You have comms and no, nobody had any good suggestions for helping with any of that except for everyone to shut up and let you work.

Great. Fantastic. 

And it means that she was correct, that she couldn't have escaped even if she was the kind of idiot who would have tried, and she - reaches for the part of her that knew that, and tries to reward it with less negative twos than the rest of her. You were right, part of Carissa that knows there's no escape. You know the world you live in. Hopefully as I grow the impulse to escape will die but if it doesn't, you look out for Carissa, and know that there's no way out, and be right. 

She clings to Keltham and cries.

Realistically, not much more work is getting done today, at least not by him.

There will probably be some eventual conversations after this, and Keltham will say that Carissa did very well for all of that having been sprung on her so unexpectedly.  If it happens again she does not need to try to talk the speaking part of himself out of anything, does not need to argue with it, not unless there is some true thing that it seems like even that part could hear.  It's Keltham's job to know the reasons why what he's saying isn't true, and he already knows those reasons; what needs to happen is just for the false things to be said.

Perhaps sex will occur.  Keltham probably won't feel like hurting Carissa tonight if so.  This is not something to panic about.  He just strained a part of himself that now very predictably needs to recover.

They should sleep, Keltham says; have some dinner brought to them as a minor favor, eat it, and then sleep.  They will predictably feel better the next morning.  Human minds are like that.

Carissa is annoyed with the Queen for trying to encourage her to have feelings. She really thinks that her life would be easier to handle without them. She's aware that this is ridiculous, and ungrateful, and in a sense as objectively wrong as a thought can possibly be. But having feelings? Really inconvenient! Kind of the worst! It doesn't make her feel more whole and more able to handle the task ahead, it makes her feel overfull. Bloated. Lost. Stupid. Pathetic. 

It feels - maybe wrongly - like this whole deception is hanging on Carissa alone. Keltham's dark fantasy is that this is one of a thousand projects, half-neglected, just-in-case, but it's the real thing, the only thing they've got. She is not a participant in a system whose victory is inevitable. If they succeed it'll be because of her and if they fail it'll be because of her.

(Asmodeus's larger victory is inevitable, though, presumably.)

(But how much of a victory would that even be, if it occurred without fixing how Cheliax trains people and how Hell trains devils, if it held the state of the art still in its current place rather than leveraging it to make everything better..... heretical, almost definitely heretical.)

She is at the point where she'd generally start wishing she was on fire but she's not actually quite wishing that. She doesn't feel quite ready. 

A bunch of thoughts are floating around in her head half-formed, and she needs to get better at thinking them, at not ignoring them, but in Keltham's arms it's like it's hard to access the Carissa who demanded three Wishes of a devil. She halfheartedly tries to pin them all down for contemplation later, but even that feels like swimming uphill. Are tropes real? They seem to be making good predictions about Carissa not selling her soul and having some bizarre reason not to tell Keltham. Put a pin in that. Does she know anything that can justify her value to Dis? Not yet, but in a couple months, maybe. Put a pin in that. Is Hell good at what it does? Put a pin in that. What is Cayden Cailean doing. Put a pin in that. Is there a way to prove to Keltham that masochists exist and aren't all faking. Put a pin in that. Is Meritxell a good next partner for Keltham. Pin. Are they succeeding at making Keltham Asmodean or just technically-Evil, and does the latter serve them at all? Pin. The aim of all this is to make Keltham and Cheliax enough alike that when they truly meet, Keltham isn't repelled. Is the way to achieve that changing Keltham or changing Cheliax? Pin. 

It's too much; one of those questions might well be the key to the whole thing, but she doesn't know which one. 

After Keltham has fallen asleep she finds herself lying awake, terrified, arguing in her head with not-real-Keltham whose deepest underlying terror is apparently that she doesn't want to be there with him. It's not a problem she's ever had before. She's not the kind of person who lies awake imagining burning in Hell; probably burning in Hell won't be very fun, but what in the world would she gain by imagining it? 

