Accompany her," he says to local Security, and to Keltham, "with your permission, I intend to cast a series of spells that will dispel external magical influences on you, detect any enchantment of your possessions or person, and guard against future such."

(Carissa and local Security head out.)

"Understood.  I currently have running a self-cast protective cleric spell on my person, and an external Share Language that will expire shortly; I would have both of those preserved if there is zero or nearly perfectly zero risk to Security thereby, but more so the protective spell as it is less replaceable.  Regardless of rulings there, I consent to your described Security measures."

"Enchantment Foil," he says. "We of course cannot cast it on you at all without the aid of extraordinarily powerful magic, as it is a spell that can affect the caster only; I will avoid dispelling it."

And he does magic, visibly intricate and high-powered to Detect Magic, mostly divinations but also some abjurations.

Keltham won't remember he's a magicbearer until halfway through that, but once he does he'll cast Detect Magic and watch.  He also notes that upper Cheliax Security isn't claiming not to know what Enchantment Foil is, which matches an earlier hypothesis about it being a Security-only spell that can be used to defeat Security measures.

Carissa returns, with the products of her recent shopping trip in her shopping-trip Bag of Holding along with her notes and her presents from the Queen, just as this is wrapping up; Security finishes with Keltham and turns to cast the same set of spells on her and on the things in her Bag of Holding. 

"Let's go," he says when he's finished, and starts walking.

Keltham follows.

Oh, he does have a tiny bit of trauma associated with Leaving The Villa Premises, what fun.

The sky above is still doing the thing that gets giant aliens to say 'Those above all mortals now battle' in a deep grumbly voice.  It's pretty at night.

It’s terrifying.

Asmodeus is going to win, but still.

They reach the edge of the Forbiddance and the man takes their hands and without preamble Teleports.

The palace in Egorian is new, built after House Thrune took Cheliax; the old capitol was in Westcrown. It makes the summer villa of the Archduke look shabby by comparison. It makes Versailles, its best historical analogue, look shabby though admittedly mostly only because of things King Louis the 14th could not have helped, like the fact his gargoyles cannot prowl and his fountains cannot start in midair and his orchards cannot grow seductively golden apples that drive men mad.

The sky is flickering here, too.

Well, good on them for remembering to fake the skyshow here too, if it's fake.  But Keltham is mostly paying attention to other sights, because they're worth it.

"This place is beautiful and aesthetic even by our standards, and on behalf of Civilization I compliment the architects and designers -"

"Wait.  Is teleporting always that fast?"  That sort of matches his experience at the Worldwound, in retrospect, but he had almost no experience with magic and spells back then, and didn't know he was looking at a spell and not a device that had charged up over the last three minutes.  Though it wasn't so much that he had alternate hypotheses, back then, as that he hadn't really chunked spellcasting rules as a latent system in a way that would make it easy to update over modular facts inside it.

"Teleportation is a fifth circle spell with the same casting time as the spells that you are familiar with," the wizard confirms. 

"Sorry, just trying to figure out an ongoing mystery about the attack.  Carissa, am I missing something or should that Security have just teleported us out when the attack started?  We were at the edge of the Forbiddance already."

"If he had it prepared and hadn't yet used it today, yes - and was at least fifth circle but his Haste lasted ten count, so he was."

"So maybe he couldn't teleport.  Or maybe he could, but if you didn't think of that at the time, it's plausible he didn't think of it either.  But if my god didn't predict my Security not having teleport or not thinking of it, that's an even stronger reason for my god to try to get me to the edge of the Forbiddance in a way that could be synchronized with the attack.  It would have been a reliable plan for my safety, not the better-than-worst harm-reduction version where I still almost got killed several times.  Though it's also worth asking where the obvious place to teleport would've been, and if there could've been an ambush there, or if there's any way to intercept a teleport and..."

"Well, later.  Sorry for the interruption.  Please lead on."

Otolmens is VERY BUSY.  She is guarding the Vault containing ROVAGUG while Zon-Kuthon gets DEALT WITH not that His VOID-CONTAMINATED MIND shouldn't have been dealt with IMMEDIATELY but BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

She is not SO BUSY that she is NEVER looking back at the anomaly AT ALL.

It is now NO LONGER within one hundred distance units of Ostenso's tallest thing.  It is ELSEWHERE.

For some reason Otolmens had been thinking that, just since the anomaly had mostly stayed in the same place for a while, it was a kind of anomaly that did that.

She cannot go on revising Pharasma's-Name edicts once they're issued, for the obvious reason that this would correspond to an unbounded edict supply.

ASMODEUS.

TELL your MORTALS to put the anomaly BACK IN THE INTERDICTED REGION.

Transparently EVADING a Pharasma's-Name Edict is NOT AMUSING and PHARASMA will NOT BE AMUSED EITHER.

ASMODEUS IS SORT OF BUSY WHILE PUTTING NEARLY AS MUCH EFFORT INTO SUBDUING THIS LONGSTANDING EXISTENTIAL THREAT AS THE REST OF THESE USELESS WEAKLING GODS COMBINED AND WILL GET BACK TO OTOLMENS LATER

They go in through a side entrance, because the Queen has ordered that no one will come into contact with Keltham whose soul is not sold already, or who isn't a priest of Asmodeus. There's a dazzling hallway and then a room that is - 

- well, exquisitely designed to some unapologetically Evil aesthetics. It has thick red velvet curtains around an enormous iron bed which has actual chains and shackles built into the headboard, and a thick red carpet, and an enormous fireplace against one wall.

Next to the fireplace is a rack of fire-stoking equipment which a person who knows a lot about fire-stoking, which Keltham hopefully does not, might identify as not even all that useful for that.

There's a cozy reading nook with an armchair and a tall bookshelves full of leather-bound books, and a little kneeling pillow next to the armchair.

There's an Asmodean shrine with incense and a stone ritual-seat that you obviously let blood into. 

There are beautiful tapestries on the walls, depicting well-dressed people dancing, and there's a window opening on a courtyard full of blooming roses.

- Carissa's life is so interesting (derogatory). ...what're the books. Oh, good, looks like they're Taldane poetry and a fourteen-volume history of Absalom dated from before the Age of Lost Omens began.

Keltham mostly notices the chains on the bed.  They don't parse instantly, but he can deduce their use after a few moments.

Keltham smiles slightly.  "I want to say somebody's overestimated our relationship progress, but on second thought maybe not."

"I like the rest of the aesthetic.  It's very close to a similar dath ilani aesthetic called doompunk which I do not totally fail to appreciate."

"You can press this bell for staff," says their escort, and departs. 

"Doompunk, huh. I'm glad you like it. It parses as an Evil aesthetic, here."

"...interesting, in dath ilani terms that's more associated with - a self-aware supervillain with a sense of humor, one who laughs maniacally while executing their cunning plans and also knows exactly how much of a cliche that is and does it anyways because that's them living their best life.  I don't think we'd say it's associated with Evil supervillains rather than Good supervillains, though?  If anything it leans slightly the opposite."

"Supervillain parses as a kind of thing that'd only be Evil, a lich commanding enormous armies of the undead or a wizard who has concocted a mad scheme to end life or something."

"Commanding armies of the undead is supervillainy, absolutely, extremely doompunk too, but I don't see why that would be Good or Evil in itself, aside from whatever you were trying to do with the undead armies?  And a wizard with a mad scheme to end life is Good, as I understand that, because they're not doing it to benefit themselves, they're doing it because they think life should be ended for its own welfare... well, in dath ilani fiction that's why they'd be doing it, if that happens in real life here maybe it's very different, but then why would they."