The latest thing (and it's been several subjective months of latest things) is that while they've managed to get the ritual to stabilize with just four external anchor points it requires some fairly precise choreography, which the Holomogi wardstone specialists feel is incompatable with truly responsive sorcery and the Bachuanese ritualists insist is contrary to all principles of harmonious planar alignment. Of course, the Bachuanese ritualists also feel that the Holomogi wardstone specialists are contrary to all principles of harmonious planar alignment, and the Holomogi wardstone specialists think the Bachuanese ritualists are all sticks in the mud. Fortunately, none of the Holomogi speak Tien and the Bachuanese are equally ignorant of Drooni. 

The last thing he wants is to touch the ritual again, but he should probably have Ip Sang figure out if the other Bachuanese have a point and talk them down if they haven't. The Holomogi will be harder – he could meet with them all individually, for a start, there aren't many – 

He startles. "Hmm?"

"You are doing incredibly important and difficult work, on an impossible schedule, and doing it better than anyone else could. I respect and admire that a lot, and I understand exactly how important it is."

"I want you to take Sunday off."

"It really is a new world we're living in. Shouldn't I be saying that to you?"

"I take time off sometimes! Admittedly not Sundays, for the past month, I've been helping Catherine, but - no, you've been working really hard, and while I wouldn't want you to work this hard all the time I do admire the capacity. You should probably take time off for yourself, at some point. But that's not why I'm asking."

"We're - going to be doing something really dangerous, here. We should do it anyway, it's worth doing. But - it is the sort of thing we might not actually come back from." From what comes after, if not from the expected fight with Deskari. "And - the children have not seen much of us this last month. They miss me, and they miss you more. I'm willing to do very dangerous things for a worthy cause. But - I'm not willing to risk death after having all but ignored our children for a month, and potentially leave them with the idea that we died not thinking about them or caring about them. If something happens to us, I want them to know that we loved them very much, and wanted to be with them even when we thought something else was more important."

"So - I think we should both take Sunday off, and spend the whole day with Rahim and Ines. In case something happens." 

She's right, of course. And he hasn't been avoiding the children, exactly – but the children are safe in the Dome where Hell can't reach them with a wish, and he has been avoiding the Dome, because every time he visits it gets harder to leave.

"I can be done by Sunday. I miss them too. I – 

– I wonder if we shouldn't have waited, for Ines."

" - no, I don't think so. I wouldn't rather she didn't exist. But I know I have - different intuitions, there, than you do."

"If I'd known things would come to a head this quickly, I would have asked you to wait. Of course, we couldn't have known – "

I'm not actually very worried about Deskari. But –  if we do die fighting Deskari and leave Asmodeus in power, they'll never be safe from him. 

I guess so. But that would still be true if it had taken longer, and we didn't know how important this was back then. I don't know that they're actually worth very much to him, if we're gone, but either way, we can't go back now.

I think we'll probably manage Deskari. I'm worried about what happens after. But - whatever happens, they deserve to see us first, you know?

Of course they do. They deserve more than that. 

The Holomogi aren't so difficult, in the end. Over the next few days, he finds that nobody wants to argue with him. 

She'll tap people and come back, then.

"You know, I'm not entirely sure what a whole day spent with your children ought to consist of. I was thinking maybe we could take them shopping and then you and Rahim could try going out on your boat? They've been cooped up in the dome for ages."

"Do you really think it's safe to take them out?"

"Well, they couldn't possibly resist a wish, but they're not strategically valuable in themselves. There's no reason to go after them. ...except to get us to spend down a wish to get them back, which I suppose we'd have to, and that might be reason enough for them to do it. Assuming we even can get them back in time."

"...I guess we probably shouldn't, when I put it like that."

"We can still go shopping – and I can turn them into birds, they like that. We could take them to see the orrery, if you haven't already."

"No, I haven't. I suppose I can't say whether Nebetah has, but I guess we can ask Rahim. Ines is so little she'll be entertained by almost anything that isn't the apartment, I think."

"And poor Nebetah deserves a day of peace in her own home, at that."

"It's true. She's really doing us such a favor. I'd offer to pay if I wasn't worried it would somehow be insulting."

