"I know. You couldn't do anything else, it's not who you are -

- I'm worried, actually, about. About your ascension. Nethys said -

- I don't know if that's - just more selfishness -"

Nethys said that sometimes Alfirin was destroying Hell all on her own. 

“I’m definitely - going to revisit - two worlds, a different set of problems and options than I thought I had, different set of tradeoffs, it’s not impossible it’ll change something. But it still seems like - of all the gaping holes in the universe, the one I’m most personally shaped to fix is the one where Heaven is not allocating its resources well for the fights it actually needs to win, and it’d be pretty surprising, if I could do more good running around with a sword. We’ll - check. If you, enhanced all unfathomably brilliant, think I’m actually wrong, I’ll take that very seriously."

"I have had my doubts but - I didn't really think you were wrong that - we need you in Heaven - I'm just so much less sure now that - it actually works -"

"I don't think most people. Who care about the universe. Are best served by becoming gods -

Actually let's. Have the philosophy conversation later. When I'm not doing my best water elemental impersonation." She would kind of like a hug but she's not going to say so and she's going to do her very best, in this company, not to think so either.

“- yeah. That one seems like - like it probably doesn’t have to happen now.

Do you want - me to hold you - I could take off the breastplate -”

"...Yes. You don’t have to."

In that case Iomedae will hug her without taking off the breastplate because in fact she really hates doing that and, also, they should probably have some measures of caution against bad decisions, here, even if the bad decisions seem very unlikely, because it’s while bad decisions seem very unlikely that you want to take precautions against them.

It’s not a bad decision to say “ - you’re very important to me. You always have been. I want you to be - immortal and safe and brilliant and - whatever you want to be -”

(It can’t be a bad decision. She’s in full plate armor.)

She clings in Iomedae's cold metal embrace.

"I think I have also been avoiding thinking about the fact that I never stopped loving you."

"I am not going to kiss you now but I might if it still seems like a good idea tomorrow with more wisdom."

“I think that if we were actively rather than as a historical curiosity lovers I would have phrased my communications with the Empire differently,” says Iomedae. 

And clings. She’s very strong.

"That sounds like a consideration for unspeakably wise Alfirin."

“Unspeakably wise seems like overstating it slightly! You will only be a smidge wiser than me. I am very speakably wise.”

She laughs.

"You know, I can do your Wisdom and Cunning too. I think it's the right call, strategically, if we've got a week. But also I'd like to, selfishly."

“I thought about it. If I’m going to - beat Tar-Baphon in the spring, ascend in two years, have Aroden’s reassurance it should go fine - then it seems like an indefensible use of ten diamonds I could instead stick in a vault for my church whenever they most desperately need it. But - if it’s going to be more complicated than that -

- and so far it’s indeed been pretty complicated -

- then, yes, I probably should. And I’d want to, selfishly. It’d make me sad to be unable to keep up with you. And it’s always on some level made me sad that I’m not smart enough to be a wizard. Just, you know, because all the cool people are.”

"Well. It is complicated and even if it were simple, I do not consider myself bound to only do what is best for the world and am capable of my own diamond acquisitions.

…I do think you're smart enough to hang ninth-circle spells, with a good headband. It's not a good use of your time, and most people who survive to be archmages are much smarter than that, but - if you had plenty of time and, danger I guess, and all the other problems in the world were fixed - "

“...then it would still be true, that when I was fourteen, I looked into whether I could grow up to be like Aroden and determined I wasn’t clever enough and decided to want something else. But, of all of the little tragedies we’ll never be able to put right, I suppose I can probably endure that one. 

Gods, Alfirin, I feel so - unfathomably powerful and so trapped and powerless - we still can’t have Arazni back, I asked. I definitely shouldn’t ascend any time soon, everyone’s mad about the noise. You’re -

I’m glad you’re immortal, and also - I never could have had, something I’d hoped I could have, and also I’ve been hurting you and not noticing, or not - doing the right things about noticing - and the best thing we could possibly have is a few years, before I go up in holy fire so everyone else can have some tiny rationed fraction of what they deserve - hundreds of diamonds and -"

"You keep saying you're glad I'm immortal and I'm not sure if you're trying to reassure me or yourself - "

“It is unbearable to imagine you going to Hell. It always has been. It was - the reason I couldn’t keep going - thirty years ago - I could feel, that if I let myself fall in love with you, I wouldn’t know how to stop, and I couldn’t be the god that Heaven needs. I have tremendously complicated feelings about what you did and I am sometimes sick with horror at the thought of what it may bring us to in enough thousands of years but I love you and I don’t want you to imagine - I don’t want you to be afraid of me -”

Cling.

"I have only ever been afraid of you once. I'm afraid of the god you will become, sometimes. I love you and I - didn't know, that you still loved me, but I knew you wouldn't want to hurt me - if there was any other way - but You won't have those particular considerations, when you ascend."

"I also keep wishing we could do - more - It's like - Nethys told us, in as many words, 'Hey dumbasses, you've got hundreds of wishes, shouldn't you be using them to destroy Hell or something?' and - I can't for the life of me figure out how, but it seems like there should be a way because - hundreds of wishes is just -

But then all that power and the Mirrorgrave can still put us into a panic for a couple days - "

“I think if you could take down Hell with hundreds of Wishes Aroden would’ve done that instead of or before ascending. Thousands of years travelling worlds, I doubt he was short on diamonds at the end of that. 

But it does feel like we’ve - got to be making mistakes, stemming from the scope of our imagination -

And probably Wishing yourself up is the right starting place to address that, especially if we don’t see any other.

As a god, I would still offer Asmodeus terms, if I found the means to destroy him, if it wouldn’t reduce the odds I succeeded. And much moreso any enemy of mine who wasn’t Asmodeus. Not fighting is - much better than fighting. I think in that specific respect being less particular will mean it being easier to do that for people I don’t particularly care about rather than harder to do it for the ones I already care about. I want to grow into a shape that - loves everyone like I love you, rather than one that loves no one at all."

"Yeah it's - not just the wishes, obviously. That let one of us destroy a layer of hell, in other worlds. I just wish I knew what it was, He said we weren't ambitious enough, not that we didn't have access to what we'd need - maybe I'm reading too much into that and should stop trying to psychoanalyze Nethys, that's not the safest thing to be doing…"

They're having two conversations at once, now, and this would be somewhat easier with a telepathic bond but Iomedae was just regretting not being able to keep up with Alfirin and actually parallelizing their conversations instead of switching back and forth would make that more salient.

"I expected you'd - think Shelyn had that covered. The loving everyone thing."

“ - did Marit tell you about that conversation.”

"...No, what conversation?"

"After - after I broke up with you - we talked about -” 

She closes her eyes. “I said, more or less, ‘it’s not that I am against love. It is observably a significant element of human values and one needs to account for it to make tradeoffs appropriately. It is simply that I think love is overrepresented, among the concerns of the Good gods; clerics are very useful to armies, but it’s possible for an army to be too large a percentage clerics, such that it’d be for the best if in the next round of recruiting you turned up no clerics at all. It’s not just Shelyn. Sarenrae’s halfway doing it, too, and Erastil with the thing for marriage and family, and the stories-for-mortals suggest it had something to do with whatever went wrong with Shizuru…

Love is fine. But Good already has far more love than is actually practical, and it’ll be an improvement to the overall amount Good is concerned with love if I have nothing to do with it. “

"...As a purely practical matter about the collective dispositions of the pantheon of Good gods I can't really say you were wrong, but also that's - so obviously tinged by - what had just happened -

I imagine Marit said more or less that same thing -

- I thought I was the one who left."

“ - I figure now that while it may be too expensive to have any experiential correlates of my values whatsoever, if it isn't, loving people is - better for them, as a way of relating to them, and they project it onto you and it's better if they're not lying to themselves...

hmmm? no, it was - I realized that I didn’t have good enough judgment to navigate high-stakes decisionmaking and being in love, so I told you I couldn’t do it. You left after that, but - I assumed you left because you didn’t want to be around me after I had broken up with you for a reason that obviously spoke poorly of me.”

"...I don't remember exactly what you said, memory isn't perfectly reliable on that timescale especially for emotionally-charged moments - I think you said something less unambiguous, ‘I don't know if I can do this,' maybe -

- and I left because I didn't think I could - keep being with you - and also hiding what I planned to do - and even if I could it wouldn't be fair to you - and I thought it would be better, for you, if I was gone. In the long run."