"Take off your left shoe."

It seems unlikely that Security wants them all running off to report at the start of lunch on things that Security already saw, which makes it correspondingly more likely that Security's just in a bad mood, but there's no point in being afraid either way. - though the second possibility does suggest more options. She keeps her eyes on him while she lifts her leg to remove her shoe. "I don't suppose Security's allowed to explain things to us."

Rodez Balaguerre breaks her little toe, not in a particularly unfriendly way.

"This is a mission for big girls," he informs her.  "You are not adequately prepared for it.  You were intended as a welcoming gift for Keltham.  Somehow you've ended up with a great deal more responsibility than that.  This will require rapid retraining."

"Pilar is now an oracle of Cayden Cailean.  That's the Chaotic Good god of drunkenness, if you're too loyal to know.  It happened moments before Pilar could sign her soul contract.  Mindreading shows that Pilar didn't want that at all, and that her request to be Maledicted if she needs to be executed was completely sincere.  This matches up with earlier records of Pilar's thoughts being read, and is not currently thought to be an oracular power for evading having her mind read.  Orders are to consider her an Asmodean in good standing, for now."

"Her giving cake to Sevar was a manifestation of her oracular curse, as was her distribution of sweets."

"You failed to report the former event for the entire length of the morning.  Had Security not known about this matter already, and had the Security officer present also failed to take explicit note of the anomaly as every one of you did, your failure to note Pilar's unusual behavior and report it to anyone, would have meant ignoring signs of a catastrophic underlying problem."

"You can have that toe healed at the end of the day, or earlier if Keltham suddenly wants to sleep with you for some reason.  Meanwhile, it is expected to provide you with a recurring reminder of the new level of Security awareness that is now required from you."

"Broom is here by direct authorization of the Grand High Priestess and belongs to a Lawful Neutral god whose work conduces to Asmodeus's purposes.  He is not authorized to give you orders and you should show him neither deference nor disrespect."

"Highpriest Maillol has decided that Sevar seems to have the best current understanding of Keltham of anyone present, including himself.  In the unlikely event that you prove to understand Keltham even better, Maillol might put you in charge instead.  Try sabotaging Sevar to make yourself look better by comparison and Maillol will hurt you enough to mildly improve your soul before sending it onward to Hell."

"Asmodia earned a punishment the previous evening but is not currently considered by Security to be an ongoing problem."

"You're done here.  Put your shoe back on."

- fair enough. "Thank you," she says sincerely, and puts her shoe back on, and determinedly walks without a limp down the hallway, though it takes a great deal of effort. 

Carissa notices herself feeling wary as she approaches the temple, which is probably that human flaw Keltham identified earlier where if bad things happen to you in a place your idiot brain will try to conclude the place is bad. She wouldn't have noticed before, but she's paying more attention to her flaws, lately. 

However this is probably not the moment to try to fix them. She'll just go in and learn what ridiculous things have happened in the last three hours and get her headband and figure out what to do about Asmodia. 

Maillol will have a chat with her that is a lot like the one that Rodez Balaguerre just had with Meritxell.  It will involve Maillol taking hold of her arm, breaking her wrist, and shaking it for emphasis while he lectures her; but he'll heal her afterwards, unlike the other girls, because he does not want Sevar distracted on an ongoing basis or Keltham noticing anything if he suddenly drags her off for a quickie.

Nothing horribly unexpected has happened in the last three hours.  Nobody is to make any humorous comments about that because nobody is to tempt fate.

Carissa would not even consider making comments about that. Fate is clearly already incredibly tempted around here, despite having as far as anyone knows been extinguished a century ago. 

'

She puts her headband back on. It's nice how she's not going to have to take it off this time. 

There's no arguing that the girls are all in over their heads. She's not...actually sure that Security and Maillol are less in over their heads. Contessa Lrilatha didn't seem in over her head and the Queen didn't seem in over her head and Aspexia Rugatonn didn't seem in over her head but everyone who isn't on that level ...might, in fact, be in over their heads. 

Well, she always wanted to be that good. 

