"Queen Galfrey of Mendev, your paladin, is the one who appointed Korva as Knight-Commander of the Crusade." He does not sound approving.

For which there are lots of possible explanations but the one that stands out most in Iomedae's own mind is that this obliges a fair bit of stepping on the Knight-Commander's toes, if the Crusade and Commander are backed by a paladin order with reputational and Lawful concerns that make for genuinely costly tradeoffs in wartime.

"So this rift opened in Mendev," Arnisant says, "Mendev's queen is Iomedae's, an Abyssal rift sounds like a mess, but Mendev can't call on the rest of the Church for aid? What're they busy with?" 

           "I don't know that," says Heleer. 

"Does a rift to the Abyss explain in what capacity You'd be working with Asmodeus," says Marit. 

"I don't really think so! I don't think He'd take that deal if it weren't getting more people damned, for one thing, and for another - the Church of Asmodeus is weak, given the strength of its god, because it is made up only of the kind of people unwise and shortsighted enough to try dealing with Asmodeus. This is one of our enormous asymmetric advantages and any institution that makes serving Asmodeus even in limited capacities attractive to more people seems incredibly bad. Unless I am to suppose that we've reformed Hell in the next nine hundred years, which - 

- I guess if what's going on here is that the Age of Glory played out differently than expected and Golarion's full of Abyssal rifts but Hell's fixed I'll take it. I do not expect it."

" -  if that is what happened it is important not to get it off track," says Karlenius. 

"And if what happened isn't that, then it's important to get it off track. And both are plausible directions in which an adversary might seek to manipulate us."

"I think the really fruitful angle here," Marit says, "is what aims are achieved by this manipulation instead of a more ordinary manipulation where they're something less implausible. What do we end up doing, if we take this at face value, that would otherwise be hard to get us to do? And what do we end up doing, in the course of stubbornly not taking this at face value, that would otherwise -"

"Well," says Arnisant, "I don't play a lot of eight-suite poker hands myself or anything, but the thing Someone might go to these lengths for is to convince Iomedae not to ascend, that it goes badly somehow, or that the Age of Glory does."

"I want to talk to Knight-Commander Korva."

         Marit makes a face. "Let's run a prophecy first."

"Sure. Do you have one?"

        "Yes."

Prophecy anticipates no immediate catastrophe, which is the best it can do, really. 

"All right. Marit, with me. Alfirin, if something seems to have gone subtly but horrendously wrong with us, fixing that is your and Karlenius's job." Her lips are twitching slightly. Karlenius and Alfirin do not get along spectacularly well but this means that if they do agree it'll be very credible.

And shortly after that, the Storyteller returns to his Magnificent Mansion with Iomedae, Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade, and a wary-looking man with a very magic sword.

Most of Korva's companions have found places to sit; Regill is standing at not-quite-attention, and Aivu is hiding under a table. Korva herself is pacing the room. As usual, supernatural gusts of wind keep showing up to ruffle her hair or clothes, and she's surrounded by at least a dozen butterflies. 

"Seelah is perfectly capable of holding down the fort for, like, four entire days," she's telling Daeran. "Maybe even more than a week! Probably! It mostly depends on whether - oh, hello."

"Knight-Commander Korva? I am Knight-Commander Iomedae, of the Shining Crusade." She's gotten a Tongues so it sounds like modern Taldane; her tone is very formal. "I am accompanied by my Commander Marit, and by the wizard Haleer, who you have met, and I am observed otherwise; I hope you don't mind." Which is not an offer to make the conversation actually private.

- Korva is going to look, to Iomedae's eyes, like she's having a very sudden panic attack, and also like she's gotten quite a lot of practice at rolling through panic attacks without giving more than the slightest visible indication that they're happening.

