Cling. "Yeah I can't imagine how someone could try an assassination that got here and then didn't succeed. It's okay, I'm okay. A cleric will be here soon, I hope."

Iomedae will hold Alfirin very tightly until that happens. 

A cleric arrives. "What happened, did you need healing?"

"I'm not very injured," Iomedae says. "But I am injured and that's fairly concerning, since I don't think anything should've been able to get in here. I - woke up to something very terrible and I was bleeding. That's all I remember. I'm sorry. - Alfirin did you notice anything before I screamed?"

"I was asleep until then, and I saw the blood and - No, I didn't notice anything before that."

"A nightmare, then. Not just a bad dream, the magic kind of nightmare that evil wizards send to their enemies. There's not anything to be done now, except heal you. I'm guessing someone will talk with you about security measures in the morning."

That's a thing that can happen? "I understand," says Iomedae, more than a bit shaken. "I can heal myself."

The priest departs.

"You were right," Alfirin says, "I've been thinking it ever since they tried to abduct you - that I should be trying harder to become a wizard, because things like this are just going to keep happening, aren't they, and I can't protect you with lathes."

Iomedae hiccups shakily. "It's not - fair for it to be your job to protect me on top of industrializing an entire planet."

"It's not. It's not fair that we got back too late to help anyone we knew, it's not fair that Aroden is dead, it's not fair that Hell took over your homeland and the Abyss took over mine. It's not fair, it's just how it is."

"I hate this," Iomedae complains into her shoulder. "I hate being scared all the time, I hate that - I don't know if they have a policy of not telling us anything unless it comes up or if they figure we'd ask if we wanted to know or if there's just so many thousands of things that there'd be no point in telling us a few hundred. I hate not having enough context to make any tradeoffs in an informed way, I hate having to trust people who seem pretty trustworthy but too busy to really try very hard to justify all their choices to us unless we make a huge fuss and since we lack any context to make any tradeoffs it's hard to tell what we're losing when we do that and I miss Aroden and I miss knowing what people want from me and I miss being safe -"

Cling. "I know. I'm going to make them tell us, though - not any of the leadership, but there's probably a wizard here who's not so busy and can just - sit down, and tell us - if not all the things that Cheliax is going to try all the types of things they might try. And someone else to give us context. And someone else to teach me to be a wizard. Because we can't just - keep putting all these things off until we're not busy. 'We're not busy' isn't going to happen."

"It's really really not. I think that's a good plan. If I knew the sorts of things that were possible with magic I'd be less terrified when they kept unexpectedly happening - ugh, I'm not going to be able to get back to sleep at all but you should, especially if you want to be a wizard…"

"Mmm. You're not wrong but it sure does feel backwards, you getting attacked in the middle of the night and then staying awake while I go back to sleep." She'll close her eyes and rest her head on Iomedae until she's calm enough to sleep properly. "Miss being the most powerful wizard on the planet, things like this never happened when I was the most powerful wizard on the planet."

"Well, you'll just have to become the most powerful wizard on the planet again. How hard can it be?"

"Harder than airplanes prob'ly. Easier than pharma."

Iomedae is very tired in the morning but she drags herself up and to the workshop because if the invasion of Cheliax is starting in the spring they can't afford any delays. Also presumably Cheliax did this to her so as a matter of spiting them she has to be twice as productive today. If the crafters in the workshop and the soldiers in testing notice that she seems shaken up, they don't say anything. 

It happens again the next night. This time the indescribable thing that lunges at her in her sleep tears a fist-sized bloody chunk out of her shoulder and leaves a long scratch down her torso; she heals that one before the clerics show up. And then cries. A lot.

Alfirin doesn't go back to sleep this time, just stays up through the night holding her. In the morning she's tired and cranky and demands to know what Lastwall can do about this, because if it happens every night Iomedae is not going to be functional after too much longer.

"Well, we could try protective spells overnight, though that would get expensive pretty fast - Or she could just skip sleep, there's a spell for that that paladins can cast for the people on the night watch. I can see if someone can use that on her tonight -"

"Why didn't you mention this yesterday?"

He blinks. "I'm sorry ma'am -"

"Don't be sorry, just fix it." She storms off to go work on learning magic building engines testing smokeless powder mixes experimenting with ink compositions for the prototype ballpoint pens, because that's probably safe to do when she's tired.

Today some people do notice that Iomedae is miserable and exhausted and ask if everything is all right. She tells them to stay on task and then feels bad about how instantly she is obeyed. 

All right, she needs to figure this out. She isn't going to be able to run the supply work for a war while this much of a wreck, and the sleep deprivation isn't helping but she doesn't think it's all the sleep deprivation. What is it. 

She wants to know if she's making horrible mistakes or not. She wants to know if she's wronging people or not. She gave up on directly asking and addressing it indirectly is more respectful of everyone's time but it means she doesn't get any feedback about whether she's doing it right. She wants to be safe, but she chose to do dangerous things. She wants to know whether that decision was a mistake or not, but they aren't looking closely at the Wish incident and what mistakes she made until Cansellarion knows whether the people who risked their lives to protect her were caught and are in Hell -

(She hides in a supply closet and cries for ten minutes.)

She wants to be able to defend herself, but she's picked a fight with people far stronger than her and she's probably never again in her life going to be capable of defending herself against the caliber of people who want to kill her. She wants Aroden back, she just doesn't feel the same way about her god-self and in any event no one seems willing to tell her how to surrender herself to her god-self's service even if that would possibly be the best way to limp through the next four months. 

She hasn't slept much in two days and she'll probably feel better once she has except the current plan is for her not to sleep tonight and she's not sure when the plan next involves her sleeping. 

She prays for strength and is not sure it's helping, which is weird, because it usually helps a lot. Eventually she decides that if twenty minutes of desperate introspection hasn't untangled her then the thing to do is to stop trying and do her job and not think about it until something goes wrong - no, okay, that's clearly a stupid plan. Not think about it until Alfirin has gotten a restful night of sleep and can help her. 

She is not at her best but she does work for the rest of the day, mostly on things like figuring out the supply requirements for a weapons-training regime where she doesn't need all that much trust in her own judgment.