My lord Asmodeus, who will possess me forever, let me do as You will, or, failing that, do things You expect, so that I may be easily guided, and easily placed where I am needed. Let me be intelligent, if that serves You, and stupid, if that serves You, and a foolish heretic if that serves You, and let me ultimately be corrected in it; I can endure anything if I know that it is temporary. I treasure Your guidance, and am trying to obey it, and if I am failing, and being an idiot, know that I see a fragment of the flaws of mortals and hate it and am glad that You hate it, and that I want to fix it, for You.

She does sleep eventually.

PL-timestamp:  Day 5 / End

Abadar is interested in paying Irori for information about a squirrel who is an unfinished cleric of Irori's. (Yes, that's unambiguously identifying; Abadar and Irori are not doing stupid adversarial trade things, so there is no reason to avoid that.)

Irori would not mind more information about Carissa Sevar, Himself, if anything has come to Abadar's attention about her.

Irori proposes a two-way trade of everything they respectively know that seems relevant, with Abadar not to use any information from Irori to hinder Carissa Sevar along her Way.  If there is an asymmetry in the gains from the traded info, then they shall be reconciled by standard payment scaled-down for their mutual exhaustion (from the Zon-Kuthon war; their divine resources are now both more costly and more valuable to either of them).

Agreed. Abadar knows of this contract with a cleric of His own, and knows from the work of His mortals some only half-translatable mortal things about a Chelish project in the interdicted zone, which Sevar might be running, or maybe a subject of, or which is maybe cover for something Sevar is doing with Abadar's cleric. It might be worthwhile for Abadar's and Irori's respective mortals to compare mortal notes.

Carissa Sevar first came to Irori's attention when she was learning from the anomaly of Otolmens's concern, who is Abadar's cleric also much to Otolmens's concern, and it seemed that Abadar's cleric was speaking of matters that had again concerned Otolmens.  Irori looked within Abadar's cleric at Otolmens's request and found that Abadar's cleric intended no destruction in that moment, but only to speak upon his own Way to others.

It became visible to Irori then, upon a second look about, that Carissa Sevar had set a first foot along her Way, an unusually determined and promising Way for all that it is barely begun; Carissa Sevar has learned from the anomaly something of what it means to be a god, which is not simply about touching a Starstone or gaining power over the world or encyclopedic knowledge or some vague concept of 'perfection'.

Irori then bargained with Asmodeus that Carissa Sevar's soul not be bought by Him, and that she not be prevented in leaving Cheliax if her footsteps took her beyond it in time.  Asmodeus may have taken this as a challenge and decided to interpret it as a contest for Carissa Sevar's soul, which, if so, Irori had thought would probably be good for her pathway to epicness and godhood and hopefully beyond.

By some strange course of events this led to Carissa Sevar's eternity standing in peril, at the hands of some powerful creature of Cheliax apparently meaning to transform her into a statue, ward her petrified form, bury her never to be found.  And so Irori marked her, softly enough that neither she nor her tormentor would notice it, so that someday some caster willing to be quested by Him could retrieve her.

A few hours later Irori got an incredibly irate call from Otolmens asking why one of the mortals in Her interdicted zone standing quite close to the anomaly seemed to now be an unfinished cleric of Irori's.  Irori went very completely legible about how much He had absolutely not been planning to causally impact the interdicted zone in any way.  Otolmens is still upset about this and, frankly, Irori can't blame Her.  Otolmens has gone to nearly the greatest possible lengths available to Her to reduce the amount of divine interference around the anomaly, and the clerics and oracles around him are still accumulating.

Irori still has no idea what the heck happened with Carissa Sevar apparently being set to be petrified and buried by some being of great power and Evil, and then her apparently being fine a few hours later.  Even if it had somehow been a false threat, Carissa Sevar's soul does not appear scarred in the way that mortals would usually be scarred by such extreme threat and fear; it was as if the whole event had happened to someone else who was also Carissa Sevar, and so also marked by Him as His cleric.  Memory erasure of the episode?  Maybe she has two personalities and only one of them is scarred now, and she's currently using the other one, and that one doesn't remember?  Irori does not have compelling theories here; nothing He has seen previously happen to observed mortals matches this.  It is like the end of one time's thread was sliced out and spliced with the start of another; one where her soul's health is if anything improved.

