She eats, and she bathes, and she cries a bit without really understanding why, and sleeps for two hours and then a whole extra fifteen minutes because she did not see any rings of sustenance and people were talking about the morning rather than the middle of the night, so probably their new allies in fact need eight hours like typical mortals.

When she wakes she's able to, uh, feel things, which she had not been doing the evening before. And she's got five and a half hours to herself to sort out what she's feeling and why.

...So first of all, they have a weapon that can destroy Dis. That's. Big. She thinks she'd normally be feeling more excited about that than she is right now. Come back to that later.

The fact that they are planning to destroy Dis means that Iomedae in fact has a good reason to be hiding everything she's doing from Aroden. And it's - detailed, and the details hang together. It would be hard to fake on short notice. It's reason to think that Iomedae did not, in fact, put on a zon-kuthon helm, especially when that was already quite unlikely. That is a relief. A huge relief. She checks, a couple times, whether she's just choosing to believe that because it's so much more pleasant than the alternative, but she's pretty sure it's actually just where the evidence points.

Alright, back to that first point -

THEY HAVE A WEAPON THAT CAN DESTROY DIS!!!!!!!!!!!!

She giggles, and cackles, and leaps about the room, because they are going to destroy Dis and she will never see the look on Asmodeus' face but she can imagine it. (She cast a private sanctum last night, she's not disturbing anyone in nearby suites)

(OK they might not literally destroy Dis but if not that's only because they are going to get something even better - by Aroden and Iomedae's lights, at least, maybe it won't be as good by hers but - that's a small thing - )

They are going to destroy Dis.

...OK, anything else.

Marit, who can still feel fear, might be having a panic attack right about now. Sorry Marit, at this point she's pretty sure there's not anything she can do to help with that.

...Marit, in the middle of having a panic attack, might ask Aroden whether Alfirin and/or Iomedae have been dominated/zon-kuthoned/evil-all-along and are up to something nefarious. Probably she should talk with Iomedae and see if there's a way to head that off at the pass, but - if Marit thinks the two of them might be working against the crusade's interests it's not like there's anything they can say to him to prove otherwise. Oops.

Iomedae has new allies. That's - good news. Great news. Even leaving aside the plane-destroying superweapon that's great news. Why does she not feel like that's great news.

- Well, Iomedae's sleeping with Ma'ar, but - that's probably not it. She and Iomedae were involved for one week, and it was thirty years ago, and she's definitely over that. It's good for Iomedae to have someone who's important to her and also not sworn to her order of paladins.

...Probably it's because with another archmage around, plus however many non-arch mages are involved, Alfirin is no longer indispensable. It's great news for the Crusade, assuming the Crusade holds out until they're done DESTROYING DIS and can turn their attention to a mere lich-king. Less good news for Alfirin personally. This is fine, because there's still this whole new planet and even if her relative importance is lower she still wants the known world to have access to this other planet and all these other mages. OK. This is fine. She's not as happy about it as she could be but her feelings aren't really an important consideration here.

OK. That might be it? Anything else?

...Iomedae was worried about her. That... makes a lot of sense, Alfirin was clearly not in her best state of mind yesterday. It was a very stressful day following a moderately stressful month and she wasn't sure if Iomedae had turned Chaotic Evil. She's better now.

She's kind of worried about Iomedae, too, what with how a god tried to shred her soul. The other events of the past month also don't sound like they were great, but - manageable, for Iomedae. The god trying to shred her soul sounds really bad though! Alfirin should ask her about that later, see if there's anything she can do to help.

...aaaaanything else.

No? OK, great, she's Had Feelings now, and they're all nicely explained and processed, and she can work on planar math for a few hours before everyone else is awake, figure out how they can test for the Astral plane and the Void being the same, et cetera.

Iomedae, when she wakes somewhat later than Alfirin because of having gone to sleep somewhat later than Alfirin, has the hertasi pass a note that says that the locals don't have Rings of Sustenance and Iomedae is available now if Alfirin has any questions for her.

...Yeah that also seems like a way she could spend her morning. She should just - double-check that she doesn't have any more feelings she missed and hasn't dealt with -

Nope! No more feelings! She can go meet Iomedae, uh, wherever the hertasi recommend?

The hertasi can provide a very nice conference room. And...breakfast...if they want it? It's kind of still the middle of the night and they are confused by these people who apparently only need two candlemarks of sleep. 

Iomedae would like a few different varieties of spicy teas, and maybe cakes that go with those? The hertasi tend to appreciate it when Iomedae has fairly specific tea requests. 

