“I once put Aroden through eighty different Commune-questions about what Pharasma wanted and was as confused at the end as at the start. 

I don’t feel sure that arcane healing would be a problem, actually. She doesn’t see eye to eye with Urgathoa about much, and - She wants people to die old enough to be sorted - She probably wouldn’t like it if they never did die, but some people obviously get away with it, so who knows, really, and that effect’s a lot smaller than the effect on low-circle spells…

This is probably not - I’m glad that you thought about it. It may be useful for us to keep discussing it because it is emotionally familiar territory where we have a great deal in common and I won’t be upset with you and will be reminded of the many things I like and respect about you. It’s - not going to get at the core -"

"I think I wouldn’t actually be very surprised if I learned that Aroden murdered seventy nine people in a magic experiment he thought was necessary to stop Achaekek from eating him. I’d go ‘ah huh, that’s where that Lawful Neutral was coming from’, rather than - having a crisis of faith - but also, I imagine, if I asked him, would you have done it for anything less, if it was only your life and not all of the battles we can’t afford to lose - I think He’d say no. It’s a way He feels to me …more like ‘me, if the best available strategies to me were slightly worse ones’ - which they would be, if I’d been born before Him, there are paths available to me and not to Him because I was born into His world -"

"Anyway. That gets you - I guess it gets you most of the way there. But I think the version of it that is a - product of strategies I’d endorse as the best you can do for the world under sufficiently terrible constraints - the differences are subtle, but -

You’re not, actually, trying to do the most possible good under terrible constraints. And it’s harder to evaluate what you did as the work of someone who may, on lots of occasions, make the much less defensible versions of those compromises, over and over, and bothered less by them every time -”

“I don’t know if I would have done it, just for myself, if I didn’t think - it would be worth it for other people in the end - I would have at some number, but I don’t know about this one - That’s not me saying I wouldn’t, I genuinely don’t know -

- It would’ve taken fewer, to do it, if it was just for the immortality. Half as many, probably fewer than that - “

“There’s - there’s a thing where - the universe is just very big, and the chances it presents us with very unpredictable and very high stakes, especially if you mean to live forever - and I support you in living forever, obviously, I would never have said to you that it was time for you to die even if you were going to make Axis -

And so, even though in most contexts it is fine to be a person with some altruistic tendencies not fully pulled into tightly-specified tradeoffs with selfish ones, an archmage in such a state is going to find themselves facing - so, so many - chances to shatter, or sell out, whole worlds, for their benefit, decisions about whether to call in Pharasma to a planet being eaten by spectres, and -

And I believe that you wouldn’t, mostly. I believe that mostly while I’d wince at some of the details what you’d do with the power of life and death over a world isn’t very horrible, and that while you might get it wrong you are less likely to get it wrong than most people and not necessarily even more likely to get it wrong than me, and most of the worlds where it goes terribly are - error, not avarice - problems that get better when you’re stronger, situations where I will be uncomplicatedly glad if you have more diamonds -

This has been a big part of how I have predicted you for - as long as I have known you - and it mostly predicts you correctly. But - I don’t have a lot of resolution on it, in sufficiently odd cases, I think because you don’t yourself."

“You’re right, I don’t. I can, I think - for an individual case - I don’t think it’s a good use of time to try to work through all the odd cases in advance, because the odd cases I run into will be different ones. Maybe that will change with more wisdom.

And you’re also right to worry that - there are things I would kill a planet for that you wouldn’t, that you think I shouldn’t. Living forever - in ordinary circumstances - isn’t one of them -"

“I suppose I never said - maybe you’ve guessed - what I had wanted the Empire for, before Altarrin came to us and we established more contact - “

“I hadn’t guessed specifically. I figured we’d - talk about it, and you’d at least hear me out - I mostly trust the tradeoffs you’ll make in contexts we get to talk about, because we don’t actually - disagree on all that much - or at least it doesn’t usually feel like we do -”

"We might not’ve. Gotten to talk about it, in this case, not extensively -

The gods here are weaker, and I think this world would be better off without - at least some of them - but I think even if they are weaker they are close enough to our gods that - I could’ve learned something, destroying one, that would be useful later. And maybe without any of our gods noticing. I wasn’t going to tell you, because - I wasn’t sure you could hide it from Aroden. Or would. Or that, in the midst of ascending, you could hide it from the others -"

Iomedae leans back in the armchair, looks at the ceiling. “I don’t think there’s any kind of - obligation to protect foreign gods that aren’t even party to our usual agreements. I suppose it might make somebody nervous. It seems more like storming the Abyss to pick a fight with Baphomet than like -

- the work we are also eventually going to have to do, of destroying Asmodeus and Zon-Kuthon…

Atet seems to have vanishingly few redeeming features. I do think you - value faith, and the things that spring of it, less than most of the people who’d be subject to your decision, and could wrong them that way, but - I don’t feel so strongly about it that I’d oppose trying to get rid of Atet, if you thought you could do it.

…part of why I didn’t want you to have the Empire is -

I hate this. I think you’ll hate this, and probably we could even manage a stupid loop where we both hate how the other is reasoning around this. But ever since I learned that you’ve done your immortality and will become an ancient archmage, one of the most important things I think about, in every decision I make, is if it’ll damage you. Because that just matters more than most things, probably, to how good the worlds are in the long term. I don’t - like using that lens, and I am not good at using it and don’t trust the results of it all that much. But. Part of why I don’t want you to have the Empire is that it’ll make you - more the kind of person who runs a mind-control Empire - and I’d let a lot of people die, to not have that -"

"Fuck. You’re - right that I hate it - you - you shouldn’t -

- Can you tell me, when you’re deciding to let a thousand people die for the sake of my gods-damned spiritual well-being -"

"- That’s - not really a fair thing to ask, I’m sorry, I’m 

- I will try not to ignore that completely, as a consideration. But I’d - I'd prefer to know when it’s part of your reasoning.”

“Yeah. I’ve been - going back and forth on whether to try to ignore it myself. It seems like, at minimum, an area in which my heuristics are underdeveloped. And if it’s alike any arguments we’ve had before it’s alike to- you burning forests for me, so that the Crusade doesn’t have to have me be someone who’d order that, and I -

My standing as Lawful Good, and your spiritual wellbeing, are in fact both important constraints for our plans, and also it seems like it’d devour us, to do things for those reasons, instead of for our real reasons of which those are stupid approximations -

But yes. I’ll try to at least tell you. …this is part of why I don’t want you to take over the Empire now that it’ll involve so much close control of people who hate you and are terrified of you.”

"I'm not looking forward to it now, either - you knew that already -"

"...I didn't burn the forest for the sake of your Lawful Good - nor anything else like it for that - I think the main thing I’ve done, for your Lawful Good, is not tell you things - this isn't an important nit to pick, that's still - wronging you greatly -"

Iomedae shakes her head. Not like she’s disagreeing, like she needs some kind of new input in her head and that’s the one available. “I wish you wouldn’t. But you knew that, too. I - I really want to believe it doesn’t even help, that I am doing something coherent enough and Lawful enough and Good enough that there are no plausible circumstances under which I’m meaningfully constrained by what someone else thinks of it. That might even be true. It’s really very coherent. And very Lawful. And very Good. 

Even before I learned you were immortal, I did worry about you, about the - way you’d treat everyone else’s wellbeing, but not yours, as a legitimate strategic priority - like a plan was costless so long as all its costs were paid out of your own soul -”

"...When you put it that way I'm pretty sure that's something that will have me boggling at my own foolishness tomorrow. I guess I imagined - my soul can bear more - more than most. Not necessarily more than yours, I was never worried about your soul as much as your reputation."

“I couldn’t bear to murder seventy nine people. Forget what Pharasma had to say about it, I think I wouldn’t be the same, afterwards. War is - not, actually, the same thing - and we wouldn’t have been the same after Urgir, either of us, if we’d had to do it -”

"...I suppose I can't really imagine you murdering that many people and being the same afterwards. I - think I would have recovered, from Urgir, eventually. It would have taken time. I agree war is - not quite the same thing - but I think it's less different for me than it is for you."

“To a god I’m not sure it’s a very meaningful distinction. But I’m not, actually, a god, yet, and -

To a god I suppose it also won’t be - all that important - if the things you do change you, so long as they don’t turn you into the next Tar-Baphon, and I suppose I really don’t actually think they’ll do that. To a god some archmage murdering some hundreds more people each century for less and less good reasons isn't - a very high priority, really, and whether I'd still recognize you doesn't matter at all."

"It’s just -

- me -

- that cares a lot about that -”

Oh.

"I didn't - know that - or - I didn't believe it - not consciously -"

And then she bursts out crying, because - because she cares too, whether Iomedae changes, and she's going to -

“I guess it is - fairly hypocritical of me,” says Iomedae, after a moment’s pause. She may also be tearing up slightly.

"Would you believe. That this the first time I've. Thought about this. Let myself think about this. The Wisdom tomorrow. Was sure going to be something."

"I'm going to miss you."

“- I know. I’m - I’m so sorry, I know it’s - I know it’s one of those things that will be wrong, with the world, forever or at least until the very end - I’m not going to do anything else, but - I am sorry -

- and I wish I could say that I’ll miss you, I owe you so so much more than that -”