She'll obey!  Suppressing the huge smile on her face when she shoves the borrowed books out of the bathroom door, just in case Keltham is peeking!

This is going to be so great and she will absolutely do everything she's ordered enthusiastically and with maximum cooperative competence while it all goes down in flames.

"Thanks, Ione!  Owe you one!"

Keltham will now rip one page apiece out of each of the borrowed library books - overriding the flinch any dath ilani would feel, at doing such a thing, it's been represented to him that changes to Ione-borrowed books don't damage the originals - and cast Comprehend Languages, while he reads those five pages.  Afterwards, he'll tuck those five pages into a relatively protected interior jacket-shirt pocket.

Keltham's thoughts indicate that he's doing this to be able to verify that it's the same five pages later, when he casts Tongues and does - something that's going to take him a while - possibly something about how the meanings of different words relate to each other?

She's not seeing it at all, and prays to Pharasma that this means Keltham is checking the reality of something they did not fake.

...she admits fault in having not foreseen this line of possibility, having not tried to produce an extensively Law-trained mathematical-adept Security who could cast their emergency Heightened Detect Thoughts and successfully understand what Keltham was thinking.

- something about how the meanings of different words relate to each other - something that'd be hard to fake -

Baseline is invented but Golarion languages borrow words from each other? No, that's not the right kind of thing. Good places ought to have systematically different languages from fake-Evil from real-Evil? Baseline seems to work like that, with the most important words shorter, but no Golarion language does because none of them were deliberately engineered - what would she even learn, if she suddenly could read Kelish -

Security with Kelish who can cast Share Language from scroll: exists

Now Carissa speaks Kelish. What does that even give her. Can she say 'my insane idiot boyfriend who's going to ruin everything' - yes, she can. What about 'my Queen' - nothing's discernably very different about saying that. What about 'we're all going to die in horrible agony'. The word lengths don't seem particularly different. 

She hopes he's just checking if the languages have the right sort of shared language history but somehow she doubts it.

The vast Things watching all this from orthogonal angles to ultimate reality are talking so fast among themselves that Nethys is finding it hard to keep up with their nearly incomprehensible Thoughts; they are - possibly speculating on what Keltham could try next to pierce the veil, given what he already knows?

Keltham's clearly visible Security detail requests instructions about how he's supposed to be reacting to this whole business with Ione Sala.  He doesn't think his alterSelf is particularly alarmed yet, Keltham is an odd person and this doesn't seem out-of-character for him, but he requests confirmation on that, these are unusual circumstances.

Yep that's correct. After he does another odd thing Security can inquiry as to whether Keltham wants additional, or alternately no, Security while he's running around doing things but not yet.

Keltham heads to store his mutilated books in his bedroom.

Keltham's thoughts indicate that he was planning to maybe get a bite of breakfast before his next step, but the bump in mindreading!Conspiracy / alerted!Conspiracy from Ione not being present at her usual place in the library has changed his mind.

He's currently heading to Maillol to make some inconvenient and embarrassing demands.  Cheliax is diverting serious national energy to mining spellsilver, and Keltham needs to just get over his sense of embarrassment about asking Cheliax to burn Teleports or scrolls on reassuring him in weird ways.

...he's also trying not to think about specifics, and apparently internal thought control is something dath ilani are trained in.  Keltham doesn't think like somebody who has actual training in resisting Detect Thoughts, and is probably going to think of what specifically he's planning in like another minute or two, but he didn't think of it immediately.

And she's here, already being updated on the situation by Security.

She can't originate plans, can't suggest plans, she can say things she thinks she sees but that's the limit of what the Most High thinks she's allowed to do without becoming too much of a primary opposed force to Keltham.

That doesn't sound like a very winnable game for Cheliax, and while they're probably going to lose, here, Queen Abrogail II of Cheliax can try to make it a little more dramatically satisfying if Carissa Sevar wins this, a little more of a fallen-flat buildup if she loses.

There's only one obvious correct next move in this game, then.  She should've seen it before now, but there are some thoughts painful enough that even to her they do not come easily to mind.

It's a risk to her throne itself, and you don't want to take too many of those over the course of your entire career as a Queen.  You could say, the length of your career is delimited by how many risks like these you take.

Abrogail Thrune II is not, actually, a coward.

It's going to hurt like the flames of deeper Hell.

She's not, actually, weak.

"Aspexia.  If I do something that risks my life and throne, in pure service to Asmodeus and Cheliax, in this moment, will you protect me and my reign even with your own life, until this emergency is done and the risk to me is over?"

"Yes."

Abrogail Thrune II storms into the breakfast hall of Project Lawful.

- okay turns out Carissa does still feel terrified out of her bones around Abrogail, if Abrogail's in the mood to be scary.

She does not kneel until she gets confirmation that Keltham's definitely not headed this direction, which thankfully doesn't take very long because her legs are threatening to override this decision and give out.

A perfectly normal distribution of students are in the breakfast room. They also kneel.

Aspexia arrives only a moment after.

"Carissa.  Win this trial and become a Para-duchess this very night, later Duchess of southwestern Nidal after we conquer that land."

"Aspexia can give any orders in this Fortress and in this emergency that I might have myself, I do not know how useful I will be, after this."

"May Asmodeus witness your day of glory even if He cannot help you in it."

She pulls off Carissa's +4 headband with her left hand, and with her right hand, takes the Crown of Infernal Majesty from her own head and places it on Carissa Sevar's.

