No. 

That could just be because he's behind shields, but - the most likely explanation is enemy action. 

...can he reach the magic sword with the communication-spell. 

It takes a couple of tries to figure out the targeting, but: yes! 

<- About time. We're a little busy here> 

That is not actually helpful! 

<What happened> 

<Iomedae was meeting with the bloody shamans. Stupid idea. Got a call, found her alone in their meeting-room, she's out cold and having some kind of fit - screaming like someone set her on fire - oh, and the shaman tried to slit her throat before we got here but that's fine> 

Ma'ar doesn't actually have the slightest idea what to make of that! For one, who would possibly think that slitting Iomedae's throat would kill her! ...He's not complaining, if they had tried a Final Strike and she couldn't dodge it that might have been enough. 

...He very badly doesn't want to set off a war with Tantara again, when they've fought so hard for these tentative steps toward peace.  

It sounds like...possibly...a war is already happening. He's not sure with who. 

<Can you reach Urtho> 

<No. Haven't the faintest idea what's wrong, I don't get calls for men in danger.> 

Why do people gods keep doing this. It's not like it's going to work, it's just horrible and stupid and wasteful and pointless, and people get hurt for nothing, and Ma'ar is so tired. 

<I am going to Gate to where you are and try to get Iomedae to safety. I hope Urtho was smart enough to make sure that followers of gods were not involved in the superweapon guard roster but I am - not sure - this is probably going to set off a large number of alarms and I need you to try to reach Urtho and explain.> 

<We'll chase the shaman. Make him explain to Urtho.> 

Can he anchor a search-spell on Need - apparently yes, but his concentration is shaky and it's taking him longer than usual to the a Gate-threshold stable and Iomedae Iomedae Iomedae - his heart is thumping in his chest, he's pretty sure he's having some kind of panic attack which is also very inconvenient - Gating to the Tower feels terrifying, for all he knows all the gods are waiting for is for him and Iomedae to both be there at the same time - 

- Gate. 

...and he stumbles and falls and barely catches himself with his hands in time to avoid smashing his face into the floor.

He really wishes Iomedae's god had warned him in a way that wasn't incredibly incapacitating. 

Iomedae is in lying on a sofa, with Shayeen standing above her looking terrified, both hands white-knuckled around Need's hilt. She is, in fact, convulsing, and screaming, though at this point she's been screaming for long enough that her voice is mostly gone.

There's a lot of blood. It does look like the bleeding has already stopped, somehow, even though her throat is laid open almost to the bone. You would expect this to interfere more with the screaming, or with breathing, than it seems to be doing. 

- also there are absolutely countermeasures on this room against unauthorized Gates, several of which are now triggering, and Ma'ar is now paralyzed by several trap-spells at once. 

This is very annoying and the levinbolt that just zapped him straight through his shields is also very annoying - it feels like his heart is maybe having some kind of new worse problem now - but it is not, technically, going to stop Ma'ar from raising another Gate-threshold under both of them. 

<Find. Urtho.> he manages. <Keep him - safe -> 

- and this is possibly a very bad idea to attempt, but does he actually get anything off Iomedae if he tries to read her mind? Usually she has very impregnable shields but whatever is wrong with her might be compromising that as well. 

- oh. Aroden had not actually been able to see whether this was going to work - everything is so fuzzy at this remove - 

He could definitely stop Ma'ar from reading Iomedae's mind but it actually seems like it might be helpful for Ma'ar to get some more context. He can instead hold Himself out of the way. 

Indeed, Iomedae's kind of shielding doesn't work at all when she's unconscious! 

- the contents of her head are an incomprehensible hurricane of pain and conviction and anger and SMITE EVIL.

Ma'ar half-involuntarily flinches away from the Mindspeech contact before he can get more than the shallowest glimpse, but 

- it's all right, she's still in there - in some kind of incomprehensible danger, but she's alive and fighting. 

It seems like anonymity is a lost cause. He'll take her to the Citadel, in the capital of Predain, the best-shielded place he has access to. And a place where there are plenty of Healers on hand nearby. 

There isn't time to worry about Urtho. He completes the Gate-threshold, and they fall. Iomedae is still wearing her armor, and probably not going to be (additionally) injured.

Ma'ar is not, and is still completely paralyzed. His head bounces off the floor and the world goes hazy red-and-black for a moment, and then he's lying facedown on stone. 

He tries to reach out with Mindspeech for the nearest person, and is distantly puzzled when this fails to work.

It feels like something is crushing his chest, even though he doesn't think any heavy masonry just fell on them. He should...check that...Iomedae can't defend herself...would be bad if the ceiling fell on them. He can't figure out why the ceiling would have fallen on them - maybe a superweapon? - but it would explain why he can't breathe...also why everything is dark and seems to be getting darker and further away... 

