"Doesn't sound like much of a trope to me.  You've been here since the beginning, Abarco, you know how weird the shit around Project Lawful actually gets, and you know nothing that normal is going to happen out from here."

"We're not in a story. In real life, the side that's richer and has better gear wins, and takes their enemies to pieces." Which he'll get started on, if she doesn't have anything else interesting to say.

"This - is starting to be - not fun for me - and remember what happened - when Tonia was facing - a punishment a lot less severe - than turning her into - a quivering ball?  Or sending her - to Hell?  This is - the wrong move, Abarco - just turn me into a statue - and don't risk Cayden Cailean's cooperation - with the Project."

"I'm doing you a favor, kid. When I get bored you're going straight to Hell, and I promise you, you'll wish you were back here for as long as you can keep on wishing things."

"Even if - the tropes let you do that - you aren't likely to do well from it, Abarco - were you there - the day when Keltham said - that the ones being held prisoner here - and taught Law - were the story's real protagonists - do you really want to get - what villains get - for doing things like this -"

"There's no story. There never was. There's just the real world, and in the real world it's better not to betray your country and your god. I think I'm done with you making annoying noises, now." 

Peranza is, in fact, starting to not have fun here, and to feel scared, and miserable, as Abarco is good at.

The thought occurs to her, then, that it might not take that much more torture before the new Peranza dissolves the way the other ones did, when there's no way out, no thoughts left -

And then -

She decides not to break.

There isn't a reason for it, she just decides not to.

It's something that Keltham told them about early on in their special lessons, the idea that, even if you end up in a place where your internal model predicts that you ought to break, you also have the option of deciding not to.

Pilar Pineda, entirely unknowing about a lot of things, knocks at the door of the temple torture room, irregardless of the several Security posted outside the temple to warn most Project personnel away.

"Pineda here," she calls loudly through the temple door, as Snack Service is instructing her.  "I've got a message from my oracular curse for a high-ranking military officer who's visiting us?  It says Zon-Kuthon's clerics found out two days ago that they've lost their eighth-circle spells.  Nidal is likely though not certain to start planning a major assault including the Black Triune, starting within two to three weeks, and if so they are likely but not certain to initially target the Kintargo wedge of Cheliax's army."

"Also somebody standing near the visiting officer is about to make a serious blunder with respect to good future relations between Keltham and Cheliax, which will not serve Asmodeus's interests on net, and my curse is offering to just directly tell him whatever they wanted to find out that way."

"If either of them want to talk to my curse about it, they can talk in a language that isn't Taldane or Infernal.  It says I'm not cleared to enter this room or overhear either conversation myself."

"Also at least one of them needs to take this cookie, it retroactively doesn't work without a cookie being involved."

Gorthoklek does react fast enough to throw up a Silence around Peranza before Pilar's hand even touches the door.

It's still incredibly disturbing that he did not spot Pilar there until then.

An oracle's curse should not have this much power.  That was evident in several ways and earlier, but even so.  There's having anomalously high power, and then there's having enough power to obscure yourself from a pit fiend.  Even now he cannot measure the exact formidability of what lies beyond the temple door, and that is not something which should be true at all.

- Abarco Sleeps Peranza, not anywhere near as fast as the Silence but fast enough she shouldn't detect his hesitating in his work on her, and kneels, and thinks his assessment of the situation in case it is of use to Gorthoklek.

Peranza thought that Cayden Cailean might intervene for her. Threatened that Cheliax shouldn't hurt her lest it break their collaboration with Cailean. It seems entirely plausible that this is the whole of Cailean's plan, what He was purchasing with everything else; that the girls would believe, correctly or at least with justification, that Cailean would intervene on their behalf, that they'd recklessly betray Cheliax on that assumption, remembering Tonia finding herself outside the fortress, believing that could be them.

The greatest threat to the project at this time, in his view, is defection. If they can hold onto the girls, they can win everything; if they can't, it will all come crashing down. It does not seem worth it to him to make any concession that makes it easier for the girls to believe Cailean would help them. In fact, if Pilar returns to the fortress un-cursed, and everyone learns that the Project at last broke with Cayden Cailean over whether Peranza should be tortured to death, that seems good for Asmodeus, so good for Asmodeus that it's hard to imagine some benefit of not torturing Peranza beats it. (Though the break with Cailean would be hard to conceal from Keltham; Abarco's not aware of the current state of the contingencies for that.)

Gorthoklek likewise replies by Telepathy.  "Speak your thoughts to this curse, then, in some tongue Pineda would not know.  Let us see how it debates you."

This situation is beyond anomalous and Gorthoklek is unsure of the effects of engaging this Cayden-made thing even in verbal combat.  There is something symbolic, and perhaps a warning, in how it stays beyond a threshold separating itself from him.

The information on Nidal is a clear offering, a verifiable one, but it does not seem to be an offering made from a position of weakness.  It announces capabilities previously unseen, and disturbing in their implications, alongside the valuable military information.

- all right, Abarco will stand up and go to the door and speak, in less-than-fluent Kelish (he learned it to read Nexian books, not to speak with powerful entities).

"The traitor anticipated your arrival here. Warned us not to hurt her, lest that invite you to break with Asmodeus. That is a great harm you have done the project, and very profoundly against Asmodeus's interests. Defection is a substantial risk to the project, and any indication that you'll protect defectors from the fate they would face weakens Asmodeus. I think it's likely you're lying, and likely that Asmodeus is best served if we tell you to go away and permit Our church the handling of our traitor."

