There's not too terribly many spells I add to the routines: Greater Shield of Lathander for twenty points of damage reduction and I upgrade Shapechanger's Gift for people to the Greater version. I do set Last Shadow up as a mage like I'd been intending: Psychic Reformation to give her the Basic Magic Training, Advanced Magic Training, and Counterspell feats, then Enable Function to grant her all of the Spheres of Power Magic talents via Extra Magic Talent, and a metric ton of spell points via the associated Extra Spell Points feat. I also get her Practiced Spellcaster and all of the Sphere-specific Gift for Magic traits repeatedly via the Extra Traits feat… and as I'm at level twelve, she has all the boosts of a fortieth level animal companion, which means she has thirty one hit dice; half casting from Advanced Magic Training gives her a caster level of fifteen: four more from Practiced Spellcaster, two more from the Gift for Magic trait, and she ends up with a native caster level of twenty-one. I also use Mana sphere talents to grant her access to my spell points; she won't run out.

  It's a pity that she's locked out of certain spheres as a subordinate creature.

  I end up with about two thousand captured soldiers and ten thousand support personnel from the baggage train… and enough captured supplies to feed them all for a year. I settle on stripping them of their gear and repatriating them with the clothes on their back and a small amount of cash, setting up a Teleportation Circle to one of the keeps in my network and running them all through it: They can go to basically any town they want.

  I keep the generals, though: They deserve special handling.

  I have Last Shadow set up a small demipne for me with the dead magic trait: It doesn't affect me when she makes one. I set up four Forcecage spells in it (the barred version: A nearly indestructible cube twenty feet on a side, made of invisible force bars with a bunch of square gaps each half an inch long. I then release my four remaining prisoners into the cages, one per cage.

  The fighter continues his sword swing… which bounces off of the bars. The archer fires arrows, which do likewise. The wizard wiggles his fingers to zero effect, and the Druid curses in elvish. I simply stand there patiently, visible, until they settle down.

  The Ranger speaks up first, “We lost.”

  I nod, “You might say that, yes.” Hmm… something about how the ranger said that is bugging me.

  “Why are we still alive?” The Fighter asks an important question.

  “It's called ‘root cause analysis’,” I reply with a phrase that's going to be completely meaningless to anyone born here who hasn't attended Mom's school, then crify, “I would like to know why all'y'all attacked, so I can see about keeping it from happening again.”

  “What can we say…” The ranger starts, then pauses. wait… that's what's bugging me: He's not talking to me.

  “You're a prophet, aren't you?” I stare down the elf in green leathers… who startles in exactly the way I expected.

  “Ah… yes,” he confirms, seeing the look I'm giving him (Intimidate rocks, by the way)... not that he needed to confirm; the looks on his companions’ faces tells me I got it right.

  “Who?” I stare daggers at my captive. I could arrange to do that literally… but not now.

  He starts with, “The Blessed Mo….”

  “Lie.” I interrupt. I have magic boosting my Sense Motive and he doesn't have the same for his Bluff, but I also happen to know Mom wouldn't do this kind of thing, and is using his Gift for her avatar. I'm not going to expin how I know, however.

  He pauses, “The Final Judge.”

  And now he's telling the truth… okay, Uncle Judgement. Yes, he might be annoyed with me. “Did he basically order you to come after me?”

  “Yes.”

  He's being tight-lipped… “Why?”

  “You broke the w of death.”

  “I didn't break any ws. I just sent someone straight to The Comforter without actually…” huh. I switch to Telepathy, “Uncle C, would that let you rescue a soul that's trapped as an undead?”

  “Yes, but you could also just destroy the undead, I wouldn't need to get quite so directly involved.”

  “Right, right…” I think, “...but if we, say, tracked down whoever that stupid gnome ended up in, and sent that person your way, could you extract the stupid gnome's soul, send him off to Judgement, and send the previously possessed person back unharmed?”

  I get dead silence for a while, “Okay, you have my blessing to try that. He's evil, but nobody really deserves what's happening to him right now.”

  The Ranger frowns at me, “You are too.”

  Little reason to deny it, “Yeah. Your patron is miffed at me because I sent a man engaged in some very evil acts straight to The Comforter without actually killing him first. The Comforter then sent him to your patron for Judgement, again without bothering to kill him, so the records look a little funny.”

  “That's it?” the ranger raises his eyebrows… and I can tell he's not asking me.

  Which reminds me… if Judgement is talking to his prophet, and his prophet is right here… “There's little reason for the game of rumor here.” He'll know I'm addressing him.

  A blue-skinned man with four arms appears, holding a merchant's scale, a book, and a pen. He's fit and his chest is bare. Fortunately he's wearing pants today. “Hmm… fine. You're quite troublesome, you know.” Yeah… the dead magic pnar trait doesn't mean anything to my retives on Mom's side.

  Fortunately, we're not in his office, so Grandpa's rules still apply: He can't do anything serious directly. “Is it really just because I didn't feel like hurting that monster?”

