"Does it makes sense, in the metaphor, if I ask who runs the store that offers games for sale?"

"Those would be the Entities that contain the branching and latticed realities within which Pharasma's Creation is a tiny bubble and Outer Gods swim like pet fish in a courtyard pond."

"And mortals like me, I suppose, are just - not even pet fish, not even gamepieces, but just tiny letters on an enormous page?"

"No, actually."  The man in leather armor smiles slightly.  "You, Pilar Pineda, are the novel-game's author."

"'And then, a +6 Belt of Physical Perfection materialized within her hand'... nope.  Didn't work.  Nice joke, had me actually going for half a round, but what's the actual author-Entity like?"

"I'm not joking.  Selecting a book to carry in your shop, reading it, even playing it like a game, isn't the same as writing that book.  Who determines which pages of the book will follow, after Nethys advises Us of His choice and Snack Service carries it out?  The player can choose the option to have Snack Service tell Pilar Pineda about the Osirian adventuring party that's going to appear in the Skymetal Sword inn.  But what actually happens after Nethys advises that choice?  How does Pilar Pineda respond?  What does she think, feel?  Who writes every word that she speaks, composes her lines of dialogue?"

"Pilar Pineda does."

"The Customers have desires about the novel-game which determine that this novel-game is a good one to carry for sale, in the store stocked by the Shopkeeper of Golarions; Nethys advises Us how to make the game-player's choices; strange vast Things watch it play out, and in watching make these events more real.  But as for the one who writes the novel-game, who crafts Pilar Pineda's every thought and word, who determines which choices by the game-player lead to which outcomes, she indeed is none other than Pilar Pineda.  And Carissa Sevar, and Keltham, and Asmodia, and Ione Sala, and Peranza, and Meritxell and Yaisa and Abrogail, and Elias and Ferrer and all of the others."

"It seems to me that these larger events had a designer who wasn't me.  None of us chose the way that - that our choices fit together to make all of this happen.  The novel-game's author had to - at the very least, some author had to arrange for particular people to end up in Ostenso wizard academy - even if I didn't get a vision myself, somebody had to -"

"The Shopkeeper does not start with a Golarion, and put carefully chosen people together by sending visions - or so I'm told.  It selected a potentiality that would become a novel-game when Keltham got added to it at a particular place and time, which then caught the Things' attentions, and the Customers care about what is made more real as a result.  You are all the authors of your own lives, but there are vastly many possible books that can be written that way.  The shopkeeper's role is to select a few of those many possible novel-games, collectively written by authors like you, to be carried for sale in its store."

Pilar thinks about this for a bit.  Not for very long.

"It's... strange.  I've been told these vast secrets, larger you say than the entire greater cosmos containing Creation, and yet I feel like I have learned absolutely nothing of use."

"One of the great truths of existence, or at least our tiny part of it, is that the deepest, highest, most hidden secrets of divinity, are completely fucking useless to everyone including the gods."

"Possibly not the part where, if Keltham's right, people blotted out of existence in one place will continue, a few myriadfolds less real, somewhere else.  That would be important if it was true.  But seeing Keltham materialized here tells Me nothing about that, however convincing the evidence may feel from Keltham's perspective.  There's only one way to find out for real, and it'll come to Me shortly."

"You're not afraid to die, die for real like outsiders do?"

"Being a god isn't much of an adventure, is the thing.  My mortal self thought like it would be a fun adventure to try for the Starstone, but he failed to consider what sort of adventures a god might then have if he succeeded.  Once you've daringly risked your divine social life on trying to score Desna and Calistria for a threesome, there's not much else courageous you can personally do that won't get you immediately extinguished or turned into Zon-Kuthon."

