- wait what the fuck. 

He kicks her in the ribs.

"Did you just attempt to save against Detect Thoughts? That's six kinds of illegal. You're lucky I can cast it again and we don't need to haul Maillol in here to listen to you."

"I'm sorry, sir, I forgot to - the spell should be working, you don't need to cast it again, I just need to -"

Don't think at all about why.  About what happened.  Just -

Some of my thoughts are under seal of a greater power of Hell.  This fact is itself secret and must be kept as tightly restricted as possible.

" - ah," he says.

And there are other people around. 

Shit.

Now he's going to have to let the Crown know the answer to 'did Asmodia come back with superpowers' is "I can't tell you". That'll be fun.

"You know, if Hell can teach people to stop thinking thoughts in a day I'm surprised we don't send more people there for a day. Or maybe you take particularly well to instruction. Standard screening, then I'll show you to your room."

And he asks questions and pretends to be reading the answers out of a mind he in fact cannot read. Hopefully Asmodia will catch on; it'll be evident to her that they aren't alone.

Asmodia is, yes, glancing around at the locations of the visible illusion magic screening the invisible people, wondering what they're all doing there.

(If anybody was wondering whether it's true that Project Lawful girls have arcane sight, they clearly do.)

She'll answer the screening questions honestly and out loud, because Abarco is still a lot a little scary and she doesn't want to give him any excuse to hurt her when he checks her answers later, probably under Zone of Truth.  Yes, she's fit for duty.  A recovery period would be appreciated but she can serve immediately if necessary.

(Some of her thoughts are readable, and those seem to indicate honesty.)

One of the standard questions is whether Hell sent her back with any messages.

"I have a message for Carissa Sevar from Ahuvir Dulzomaud, my former owner, but, uh, it's probably moot now," Asmodia answers.  "Ahuvir Dulzomaud was destroyed... maybe about two hours ago if time was running at the same rate."

" - I see," says Elias. "I suppose pass it on to her anyway and let her be the judge of that." Also, what, but he's not going to ask in front of an audience. "No further questions, you can stand up and I'll show you to your room."

"I'm not sure he didn't get destroyed for trying to pester Carissa Sevar with an offer, either it was that or he'd asked me too many questions about the project," Asmodia volunteers as she follows Elias out.

Then he will drag her into the next room, close the door behind her, and start flicking bits of skin off her neck with the tip of his knife. "Why. Did. You. Say. That."

Project Lawful girls aren't very fazed by Hell:  Rumor ADDED.

Project Lawful girls have to make a special effort to allow their minds to actually be read:  Rumor ADDED.

Project Lawful girls have arcane sight:  Rumor CONFIRMED.

All devils in Hell know Carissa Sevar by name:  Rumor CONFIRMED.

Asking too much about Project Lawful and/or pestering Carissa Sevar with offers is an execution offense in Hell:  Rumor ADDED.

"Because you would blame me and hurt me if you pestered Sevar and got hurt for it and I hadn't warned you?" Asmodia says blankly, not feeling nearly as relatively hurt or scared about the knife as she would've a couple of days ago, but worried that things are about to become actually bad.

Then the knife can go a bit deeper. People vary in how deep the knife needs to go to bother them properly.

"All right, you piece of shit, let's be clear about a couple of things. First thing, if you have a secret the fact of which also needs to be secret, you can communicate that by Messaging that you need to be alone, or by asking to go to the temple for your debrief, or by saying 'debrief may cover highly classified materials, ask the project head if you're the person to do it', or by exercising literally any initiative whatsoever. I'm not going to rip you apart for that, because I didn't expect any better, but that's how it's done, among people who aren't catastrophically stupid.

Second. If you have a secret the fact of which also need to be secret, you don't just randomly volunteer potentially-relevant information to a large group of strangers for no reason. I am going to guess, wildly, with only my intelligence which is apparently at least double yours, that your devil dying might have had something to do with this very secret secret. Which they are destroying people, in Hell, to protect. If a secret is important enough to destroy devils over, it's probably important enough to say in a whisper, or in a Message, or by passing a note, or by waiting until we got out of the room, because I was very evidently avoiding doing a real debrief until we got out of the room. Instead of any of those things, you opened your stupid fucking mouth, you worthless fucking idiot. I did actually expect you to be slightly less stupid than that because you somehow survived to adulthood, and I repent of my error."

Asmodia is frightened because Abarco is scary but it is not her first time being frightened in Cheliax, and for the first time in her whole life she knows that there is a way out, at least for 100 years, if things get bad enough.

"None of that was relevant to the secret," Asmodia says, keeping her voice as controlled as she can.  "If it was I'd have lied and not volunteered information."

"Don't volunteer information! I don't care if you think it's relevant to the secret or not! Simply keep your stupid mouth shut when not asked a direct question in private by someone authorized to know the answer! 

Who, in Cheliax, is authorized to read your mind at this time."

That shouldn't be spoken aloud.  "Read my mind, sir, I'll try to put out thoughts you can see."

My sealed thoughts can't be read period.  Gorthoklek authorized to know that seal exists.  No mortals to know there is anything unusual about me, if possible, everything should look normal.

"The Crown wants to know if you have superpowers.

Do you have superpowers."

Just the seal if that counts, and the Crown is not authorized to know except Gorthoklek.

Wait, why ask that, why do they want to know if she has superpowers, what?

(As the above thought is not about Erecura's gardens, it's also readable.)

"You don't need to know," Elias says, and then starts off on the unpleasant task of doing the debrief for real and then the even more unpleasant task of asking Gorthoklek what answer he should give the Queen about the superpowers question.

Asmodia's answers all match the answers she gave before.

Gorthoklek has no idea what this is about, but is uncurious since he is not supposed to be curious.  If it's under seal then whatever's under that seal and the seal itself are things you pretend don't exist, if you are a mortal unfortunate enough to know about them.  If Asmodia has no superpowers not under the seal, then the answer the Crown gets is no.  Obviously.  Gorthoklek doesn't add that it was a stupid question; mortals are stupid.

It is shortly after all this that Carissa knocks on the door of the room Asmodia shares with Pilar.

"Hi!" fuck "I mean - what can I do for you?"

"Is Asmodia here?"

"Palace gave her the room to the right of mine," Pilar reports concisely and professionally like a sane person.  "Looked distracted more than traumatized, just sort of nodded at me and went in, didn't need cake."  Aaaarrghh.

- wait, is she wearing Keltham's shirt?  Good for her!  Thiiiiiiiiis does NOT call for a party, good she caught it that time.

"Mmm."

She knocks on the correct door this time.

Asmodia opens her door -

SHIT.

"I have a useless message for you from a devil who's dead now, do you want that at all," Asmodia says, trying to control the sudden hammering of her heart.  She just got to this nice private room, could she not have had three consecutive minutes to herself before this.

".....well that must have been an interesting day. I'll...pass, if the message might cause me to also end up dead. How was Hell.'