"I'm about ready to sleep.  Want me to let you out of -"

"See, if I wasn't this exhausted, I'd have noticed faster that I'm not supposed to ask you that.  But if I've got to decide - then I need additional information, right, that's why my brain doesn't want to decide right away - are there likely to be any Carissa-needs-a-toilet-first consequences if I decide to try falling asleep snuggling you like this?  If a more experienced thing-I-am would know to tell you to give me other information first, tell me those questions."

"I think someone more experienced would say it as, 'I'm going to go to sleep snuggling you like this, but I'll entertain arguments I should let you out for a little while first'. I should in fact probably check out the fancy palace baths."

Keltham has an alternate thought.  Is it a real impulse, something he actually wants out of his true self?  Or his brain autocompleting the thing that a person-like-him-would-do based on its early primitive pattern prediction?

...probably a real impulse, Keltham isn't sure, but if he's not sure, that's reason enough.

"Should you now.  Well, I'll snuggle you for a bit longer, since I feel like doing that, and then possibly I'll let you out.  But no promises."

Tiny happy Carissa sound.

The top priority on the Raise Deads is getting everyone who is themselves a fifth-circle-or-higher cleric of Asmodeus raised by morning so they can join in on the Raise Deads themselves. There are not usually quite this many dead clerics of Asmodeus but they're getting through it, burning diamonds at a pace everyone knows that even the richest treasury in all Golarion can't keep up for very long (but longer than Nidal, probably).  They have some other people nearby casting Restoration on the newly-raised clerics to fix the problem where they come back weaker.  It's a nice little assembly line operation. 

Someone from Palace Security is on hand for Maillol's resurrection. They have a briefing for him. It's a pretty long briefing considering he's been dead for almost five hours now.

It's not the first time Ferrer Maillol has been raised.  He doesn't remember anything of Hell; he's a priest of Asmodeus, not a sold soul who bypasses sorting, and while his god could perhaps trouble Himself to take Maillol directly, Asmodeus, of course, has never shown that much solicitude.  Maillol is someone who'll predictably be raised even with prophecy broken; he has never seen the Boneyard even briefly.

His last memories say that somebody hit him with a Suffocation spell, a caster powerful enough that Maillol went unconscious almost immediately, and unconscious is not a good place to be in the middle of a Nidal assault even if the spell doesn't just kill you.  Maillol didn't particularly expect to survive, to be clear, and burned all his negative channelings almost immediately; he wasn't expecting combat that day and hadn't requested spells accordingly.

Maillol lives and pulls himself together, fast enough you might not notice it, and requests a situation update.

"Our Lord is at war with Zon-Kuthon," the briefing begins, "and Cheliax is at war with Nidal. Keltham is alive. Sevar is alive and has project command, though she delegated most project decisions to you anticipating your immediate return. Otolmens' oracle is alive. Keltham, Sevar, and Otolmens' oracle have been relocated to the palace on Her Majesty's orders; Sevar is presently chained up in Keltham's bed, having had a conversation with him in which she told him that what he desires is a romantic relationship in which she belongs to him, he worried she did not mean he could murder her, she insisted she did mean that, and he decided to trust her and try doing whatever he wants, which seems to be cuddling. Project casualties are in your briefing notes, they're in line for resurrection; we're seeing high casualties on the border, so those resurrections may be slow at their present prioritization.

Pilar, the oracle of Cayden Cailean, somehow accompanied Keltham to his spell testing and out of the villa for the summons, and then took a sword for him; she's higher priority for resurrection because we're both worried we might lose her - she's in Elysium - and because we need to ask her what the fuck happened. Asmodia is also dead, confirmed in Hell, lower priority; Ione is not conscious and may not, given the vision was likely from Nethys, recover consciousness. The villa has just been determined clear of hostiles and traps and not yet evaluated for Kuthite magic items for divination or espionage. Keltham is suspicious about the destruction of his notes, which happened when the Kuthites swarmed the villa, and about the fact that the invasion was obviously timed to his stepping outside the villa and yet the invaders didn't seem to immediately know where he was. We have no explanation for this. He's requested we ensure there are no secret Kuthites on staff; we're pretty damn sure, obviously, but if there's anyone who could plausibly have evaded recent evaluation, haul them in. He's also suspicious that Security didn't teleport him out; we determined that staff member used his Teleports earlier in the day fetching requisitions from a supply depot in Corentyn, and that despite this he was selected to accompany Keltham out of the villa because he passed muster to Detect Anxieties and Detect Desires when most didn't, but if anything about that seems odd to you, we can raise his priority for resurrection as well, or if he refuses it contact his owner in Hell."

'Our Lord is at war with Zon-Kuthon' would be harder to understand as a statement with import clearly distinct from 'Cheliax is at war with Nidal', if there were not a window inside the room Maillol now occupies, from which you can see a bit of the darkest-of-night sky, flickering, in a way that (if history is true) it hasn't done in the hundred years since Aroden died and the Worldwound opened.

Maillol wants to believe that this is literally the worst that a project disaster can possibly, possibly get.

He is afraid that it is not.

"Have we considered the possibility that this project is, in fact, cursed directly by Pharasma Herself with all of Her malice, and should be shut down entirely before we find out what happens to it tomorrow," says Maillol.

...he doesn't actually.  But he thinks it very loudly.

What he says instead is, "I need explicit confirmation that Aspexia Rugatonn knows that Carissa Sevar is sharing a building with the Queen."

In the depths of the center of the Palace in Egorian, there is a chamber that sees unfortunately frequent use.  The queen sits on a stepped dais high enough that her own head will not be below that of the crouching form of Gorthoklek the pit fiend, which, even with Gorthoklek crouching, requires quite the high dais.  Across from Gorthoklek also stands Contessa Lrilatha in full and deadly panoply.

Before the dais stands one other.

The most important purpose of this chamber is to, when it becomes necessary, hold an intervention.

"You," Abrogail Thrune declares coldy, imperiously, a voice like a twisting dagger, "are a greater disappointment to me than perhaps any other being or happening in my life."

"The feeling is mutual," says one of the three entities in Cheliax who would dare say such a thing.

"I can remember as though it were yesterday, my excitement when I learned that Asmodeus had sent me my own personal erinyes to tempt me and corrupt me.  What poisonous words does she now whisper in my ears?  Restrain my cruelty.  Restrain my lust.  I must control my desires and not let my desires control me.  I have been assigned my own personal black-winged monk of Irori."

"Irori is Lawful Neutral," observes the same entity who spoke before, Contessa Lrilatha.  "Asmodeus is Lawful Evil.  Need I spell out in greater detail what the two have in common?  Imagine my own disappointment when, hoping I had been assigned an eager pupil to corrupt further, I found myself instead tasked to restrain an incipient drow queen."

"Drow queen.  What a tempting thought.  They, one hears, are allowed to have fun."

Aspexia Rugatonn speaks then, weary, dry, from where she stands before the dais, facing down the Queen with the other two sensible beings in Cheliax.  "You are allowed to have fun.  You are allowed to have other fun.  Find different fun."

"I don't want different fun.  I want to turn Sevar into a statue.  I really, really want to turn Sevar into a statue."

"I really, really want to dissolve you in acid but you don't hear me being a whinecomplainbitch* about it."  (This word of Infernal now appears as a loanword in the Chelish dialect of Taldane.)

"I want to petrify her slowly, so that she can feel it happening, and scream with all of her heart and all of her soul while it's happening, and release all of that terror, and tension, and everything inside her, and I want to kiss her gently while she's turning to stone and screaming.  She's just so scared, and I so rarely meet anyone who's that scared... well, anyone interesting to me who's that scared of me personally doing something that it would interest me to do to them."

Even hunched over, with its wings folded, the black figure is taller than a man standing on another man's shoulders.  "I expect that our Lord would be most extremely displeased," rumbles Gorthoklek.

