"I've already bargained with his owner to have him tormented for a time and then destroyed, however and whenever he gets to Hell.  It's not cheap, but it can be done.  Isn't it funny how he ran away into a gameboard he imagined in his mind, a gameboard where he imagined that he could ever win against me, and so lost his one and only chance at the mercy he could have received by not betraying me?  Do you think you can laugh at that, Carissa?  Hating a man you hardly met isn't a deep enough hurt to satisfy me; but if you can really laugh along with me at his foolishness in defying me, I'll count that, on a whim."

"No. Because, tomorrow, he'll be alive, and I won't. He can - live his whole life. Go for the Starstone. 's not good enough. Wish I had that foolishness, if that's what it is."

"I wouldn't have buried him as a statue for ever, if he hadn't turned traitor at the end.  Wouldn't have buried you as a statue for ever, if you hadn't turned traitor at the end.  It was only and ever your fear of this place that led you here.  If you have true laughter for that, or true tears, I'll count it while they last."

"oh."

She does cry, then.

"Asmodia - wants to stop existing. so she - gets Hell - and -"

There comes a time, though, when Carissa has run out of new ways to hurt.  Even Abrogail offering to accept the coin of any other deep strong feelings that she's buried, does not rescue her from bankruptcy; no human being can play that game for very long.

Carissa is informed that it's time for her to be a statue now.

"Please don't," she says, not because she expects it could possibly work, but because not saying it won't work either, and not feeling it was boring. To Abrogail. Who is the only thing that matters in the whole world, and isn't that exactly what she wants. 

"I hazard my true oaths warily, dear Carissa, and scribe them all out in advance, so this is not an oath in Asmodeus's name or otherwise, but just a promise."

"I promise that if, as your slow petrification ends, I do truly believe that you have let out all the suffering inside you and held none of it back from me, you will, at the very end, be saved from the very worst fate you fear, and not be a statue for ever."

"I don't think you can, but I promise I'll be fair about judging it."

"I don't hate you so much, sweet Carissa, that I'd rather be certain of destroying you completely, than have a little more fun while you end."

It starts as a tingling in her toes.

"Okay, now I hate you," she says, and it occurs to her, wildly, ridiculously, that Keltham would call that the same kind of error as all your predictions being wrong in the same direction, and Keltham, Keltham, Abrogail has already heard every feeling Carissa is capable of having about Keltham, and she'll never know if he intended this, or not, or didn't care, or might look, someday, when he understands - but maybe he does - 

- and she thought she was kind of out of things to cry about but she's crying again anyway. She hopes Abrogail is pleased. Even though she hates her. Because - no, she doesn't know why, she's too tired to think, she has no idea why she hates Abrogail and hopes she's making Abrogail happy and in fact doesn't really know why, or for how long, there will be anything at all clinging to its place in her head in the rising tide of terror.

Abrogail is inscribing runes into her flesh, with molten metal laced with spellsilver, the sort of work that really will stay in place for a long long long time once those places have petrified.  It hurts, but not much compared to some other things.

"You're allowed to fight back, you know," Abrogail informs Carissa.  Her voice is so soft now, so gentle.  "You're not allowed to win, but you're allowed to fight back, with magic, with your hands when you have no magic left.  It's why your hands are free."

"Is there the slightest reason to think that might change anything at all."

"There is," Abrogail murmurs, not looking up from the lines of fire tracing an absence of eternal damnation into Carissa's skin.  "It's something inside you that school taught you to never let out, against someone like me."

Sure, then, she will try to gouge the Queen of Cheliax's eyes out. May as well be not-damned for every crime in the reach of your arms.

Carissa's hands scrabble uselessly over Abrogail's face.  There's no obvious magic opposing Carissa, it's just that what she's trying doesn't work.  She can't do this any more than Keltham could bite through her lip.

This is objectively not surprising but it's still infuriating. Can she interfere with rune-drawing. 

Not as such, no.

Can she scratch the runes off her own skin.

What do you think.

She stopped being competent at thought some amount of time that she has no guess at ago! She's just trying things!!!

"They say that it's less dignified for a wizard to die with spells still uncast," Abrogail observes.

Ah, yes, she definitely thinks Abrogail's going to let her get away with Gaseous Form, that definitely seems like something Abrogail will let her get away with. 

Spell's stuck!  It's not even being countered, it's more like she can get halfway through casting it but then can't cast it any further.

Abrogail laughs.  It sounds more cheerful than sadistic.

"Apologies, apologies, I just kept wanting that to happen at some point while I was destroying you."

Carissa spits in her face. 

Can she Prestidigitate the runes off.