"I made the world a better place just by being there and choosing clerics, and it wasn't like I was suffering, so I stuck around.  But if I can do more good by dying, and possibly going on to a next greater adventure, it's not in My nature to regret that.  You don't go for the Starstone on a drunken bet if you're the sort of person who holds the same horror for true-death that Carissa Sevar holds, or Iomedae for that matter.  Nethys's notes say there are more distant Golarions where Carissa ends up as Her cleric, can you imagine?  I'd regret not seeing the future of this world, how it all ends up; but wherever I end up, it'll be someplace that can see this Golarion, so with any luck I'll still find out how it all went."

"And even if I don't go anywhere - there's so many souls every day that go to Abaddon, not just in Golarion but in all the Material planes; and so many more than that, who suffer for a time in the Abyss and then perish again.  It's not, really, like a god's true life is worth so much more than theirs.  There's more consciousness in Me than in a hundred mortal souls, maybe, but not ten thousand."

"So if by sacrificing Myself I might be able to put an end to Abaddon as it is now, the Abyss as it is now, and above all Hell as it is now - then fine, good trade."

Her throat seems to have swollen shut; she cannot speak.

"Which brings us to the real topic from the beginning.  You're here to hear your last temptation."

"Even though you already know what it is, and you already know your answer."

Her throat seems to have swollen shut, or so it would be convenient to believe.  She cannot speak, or rather, would like to not be able to, she knows she could speak but she doesn't and her thoughts are winding into a tight frantic loop of horror, no no no don't say it don't make it real let her go on pretending pretending for longer even though she already knows she knew when she came here...

"You can't speak the words, because if you speak them they'll become real.  No, I'm not reading your mind; Dispater sealed it against even gods, unless I put in enough effort that He'll notice.  Some part of Nethys sees through that, but it's not talking to Me right now.  A different piece of Nethys knows what a possible Pilar thought, Nethys told Me of it; but what Nethys sees in advance of it happening can only be a possibility, and sometimes it's not right."

"Still.  This is what, according to Nethys, Pilar Pineda in one possibility was thinking, or rather, not letting herself think:"

"That your sin and flaw from the beginning, is that you thought it would be better if the people who want to go to Hell, could go to Hell, and the people who want to go to Elysium could go to Elysium."

"You wish that Asmodeus were different from how He is.  You want to also know your master's affection and caress, and not only be crushed down by correction and punishment."

"You were kinder to the other students at Ostenso academy than you should have been, and in your secret heart, even now, you don't feel that was wrong.  You feel like a bad Asmodean for having done it, but feeling that you were wrong to do it, isn't the same as feeling that the deed itself was wrong.  You've never truly felt that a single act of kindness you carried out was wrong in itself, only regretted that you were being a bad slave for doing it."

"What lies in your secret heart isn't even the respectably edgy kind of Good where sometimes you feed an unwilling paladin to locusts to protect other people.  It's worse than hidden Goodness; you, Pilar Pineda, deep down in your heart, are nice."

"From the beginning, Snack Service was made out of a piece of Myself, a bit of Nethys, and Pilar Pineda's own not-actually-very-repressed best wishes for everyone."

"You actually started acting less nice, once that voice in your head was outside yourself, and you could call it Snack Service, and say to yourself that it wasn't you, you weren't that, you were a proper Asmodean being tormented by a voice of kindness talking inside your head.  Taking that excuse away from you is why the voice is silent, now."

"The truth is that your 'curse' was mostly you, all along.  Throwing surprise parties for people isn't My domain.  It's not Nethys's domain.  It's what Pilar Pineda would have done if she'd grown up somewhere other than Cheliax.  And deep down, you've always known that."

"You'd give every sad person in Creation a hug, if you could."

"It's not exactly what's on offer.  There can't be any absolute promises, either, because by now we're off the track of any exact possibility that Nethys has seen - or at least, any that Nethys told Us about.  But the main stakes still look to be in play, and Snack Service wasn't lying when it said that you were being used for your own interests, not against them."

"All right, you fucker.  Tempt me."

"See, now you've gone and asked for it."

"One temptation, coming up."

The dying Swashbuckler drains the last of His flower-glass and pitches it into the pseudo-fireplace, where it shatters and begins to burn.

Elsewhere and not exactly at the same time: