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Yes. I have been fighting for a very long time and now I'm very powerful. I might be powerful enough to kill God, or I might need powerful friends to help. If you travel with me I will try to make you stronger and Lawful and Good so you can smite God like I will.

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I'm not going to do what you tell me to! says the newer one. I don't do what anyone tells me to! But I'll kill God!

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I also don't really like doing what people tell me to! I worry they will tell me the wrong thing to do! 

 

And she will keep going through the sandstorm.

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Now she has two demons following her. 

With the wind trying to push her off course, the sand trying to get in her eyes, and the total lack of persistent features in the landscape, it's hard to keep to a single direction, or to be sure you've kept to one.

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In some situations you can solve that with clever strategy and in some you just have to go with SHEER STUBBORNNESS. She will walk whatever direction the wind seems most inclined to prevent her from walking in.

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Then in time the wind will fade, and the sand will settle down and turn to gravel and then into stones, and the little party will be in a still and arid land dotted with red-hot iron coffins.

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"Do you know what's in those?" she will ask her demon friends.

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Not only do they have no idea, they seem to be too busy being surprised that there are places that aren't sandstorm to really engage with the question.

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She hates God so much. 

 

She's not going to sleep but she does need to at least rest with Keep Watch aiding. She'll - pick a random location, if none seem particularly suitable. Once she's rested she can see if the coffins open.

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The demons spend most of her rest declaring their absolute and relative degrees of hate for God, each other, her, and various other nouns, but they don't actively cause trouble.

If you're stronger than humans can reasonably get and don't mind that the coffins are made of red-hot iron, then yes, they open. Each one has a human or a demon in it. Anyone released immediately thrash-flops their way out of the coffin and lies unmoving on the ground near it.

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Oh, she minds that the coffins are made of red-hot iron. But in the sense where that's why she's doing it. 

 

Will her demon friends help her get people out of the coffins? God wanted this. She is nothing like God, and she wants not-this. She thinks they too should want not-this.

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That sounds less hateful than not doing it so yes! . . . Neither of them is individually strong enough and it doesn't occur to them to both shove on one coffin at the same time.

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She will suggest it. God probably didn't realize they were clever enough to work together.

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They squabble about which coffin to start with and who gets what end, and they flinch away from the hot metal enough to make the timing difficult, but they do get one open. A human flops out.

One of the humans Iomedae freed has enough presence of mind to look up, sees her and the demons, and immediately tries to scramble around their former prison and hide behind it.

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:I am not here to hurt you: Iomedae says, but makes no effort to go closer.

 

She congratulates the demons on their cleverness and bravery. Enough cleverness and bravery like that and God won't stand a chance.

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The human's head peeks out from behind the coffin. He asks in a small voice, "Are you an angel?"

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:No. I am a human who is very powerful.:

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Skepticism! He gradually creeps out from behind the coffin and stands up, looking like he expects her or possibly the demons to attack him at any moment. "Are there other--free humans--here?"

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:Most of the humans I have freed have not been very responsive or capable of speech, and I left them behind when I departed. You can travel with us if you like.:

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He looks nervously back and forth between her and the demons, not quite articulating any thoughts well enough for her telepathy to catch them.

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:I will stop them if they hurt you, as long as you stay near me. I don't think they prefer to hurt you.:

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He looks at the vast expanse of coffin-pocked stone, looks at the demons again (one has gotten distracted by trying to smash one rock with another rock and the other is telepathically yelling at them about this), and nods. And takes a step closer, carefully keeping Iomedae between him and the demons. (He's naked, as is everyone here except Iomedae.)

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She will head over and congratulate the one demon on tool use, which is a very clever idea they will be able to use to make knives and tools eventually, but probably not right now, because there's still some more people to spite God and rescue.

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They hate tools and they hate rescuing people and they hate God more than both of those things put together! They open some more coffins. Most of the humans stay on the ground indefinitely and most of the demons either attack or run away, but if they go through enough of them they can get some more recruits. The demons in this area are a bit more intelligent and strategic than the first two.

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Iomedae's pitch is very simple. She's going to go kill God, she's going to stop the people around her from killing one another, and she wants their help. If she can turn them into paladins she will, paladins are the best at killing God because they can smite Evil, which God is. (She's going off the archangel, and the torture dimension. She could be wrong. But that seems like a lot of nuance to expect of this audience.)

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