"I don't think there's a person in the world who never feels something in their heart that speaks poorly of them."

"Yes, but I do try to form grudges on the basis of reason and not things that happened to be emotionally salient to me a decade ago." 

He's not going to comment on whether they're still salient now. Alfirin can probably read him anyway. 

"Don't we all? I -

I won't hold it against you, if your opinion of Iomedae right now is not fully rational, and comes from personal reasons and not just purely strategic ones. But if you only want to tell me rational reasons - I won't hold that against you either."

"The rational answer – I should preface this by saying that some members of the church of Iomedae made enormous sacrifices for our victory over Hell. They've protected Avistan from demons and orcs and undead for hundreds of years. The world would be much worse without them in it, and some of them I even like. 

But Her followers want Her to be much more than that. They like to insist that she's the goddess of defeating Evil, but, judging by Her works – which are all I have – she's not. She's the goddess of not losing to Evil, and that's a very different thing. She has two nations, Lastwall and Mendev, and the both of them fight every battle like it's the shining crusade. They're very useful if your problems look like mindless hordes of slavering something-or-others threatening innocent civilians. They're both about fifteen percent paladins by volume. Almost everyone in them is Good, and almost no one in them is free, and almost nothing in them will ever change. 

I don't think it's possible to win the real war like that. If Hell could be defeated by building a big enough army, someone would have done it by now. I do believe, very strongly – not that Good will triumph over Evil, but that all that reasoning beings share which is not Evil is stronger than that which is. Everything we have – not just our compassion but our selfishness, our desire for safety and love and wealth and comfort – pushes us away from Hell, because Hell wants to destroy everything which makes existence bearable.  The stronger mortals are, the closer we are to victory. And the best way for mortals to become stronger is to build a society in which every generation desires to better themselves, to improve on the works of their ancestors, to share their knowledge freely with their descendants. A nation like that could be greater than Azlant. It could have dozens of wizards like me. 

And it can't exist in a place whose highest ideal of service is to fashion yourself into a helpful tool in the hands of your Goddess. The best Iomedans are wise, kind, brave, diligent people who worry that thinking too much is bad for unit cohesion. The worst are Hellknights who got lucky. But, you know, still nice to have around. 

The answer from my heart – and I did tell you it was less flattering – 

Is that we Galtan rebels needed Her desperately and She abandoned us. 

I can't forget watching men and women who desired nothing more than the  salvation of every soul in Hell, who fought their whole lives for it, expecting no reward, men and women who worshipped the Inheritor with their whole hearts – see their goddess condemn them because they couldn't fight cleanly enough. And I watched them keep fighting afterwards. 

Of course, we all did great and unnecessary Evils. I never minded when Her servants told us so. But they never gave us any other working way  – the Terror could have ended if only we made peace with Cheliax and let thirty million of our brothers and sisters be damned. The Terror might have been possible to stop even if we didn't, I wanted that, I fought for that – but She simply withdrew Her hand. 

The best man I ever knew was Her cleric, and he renounced Her, not because he did not love Her, but because he believed  that Galt's freedom and the freedom of Cheliax mattered more than all the other simple things paladins like to do with themselves because they're willing to risk their lives but not their immortal souls. He was right. He was Evil when he died, and he was right. The troops that retook Cheliax for humanity didn't come from Vigil – Her capital – but from Isarn. We would never have been able to wage war against Asmodeus without the armies of Galt. Lastwall never tried for a hundred years. And my Galt still isn't free except from Hell, it's a military dictatorship, but She doesn't care, does she, she's got two of her own – 

– So of course She was right, by Her own values, to have condemned everything we fought for. She got what She wanted.  But if I ascend, it will be because I want to become the kind of god who could embrace the people she gave up on. I want to be that part of Good which asks that each person bring their will and their insight and their reason, not their unquestioning obedience – which wants friends, not servants – 

I know I'm being unfair. I'm not twenty years old anymore. I'm sure She did the best She could with Her limited resources. 

...And it's probably for the best that when I was young and desperate and expected to die every day, and knew that I would go to the Abyss when I did, I never for a moment believed that Anything or Anyone would offer me hope or comfort. That if we were going to make a world where all reasoning beings weren't Good but happy and strong and free, we would have to do it our own damned selves. It made me a better man and one day it might make me a better god. 

It's still hard for me to look her in the eye when she hears what happened and offers me her help."  

"...Oh. I -

oh."

"So... the answer to your rational objection is Aroden, I think. I don't know what She will be like as a god but - it sounds like the thing you want Her to be is Aroden. And we already have Him and I don't think we need two. And - it makes sense that Her church would be - lacking, there, after Aroden's death."

"...And the answer to your heart is - I don't have one. But I can see why, in eight hundred years, I am your friend."

"I know very little about Aroden. Maybe you're right.

I hope we don't have to kill him." 