She does not collapse.  Abrogail was not weak before she took the throne.

What's left of Abrogail turns without another word and leaves the hall, escorted by Aspexia.  She is being a distraction, and cannot be much of an actual help for a while and maybe not at all.

- oh. 

Oh. 

She's not using this to the best of its potential, she can feel that now, it's the kind of mind that you need to grow new habits for, she can see farther and she can direct her mind better and she's using only the barest fraction of that, if she sets herself only to being Carissa faster.

Well, she can't just use her miraculously enhanced mind to think 'oh' over and over, that's a waste of it, and she also should not use it to be concerned for Abrogail, Abrogail eventually reading her thought-transcripts will be annoyed with her. Instead she needs to use it to outthink Keltham and stop everything from being lost. 

- how good at spellcraft do you have to be to make one of these.

Not the time. 

What's he going to ask Maillol for?

The obvious things are things that are not too inconvenient for alter!Cheliax to get, but are deeply inconvenient for true!Cheliax, like the books. What else is in that category - people to talk to. That whole category of request she feels confident they can handle, actually, with glibness pins and impersonators.

People to do a Sending to. Sending takes ten minutes but that's all building the spell, picking the destination doesn't have to be done until the end. They blocked Sending into and out of the fortress, they told him that they'd done so and they should probably tell him also that many important people do the same thing to avoid random unsolicited Sendings, even though they'll lose a 2 for that.

Financial and tax records - they'll just have to send him real records and pray it takes him longer than one day to figure them out. They can petrify him once he sleeps. 

Books about theology and Asmodeanism. They have worked up some fakes specifically on that topic; he might ask for them in other languages, though, or ask for ones with specific traits that'd exist in the real world but that they wouldn't happen to have included in their manufactured ones. 

- oh, there's an idea for what he might've been doing with the books he destroyed, not a sure thing but a thing she'd do in his situation - there'd be math, for without memorizing or even reading a whole text being able to be sure if it was changed around on you so long as the person changing it around didn't know what you'd be checking. Something like 'counting all the Es' except faster.

An antimagic field, into which he can demand everyone step after having verified its properties as an antimagic field. Has Keltham run across the concept of antimagic fields? She doesn't know. 

A walking tour of Ostenso where he can accost random citizens with questions. They have the capacity to handle that, she thinks, between telepathically giving people cues and Dominating them. 

Something he can scry - some place in Hell he can scry, maybe - they could just give him parts of Axis instead - 

Verification of the Nidal war, she is setting that whole category aside because they're not lying about the Nidal war. Verification of Zon-Kuthon-related topics, same.  

"Are you, at any point, going to bother to cast the obvious enhancement spells on yourself for at least +4 boosts, or have Security here do so?"

You could almost think Abrogail's voice was strong, if you had many fewer ranks in reading-skills than does Aspexia Rugatonn.

"It is genuinely amazing how little sense of drama you have, Aspexia."

"Sevar," says Elias Abarco, "turn off the Crown of Infernal Majesty's spell resistance and immunity to mind-affecting magic."

"Try harder to avoid sounding like you're giving me orders, Abarco," says Carissa, but does that, because he's obviously right. There is absolutely no chance that anyone will let her have the Crown of Infernal Majesty during this operation while not even mindreading her to make sure she's not secretly trying to help Keltham win. 

It's an effortless mental action. She wants a headband like this. She never wants to take it off though obviously she'll do so the second the crisis is over. 

Is there also a mental action to make it look like her normal headband - yes. 

Carissa will burn in the fires of Hell for as many centuries as it takes to become capable of forging magic items like these. 

"Maillol.  I'm sorry, and apologize for how unannounced this is all going to be.  But with the nation of Cheliax investing a significant fraction of domestic product into scaling up the Project, I think the point has come where it's silly for me to not ask for some things that are expensive and inconvenient and will enable higher Project output from myself."

"Most of those are non-urgent and can be negotiated sensibly and with due notice.  The reason for this abrupt set of requests is that I have been kind of stuck in this Fortress.  I now want to take a set of measures whose point is to test whether Cheliax has been truthful with me about conditions outside it, and the less time hypothetical Conspiracy Cheliax has to prepare for those, the better.  If I ask you for something impossible, that I didn't expect to be impossible, I obviously cannot alter reality to make it be possible for you, but please be creative about thinking of other ways to do it; it costs Ordinary Cheliax its probability when that happens and I didn't expect it to."

"My highest priority request is for as many possible daily newspapers, preferably including newspapers from previous days, in the same language this page is written in," Keltham holds aloft a random page from his shirt, "in whatever country that is, and at least three theology books from that country mentioning multiple gods but at least the gods Asmodeus, Nethys, Cayden Cailean, Zon-Kuthon, Iomedae, Irori, Norgorber, Calistria, and Aroden, and at least five fictional novels preferably from five different genres, bonus if there's a lot of descriptions of interesting magic in them.  I imagine, but am willing to hear otherwise, that this is something you can get done in an hour on an emergency basis.  Happy to hear a cost estimate, which I think I am okay at this point charging to the Project; this is something the Project needs to do in order to gain access to additional knowledge of mine.  Oh, I also need a scroll of Comprehend Languages, preferably divine version, brought back, if at all possible."  The schedule disruption of now worrying about mindreading has also affected Keltham's planning in other ways; this was supposed to be combined with the Tongues project.