At least she can be sure it's not her unique history that makes this difficult. Everybody agrees this is awful.

All right. She is ready has nothing else she can plausibly use as a reason to procrastinate. She can do this. 

She's going to have a heart-to-heart talk with her ex.

To be clear, is this one of those cases where the ex turns out to be a stone-cold crazy killer whose obsession with 'strength' leads her to betray her people over and over again, and help a demon corrupt the children into its servants by making them undergo a cannibalistic ritual?

Yeah, right. She wishes. That would be a best-case scenario, for relationships in the Abyss.

No. Arueshalae was the stone-cold crazy killer who corrupted a pure heart by cannibalistic rituals. Mostly for the fun of it.

And now she has to clean up the mess. Or why else would Desna give her a redemption arc at all?

Oooo-kay. Lann isn't going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

Fortunately, an archer very rarely needs to. But he'll give Arueshalae some advice, worth its weight in diamond dust, one ranged combatant to another:

Two in the chest, one in each eye; that's how archers say goodbye.

Thanks Lann. That's... really awful, actually. 

But she feels a little better anyway.

Ember's not going to repeat that word everyone else seems to agree on. It doesn't seem like it's helping them.

But she is going to ask... of someone who is maybe in a position to know... why is the Abyss like this? It doesn't look like anyone is having any fun here. Not even the ones giving the orders. So, why are they giving these orders and not some other ones? Why is everything here so...

bad?

What do you mean, 'bad'? The view from up here is great! And she doesn't just mean the abundant curves and smooth skin. 

Ember won't know anything about that for a couple of decades, but she understands that some people take a lot of pleasure in it, sure. But... usually when people like something, they display the signs of actually wanting it for its own sake. Not just so they can brag about it. And then, when that's true, they... get enough of it? At some point? They don't keep heaping up the curves and the display of skin and the abjectly terrified slaves saying "please trample me at your leisure, Mistress" as though they were... keeping score; they get the amount they want and enjoy and then they go and enjoy something else. When they're actually having fun with it. 

Ember appears to be grasping for the phrase "diminishing marginal utility of consumption". 

Rude! Nocticula is a goddess and capable of enjoyments that would literally blow your tiny mortal mind out through your ridiculously pointy ears!

Well, okay. So... why doesn't she? Why does she go around doing...

(inarticulate gesture at Nocticula's courtroom and by extension, Alushinyrra)

...this?

Ember's not a goddess. But she's pretty good at noticing when people's stated goals don't seem to be very good for them.

That's... very funny. Nocticula is going to perform some laughter about how funny it is, for a little mortal to think she has anything to tell Her about how to enjoy existence. 

And then tell these mortals to get the Hell Abyss fuck out of her courtroom, this is not the sidequest they are looking for, there's a good one over that-a-way and they should find it easy to line up a ship to sail the Abyss to get there, and it will even advance Nocticula's goals for them to do so more than just killing the lot of them would and at the present moment mortals in Her court should really appreciate that.

Go! Shoo! Get out of here, Nocticula has other people to talk to! Much more interesting ones!

That appears to be roughly as good an outcome as can be expected from speaking to a high-ranking demon. It went much better than the confrontation with Chivarro.

Or Savamelekh.

Hey Minagho worked out just fine!

It kind of didn't, Seelah. It's not good when you end up killing people. Although she supposes it was better than what happened with Dimalchio.

Great! Nocticula is very happy to be in the top decile of Abyssal encounters for high-level adventurers! Now shoo! They have sidequests to be about!