Honest with herself? About Iomedae...?

"...Oh. I still love her and have been rather an idiot about it." It's not a surprising revelation once she decides to look for it. Embarrassing, to not just have it thrown in her face but to also have it emphasized how she didn't see it herself - A part of her resents Élie for that, for knowing her better than she knows herself, for having soul-trapped her and read her life's chronicle to get that knowledge - He's going to notice that, she thinks, knowing her as well as he does, he can read her almost as well as Iomedae can and she was caught off guard - She'll get over it, she thinks, though it might be wise to get someone to check her on that since she apparently doesn't always notice when she's not over things - She might have a bit of a grudge against Sarkoris, so it's not like she never holds grudges -

"I'm sorry. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I'm going to go somewhere else in this demiplane so I don't waste too much sidereal time on this but I am going to think about this on my own for a while now."

Well, he wasn't expecting to be quite so dramatically correct, and he certainly hadn't thought she'd tell him if he was. It's embarrassing to constantly be surprised at the same revelation, but there it is again: not his Alfirin. (His Alfirin, he imagines, would probably just cease to be in love if ever she found it inconvenient). 

"I understand. I have things I can do on Golarion, if you'd like privacy. I won't – obviously, I won't say anything to anyone."

"Thank you. There's enough demiplane, if you want to stay here and work - I'll be over by the alligators."

The Shining Crusade is not operating in time dilation but they are quick when moved to be; they'll have the star fortress well underway by the time Elie next stops by, even if it's only been subjectively twenty minutes. Some people with all-day flight are directing construction from midair. 

Does it look like the thing they're doing is broadly reasonable or should he swoop in with some alterations? 

They're following his instructions exactly; they don't know which parts of them were really important. 

Oh, well, now that he's looking at it there are things he'd do differently – and combat in his day really doesn't involve this many powerful wizards, so the outer walls will want more structural redundancies – 

Who does he talk to about that?

Oh, Iomedae's doing military court proceedings today; Arnisant has the command in Marian Leigh and Karlenius with the main host.

Military court sounds interesting, but for now he should find Arnisant. 

Arnisant is in flight on his pegasus, though he can land if Elie wants to speak somewhere unscryable.

Élie's always unscryable, isn't Arnisant? 

Usually, but not on a skirmish day (once the Communal Mind Blank for the fight has expired); they burned through most of their eighth circle spell availability and are conserving the rest.

He doesn't want to interrupt Arnisant's work, and he can explain what he's talking about better from the air anyway. 

If it's not sensitive he's happy to talk here and now. The fortress needs fixing? What, and where?

There and there – and now that he thinks about it, there – he's making this up as he goes along, really, and he doesn't know the first thing about siege combat, so Arnisant should certainly point out anything he's missing. 

"Well, when we had Arazni, all the walls were indestructible, but now we don't, so we just try to have little behind them that's worth destroying, and to make him work for it."

"Oh, that's fascinating, do you have any idea how she did it?"

"By being Arazni, I'm pretty sure. It's like her Time Stop or her Contingency or her demiplanes - just because Alfirin's an archmage now doesn't mean she can do the things Arazni could do. She had, what, four thousand years of practice, I'm sure you'll get there if you live to be four thousand."

He wasn't fishing, he really did just want to know if anyone had any idea how the spell worked. 

"That may be so, though I'm sure practice isn't the most important part. But I was mostly asking if you, on the basis of your military experience, had any suggestions for how I ought to arrange this fortress to the best of my more limited ability." 

"The way I get fortresses built is I hire people who know things about fortress building. This life's not long enough to learn every craft with your own hand."

That's not Élie's experience, but he supposes not everyone can be a wizard.

"I know enough about building fortresses to be getting on with. The thing I've just learned I really don't understand is how one takes them in this day and age. Am I preparing for batteries of Disintegrates? Earthquakes? Tsunamis? Should the interior be partitioned so parties teleporting in don't have access to the whole structure? What am I defending it against?" 

"We'll Forbiddance and Teleport Trap the interior, aside from an escape location. Reinforced stone should stand up to earthquakes and tsunamis, and there's nothing other than Arazni or dwarven sky-citadels that I know of that can hold up to a battery of Disintegrates. You just want to make it take a lot of expensive spells for Tar-Baphon to get in, give us time to leave and leave some nasty surprises."

"And I should ask someone else about those expensive spells and how to account for them, yes?"

"If there's a trick for it beyond having several sets of walls, I don't know it."

Élie can think of a few off the top of his head, but – as he's trying to explain – his intuitions weren't formed in an environment with quite so many lichs. 

"You're really a very straightforward person, aren't you?"