Carissa has literally no idea what to do with the assertion that she'd probably just end up somewhere else like Keltham. That....seems false? There was reason for the gods to grab Keltham. Obviously he means something more complicated, but the thing her brain keeps returning is his assertion that if the Abyss was infinite then they'd be demons. And if it's not infinite then it doesn't follow that she'd turn up somewhere?

(It's more that the Abyss can't be infinite while everything else is finite.  The question is not whether you imagine those quantities to be infinite or maybe zero, but just, what are the ratios between them either way; for those ratios in the very final end are all that there ever is.)

"And now I've just realized that our cuddleroom conversation literally went to 'anthropics'.  There are sad jokes about that out of dath ilan."

"Carissa, I'm about to apply the least painful thing in here to you.  Jacint doesn't expect it'll do much, I'm not really second-guessing that, don't get worried about being disappointed, I'm trying the least painful thing first just on grounds of generally good escalation procedures."

"The prohibition against asking me to stop, or asking in words to be let out of these chains, is about to return into effect, if you wanted to say anything before then.  Including perhaps about going to the bathroom."

"Did that while you were talking with the High Priestess." So that's what anthropics is? She feels like she's gotten half a dozen different accounts of what anthropics is and none of them are the same thing. 

All right then.  He's nervous, and hopefully that goes away rather than amplifying to the point of inner screaming that forces him to either stop or as forcibly rearrange himself.

Should he apply one droplet of probably-concentrated-capsaicin on... Carissa's nipple, as is hardly a mucous membrane at all, if he's not using the magical-potion form?  No, that is starting off too weak, even for him.

"Starting now.  Don't control your reactions, don't suppress them either, just let them happen.  Whatever is reality, that's what I want to come into contact with."

One droplet of probably-concentrated-capsaicin, on a more sensitive area than a nipple.

The instruction 'don't control your reactions' is approximately impossible. Everything that Carissa is is the product of a hundred different filters, checking if that's safe, checking if it's allowed. It doesn't actually feel like there's a true answer underneath those layers, just waiting to be freed; it feels like the layers are Carissa, with nothing beneath them at all. 

She'll try, though. She can at least tell that pretending doesn't serve any goals here, that Keltham wants to be touching the fabric of reality and she doesn't have the reach even within herself to fake it. 

Does that look or sound like anything in particular, though?

Not especially? Keltham should give her an easier task like becoming an archdevil and reforming Hell.

That's fine, and he'll tell her so, and thank her for being reality.

Let's skip straight to magical capsaicin, #3, this time applied first to nipple.

What makes a reaction authentic anyway? If you have control over how you experience pain, at least sometimes, as a corrective or a game or an injury to account for in further combat, and you automatically classify it as such, is that inauthentic? But it feels, especially with a headband, with more insight into memory and thought as it occurs in her mind, like the filtering-process is exactly the same as the input-process, like the signals are interpretation all the way down, and there's no reflex to respond in any particular way, only the question of what response is safe -

She did warn Keltham that he was probably going to have to hurt her until she stopped overthinking things. 

She did, and that's okay, and he'll tell her so again.

#3 on the more sensitive area.

Carissa seems to have two categories of reaction: involuntary flinches, and freezing up while she tries to figure out what her reaction would be if it'd had minimal intervention from her brain. Hurting her enough, or unexpectedly, gets involuntary flinches; everything else gets freezing up while she tries to figure out what her reaction would be. She is aware that this is ridiculous but everything else feels like even less what Keltham asked for, and lying is more dangerous than being ridiculous, here.

Flinches and freezing are, in fact, pretty legible to Keltham as the initial real reaction followed by her brain undergoing an internal collision between everything it's trying to automatically do and deliberately not do.

There are ways to try to work past internal collisions like that, if you happen to already be trained in them; you can imagine careful things that might be said in words to the untrained, to try to unravel this.  Carissa being who she is, their relationship being what it is, it seems that he should try to brute-force this and cheat, for it is less effort to brute-force pain than pleasure.

It is easier to do all this and push past his own internal screaming if he can tell himself that he is hurting Carissa for a reason, and reasons like that are hard to come by if you are not able to just make them up.

Keltham takes off his shirt.