"As servitor races made by archmages go I think hertasi are my favorite," she says. "Tantara would've lost the war much sooner if Urtho hadn't had them to do all his military logistics, which he is dreadful at. ...how are you doing."

Well, they are powerful adventurers from another planet, of course they have some surprising properties! Just tea for her. Green.

"I'm - better. Great, actually, I keep remembering that we're planning to destroy Dis - I realize I was doing quite badly yesterday, I think - When you said you had to hide your plans from Aroden I wasn't sure you hadn't stumbled into a zon-kuthon helm or something like it - And you said Aroden would approve if he knew but - You've never lied to me but if you weren't Good, or Lawful you might and - I couldn't really make trustworthy judgements about that while you were there. And there was a lot of new information and - "

"And I'm better, now. I'm sorry I cursed you. Are you okay, a god attacked your soul...? I realize I'm missing a lot of context on what you've been doing the last few weeks, and we have a few hours, but - the god attacking your soul thing seems important, maybe we should start there?"

"I think we should start there. I - that we should destroy Dis, given that we can, seems so overdetermined that even if I'm in fact a little bit twisted somewhere, I'm very sure the proper shape of me does it. But I think I ought to not have ruled out that I'm a little bit twisted somewhere, and I can't have Aroden check for me yet, and so I'd appreciate it if you did.

They call Her the Star-Eyed Goddess, Her followers explained to me that they had - concerns about how I was fogging up prophecy - this was just after Vkandis's followers had stolen a superweapon, so under the circumstances I was sympathetic to the prophecy concerns, though I'm also just - always more sympathetic than you, right - and Her followers asked me to come with them to walk the Moonpaths in what sounded like the astral plane, and meet Her in a vision. They couldn't promise me safe passage. That's not how the locals understand their gods to work; their priests' words don't bind the gods and the gods don't themselves make promises to mortals.

I should probably have refused. I was being an idiot, because I'm used to - because I'm used to dying, and I really like being strong enough I can give everyone the benefit of the doubt about whether they're trustworthy, and then only kill them if they aren't, and because Ma'ar and Urtho had agreed on terms and I'd survived the superweapon and - you'd have told me I was being an idiot. Marit would've told me I was being an idiot. 

The Star-Eyed goddess tried to - rip Aroden out of me - and when that didn't work, tried to make my soul a shape that wouldn't be His paladin. He intervened. They - fought. I don't actually remember any of it except that it was astoundingly painful and Aroden is really something when He's angry.

"...I'm so sorry. What happened after that, you said maybe-Sarenrae helped you, was that then or did other things happen first?"

"That was a while later. Aroden - wanted to kill the Star-Eyed, I think, but - but could see that if we did that the peace would fall apart - I'm reconstructing a lot of this from what Ma'ar told me afterwards - Aroden warned Ma'ar I was in danger. Ma'ar broke the ceasefire to grab me out of Urtho's Tower where the Star-Eyed's servants had slit my throat while I was in the trance with their goddess, Urtho's Tower's countermeasures had Ma'ar dying, Ma'ar's people were blaming Urtho, the Star-Eyed had intervened directly to incapacitate Urtho -

- I healed Ma'ar, and - realized I was very badly damaged, and told them to kill me while that got sorted out. They didn't. They don't have resurrection, here, and Ma'ar didn't think it was what Aroden had intended when Aroden briefly communicated with Ma'ar. So I physically recuperated, but I was - confident I was compromised, and didn't see a way to fix that, so I didn't really do anything. Ma'ar - went to the temple of the nameless god of the eternal flame, and decided to bring me there for the most powerful magical healing this world has available, and then their goddess - approximately the same portfolio as Sarenrae, and a similar operating style from the examples I heard -

- anyway, the nameless god did a miracle. It was like I was outside myself, and could see the shape I'd been twisted into, but because I was outside it I could check it and be confident in the results of the checks, and I could see that - well, I had a lot of memory loss and habit-damage and motion-damage and so on - I could use a Heal - but most of the irrecoverable damage to the core of who I was was in fact a result of my not being sure I was myself, the way even when I was fifteen I was sure I was myself. And I could sit there outside myself and check piece by piece until I was sure.

Which I did, and since then I've been operating on the assumption I'm basically competent and myself, and introspectively it seems true but this doesn't sound like the kind of process that definitely works, right -"

"Yes, I should - get someone to tell me about the Star-Eyed's theology - and the nameless god's - and go over any major decisions you've made since, just to double-check in case it's a subtle influence but - "

"Dis is overdetermined, probably, even if They gave you that idea to get you to take out some of their rivals - "

"But, also." Heal.