They can teleport to just outside the dome, and after the security checks they can walk in. The inside of the dome is - sort of comforting, as the interiors massive demon spawn exoskeletons go, not that Naima is particularly a connoisseur of those. Almost nothing can get at you when you're inside it. They can head up to Shawil's apartment, and Ines and Rahim can see their father for the first time in far too long.

Well, Élie can wait in the recieving hall while a servant runs up to the women's quarters to announce them. Osirians. 

Rahim will run out faster than the servant can come back!

"Papa! Papa, you're back!"

Élie can dimension step across the room to him and lift him up in the air! 

"I am! And – while you should of course correct me if I'm wrong – but I do believe you've gotten bigger while I was away."

Rahim is delighted. "I did! I get bigger every day!"

Ines toddles in behind him unsteadily, crashes into her papa, and raises her hands so he'll know it is her turn to be picked up now.

Well, he can't very well bend down while he's still holding Rahim, but that's alright, she's small enough that a couple of unseen servants can give her a lift. 

"Ines! I'm sure you weren't half so good at walking the last time I saw you. Remind me, how long has it been? Ten years?"

"Ten MILLION years," says Rahim, while Ines latches onto Élie like a burr. 

"Ten million years? Tell me, then, which of you has discovered the secret of immortality?" 

What happens if he tries to geeeeently set Rahim down? The kid is actually pretty heavy and he's never been particularly strong. 

Rahim will reluctantly allow this if he can keep hugging Élie's leg. "It felt like ten million years. That's because time moves at different speeds for different places. So it's only been a little bit for you and mama, but it was ten million years inside the dome."

Sure, he can keep hugging. Élie can even make exaggerated lurching motions like he's being held down by a giant clam. (He's not attempting to put down Ines. He's met his daughter and he knows he's not going to win that fight). 

"That's a very interesting theory! Why do you think time might flow differently inside the dome?"

"Because of Ulunat!" Rahim will stop hugging in his quest to explain how Ulunat makes time flow differently. "Because the time bounces off her shell, like magic does, and also you don't grow up, so you can keep being inside her for a million years and still be a kid."

"That's a very reasonable assumption. But Nebetah was born in the dome and has lived here all her life, and she's a grown-up. How do you explain that?"

"You only mostly don't grow up," says Rahim. "You still grow up a little bit. So Nebetah has just been inside the dome for a million million years."

"Ines, what do you think of this theory?"

"Up," demands Ines, despite already being up. "Papa up."

Well, he prepped overland flight today. Everyone can be even more up! 

Ines accepts this fulfillment of her totally normal and reasonable expectations for Up. She keeps clinging; she's determined not to let Élie escape again.

Rahim remembers that he should also hug his mother, and does so. "Can you stay for breakfast, or do you have to go again?"

"Breakfast, lunch, and dinner today, little one. Your father and I have missed you terribly."

Élie discovered some time ago that Ines likes it when he tosses her great distances in the air and uses his dimension steps to pop into existence and catch her at the last moment. He flings the child, pops over to Rahim and Naima, and catches her as she falls. 

"Terribly. But – " no matter how long we're away, we'll always come back. He can't promise that, under the circumstances. "But now we're here, and we'll have the whole day together. Tell me, has Nebetah taken you to see the orrery?"

Ines screams with delight about this, at a volume not entirely polite to everyone else in the house. 

"Hamideh and me went to see it," says Rahim. "Ines couldn't go because she wouldn't stop screaming."

To Rahim – "Did you like it? Would you like to show me?" 

And to Ines – "You know, it's considered very impolite to shout so loudly."

Ines giggles and shrieks again, perhaps a little quieter this time.

"It was good," says Rahim, without much obvious enthusiasm. "Can we go to the market and see the puppets, Papa?"

"We may certainly go to the market and see the puppets."

He can always drag them along to the orrery later – he wants to see it, and it's never too early to inspire in a child the desire to rederive interplanetary teleport. 

" - is this market inside the dome, Rahim?"

"The one with the puppets isn't," says Rahim.

– Right.

"We can't go today, then. But we can go to the market in the dome." 

