She could kill herself, like Asmodia, leave a murder mystery, like Asmodia, leave Cheliax confounded and tearing their hair out, count on Osirion to raise her before she even got to trial. Keltham would raise her. Forgive her, no. Ever want to speak to her again, probably not. But raise her, and offer her an Atonement - 

but Asmodia already did that and she wants to do something different the time for being a stupid prideful child is over, or rather, was never.

- the thought of an Atonement is itself somehow sickening. She probably qualifies for one now, what with being so full of blinding grief and horror and regret that even though she'll definitely die if she screams out in misery she's having a hard time not doing it, but an Atonement wouldn't change anything except her alignment. It's not real. The problem with this situation is not that Carissa Sevar, who deserves it as comprehensively as a person can deserve it, will go to Hell.

- a different part of Carissa overrides that line of thought, which does not look productive. If atonement is useless, self-flagellation surely is too. Back to the more useful line of thought that prompted it: she can leave, if she wants, by dying. 

She doesn't want to leave. 

She wants to rip the universe out by the roots and replant it where it was supposed to be growing. Or at least think for another few seconds about whether there's some way to do it. 

The stupid thing is that she could probably have Peranza's soul, if it'd occurred to her a couple of days ago she might want to be able to play for it. She has options on the newer students; Peranza can't be worth that much anymore; she could perhaps have called in the favors to purchase it. She can't now, of course, because someone will look why she wants it, but -

- but she's worth enough, to Cheliax, to have everything she wants, if only they didn't know she was playing for it. 

What kinds of plans can you make, if you're very very smart? Can you make plans that slip right through everyone's precautions, because you're cleverer than them, pulling strings they didn't know were there? Can you make plans that fool even someone who has every reason to suspect you're very intelligent and making a plan that'll fool them?

Is she ready to bet all the Carissae on the answer to that question being 'yes'?

And then the final piece comes to her. 

Keltham's going to destroy the world. 

If I actually didn't care about ethics, he said, I'd let Rovagug out, just as a distraction. 

Dath ilan has its philosophy of - - cleaning up - - unusually ugly bits of Greater Reality -

- and he thinks no one really dies, he thinks they wake up somewhere else, like him, he thinks if they care about all the worlds in which they are annihilated they're making a mistake -

- he won't trade with everyone else because he doesn't want to take their money to annihilate them and everything they've ever cared about. He wants to do it. He just doesn't want to take their money to do it. 

And she is, actually, willing to gamble, every Carissa, for that, for the thing that's at her core as much as she can possibly be said to have one.

Well, she thinks, at the trope-gods, if they're real, I think if I succeed at this it'll be a way cooler story than if I fail. 

250 seconds later

Carissa Sevar finds herself at her desk, with two discarded one-use items of Modify Memory at her side and a detailed packet of notes labelled don't read this just take it to the Most High immediately in her own hand. 

This is worse than a murder mystery, she thinks, after the first few seconds of panicked confusion are past. 

"SECURITY?"

Okay, Security will immediately burst through this door, then.

"I need an urgent Teleport to Egorian and also, if there's anyone who has been spying on my room, if there's some kind of remote surveillance setup, you don't need to tell me about it but someone with knowledge of it needs to come with me on the urgent trip to Egorian, the Most High is going to have questions for them."

There isn't that he knows about, but that's irrelevant; this gets routed to the new 7th-circle commander via Telepathic Bond, stat.

Carissa Sevar will be out of the Forbiddance and on her way to Egorian before 2 minutes have elapsed.

She will spend them staring at her own handwriting and wishing she had gotten some sleep before the next Project Lawful thing had to happen.

Egorian

One might find it satisfying to imagine that Aspexia Rugatonn had thought that Sevar was developing so nicely, that Project Lawful was going back under a firm hand, that everything was going normal and fine on Project Lawful, and then this happened.

She obviously didn't think that.  Aspexia Rugatonn wouldn't have let herself think that even before she'd heard of 'tropes'.

Among the many dark unspeakable facts you learn as the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus is that projects which have had drama in the past, will probably continue to have drama in the future.

Aspexia Rugatonn gave herself 24 hours in the Palace, catching up on administrative matters, promotions and demotions, rewards and punishments, before returning to the front.  24 hours, starting from when Carissa Sevar returned to Project Lawful.

24 hours later, as she departed for Nidal, having heard only good things out of Project Lawful, Aspexia made a private wager with herself about the chances of her being called back by some Project Lawful emergency within another 24 hours, once she was no longer conveniently at the Palace and interruptible.  Has she won or lost this wager?  It doesn't really matter; whoever won, Aspexia Rugatonn loses.

"I'm pulling all of the current Modify Memory items from Project Lawful as soon as I've dealt with whatever madness this is," Rugatonn states in tones of even, calm impending murder.  "The utility to the ilani project, in retrospect, is not worth the massive vulnerability to the tropes created by having them around as potential plot devices.  In the future, Project Lawful will have on staff one person who can use Modify Memory of the 4th-circle spellform, as will be detectable by Detect Magic and reversible by Break Enchantment.  How long has it been since you slept, Sevar?"