The countermeasures on Urtho's Tower aren't meant to be lethal, but even an Adept-strength mage can get very unlucky, especially if seconds earlier they had direct mental contact with a god and most of their shields are down. Ma'ar's heart is not currently succeeding very well at pumping blood. 

He's already unconscious by the time the first Healers reach them. 

THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT JUST HAPPENED BUT IT'S PROBABLY TANTARA'S FAULT

Ma'ar's generals have a contingency-plan for invading Urtho's Tower directly.

Someone just tried to assassinate Ma'ar and Iomedae at the same time and they are seriously considering using it. 

Ma'ar's orders were very very emphatic that they should use any means available to avoid this, if they possibly can. They will, instead, send an urgent and VERY SCATHING note. If Urtho has an explanation for them within the next ten minutes they they can consider resolving this diplomatically. 

Iomedae...seems stable, actually, despite all the blood and screaming. 

Ma'ar isn't breathing. His heart is technically beating but not in a way that is particularly resulting in any circulation. They are trying very very hard to fix this but it's not a trivial problem to solve with Healing. 

This was not part of the plan. Aroden just can't see what He's doing very well. 

He doesn't have remit to grab that particular soul. Unopposed, maybe He could do it anyway, but not if the Star-Eyed– 

...huh. That is genuinely surprising. And - fascinating - pieces fitting together... 

He will present it to Iomedae as clearly as possible, in between fighting the Star-Eyed Goddess in her head, which is probably pretty distracting. 

She is in Predain and, He thinks, relatively safe.

Ma'ar isn't. Ma'ar is probably dying. 

Ma'ar - is not going to die permanently, because, like young Aroden, he has an immortality method, a way of preventing this world's impressively terrible gods from seizing his soul. Also like young Aroden, he doesn't yet know for sure if it's going to work, but Aroden can see that it will. 

Not instantly, though. And if he dies, even temporarily, Foresight shows something very bad. Probably. It's not a certainty but it would be hard to avoid, and it doesn't look like killing the goddess would prevent it. He isn't going to invest energy in figuring out what, when His sensory input is so fuzzy, and then communicating it in human-legible concepts to her. Iomedae presumably has context to figure it out with ordinary human-level reasoning.

He can refill one of Iomedae's spells - it'll be so expensive but He could - and then Ma'ar will not die, and Foresight looks much less doomy.

What he cannot do, if he does that, is also kill this god here and now. And he also can't throw her mind back to her physical body in the material plane without her active cooperation.

Which means that she would have to make an active decision to stop fighting the Evil god. (Also that the evil god will still be around until Aroden figures something else out. He isn't actually worried about this, especially; He will figure something out, and She is going to be significantly weakened and has exhausted most of Her avenues to cause trouble for Iomedae directly.) 

Iomedae is a shape that chooses things being better instead of things being worse. Iomedae is also a shape that destroys Evil. Aroden is observing that these two things are in conflict. Aroden is observing that he doesn't know if Iomedae can be a shape that will walk away from this fight. 

...also this is not exactly a strategic consideration but it's an observation that may or may not be relevant context for Iomedae: Ma'ar reminds him kind of a lot of his younger self. His much younger self, who did, in fact, have the sort of problem you get with much higher Intelligence than Wisdom. He is, ultimately, going to be a shape that can and will pursue their shared goals even if he has to do it alone. He - isn't that shape yet. Very young Aroden wasn't either. Very young Aroden was prone to setting off enormous disasters by accident, by being impatient and desperate about the fact that the problems of the world weren't already fixed, and then moving too fast and trying things too hard for him. Very young Aroden was incredibly lonely and afraid all of the time, because he was never a paladin and the only way he knew to not be afraid was to be ten steps ahead of everyone at all times. (He solved this, eventually, by learning to in fact be ten steps ahead of everyone at all times.) Very young Aroden could badly have used more allies - especially allies with higher Wisdom than him - and, in a sense even more badly, he could have used friends. 

This is way too many godconcepts for the middle of a fight. 

- the peace. The thing that goes wrong if Ma'ar dies is the peace. 

She wanted that peace.

The fucking Evil demongod -

- they are going to kill it, right, not today but someday soon, once Aroden has a church here, once he can work here more cheaply -

They're definitely going to kill the Evil god. (He is not sure She would actually read as Evil to Golarion spells, that is maybe not a thing here, but this is an irrelevant-for-Iomedae's-purposes side point that Aroden isn't going to try to communicate.) Even apart from the strategic considerations, which are that She is going to keep causing problems, you have to be a shape that retaliates for that, in sufficient thoroughness to have made it not worth trying in the first place. Even with gods who aren't Lawful and wouldn't even have been deterred. 

- okay. 

The peace, then. She chooses the peace. 

It's very, very difficult.