Pilar goes to sleep shortly after, reminding herself that it's acceptable for an Asmodean to feel proud.  Even if all of this is a long game by Snack Service to crack her open after deceiving her in Elysium about how difficult she was to crack, even if the +4/+6/+6 headband is for herself and it turns her into a traitor like Asmodia, even if Lord Dispater sealing off her mind from simple Detection was just part of Snack Service's plan -

- Cheliax will survive.  Hell will triumph.  These new candidates are not as flawed as Pilar, unless everything about her curse including the magical feedback sensations are lies.  Asmodeus will have His ilani and His Keepers no matter what.

The next morning, Security may be concerned to hear from Carissa Sevar's quarters a

WHOOP OF UTTERLY UNDIGNIFIED GLEE!!!!!!!!!!!

WAS IT THE BEST USE OF FOUR HOURS OF HER PRECIOUS TIME ABSOLUTELY NOT

 IS IT IMPORTANT AT ALL IN AN OBJECTIVE SENSE NOT REALLY

BUT

CARISSA SEVAR

HUNG A TELEPORT!!!!!!!!!!

Technically many places don't count you as fifth circle until you can prepare a full slate of spells including a fifth circle one, which she cannot, this scaffold is a goddamned mess and the Teleport messily drooped on it is the only thing she'll have prepped today, BUT

- right. She's got her students waiting. The plan for today was a morning lecture about how Keltham broke the Conspiracy, as a useful object lesson Carissa happens to have particularly in-depth information on, and then an afternoon spent preparing the Plan For If Duties Call Carissa Elsewhere so it's less of a shitshow than it was last time.

....she can still fit it all in, more or less.

Gather around, little ilani, and hear the tale of Project Lawful's greatest success and greatest failure, as they are, after all, the same tale. It's a very dramatic one. You'll want to take lots of notes. Some details are elided for confidentiality reasons but not all that many of them; everything Ione knows and everything Keltham knows is known by Cheliax's enemies already, after all.

She skips lunch. She's riding a wave of glee and anyway no longer needs to eat. She spends two hours patiently writing an org structure and plans for various contingencies poking her Teleport on the scaffold and watching it jiggle -

- and then two hours writing up an org structure and contingencies, because it is, actually, important. Pilar is her second-in-command on the ilani project, and should also make judgement calls related to tropes or conduct towards researchers generally. Meritxell is on the ilani project after Pilar; she actually did pick up a fair bit from Keltham's Keeper training, doesn't seem to have broken about it, and is reasonably able to pass it forwards. Carissa's glad they didn't send her after Keltham, though slightly confused about how that call was made. ...possibly there's something more to Meritxell than she's been assuming. Put it on the list of things to think about once she has some time. 

About halfway into writing this document she realizes that the obvious person to assist her in this task is Maillol. And the reason she hasn't called him in for it is that she doesn't want to face the fact she damaged him and now he's worse. 

Well, the nice thing about being a coward is that once you notice you can just stop. She orders Maillol sent in.

The effects of torture, as Carissa Sevar did once observe, are not linear.  Maillol has been tortured by Gorthoklek, but under conditions where he knew Gorthoklek was an expert and would not break him and Maillol only needed to... not endure, he broke immediately, but just, hang around hurting and broken and screaming and not trying to do anything else.

When Carissa Sevar tortured him, it went on and on, and she was not an expert and visibly did not know how to be careful even if she wanted to, and Maillol did not know what she wanted from him, or how long it would go on.  If the Chelish system was throwing him away now, if he was being just broken now as an example the way he'd broken others, not important any more not useful not in the inner ring just one of the little people who get made examples of, if it would end in anything but Hell.

Pain alone can break people, and leave them never what they were; pain and fear will do it a lot faster.

Something walks into Carissa's office, wearing Maillol's face.  It's holding itself together better than the last thing Carissa saw wearing Maillol's face.  It can probably be useful at administrative tasks so long as it doesn't need to show initiative.

It is very terrified of Carissa Sevar.  It spent a long time being terrified of her.

"- please sit down. I'm not going to hurt you."

It will obey, of course.  If anyone asks it whether Carissa Sevar will hurt it, it now knows that the answer to be given is 'No.'

"I'm working on better writeups of - the Project, who's in charge of what, who should be in charge of what if they are indisposed or called away or turn traitor or vanish mysteriously in the dead of night. I - realized that you're the best person for this, you're the one who's been keeping track of it already."

"Yes, Chosen," it says automatically.

Abrogail's notes on torture had suggestions, about this, but mostly they were to only do it in the first place if you didn't really like the person and weren't going to want them to be useful afterwards. 

"I'm not going to hurt you. Not today, not tomorrow, not even if you fuck up at something again, I'm not going to put you in a position where you might."

"Yes, Chosen."  A flicker of trust in Carissa Sevar, that once was -

- but that wasn't real, was it?  She was a thing-that-hurts-you after all.

The thought dies before it can form much of a connected chain.

Possibly if this person were not hurt, a few times sequentially, when he otherwise expected strongly to be hurt, he would start to be able to hear promises again?

"I'm sorry."

"Chosen?" he says.  The parts of him that detect heresy light up, they did not get much use in torment or shattering by it; but very quickly the sequelae run into the horror that is everything about or relating to Carissa Sevar, and that thought goes nowhere.