It's pretty obvious with a headband on that having a headband on isn't anywhere sufficient to achieve that. She's not sure a +6 headband would be, and while Wisdom might be more useful than Cunning it doesn't solve the problem either. The fundamental thing is that they're trying to do something very hard with little margin for error and at least one god actively opposed to their efforts, and while obviously being smart is necessary for handling that.....

...Nefreti Clepati isn't dath ilani. Being smart doesn't even mean automatically deriving all the Law and becoming one with it, within the range that humans are capable of making themselves smart. What she knows now is what dath ilan taught seven year olds in a couple days of classes, and while she can feel that it has not only cleared up her confusion about what bargaining is, that it has lit a torch that casts some light on a dozen surrounding things, she can mostly only see everything she doesn't yet know. 

But Keltham likes her. And if he gets bored in a week then the other girls will be a week more prepared for Keltham to like them. And while she tries to maintain realistic expectations about how long he's likely to take to get bored, her actual honest guess, now that she's smarter, now that it's a bit easier to split out which predictions are defensive-predictions so she won't be sad about whatever happens - what a flaw to have in your brain -

- her actual honest guess is that he won't get bored in a week. That he'll pick up additional girls at some point, because variety is highly motivating, but that she's already not interchangeable, to him. 

For some reason this feeling makes her wish that she'd fixed the Queen's bag so it could hurt her again. However, not flirting with the Queen was the smartest call she made this morning and she's going to persist in it even if it would be really nice to be in a lot of pain. And she's not quite on terms with Keltham where she could run up to him and say 'for reasons I can't tell you, I want you to break all my knuckles with a hammer' - he's not even there yet, he wouldn't enjoy it -

She gives herself five minutes to spend staring out the window and daydreaming about things to tell Keltham to seduce him to Evil, and then tries to steer her mind back on to business. ...it's probably too late to pull Asmodia aside in a not-maximally-threatening way but she'll see if she happens to be able to catch her.

It's way too late to catch Asmodia without a broken toe that hasn't particularly improved her mood.  It's been improved even less by being told in a smiling way that children will be children, but it might be unwise for Asmodia to fuck with Pilar like she was thinking about, considering that Pilar now has an extra two caster circles on Asmodia plus unknown Chaotic Good powers plus Security knows Pilar is more loyal than Asmodia is probably capable of.

She's not bothering trying to walk without a limp if Keltham's not around.

The food here is substantially better than in Ostenso academy.  She's gone to get a small snack from the refectory area; they've got some out, probably in case Keltham - or, she supposes, maybe some of the other people here - want one.  Nobody's told her she can't.

Carissa comes up behind her and takes one too. "Hey," she says. "You're not in trouble, or you might be but I'm not it. Do you want to borrow my headband?"

That's a very good way to get a wizard's attention, even under Asmodia's circumstances.  She tilts her head to look at Sevar, which is the Chelish equivalent of whirling around in shock.  "That would seem very generous of you," she says, meaning, why would you do that and what's in it for you.

Maybe this is a test to see if she is capable of learning literally at all and will now report to Security after Sevar acts weird.

"Wouldn't it just. I was really annoyed, when it occurred to me as the way to get what I want, here. Especially because it only occurred to me with the headband on and I think wouldn't have otherwise." Wizards more inclined to poetry than Carissa have described taking headbands off - not +2, generally they're talking about +4, but still - as like 30% of the way to being dead.

"You can have it for the duration of the conversation and then long enough to look at my third-circle spells, all I want is for you to approach the conversation like I'm doing you a favor and will keep doing that if it works this time."

"Accepted," Asmodia says unhesitatingly.  She has no idea what it's about, but the offer is, she suspects, intended to be more-than-fair; if so it makes that point well enough.

Carissa takes her headband off and tries not to make a face about it. Hands it over. 

"I noticed you were in a bad mood today," she says. "Keltham didn't, or this would be a very different conversation, and perhaps you will get it together by the time he's competent to read us at all, but I noticed. And, you know, I'm not worried about whether your incentives are pointed in the right direction. You're not an idiot - you're very clever, actually, or this would also be a very different conversation - and we're the most carefully-corrected batch of wizards in all of Cheliax at present. But. We are working in adversarial conditions, here, Abadar is mad at us, and to succeed under those conditions our success needs to be assured from more than one direction. Cheliax is doing its Chelish best to teach you how to handle yourself here.