"I would, of course, unpetrify her immediately afterwards; and swear then never to do that to her in truth, unless she had betrayed the House of Thrune knowingly, deliberately, and unambiguously."

Gorthoklek and Contessa Lrilatha both pass their Bluff checks against the queen; Aspexia Rugatonn, who is not specialized in Splendour in quite the same way, does not.  The brief break in the room's atmosphere is therefore, however finely, noticeable.

"What," says Abrogail.  "Did you actually believe that I would actually bury her?  Really?  Really?  After having known me this long, you still think I would do that?"

"Yes," say three of the four most powerful beings in Cheliax in unison.

"Perhaps I would if Asmodeus had not singled her out and if she were not performing vital work for Cheliax.  But, that being so, do you truly believe I would affront Asmodeus's purpose and interests so, when I could have most of the fun I wanted without the cost to Hell?  You should know, given the consequences to me, and how those have not yet been invoked, that I have never once betrayed Asmodeus in the depths of my own heart."

"The trouble is what the depths of your own heart seem to define as a betrayal of Asmodeus," rumbles Gorthoklek.  "The depths of your own heart seem astonishingly permissive about it."

"Oh?  How misfortunate.  The devil negotiating my pact on behalf of Asmodeus should have defined that term more carefully."

Mortal humans being what they are, one would have expected this clause of the contract to come into force within days of the pact being signed and possibly the first minute.  No matter how lax or unspoken the definition, no matter how the mortal drove themselves half-mad trying to avoid that, it should have triggered anyways.  The resulting penalty clauses do not nullify the compact, but produce a less stringent interpretation of Hell's side and a more stringent interpretation of Abrogail Thrune's.

Given that it hasn't triggered, the devil who negotiated that compact is not having a good century.  It isn't that Asmodeus hasn't benefited from the pact, or that Asmodeus isn't receiving enough of a share of the gains, or even that He is displeased with the results, it's the principle of the thing.

Abrogail Thrune has never once spoken aloud what it meant to her when she signed her compact, to not betray Asmodeus in the depths of her own heart, lest anyone use that knowledge against her.  It is simply this: she gets to have her fun, and Asmodeus gets to have His.

"You know as well as I do that it would be good for her," says Abrogail Thrune. "It would be so, so good for her."

"We are not here to do what is good for Sevar," says Aspexia Rugatonn.  "We were explicitly instructed not to be proactive about her correction."

"You were.  I was not.  Asmodeus cannot have failed to predict that she would catch my interest."

"He most certainly can have failed to predict it.  He can have failed to predict that Hell's exact wording would leave you a loophole, and a rather arguable loophole at that.  Our Lord has other things on His mind and cannot devote all of His attention to Cheliax.  Complications like these, which require more of His attention, are already injuries and expenses to Him.  And now, of all times, He is gravely distracted, and may not see what is happening here at all."

For all her Splendour bonuses, Abrogail can't compete with Aspexia for sternness, but neither is she that easily swayed from her desires.  "You may recall that when I was negotiating with your Lord's agent to take this throne in the first place, there is a specific clause I added to the effect that His high priests would not tell me to never have any fun.  Keep to your Lord's bargain, Aspexia."

"Operative word never," Aspexia says sharply.  "I've accepted you turning good Asmodeans into statues and burying them, because most souls are of little importance to our Lord, because there could be a discipline problem otherwise among those who truly look forward to Hell.  You may continue to have that fun in the future.  This soul is of importance to our Lord and to your country of Cheliax and to our Lord's longer purposes in Golarion.  Otolmens has appointed an oracle.  The gods are at war.  You need to stop introducing complications."

"Unfortunately, as I do now admit, I did not realize, on first meeting Sevar, the effect my threat would have on her; and that, I do worry, may be a complication.  The transcripts of her thoughts show that, despite my attempted reassurance, she continues to be distracted by thoughts of me doing terrifying things to her.  So now I have to actually do them to her.  Slowly.  It's the only way to undo my own past folly."

