"I think much more the first thing.  I don't actually understand why it's okay to hurt you, I'm just pushing ahead anyways because you said so.  But my sense of - having you - and that depending on being able to inflict pleasure on you -"

"My brain is claiming both that you're obviously correct and also that it has no idea what you could mean by that, which is an odd and embarrassing set of stances to hold simultaneously."

"I am ....referencing arrangements that people want, and that can be good for them, and that I am nearly certain dath ilan doesn't have and wouldn't even understand, and I expect trying to explain will take hours and trip on all our previous confusions about how governments work, but I can try, if you want."

"For now, I should only need to know which final answer you think is right, for how I should - treat you, and feel about you while I'm doing that, in order to have you.  Part of me must almost understand it, or I wouldn't know there was something I wanted.  Maybe you don't need to explain why the answer is correct, just make me understand what the answer is, or the fraction of it that's about me right now."  Frankly, it'd probably help his bewildered sexuality quite a bit if he had the six-hour lecture, or, just imagine, a textbook.  But time is a finite resource.  "You're making progress, Carissa Sevar, I'm less confused than I was an hour earlier.  I just haven't heard enough that my need to inflict pleasure snaps into place as an obvious element of having you."

"Having something means you can do as you like with it. What makes having a person different from having a big wax doll of them is that they experience you doing as you like with them. So it's not very satisfactory to have a person and not have the ability to cause them to have whatever experiences you wish them to; it's like how it also wouldn't be nearly as good if I could turn off or modulate all sensory input I got. You should assume that those things are yours, not mine, to decide, and barriers to you having those things are problems to solve, though not necessarily problems you want to solve tonight."

"That feels like - another small bit of my sexuality just slid into place -"  It's phrased in a worrying way, but Keltham can't put his finger on how else it ought to be phrased instead, and Carissa sure has emphasized that this is what she wants.  His sexuality also seems more cheerful about continuing with sex in the face of 'this is a problem to be solved later' rather than 'this can't be a problem because demanding women be aroused by you is not how sane relationships work'.  "What would you guess I'm supposed to feel while I'm - having you, making you experience what I want you to experience?  It's not infinitely safe to tell me what I should feel, but I'm guessing that it's much safer than giving similar advice to a Chelish man my age; Civilization ran me through a lot of exercises on not feeling something untrue to myself just because somebody primed me in the wrong direction."

"...powerful? That's - why it's interesting at all, right -" she has no idea how tyranny would translate to Baseline and doesn't want to risk it, but this is clearly the thing her tutor possesses and she doesn't, the ability to find Asmodeus here, the dimension along which Keltham can be tempted - except he couldn't learn it from someone else who experiences it, he has to learn it from someone who can look him in the eyes and sincerely tell him that some people are meant to be ruled over, that she would know..."that your wants are law, that the only thing you have to think about is how you'd like things to be -"

Not - quite right, somehow, Keltham thinks.  But it's close enough that he can maybe see what his mind is trying to feel.

"You talked about - giving yourself to me, to see what I made of you - can you say another few words about that."

"There are lots of different kinds of devils. And some of them are painful to become, from a human-shaped start, not the way exercise is painful, the way being whipped is painful, and I've wanted that since I first heard it was an option. I want to bathe in a flame that hurts me but does not damage me, and emerge perfected. I want to suffer and survive and know things about myself from the surviving. I want to let go of all the things I cling to as I try to keep the world under my control, and learn what happens without them. And I want to watch people transformed by power over me, I want to see what they grow into when I am the raw material they get to use for growing. I - know that I will survive anything, Keltham. I think no one in your world has ever really had that. And since I will survive anything I want to endure lots of things. And you, you're already remaking - how I think, what I see, what I want - I want to see what you do with me. I want to learn how I emerge from it."

"That's - the way you feel about this, is too far, from any way my own mind works, for me to understand, I think - though it's helping on some level to know that you have an experience that makes sense to you -"

"You can be damaged even if you can't be annihilated.  Isn't it still a big deal if I manage to screw up on a level that - damages you?  Even if it's only for the rest of your pre-afterlife existence?  I'm sorry, I know on some level that I'm asking questions whose answers from you should already be obvious, that I'm denying the frame and making you repeat yourself, but maybe I need to hear it anyways."

Well, seems like the devil bit went over okay? That was the highest priority, here.

"- so, several things. First, I think you probably actually can't damage me for the rest of my pre-afterlife existence, I recognize I'd be more credible on this front if I didn't apparently have some kind of Worldwound-related trauma but I've been there for six years and I'll be astonished if I have trouble relaxing for a month. And that's, you know, watching my friends eaten by demons in front of me and so on, not getting hurt. Second, I'm worried you're still - reaching too much for a trade frame? Which is maybe my fault, for telling you what I like - I am not trading you 'the right to do whatever you want' for 'hopefully it's a satisfactorily compelling experience for me and if not I'll wish I hadn't made the trade'. I am giving you the right - because I have it, and so I have the right to give it away - to do whatever you'd like. If I wanted a very specific range of things to happen to me I could hire my own damn sex worker. You don't owe me 'me not getting damaged', because you don't owe me anything, and I am not, really, honestly not, trying to sneak in some little things you owe me around the sides. It's - would it work any better to say it's an experiment I am doing with myself, and if the result of that experiment is damage then I'd rather have damage happen, like when you're testing artillery you don't want the test to miraculously come out 'no damage', you want the test to accurately reflect field conditions...

Thirdly, it's common to order someone to tell you, if they think they're past what they can handle. Not because you're obliged to stop, not because you're obliged to care at all, but because you, as the person doing exactly as you please, might like more information to aid you in doing exactly as you please."

That - also doesn't sound quite right - but like it's near the thing that is right?  But he sure isn't going to start rolling his own nonstandard safety protocols at this stage of his ignorance.  "Consider yourself so ordered."

(Six years at the Worldwound.)

Maybe she should actually do it, just so he's reassured that she can. - depends how things go, she decides. Possibly it hasn't even occurred to him that she might not want to tell him. 

What if they stop having this conversation and go back to having sex. Can she achieve that. 

She bows her head and looks up at him. "Yes, Keltham," she says.

He can feel Carissa's words hitting that part of him, that wants to have her not just have sex with her, waking it up again; and Keltham does his best to walk past all the little pleadings in his mind that everything be much better understood before he proceeds further.  Civilization does do its best to give people experience in needing to do things that are not carefully arranged; they have overthought everything far too much to miss such obvious ways they could be making their children weak.

He is already remaking her, so she's told him, with his knowledge, and she is someone who desires to be remade; it at least lets him understand why she might give herself to him at all, it helps him understand how there could be a sensible price and have it be one that he can pay.  No, that's not a frame he can step out of so easily, even after being told to, he does not comprehend yet where he could stand instead.

Keltham does manage not to disclaim out loud that he probably can't remake her with sex yet.  She knows that.  She knows he's only taking his first steps.

She's told him over and over to stop worrying so much about her side of things, to worry about his side of things, what he wants.  And for somebody whose Thing is supposedly Selfishness, it sure is funny how that's such a hard instruction for him to - not even follow, just visualize in correct and plausible detail what it means, how it could be.  There is some unquiescent desire within his mind, something he's supposed to do, to make it okay, for him to only worry about himself afterwards, some reassurance that he needs or procedure to follow, but he does not know what.

He can go on anyway.  Civilization also teaches that art among its others.  Continuation, the first layer of the twenty-second virtue of Perseverance.

Keltham reaches out a hand to touch Carissa's head, brushing a strand of hair away from her face.

