"Sir, had Asmodia presented any estimated timeline of her research on roads, to establish a point of comparison, I myself would have expected it to be an overestimate of which she could say she was doing well despite all obstacles, and I would have rejected that estimate as having no basis.  Keltham was not wrong about the impossibility of making good project estimates on basic research, he was wrong about the implied possibility of Golarion natives making good estimates on projects far more straightforward than that."

"Fail your save," she says, and casts Detect Thoughts.

The sudden shock of horror that goes through him isn't in words, thoughts in words being suddenly dangerous, but he has no choice but obedience now and obeys.

It's been too long since Ferrer Maillol has expected to need to control his thoughts, since he's been answerable to someone who could read his mind and also he had something to hide.

To almost-fifth-circle Detect Thoughts, there's more information, there, than Carissa will have seen when she was third circle.

- that Maillol himself would have been annoyed with this outcome but accepting of it, if not for the Asmodia part, that you can't reasonably ask people to sustain the kind of perfectly lockstepping performance they had around Keltham once Keltham is gone, Sevar is green and expects too much -

"Tell me more about what can reasonably be expected of a Security team and project staff in Cheliax during wartime."

"On the Worldwound people will pull together temporarily in the middle of battles and blow off steam during their off hours, which has to be managed carefully if you want to prevent long-term damage or losses without" asking people to act like fucking paladins "creating the appearance that you are trying to take from them more than they have, more than they'd expect to be asked on other projects" such that they'd be better off if he had an unfortunate accident involving the complete consumption of his body.

- Sevar is green and has fundamentally unrealistic expectations about how well projects do, even losing Asmodia wouldn't have made his top five embarrassing project disasters if not for the part where Sevar has unrealistic expectations and will flip out about it, they did so well for a whole month of Project fucking Lawful running, this wouldn't seem like such bad news if Sevar hadn't been informed of it all at once -

"I do not think that the only alternative to the Abyssal chaos that's been reigning on this Project is asking people to act like fucking paladins. I see there are whores here now; that's fine. I see there are slaves here now; that's good. Asmodia was being silly, and at the Worldwound would've had to grow up and learn how to keep herself out of trouble she didn't want, like I did. But if this is really and truly the best that can be expected of Chelish people, then she was right to give up on Cheliax, because we are doomed."

"Yes, sir."

- actually Cheliax continues to be even worse than she thinks, and if Osirion wasn't also worse than she thinks and Lastwall worse than she thinks, Cheliax would obviously have lost long ago -

- the strong rule and the weak suffer, it wasn't chaos the Sevar loyalists looked weak and Asmodia made them look weaker with all her talk of Cheliax's interests and not her own power and threat like she thought she was in fucking Lastwall wanted to believe she was in fucking Lastwall -

"I see."

"I have, after all, been taught a valuable lesson about Asmodeanism; I hope you are rewarded in Hell for it. I would like to continue this conversation in a torture chamber."

It does not come as an unpleasant surprise, only an unpleasant fulfillment of expectation, he knew this conversation would not end any other way.  "Yes sir."

- she won't break him Sevar doesn't break people only hurts them to make him stronger all his fault was that he failed to predict something that nobody could've predicted there was no way he could have done better, only incompetence not betrayal, Sevar won't forgive but she'll understand -

and, buried deep enough that at third-circle Carissa wouldn't have seen it at all, flickering enough that without a +6 intelligence headband she'd be unable to interpret it

- considered ordering Abarco to tell Security to tone it down some, but feared the further complications that might result if he was seen to intervene on the 'Crown' side of a supposedly Church-Crown conflict, and he could've tried to manage all that complication plus Subirachs but unholy Asmodeus what a pain in the ass -

- didn't seem worth it because Sevar wasn't as scary as Gorthoklek.

"My present failure analysis," Carissa says very calmly, "is not that my expectations were too high, but that high expectations must be accompanied by correspondingly high motivation. You'd have done something if you anticipated Her Majestrix and the Most High getting involved, because they scare you. But you and Subirachs both figured I'd be angry, when I came back, and that would be fine. And so, if keeping the situation under control required any creativity, any deep-felt desperation, any doing things you didn't happen to want to do, it simply wouldn't happen.

