...He nods. :I will wait. ...If you are not back in a candlemark, or if anything else happens, I am going to Gate back to inform Urtho, but - I will try to return and wait for you even then: 

:That sounds good. Thank you.:

And now she'll permit Alfirin's Plane Shift.

And rather than in her gardens, they will be floating weightlessly in an orb of force suspended in the middle of a torrent of positive energy, which fouls prophecy and more ordinary divinations alike.

"Explain."

There's - a lot that Iomedae would like to say to her friend and also ex who has presumably been under extraordinary strain without Iomedae who just showed up across the planet with a boyfriend and a mysterious plan.

It's not the time for any of that.

"First thing, prophecy does not work well across interplanetary distances of the type we're talking about. The local gods in Velgarth, where I landed, pretty much couldn't see at all and it caused them a lot of problems and also me a lot of problems. I'm reasonably confident it'll work the other way, and the gods here will have enormous difficulty with visibility for plans conceived and developed in Velgarth.

Is that enough that you'll agree to come with me to Velgarth for the rest of this briefing or do you need more."

"Did you get here with a wish or do they have longer-ranged teleportation on Velgarth?"

"They have a longer-ranged Gate. Ma'ar, who accompanied me, can take us back."

And, with a sigh, she pulls a Wish diamond out of her gauntlet. "- and you can leave without their assistance, if you need to, though they are my allies and I trust them."

This is, if it's a trap, a very well-baited one. She will take the diamond.

...She is having a sinking realization that, when the Crusade leadership had arranged a commune with Aroden, He had told them not to try to wish her back, even in an emergency. And that they had not, at the time, thought to ask whether this was because Iomedae was doing something extremely important, as they had assumed and as her recent sending implied, or for some other reason. Dou-Bral wandered to distant places once and came back changed.

"Are you hiding your activities from Aroden in particular, or just other gods."

"Aroden would approve if He knew, but it is possible that He would be - bound to stop me."

How incredibly inconvenient (for Good Iomedae)/convenient (for Evil Iomedae)

"Do you predict it would cause problems if we asked Him, with no other context, whether you are Fallen."

"- I think, had Aroden withdrawn His backing, I would no longer be consistently able to beat your magic, or immune to any of it that might touch my mind. Also the sword still works." She makes it glow. "I don't, in fact, want you to ask Him to look closely at me right now."

"Don't resist." Greater bestow curse. Bestow curse. Dominate Monster. Dominate Person. Dominate Person. Threnodic Dominate Monster.

--

It is, in fact, very very unpleasant, to let a curse touch her. 

She can see what Alfirin is checking, though. If Iomedae is immune to mind-affecting magic, no Dominate will touch her no matter how badly Alfirin has battered her ability to resist. If Iomedae is - whatever in the Outer Reaches Alfirin fears Iomedae is -

- well, one of those should really have worked. 

None of them did. 

"...OK. Let's go. I'll prepare a lot of break enchantments tomorrow." Plane shift. Teleport.

:OK, I did some more checks. Not a trap. I'm going to the other planet with Iomedae, the telepathic bond probably won't reach.:

And they reappear in front of Ma'ar, Iomedae looking like she has been cursed - which is to say, not much different from usual, but there's a bit of strain in the way she's carrying herself, if you're attentive to that, and also some obvious spells active on her.

:We're ready to go.:

He notices. The spells, of course, they're incredibly obvious and not ones he recognizes, but also the strain. Iomedae isn't acting like her ally just betrayed her, but - she might not be allowed to, if they gambled wrong here - 

- he can't actually read her mind to check unless she lets him, and he probably shouldn't just try to snip those spells, they'll come apart destructively and Iomedae will survive it because it's much less bad than a superweapon but it will look very escalatory. 

He ends up just taking a step closer to her, his body language shifting to - not exactly angry, but definitely dangerous, and protective. :Are you all right: he sends, privately. 

:Yes. I just have very suspicious allies, which I appreciate about them. You can dispel the curses if you want, we're no longer using them.:

She's just going to ignore that.

It's understandable to be grateful and appreciative for suspicious allies! This is not actually going to get Ma'ar to the point of feeling or acting warmly toward Alfirin, but he is slightly less hostile. 

:I would prefer to do that here first - cutting them with my magic will be somewhat destructive, I think it will not injure you very much because you are hard to injure but - is that all right -?: 

:Yes, yes, go ahead.:

Then he'll snip the spells. As carefully as he can, and laying shields on her first where it looks like it might help, but it's still definitely a level of backlash that would kill a normal Velgarth human on the spot. (It gives Ma'ar some backlash, just via being the one who laid the shields, though not an amount of backlash that will interfere with Gating.) 

She does not, perceptibly, startle to see that.

Iomedae can take a Wail of the Banshee to the face when she has not made her save from it and does not much care about the spell-snapping damage, though she smiles appreciatively at Ma'ar.

And he'll fling out his mage-sight first, to check that no one is nearby enough to see a Gate, before he raises one back to Velgarth.

It takes him a while, even with the more efficient routing, and he's not especially close to draining himself unconscious but he's definitely very dizzy by the time the Gate is up. (The other side is, of course, hidden by a milky-opaque barrier.) 

He holds out his hand to Iomedae (half because it would be embarrassing if he collapsed immediately after crossing) and then will usher them both across into Velgarth, specifically to Urtho's very well shielded Work Room. 

Urtho is very relieved! 

...He's been scrying from a different Work Room, and will drop it and switch to scrying the room they just Gated into for a few seconds before he walks over to meet them. Paranoia does not at all come naturally to him but he's learned some of it, over the course of the war.