She surges into his mind, sending love and worry. :Are you all right, Chosen?:

That is a question that doesn’t feel very relevant to anything right now, and Vanyel is - mostly trying not to think too hard about the answer. 

:I’m fine. I - think she is who she claims to be, and genuinely wants to help. She agreed to and passed a first-stage Truth Spell. …Second-stage doesn’t work on her. Her god makes her immune to most mind-affecting magic. Which is good, right, if it means Leareth can't suborn her... She wants to send him a letter. Says she doesn't start wars with people without having talked first.: 

:An admirable sentiment: Yfandes' mindvoice is very tense. :What's she saying to him?: 

:Haven't had the chance to read the updated letter, yet. Need to take it to Randi.: 

And he's flinching away from thinking about half a dozen things, because there hasn't been time to process any of the enormity of Savil's death and he's just learned that, almost certainly, everyone he knew and cared about in k'Treva Vale is dead and it might in some sense be Iomedae's fault. Yfandes is very worried about him. 

And it doesn't change anything. The stakes aren't going to get any lower and the situation isn't going to get any less screamingly urgent just because Vanyel needs time to process - because they all do - and the only thing to be done is keep going. 

:Of course, love. I'll tell Treven's Eren to arrange the meeting.: 

And ten minutes later, the King of Valdemar is arranged in a padded chair in one of the small meeting-rooms. The rest of the Senior Circle is still assembling - only Treven is there, mostly hiding his tense misery, and Tantras looking even more exhausted than Vanyel feels. 

"Van. Can you please explain." 

"I spoke with her. I - think it was the right decision, going north. I've dropped her off at a remote Waystation, she's - worried that she's a target." Though it doesn't make any sense that exploding k'Treva could have been Leareth's doing and also triggered by Iomedae's arrival, she'd been there for minutes, how could Leareth possibly have known enough about her to recognize the threat.... "She explained some things about her world and her god. It really does sound like another world. She says she wants to defend Valdemar if we're invaded, and hopes she can make a case to Leareth against bothering to invade, given that. ....Here, just read this." 

And he plops the letter down on the table.  

Leareth,

 

This letter was written with Vanyel's assistance, but I, Iomedae, Knight-Commander of the Knights of Ozem, am the primary author. I arrived in K'Treva Vale shortly before the explosion, and I think it may have been a response to me, though I don't know how or why. I think that I am from another world.

I think that the existence of, and possibility of contact with, my world may change the justification for your war. I hope that this is so. 

I think that it will be much costlier for you to go to war with Valdemar while I am inclined to defend them against conquest. I am so inclined. You could persuade me either that this defense is entirely futile or that your war is justified, though only with great difficulty. I will almost certainly defend Valdemar if you attack at present. My presence on a battlefield is usually decisive. 

Vanyel has explained your grievances with the local gods and some, to me, seem legitimate. In the interests of honesty I must disclose that I am a selected follower of the god Aroden in my own world, part of an institution by which the gods select specific people who are then highly trusted and highly reliable, and given positions of authority accordingly. This system is like the heralds in some respects, but were Aroden to renounce me I would be only an ordinary amount of grieved by this, I can renounce Him if I cease to believe that serving Him is the best path for me to achieve the goals I believe I share with Him, and I can fight the gods if it seems like a good idea (which it does, for some gods and some fights). The grievances about the conduct of the gods that were explained to me do not seem to be to be applicable to Aroden.

Aroden was a human once, and he represents that ascension did not change what he strived for, or his commitment to dealing rightly by others. 

Aroden ascended without killing other people, by a mechanism called the Starstone that remains in our world and still functions. Others have used it to ascend after Him. 

Aroden cannot operate in this world at this time. I will likely take steps to change that. You could ask me not to do that, if it seems to you that it might have greatly negative effects. 

In my world, the dead are sorted according to their character and then go to the Outer Planes, where they can live forever. Many of the Outer Planes including Aroden's are paradises. (Some are not. We are working on fixing that.) I am grieved to learn that this is not so in your world, and would be willing to work with you on finding a way to fix that, though not through conquest and mass human sacrifice. Introducing Aroden on this world might do it.

I have no desire for war. It is among the most tragic of human endeavors. I have been at war for nearly all my life and am very good at it. I am immune to compulsions. I am immune to fear. I have other forms of protection against magical attack which I do not expect at this time it's a good idea to specify. I do not know of a good basis for comparison across worlds, but in my own world the only powers that could survive in my presence on the battlefield for six seconds are halfway to being gods.

I survived the K'Treva Vale explosion and believe that I would survive a Final Strike for the same reason. If you wish to test this I request that you notify me in advance so I can go somewhere where your attempt will not cause civilian casualties. I will take no precautions against assassination on receiving such notice that I wasn't taking already, except for avoiding civilians.

The communications in this message are intended as part of a peace negotiation. Were we negotiating by the norms of the world I am from, that would have the following implications: I will, to the best of my abilities, not position myself to make inferences about your capabilities from the timing and process for the exchange of letters, and not use the contents against the aims of the peace process. I will not harm your agents in the course of their operations related to these negotiations. If you provide information or resources conditional on my agreement to terms I do not agree to, I will send them back. I will not lie. I will attest to the contents of this letter under truth magic, as relevant; I will swear not only that this communication is true to the best of my knowledge, but that the best of my knowledge is very good; that when I make claims in contexts like this one I am usually correct.

