Hug. "We can make it a radio episode once we go home. What's wrong with Osirion? Why can't Abadar, who is a pretty tolerable god who says he likes cities and civilization, run a theocracy that isn't pretending it's still the Bronze Age?"

"Mhm. Without the radio episodes when we go home I would have a much harder time staying civil… I guess I have not yet demonstrated that I actually can stay civil."

"You really, really haven't. Maybe your father would tolerate that kind of thing around important foreign dignitaries from a place with a god-king but mine absolutely wouldn't have."

"Sarkorians didn't have a ton of respect for god-kings, I think. Comes from having a lot of distance from their empires, I guess."

"Well. Good for them. …my father and I had a conversation, when I was twelve and the Duke was coming to visit, because he wanted to bar me from speaking the whole time and I was very hurt. And I shouted at him for a little while and he didn't shout back and then I realized - he was scared. And I figured I could behave myself, at that. …mostly. That's when I asked if I was allowed to say anything so long as it was scripture and spoke in nothing else for three months."

"You're incredible. Did you manage to avoid offending the Duke?"

"Yes. - well, I think he thought I was odd, but 'odd' is much better than 'presumably getting all those heresies either from her priest or her father'."

"The reason I'm sure my father wouldn't have had a problem with me talking around mean things about god-kings is - I saw him do it, I guess. Much more direct, though. Also I learned later that Aroden was not the god-king of Taldor. And I guess they were only traveling merchants and priests and not dignitaries, per se, but he definitely lost business for it… my father might not have been the wisest of men."

Iomedae beams at her. "I wish I could have met him. …we should probably try to be the wisest of men, though, while we're here."

"Second wisest, the Pharaoh is legally the wisest."

They never did get absolute confirmation that Osirion does not object to people being gay, which is unfortunate, because Iomedae is feeling very very gay right now. She contemplates going out to ask Jeres and then decides she would rather not do that, and would maybe rather do literally anything that isn't that.

"You look horribly conflicted."

"You are the cleverest thoughtfulest most inventive second wisest of men and I was just realizing that we asked the secretary to check if Osirion objected to homosexuality, and that I for one didn't hear the answer, and then I was imagining marching back out there having just been scolded for my association with you to ask Jeres -"

"Oh, well if it's just that," Alfirin kisses her "I got the answer while you were out talking to the defector. It's fine. Encouraged, even. Keeps us from getting involved with boys."

Then they can spend the rest of the day or at least a while of it on activities formally sanctioned by the government of Osirion.

The attack comes Oathday morning. Well-coordinated, well-timed, eight locations within a few moments of one another. Monsters rush through Gates into the streets of Almas, while everything flammable in the city goes up in flames; a seething impenetrable darkness spreads like oil through the sky above the army and then turns out at the last second to be concealing a great red dragon, which sets itself to incinerating the soldiers by the hundreds; Azir burns, as does Isarn; some sea monstrosities surface to devour the Rahadoumi navy; someone lets out a pack of ravenous greater shadows in Vellumis; some Disintegrates punch through the walls of Andoran's border fortresses. 

(Cheliax sends Lastwall and Andoran a declaration of war.)

(Morgethai, and Cansellarion, and Catherine de Litran, and a number of other people, feel the insistent tug of an effort to Wish them somewhere.)

Lastwall's elite response teams who were notified in advance that something might happen this day are, honestly, kind of relieved. They're all experts in fighting the undead. Shadow attacks are not the worst of the things they were preparing for.

Cansellarion's army in the field is thrown into disarray. Few can endure the presence of an ancient dragon. The bulk of the troops panic and run every which way.

The most powerful fighters left behind at the camp don't, though. Sure, there's a dragon, and sure, Cansellarion doesn't seem to be here to fight it, but just like they have crates of silver-plated ammunition for devils and cold-iron-plated ammunition for demons, they have crates of ammunition that they've been told to save for heavily-armored enemies, like hellknights in adamantine plate or, yes, dragons.

Catherine's not hiding, this time, and not sitting next to Morgethai. She catches the wish and uses it to conjure up a diamond for later. "I guess that's the signal," she says to Clepati, and smashes the last of the paper shreds in the mortar.

Lorthact's false realm is just a demiplane; he was kicked out of Hell. It's a good demiplane, trapped against outsiders and hostile both physically and magically, its valuables elaborately hidden, the souls in its custody carefully rigged to be difficult to rescue. It tries simultaneously to shred their souls, trap their souls, devour them, burn them, dissolve them in acid, turn them to stone, and turn them to ghouls.

The thing about a demiplane is that you can't actually put a disjunction trap in it, or any trespass would risk ruining the whole thing. Catherine and Nefreti are under death wards, warded against fire, immune to acid and petrification thanks to greater angelic aspect, and, in Catherine's case at least, already a ghoul.

It's still slow work - identifying wards, picking them apart, figuring out what's worth taking - but Nefreti doesn't seem to be in a hurry. "Ah," she says, a moment before Lorthact arrives, and that's all the warning they really need. Lorthact is, in fact, prepared to find an archmage in his sanctum, but he's not really prepared to find two of them.

Also, they don't mind so much if the whole place gets torn apart and its contents spilled out into the Academae, and can say "hello" properly.

Felandriel Morgethai is immune to soul-trapping when she is awakened from her very brief nap, and she's honestly looking forward to the opportunity to murder Razmir with Cansellarion and Codwin helping. With the forewarning, she has set up some contingencies that should trigger a Disjunction if he tries to show up in a Time Stop.

They kill him twice, and he's probably not very persistently gone but he stops showing up after that. 

"Do we need to clear out this place now or will it keep if we go help out in Almas now?" Nothing related to either Iomedae has happened yet today, that she knows of. She's kind of dreading finding out what it is. (Also, fuck you Nethys.)