(Part of him notes it's strange that she'd have long hair while fighting demons; but he did directly see that aspect, the giant things, right when he showed up, it's not a likely place to catch a deception.  It's not like Carissa said she fought demons by punching them; maybe for magic fighting, hair length doesn't matter -)

He wants to ask if Carissa is ready, but it's the wrong move, a move not about what he wants; she keeps on trying to tell him to focus on his own desires.  Still part of him wants so much to check, to hear a word telling him it's safe to continue -

Try it.  Try it the way she says just once.  If she says he got it horribly wrong, he can undo it.

"Hold still until, I tell you that you can move again," Keltham says, with only a slight break in his voice.

Awwwwww he's trying - and that's the wrong attitude to have entirely -

- there is something important in this. There is something important to Asmodeus, in power and obedience, even the little broken versions of it that humans practice, and it is her job, to help Keltham see it, and that's not cute at all, it's - important, it's part of the path to perfection -

- she watches him, and doesn't move.

Carissa doesn't speak, doesn't move, though her eyes follow him, and it feels correct the same way that hurting her felt correct, that he said what to do and she did it.

(There are so many obvious ways a system like that could go wrong -)

Brain, stop it.  There is something here he needs to learn.

Keltham runs his hands over Carissa, trying to imagine - that she's a good or service he just bought?  It doesn't feel right, any more than imagining her as a doll.  What does it mean to have someone?  To control her experiences?  To do what he wants with her?

Sex alone doesn't feel like - enough, somehow, especially if he can't fuck her.  Oral (the kind of oral that Keltham has ever heard of) can't be satisfyingly forceful in the same way as fucking.  He does, in fact, want to fuck Carissa properly, that is a thing he wants, but he doesn't want to have children tonight.  Well, theoretically he could decide that he trusts in Carissa enough to believe that she'll use contraception, if she says so; but trust decisions are not to be made in heat.

He could hurt her.  But part of Keltham is terrified that if he just pinches Carissa's nipples again, she'll feel bored or unimpressed because that's what he did last time.  No, that's not how she advised him to think; but when that fear-signal doesn't go quiet after a gentle nudge, he deems it unwise to silence it more forcibly than that.  He just needs to think of something else to do besides pinching her again; and if he can't, well then, if she's unimpressed with his creativity, it will be correctly so.

Keltham's roving eyes light on Carissa's armpit hairs.  Civilization has mastered biochemical control of hair; Keltham himself doesn't have hair anywhere he doesn't want to.  Most women of dath ilan do elect to switch off hair in armpits; Civilization tries to avert certain kinds of status-appearance contests that can only have a few winners and many losers, but everyone getting a simple treatment to choose their hair pattern is hardly that.  He does see why a supermajority of Civilization's women would choose that, now.  It doesn't look good on Carissa, in his own decision and choice.

Keltham reaches down, wraps a single long armpit hair around his forefinger and pinches it between his forefinger and thumb, and then rips it out.

Women in Golarion do not shave their body hair.

(That's not entirely true; Golarion is a planet, and has lots and lots of civilizations in it, and in some of them, women rip hair out with tar, and in some of them, concubines are shaved in the baths before being presented to princes, and there's probably some of that even in Cheliax, but Carissa hasn't encountered it.)

It's painful, and surprising, and surprisingly painful, but she's mostly just - confused? Which is fine, when your orders are to hold still; you can be as confused as you'd like while holding still. She isn't sure what Keltham is aiming for. She....has maybe succeeded in teaching Keltham that he doesn't need to tell her what he's aiming for, and he needn't have her in mind for it. Great job, Carissa, let's hope you can handle what you have wrought. 

"I think I'd like you better without armpit hair," Keltham says, in a lower voice than usual for him.  "I am ordering you to tell me if it's valuable in any way to a wizard, or if you have strong negative feelings about that, and then I'll decide what to do about that."

"I feel you should have your girls how you like them. Wizards don't need hair."

