione doesn't say anything in response to this, probably wisely.

They head on into an incredibly fancy-looking restaurant which only serves one patron at a time, accepts payment in magic items only, and also, apparently, grants up to 5 Wishes in sequence if you've got the diamonds.

Why?  Who knows.

Sure, Ione will pay a fee of 2000gp to cover the case where they can't come to an agreement about the mysterious deal to be further-negotiated.

She'll then vanish from Pilar's sight, and come back six minutes later looking noticeably more cheerful, and head out of the restaurant with a spring in her step.

"One down, eleven to go!" she says, her voice sounding more vibrant and forceful than before.

"Fine, I'm fucking asking.  Please tell me what the fuck we're doing, and I will only use that information in ways that benefit Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus."

"And that don't harm Keltham, who brought us along on this trip, and gave over some of Doomlord's hoard to spend, on the basis of expecting that it would not be used to harm his interests and would benefit them at least slightly."

"You will accept the words of myself or Snack Service when it comes to which ways of using that information will harm Keltham, Cayden Cailean, or Asmodeus."

"Agreed.  Now what's going on?"

"Hold on, this takes more concentration if I'm outside a library..."

The sounds around them hush.

"So, first, what do you think is going on?"

"Doomlord had enough Wish diamonds that I can get a +5 bonus to my primary casting stat, which I guess is Splendour these days, which is the treatment that Doomlord planned for himself and I'm supposed to get.  Tropes suggest that Doomlord actually had 20 Wish diamonds, and Keltham, Carissa, and you, are all getting boosted the same way.  For some reason it's important that nobody knows exactly which Efreet performed the service for us."

"What follows is true, but not the whole story:  Mister Doomlord is from a planet not in this plane that didn't have access to ninth-level wizards or the City of Brass to convert Wish diamonds into Wishes.  Wish-sized diamonds are a lot cheaper there."

"The plan is for us to get all of our abilitystats wished up."

"Ione, it's not that I lack all sense of eagerness here, but this sounds increasingly like a really large fucking issue.  Not like telling Cheliax, like telling the Worldwound alliance sort of issue."

"That sure is some common sense there.  So how'd that work out for you in Korvosa?"

"How loud can I scream without that getting out of your sound barrier?"

"It is contrary to the nature of my library powers that they be used for horrified screaming rather than privacy and solitude."