"Hardly the only way," observes the most actually intelligent entity in the room, in a low grumbling growl, though this level of Intelligence is not required to see the obvious. "You could swear to Sevar the same oath, without first pretending to turn her into a statue."

"But then I would never get to slowly petrify her!"

"Why have our existences become this?" wonders Contessa Lrilatha on a more private channel.  "How did we offend our Lord?  Will we ever be allowed to return to Hell?"

Gorthoklek replies with a brief proverb in Infernal.  It carries with it the sense of 'Hell is other people', of 'This is Hell nor are we out of it', of 'Hell is not a place but a philosophy', but the literal Infernal is simply 'Hell is the destruction of hope.'

Time doesn't always pass in the same rate, in Chaotic planes.  Especially if the local Power in charge wills otherwise.  Cayden Cailean is otherwise occupied, fighting Zon-Kuthon; but has still His local co-conspirators, and His plans laid in advance.

Pilar Pineda has been in Elysium longer than Hell thinks.  Not nearly long enough to get the full tour, but enough to be shown around a little, appropriately attired and appropriately treated, to see massive crystal-waterfalls in which glasslike material flows slowly down from what look like leagues and leagues up, to sleep briefly but refreshingly in a warm cavern lit by glowing edible moss, to meet interesting people and be mistreated by them in interesting ways.

Long enough to be told what Elysium believes about what Hell really is, how Hell really works, and have it sworn to her in the name of Good and Chaos that they're telling the truth to the best of their own knowledge.  They're not Lawful, yes, but it doesn't mean they're all liars, all the time.  There are beings with spell-like abilities here to rival great wizards, and one shows Pilar a glimpse of Hell as it really is.

To be clear, Pilar hasn't been here that long; this tour is being done in something of a rush.

Keltham wakes, to light just beginning to filter in through the bedroom window.  He is not used to sleeping through any more light than that, and, what with all the distractions, didn't even close the curtains before falling asleep cuddling a chained-up Carissa.

Oh.

He can sleep on the same surface, and even in the same poorly designed bed, as someone else.  Well.  He can do that with Carissa; he doesn't particularly like the thought of doing it with anyone else that he currently knows.

It's raining outside, moderately windy.  It's not possible to see, underneath the clouds, if the sky is doing anything weird.

Keltham starts to get the - key, how is that a key, he didn't want to interrupt sexytimes to ask Carissa this, last night, but you can literally just look at it and see how it must fit into the lock.  Why couldn't you just look at the shape and remember it, and then make another key like that, if you'd trained yourself a bit on fast memorization?  Golarion really doesn't make much sense... well, maybe only sexy keys for bed chains are like this, because the person is chained up and it doesn't matter if they can remember the key's shape.

He's carefully unlocking the keys before it occurs to him to wonder whether he actually wants to Carissa let out; after a few moments, he concludes that he doesn't want to do more - well, maybe he would, if he thought of things to do - but if he wasn't pushing himself into things -

Keltham realizes he's being dumb; he knows how to think better than this, in familiar domains, knows that the Way there is not to question your ordinary wants so much except on rare special occasions of deliberate meta.  He felt like letting Carissa out of the chains, so he's going to do that and not trip over questioning the impulse.  If he made the wrong decision somehow by acting on that impulse, he'll find out and his brain will update its impulses.  Besides, if he wants Carissa back in the chains, he can always put her back in them later.

(A strange wash of warmth at that final thought, unfamiliar, but becoming quickly less so.)

She's a sounder sleeper, but wakes up at him attempting this; flinches, at first, and tugs at the chains, before she realizes -

"Oh, hey. Good morning."

He's pretty sure that what she just said was 'good morning', so the Taldane words are starting to settle in a little.

"Greet the day!" Keltham replies cheerfully in Baseline, before his brain helpfully thinks of the rainy weather outside and that it might betoken an impending genre shift to Postapocalyptic; and while Keltham does inwardly tell his brain to screw off, this is not a perfect inner telling.