His left hand trails gently through her head-hair.  It's not smooth like head-hair tends to be in Civilization (for both men and women), it feels rougher to his hands; but that, he doesn't know how to change at all, without basic research and going an unknown long way up the tech ladder.  Maybe magic and money can do it, if you have those, without it costing time or thinking.

His right hand gathers up more armpit hairs.  "For now," he says softly, "this is as close as I know how to come, to remaking you the way I want, with pain."  He yanks hard.

She feels that inappropriate-to-the-situation burst of emotion, again, fondness and protectiveness and Carissa if you catch feelings every serious person in Cheliax will laugh at you while they put you to death. 

She holds still.

(Stand down, part of his brain that's now obsessively worrying about whether Carissa was damaged at the Worldwound in some way that makes this the exact wrong thing to do to her, and she's not telling him about it because Permanent Cheerfulness.)

Keltham can tell that he's forcing himself to some degree, acting a role like in a LARP and not just acting on his own impulses.  On standard wisdom, he should not do too much of that, especially on his first time doing the thing; doing it without enjoying it will not train his brain well.

You can try a little to enjoy something, though, if you don't try too hard.  Why did he want to hurt Carissa, again?

His thoughts go back to when Carissa propositioned him at lunch today.  He wanted her then - because she was a pretty older woman, who seemed probably more experienced, throwing herself at him in a way that Keltham had never quite experienced before; she seemed like a challenge, and he wanted to rise to her.  From that comes sexual attraction in the way of a challenger, not just wanting to have sex with her, but to - win at sex against her.

And even before he'd quite understood her as somebody who'd spent six years on Worldwound emergency response, watching friends get their mortal bodies eaten by demons, and remaining amazingly unhurt-looking from outside, apparently because that's just the standard here - even before that, he'd noticed that she was successfully navigating the planet of Golarion where nothing made any sense.

From that, comes respect.  From that respect and sexual attraction, the desire to have her.  From that respect also, the appreciation of the value of the gift she gave him by presenting herself to him like this.

Some of the sense of forcing himself fades, the sense of just-acting, as he winds up another fingerful of armpit hair, tenderly, and then yanks it out hard.

And the desire to inflict pain?  He doesn't know, yet, it doesn't make that kind of sense.  Controlling her experiences?  Having her?  Someday knowing how to shape her, like this, through pain - feels like something she wants more than he does, right now, but maybe he'll get it later.

It is resisting analysis into internal parts and internal causes, for now, and that's okay, for now; inflicting pain and pleasure on Carissa Sevar is not-yet-reduced-ly* sexual.

(*)  Baseline does not have any simple phrase that means 'irreducible in the territory and not just a map', only a word that means 'not reduced-in-the-map yet'.

Carissa would really like to react to this in any way! It feels like the sort of thing for which a reaction is warranted, an affectionate one, laying her head in his lap or something. However she is in fact deadly serious about not disobeying orders as long as he doesn't try to order her to tell him the truth about Cheliax or something, and she does not move at all.

Powerful, she said he should feel; that his word was regulation.  His literalness objects to that last part as making any sense as a good thing, regulations are coordination burdens?  But he can guess what she was driving at.

Powerful, he doesn't quite feel; he is too uncertain of himself, now.  She has too much real advantage in this relationship, in a world he doesn't know, surrounded by her own people while he is among strangers.

But there is a way he does feel, is only beginning to feel; a sense of freedom, that he could do anything he wants with this pretty and sexual creature, and not worry about how to pay it back... at least in the short term, he's got to pay her back in one money or another, but he's already given her valuable knowledge so brain would you please stand down about that for now.

He can do anything he wants with this pretty and sexual creature, the alien who gave herself to him, Carissa Sevar.

"I'm going to switch to your other armpit now, to keep it symmetrical along the way, in case I feel like stopping in the middle," Keltham says.  "It's harder to reach that armpit from here.  Move around however you like, just make sure you go on presenting your other armpit to me."

Why is that command the one that's almost instantly making him more erect than before, more turned on...