Hey, I don't care.

(He might care, though.)

Ember, who has been found, will hear the telepathic conversation and come investigate herself. And if she sees Iomedae leaving, too, she will smile very sincerely and wave goodbye to her, without a trace of ill will or discomfort.

Iomedae knows a lot of that kind of person. They're the kind she meant to build her Church out of. 

What happened?

- she should give Alfirin her headband back.

"You look more troubled."

"Korva had a very reasonable list of demands in exchange for enabling my geopolitical troublemaking, and -

- her main line of objection was, in fact, that in her experience, the Iomedaen inquisition in Mendev burned Ember's father at the stake, and tried to burn Ember too, on suspicion that they were cultists of demons, and she would like me to moderate such behavior in Cheliax."

"...Were Ember and her father in fact demon cultists?"

"Ember's a witch. I have no idea what her father did. Korva asserted that the man responsible is still an inquisitor, still in power in Kenabres, and was recently going after the Desnans who Arueshalae had warned about the demon attack."

"Not even I will call it particularly overzealous for one of Your inquisitors to be suspicious of people who were contacted by a demon right before a demon attack. Your church in this world does seem much worse than I would expect, even knowing prophecy recently broke - I'm sorry."

"Thank you. It- it is what it is, really. I won't be upset if I have to change course. I will be upset if it's still the best course just a much less good one than I hoped, that'd be really annoying. And as you said, this world was probably - selected.

I like Korva. She handled the request well. She wants my word to only do it if it can be over in weeks, or I've convinced her is worth it anyway."

"She seems likeable. And less easily overawed than most people her age."

"Mmmhmm. 

Depending what Marit finds it might make sense, next, for you to go through, figure out what you're up to and whether my church outside Mendev's any better." 

"Marit seems about as qualified as I am to investigate the latter." She does not immediately see a good way to ask 'Why do you think I'll still be up to things in nine hundred years?' so - obliquely, she supposes - "Did Korva mention anything that might be a lead on the former apart from how I share an ethnicity with the woman who opened the Worldwound?"

"She didn't. Four known archmages - Razmir, Felandriel Morgethai, Nefreti Clepati, and Vorlesh. Morgethai's the chaotic good one in independent Andoran, and seems almost definitely worth reaching out to, we'll need her backing. The others I want to approach more carefully, but - we could use them too."

It seems - possible - that Alfirin has some ideas for things she may try, with respect to immortality, which suggest leads in finding her in the future. But that's such a complicated conversation. Iomedae isn't totally sure she can afford such a complicated conversation.

The complicated conversation seems kind of inevitable at this point, but it's probably better to have it after going to the other world and knowing what Alfirin actually becomes, nine hundred years down the line (Assuming that she even exists in this other world)

Iomedae is pretty sure it's a good idea to say something, it's just excruciatingly hard to think what. 

"Another world, and an adversarially chosen one," she says eventually. "...also one in which I, or my Church, seem to be the worst. I'm - dreading learning something about that world's Alfirin that's as alarming as 'she's Areelu Vorlesh'. I'm also dreading learning that my Church turned on her, and I don't know if I'm more appalled at the possibilities where they were right to or where they were wrong to. I...I want to make you a promise, but I don't even know what shape it'd be, of promise, but - if you've thought of anything it'd help to hear -"

"If the problem in that world is that You are different, then your promise in this one is unnecessary. If it's Your church and - poor communication - and they have turned on me wrongly, then your promises cannot save me. And if they turned on me rightly, by your values - I cannot ask for a promise that would prevent that."

"Maybe once we know more about what actually happened, there, one of us will know what to say to the other about it."

"I could promise not to use whatever we learn from that world. In the last case. If you do it here and the Church learns of it here, sure, we'll have a problem, but - but we can't afford to invite that problem back to before the conclusion of the Crusade, and it's not remotely fair, to you, and it feels like a way to be manipulable, being willing to turn on someone based on something that happened in another world. And those were some stabs at describing what'd be wrong with that but I'm much more sure that it'd be wrong, a terrible mistake, than I am at my guesses of why."

"You are not a god yet."

"May not be one, at this rate. I would have to think carefully about what specifically was being promised, but - I think I can do it, or I wouldn't have offered to. I think I could make only very small errors neither of us were sure were errors and in unpredictable directions from an Iomedae who didn't know."

"I'll think about whether I would want such a promise even assuming you can keep it. I - selfishly - would not want you to ignore the implications if the Alfirin in that world is Felandriel Morgethai and - It seems - anarchic, but also simply against my values - to ask you to only ignore anything we learn that speaks ill of me - "

"And I appreciate that - deeply -

- but also I am mostly specifically obsessing over avoiding a scenario where we learn that the other Alfirin did something terrible and you - feel like you cannot safely come home - and it seems fine to me if, so that the Shining Crusade succeeds at its extremely important aim, it has a blanket-amnesty-for-future-selves-from-the-terrible-world policy that still permits smugness if one turns out to have a nonterrible self from the terrible world."

"If I learn that in the terrible world I did something with some great cost that you would be unwilling to countenance, then either I would be able to say to you truthfully that in this world I would not do the same, and it must be that the me in that world is worse the same way everything else is worse, or - I would tell you that I won't start pursuing that same path yet, and wait until the Crusade is done to be enemies. I do not need your promises to trust that that would be safe and - if we are to be enemies, I'd rather do it openly than both spend years second-guessing whether you've learned enough through more normal channels to start suspecting me -"

" - all right." It doesn't feel all right. Probably she's still shaken up about the terrible world. "That works for me. Thank you."

"There's really no need to thank me, not for that.'

"You are being very tolerant of my paranoia prompted entirely by learning of My own failings. And I as ever appreciate your thoughtfulness." That's enough, though. There is slightly more affordance to say nice things to Alfirin after fraught conversations but not all that much of it. 

"If we send Marit through with a couple of scrolls and minor magic items I don't think Tar-Baphon will be curious enough to check where he is, but if we want such a check to fail we'd be incurring much higher expenses..."