"That you speak of Keltham, if you're leaving? Much more of Nethys wants that than wants most things. That you leave? Nethys wills that you leave and that you stay and that you explode and that you endure; which of his wills do you find in yourself?"

"I've started to like Keltham, and I genuinely do want to - keep him out of trouble - in a way that I've never wanted to keep anyone else out of trouble before.  If the whole trope thing, works like that, I might come to love him, which is something that I - might want to have, I think, if it's possible to me."

"I want nobody else to ever grow up the way I did, being forced to cast Acid Splash on children so I'd end up damned to Hell.  Helping Keltham, outside of Cheliax, seems like it might work toward that."

"But if my trying to follow Keltham right now, results in my not getting to do that, and then being horribly tortured over the next several days until my curse kicks in and kills me, then I'd rather go with you to your library, yes."

"In that case you should come along, and let Cheliax's self-defeating torture habit fall where it'll weaken them and not where it'll weaken us. For reasons I'll explain once we're offscreen, it doesn't serve much of Nethys, or the Good in you, for you to help Keltham too much, in the second act of his story, and it sounds like you are one of the Iones who'd be very helpful to him. Though he can visit you at the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye, that's fine."

"...right then."

She kisses Keltham goodbye, briefly.  It's not her first kiss, just the first one that means anything.

Keltham does not particularly know if anything is real right now, and does not kiss back.

Ione turns, and walks quickly into Nefreti Clepati's Gate before it can close and leave her in Cheliax.

She isn't crying, either from sadness or from desperate desperate relief, because she's still in public and who knows what happens to you if you show weakness, and also because she isn't weak.

"First sentence on the random page of the first book you'll grab is 'We found ourselves, Desna be praised, in the evergrowth, a verdant swampland in northern Katapesh which our mapmakers had through neglect or ignorance left off their maps,'" Nefreti says to Keltham. 

She can't actually usually do that but you can't just pass up an opportunity to show up Aspexia Rugatonn.

And she, too, departs through the Gate.

Well he's obviously going to go check that, looking through a set of books to fix their titles in mind, picking a number 213, then computing which book is 213 mod that number of books, then opening that book to a random page.

Then he's going to check the page before, and the page after, and flip through other parts of the book, checking against the title he just picked to verify that the title makes sense in context, and that the other titles would not make sense in that context.

"Hey Ordinary Asmodia, if you're still in there, how'd the Conspiracy do that?"

What is she, in fact, supposed to do now?

Did the Most High already know that Nefreti knows everything about the tropes and is leveraging them on purpose for Nethys' goals which she can do because she's practically omniscient. Carissa did not already know that and it's kind of prompting her to need to recalculate a lot of things.

....she thinks that at this time, Keltham having invoked his right to leave, they let him leave, and prepare to declare war on Osirion, or to force a peace that doesn't let Osirion do anything threatening without this knowledge, or - 

(- Carissa kind of assumes that she will, personally, be being punished for this failure and will not have to figure that out, actually. There is some reassurance in that thought; instead of the unrelenting agony of failing at the most important task in the world in front of everyone you respect, there will be only the unrelenting agony of suffering as you deserve for it. And maybe this time she'll get it right, and suffer enough to stop being broken.)

Absent orders, Asmodia will remain silent to Keltham's question.

Right now is a time for Asmodia to be very professional about things.

...Aspexia briefly considers instructing Sevar to pull herself together, that this is not a good look for an Asmodean; but Aspexia is not sure that Sevar can in fact do that.  It's possible that taking away the Crown of Infernal Majesty from Sevar, before she entered the Rope Trick, was an error; she hasn't been at her best since then even with spell-boosts.  Yet Aspexia was not in fact comfortable with leaving the Crown to Keltham's possession within the Rope Trick.  It seemed like a possibly fatal case of underestimating an ilani.

Aspexia broadcasts generally that she is now in command here.  Abrogail is still recovering from her own ordeal -

"No," Abrogail says into the Telepathic Bond.

"Sevar.  Pull yourself the fuck back together.  Your current objective: to increase the chance that Keltham in time returns to us, Lawful Evil, to reclaim what is here, that is truly his and waiting for him."

Carissa knows that her work isn't done, that they were never going to keep Keltham forever and that there would still be lots to do to ensure Cheliax's triumph once he left. She also knows that she is disintegrating, and that she shouldn't be that weak. But all her thoughts claw around inside her head reaching for something she no longer has the capacity to grasp, or else terminate pointlessly in the crystal-clear observation that she lost, that Keltham is leaving, that there are no paths around it now, or else elaborate in cheerful depth on what horrible things will happen to her next. 

Abrogail's voice does not put back together the fragments of her mind, but it does sweep over them like a magnet over scraps of iron, swing them around so they're all pointing in the same direction -

Asmodia should keep bantering with Keltham as normal. 

But telepathic debate is not a free action.  Even as the command gets transmitted, Keltham has turned and headed towards the apparent door of the library.

He'll just keep exiting layers and possibly wake up somewhere else, is what the intuitive part of him is thinking; but he is tracking other possibilities as well.  You can never be sure you're not inside reality, dath ilani stories teach that lesson too.

"Carissa, follow me, don't try to escape, take no other voluntary actions except talking."

It's not impossible they'll just let him leave with her, because, like, is realism much of a thing here?

"I am genuinely unclear on who I'm being ordered not to try escaping from, at this point," says Carissa, as she follows him.

"Me, you're free to escape from anyone or anything else."

"Okay never mind this hurts too much, stop talking."

Keltham exits the 'library'.  What's outside?  Giant vast blank space by any chance?

The other rooms of the temple. There's some sleeping quarters and a kitchen and an altar.

He'll wonder if the tinyness and bareness of architecture here, outside his nice fortress, reflects perfect realism about small-town temples of Nethys; or if this reflects extremely hasty construction, or if they had to strip off all the furnishings because this was a temple of Asmodeus at dawn this morning.

And then keep going, looking for the exit of the temple.

"Can I ask what you're trying to do?"

"Oh, hi there.  Ordinary Asmodia or Conspiracy?"

It hurts, but not as much as talking to Carissa.

"Ordinary Asmodia now contains a contradiction, she's based on - what Keltham knows?  I can't coherently imagine her anymore."