"While she's here, though it's hard to stop her from deciding to go back for reasons that neither you nor I would consider good enough. I might anyway."

"I have, some pretty serious reservations actually, about the whole plan where you rewrite her entire value system in five minutes of totally-not-talk-control, even if her current one is horrible by most people's standards and she's 'in denial' about whatever. In fact, if that whole thing where she was mine was real at all, I forbid you, I refuse consent on her behalf. If that's even something that matters to you at all."

It was but not even slightly in a way where you can order that, she does not say, because Keltham is a traumatized teenager whom she badly needs to trust her, and not lying doesn't mean saying everything that's true.

"I actually wasn't planning to do anything like the thing you're imagining," she says instead. "We can talk more about the thing I actually meant, which very likely won't even require any action on my part even if I could make it happen faster, but I think that, possibly, we should do that more than ten minutes after you found out about the existence of Hell."

"Right, I shouldn't develop any cached judgments when my emotional and epistemic state is this much of a mess, it's just, optimizing people to be Good, is something I have, opinions about, from back in dath ilan—maybe I'm okay with it, if the alternative is whatever the shit Cheliax is doing—"

"Last Carissa-related question, are masochists real?"

"The answer that most updates your present model toward reality is 'yes' although I note, in the interests of meta-honesty, that this belies my own complicated opinions that you're predictably not going to like."

"Yeah, that sounds like a later conversation to me as well."

"Next steps are for me to go somewhere or have something done so Cheliax can't kidnap me, and then spend a while digging into this layer of reality and seeing if I want to cooperate with whatever plan you've got going on. Concur?"

"Concur."

She leads him through the paused city to a place where the street ends suddenly at a moat so deep the bottom of it, if it has a bottom, is lost in darkness, with a narrow bridge across it. On the other side of the moat is a curtain of brilliant white light descending from a vast height.

"I'll need to end the Time Stop to speak to the sentry," she says. "Even I may not easily enter here unpermitted."

She takes Keltham's hand. Her touch feels slightly fake, as though something is trying to implant the sensation of having his hand held directly in his mind without it actually being the case that he's touching a physical hand, and not doing a perfect job of it.

She tells Abadar to unpause time.

The sentry is an imposing humanoid construct about eight feet high, with skin like animate black stone and a huge black sword.

"Who goes there?" it asks.

"The goddess Iomedae, exercising the right of entry owned by My Church in Golarion," she replies. "This is Keltham of dath ilan, a cleric of Abadar, and His guest and Mine."

"Proceed," it says. The curtain of light parts slightly to reveal a section of city much like the one behind them. The houses might be slightly fancier on average.

"This part of Aktun is approximately categorically secure against unauthorized interference of any kind, including gods who aren't trying harder than they're typically allowed to," she explains to Keltham as they cross the boundary. "My church has a base of operations here; this isn't the first time we've needed to offer protection to someone Hell was very upset with."

He'll process the truth value of that claim later.

They reach the safe house. Iomedae knocks on the door.

"Oh," says the cleric who answers the door, falling abruptly to his knees.

"Get up," she says, with an air of vague disapproval. "This is Keltham. He just got out of Cheliax, so be nice to him."

(The people currently in the safe house are, of course, already much better briefed on the situation than this, though apparently they weren't expecting her in person.)

He rises, still kind of staring.

"Of course," he says. "Are you, uh, coming in?" He opens the door wider.

She steps inside. Everyone in the room is immediately healed of any injuries they might have without her particularly intending to do that. She has her Aura of Courage deliberately turned off, because she predicts Keltham wouldn't appreciate it, but it's still pretty hard to feel afraid in her presence for entirely rational reasons.

(There's a lot more kneeling and staring.)

"There's one more thing before I go," she says to Keltham. "I expect that, while you would rather not do it now, you will at some point see the necessity of making yourself smarter, so I'm leaving you with a tool to do that."

She produces, apparently from nowhere, an extremely fancy headband, to both the eye and Detect Magic more elaborate than any anyone present has ever seen, save perhaps the Crown of Infernal Majesty. It's decorated with motifs that someone vastly more literate in Golarion's cultures than Keltham might recognize as coming from the Arcadian nation of Xopatl.

(People who are that culturally literate, or have just seen this artifact depicted in books, audibly gasp. This is a far more shocking intervention than the Goddess showing up in person.)

"This was once worn by one of my best friends. I haven't, from Her death until now, known anyone whom it would actually be worth the intervention budget to lend it to. May your path end more happily than Hers did."

She would at this point place it ceremoniously on Keltham's head, were Keltham less wary of cognitive enhancement than he in fact is. Instead she sets it down on a table.

(Keltham is clearly missing some context here.)

"I state explicitly that this gift is given in the hope, but not the 'logically-binding-expectation'*, that you will use it to further my values, and you should not consider yourself bound by honor to do so, nor refrain from using it out of fear you might betray me."

(*A two-syllable word in Baseline.)

"Thank you. Your disclaimer is understood and acknowledged."

"Good luck and good skill," she says, and turns to depart, casting an hours-long Greater Heroism on everyone in the room (except Keltham, who might not appreciate it) as she does so, because she does, actually, mean those words.

"I think," says Keltham, "that I would like to be alone for a little while. If anyone has a headband of just Spendour, not this Very Fancy Headband that I assume does multiple abilitystats, that I could borrow, or barring that the temporary enhancement spell, I'll repay you as soon as I'm able."

A paladin has a +4 Splendour headband that he can borrow for as long as he needs it.