He'll go visible then.

"We can provide full transcripts."

A wash of Dispel Magics, at least a dozen of them - just to be safe - and then a new Tongues, two new Share Languages - Taldane and Osirian - and a Spell Immunity Detect Thoughts.

"Go ahead, Asmodia."  He's halfway numb, mostly planning to review transcripts later for the coherence check.

"This started when I was yanked from Ostenso academy on half an hour's notice and told I was now part of a seduction mission on a visiting human outsider, whom Asmodeus had designated as important in a vision, and who'd expressed interests in having lots of kids, and who was being deceived about the nature of Evil, Asmodeus, and Cheliax.  It was said that you were of high Intelligence and your children might be valuable to Cheliax."

"The topic of whether I wanted to have sex with you was not, I think, one that it occurred to anybody in this process, including myself, might be at all relevant."

"I'd grown up in Cheliax, and I was one of the top students at the academy.  One of the top students who gets to punish the weak students, not one of the poor performers who get punished.  I don't think I was as distressed as Ione was, by having to practice Acid Splash on prisoners and criminals and, yes, occasionally orphans with no other uses except to damn us.  I thought of myself as one of the ambitious ones, who makes something of herself and doesn't just do well in class, even if that meant taking risks.  I've had about as much sex as the average Ostenso student, mostly with people who would have had the power to hurt me otherwise, occasionally in trade for favors, because whether you want anything is not particularly relevant to the game you play to not end up one of the weak students at the bottom."

"We didn't know how often our minds were being read for signs of disloyalty.  I'd guess around once a month officially, but all of us second-circles were trying Detect Thoughts on each other and weaker students all the time."

"Next significant event at the villa - when Ione got oracled and they decided that the rest of us needed to sell our souls to Hell before any other gods touched us - the implicit 'or else die and go to Hell anyways' wasn't said explicitly, but it was pretty obvious -"

Deep breath.  "I tried, the only time in my life, because I thought - it wouldn't matter, after I sold my soul, they let you think more of your own thoughts after that, it's said - I asked any of the Good gods to, protect me, if that was possible, or kill me and take my soul, if they couldn't, because I thought, just once, that maybe - maybe they'd lied to me about everything - about the Good gods being weak, or about my already being damned to Hell -"

"None of the gods of Good came for me."

"The devil who I bargained with told me that I'd been a bad slave.  I was only allowed to sell my soul to them and live, instead of dying and going to Hell anyways, if I could manage to sincerely thank him for giving me that chance."

"I had a bad night, that night, after selling my soul, because of my heresy.  Don't really feel like talking about what Security did to me."

"Everything changed when Nidal attacked."

"I died, and - hold on -"

Message to Pilar:  I need direction from Snack Service on what I'm allowed to say here?

Message:  Snack Service says to be accurately but imprecisely reassuring, password is 'password'.

"She's asking 'Snack Service' for what to say," says the Osirian leader flatly to Keltham. 

((Password is password - the password on the old Forbiddance was 'Erecura'.  Okay then.))

"And Snack Service just now told me to be accurately but imprecisely reassuring."

"I didn't have as bad of a time in Hell as Osirion would expect."

"You should probably not make general updates about Hell from that fact."

"I started to do better at mastering Law than the others.  I got promoted to being the main consistency-checker on the world we were weaving.  The Most High let me borrow her crown, her artifact headband, for two hours, to see if I could figure anything out.  It did send me manic afterwards, but I told Security to light my hand on fire for five rounds and that solved it.  The mania wasn't permanent, that part was an excuse for my getting a +6 Wisdom headband and to try to get you to not use headbands yourself."

"Um, key background facts, we all got Rings of Sustenance, which let us sleep for only two hours per night and still get spells the next day, and also four times during the early days they turned you into a statue overnight so the rest of us would have time to catch up on, sleep, and things.  That's when headband weirdness had time to happen."

"I am in fact asexual.  I ended up as the one who stands back and watches it all.  The tropes are probably real and we've been hiding that from you, the part where I am in fact asexual is my own piece of that, but there sure are others from what I've been told."

"Other stuff happened that got hidden from you, I got turned temporarily into a dragon and got a permanent +1 Intelligence boost from a god, I don't think that part actually matters to our relationship."

"The part that matters is that - you're the only one who's ever held me in bed without - something I didn't want, being impending, after that."

"When we were fighting our last desperate battle to keep you unawares, I - obviously had to do my professional best to keep you, because they'd hurt me, otherwise - but the part that really made me forget, that I secretly wanted you to win, was that I wouldn't get to hold you and be held by you again, if you left."

"I'm not really loyal to Cheliax, and they know that, but they have power over me and they're reading my mind.  I don't think - I'm giving very much away to anyone - when I say that I'd give a lot to get out of this place.  But as it stands, I expect that what happens is I go back to the Project and work on improving spellsilver production and trying to teach Chelish ilani, until... um.  Until you do something that disrupts that status quo.  I expect it will probably not be very long."

"This is the truth, according to you?" Keltham says to the Osirian.  His voice is cracking some.