She doesn't need a Heal badly enough to burn a Wish on it, and Limited Wish doesn't do cleric spells of the sixth circle, and she's ...not sure that what she just saw was either of those.

- setting that aside a moment.

Iomedae -

- feels notably better, for one thing, like the difference between being half awake and all the way awake, like there had been something twisted deep inside her that's now untwisted, though not in a way that changes her priorities -

- and two, blinks stupidly at Alfirin, trying to decide whether to bring that up or not. 

" - thank you very much," she says after a moment. "Dis continues to seem very overdetermined. If you can teach other people how to do that, it'd be wildly useful here, since they have no divine spellcasting." There, that's bringing it up but not in a way that suggests she should've been told sooner or anything. 

"...OK let's actually have that conversation now rather than leaving it for later. I imagine you're thinking I could've been saving lives with this, if I weren't keeping it hidden.

Then I'm going to say, 'There have been precisely two occasions where I had spare spell slots at the end of the day that I could have used for healing and where the Crusade's healers were sufficiently overwhelmed that the marginal spell would actually save a life. One one of those occasions I put on a different face and pretended to be a cleric. On the other you kept me up all night with strategy meetings that were, in fact, the right use of my time.'

Then you will say, 'OK, but there was still no reason for you to keep it secret,'

To which I will say, 'By default I keep surprising new capabilities of mine secret because the more people know the more ways there are for our enemies to learn them, and also because it's useful to have capabilities that you don't know about in case, for example, I have reason to suspect you might have put on a zon-kuthon helm.'

And you'll say, 'But if you could teach other wizards that does, actually, have a big impact not just on the crusade but on civilization everywhere,'

And I'll say, 'Yes, but I can't, and I probably can't teach the local mages either,'

You'll ask 'Why not?' and I will tell you that if I could give you or a junior wizard a satisfying and comprehensible explanation I wouldn't be unable to teach other wizards. You will say this answer isn't very satisfactory and I will shrug apologetically.

Did I miss anything."

" - I - appreciate knowing your reasons. But I wasn't, actually, going to push you for them, because -

 - gods, Alfirin, this right here may be the most important decision a mortal has ever made or ever will, and I trust you to help me make it. You can defend yourself to me, but you don't have to, because I'm not actually here to scold you. Even if the spells would've saved lives, the scoldings sure wouldn't. You have your reasons, and they're probably good ones, and if a world with no divine magic doesn't change them, then it doesn't change them. I'm not Pharasma. I'm not interested in measuring you against - well, me."

"I know you weren't going to push. But you were going to wonder and - if I weren't willing to explain as much as I did I wouldn't have cast it in the first place. And you can take it on faith that I have good reasons but I'd rather, when I can explain my reasons, just do that so that you don't have to take quite as much on faith."

"I can also do raise dead and resurrection and prepared one of each this morning, in case we do need any while we're hiding things from Aroden and can't bring any clerics in on that."

" - good to know. I have no shocking secret magical capabilities at all, myself, so we'll have to get by with my non-shocking non-secret ones.

Do you want - a rundown of the rest of my adventures here -"

"Please."

So she'll go through it. She arrived on the battlefield, was evacuated off it with the retreating Tantaran forces, offered to heal on their word they wouldn't send the recovered men back to the front or in exchange for an account of the war which made it seem good for Tantara to have more soldiers, got one under Zone of Truth. Neighboring kingdoms united under brilliant conquering warlord mage who is winning the war, by a large margin, thanks to his penchant for mind control and blood sacrifices plus the fact Urtho's not really a tactical genius -

"- so that was my first introduction to Ma'ar, who I actually think you'll like a lot - the blood sacrifices were probably a bad idea but a really comprehensible bad idea -"

"What does blood sacrifice even do, I assume he wasn't - making a pact with a demon lord or something - "

"Local sorcerers can just directly refill approximately all their spell capacity for the day, plus some, by killing people! I don't know if this is a technique Golarion never invented or something specific to their kind of sorcerer. I hope it's the latter because it's obviously an enormous asymmetric advantage for Evil."

If she says "Wizards can't" Iomedae will read true things into it. And probably some false things.

"There are legends of blood sacrifice letting a wizard recover their spells but I think those legends are false or misleading and spread by demons who think it's funny. I did look into them."