  “He NEEDED to suffer,” Mr. Blue's face turns purple… I guess that's what happens when you add red to blue… “for what he did!”

  I consider, “And you didn't have your prophet go after him because…?”

  “It's not for you to question your betters!”

  Right: I need to be polite… “I'm young and inexperienced. Please share your wisdom and help me avoid simir mistakes going forward, by letting me know how what I did caused a problem, or would have without your generous intervention.”

  There's a really long pause, so I continue, “I understand the pce such people end up is not exactly pleasant. Surely he's suffering worse than anything I could have done to him, isn't he?” The Ranger's frown tells me he's starting to pick up on things.

  “It's not the sort of torture that monster deserves,” the blue being stares at me, “what he did… what I had to watch through his memories….” wait… are those tears?

  Ah… I think maybe I get it,“...but he hadn't sent anyone through your domain with the knowledge of exactly what he was doing, so you didn't know you needed to step in. So really, my sin was being too te,” and you're taking it out on me because you don't want to admit you couldn't take care of it.

  “Yes, and for your sin…”

  “Before you pronounce Judgement, might I make a suggestion?” Because I really don't want to be ‘creatively blessed’, “my sponsor knew of the problem, but couldn't wrangle an angle to let him act until the evil man started on the route to undeath. Perhaps I could ask him to have a chat with you when he is aware of a problem that you could address but my uncle can't?” When the eyes of my prisoners all go very wide, I know I've slipped up.

  The blue skinned man pauses, “You can cast False Alibi, right?”

  Eh, may as well… “Better, although I can't do it often; here…” I invoke the Time domain power, and rewind things by a minute.

  Things don't look much different to me; it's my ability, I haven't been moving much, and Uncle J isn't affected, so he's still here. The wide eyes go away, although the Ranger's immediately pop… I'm guessing because from his perspective his patron just showed up in person for no reason… maybe. I'm unsure exactly where the patch point is located.

  So I switch to Telepathy to just speak with Uncle J and Uncle C, “There. Slip up gone.”

  “So my sister taught you that, huh?” Judgement has a good poker face… but he's talking like family in this channel; nice. The visible glower isn't great, but he has appearances to maintain… I try to act suitably cowed for my prisoners.

  “It's useful, but annoying,” the Comforter adds.

  Yeah, deities can hear each other when they want, “He did teach me, yes, but you did want to undo the slip, so… done. About the ‘talk to each other’ thing….”

  “Yes, a fine solution for going forward,” the four-armed man switches to looking past me, “why didn't you do that in the first pce?”

  “The st time I suggested you act…” the voice of the grave trails off.

  “I suppose I didn't react well, did I?” My blue-skinned uncle pauses, “Fair. In my defense, you were suggesting I take up arms against my granddaughter from before I ascended.”

  That's not how Grandpa views it… but I don't want to interrupt right now.

  Death speaks, “Ah… I don't have birth records. Had I known, I would have been more circumspect. Still… she needed to be disciplined.”

  “I see that now, having processed her… but that was about five thousand years ago; back then I merely saw my granddaughter…” Judgement pauses, “sorry.”

  “It's fine…” again, the impression of a shrug from my patron, “I don't hold grudges.”

  And they're talking about it like it was st week… “So what do we do about the observers?”

  “I'd rather not break in a new Prophet,” Judgement responds, “so please let them go.”

  “I can do that.” I consider, “I'm guessing we'll want something official for them, though. I don't imagine you want me telling them about this conversation.”

  “Hmm, yes…” my blue uncle says something I can't hear, “...is this pce too rge for you?”

  “It'll be okay for a few minutes…” Death speaks, “but do remember Alex can't hear our Names. Come visit so we can settle on a script.”

  “Okay, I got my part ready,” that non-time thing they do is annoying from the outside… it was annoying when I was using it to study, come to think of it… “Whenever you're ready brother.”

  Death shows up in person, red formal wear, fire hair, bck spirals to infinity horns, bck skin, and sucking void eyes… standing right between myself and Judgement, facing his brother, “This one is mine,” his tone brooks no uncertainty.

  “And these ones are mine,” Judgement is equally stony, “They're so fragile… yours would certainly get caught in a crossfire.”

  “And yours wouldn't?” Death raises an eyebrow over the holes in reality that are his eyes.

  “Point… hmm… fine. We table the matter. I call off the hunt, you have yours release mine to the wilds.” The blue muscle man doesn't take his eyes off my other uncle.

  “Agreed….” the bck demonic looking man also doesn't budge his gaze, “Make it so.”

  I take that as my cue, and cast a Reach Spell Greater Pne Shift, sending the four prisoners off to Westgate.

  At which point Death vanishes, and Judgement rexes and lets out a ugh, “Always fun, thanks brother.” He eyes me as I stand, “so what should I do with you?”

  “Please don't get too ‘creative’ with the blessing,” he can't hurt me because of Grandpa's rules… but as I'm a Prophet, he can give me a blessing… and the difference between a curse and a sufficiently creative ‘blessing’ is petty.

  Judgement considers….