If you were to, for example, take this peace communication as a prompt to attempt to kidnap me, before knowledge of me would otherwise have reached you, this would be, in the terms familiar in my world, indicative that this kind of mutually cooperative and Lawful interaction will not work. I mostly expect that, regardless of your intent, this negotiation will not proceed along the terms familiar for Lawful negotiation in my own world, because we are alien to each other, and nearly certain to face much mutual incomprehension. But I am trying to make this negotiation possible for you and advantageous for you, and will do so past the first several points where it seems to me you are not doing the same. 

With regards,

Iomedae, Knight-Commander of the Knights of Ozem and of the Shining Crusade

...This is, in fact, also the first Vanyel is learning of the 'outer planes' where people GO TO LIVE FOREVER when they die and he has emotions. It's the worst possible time to be having emotions. He is nonetheless having a very difficult time concentrating on anything else right now. 

...he can't help trying to picture Leareth's face, when he receives this message. It - changes everything - and whatever else he thinks about the man, Vanyel has a hard time imagining that Leareth doesn't genuinely and deeply want people to stop dying. Or - well, this is almost better in a way than universal immortality, which has all sorts of complications, the sorting system is bizarre but...

He doesn't actually feel like he can guess how Leareth is going to react. Just that it's going to be - a big deal. 

(He might in fact kidnap Iomedae. It's got to be his first instinct to something this new and outside his known context, to get in control...) 

Randi eventually clears his throat. 

"Er. I...honestly don't have the slightest idea what Leareth is going to do with this. Whether or not he's the one who tried to kill her, actually." 

"There's absolutely no way he's going to believe any of it, right? I mean. I don't really trust - any of this - and that's with Van having been there in person with a Truth Spell." 

"I mean, no, not without more evidence. But - if it's true then it's the single most important thing that's happened in - possibly ever, or at least since the Cataclysm? He's going to at least check. - might try to check by kidnapping her but she thinks her god's miracles mean she can survive a Final Strike at close-up range, he almost certainly can't kill her and may not even be able to badly hurt her, and he probably can't compulsion her either. And if he does - act adversarially - then I think that mostly just confirms to her that he's in the wrong and Valdemar needs defending from him?" 

...Which feels, in itself, like a reason to predict that Leareth won't open with kidnapping, because Leareth isn't an idiot and it - holds together, that he genuinely doesn't want a war, which will be costly and destructive and mean it takes even longer to repair and get the thing he really wanted all along. Which Iomedae doesn't want him to have even via peaceful means, but - there might still be common ground there. 

Treven is biting his lip. "What's the risk of sending the letter on Iomedae's behalf? What options does it lose us?" 

"- Anything that would lean on him not knowing about Iomedae or her capabilities, I guess? But - if it was him who blew up k'Treva then he has to know already, right." 

If it was Leareth who– 

Vanyel's mind is still bouncing away from looking at it directly. It hurts, and he's so confused and - what does this even accomplish, from Leareth's point of view, losing Savil (quiet internal screaming, but he can, at this point, make himself think her name) weakened Valdemar meaningfully. But k'Treva isn't even Valdemaran territory. It has to have been insanely costly even for Leareth to operate there. You would think he would find something better to do with an agent in a Tayledras Vale - and it feels like an even thinner excuse that it was an impulse panic reaction to Iomedae's sudden arrival, one because Leareth does not at all seem like the impulse panic reaction sort of person, and two, because he would have had so little time to react, surely not even long enough to receive a spy-report from an agent and respond to it... 

Maybe someone in k'Treva was Leareth's agent and acted unilaterally? That - would be horrifyingly sad, mostly. And still doesn't feel like a story that leaves Vanyel less rather than more confused. 

But if it wasn't Leareth, then - no, he's still failing to think of literally any alternative. 

Treven clears his throat. "Is there any way it could have been an accident? Whatever happened in k'Treva, I mean. It would have to be a huge coincidence, but - it is in the Pelagirs, there's a lot of dangerous magic there...?" 

It would have to be an absurd level of coincidence, Vanyel thinks grumpily - not just that it happened at all, when he's never heard of anything like this, but the exact timing - unless maybe there was a magical interaction, that some of Iomedae's otherworldly powerful magical artifacts or some of her glued-on persistent godmiracle powers interfered with the functioning of the Vale's magic, destabilized some critical infrastructure...? 

The insane conspiracy theory, of course, is that it was Aroden's doing. Or - indirectly, maybe, if the sudden presence and influence of a completely unknown god spooked the Star-Eyed into something that– 

....something that - if not for Iomedae's determined insistence on diplomacy, and maybe even with it, will inevitably result in a war. 

Which (horrified recognition) might, actually, be rather in the Star-Eyed's interests. 

Except that the entire theory is also completely insane. They were Her people. It would surely have cost Her even more than it gained her - it was already pretty determined that Valdemar would go to war, after Savil - 

- the fish came from the Pelagirs - 

- this is an agonizing and stupid thread of thought to be chasing in the middle of an urgent meeting. Vanyel drags his attention back to the room. 

"- good point, that the worst-case scenario here is that Leareth is responsible for k'Treva," Randi is saying. "In which case Iomedae wanting to try diplomacy first doesn't give much away. - that she survived, I suppose, but he would notice her defending Valdemar, and - I mean, I'd want him to realize he can't kill her and his best option is to try leaving us alone." 

"I don't like it. What if k'Treva wasn't him?" 

Randi closes his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose again. "Then - I have no idea what. Except that - if it wasn't an accident - we might have an even worse problem than Leareth."