"But that one doesn't have puppets," says Rahim. "Pleeeease, Papa?"

"Sweetheart, it isn't safe."

"But I really want to see them. You can teleport us away if anybody bad comes."

Probably every father wishes that he could wave his hand and wish away everything in the world that might threaten his children. He wonders if it's better or worse for him that he almost always can. 

"Right now, love, there are some bad people that I can't teleport you away from. Your mama and I are going to stop them. But it's not safe yet." 

Rahim looks very much like he might cry. He doesn't quite; he summons all of his five-year-old self control and manages to hold on.

"Okay", he says tremulously, and goes for another hug.

Hugs all around. 

"We're both very proud of you. You're being so patient, and so brave."

"That's right. But listen, Rahim, there's no sense in spending the day have now crying about things we can't have yet. We'll only have this particular day once, and we'll want to have spent it doing something. Now, would you like to go to the shops to get some breakfast, or would you like us all to eat here with Nebetah?"

"Shops," says Rahim, quietly.

Élie used to find the dome unsettling, until he learned the trick to doing magic in it. Even now, though, there's something off about its central market – far too elegant and calm and orderly for a shopping district at the heart of a major city. He holds Ines in his lap, even though there are plenty of places to sit, and occasionally prestidigitates clumps of stewed fava beans off the ground.

Rahim bounces back after a few minutes. He's eager to tell his parents lots of things, although the things have less to do with what he's been doing and how things are going in the dome than they have to do with claims he's heard about ships and monsters and wild animals. Ines doesn't want to be put down at all, although she will sometimes momentarily tolerate being held by her mother instead of her father. She falls asleep in Élie's arms around midmorning, and somehow keeps holding his coat in a vice grip the whole time.

It isn't until later, when they visit the orrery after all, that Rahim says without any preamble, "Papa, why did people destroy our house?"

He's really not sure where to start with that one, so the thing that comes out of his mouth is "To be entirely fair, sweetheart, we destroyed theirs first."

" - why did we destroy their house?"

To Naima – Is there anything you feel strongly they're not ready to hear? 

And to Rahim – "How much do you know about the war?"

- well I don't know, I guess the specifics of hell or anything particularly graphic about what wars consist of -

- and now that I am thinking about it I am mostly imagining possible negative consequences of them hearing that we killed at least a thousand innocent people, which I suppose we did absolutely do -

"Osirion had a war with Cheliax," says Rahim. "But it's over now. Wars usually take months and months and months, but this one was over in a few days."

"That's right. And you know that your mama and I fought in the war? Do you know why?"

"Because they were being bad?" Rahim is pretty sure this is the usual reason why his parents have to go fight things, although usually the things don't destroy their house about it.

" – Yes." Scoop. "Cheliax is ruled by Asmodeus, and he is very, very, very bad. We were fighting so that he wouldn't be in charge there any more. But Asmodeus had a terrible weapon he was using to fight us with, and because he's not very nice and also not very smart, he decided to put it right below the house where his human servants live. Your mama and I – and Catherine and Ione and Shawil – had to destroy that weapon, and when we did, it knocked their house down too." 

"Can you build them a new house?"

He's your son. 

"Why, yes, we can. We are. But that's not why he's angry with us. Asmodeus gets angry whenever he doesn't get just exactly what he wants – do you know anyone like that, Rahim? – and when he's angry he likes to hurt people just because he can. Destroying our house doesn't help him win the war. It doesn't help anyone. But I'm sure he thought if he did it it would make us angry, and if we were angry we'd be just as silly as he is." 

"I am angry," says Rahim, with feeling. "It's mean to destroy people's houses."

"There's nothing wrong with being angry, as long as being angry doesn't make you stupid and cruel." 

"Oh," says Rahim, and doesn't say anything else for a bit. 

That's alright. It's a lot to think about. 

Does it look like these kids have the energy for more excursion, or are they flagging? 

Ines wakes up while they're visiting the orrery and cries about being awake. Rahim isn't overtly tired, but is sort of giving off fragile rather than excited vibes by this point. They could probably use a break.

That's fine. the Dome isn't large. They can all go back to Nebetah's. 