He does not know why Abadar's cleric would pay thus for an option on Carissa Sevar's soul, except for the obvious fear that it stands somehow in danger of being bought, despite Irori having bargained with Asmodeus for that not to happen.  There are standard clauses in the compact for which Irori paid Asmodeus whereby Irori Himself could revoke it, but this He cannot be threatened into doing, nor would He do it even at Carissa Sevar's own request if she were being forced into making it.  Irori would of course revoke it if Carissa Sevar prayed to Him and seemed in full sincerity to believe that her Way made that her next step forward, but then in a case like that there is also no reason why Abadar's cleric would need to protect her.  Irori's best guess is that Carissa Sevar falsely believes that there is a prospect of her soul's sale being forced, and Abadar's cleric is seeking to protect her from that.  Even the Asmodeans may not yet know her soul is unbuyable.

With all that said, Irori does not exactly have a merchant group of which Carissa Sevar is an employee, that is monitoring Carissa Sevar and has notes to compare on her.  Nor, in fact, is it particularly evident that Carissa Sevar would need or want any more of Irori's aid, considering how past attempts at that have been working out for Him and her.

That also said, Irori is aware of Abadar's communications difficulties.  Irori can perhaps send forth some mortal willing to receive a vision from Him, to speak to those mortals that Abadar trades with, and say what Irori knows and can make clear.  But this Irori would not do of His own accord, nor does He much expect that His interests will benefit from the quested mortal hearing whatever they may hear in return.  It would come out of Abadar's own intervention budget.

(Which is, for those gods present in the beginning, who are not now too much in disaccord with the way that things are, more generous than any intervention budget ever granted by them to any god that was once human.)

The mortals that Abadar trades with predict a really wide range of outcomes from this whole mess and some of them are quite concerning: see, look at their persistence in predicting more than a ten percent chance of the destruction of the multiverse. If mortals weren't incredibly bad at predictions that would be terrifying and as it stands it is still Abadar's highest concern. 

Abadar is willing to pay for Irori to arrange for those mortals to have more information that would allow their predictions to be better, and should the results turn out to benefit Irori's interests, Irori can reimburse him partially, as usual.

Done, then.

Trading with Abadar is gentle enough, if you are not yourself trying to mess with Him, that it is hardly like trading at all; just having portions of your utility functions mix together like dyes of two different colors, blending to paint some portion of the world in a single shade.

Most gods have worshippers.  Asmodeus has slaves.  Abadar has trade partners.

From the perspective of a monk named Derrina, she follows her own Way... but permitting herself to be steered by Irori often places her in situations where she learns something.  Or, occasionally, somebody else learns something.

She would not presume to call Irori her teacher.  At best He has been to Derrina something like a scrawled old treasure map that she occasionally follows another step.

Derrina is, for the most part, a barehanded martial artist, because that is what resonates the most with her, and most feels to her like she is becoming something better by progressing in it.  Derrina did however once trouble herself to attend a wizard academy, after it had become clear to her that solving intellectual challenges on the level of spellcraft had become the next thing she believed she could not do.  Over the years since, Derrina has made use of that to challenge monsters that might be too much for her fists alone, resorting to spells only when her fists failed her, and items only when her spells failed her.  Now she is fifth-circle and can Teleport, and following her Map's hints has many times taken her to far places where she, or somebody, will learn something of value.

Derrina is, if you bother to ask, a first-circle cleric of Irori.  It is enough for Him to watch her and enough for Him to steer her into learning opportunities, and neither of them desires for her to receive any more aid from Him than that.  Eventually, if her Way proves true, Derrina will pray to Him one final time that He may sever their connection.  Irori had no god when He ascended.