And dath ilan, if we were dath ilani students, would try to bribe you. On the utterly stupid assumption, if Keltham's telling it straight, that punishment doesn't work; or on the slightly less stupid assumption, if we figure the smart people in charge of dath ilan lie to their people as much as our smart people lie to us - and I don't think Keltham'd be very surprised, to learn that - that sometimes you hit a different corner of the motivational system, when you dangle a bribe in front of someone." She nods at the headband.

Asmodia puts on the headband.  She's ever tapped herself with a Fox's Cunning, but there's said to be a subtle difference from the headband.  That with spellsilver to anchor a more carefully refined enchantment than a hung spell, it can be smoother, more supportive, befitting something meant to be worn forever after.

...she can't really tell the difference, in the first rush of clarity, it feels half as intense as Fox's Cunning but otherwise mostly the same.

Mostly her newfound clarity is agreeing with her prior impression that, yes, her life is a complete loss in which nothing good has happened to her, nothing good is ever going to happen to her, and all of her goals now consist of being tortured less and staying out of Hell for slightly longer.

It's definitely possible that having any prospect of anything good ever happening to her would hit a different corner of her motivational system.  Dath ilan could be on to something there.  Asmodia chooses not to say this out loud, where it would be a pathetic plea for help; if Sevar is running Detect Thoughts, which would be sensible of her, then she's welcome to the inward thought that isn't a plea for anything.

"Or, alternatively, we only got the lectures for seven-year-olds so far and dath ilan's reasoning will seem much more understandable after a full week of lectures," Asmodia chooses to say instead.  "Irresistibly compelling, even, which I assume is why they had us sell our souls first."  Why not Sevar, though, that makes no sense.  "And Abadar's mad at us?  That sounds important."

"Well, see, we keep lying to his cleric. Keltham has - a bunch of divination, today. Detect Anxieties, Detect Desires. What do you suppose he's gonna turn up, if he casts those and looks at you?"

Asmodia doesn't laugh out loud.  Even less so, considering how fucked she would be.  And yet, somehow, it's still funny.  What a lovely bed Hell has made for itself to lie in.

"Detect Anxiety might not turn up anything much, you can't be anxious about what's already happened to you.  Detect Desires might pick up something Security doesn't want him to see."  The desire to be somewhere else.  The desire to not be herself.  The desire not to go to Hell.  Even with an intelligence headband on she can't think of a solution for that besides removing her, which isn't a good sign - no, wait, she's thought of one.  "Should've written down on my paper that I'd have a more interesting background, some story that would explain why Keltham couldn't detect my own desires, if I'm about to get a blocking item for that."

"Would've been a good idea. I haven't got Nondetection for you, but Security will. I'm not, actually, expecting him to try casting that one on a room full of students, given how some of his other spells have panned out - not today, when he doesn't recognize it - but maybe he'll surprise me." She smiles tiredly; it's not sincere, but the insincerity isn't really pointed at Asmodia. "Now, entertain me for a bit, pretend you're in dath ilan. What payment would you want, for this, such that you'd be glad on the whole that you were chosen for it, that you were born for it, such that if you thought of a way to make it go better you wouldn't just think 'they'll kill me if I don't'."

The thought is painful to glance in the direction of; Asmodia turns away from her first internal glance.

Her first thought is that she's being toyed with.  That wouldn't be anything the least bit surprising, but right now it's running into a contradiction with something else.

"I could entertain you, if you hadn't exchanged a headband-borrowing for considering that you were doing me a favor," Asmodia says.  "A little compact between us, probably a bad idea for me to break that."  Can she, actually, if she's sold her soul to Lawful Evil?