Chain removal continues.

Oh, do they no longer have a language in common, ugh. She will call a servant about that once she's unchained, if he doesn't seem to have other plans.

Keltham will perform the gestures for Comprehend Languages where Carissa can see them; he hasn't prayed for spells yet, so he might as well use this one.  He can understand her now if not speak to her.

Keltham doesn't think until afterwards that maybe energy is more expensive to his god than usual right now... well, he'll see if he gets any spells period, then.

Chains be gone.

"If you don't want to wait for me to prepare Share Language we can ask the staff here for it," Carissa says once he's cast Comprehend Languages. "You have a call bell, right next to the door."

Sure, he'll try Taldane with yet another different set of hard-to-detect connotations being rapidly overridden by actual familiarity.  He goes to tap the call bell.

A uniformed person shows up in about fifteen seconds "How can I help you, sir?"

"Eat chair Share Language Taldane?" Keltham says in attempted Taldane.

(It's pretty easy to figure out that 'eat chair' was supposed to be 'cast magic'.)

Yeah, all right. Tap. 

"Thank you," Keltham says in Taldane, and tries running through some words in his mind.  It's harder to read the faint connotations than it was yesterday; Share Language doesn't want to override knowledge that you already have.  Keltham has to focus hard on the internal probes and use some dath ilani techniques for hunting down subtle connotations that words and concepts have to you.

'Lawful' is obsessing over your city's regulations and fretting over whether you're conforming enough to all of them, 'Chaos' is insanity, 'Good' is something put firmly underneath a sense of superiority that's alien to dath ilan, 'Evil' is being mean to people and not in a sexually sadistic way either.

Keltham makes a note not to trust this particular person with anything if he can avoid it.  Actually, he should check -

'Asmodeus' doesn't return anything, nor 'Zon-Kuthon'.  Somehow the spell knows that these are individual things rather than general concepts, no matter how much a dath ilani would say that no such qualitative difference exists, and isn't transferring them over as Shared Language.

Keltham supposes that would have been an overly easy way of identifying traitors, at least those at or above second-circle wizardry... no, that's trope-based thinking, and it is very far from certain that mode of thinking binds to reality here at all; so he needs to at least firmly label every use of it in an inference step, and then compute everything the other way too.  If this technique is not forbidden to work by tropes, Keltham should be creative about making this method work, or just literally continue at all to think about how to make it work.

'Pain'?  Keltham can't get a read on it, he has a Baseline concept that the Taldane word maps onto almost exactly; Keltham already knows what this word means.  This sort of outcome is presumably the reason why Golarion folks don't think of this as a standard probe to use on each other.

Dath ilani however do not have a single commonly-used concept that corresponds exactly to the connotations and meanings of the Taldane word 'torture'*, and Keltham can get something of a read on that; 'torture' sounds awfulscary rather than desirable.

Okay, probably not a Kuthite traitor then, to the extent this method works at all.

(*)  The Baseline compound phrase that refers-by-convention to 'deliberately inflicting extreme amounts of pain' carries primarily the connotation of overly large negative payoffs in decision matrices and edgelord thought experiments devised by teenage males, not the idea that you can obtain information or obedience that way.

(From the perspective of anybody watching, Keltham just said 'Thank you', closed the door, and then shut his eyes and stood motionless for about a minute.)

Carissa is ....concerned!!! But she has nothing productive to do with the concern and isn't exactly going to interrupt him. She brushes her hair and pulls her spellbook out of extradimensional space, instead. 

Keltham finishes thinking and turns around in time to catch this.

"Wait, have you had a hammerspace* this whole time?"

(*) Lit. 'Don't-bother-tracking-facts-about carrying' in Baseline, translated to a Taldane term for a pocket dimension.

"It's a first circle spell to hide your spellbook in another plane. It only works on spellbooks. I separately have been loaned a Bag of Holding, which is more of a standard instance of that thing, if you want to poke it."