Snack Service will respond in the same language, as Pilar permits it to speak.

"Actually, the traitor wasn't thinking anything like that at the time!  The report the Security gave you was missing a lot but the basic outline is right.  The traitor didn't think at all about what she was getting herself into by calling out to that god!  She was just doing what one of the characters from one of Keltham's stories would do.  You put her in a situation where Security was reading her mind and ready to act against her.  So she needed something she could do at the speed of thought, and she knew she had to do that as soon as she thought of it.  Her mind didn't have time to think about the consequences at all, let alone how to get out of those!  She hasn't admitted that part to herself because it makes her look reckless instead of courageous, but it's what happened.  The traitor thought of Snack Service afterwards as an argument she could use against Abarco, alongside other arguments like tropes, future Civilization, and if you'd let her keep going she'd have thought of more things.  Afterwards, not before."

"Whether Keltham comes over to your side at the end, or leaves for elsewhere, he'll be incredibly upset with Sevar and Cheliax afterwards if a Chelish officer under Sevar's command severely tortured the traitor!  He considers her something of his because she's working for him, even if they didn't flirt very much."

" - when I'm done, we're going to send her to Hell. You object to that too?"

"Pilar's curse sure does!  It'd be better for relations with Keltham if you statued her out of respect for his interests and his pride.  However, Pilar's curse knows it won't win that argument.  It's not ideal if what Sevar says afterwards is that the senior devil showed up and took the decision and execution out of her hands, but it's definitely better than the event with you torturing her while working for Sevar.  Pilar's curse notes that should have been obvious at the point where Pilar's curse stopped Sevar from giving the death order in the first place."

Indeed, it would not win that argument.  If it is truly correct to refrain from shattering this Peranza, Cayden Cailean may plainly communicate the reasons so to Asmodeus, who reigns supreme in Hell and may intervene there as He wills; there is not even the faintest need to trust this curse's word in that matter.

"So it's fine if she's killed slowly and painfully, and understood that she'll suffer more once she's dead, but not fine if any of that's done by anyone who answers to Sevar?"

"It's all injurious to Asmodeus's interests!  It's least injurious if she gets turned into a statue out of respect for Keltham's pride, or with her judgment on hold until Keltham can negotiate about her.  Things that all independently add to the degree of harm to Asmodeus's interests include torturing her severely, letting the other girls on the Project actually know what happened to their friend, and sending her to Hell.  Pilar in particular shouldn't be allowed to know exactly what happened until a while later, it would come between her and Asmodeus if she found out now."

Elias Abarco is fairly disgusted with anyone whose relationship with Asmodeus would be damaged by the realization His faithful torture traitors. I mean, really. Of course they torture traitors. Taldor's traitors don't die quickly!

"The interrogation was still going productively, in the sense that I was learning things about how the traitor thinks and how she broke. When you interrupted, she was thinking about how this version of herself might be destroyed like the others, and then about how she could decide not to break, if she didn't want to. - which would've been false, everyone who thinks that is wrong eventually. I am interested in learning what I would have learned from continuing the interrogation."

"Snack Service can't see an exact detailed future like that!  If Snack Service had that kind of unshattered prophecy it could've told you exactly when and where Nidal would strike.  Snack Service can answer questions about what happened with the traitor in the past, or about how she worked inside."

"Fine. At what point did the traitor become aware that she was not going to be an Asmodean once she learned dath ilani techniques."

"Deep down, the traitor became aware of that gradually, the first hints being what Keltham was saying to everyone in class that most of them were afraid to answer back about.  Her awareness became stronger around the time Sevar told everyone they'd be safe even if they became heretics, so long as they didn't betray the Project.  The traitor didn't believe Sevar about that deep down, because of the way that Cheliax had treated her all her life until then, and because it was forbidden to disbelieve Sevar so the traitor couldn't really think about whether anything Sevar was saying was true.  Sevar knew that was a problem, but to solve that problem she'd have needed to teach the traitor ilani techniques that Sevar was grasping intuitively but didn't know how to teach herself."

"She was terrified.  She didn't want to become a heretic and die a horrible death and go to Hell and suffer more."

"She was always terrified the whole time.  She never believed she had any of the ways out that Sevar tried to promise her.  Her last thoughts as her old self were about how, even if they promised her Abaddon in exchange for her work, they'd just lie to Sevar about that, because they wouldn't cheat the Count of Hell who'd paid so much for her."

"So the part of her that kept trying to find a way out, broke, and everything Cheliax taught her about how to think, broke, and what was left was how Keltham taught her how to think."

Sevar's an idiot and has no business managing this project. Abarco doesn't say that, obviously, and would prefer not to have thought it; it's still insubordination unless you've been specifically asked for a failure analysis which he hasn't been yet. 

"Why did this happen today instead of a week ago or a week from now."

"Keltham had lectured her a few days earlier on techniques for looking at the things inside yourself that you're not seeing.  He used a technique that dath ilani use on children, and told her to expect that, any time she tried to look away, she'd notice herself looking away."

"Then he told everyone that if somehow they'd managed not to process all that, they should expect that they'd suddenly find themselves unable to stop themselves from seeing it during their next Owl's Wisdom."

"He thought he was mostly joking.  The traitor didn't pick up on that."

"She didn't let herself think about it loudly enough for any Detect Thoughts to pick up how she knew she was going to die, or her thoughts about how even if she begged Sevar to spare her, Sevar would make her do it, because Sevar would want to know how she broke."