We really do owe her a great deal. Whatever else happens, at least, we'll have the time we've had.

I did have that thought. Something like - whether I would rather have married someone else, if marrying you meant facing this. And I don't really think that I would? Maybe that's stupid, but - I am thankful to have had this. Even if it's all we have. I hope it's not.

- hey, Elie?

Yes?

I don't think we can actually bring M. Perrin back later. We're not allowed to interfere with Hell afterwards, are we?

Oh. 

Well – that's only after we win, if we win. We might have some cause to Wish people out of Hell before then. Or we could try bargaining for him, but I'm not sure we'd get a price we could accept.

I don't imagine we would, no. Just - remember it, if you have cause to cast any of your wishes to call people somewhere else before then, I suppose.

I will.

He's quiet for a bit. 

Do you think the contract forbids us from resurrecting people in Hell the ordinary way, if we can?

I don't think so? I'll want to run it by our Axis lawyers to be sure, I suppose. I was looking forward to doing a lot of resurrecting people.

And there are some people I'd be fairly devastated not to be able to get.

Yes.

If it does conflict, is there anyone you want me to be ready to get beforehand? Any remains we should be tracking down in whatever time we have left?

Simone Dacier. Gabriel du Faouët. Anne-Madeleine Savarie – 

– It doesn't feel right to make decisions like this. There will be people it's easier to get. Nobody deserves Hell for any reason, and especially not because they didn't give a speech to a crowd that happened to include the right teenager in the early 90s.

I'll talk to the lawyers. I suspect we can continue resurrections, but if resurrection interferes with the deal then we ought not resurrect anyone in hell, and will be doing everyone else there a favor by not. But I want to get out the people you care about if we can.

I thought of something we should have put in the contract. I mean, I thought of something that doesn't matter at all and which I want as badly as I've ever wanted anything. I'm sure Mephistopheles could have tricked me out of it at great personal expense. I want Asmodeus to know that it would have cost him nothing to have me killed when I was twelve years old, and he didn't, and in all the millions of years he's existed that's the single worst mistake he's ever made.

You'd have had to pay him something else. Mephistopheles doesn't want anyone to reliably know anything.

Maybe for the best, in this case. I'm already too powerful to go about cultivating my pride.

I suppose. No one else will ever know of this. Besides the rest of the party and the lawyers, and Iomedae, I suppose. I expect it doesn't make you feel any better knowing that we'll also be considered terribly important for much less significant reasons.

Oh, that I don't mind. I want people to think I'm important for the gates and the arcane engines and Fabricate and not this horrible stupid war that just makes everything it touches worse and worse and worse. I don't even think I deserve much credit for it; there a hundred people who could have done as much if they'd happened to live. Of course I like to imagine I'm irreplaceable – it's a flaw in my character. And I'd personally find it satisfying for Asmodeus to spend the rest of eternity contemplating how he lost his throne because of some little mortal ants he thought were too inconsequential to step on. 

Maybe not even knowing who it was drives the point home even further. Or maybe he will know, in the final moments before he loses. I suppose we won't know either way.

I do think you're irreplaceable for some purposes. Mine, for instance. But Mephistopheles isn't so picky, and I think the truth is that he would have found someone else eventually. Maybe in another thousand years. But they probably wouldn't have invented fabricate or opened a gate to Bachuan, and they might not have had effects on the people around them such that they were interested in bargaining for more with him.

I meant what I said about wanting to be remembered for the things we build after. I shouldn't like to count on this thing with Mephistopheles, and I'm not convinced that a thousand years from now we won't regret it. I'm happier with cheap healing and cheap travel and being irreplaceable to you. 

Yeah.

I think I'll be happy not to think about it much at all afterwards. I want to get back to everything else so much it hurts, but I know we have to finish this first. I just hope that we're here to go back to it, when we're done with this.

Thank you for today, Élie.

Thank you for all the days to come – many or few as they might be.