This is the first time that she has received from Irori a request, or any such clear vision at all, but it hardly requires much contemplation for Derrina to agree.  Her relationship with Irori thus far has not been one where she feels that she has accumulated debt to Him; Irori has steered her well, many times, but it is not as if she never advanced His interests on those occasions.  Yet the prospect of having truly served Irori, in some deed He could not do for Himself, is an exciting one; Derrina has many things she might ask of Him, if she had properly earned some reward by her own strength and His true need.

And besides that -

She is not at the point where she could say that she considers Irori to be something of a friend.

But she does want to get there, someday.

It is said that Osirion has no place for women like her and no concept of them.  What of it?  It will be a learning experience.  Perhaps for her, and perhaps for them, but at any rate for somebody.

All that Derrina owns is about herself already, and she already has a Teleport prepared.  It will not take her to Osirion, for there she has not yet been; but it will take her to a city large enough that she can purchase a Teleport from there to Osirion's capital of Sothis.  As soon as she finishes recovering from receiving Irori's vision, Derrina will be ready to be on her Way.

Well.  His Way, this time.

Derrina contemplates this a moment, and decides that if she was too strict about even that, it would be one more needless chain upon herself.  There; she has already learned something.

Her hands draw shapes in air, and she is gone.

PL-timestamp:  Day 6 / Start

The first thing Carissa does in the morning is prepare spells; the second is track down Asmodia, who she'd meant to meet with the previous night to coordinate stories on Hell, before things happened. She should probably expect that things will always happen. Asmodia has her authorized lies, but it felt yesterday like that wasn't quite enough, and the obvious explanation is that it's related to the thing where Asmodia had a message for Carissa from a dead devil.

Which in hindsight maybe she should have asked to hear, or at least flagged as awfully important. 

They meet in the antechamber of the allowed-to-Keltham temple; there's Security at the door.

"What happened in Hell? - not to you, I don't care if you want to relive that or not, but, uh, around you."

Let's see if she can get through this without needing to invoke an authorization she doesn't yet have in hand.

"It seems possible that you would prefer to have this conversation someplace where only the two of us will hear it," Asmodia says.

"Understood." She waves the security out of the room.

"I woke up next to my contract devil.  He finished reading his books and eventually got around to questioning me.  Said that it would be a flaw in the structure of Hell, I forget his exact words, if he wasn't allowed to know anything that I knew, and if that resulted in him being suddenly promoted, so be it, and if somebody destroyed him for being promoted too high, so be it.  I started by giving him the broad outline, Keltham, what Keltham knows, what the knowledge might mean, Nethys giving Ione book powers, Pilar being made Cayden Cailean's oracle, Carissa Sevar is sleeping with the Queen."

"He didn't seem to notice any of that as important until I got to the part about Carissa Sevar, at which point he stopped in the middle of what he was doing and said:  Carissa Sevar?  Tell me more."

Asmodia will pause here, in case anybody happens to want to say something about that.

"I'm popular in Dis," Carissa says blandly. 

"He set me to writing down everything I remembered about our project, and then set me to copying spell diagrams, and then walked me through Dis to a place I'd rather not talk about and left me there.  Before he saw me off, he said, I memorized it:  Tell Carissa Sevar that you are, of course, for sale at the right price, and to look up Ahuvir Dulzomaud, who holds your soul."

Wait, what?

Is this about - 

- the stupid thing she said to Abarco in the first moments of her new life, half on reflex, just trying not to undershoot - can I have the other girls' souls -

"I'm not that rich yet, obviously, but if I think everyone else in Hell is doing it wrong then I'll have to get everyone myself and do it right, I guess.

And then - he got killed? How?"

"Two hours or so after he left me, I felt a sensation that I was told was the feeling of my contract devil dying and my soul going to whoever had the next rights for it."

"I was not informed of anything else.  The only guesses I had, were that knowledge of our project promoted him above his place and led to his destruction, or that he'd been destroyed for trying to pester you with offers."

Security advisory to Sevar:  Asmodia's thoughts are too sparse.  She is trying not to think of something where I can hear it, and she is succeeding.