It would probably be taken well if Urtho responded that Tantara will of course have to check all the released prisoners for compulsions and does not require Predain to remove them before the transfer.

That makes sense and Urtho will send that message, and start assigning mages to compulsion-checking-and-removing duty. 

Predain appreciates it. They are still planning to remove compulsions on un-Gifted soldiers who have less ability to cause problems when their captors have weapons and magic and they don't. (They understand that Tantara will of course still have to check, but it still seems more polite to the soldiers in question, given that there are nearly two thousand of them and having to wait around under restrictive compulsions while technically free is probably upsetting.) 

Understood. It's going to take a while to move that many people through Gates, but it sounds like they can get started? 

Urtho feels like he should be worried about something going wrong but he's not actually sure what specifically to look out for. Can Iomedae advise him on that? 

She's not that worried, unless a hostile god is interfering on purpose for some reason. They have lines of communication. They have Gates so the whole thing can be over quickly. The site could be ambushed, but there's no one with obvious incentive to do that unless, again, there's a god who doesn't want a peace. Predain could have mixed some spies in with the released prisoners, or just turned some of them, though she'd bet Ma'ar didn't and it's not that big of a problem as long as the ceasefire holds. The gryphons and mages will not have the option of being stupid. The numbers might not precisely match what was communicated, because counting people is in fact hard. The locations might not precisely match what was communicated, because location is also in fact hard. But - the things that tend to make a prisoner exchange fail are not, in fact, at play here.  They can be paranoid while also largely predicting that things will go smoothly. (This is important for how reactive you want your guards to be.)

That makes sense, and it's a good point that telling his people to be on high alert for potential problems might not, in fact, reduce the likelihood of problems. 

It does, in fact, go smoothly. Predain seems to be pretty good at counting people. Tantara is not perfectly good at counting people, and is finding out that they have somewhat incomplete information on which prisoners are where, but this can be sorted out over communication-spell with the monitors. Gryphons are very upset and would probably like to cause problems but are limited to shouting insults. (None of the Predain guards threaten to duel them over it.) 

One thing at a time, one little bridge of trust. 

She starts drafting the peace talks. 

She has a self-imposed deadline of morning. She noticed that the representatives of the Star-Eyed goddess did not, in fact, guarantee her her safety. She is sympathetic to the fact that a god is suspicious of her for interfering with prophecy while they were presumably watching the war very closely to prevent superweapon use, but she wants to make very very sure that everything here holds if something goes wrong tomorrow. 

Urtho's people - and particularly the priestess of the Nameless God - will make themselves as helpful as possible to Iomedae's work. 

Nothing goes terribly wrong overnight. 

Then in the morning she will pray for guidance, find the usual silence, and go meet with the Star-Eyed's representatives.

The hertasi will again set them up with a room – a very comfortable sitting-room, this time, with sofas where they can stretch out in a comfortable position before projecting their minds to another plane.

Silverhorse is apparently recovered enough to join Ravenwing, this time, though he looks very drained and doesn't stand up to greet her. 

"Do you know of the Moonpaths?" he asks her, once she's seated. "I am not sure if your world's people know how to access the spirit world." 

"We know how to access...various places that might be translated that way. I don't know if this is one of them, or something else."

He can describe it to her; it looks like a mostly-empty void, with distant purple nebulas or dust clouds, and glowing mist closer at hand. It's not the most dangerous of the known planes but it's certainly not safe. The Moonpaths look like, well, paths, made of moonbeams, and it's fairly safe if you stay on them. The mist is thought to perhaps be souls of the dead, and there are legends that some past shamans knew how to talk to them - or that their Goddess could choose to allow mortals to talk to them - but he has no personal experience of it. 

With an apprentice shaman, he would usually teach them how to center their mind and concentrate in the right way to step into the spirit world, but it usually takes people days or weeks to get the hang of it. For Iomedae, he can just take her hand and lead her there. 

