She's awed. They should be much richer than Cheliax, if their magic can do that.

She returns to her room and examines the daggers and writes a list of things she knows how to do to daggers, for once they get her some spellsilver. Maybe Leareth is very very rich and can arrange her lots of spellsilver and will want a brilliant energy weapon, she's always wanted to make one. 

She prays, before bed. She does not expect anything to happen, but if somehow she ever gets home she doesn't want to have totally lost everything that would let her hold herself together in Hell. She prays for Asmodeus to make her an instrument of His will and burn away everything unworthy of Him and see His aims realized through her hands. And get the people of this world an afterlife. And let them make their countries prosperous.

She sleeps.

In the morning, rather than having breakfast brought to her, Lacie asks if she'd like to join Leareth's other staff in the dining hall. :Ooh, also he has some metal samples coming for you, so you can check if any of them are spellsilver, and if not he wants a more precise description of it: 

Sure, she'll do that. :What is this facility, is it a garrison? His wizard tower?: If he hasn't told most of his people she's a prisoner that'll help with escaping, should it come up.

:His...wizard tower?: Lacie giggles and seems to think this is a hilarious concept. :Nah, this is just a research facility - the garrison is a lot bigger. We've got a big library and Work Rooms and a lot of mages work with him here on, er, various projects: 

There are a couple dozen staff in the dining hall, eating and chattering away in various local languages. The food is laid out for self-serving on a sideboard; there are beans and vegetables and a separate dish with meat. 

She casts Tongues so she can eavesdrop and takes some of everything and sits down to eat.

There's a lot of the usual social gossip - who's dating who, whose cousin just had a baby, whose parents are sick - and a lot of very, very technical conversations about magic, with a lot of vocabulary and concepts that don't straightforwardly translate. There's also a table of people who seem to be talking about healing-specific magic; based on the way they refer to it and themselves, it's an entirely separate kind of magic from the regular sort here.

A couple of people nearby are apparently mages who can sense magic; they look impressed at her spell, one of them sort of whistles and comments that it's just as pretty as he heard, but overall they don't pay her too much attention and quickly go back to their conversations. It doesn't especially seem like they're holding back because of her presence.

(Lacie reads Carissa's mind and continues to find her likeable and quick and to feel very sorry for the fact that her god TORTURES PEOPLE and this means that Leareth is definitely not going to let her go home even if it turns out to be possible. She shows no sign of this on her face, just makes a bit of small talk with Carissa about how she's finding things and then lets herself appear distracted talking to another woman at their table about her niece's education elsewhere.) 

She eats and tries to learn everybody's names and faces and what work they do. She doesn't contemplate escape plans in much detail but that information will be useful for every plan short of 'hit fifth circle and teleport out of here'. She is only a little homesick for her unit at the Worldwound. Probably they would've scried her, which the paladins were blocking, and probably they'll try occasionally because she's on a list of deserters somewhere, but it's not likely to work at finding her here. They'll question her parents and her sister and her girlfriend and her acquaintances and then -

- not her problem. She needs to figure out how to stay alive in this world.

She says she's finding everything lovely, and she's excited for the swimming pool.

It'll be ready to swim in in a couple more days, Lacie thinks, they're setting up some equipment to keep the water heated at a pleasant temperature and pump it through a filter so it doesn't get full of debris, mages can sterilize it every so often but that doesn't get hairballs. Leareth has designs for everything buried in some book somewhere in one of his libraries, it's absurd, but really who can be surprised, he's Leareth. 

Lacie wanders off before Carissa is done eating, apparently assuming she can find her own way back to her room. (She is, in fact, once again parking herself in some random person's office nearby to supervise.) 

When Carissa makes her way back to her room, another woman is there waiting for her, with a box that contains small ingots of a dozen different kinds of metal, all of which are some variety of silvery colour since that was Leareth's guess for what 'spellsilver' would look like, and he also excluded really common metals like iron and lead and tin as obviously not it - are any of these right? 

She discards half out of hand and studies the other half more closely. Detects Magic and then tugs a little magic through them, watching - "I think this is an alloy that contains some of the right thing. Can your magic be used to isolate it?"

"Huh, fascinating! Yes, almost certainly, for rare metals quite a lot of our metallurgy is done with magic. And since this is Leareth we're talking about, I'm sure he's either an expert on the topic somehow or can have someone over here by this afternoon to do it. Should we - just get a bigger sample of this alloy and have it separated into all of its base elements, and then you can tell us which is the right one and we'll research a more efficient process for it then?" 

"That sounds good. Thank you."

