"I think Hell is a lot better run than Cheliax," Carissa says dryly. "By the way, can I come when you go ask pointed questions of the site manager, it's not really any of my business but I think it'll be really funny and maybe inspire me to grow up and build Civilization."

"If you think that's safe career-wise."

He frankly did not need this as a Thing to Worry About.

...well, the same logic that says that any of this would be true in the first place, also says that Carissa is the First Girl, and therefore, out of all the girls here, the one who's guaranteed to have a pathway leading to a happy outcome for the two of them.  So if she's a Zon-Kuthon cleric unknown to even herself, it'll be a solvable problem.</optimistic rationalization>

"I don't think they'd have put someone super unprofessional on the project but I won't, like, make faces or anything, and if he has me disciplined for looking like I was having too much fun then we'd have some valuable information!"

"Let's run that experiment then."

"Carissa, what's your favorite spell you've cast, next up spell you're really looking forwards to?"

"I am told this makes me a tedious parody of myself but I really like Fox's Cunning, and I'd be incredibly excited for Dimension Door if I weren't in a Forbiddance. Since I am....Scrying's going to be fun."

Golarion sure does have a lot of spells that seem to have been invented by someone fundamentally opposed to and perhaps offended by the notion of privacy.  "Scrying?  How's that work?"

"It is a fourth circle spell that finds a person and shows you them and their surroundings, which you can also hear. Somewhat restricted - it won't be in your basic book of magic - because you can use it to spy on people, but it's also essential for most military operations, so it's not top secret like effective enchantments are." They considered hiding this one from Keltham but keeping him and them unscryable is a major constraint at this point and because of the one-hour casting time they can manage plenty of deception with it. "I am not gonna use it to creep on my ex, though it did occur to me I could use it to get a remote tour of the world, if we can pay someone to go teleport to and then walk through other countries and be scryable for us while they do it."

"Yeah, it hasn't escaped my notice that I made it to an incredible new world and have, you know, been moving around a number of tightly secured indoor rooms since then.  I mean, not that this is in any way the wrong decision, but if it drags on a few years I might start to feel slightly annoyed."

Keltham's brain, which has apparently been running a separate subthread this whole time, notes that Carissa sure seems to be a lot into pain, and that he currently has only Carissa's word for how normal of a sexuality that is in Cheliax.

Message to Carissa:  I notice you came back with a fancier headband, speaking of Fox's Cunning.  Is that a safe public topic?

Private loan from Aspexia Rugatonn. You can mention it but don't go on about it too much, everyone'll be madly jealous.

Okay, good, that seems very probably safe.

Mostly I was just checking because you said Fox's Cunning was your favorite spell, and I had suspected you might be beyond it now.

Indeed. (She's so happy about it.)

"Meritxell, sorry to interrupt this conversation, I was enjoying it, but my brain is nagging me about something and I need to go talk to High Priestess Jacint Subawhatever, or schedule a time to talk to her, and then hopefully my brain will stop bugging me about it."

"Of course," Meritxell says cheerily enough, but glares at Carissa a tiny bit for interrupting like that.

Keltham goes to have another awful conversation about tropes, which, at least this time, he is doing the virtuous thing and making advance predictions about.

The High Priestess was not especially expecting Suddenly Keltham but her poise is of course perfect.

She's in communication with Security and will be relaying all this to Carissa, of course.

Keltham shall open by inquiring roughly what fraction of attempted afterlife arrangements fail, like, just don't go through for some weird reason.  1 in 10?  1 in 1000?

This is an unpleasant surprise for Carissa too but she'll be on standby to consult.

Ah. Fuck.

....Keltham's going to conclude there's a Suspicious Reason she can't sell her soul. Probably best handling of that is for her to fake selling her soul as soon as possible, rather than for them to lie about how often it fails. (Or really sell it? The order from Asmodeus said 'not this day', maybe it's supposed to be this day instead for some reason.)

She'll answer honestly, then.

Perhaps 1 in 20?  1 in 50?  She is not especially in charge of those arrangements.

Next question.  Out of 100 random women in Cheliax, or random 18 Intelligence wizards if that's importantly different, how much would be into pain to roughly the same degree as Carissa or more?

Also doesn't seem worth lying about; Carissa gave Keltham her previous honest guess.

"Half, perhaps, or a little more than half.  Your Carissa is not so much exceptional in how much pain she enjoys, as in how much pain it takes to push her to her limits, which is a distinguishable aspect of her submission."

Reassuring, but still.  Keltham doesn't know if Jacint has been briefed at all on 'tropes', but Keltham registers to her the prediction, 30% probability (he's updated after more thought) that something will mysteriously go wrong when Carissa tries to make her afterlife arrangement.

And if that happens he would like Cheliax to check her for being a hidden cleric.  Yes, again.  Right away.  This plan is still not going to work, somehow or other, but Keltham doesn't know what else to try at that point.

If her afterlife arrangements get made successfully, then - assuming afterlife arrangements couldn't work with somebody having a split personality one side of which is a Zon-Kuthon plant that the other side doesn't know about - everything he just said can be safely ignored.  Which, on Jacint's priors, should happen 19 times out of 20, or 49 times out of 50.  So really, on the view that seems normal, there shouldn't be much chance of this contingency arising in the first place, right.

All of this should be reported to Keltham as priority interrupt, given either possible outcome.  Carissa being unable to sell her soul is 10 times as likely if that 'trope' is in play, and makes that 'trope' 10 times likelier once observed.

Why is he LIKE this. 

They'll just have to pretend to sell her soul, no way around it. 

...Jacint is in fact feeling somewhat unnerved here, but, as with gods, anything having to do with 'tropes' gets copied to Aspexia Rugatonn, so it's not truly her concern past this point.

Jacint will see to it that Keltham's wishes are thoroughly obeyed.

How does she manage to reply to an ordinary request like that.

(Keltham says this out loud.)