Keltham sticks his head out of the Rope Trick and asks them to send up Carissa, followed by Asmodia one minute later.

"- okay now what's the plan for subduing Carissa."

"Wait until Sevar is far enough in not to fall down, then rip off her headband, it's an artifact headband instead of her usual one.  Losing it should disorient her enough that you can, uh, subdue her, if that story was true, and get the earrings onto her.  And then command her to take no voluntary actions, and then heal her."

A spark of real interest lights in Keltham.  "And then we put the artifact headband on you instead?"

(Getting your hands on the cognitive-enhancement device, even for a few exciting minutes, is not uncommonly a key turning point in dath ilani stories - though with protagonists who have more Carissan and less Kelthamian attitudes towards cognitive enhancement.)

"...too risky," Ione says with great regret in her voice.  "It strikes me as the sort of 'Exception Handling weaponry' that might possibly have safeguards against 'unauthorized users'."

(After a couple of months of Communal Share Language from Keltham, everyone on the Project has started to pick up some phrases in Baseline; and concepts too, of course.  Ione more than most, again of course.)

The spark of interest-hope-curiosity fades.  Is this really worth delaying his primary escape plan?

- maybe it is, if he can haul Carissa with him on his primary escape.  Asmodia - why Asmodia, why is the Conspiracy -

"Ione, why Asmodia?"

"Asmodia is the other one who strikes me as - redeemable is the wrong word, that she doesn't really want to be here - and who I think actually cares about you, which I suspected would matter to you.  Was I wrong?"

"No, that would matter to me, if" it was real "you were right."

A small flow of probability shifts from ConspiracyConspiracy to OrdinaryConspiracy, though not much.  ConspiracyConspiracy he'd expect to try tempting him with keeping Yaisa - or had he actually come to care more about Asmodia, and did they know that?

The sadness hits him like a punch in the gut; with the added Splendour he withstands it more by inner force than by inner fiat.

Here comes Carissa.  Time to play out this next part, he guesses.

And hurt Carissa, not for the sake of their relationship, but for - he's just not going to think about that, or whether he meant anything to her.

"- wow," she says quietly as soon as she sees Keltham's face. " - what - do you want -"

Grab her and haul her in.

Rip off the headband.

- Carissa makes a small horrified sound and then lunges bodily at Ione. She's clumsy; if you had absolutely no context on any of this you might think she was on drugs, or possibly had rabies. 

Without Bull's Strength some of his martial options become more limited, have to be done in particular ways.  Grab Carissa's right arm, bring up his fist in a powerful blow to break her right elbow, to make it harder for her to draw and use her dagger.  Then put Carissa into a chokehold that Security insisted on training Keltham in, as an anti-spellcaster technique.  Were they planning this fake escape that far back?

(...why is he playing along, to this extent... because maybe he can turn it real, or, real enough to take Carissa with him when he actually leaves...)

She doesn't actually fight him, though she does keep trying to maul Ione. 

Somehow that makes it hurt worse.  Some deep part of him doesn't believe in anything that's in words words words, it just sees him beating up Carissa who isn't fighting back.

Dath ilan hopes most of its people don't experience this stress level at any point in their lives.  But always some people do, and when that time comes for them, their ability to continue operating seems like a key figure of merit for whether dath ilan has made its people stronger, or weaker, in the end.

Keltham has been shaped to continue even now; Keltham's society has shaped itself to accomplish that quality of the people within.

"Ione.  Earrings.  Left pocket last time I saw her put them in there."

At some point he's going to find whoever planned out this particular pantomime, and made him do this to Carissa -

- possibly Carissa, now that he thinks about it -

- or were all her lines, everything she was, scripted by that same scriptor -

She'll look for them and not say anything.  Still there?

Still there. She finished them, while they were waiting for Keltham to realize the truth. 

She will attempt to apply the earrings to Sevar... how easy are these earrings to apply to somebody who is (possibly pretending to be) not cooperative?

Well, obviously, they were designed to be possible to put on an uncooperative person should that seem like fun. 

"Equestrian pumpkins.  Take no voluntary action."

Channel healing.

"What's the plan on Asmodia?"

"Several possibilities but the one I was betting on was that you've still got that magic item you used to cancel Sevar's magic, and you brought it along with you into this place along with all of your unbanked money.  Fallback, that Sevar has a spell or item that makes Asmodia safe to take with.  Worst case is killing her and taking along her body so we can resurrect her at the destination."

"If you predicted I had the Curse of Magic Negation item, why did you just make me break Carissa's - because I didn't prep Remove Curse and we need Carissa's magic to Teleport, never mind."