(Is it heretical to intend to figure out how to make things like this herself?)

"Snack Service says that it paid Lord Dispater for a cosmetic treatment that would make you look safely not as pretty as Abrogail Thrune when she returned from Hell, but as pretty as you could be under that limit, and this devil is also here to administer it."

" - I am confused Snack Service cares about that but I guess it sounds useful for a Keltham seduction plan. Go ahead," she says to the terrifying prettydevil.

If you weren't, like, Carissa Sevar or Pilar Pineda or somebody like that, you'd probably consider this horrifically painful.

It is in fact horrifically painful! But - but this is everything Hell is supposed to be, pain for a purpose, pain that leaves you better off, and there are people who worship her, now, and games she does not understand, and she will not curl up in a ball sobbing she won't she won't she won't

Eventually it stops. She feels numb, maybe just by comparison. Jolts of wholly-imagined pain keep searing up her cheeks. 

"Well," she says to Pilar as soon as her voice won't shake. "Do an illusion so I can see it?"

"I don't have one hung, but -"

Pilar Prestidigitates the air of Hell into a flimsy but straight and functional mirror.  She is still a Project Lawful girl, after all.

"Huh. I actually kind of expect this to have mixed results on Keltham, but it'll be useful for my cult taking off. Most High, is there anything I'm forgetting before we return?"

"If so, it escapes me as well."  Even she is tired, staying wary and watchful in Hell for this long.

"Snack Service authorizes me to say that it traded an information tidbit to Lord Dispater for Him to not offer us a Plane Shift back to Avernus 'and now the timing will be right'.  WHY."

"Right, then, let us depart." It feels wrong to say 'let's get out of here' or something when she's wearing a minor artifact and holding the soul-contracts or option-contracts of thirty different people.

They encounter less trouble, on their way back through the city; perhaps it is Dispater's announcement that Carissa is his favored possession, perhaps it is Snack Service visible instead of hiding, perhaps it is the Infernal artifact sitting on her forehead. They cross an enormous steel bridge that passes over both rivers, made of some soft metal that is red-hot where it's near the lava. Carissa now has permanent Fire Resistance 20, and is unbothered. The lemures sloughing around, miserable pillows of tortured flesh, burn; it smells like cooking meat. 

The bridge offers a good view. There's a beautiful black outdoor amphitheater in which Dis hosts a slave market that puts any on Golarion to shame; the place is carefully architected to allow tens of thousands of people to pass through and hundreds of auctions to run simultaneously, along with room for private showings. The pieces of it can revolve to change the size of the partitioned rooms, to accommodate auctions that attract particular interest. There's a row of skyscrapers with tops like impaling spikes, with people genuinely impaled on them, struggling fruitlessly. 

On one street corner there are recognizable petitioners, their eyes gouged out, their ears cut off, but their form still plainly a human one, not yet reduced or fleshshaped from there; they are washing the streets with acid that burns away at their bare feet as they work.

She's probably just exhausted.

Is all of this good for productivity? Has anyone checked, with a control city where all the punishment happens in secret?

"I cannot seem to read your mind, Pilar."

"I regret my failure to mention it earlier, Most High.  Lord Dispater sealed all my thoughts so that I would not reveal any of His dealings with Snack Service.  I am permitted to say that I did not, myself, witness anything that seemed a betrayal of Asmodeus's interests to pass between them, and Snack Service of course claims that it would never."

Aspexia Rugatonn sighs rather heavily, and says nothing, not having calculated anything it seems especially wise to say.

They reach the platform. The devil that turns the wheel that hauls it does not demand payment. 

Up they go, into the smoky sulfurous skies of Dis, into Avernus. 

On the way up, Aspexia Rugatonn receives a Sending from the Palace.

She's so tired of Snack Service at this point, she can't even be bothered to react emotionally.

Instead she just waits until the moment they're out of Dis, into the first layer of Hell, without delaying until their platform reaches the fortress proper; and then Plane Shifts them all to somewhere within 5-500 miles of Egorian.

355 miles North-Northwest, in the archduchy of Ravounel. This area is forested. 

She doesn't particularly care, they will not be here longer than moments.  "So long as we were not already back, we - that is, Sevar and myself - were summoned to a formal event at the Palace, if our condition permits it.  I replied that we'd think about it.  You, Sevar, are apparently already dressed for it.  It's to begin shortly, and while I doubt the Queen would begrudge you a quarter-hour to recover, I expect she'd also be pleased if you arrived on time, were you in good condition on arrival."  Aspexia Rugatonn taps Sevar with another Lesser Restoration as she speaks.

"I'm not even going to be able to sleep when I'm dead, am I. If it pleases the Queen, we can go now."

Aspexia Rugatonn invokes an item-based Teleport to the designated landing platform, right outside the appropriate area of the Palace's Forbiddance.

Security doesn't recognize this beautiful woman, at first, but the girl with pink hair and the Most High beside her are a sufficient hint for him to put the rumors together.

"Lady Sevar?" he says, awestruck at both her appearance and the magic radiating from the crown she wears.  She looks exactly like the rumors say.