It didn't matter, that Cheliax needs this project to survive this year. That's not the kind of thing that motivates you. It's weak, caring about things like that. It smacks of Good, really. The only Asmodean thing to care about, in the end, is yourself, and that is the reason why Asmodeus must use torture to get anything He wants."

"Yes sir."

- why did she pick NOW to figure that out why why why he's not strong enough not creative enough he didn't want to be here, this is why Sevar's in charge not him, she won't find any better, he was at the Worldwound for being the best Cheliax will be weaker if she breaks him -

At that she feels real, genuine contempt, strong enough it startles her. "What the fuck is your plan for Hell, Maillol? Even if I figure out how to be as scary as Gorthoklek, and I'll try, I won't be as scary as the way you'll spend every day of your existence once you die."

no no no

"Didn't seem like a productive question to consider within Golarion, sir."

- Hell breaks everyone, doesn't matter what their plan is, he'd go to Axis if he could -

There's a sort of sickening momentum to it, not like running right off a cliff, like looking down and realizing you ran off a cliff a long time ago. "Huh," she says, and her voice is steady. "If I wanted to go to Axis I imagine I'd just be a Good person. I can't relate, though. Imagine understanding all of that about human beings and not wanting to burn until it's no longer true of you."

She feels someone attempt to read her own mind. Clumsily; she could kick them out. She doesn't. There are no thoughts, in her, except that she's not a child anymore, and if she needs people to be afraid of her then she'll scare them whatever it takes. 

He can't think of what to say to that; his mind is a blank horror that you'd need Detect Anxieties to read, not Detect Thoughts.

Security will help this old man walk out.

She is only a little late for her planned 2am return to her office. She has her Glibness up; she is blandly unreadable. She sends for Olegario.

Olegario walks in and immediately kneels to the Chosen, feeling mostly heartfelt relief and only a little terror.  He was loyal, he obeyed both orders and discipline.

"You can sit. I'm trying to get an understanding of how the - factions within the project developed."

Olegario will describe it faithfully as it seemed to him; Avaricia began it by stating... any political position at all, essentially, anything that wasn't strict Sevar orthodoxy, and then of course everyone who disagreed with her became Sevar loyalists; some thought it a matter of Church and Crown because almost everybody in Cheliax thinks that Church and Crown are choosable sides (even though it seems to him, Olegario, that Abrogail Thrune and Aspexia Rugatonn are aligned on most matters, and he'd wager that they see themselves as siding with each other against the recalcitrance of Cheliax below them both); he wondered what he would do if Asmodia approached him to seek aid, agonized over that, concluded there was no general answer but to do whatever he thought Sevar would have him do about the particulars; but Asmodia never asked him (and in this she was probably wise, Olegario does not see what could have ended well about that).  He knew that Sevar's interests were being challenged but he did not know how to defend them, without orders from above or even a request from Asmodia below; he is glad that this has ended well for Sevar's supremacy in Project Lawful, he did fear that she would be less dominant than before, upon her return from torment, but he sees that the opposite is true; and he prays that Sevar ascends in Hell and that he becomes greater rather than lesser than he was, when his soul is in her keeping.

It's disappointing, on some level, for it not to have been more than that, more cleverness on Avaricia's part, more deft maneuvering by someone. She'd rather govern a den of vipers than a den of naked mole rats.

But Olegario himself, she is not disappointed in, and she says so. She thinks that he is right, in his assessment of the Queen and the Most High, and she thinks that the Most High would name him a better Asmodean than most, if Carissa presented the question to her, which she does not plan to. 

She has a few more questions, just to fill out her full picture of the timeline, and then tells him that she's acquired another loyal minion hoping that she'll become the Power in Hell that is whispered of these days. He's undergoing Security checks right now but should be here tomorrow, and Olegario can direct him as he sees fit, and kill him if he's useless, though it is her sincere hope he won't be.

Then, Avaricia. 

"Chosen."

"I hope we're both clear on the fact I'd kill you if you weren't something of a bottleneck on our chemistry."

"I like to presume, sir, that if my contributions had been wanting up to this point, I'd have possessed less confidence in my judgement that Asmodia was up to something, and not mentioned it."