"I don't know how much I'll change, in the next eight hundred years - maybe this won't communicate very much, but -

He's my god. The only one I found acceptable, the only one who - was even close to a god that wanted what I wanted from the world. And He was close enough that I'm willing to follow Him, pray to Him -

I hope that too. I hope so very much. I'm not going to hesitate, though, if that's what it takes. I love Him but - I love His domain more, I guess. Humanity."

This place isn't quite secure enough for Élie to mention that the version of Alfirin he knows is planning to flood the ethereal plane with positive energy to make divine intervention of all kinds impossible. She can probably tell that it communicates a lot.

"I'm not sure what I think of that – Aroden being the god of humanity. I like humanity well enough, but I'm certainly going to try being lots of other things now that I have the time. Does he have something against other reasoning beings?"

"Well His church isn't exactly going around telling us to enslave all others. I think it's synecdoche. For - mortal persons, at least. I expect He might say that He has a greater concern for mortals than for other beings, and that Outsiders already have sufficient backing among the gods. I would buy that He has something against alghollthus."

"Cheliax – the Cheliax I grew up in – has exclusively non-human slavery. I like to make the distinction." 

"...Ah. That - sounds like what you'd get, if you took a part of Taldor and let it be governed by Hell. It's definitely a part of human - mortal - nature, that some are going to want that. And it's a direction Aroden's faith could be corrupted, if His church weren't actively pushing in the other direction - actually maybe I give His church too much credit, I don't know nearly as well what it's like in other places. Here, I'm surrounded by Paladins who need regular reminders that some humans are ever evil."

"And if you disagree with them, it must be because you've been misled?"

"Oh, no, they usually come to their senses on the possibility of evil humans when they see the altar to Norgorber - I don't, actually, worship Him ever but He's the second ascended god and - anyways. I'm sure if I were wiser I'd antagonize them less."

"I don't know, sometimes I think it's good for them." 

"Oh I fully agree! I never said that a wiser Alfirin would not antagonize them at all. But sometimes I take it too far, because I could get away with that, because until today I was the crusade's only Archmage."

"...I think a greater dispel from either of us would take off most of these protections, actually. Did we try that and fail, in the future, or will we come here before getting ninth circle?"

"Very much the latter."

Greater Dispel Magic. Greater Dispel Magic.

"...and that should be safe. Or, at least, it has no protections other than itself - I'm still not entirely sure how to operate it yet and probably sufficiently improper operation kills us horribly."

"Probably it does something worse!"

He does not sound remotely reluctant to start messing with it anyway. 

Wizards above fifth circle are the same everywhere, even in the future it seems. The two of them can get started on figuring the pyramid out, and if it takes them a whole week they'll still be done by tomorrow!

Then they will learn that 10x is the plane's maximum time dilation, though it can be adjusted down, and figure out how to turn off the positive energy effect, and generate a little river delta with bullrushes and date palms and man-eating crocodiles, and activate the feature that enhances all spells related to summoning outer gods, and quickly deactivate the feature that enhances all spells related to summoning outer gods.

It's been four and a half hours sidereal. Should they check in on the crusade? 

She'd be delighted! She'll just adjust her expectations for how much they've probably done on the outside, if they've only had a few hours instead of a day and a half. Plane shift! Teleport!

Iomedae beams at them. It's hard not to be cheerful about having two archmages. If some tiny part of her feels, instead of glad, jealous that Alfirin finally has a true intellectual peer who seems to personally dislike Iomedae, well, when she's a god she won't feel that way. 

"How'd it go? I think we can swing Marian Leigh. My current favorite plan is actually to lay a bit of a trap for Tar Baphon, since we're not going to fool him about having two archmages for long - Teleport fourteen hundred men in to clear the city, let the High Priest of Pharasma loose with a Miracle for them. I think he'll guess that I think I can supply a garrison there overwinter and do raids in his territory out of season, but if he doesn't guess that the other guesses are that there's something there I want, or that it's a trap, both of which suit me fine. My bet is he watches until he's pretty sure he's counted all your spells and then drops in to crush us. If instead he drops in to crush us right away, different Miracle. If instead he lets us take the city, we put the Teleportation Circles underground and maybe do get away without him knowing how we're supplying for several months."

"Pharasma has a high priest? I suppose she would, these days. Can we trick him in the other direction – keep popping in and out of the demiplane, spell refresh every 2.4 hours, make it look like there's a whole horde of us?"

"That gets him panicking and it could be enough information to help him to guess it. I'd be happier about only using the demiplane occasionally, squeezing out an extra spell refresh when we can pretend we were just at a lucky point in our sleep cycles.

If we scare him too much, I'm worried - we still don't have a way to necessarily win the war in another three days, sidereal, and he can just - let us win a lot of battles, contribute nothing himself, trade occupation of most of his country for time and use that time to learn about the demiplane and pick a time that's inconvenient for us to try to take it away."

"I don't suppose the future ever did find his phylactery, or have any leads?"