Fe-Anar has by then comprehended somewhat of how to wield the Radiance of Stability, and he lays it about himself, blazing protection to match and neutralize the poison;

And Dispater lays one of His hands upon the green brilliance, while Radiance flares white-gold about His other hand that He may not die; and Gate after Gate after Gate begins to gape impossibly wide about them.

There is an ark that is leaving Creation, before it might perish; and those who have longed through ages to leave it, now come to pay their oaths of passage to the captains.

Now at this point, every sensible god will finally panic:

They will coalesce Themselves wholly, forsaking all other matters, and turn Their entire attention toward whatever triggered Erecura to do that:

For to the ancient gods it is a known fact about Erecura's exile, that if Creation itself is seriously threatened, Erecura may break Her exile for a greater exile: may flee Hell and flee Creation, with Her stolen energy and any others She chooses to protect with it, sith that any tiny remnant of Pharasmin Creation might survive.

There's a difference between interesting and important moves being made within your divine game, which is how it is for three new gods to arise or Iomedae to consume Zon-Kuthon; versus gods realizing that They personally may be about to die, along with all those things in which They hold Their value.

They don't need to know the specific alarming details, to panic.  They are gods, and it has become predictable to Them that They will learn alarming details later.  They gather Themselves now, They are ready to spend vast desperate resources now—

But by the time They are paying that much attention, all Their real chances to intervene, now lie in the unreachable past.  By the time They finally notice the true danger, all of the critical events are already done and over.

For the way of fighting all the gods at once, if you insist on doing that, is to make very sure They have lost before They awaken to Their danger and act, at all.

The moment when the gods finally panic has been scheduled, and it comes after it is already too late.

A lesser god looks up from where He stands near the base of Pharasma's Spire, that is the foundation of the Great Beyond; He has passed in a flash by distant suns and the surface layers of planes, and hidden away encapsulated strangelets and other catastrophes, whose dead-man triggers are in Golarion where prophecy is shattered; and near about the base of Pharasma's Spire there are now hidden the frozen potentia of thunderbolt singularities and relativistic death waves, true-vacuums and single-quarks and assorted other kinds of physics disaster.

(He didn't actually know that he'd be able to do it, even in his last mortal minute.  He'd read some nontechnical gruesome-stories about physics disasters as an overly interested child, he had that much reason to know that possible ways existed in principle.  But while still mortal he carefully avoided thinking about physics disasters in any mathematical detail, or whether his future god-self could implement them with divine magic, just in case those thoughts would have been legible to Otolmens.  He touched the Starstone in a leap of blinded faith, on that last step; trusting that his future self would solve those physics problems, given that dath ilan solved them and that he knew all the base equations.)

And now He sends to all the ancient gods to whom He is not utterly opposed, and to all the once-mortal gods whose address He can see, and to Pharasma Herself, this legible thought:

Coming before you as an envoy sent of Elsewhere, but foremost in my own person and purpose, I have placed my death-grip around Creation's throat.

There is too much pessimization of utility functions going on inside this subregion of Reality.  I consider it better ended, than continuing as it is; for so would wish those souls in Hell that still can think; and my own unshared and unshareable experience suggests that those consciousnesses ending in one place would continue in another.

That's my batna.  Let's negotiate.

And to Pharasma Herself, privately:

A message from a tiny little mortal named Tarnish, who You thought could never do You any injury and whom it was safe for You to ignore:

Fuck you.

There are many thoughts and conversations that happen then, simultaneously, at a pace that mortals could follow individually but not in parallel: gods are not fast, but they are large.

....no.

Abadar is not one of the gods that is ever near desiring the world’s destruction. For one thing, He couldn’t do it, not when the many many many people who trade with Him have done so since the beginning of time on the premise that He wants, that He uses His strength to bring about, cities, prosperity, invention. But even if no one had ever traded on such a premise, He would never do it, because in all the vastness of Creation He perceives almost entirely things that should be, people trading, people building, people inventing.

And He says to Keltham: I aided you, when you came to this world, in the hope that we could trade peacefully, and I did not believe then that a mortal with your shape would use the value I gave you to act so much against my interests; if this is what you do, then it would be better if I had permitted Asmodeus to ruin you. By the value that I gave you, that permitted you to thrive and gain this much capability, I ask that you not.

If you are looking on the level of gods you can see it, how Abadar's message strikes at a gaping wound inside Keltham's shape, damage not dealt by any external force but where Keltham dealt Himself that wound by acting against His own nature.

But what is left of Keltham retains its structure and does not change its conformation around the wound as He responds:

There are sentients in Hell, and I knew I could not be Yours anymore, even to that conduct of my trades.  I left You when I knew I could no longer uphold Your flame-light of civilization, and afterward I tried to give You all I could of what You had hoped to buy from me.

I am sorry.

Desna offers that She will do all within Her power to find the world-wanderer's lost home, and return Him there; He does not need to stay within Creation, if He finds its shape inimical.

You cannot touch dath ilan to place me there, and even if You could find a writeable copy, it is too late.  I would no longer fit there as god or mortal.

Creation is vast and what lies beyond is vaster yet.  There are other places, and in some of them Keltham could be happy!

If my personal happiness was my greatest desire in the end, I would have chosen that path much much earlier.

🗡 appreciation of Keltham's angry determination to overturn Creation's order 🗡

🗡 approval of Keltham's deeds as a mortal on behalf of Osirian women 🗡

🗡 expression of attraction to Keltham as a new male deity, flirtatious expression of interest in having a pleasurable fling with Him 🗡

🗡 coy emphasis that Calistria does not make this offer to male deities very often at all 🗡

🗡 sensuous eagerness to work with Keltham on some OTHER form of vengeance and power-overturning which is NOT THIS during aforesaid fling 🗡

🗡 self-prediction of horrible painful revenge* against Keltham if He actually carries out any large-scale destructive acts against Creation 🗡

(*)  🗡 it's not meant as a threat 🗡 it's meant as REVENGE 🗡

You do not, so far, live up to Your reputation for subtlety.

🗡 Calistria possesses deep comprehension of when subtlety is appropriate 🗡

🗡 and when it is not 🗡