I think I should have told him that we're going to build our house again just the way it was, and that the important thing is that nobody got hurt. 

Are we going to build it just the way it was?

If the children are upset about it, I don't see why we shouldn't?

Well, we certainly can, if they're attached to it. But Catherine's not going to be living just next door anymore, and you've been talking about creating a new demiplane and building something new there. I'm not opposed to fixing the tower, but I'm also not sure that things will be just the same as they were going forward, and we should probably think some about where and how we actually want to live, given that.

And plausibly we shouldn't promise that we're going to do things after all of this. I'm not sure.

Do you think it's worse if we both die having made them promises we're not around to keep? I'm not sure. If fulfilling our obligations to them was our first priority, we wouldn't be fighting Deskari tomorrow.

- so I'm actually not sure that specifically is true? I've been thinking about it and I'm not at all sure that there is a good way to back away from all this at this point even if we wanted to. I suppose we could all huddle in the dome forever like mice, but - the point stands anyway, really.

I'm also not sure, really. Maybe it's better to know what your parents planned to do, had they lived. It just - feels kind of dishonest to say it'll definitely happen? I don't know. If you think it's fine I suppose it probably is, assuming for a moment that we do actually plan to rebuild and use the tower.

I don't want to lie to them. But I also don't want them to be any more terrified tomorrow than they have to be – and if something does go terribly wrong, I don't want to leave them thinking that we didn't try to fix it for them because we didn't care.

That's fair. I'm - okay with it then. I mean, I'm still not actually sure that there isn't going to be a better living situation than the tower or that I'm not going to immediately be struck with the desire to improve upon it as soon as everything settles down, but - I guess, if you can excuse me being incredibly sappy for a moment, it also doesn't matter too much as long as we're all together.

That's true. But this must all seem very complicated when you're five. 

It must. I suppose it's pretty complicated even when you're not five.

The kids are a little more subdued at home. Rahim wants Élie to read to him, and Ines toddles over and listens with interest that Naima's never seen her show before, although she's not very sure whether that's more a fact about Ines or more a fact about what Naima has seen. 

Afterwards they can eat dinner, and make conversation with the other people in the house, and then eventually put the children to bed.

"Will you be here tomorrow? You and papa?" asks Rahim.

"No, darling, not tomorrow. But we will be back as soon as we can be. You know I love you very much, don't you?"

Rahim nods. "Will you come back soon?"

"I think so. And I will miss you every day until then."

"We'll be back home with you just as soon as we possibly can, love." And then, because he can't help himself – "Do you want one more story?" 

"Yes! One more!"

He can have the one with the hill giant and the woodcutter's son. And then it's time to really for real go to sleep. 

Rahim will try to go to sleep. Even though he wants his parents to stay forever and if he sleeps they won't be here when he wakes up.

And she and Élie can go... not home. They don't really exactly have a home right now. They can go to the time lapse demiplane, probably, that's at least where she's been doing most of her sleeping.

It wasn't really enough, I don't think. I guess nothing will be enough except winning.

It's not fair to them. That's not the most important consideration in the world right now, but – we owe them more. 

Yeah.

I'm scared. Not of Deskari, but - of what happens when hell realizes what the game is. I keep thinking it's insane to talk about it, since you probably either accepted everything that might happen twenty years ago, or are even more terrified than I am, or both, but - I keep wishing there was some way to be reassured that everything will be all right. And there isn't, because it might not be.

I'm – thinking of what I might have said if you'd told me twenty years ago that I wouldn't be scared of Deskari. Probably that I'd have no reason to be, since Deskari can't maledict me and other than that one death is much the same as another. Somehow, the more powerful we become, the more frightened I am. 

Right? It's absurd. It's not as if we haven't faced down death and hell a dozen times already, or as if we weren't in just as much real danger before. But - we have a lot more to lose, now, than we did.

Can he hold her? He'd like that right now. 

If you'd told me twenty years ago – or fifteen, or even five – that I'd live long enough to have a family, that would have been really surprising. And here I was just starting to get used to the idea. 

He can definitely hold her. She'd like to be held.