She really should have prepared for meeting Iomedae. Obviously she was going to end up meeting Iomedae if she kept hanging around the Shining Crusade, being the person she is and claiming to be from nine hundred years in the future. But here she is, meeting someone who claims to be Iomedae, and it turns out that the last time she considered this possibility she was imagining something a lot more like that one succubus that was pretending to be Iomedae and got an Iomedan paladin to gouge his own eyes out and hand them to her, which she's suddenly realizing is a situation that she's way more prepared for than suddenly meeting any variety of possibly-actual Iomedae, who she has no idea how she feels about.

"Not at all," she says, with barely a pause. "I, uh, hope you don't mind the baby dragon."

"Aivu, right?" She nods gravely to the baby havoc dragon. "There is no form of the Good in which we do not see ourselves reflected, and perhaps with new clarity", spoken like it's some sort of standard thing to say, though in Korva's world it very much is not. 

- yeah, she doesn't entirely know what that means, and she's not sure whether that's because she's not actually Good or because Iomedae is from nine hundred years ago and is also the kind of person who becomes - well, Iomedae. Probably it's that second one, she actually feels like she's usually fine at understanding Seelah and if anything better at understanding Ember than most people are. Of course, then there's also Sosiel, but she's not going to judge the forces of good by Sosiel, that's like judging the forces of evil by - this is not relevant.

"Yes, that's Aivu under the table. These are - Paralictor Regill Derenge, Count Daeran Arendae, Woljif, Arushalae, and Ember."

....she is not actually ashamed to be associated with any of these people, but she's very aware that that's a conscious choice she's making that it would in some sense be easier not to make.

"Knight Commander Iomedae. I wonder whether my dear cousin will finally die of jealousy upon hearing the tale when we return."

- okay, sometimes she's a little ashamed of Daeran, but she's going to lean out of that right now.

"We came here hoping for - assistance returning to where we came from, this time, or more information about where exactly that is, relative to here. I assume you have further questions for us, though."

Daeran and Regill are Evil. She doesn't comment on this, obviously. She nods to them each in turn.

"Welcome to the newly liberated Encarthan region. I assume in your day we have named it. I - do have questions. Quite a few of them. Haleer presented us with a story that sounds, candidly, quite unbelievable."

"That seems like an entirely fair reaction, given that most of the elements of it were fairly unbelievable when they were happening. Also given that I'm, for my part, only around eighty percent sure that you're not another succubus, like the last Iomedae I met was."

"That had not actually occurred to me as an avenue for suspicion. Are there capabilities I could usefully demonstrate to clear that up? We have the resources for a Commune, if you want to ask Someone."

"Thank you for the offer, but most of my remaining suspicions involve extremely thorough mental tampering, so I don't think a Commune would help. - I guess if certain people were here I might ask them to try communing with Iomedae, but they're not, so if this is a demon plot I suppose I'll have to see through it the old fashioned way." 

It's perversely comforting, actually, remembering that it might be just a demon lord who's trying to wring information out of her and then torture her to death. It's - not very likely, given the catalyst was the activation of her powers, but it's an emotionally useful frame anyway.

"Anyway! Your questions."

"What - happened, in your world, since the Shining Crusade."

"Oh man, a lot of stuff. Uh. Tar Baphon was sealed away, you ascended and became a goddess, Cheliax became independent from Taldor, Aroden died, Areelu Vorlesh opened the Worldwound, I'm not sure those are the five most important things but those are the first five things I'm thinking of."

"Aroden died? When? How?"

" - right, I should have put that one more - uh, the scheduled date for the beginning of the Age of Glory. I'm fairly certain of the date. I was taught as a child that Asmodeus killed him, but it turns out that one's more contested."

"I see." She mostly doesn't believe it but it does make a few of the confusions elsewhere in the woman's story line up. Why Taldor sent so little aid to Mendev to deal with their Abyssal rift problem, even though that's the kind of thing that will quickly become everyone's problem. Why the age of glory, well, seemed so distinctly unglorious. "I don't know the name Areelu Vorlesh? Should I, or is she not born yet?"