"Carissa, I need, for the sake of my own sexuality, to have some idea of what this is actually doing.  Part of me thinks it doesn't do anything.  I'm going to apply one droplet of #3 to my own nipple, with the neutralizer ready to hand.  I am checking that you think this is safe for me.  You also have a temporary exemption until the next time I hurt you, if you want to argue that you should not be in your chains while I do this."

"I think it's safe for you, I'd be shocked if it was incapacitating. You could give me a free hand if you wanted so I could apply the neutralizer if it is incapacitating."

He notes that whatever current ongoing degree of pain she's in doesn't seem to affect her speech, even.

"I agree on being shocked; I'll free your hand anyways, just in case somehow dath ilani turn out to be much relatively weaker to pain than either of us are modeling.  It's not like we've actually checked any observation which substantially constrains that."

He'll lean over to read and remember the command word for her right cuff, which is the side he's sitting near, and then free that part of her.  "Ready if we're both wrong?"

"Mmhmm."

He observes that he feels a little anxious, more about possibly failing to impress Carissa than about anything to do with pain.

Bracing himself to suppress his own reactions, if he can, lest he alarm her; one drop of #3 on his own nipple.

...Keltham once burned himself with a soldering iron.  This is roughly that, but the awful pain of first contact doesn't go away and if anything seems to be slightly worsening.

At least by dath ilani standards of not visibly flinching, he doesn't flinch, nor does he make any sounds.

"Yeah, this would be annoying if it kept up, and it'd be scary if I thought it was doing actual damage in a world with no healing spells, but I'm very much seeing how this is not going to break past any internal jumbles in Carissa Sevar."

Keltham applies the antidote to himself, reattaches Carissa's cuff to the chain, applies antidote to the two Carissa areas he tapped before, Prestidigitates any remaining nonmagical capsaicin to taste like sugar, and goes off to check the basket again.  He's hoping she's not disappointed with dath ilani pain tolerance, but he's definitely not asking her to be impressed.

Carissa does not really have evaluating Keltham as an available action! She is trying to do this properly and is unable to because of how it's impossible, and she's hoping that Keltham will fix that, and if he doesn't then she hopes he has a good time and becomes Evil and helps her fix Hell. It's a plan that doesn't leave a lot of room for being disappointed in Keltham; if he doesn't do what she wants, that's her failure. 

#4 is marked with a note that it does actual damage requiring healing afterwards, which is probably not especially helpful with breaking through Carissa Sevar's resistance, but maybe Keltham wants to do that, or maybe his own theory says it's helpful.

It's a self-heating disc with a single command word; speak once to adhere, then again to switch on heat, then again to switch off and loosen.  It's mostly for cooking food under field conditions, but can also be used to apply steadily escalating pain to a person.

"I'm skipping #4 because I'm guessing it's not escalating fast enough, but this is kinda interesting even if you're a nonmasochistic dath ilani, if you just ended up in a world with magical healing.  It's a self-heating disc that actually does burn whatever it's attached to, and Jacint's note says that to be a Security wizard you need to be able to keep Detect Magic running for 10 minutes with this stuck to your forearm.  I'm definitely going to at least try that at some point, I expect I'll utterly fail to impress but I want to know."

" - I too now want to try that."

"I'm legit surprised you haven't already.  Well, I'm definitely going first, because I am not heading into this with the mindset of trying to beat Carissa Sevar's time on it."

#5, dagger-hilt with an illusionary blade that causes real pain.  There's a command word for producing illusionary wounds and bleeding, which Jacint doesn't particularly recommend that Keltham use; also that part uses up a limited number of charges.  Effects wear off in ten minutes but can't otherwise be canceled except by Dispelling them.

Okay.  This seems like it could be legitimately useful for breaking past Carissa's barriers, on the one hand, especially if he doesn't warn her, and on the other hand, actually using it on Carissa is going to take psyching himself up some.

"I'm not tracked for Security, I've had training on casting in pain but not that specific one. Weapons enchanters mostly cast Haste on our melee combatants and then stay off the front lines."

"Do you know where I'd find a blindfold, in this cuddleroom, it seems like obvious equipment but I'm not seeing one around."  Talking perfectly normally, like he's not about to fake-stab her.  Keltham is feeling like a not-particularly-Law-Abiding Psychopath right now.

(Well.  Actually being a Law-Abiding Psychopath doesn't feel awful, that's sort of the point, but, obvious actual meaning of thought is obvious.)

"There should be one in the closet, along with other safe-for-Keltham stuff."