I sort of feel like I should be more scared of hell. I mean, I don't, because it wouldn't change anything, but I'm abstractly aware that if Asmodeus does manage to grab hold of us I'll be unimaginably upset, but - it's none of what I'm fixating on. I just keep thinking about everything I desperately want to do and might not have a chance to. Which is weird - it's not like I didn't spend a couple years facing down expected non-existence - but I don't think I had really realized then that all the things that I want now were possible.

Now I just keep thinking - I want to have more children. I want to raise the ones we have. I want to replicate the remedies and then teach everyone how to make them. I want to live with you in a beautiful house and grow old beside you. And - I just keep thinking that there must be some way to make it certain, and there isn't.

Lean. 

Does it help if I'm scared of Hell enough for the both of us? I want those things too, but when I try to imagine too far in the future I just see fire. 

She can hold him tight. It doesn't fix much, but she's going to do it anyway.

I know you are. I know you do. I wish I could be comforting about it. Or that you could. I'm not sure either of us can be.

I'm tempted to wallow in thinking about all of the things I want after this, but I'm not sure if that would be - helpful. For either of us. 

When I consider the question rationally I do realize that we're not especially likely to be trapped there forever. Or at least not more likely than we are to have our souls dissolved by the energies of the worldwound or eaten by Rovagug or something else we've never thought of. 

Oh, I'm plenty worried about all of that other stuff, too. Especially getting everyone eaten by Rovagug? I don't think this is likely, but it would really be incredibly upsetting to have tried to do something so useful and good that you had to take the shot, and ended up destroying the universe.

Sometimes one sets out to do something good and it turns out worse than you could possibly have imagined. 

...yeah. I guess you must know all about that, too.

A little, maybe. Not like this. ....And what must I sound like to you? The closest I've ever been to Hell is nightmares, and – anyway, I'm sorry. It doesn't help either of us to dwell on the past. 

Oh, I was only there for - fifteen, twenty seconds? Long seconds, but by the time I was really panicking it was over. It wasn't so bad as some of the other things we've done, thanks to you. I just wish I'd had the presence of mind to kill the man instead of hesitating.

So do I. 

He's tempted to say it's better than he would have done in her place, but, on reflection, that's not exactly true. 

Nobody has the instincts for it at first. That was something we spent a great deal of time on, when – when I was younger. If you were captured, you really absolutely had to be willing to kill yourself and anyone you were with, if they couldn't manage themselves. And even then, I think we had more failures than successes. 

I had the thought, is what kills me. I knew that if I killed him I could bring the body back. And then I just - didn't. Fell back on the heuristic that I shouldn't go around casually killing people, instead of thinking about how to do enough damage in the second I had. And it's usually a good heuristic, for adventurers! I've been glad to have it in the past! It's just - not so good when you've been dragged bodily into Hell.

It's funny. In some ways this week is like nothing I've ever experienced, and in others it's making me feel like I'm twenty years old again. There are people in Hell today who wouldn't be if I'd been smarter, quicker, better – but I wasn't, and they are. So I've been thinking about what I wish someone had told me then. Something like – 

I won't say you did the best you could, or the best you could be expected to, because I respect you more than that. And I won't say you'll do better next time, because I – I do not hope, I insist – that it won't ever come up again. But I can say – you're fighting Hell. It is their particular talent and delight to engineer things so that their enemies always feel guilty, and they like it best of all when that guilt is justified. We're going to make worse mistakes than this. We already have made worse mistakes than this. We'll try to win as cleanly as we can, and it won't be very clean at all, but the important thing is that we win.

Also, while it's not very much help to poor M. Perrin, we will get them all back one day. 

She hugs him tighter. Not for him, this time, for her.

It hurts more than most mistakes I've made.

I suppose the best thing for him at this point is also to bring this to an end.

We can also specifically get M. Perrin, if and when we survive all this. 

I guess so, with your wish wording. It really was a brilliant one. ...I know this is completely the wrong attitude but it's really about the most romantic thing you've ever done. And also, you know, separately useful and I'm very glad not to be in hell with him.

"More romantic than the wedding jewelry?"

