"What am I to do, Most High?  I fear these 'tropes' are beyond me."

"If another 'trope' threatens?  Treat it the same as you would a meddling god with unshattered prophecy, which is to say, refer it all to me, because it is beyond you."

"As for your cultivation of Sevar?  Continue it the same as before.  We already wished Sevar to distance herself from Irori."

Rugatonn emerges from her conference with Subirachs, neither of them particularly readable as to what might have been said there.

"Sevar," she states.  "You have an appointment with a ley-line, a sacrifice, and a 5th-circle scroll.  Let us be swift about this, for Keltham may not expect this matter to take long."

" - yes, Grand High Priestess." She didn't actually know you could get a caster level boost from a sacrifice. Permanent Detect Magic, here she comes. 

(Is it a human sacrifice? Probably it is unAsmodean to care if it's a human sacrifice.)

Aspexia Rugatonn takes Sevar by the arm and Teleports, of which she has her means.

It's not a person, it's a tame warg, clearly someone's prized attack animal. Carissa feels a rush of relief about that which she absolutely merits punishment for, and accepts the sacramental blade enchanted with a beautiful spell she has no time to look at, and gets to work on enhancing her caster level sufficiently to give herself Permanent Detect Magic from a scroll.

Keltham is pacing inside the fortress, back of the entranceway/exit that Carissa used; it is not considered safe for him to go any further, let alone outside, he would not be sufficiently scry-warded.

...if Carissa comes back and everything is fine then he can probably give up on terror of random tropes, right.  The conflict didn't happen with the Queen, Asmodia does not seem to have superpowers.  If Carissa is no kind of hidden cleric and her afterlife arrangements go fine and their romantic options contract proves not to be a setup for some huge awfulness, he'll be able to say that all this trope business is more the sort of thing he ends up calling afterwards than the sort of thing he can call in advance, and he should be less afraid the next time he thinks up an advance prediction of something terrible.  Isidre won't be a hidden criminal mastermind either.

It takes what feels like far too long but then his Carissa returns to him, looking radiantly pleased with herself. "It worked fine," she says. "I got Arcane Sight and a lot of spellsilver. And the Grand High Priestess came by and poked me personally and said that she believes as strongly as mortals can believe things that I'm not a hidden cleric of Zon-Kuthon, which, I wasn't very worried, but I know you were."

"Or a hidden cleric of anything else?  Or a stealthed cleric that is not hidden in the sense of now being known to her?  Also what cantrip am I casting behind my back."

"Message. Technically Arcane Sight only lets me see that it's a cantrip and a transmutation, to see the actual spell structure I need to see you cast it. But I know it's Message since that's the transmutation you hung today. She said that I was no hidden cleric, and I didn't press her on whether that technically covered all possible kinds of clerics who might be in various possible states of knowing and known, but also I don't think the devil could have bought my soul, had a god already claimed it."

"And the devil actually did buy your soul, which you haven't actually said in those words, and there did not happen any incredible shenanigan behind the scenes while I was not there which explains for perfectly logical reasons why Governance would have to lie about whether you'd sold your soul successfully and fake the Arcane Sight thing."

(Keltham will now roll his Sense Motive against Carissa's Bluff, with a +5 bonus for surprising her with this startling insight.)

"The devil actually did buy my soul, in what I think was a completely normal devil-buying-soul transaction, aside from the part where he thought it was weird the Grand High Priestess was hovering looking totally un-awestruck. The devil gave me Arcane Sight and a lot of spellsilver in exchange for my soul, which he bought."

(Bluff: 34).

"Part of me is having trouble believing it, because, if I believe that, it means I'm basically safe from what my brain predicts are horrible things that will happen to me because of tropes, like the options contract being sweet and romantic and thereby implying that something horrible will happen to our relationship as a result, and my actually being safe like that seems too good to be true in a world where Cayden Cailean is suddenly doing my snacks catering."

(Keltham's Sense Motive: lol + 5)

"I totally predict many horrible things will happen between here and Civilization. But - I'm kind of planning to feel safe where I can along the way."

"That's extremely sensible."

"My brain, which apparently is very reluctant about believing in that safety business, because it thinks that's going to get me killed or worse, has instead entered a weird state where part of it has decided that this of all things is the proof that everything around me is an elaborate lie.  I'm probably not going to be in a very sexual mood until it recovers.  I would still like to go to our bedroom and cuddle with the person that part of my brain thinks is a cleric unknown to herself because, you know, the Grand High Priestess would totally have had some incredibly logical reason for lying to her about that or doing the technical truth thing, after they faked the soul sale."

Carissa's internal screaming is quite deafening.

"Well, we can put up a poster, is Carissa a secret cleric, and everyone can place their guesses, and we can see who gets points from who. And we can cuddle."

"Okay, yeah, that actually helps to hear you say, I am a little worried about how much dath ilani being sane relies on them having anything else sane around them, and the thought of having to write down my insanity as a fraction on a poster like I was a tiny kid again is actually very very helpful here."

"Bedroom?"

Snuggly Carissa. 

"You know you don't have to warn me whether you're going to want sex or not, I don't mind not being sure."

Keltham is holding her pretty tightly.

"Not trying to update relationship model right now, too busy trying to convince a - slice through my mind's structure - that you're not going to die in the next hour."

"I can shut this all down if necessary or in any emergency, I am not out of control of myself, it's just, I have a sense it's wiser to wait it out."

" -okay. I'm - sorry you're so scared, even if I don't really understand. I'm here. I'm not going away. Not ever, if you don't want that."

"The thing with Cayden Cailean catering my snacks really really did not flaming help with anything.  It really didn't.  Finding out the way I did didn't help either.  This whole world seems so barely real, like I'm supposed to go to the layer past saying 'I notice that I am confused' and say 'This is not reality' and wake up out of it."

Oh, he's finally having his metaphysical panic attack.  That's also an meta-deconstructed-eroLARP trope.  He always wondered how you would get a realistic sane person to the point of actual metaphysical panic when, like, they knew the math, and now Keltham knows.

"I'm really sorry about that. I feel like it's my fault, because the site manager was telling me things to pass on to you, and I bet he'd have told me that, only I didn't report yesterday."

"Well, you've got to expect some costs and consequences like that when you rent your girlfriend to be surprise kidnapped by the Queen of Cheliax."

His arms tighten more around her.

Small happy squeak. "I'm glad you did. It's okay if you never do anything like it again but - now I know what it's like."

"...hey.  There's - something I want to do - that I don't know if you'd recognize, or understand, and I'm not in shape to explain it properly.  I want to let the part of me that - doesn't believe in any of this - talk to you.  It won't be all of Keltham that's talking and you shouldn't panic about what it says.  If you can't - make that mental separation, between that part of me, and my whole - if part of you will think on some deep level that it was the real Keltham talking - then I shouldn't do it."