No one else bothers her for a few hours, except to bring lunch to the room, apparently lunch is a less communal affair here and most people grab food to eat while they work.

(Lacie reads a book in the office that shares a wall with the shielded room they put Carissa in, and pauses every three lines to check if Carissa's thoughts are interesting enough to pay full attention and take notes for Leareth.) 

Whether Leareth did it himself or called in an expert is left unexplained, but by late afternoon the person is back with a few little ingots in a box. "These are the ones that still came out metallic in pure form - which one?" 

She believes Leareth, about being a thousand years old or something comparably scary. 

She points out the right one. "It tarnishes in air, we keep it in a solution...."

"Ah, good to know. What sort of solution - water, oil, something else...?"

"Oil, not water. I'll need about this much -" she shows a palm's worth - "for a really minor magic item and more if you want something fancy."

"Of course. We are going to need a couple of days to work out a more scalable metallurgy process for it, but we can certainly do that for you. I expect Leareth would appreciate seeing some notes written up on what sorts of magic items you can make and what they can do."

They nod to her and leave her alone. 

Leareth is somewhat behind on other things - putting various plans on hold pending more information on Carissa's world has been time-consuming and a hassle - but at this point he sets down his work and heads over to take Lacie's place and eavesdrop on thoughts. 

He's learned everything he needs to, at this point, to make a decision, but he's still curious. Carissa is getting more information on him, his resources and capabilities and - maybe a corresponding update in how likely it is he could pull off building a god. 

He's very curious what, left to her own devices, she's going to do about that. 

She makes a list for Leareth. She can make weapons deadlier and make them pierce shields more easily, obviously; she can make them, rather than slicing through skin, deliver crushing exhaustion and unconsciousness, though this still often kills people if you misestimate how hard to hit; she can make them appear as some nonmagical object of the same approximate size; she can make them teleport back to the bearer's hand on demand though only a distance of a hundred feet or so; she can make them break spells when they strike; she can make them sense heat and attack unerringly even against invisible enemies or in a cloud of smoke or something; she can make them easier to throw; she can make them attune to a target over the course of a minute or so and do more damage when they attack; she can make them particularly deadly against creatures from the Outer Planes. Those are the ones commonly in demand; she also has notes on much more expensive and complicated enchantments like making a weapon of light that ignores magic armor and regular armor alike, or storing invisibility on a weapon so you can make yourself invisible while holding it, or a weapon that turns unworthy bearers into toads. 

She wonders what is up with Leareth. Of course a man like that must be very busy, but his people apparently did not know that there were other worlds at all, which makes her presence even more momentous than Kyeo's was on Golarion, and Kyeo on Golarion has caused (she thinks, resentfully) a lot of fuss. It's a good thing, that he has not demanded yet that she teach him magic, but it's a bit surprising, and a bit confusing. She puzzles over it for a moment. Doesn't come up with anything.

The more confused she is, the more careful she should be. But it's not clear what being careful is, here. 

They don't know how much spellsilver anything takes, or how long a project ought to take her. She could siphon some off, and make something for herself. Not - not anything in particular. She doesn't know yet what she might need. But if she pilfers some spellsilver for a minor magic item she can reuse it later, it's stable once it's in a magic item, she would have the resources to reuse for whatever she turned out to need. 

She sets her notes for Leareth at the door and waits for them to come and get them and turns her thoughts to something else. Swimming. She hasn't been swimming in a long time. She misses it.

Someone else comes and gets them. 

Leareth glances through them, but mostly he paces, and thinks. 

He's frustrated. Right now he's sitting on a vast resource, and a new piece of information with almost unimaginable ramifications, and he doesn't know why, and he hates being a pawn in the schemes of greater Powers more than almost anything else. And the person this Nefreti and her god dropped on him is brilliant and careful and - and something he doesn't even have a word for, 'damaged' isn't quite right, 'broken' even less so. But she seems deeply committed to serving a god who sets people on fire and tortures them to turn them into tools He can wield, and so far there's no sign of that budging.

He's not sure to what extent there's a right approach here, if it's even possible to get all of the things he wants, but - almost certainly continuing to play games with her isn't going to be the most valuable path. 

Eventually, still frustrated, he goes to bed. 

...

In the morning he arrives at Carissa's door at the same time as one of his staff bringing breakfast. "We need to talk." 

Why is he so terrifying. Does he do that on purpose.

She manages not to think of anything she might be guilty of that he'd want to confront her about. She has a lot of practice at the mental motion of not interpreting suspicion as a cue to rehearse what people might be suspicious of. 

"Of course. You got my list of magic items?"

"Yes. Thank you, it was very thorough and at some point I want to discuss it further. Not now, though." 