" - honestly, I can't decide. The wedding jewelry was a promise that you would come and save me no matter where I was, and this was actually doing that under circumstances that were previously believed to be impossible. Five seconds preventing you from technically doing the impossible part notwithstanding. On the other hand the wedding jewelry is absolutely the exact moment that I fell in love with you, you know, so it's possible that I'll end up putting rescuing me from the clutches of hell in second."

Oh. Has she said that before? 

"Really? That soon?"

"Oh, definitely. I remember that I didn't that morning, I was still thinking that all of your various positive qualities should make it very easy to cultivate love for you, and how I intended to work very diligently at it immediately once we were married. And then instead you made it effortless."

"Oh. 

I really don't want to die."

" - yeah. I really don't want to die, either. I think we should not. I - kind of wish that I could believe that that was something I could just decide, this time."

"We can."

"...That was flippant, but I think it matters. We can just walk away. If all we wanted was to protect ourselves and the children, we could. We're choosing this – and it's the right choice, I think, but it is a choice."

"I'm not actually sure of that. I would like to be, because it seems - healthier, to be choosing like that - but I did think about it, and as far as I can see, if we do back away now, we would have to accept leaving them in the dome indefinitely, or else not doing that and accepting the risk of retaliation. And - that's a kind of safety, there are things that we could still have like that, but it isn't exactly the blindingly brilliant life we've created for ourselves thus far or that we've been hoping to create in the future. So I think that I am fighting both for grand moral reasons and because I want to have that life again when we're done. ...and because it's the most important thing in the world, to you. Not that I'm doing it just for you, I'm not, but I'm not going to leave you to fight it alone, either. Or ask you to give it up."

"I think we could wait them out. They're going to strike back for real, or they're going to run through their ability to use Wishes on the material plane, or they'll give up on Cheliax. And the greatest danger isn't that, even, it's – well. There are safer courses than the one we're taking. 

I am very grateful that you're doing this with me."

"Of course. You're right either way, it isn't something we can really pass up. Or - we could, like you said, but - I am not sure whether anyone has ever been given a chance like this, and I don't think we would forgive ourselves if we didn't take it."

"Oh, I'm wouldn't consider doing anything else. It just matters that no one's stopping me."

"All right. But I don't think I'm going to rest easy until we're done. - and I'm not actually sure that this is what I want to talk about tonight, although it's hardly surprising that we are."

"We don't have to talk about it if you don't like. Still – It feels extraordinarily strange to me that we will be done. Well, that or dead. I've always thought I'd be at this fight another ten thousand years, if I had them." 

"I am looking forward to never thinking about it again. I suppose eventually, given enough time, I might decide to be bothered about one of the other horrible things in the great beyond, but I intend to spend the next century focusing entirely on things that personally annoy me. And, well, things that don't annoy me because they're actually good."

"Things that personally annoy you, like infant mortality?"

"Yes, exactly. I have excellent taste in annoyances, I just don't pick the absolute worst problems in creation the way you do."

"I don't think I deserve any credit there. It picked me."

"Well, in fairness, mine wasn't exactly irrelevant to me, although it was less... all-encompassing."

.....hey, Elie? Thinking about what I want to talk about before tempting fate, and - well, it's not actually important, but do you, uh, remember anything about when approximately you fell in love, or decided that whatever you felt counted, or...?

He doesn't remember how they decided that thoughts were more intimate than words, but it does seem to be the pattern they've fallen into. He strokes her hair.

I don't think there was any one moment in particular. Before our wedding, though. Or, rather, once we were engaged, it was very easy to see what I felt for you as love. I was – you don't need me to tell you how I was when we met. I'd lost myself completely. And then to see you, really trying – I mean, not the way adventurers try to become more powerful, trying to do something nobody had ever done before because the world as it was just didn't bear countenancing – I'd forgotten there could be people like that. I couldn't imagine why you'd want to marry me.  So it just took getting used to the idea, really. 

She hums contentedly. Right, you thought I didn't really want you at first. I really do owe Catherine for the advice to go and talk to you before the six months were up. It would have - taken longer, I think, to get where we are, if I'd been patient. For you to really believe it.

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.