"Bore me, then, and give me a straight answer. Look, do I like you as a person? No, I'm not that impressed by mathematical ability I'll have myself once I have time to study with the headband on. Would I give you presents even if I liked you as a person? No. But this is either going to fail spectacularly, in which case we will all die very shortly, or succeed spectacularly, in which case I will be rich beyond my wildest dreams and powerful hopefully right up to and not beyond my ability to keep my feet under me. And if I can buy - with that future money that I only get if I win - the slightest sense, in your heart, that you want me to win, well, that might end up being worth quite a lot to me."

Asmodia's thinks that this is probably what it feels like to have somebody trying to buy your soul, before she remembers that already happened yesterday and didn't produce anything like this sensation.

It's pretty obvious to her what she wants, now that she stares in that direction.

It's the sort of thought that gets people killed, maybe even people who've sold their souls.  Intelligence headbands are dangerous things; she doesn't feel like she'd have thought of this with the spell form of Fox's Cunning.

And having thought it, she's already fucked herself over yet again, and might as well say it to Sevar.  "There's a story I once heard whispered about the Queen, that if you piss her off badly enough, she'll turn you into a statue and bury you far down enough that even the Hellknights can't get to you to free your trapped soul.  I'd serve someone loyally if there was a realistic compact for that to happen to me, at the end of my life, if I served at some realistic level that's actually in reach for me."

Carissa knows exactly what Keltham will see if he turns Detect Anxieties on her, because it hasn't left her mind since the Queen said it and she's pretty sure it never will, even if she succeeds beyond everyone's wildest dreams and gets a duchy out of it. 

She doesn't say that. Obviously. But that leaves her - with absolutely nothing to say, nothing she can even really imagine herself saying. Her planned grateful exit was, 'I think I'll need the headband on to consider that', but she's not sure she can say that, about - about the desire not to be - 

- also it's almost surely impossible, not threatening, or Security would have intervened. 

"And here I was hoping you liked, you know, magic items, strangling puppies, that kind of thing. You know, if I had an aptitude for spell research and a terror of Hell, I'd work on permitted forms of immortality - powered by the hearts of babies or whatever. Figure out what the Starstone does to the people it eats."

Very few people ever pull off anything even close to immortality, and Asmodia is aware that she's not that good at math, to research something that very few wizards have ever figured out.  A lot of people want immortality.  Very few people get it.

Then again - the other form of the thing she wants - isn't something that a lot of people want.  Maybe it's genuinely easier to figure out what the Starstone does to the people it eats, than to figure out immortality.  Though you'd think, if it was easy to solve, that Galt would use that instead of their famous soul-trapping executioner's blade, which Asmodia isn't interested in because the Hellknights will get to it sooner or later.

"I suppose a slave's-bread version of that would be finding enough spells that destroy memories and rewrite personality that the person who goes to Hell isn't effectively me any more," Asmodia says, and feels a flare of awful hope as she does.  "Remaking her to be a faithful Sarenrae worshipper might be funny, she'd be so surprised when she ends up in Hell."  Because fuck Sarenrae, that's why.

- giggle. "See, if you work out something like that, then you're not constantly constrained by who'll collaborate with you, because I don't think that's even slightly heretical. I know there's a ninth circle spell that lets you turn a person into a book, and edit it. I'm certainly not going to promise anything on the spot, but if you do a good job, and get us to pull this off, I would enjoy rewriting every page of your book."

Asmodia's wordless core pulls her thoughts back from a direction of looking, where if she actually thought of any way of doing the thing, Security would execute her possibly on the spot.  She doesn't even think about where she didn't look.

(Fuck this!  Fuck this again!  The only consolation for selling her soul was supposed to be that she could finally think her own thoughts!)

"I'll think about it," Asmodia says after a lengthy pause.  "I'd realistically - want to be rewritten as someone like Pilar who enjoys it and gets off on it and would do great in Hell, just in case it's still me in there no matter what.  Going for contract devil when you grow up, are you?"

"I'm going for getting to grow up. I can't say I can relate to not wanting that, but if you do a good job for me, I expect I'll arrange you any stupid thing that takes me less than a month of my time. That ball is in your court, though, presently. You'll have to go study dath ilani thought and convince me that an Asmodia who wants something is valuable enough for the no doubt unpleasant series of conversations it'll take to figure out a version of it I'm allowed to give you."