"To bypass the forest? Sure. I was about to suggest Marian Leigh. It's unorthodox, but with circles we wouldn't have to worry about supply lines - "

       "I like it," says Marit.

" - might work, if we had the Teleportation Circles," says Iomedae. "It's a - fairly catastrophic position if anything goes badly wrong -"

And she closes her eyes to think. She's not as smart as Alfirin, just good at - breaking things into pieces, and thinking about the pieces, and reassembling them into -

       "If we have two Miracle-grade diamonds I like the plan; with only the one I don't," she says after a few minutes. "Tar-Baphon's aims while we're there are very obvious; he wants to fence us in, and he wants to take as many chances as all his power permits him at our ninth circle wizards, because if he succeeds with either one then he has Teleportation circles and we don't, and because he can't expect to win without pulling that off."       

" – We should pretend for as long as possible that I don't exist and Alfirin cracked it with bilocation." 

"...I wouldn't believe for very long that Tar-Baphon had cracked it with bilocation, he will not be fooled for very long by the suggestion that I did. Which isn't to say we shouldn't try to keep your existence hidden as long as possible, but if we expect that deception to hold we need to build it up - time stop might make it more believable but that's an expensive bluff - and we'd have to leak it deliberately, since I doubt he'd risk scrying the teleport locations..."

" – I just remembered. The tomb of the Pharaohs of the Ascension has a demiplane where time is sped up by a factor of ten, it's almost undefended, and I've got a tuning fork. For if we ever need to do anything impossibly quickly."  

...Have Marit and Karlenius ever seen her smile before? Probably not.

No! They haven't!!

"All right, all right, why don't you take Alfirin tomb-robbing and we'll think more about how to make Marian Leigh work."

He turns to Alfirin. 

"Whenever you're ready." 

"I was ready as soon as you said 'time is sped up by a factor of ten!' "

She'll take his hand for the plane shift.

Plane Shift. Mass Planar Adaptation.

– because the space they're now in is absolutely flooded with positive energy. 

Other than that, it looks like an ancient Osirian temple, complete with alabaster columns, bas reliefs of scarabs and ibises and cwering slaves, and, in the center, a sinister-looking black pyramid. 

"So... are they all buried in there? It doesn't look big enough from here but that's not prohibitive."

"Oh, no, the rest of the tomb is outside this demiplane. ...The pyramid does expand to full size, though. We had to stash the thing in Axis when we started using the place to keep some Urgathoa cultists from getting it, so I haven't had much chance to play around." 

"What does it do, other than get big?"

"Controls the features of the demiplane. Probably drives you irrevocably mad if you touch it. I'd be able to say more, but someone disjoined my permanent Arcane Sight." 

"I am sure you would have done the same." Possibly has done the same from the look on his face. She is so curious about this friendship that she suspects involves rather more hostile ninth-circle magic than most friendships do. "We can get some diamond dust and put it back."

"In the meantime I recommend we keep a safe distance." 

"Mm. Does something bad happen if we don't? How'd you - we - get it to Axis?" She still has her arcane sight and can take a closer look.

"Not that I know of, but it was made by the Pharaoh of Numbers so my assumption is that every time we interact with it there's a slight chance it awakens the planet Aucturn from it's ageless slumber. It's hard to say. Maybe it makes you better at calculus! 

We – you, actually – scooped out the floor to a depth of 10 feet with adamantine blades and lifted it with the cat eidolon from the elemental plane of shadow you grafted onto your granddaughter's soul."  

"That raises several more questions than it answers but possibly the most urgent is - why is the planet Aucturn in an ageless slumber? I assume if it woke up that would be...bad... but I thought it was just a rock!"

"At some point I really need to sit down and establish what was and wasn't known a thousand years ago! Aucturn is an alien demigod from the darkness between the stars whose very visage inspires  men to genius and madness.

It might also be a rock. It seemed fairly rock-like when I visited, but then I was only there for a couple of seconds." 

"I see. That sounds like - something to deal with eventually."

"...So, what exactly do you have against Iomedae? Or Her future church?"

"Oh. ...That obvious?"

"To me. And to her. And probably Marit. Karlenius might have missed it and Pereza and Arnisant most likely did."

"Ah. Well, I've offended plenty of Her clerics, and if She's anything like them, She'll live. 

There are two ways I could answer your question. One comes from my brain, and I think speaks well of me. One comes from my heart, and doesn't."