"- depends a lot on whether she's the same person I knew. If she is, it'd be worth talking. Carefully, she was averse to the way Lawful Good people tend to see the world, but - she was in fact someone who wouldn't make you worse off for checking if there was common ground, and there often was. 

If she's a lich - I'd expect that to be one of the virtues that gets crushed when you do that to yourself.

I could contact her, while I'm here. It seems plausible she'd murder me but that would be informative if so.

I'd be fairly surprised if she went to war with you in your mortal lifetimes, even once your mutual enemies are destroyed. It'd be - well, it'd be ill-advised, and if she's stayed under the radar this long she's evidently still a patient person given to secrecy. It would surprise me if preparing for overt conflict was a good use of resources."

"If you think you contacting her is likely to go better than us doing it, that would be appreciated, though if she is likely to murder the person who reaches out to her it might be wise for someone recoverable to do that. What about covert conflicts? You hypothesize that she tampered quite extensively with our records once, would she engage in other acts of sabotage?"

"That seems much more likely and much more worth preparing for."

"Should we prepare for her to act covertly against us even while we are collaborating against our overt common enemies?"

"The Alfirin I knew never seemed to do that, but it seems likely that she's gotten worse and that's again an obvious direction to get worse in. And it's possible I just didn't catch her at it."

When they're re-ensconced in the Dome and Iomedae has apologized to Lieutenant Jeres for the worry she caused, not that it was a volitional action on her part and not that she can promise it won't happen again, she makes a point of hugging Alfirin very tightly. Probably learning that your alternate timeline self might be an evil wizard is even more upsetting than learning that she's a good god and learning that she's a good god was honestly kind of upsetting.

She appreciates the hug a lot. It is in fact really upsetting to learn that when she doesn't get mysteriously transported to America she becomes a probably-evil probably-undead. "It's not even just that she's evil and undead, it's that - I don't know why she's evil and undead, right, I don't know if it's, like - she got turned into a vampire and now she's evil, or she decided to be a monster - and I don't know that it's not - something that might still happen to me, if the wrong things happened in my life -"

Hughughughughug. "If you get turned into a vampire I will fix it. If you get raised by Geb as a lich like Arazni I can, in fact, apparently get strong enough to fix that too, though I'll try not to rope in any unsuspecting teenagers. If she just - decided to do awful things - then in some ways that's more upsetting but it's also like - the goddess Iomedae just didn't know that democracy worked, so she didn't do it - you know more, and can just decide not to do awful things -"

"I can but… I don't know why she would have decided to do awful things in the first place. So when I think 'Oh, I'll just not choose to be evil' it's - I don't know if it's because something went differently for me already, that I learned… how to be a good person, or something… or if it's just a failure of imagination about what might happen to me, about who I might be."

"That makes sense. I - you know that I love you, and won't stop loving you -"

"That's - I don't know if that's reassuring, exactly. Part of it is that we don't even - we just have Precentor Valentina telling us that she's probably evil. We don't know what that means in terms of actions. I - I don't know, I imagine you might stop loving me if I was literally Hitler, and my evil wizard version is probably not as bad as literally Hitler but, like -"

"I would probably tell you that I felt obliged to try to kill you, if you were literally Hitler. I don't actually know that I'd stop - loving the person I know, even if you had stopped much resembling them - we don't really know enough for a lot of this, I just don't want you to worry that if Lastwall decides they disapprove of you or if it turns out your evil wizard self is Hitler I'll change my mind about you."

"Oh. Yeah. I'm not worried about that. I love you and I trust you and - I'm not really worried about what people will think about me based on what my wizard self is like. I know you won't change what you think and - if Lastwall does they're being stupid but that's their right as Americans. Not that they are. I'm just… worried about what it actually does say about me, to me, until I know what she did and why?"

Iomedae nods. "Yeah. I think if it were me I'd be - a lot less sure that I'd like the result of - going through the world the way I feel like I ought to. And that'd be - really upsetting."

"Mhm. I just - feel like I'm doubting everything, like - should I keep trying to be a wizard myself? Or maybe I should, because - it seems like if I were tempted to do terrible things it would be when I'm scared - but maybe that means I shouldn't do things like learn magic where - there's more that I can do, in a short time, if I'm panicking - but that just feels like saying 'maybe I shouldn't be able to do any things'"

"When you were very, very scared yesterday you patiently pointed out to Jeres your rights under your agreement with him and then made some purchases that amount to a rounding error in your ownership of industry, like, all of it, and then came and gave me hugs. And I guess Sendinged the Lord Watcher but that was not actually at all evil to do."

"Yeah but if I was that scared and had phenomenal cosmic powers who knows what - no, never mind, I'd just wish for you to be back here. Or, like. Left the Dome and done that. Maybe there's an intermediate level of cosmic power where I do stupid evil things though."

Iomedae considers it. "Like, if you could get to me but only by murdering Jeres, but you were strong enough to do that?"

"Like that, yes, if he were being more obstinate about keeping me in my room and I couldn't get out by talking and I could get out by hurting him -"

"I can see how - if there were a lot of situations like that - it would mean that having more power let people be more evil. But I think in most situations, like, the best way to solve problems is not literal murder even if you have a gun...this is less true on Golarion but I think it's still true, when you have the resources we do. And magic also allows for - escaping Jeres -"

"That seems true to me but - maybe I should just stop obsessing over what it means that the other me is evil, when we don't actually know for sure whether she is. Otherwise I just keep imagining - things that are definitely not the right thing -"

"Yeah. We can - ask for updates, on what her deal is, and worry then. …and help her, if she needs help."

"She's a nine-hundred-year-old ninth-circle wizard. I can't imagine what help she might need that we can give."

"This is Marit," the voice says over a Sending the next day. They considered alternatives. Marit thinks that hypothetical lich Alfirin who considers herself to have declared war on Iomedae's church yesterday is more likely to kill him than to kill a random paladin, but also much more likely to be possible for him to productively talk to than a random paladin. And - they don't know why, yet, so much is at stake here for Asmodeus, but Marit is not likely to go on to die in some fight where there's more at stake. "I'm in Vigil trying to fix what they did to their history books. I'd like to talk, if you would."

Well. She's lost enough things she cares about, in this war, and she already knew her secrecy was one of them. Lastwall wouldn't use this for an assassination. She will probably just get lectured again, because that's what old friends do, apparently, but maybe she'll be proven wrong about that. It can't really hurt more than everything else does. "Unless you say otherwise, I'll be there in two hours. I'll speak with Lastwall's leadership after, if they want to."