Marie smiles back and her smile is very forced and horrible just as an expression, on top of which it shows off her missing teeth.

She gestures around at the place. "Hmm?"

"...How long ago did you die?"

Is she in a Lower Plane. Hell would have more Asmodean symbols, she's pretty sure, and Abyss petitioners take the form of larvae which this woman isn't. This doesn't seem obviously Abaddon-ish but she isn't going to confidently rule it out.

She frowns.

Yeah, that's very fair and she should give an actual explanation to the extent feasible.

"Zoriana." She'll point to herself.

And then she'll get out her notebook and draw three images. A person goes on a walk, then runs into some runes, then is in a room with another person on the floor. She'll name herself in these images, then point between floor person and the actual woman in the room, in case that helps.

"You were going somewhere. You saw - that, I don't know what that is. You don't remember anything else, you must have died very suddenly. This is a place you go when you die. It's... not Hell, so you'll... only be hurt as badly as Hell would hurt you if you disobey. Just be very obedient and don't ever try to get away with anything and I promise, what happened to me won't happen to you."

Zoriana is not making the face of someone who plans to do this. Zoriana is going to demonstratively teleport a little bit within the room, walk back to where she started, then draw a circle of 8 people holding hands in a room like this, then another drawing of those same people standing in a field with trees and a sun.

"...You’ll meet an angel before you can round up that many people. Unless you’re trying to tell me you are an angel."

"Angels don't torture people." This isn't comprehensible and she knows it but she's saying it anyway.

She'll make a handwavey gesture.

If she’s even sort of like an angel that seems like grounds for abject submission and quiet crying.

Yeah, that's fair and she should have foreseen it.

Well, she usually prepares a Remove Fear since Longstrider doesn't do her the most good. Now's a fine time to use it.

"Please let me go to Heaven. I promise I’m broken enough to never ever disobey you."

This is a horrible place.

Zoriana can probably manage that tomorrow, but she might be interrupted before then and she'd really like to bring a full load of passengers. She can't communicate any of that. Also realistically she's likely to choose Elysium, they're less tedious.

She'll give the woman a hug, since at least for now it shouldn't cause a panic and it might communicate something about her character.

Clingy, clingy hugs. Quiet sobbing.

It's possible to meditate on preparing spells while at least sort of hugging someone. Probably the Shelynites and Calistrians are way better at this but a little bit of hug is probably better than none.

Remove Fear is going to wear off before she can use Share Language, which isn't great, but she doesn't have ideas on how to do better when Marie is way more focused on appeasing her than on asking useful questions.

Marie is not okay. She's only just now realizing how very not okay she is. The fear leaves and all that it leaves behind is pain and the memory of fear. At one point she used to care about more things than just not being tortured. Now she doesn't even care about that, just keeping the torture to a more bearable level than what just happened.

There is nothing in her worth saving. God understands that because God sees what's in her heart. So the obvious next thing to happen is being sent to Hell and tortured like she just was, forever, without any more breaks ever again. She's not afraid of that. She's just disappointed - she thought she was saved, and anyway, just because she deserves Hell doesn't mean she wants to go there. She tries to think of something she could do to escape her obvious fate, but without the fear to motivate her she can't quite care enough to go beyond vaguely thinking that it would be nice if something better than that were going to happen.

When the fear returns she gets even clingier and tries mostly by instinct to keep her breathing even. (Tries and mostly fails.)

Zoriana is going to be held in an unreactive sort of way for around six minutes after the fear returns, then very hastily scribble some incomprehensible text on a sheet of notebook paper and poke Marie with it.

Somehow, the paper disappears and this spontaneously dumps multiple languages into her head. (Taldane, because everyone in Avistan should recognize it. Varisian sign, because it’s quiet and obscure. And Celestial, because she can swing three languages and all else equal this person deserves to know the language of actual angels.)

That... seems like a good sign? Maybe? She lets go so she can use the sign language. "Please tell me if there's anything I can do to go to Heaven with you today, please, I know I've sinned horribly and don't deserve it and I'm sorry, I really am." Actually there's basically no compelling reason to fight the impulse to just keep apologizing, it's not like she's meaningfully talking over anyone, so she repeats that she's sorry several times.

“I want you out of here and you absolutely deserve to be somewhere nicer, but we need to discuss logistics. How soon do you expect anyone else to come here?”

Okay but what is this person. Do the angels not all work together?

"They usually let me finish healing but I think they're really angry this time - I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"You're being very cooperative and I'm angry with them but not you. I'd like to ask you more questions but it's fine if you don't know the answers, alright? You can also ask me questions, even if they feel silly."