"I suppose I need not remind you of what those incentives are," she says.

"Under what circumstances would you betray Cheliax?"

"None." If I thought there were a way to escape Hell by doing so.

She laughs, and cancels the Mind Probe.

"A reasonable answer," she says. "The very same, in fact, that I would give. And yet there is not such a way. Had I my way, I would send you there now, so as to remind you of this essential fact, but my handlers inform me that sixth-circle wizards are 'valuable' and Raise Dead diamonds are 'expensive'. So I suppose I shall have to make do.

"Alas, my art is not yet the equal of the devils'. But I suppose I shall require practice to perfect it."

[torture censored]

The morning after he arrives, a slave comes by his quarters to return the items Andoran confiscated from him, now recovered: his headband, Medallion of Thoughts, and Bag of Holding.

The Bag of Holding is an advanced model that requires a password to open, but he opens it just to make sure everything is still there anyway.

Everything is there! Plus one additional item that he definitely didn't put there: a scroll of Meteor Swarm.

Huh?

That's a ninth-circle spell.

(An entirely pointless thought; of course it's a ninth-circle spell; that doesn't actually tell him anything about how the scroll got there.)

Almost reflexively, as he's long been in the habit of doing when faced with a mystery, he casts Cunning and Wisdom on himself.

...there's a discontinuity in his memories of his interrogation. It's incredibly obvious now that he's looking at it.

They erased something. What did they erase? Something he was meant to rederive, on encountering this incredibly expensive scroll that they certainly wouldn't give to an enemy.

He defected, truly and unambiguously, and they erased the memory so that he could pass an interrogation by Cheliax about it. Which means the Church of Iomedae must have shown him a workable way out of hell. (It was a paladin of Iomedae who interrogated him, and it seems unlikely that Andoran as a faction could do that.) That's the only condition under which he'd risk Hell's wrath, which can, in fact, always get worse.

He must have given them the password to the Bag of Holding, which means he must have helped formulate the plan. What was it?

It's obvious. A significant portion of the Chelish fleet, down on supplies and in need of repairs after the long blockade, has come into the newly available port. He can actually see the ships out his window.

Ships are extremely flammable.

He reads off the scroll, targeting the docks.

He doesn't stick around to watch the ships burn, of course. The moment the first spell pulls itself free of the scroll he's already casting a Teleport to the Ascendant Court in Absalom.

He runs into the Temple of Iomedae.

"I just destroyed about a third of the Chelish navy and I need to be unscryable in the next six seconds," he says to no one in particular.

The Iomedaens are rather concerned about the high level Chelish wizard running into their temple! Somewhat less so when he announces that he just destroyed a third of the Chelish navy; probably he's a defector? Although this could be a lie, Asmodeans do that a lot.

Someone grabs his wrist and Plane Shifts them both to Heaven.

Plane Shifts to Heaven's Shore are redirected based on the alignments of both the caster and their passengers; they land in the area designated for Good casters with non-Good passengers. The possibility that some of those non-Good passengers might be trying to escape Infernal Cheliax is something Heaven has thought of, and so adjacent to this plaza there's a safe house with an effect on it that those who insist on describing magic in mortal terms might call an Area Mind Blank, which is to say that no power known to Golarion can see inside. The priestess of Iomedae who Plane Shifted them here tells Riudaure to follow her, and leads him inside.

"I apologize, your magic won't work in here," she says.

"Understood." He's busy staring in wonder at the effects with Arcane Sight; is that an alignment-conditional antimagic field? It sure looks like it only blocks magic from Evil casters.

His headband still works; evidently it must be an import from outside Cheliax. His Medallion of Thoughts doesn't—though it wouldn't anyway because Area Mind Blank, seriously.

She turns to face him.

"So. Uh," she says.

"What?"

"My name is Jean Riudaure, Captain, sixth-circle wizard, and I have just betrayed Cheliax by using a scroll of Meteor Swarm on their fleet in port in Augustana," he says in the calm, rapid idiom of someone quite experienced with emergencies. "There are complicated details there but I doubt any are urgent on the scale of minutes. My highest-priority personal request is clarification on what protection from Hell I can expect of your Church—I am soul-sold—but that is also less urgent than the situation in Augustana, I expect."

She breathes in, then out.

"Right," she says.

"I'll be right back." And she runs out into the street and flags down a lantern archon.

     "Hi! Can I help you?" it asks cheerfully.

"Convey the following to the Temple of Iomedae in Almas: arson attack on Chelish fleet underway in Augustana. Request all available support."

     "Sure!" it says, and disappears with a !pop!

She returns to the safe house.

"We can statue you," she says, "but normally, soul-sold defectors ask about protection from Hell before they call down a Meteor Swarm on the Chelish navy. Speaking of which, where the fuck did you get a scroll of Meteor Swarm?"

"I knew that, at one point, or so I assume. I had my memories erased at some point so that I could pass a loyalty screen." He explains the original infiltration plan, the gap in his memories, Aspexia's takeover of the demiplane—

"—speaking of which, have you ever considered trying to get to one of her Security and having them Teleport her into the House of Oblivion? I almost did it but I didn't think I could hit the target closely enough. Or ten feet from the Worldwound, I think that would be more likely to kill her but I didn't have the range."

Wow.

Who is this guy.

"—I think that, in practice, Aspexia Rugatonn mostly doesn't trust people to Teleport her who would do that. Even to escape Hell. I'm not sure why such people exist but empirically they seem to."

Obviously they should start assassinating those people then. There can't be more than, like, ten.

"Anyway. When I found the scroll of Meteor Swarm in my Bag of Holding I guessed what the plan must have been, and then did it. If you want confirmation of this that doesn't involve memory fuckery you should find the paladin who interrogated me. I didn't get his name but he had a colonel's insignia."

"Yeah, we can do that."

"I am making inferences about the contents of my deleted memories here, but I gather that Iomedae is opposed to the existence of Hell? If so, I think we could be allies, if not friends."

"Of course Iomedae is opposed to the existence of Hell! It's—

"—She's the goddess of defeating Evil, right, and Hell is the worst evil in the world without question. It's not fair, it's not justice, it doesn't even discourage people from doing Evil in their mortal lives because humans aren't good at thinking about that sort of thing, it's just—suffering. We wouldn't subject Asmodeus Himself to it."