friendship is heresy | Glowfic Constellation

What do you do with the trapped souls of the Queen of Infernal Cheliax and the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus? You can’t, actually, keep them that way forever. Lastwall has spared no expense in keeping their soul gems as securely as possible, but given what Asmodeus proved willing to spend on defending Cheliax, it stands to reason that no security mortals can provide will keep his favored puppets imprisoned forever, or even for very long. Heaven could do better, of course, but they do not really want to try to match Hell intervention for intervention, not when Asmodeus is acting like this.

Besides the security question, of course, it is wronging someone greatly to keep their soul trapped forever, even when that person is Abrogail Thrune or Aspexia Rugatonn; hardly better than destroying it, even if Pharasma accounts it differently. It is better, by the values of almost all mortals, than sending them to Hell, but there are exceptions, and loyal Asmodeans are perhaps likelier than average to be exceptions.

They cannot, actually, send them to Hell, even if they would have preferred it over oblivion; if they do they will be resurrected immediately and continue to be used for Asmodeus’ purposes on Golarion. They could try to negotiate an arrangement where Asmodeus promises not to resurrect them, but that would be trusting Asmodeus, and unwise on principle.

This leaves, of course, the option of sending them to Nirvana and seeing what Nirvana can do. Iomedae doesn’t have a good estimate of how likely this is to work; in her judgement redemption, like love, is a concern overrepresented among the Good gods and emphasized out of all proportion to how much it actually improves the world. So Lastwall asks the church of Shelyn instead; Shelyn, who has for personal reasons made something of a study of the redemption of beings twisted by Evil, and whose marginal intervention is in Lastwall’s opinion far less efficiently used than Iomedae’s.

Shelyn, unaware of the risk of reducing Herself to a plot device for ridiculous glowfic premises, knows just what to do.

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lord-of-qaos

"And chaos!"

magic-with-me

And chaos..."Can Discord choose which of the possible futures we end up in?"

lord-of-qaos

"Only which one I end up in, which retroactively gets much more ~~~~~~* than any of the others, because I'm much more interesting than any of you."

(*) 'realityfluid' (the literal Baseline word)

Princess Celestia

as-the-dawn

"To be clear, that didn't count as one of my three answers."

magic-with-me

"Did it make any sense to you?—and if so, how; that can be my third question."

Princess Celestia

as-the-dawn

It contained as many as several bizarre and disturbing claims about the nature of reality that she'd rather not share with Twilight; how should she put this—"He can't control your choices, and that's the important thing."

magic-with-me

Twilight thinks for a minute.

"If Discord can predict what we'll choose, I think we need to ignore the Elements for now. Otherwise he'll have predicted that we wouldn't, and stolen them."

Rainbow Dash

a-big-adventure

"This really is stupid. I'm going to go get them right now." She takes off in the general direction of the vault.*

(*) A completely random direction; she has no idea where the vault is.

magic-with-me

Twilight grabs her with telekinesis. "Hold on, Rainbow Dash."

Applejack

faithful-and-strong

"I think she's right," says Applejack. "I don't think even Discord can't change the past. What we decide now can't possibly affect whether the Elements are already there."

magic-with-me

"Don't you see, though? If you can predict the future, you can change the past, sort of."

Rarity

a-beautiful-heart

"Twilight, dear, I'm not entirely sure that makes the slightest bit of sense."

magic-with-me

"Pinkie, do you have anything to say about this? You've been quieter than usual." Given the topic she'd really expect Pinkie to have said something completely baffling by now.

Pinkie Pie

tons-of-fun

"Obviously Twilight's right but I can't explain how because that would be cheating!"

magic-with-me

OK yeah she got what she asked for there

Applejack

faithful-and-strong

"Hold on a minute. How exactly is that cheating? Even if we're gonna play by Discord's rules, he said the six of us should figure it out together."

lord-of-qaos

"I would say 'It's obvious if you understand decision theory,' but that is, actually, the whole point of the exercise."

Pinkie Pie

tons-of-fun

"I only know it because an alternate universe version of me knows it! That doesn't really count as figuring it out."

Rainbow Dash

a-big-adventure

"There are alternate universes? Why does no one ever tell me anything?"

i wish spike hadn't spilled glitter everywhere

magic-with-me

"You really, really don't want anything to do with Pinkie Pie's alternate universes."

Pinkie Pie

tons-of-fun

"Discord is also in tune with all alternate universe versions of himself! It's how he can see everyone talking about us right now!"

lord-of-qaos

Discord groans. "That's not funny and also not even true."

magic-with-me

"...anyway, girls, like I was saying, if you can predict the future, you can change the past, because back when the present was the future, the past was the present...predicting the future is like sending a message into the past—no, it is, if you can do one you can do the other—"

Applejack

faithful-and-strong

"Sorry, Twi, but that made even less sense than the last one."

Fluttershy

sharing-kindness