- all right. 

She should arrange herself comfortably, in a position where she definitely won't fall, and take his hand. This is probably going to be very disorienting. 

- it's pretty much exactly as described. A silent void, with the dusty baleful light of distant nebulas shining down on them, and slowly shifting golden mist on either side, and moonbeams-made-solid under her feet. It feels half like she's weightless, or falling, and half like she isn't physically embodied at all. 

Silverhorse is there with her, and Ravenwing, both of them looking oddly younger in the golden light, and apparently wearing clothes that look sort of - half-finished, like a painting without the final details added. 

"I will call to Her," Silverhorse says quietly. "We may have to wait, but - I think it will not be long." 

"It's beautiful," she says softly, and waits.

It's not long. 

There's no one else there, and then abruptly there is someone else there, in a way that feels oddly as though She was always there and Iomedae just somehow failed to notice. 

She's dressed from head to toe in black robes that seem to swallow the light. Her features are the same ethnicity as Silverhorse and Ravenwing. 

...Her eyes are - starry sky, without pupil or iris, somehow more disorienting than anything else about this place. 

"Iomedae," she says. 

Iomedae bows, which from Iomedae only means that this is in a context where it is probably formally appropriate to bow. 

"You are a long way from home," the goddess says. "Yet the traces of your god are still on you, and cast a shadow on your future. Curious.

- What are you planning to do." 

"I did not anticipate that in being here I would shadow prophecy. I did not intend that." If she knew how to get that effect at home she'd definitely use it to surprise Asmodeus but here the situation was in fact not that meriting of massive disruption, and also unusually delicate, and she is sincere in regretting having perhaps made it harder to navigate safely. 

"I want to build a lasting peace between Tantara and Predain, and then commence research on how I can return home." She could really use some of the local mages in her crusade, if a lasting form of transit can be developed, and she needs to go home even if it cannot. 

The goddess - makes a facial expression, or something sort of like a facial expression, that is maybe intended to be a frown but mostly just comes across as alien. 

"If you find a way to return to your home, then so might others. And then your god will intervene here, if He has a way to reach this world. I can see little of him, but - that shape, yes." 

It's a statement, not a question; it's not at all clear how the goddess wants Iomedae to respond. 

She cannot in fact deny that if there's a good channel of travel between the worlds, it'd get cheaper for Aroden to intervene here, and He might. "I do not expect Aroden to act in a way that's unwelcome to existing peoples, in a place like Tantara. Maybe in places that are ruled by Evil."

"Tell me of how He would try to intervene. And of what He would mean by Evil." 

"He is a Lawful god, and would communicate Himself with you. I would expect Him to oppose gods who send their followers to afterlives of torment and suffering, by inviting His church to oppose theirs, by toppling governments they control. Without the afterlives of torment and suffering, I'd expect Him to be willing to leave things to humans to work out, if that is the preference of the local gods."

The goddess takes a step forward. 

"Leave us," she says to Silverhorse and Ravenwing, and - she isn't touching Iomedae in any noticeable way, but Iomedae is still going to notice that she is being very very firmly held in place. 

...Ravenwing looks startled, and then worried, and like she wants to say something. Silverhorse looks - resigned, and tired. He takes her hand, and a moment later both of them are gone. 

The Star-Eyed looks at Iomedae. It feels, suddenly, oddly as though her insides are transparent, and the Star-Eyed is seeing through her, every thought she's ever had, every choice she's ever made, every tradeoff she's ever reasoned her way through. 

Every way in which Aroden has ever touched her, which is quite a lot of ways. 

"You," she says, in a tone that's impossible to read as any human emotion but might be most closely adjacent to sad, "are a very inconvenient pattern. The line will not bend. ...For what it is worth, I am sorry." 

- and something is happening. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that should be possible, for any force to reach into Iomedae and peel apart her layers and pull out the parts of her that are belonging to Aroden.

But it seems to be what's happening.