"Yes. Both in the sense I don't see how they faked it, and in the sense it fits with what we know."

"According to you, was there a godwar between Asmodeus and Zon-Kuthon, eighty-four days ago?"

"....eighty-eight."

Oh, so that's supposedly still true on this layer of reality, then.  Fun.

It doesn't modify Keltham's decision to go with the 'Osirians'.  He's used his best idea for leaving, and staying around in the previous layer of reality that's now been revealed to be full of hypothetical torturegod does not seem particularly wiser.

"Well, if this is reality, I'm not particularly going to leave reality like that, no."

"Any else, Asmodia?"

"I'm -"

"I apparently can't say I'm sorry."

"It was the most fun I ever had and the happiest I've ever been, and I'm sorry that I can't say I'm sorry, but I'm not."

She kisses him, then.  It's not their first kiss, but it's the first kiss from the real Asmodia.

Keltham allows it, though he doesn't kiss back.  It's possible this Asmodia is real and if she's real he doesn't want to hurt her feelings.

And Asmodia steps back.  A piece of her heart is breaking, possibly, but only a small piece, and hopefully only temporarily.

She believes in him.

This will not be forever.

...though it's possibly a bad sign that he didn't ask her if she was leaving anything out.

"Next up!  Meritxell Narbona!"

"Hi Keltham. Uh, I guess Asmodia already gave you the resentful defector account of what growing up in Cheliax was like. I liked it. The whole world's awful, as far as I know; Cheliax is awful on purpose, for a reason, instead of being awful all the time for no reason while everyone pretends otherwise. I lobbied to be allowed to try seducing you, because I wanted to; obviously, no one would've cared if I didn't want to, but I did. I'm not in love with you. I don't think I've ever witnessed a loving relationship in my entire life unless you and Sevar count and that is not exactly something I want to invite into my own life. But I didn't lie to you about wanting you, or about having a good time in your company, and I worked so hard on the shapeshifting in significant part because it was incredible fun and the best sex I've ever had. 

Not that the bar for that is very high, to be clear, but still. 

I am sort of assuming that you're going to spend a while having a horrible time, because of having no idea what the truth is, and I wish that wasn't going to happen, other things equal, though other things are not exactly equal in that I'd rather you be unsure what the truth is than try to destroy my country and my family in a massive war. But, you know, if we took that off the table, I'd wish you could be sure, and I'd still want to hook up."

There are a great many things she isn't saying. She assumes she should go on not saying them.

Cayden Cailean's and Asmodeus's interests are not particularly aligned here, if that's what anyone is asking.

"Well, thanks.  I can't say you were the highest-quality girlfriend I ever had, but you sure were the highest quantity of them."

It's only after Keltham speaks the words that he realizes it's just what he would have said to Meritxell ordinarily.

"Gregoria!"

Meritxell blows Keltham a goodbye kiss, beaming. 

"Honestly I'm not sure what I add to this conversation," Gregoria said. "I could guess. Maybe we're hoping that the more faintly absurd this all seems, the harder Osirion's going to find it to convince Keltham he's out. Maybe we're just doing things at random because Sevar's too busy having a breakdown to come up with a plan. Uh, Keltham, I'm not attracted to you. It's not that I'm asexual; I'm a straight woman who is attracted to men. Just not you. It might be your face or some intangible chemistry thing but I think it's your personality. It seems to me that it was incredibly stupid to make your project of rebuilding Civilization also your project of having lots of kinky sex with admiring employees. Cheliax let you do it because we suck and do horrible things all the time, but you don't even have that excuse."

"Your opinion has been duly noted!  A day ago I'd have said that was too Good for me but now I don't know what any of those words mean and instead I will note that I was trying to have fun while rebuilding the world!  I was attracted to you but only in a fucking way, really, so I'm not sure what you were doing here.  Snack Service?"

"She just felt really strongly about that.  Yaaaisa Castilla!"

"Oh, boy. If you're taking people with you, Keltham, I'd be delighted to come. It's not that I'm not a loyal Asmodean, I'm going to go to Hell when I die so I guess I might as well be a loyal Asmodean about that, it's just that I'm only on the Project to fuck you and I kind of figure something awful is going to happen once I'm useless. I quoted you my true prices, for sex, and not just because that one time you had a massive freakout about suspecting my prices of being wrong. I got paid my true prices so as far as I see it, we're even, except for the potential for an ongoing business relationship, which would be nice.

Once when you were doing an orgasm denial thing and then you got petrified for a day so the Project could catch up on all its lying work, I got myself off, because the extra day was really throwing me off. I figure that was only fair because you weren't paying me for those days, what with how we never told you that those days happened, but if you're mad, you know, fair. If I were you I'd be mad, though not about that specifically. 

I never really tried to explain myself to you, you know, as a person. You never really asked. I'm kind of assuming you don't really want to know, it's not really the point, and it's not really the point on my end either, so I'm not, like, mad about that? But if you want I can ask for a Splendour and try to explain."