Oh.

Somehow she hadn't made that connection.

"Do you swear to me that all of this - not just today's choice, the entire fucking thing since the beginning - that it's all being carried out in a way that's - of Abadar, not Asmodeus?  Where this isn't some clever trap to indebt me to Cayden Cailean, and prevent me from benefiting Asmodeus more, as I would have done on my own?  Not just that exact thing being ruled out, but everything like that?"

"I mean, Abadar wouldn't have set up your family to end up in Axis without asking you.  But it's a decision-theoretically-complicated bargain being made around your past and future selves that, cares, in that way, and looks out for people's interests in ways that they didn't know to ask for, that they'd have predictably wanted later.  You're not, ultimately, being used in a cruel way where they go 'ha ha' afterwards, at least if things go the way that we hoped, that was predicted to me.  The result won't be worse for you than if you'd done nothing, or had no capacity to do anything.  The results from your perspective won't be worse than if you'd been a rock with the same utilityfunction.  I can swear to that, and do swear to that."

"Am I - being offered anything remotely resembling a fucking real choice, here?  Because if so, I'm missing it."

"No.  You're being used.  Used to achieve your own interests, but still, used."

"Hearing you be honest about that, is helpful."

"Will I think that all of this was a good idea, that I made the right choice here, after I get Wished up and put on the headband?"

"You'll wish you'd figured out other things you haven't figured out, before coming to the City of Brass and being given information, and taken options you didn't see.  Of the options you do see, you'll endorse that you chose to get Wished-up.  You'll know that if you'd been a person who'd have figured it all out and acted earlier, Cayden Cailean wouldn't have invited you in, or given you as much information as you already had."

"You might not approve of the entire macroevent that's going on.  You'll prefer having been part of it to having been left out, and see that you were used in your own interests and not against them, in a sense that's deep, and real."

"I so swear."

"Okay."

"We'll do yours next, then!  I'm planning to hang out in the City of Brass doing even more shopping afterwards."

"Like, ominous shopping of destiny, or..."

"No, just fucking around and having fun because this is great."

"I'd say that I'm glad somebody here is having fun, but I'd be lying."

"Pilar?  Let me tell you one of life's deepest secrets.  No matter what else is at stake, and no matter what else is going on around you, no matter what ominous storm gathers just over the horizon out of sight, no matter what you don't know, and no matter what you're already afraid you know -"

"- anybody who can't have fun as a sixth-circle oracle on a City of Brass shopping trip, with an unlimited budget, is fucking doing it wrong."

"Now how about if we get you a permanent intrinsic +5 to all abilitystats, and you try not to whine about that.  Is this some kind of subby thing?  Because for somebody who grew up in Cheliax it's amazing how much you whine."

Ione has a point, not that Pilar is going to admit it, but she does.

...Wait a minute.

Ione's already been to Wish shops.  She's already got +5 Splendour on top of her headband.  Probably got that in the first one she visited.

That fucker.

+5 Constitution.

+5 Dexterity.

+5 Strength.

She doesn't ask why Ione is doing this in that order, because she already knows.  It's a kind of gentleness, and Ione is Good.

+5 Splendour.

...she can just take the headband off beforehand and not change too much, that way, right away.

+5 Intelligence.

She's worn the +6 Intelligence headband before.

This feels, deeper, in a way.  But not - not too different.  Not too new.  Right?  It's just that she can never take off this invisible headband.  Except maybe by learning Bestow Curse and cursing herself and that... would be going too far into being pathetic.

+5 Wisdom.

Pilar has had a simultaneous Fox's Cunning and Owl's Wisdom before, and this is, greater, and not just in the way of +5 versus +4, there is something in it not captured in the measurements.  But she's had +4/+4 before.  It's not that different...

At +5 Wisdom it's very obvious to Pilar that she is lying to herself.  She knows she has done the equivalent of putting on an artifact headband she can't take off, and that's before taking into account the actual +4/+6/+6 headband that she still has, returned to her by Keltham, in her Bag of Holding.