"I slept - before my debrief and departure from Egorian, Most High. That would have been about two days ago."

"You look it.  If we are truly fortunate, this packet only contains your mad ravings after you snapped due to sleep deprivation.  What's the last event you allowed yourself to remember?"

"I wasn't succeeding at falling asleep so I decided to cast Owl's Wisdom and get some more work done on thinking about corrigibility."

Now there's the sort of topic somebody might choose if they were trying to distract Aspexia Rugatonn about something.  Fortunately, Project Lawful's current Modify Memory items are not at least the sort that alter memories.

"You are certain you remember that actually happening?  You did not leave yourself a further note saying that it was what happened?"

"No, Most High. I thought to myself I should try to make some progress on it, for its own sake and because it'd be a way of seeing if any of Pilar's new ilani can set themselves apart, but only if I've made progress myself to judge theirs against. And then - nothing." 

"Lovely.  Shut up while I think."

Aspexia Rugatonn weighs the packet in her hands.  She's no ilani, but she's read every Project Lawful transcript and is very, very Wise.

The temptation to tear open the packet and read it immediately is strong.  But there's an obvious thought, here, which is that Sevar went traitor, knew she couldn't pass Detect Thoughts past that point; and that this past Sevar is essaying some gambit intended to get her less-enhanced self out of Cheliax and to Keltham. 

This past Sevar has INT 24, which is noticeably more Cunning than Rugatonn, even if that Sevar remains much less Wise than herself.

Then it may be wiser for Aspexia to do her own thinking at least briefly, before she opens the packet and allows it to poison her interpretations.  Aspexia will make her predictions in advance, decide in advance which theories imply what, as Keltham always emphasized that an ilani should.

If Sevar turned traitor the first time she augmented herself with +6 intelligence and +4 Wisdom - the packet will aim to steer her still-loyal mindwiped self in a way that will reproduce her traitorous realization under conditions where she can escape Cheliax and reach Keltham as soon as she has that realization.  The packet will argue that Sevar mustn't be allowed to have +4 Wisdom again, until she is in some strange unusual situation that places her out of Cheliax's reach, or within Keltham's.

If Sevar is a good Asmodean - then there is here some thought Sevar could not bear, and she honestly wishes herself defended from it.  Perhaps she has actually done the equivalent of seeing through to the Dark Tapestry and the packet will contain a further seal instructing Aspexia to show the contents only to Gorthoklek.  Perhaps it is some more ordinary disloyal thought and Sevar did not wish to die a traitor's death, or lose her place in Cheliax; and her packet will advise as to how her unwitting self is to be reshaped in some ordinary way that prevents a recurrence, in a plan that brings her no closer to Osirion.

At INT 24, Aspexia's own thoughts here will not be beyond a traitorous Sevar's attempted grasp.  Many in Cheliax have tried to think like Aspexia Rugatonn, correctly knowing this for a path to power and fortune if she recognizes them as even beginning to grasp it.  - but this thinking Aspexia has just done, does not draw on that which makes her a 9th-circle of Asmodeus.

A traitorous and clever Sevar, then, will be trying to obscure the distinction between those two cases, and all complication is a sign of her disloyalty.  One who grasps this thought has indeed begun to ravel Aspexia Rugatonn - which may not be beyond Sevar's grasp, it wasn't beyond Asmodia's.

It would be more certain reasoning, if not for tropes.

Aspexia opens the packet, and reads the first page there.

Most High -

Earlier

The base action she has to improve on is fleeing to Osirion and trying to change Keltham's mind even though interacting with her at all has so far made his life only worse and she has no way to fix that, and if that fails reporting him to Otolmens.

It's a pretty bad base action and not trope-satisfying at all so it feels like she ought to be able to improve on it. 

Carissa-as-of-ten-minutes-ago could plausibly have demanded Peranza's soul and gotten it. The problem isn't that it's an expensive ask, it's that she's a heretic and a traitor. Carissa as of ten minutes ago could plausibly have demanded the souls of everyone on Project Lawful -

- also all of the Security, the tropes and Keltham seem to care more about the girls than about Security or Maillol but Carissa doesn't, actually, and if she's going to do it she should do it her way, not just make sure that no one who knew Keltham is worse off for having known him but also that no one who worked under her is worse off for that. 

If Carissa of ten minutes ago could have had that, then Carissa of ten minutes ago is your starting point; she does possess items of Modify Memory, after all. 

The problem is that Aspexia Rugatonn isn't an idiot. She's not as smart as Carissa, she's never seen Carissa at Carissa's smartest, she might underestimate her. But weighing against that is that she'll be on the lookout for something exactly like this, it'll be her first thought when she hears what happened, and Carissa can do only the steering that fits in a letter. 

It should be enough. You can put a lot of steering into a letter, sort of an absurd amount; words are dangerous things. 

And she's very, very good at building a world that's not the one she lives in.