He sits down. Looks at her for a moment. 

"- I was genuinely uncertain about what to do, the last time we spoke, that much was true, but - I was not entirely upfront with you, then, and it would do you a disservice to continue with that game any longer, now that I am sure enough. First. I do not want to kill you because that would be very stupid of me, and also because - in fact - I disprefer anyone dying, but I expect the first point to be more convincing. Second. You should not expect running away to work; in addition to all the default precautions on this place, which are considerable, I placed a compulsion - something like an enchantment, in your system - while you are asleep, that you cannot deliberately leave this place until I change that. Third. I am fairly sure that your god Asmodeus tortures people and in other ways - does not value human lives as I do - and I am under no conditions going to consider allying with him, given that, or allowing you to contact him." 

Leareth sits back. "I still want to work with you, to the extent we can make that happen, but I understand this leaves us in an adversarial position. I do not think it would be better to lie to you about my goals, though. I want nobody to die forever and I want people to have good lives and I intend to make that happen. However long it takes." 

And he waits. 

He is almost definitely reading her mind and that makes it very dangerous to think in any depth and so she's left with very shallow things. 

"I knew I was a prisoner," she says calmly. "I knew it would be impossible for me to go home for some reason, or Nefreti would have sent me somewhere else, where it was impossible. I want you to build a god, if you think your god will be able to use more of people and mean they won't die forever and no one is taking care of that already. I don't think your caution or your being upset about Hell makes us adversaries." She does think his being fussed about Hell is predictable and disappointing and it's silly how that's the final word on the subject instead of them being able to argue it, but, whatever. "I am happy to do magic for you while you work on this god plan."

And she casts around for a thing to think about, that's smart when some thoughts are dangerous - she will think about all the things she's not going to argue about Hell, that sounds good. Torturing people is not really a big deal and no one whose world has people just get no afterlife at all has any right to be upset about a perfectly good afterlife that involves some torture. Has he even tried torturing people, you would think that would cause you to notice it's not a big deal, though maybe that's not true among living humans who have only a little while before they're gone forever, maybe the improvements aren't on a scale you can appreciate. 

Leareth's expression is hard to read, but he seems - quietly approving. And then, surprisingly, he smiles. 

"Actually I think debating the merits of Hell sounds fascinating, now that I can do so openly and get all of my questions answered. ...And I wish you did not feel that thinking was dangerous, if I were going to punish you for thoughts that disturb me I would surely have done it days ago. We are both missing huge pieces of each other's context, and yet it seems that you are the ally available to me, and vice versa, so I think it is in both of our interest to try to understand each other's perspectives. I - doubt I am wrong, but I could be, since I have data only on living people - which I think clearly demonstrates that torture is very bad for people's ability to pursue human-scale goals, but that could, in fact, be a different question from your claim." Shrug. "Personally I would not mind a little torture but I would very much mind being - shaped into a different sort of being to serve an alien entity's values rather than my own. And I expect if you polled many people in Velgarth, they would prefer nonexistence over eternal torture. You would be welcome to poll my staff if you wish." 

"It's not eternal torture, that would be stupid, there is not much torture once the things that are wrong with you have been corrected, which takes centuries sometimes but I don't think it'd ever take eternity. I guess if you just refuse on principle to leave Avernus you'll be there for eternity but you could get in line at any time.

I think torturing people is bad for their pursuing their goals but that's - the point, right, that's what one uses it for, getting someone to do what you want instead of what they want, and it can be hard to be cooperative without any incentive." She does not actually want to argue him into hurting her, that would be stupid. Unless it's better than whatever he'll do instead if he learns think about Hell, "Most people hear 'a century' and they think that's a very big deal but it's not, people are just bad at math and don't realize how much eternity is."

"...Hmm. No, I agree with you that people are often not good at considering long timescales, but I do not think that is the root of our dispute. I - think that people pursuing their goals is good. Most of why I spent centuries trying to build prosperous, functional civilizations was so that the people in them could pursue their own goals and values rather than be constrained by the risks of starvation and disease and crime."

A little, slow shrug. "I suppose I have little sympathy for the position that Asmodeus is far larger and more powerful than a human and thus his goals matter more than ours, probably because the gods I know here have not inclined me to think that way. ...Also, honestly, I think the point applies in the other direction as well. Probably ants cannot really experience suffering in the way we know it, based on the reports of Animal Mindspeakers trying to read them, but - mice, say, can, and I think that matters, and humans torturing mice to make them compliant for our experiments is bad even if it is sometimes a cost we judge worthwhile, for example to save more lives via better Healing research."