WHY IS HER LIFE LIKE THIS.

All right.  Thoughts.

Sevar is correct that, with her soul not sold, she could've suicided to Osirion - something that Aspexia and Abrogail themselves should have thought of.  They must have actually started trusting Carissa Sevar on some level, not to think of that; or simply failed to imagine themselves sufficiently well into Carissa Sevar's place, trying to ravel these problems with INT 24.  It is, in fact, not her or Abrogail's primary stat, neither of them have more than a couple of Wishes on it, and Sevar is now boosted beyond them both.

Aspexia could have maybe nabbed her back with a scroll of Miracle, if no other divinity saw, protected her, though they would have needed to decide to move the project or Sevar's portion of it permanently out of the nonintervention region - though they would have, for that.  But Sevar also had geas earrings in her possession - and as something of an unfired plot device, at that.

Verdict:  Yes, Sevar could have made her way to Osirion, at INT 24, if she acted before anyone read her thoughts.  Gorthoklek, who is smarter than that according to Detect Thoughts, of course failed to warn them because nobody requested Gorthoklek to think about it.

Has Sevar gone fully over to Keltham, if not to Iomedae as such?  Keltham would want the souls of the Project Lawful women who were sold away.  To request the souls of the Security who've read her own mind is obvious smokescreen.

But Keltham wouldn't have Sevar sell herself to that end, would be unutterably furious with her for doing it that way.  This is as blatantly obvious as anything between men and women could be.  Sevar has raveled somewhat of corrigibility; she would not mistake Keltham's will so wildly if she was seeking to return to him as his own possession.

The rest of this - is rather dubiously possible - she shall have to check with Gorthoklek whether the soul-sale system can be gamed in this way, buying the Project Lawful girls back at Hell's huge prices on them, paid in spellsilver as the market previously valued it - the definitions of value would not be written so as to allow people selling spellsilver back and forth among themselves rapidly to game the definitions of the godagreement, there'd be some other definition than the simple sale price, and that definition might lag the current price of rapidly-traded spellsilver in Avistan -

- does Hell even get its budget back, if you buy souls back from them, can you get more of the budget back than Hell originally paid out -

- if it's all, in some sense, a bona fide transaction, if the devils in Hell bid up those souls among themselves honestly and without expectation of the prices being false -

- though, to be sure, Asmodeus would have paid extra in godnegotiations to be allowed to have some small loopholes like that, exploitable by the clever Asmodean for a local benefit rather than a continuing one, not because He expected to gain net advantage over other gods after that payment, it is just the way He would prefer to set up the system -

- Hell will sell out souls if the purpose is Hellish enough, not Good, and Asmodeus benefits in the end - they would be less His property, did He not sometimes sell them - they couldn't have set up soul-backed currency in Cheliax otherwise, you can't turn in currency to the Imperium and pick out any soul you like, obviously, but you could get a soul at bona-fide Dis prices on them -

Eventually she orders Abrogail fetched; they must at the least prod Sevar with what supposedly produced her disloyalty, see what results, see what seduction plan she produces.  And Abrogail is in some sense the expert on Carissa Sevar.  And also Abrogail has seemed wiser in the ways of tropes than Aspexia herself, in some ways, though she reasons very recklessly about them.

Aspexia is not quite deferring this matter to the Crown, but she'd hear the Crown's judgment before making her own.

"I shall have another Modify Memory device brought over, and we shall see whether your thoughts reproduce themselves as you claimed they would, and erase them again if need be," Aspexia tells to Carissa Sevar.  She does not mention that Abrogail Thrune will be doing any of the mindreading.

" - I understand," says Carissa, who is really wishing her future self could have left HER a note or something even if it just said that things were fine and this wasn't a catastrophe or anything.

"You didn't hit on anything from the Dark Tapestry and the world isn't ending," Aspexia adds, because it does occur to her then that this Carissa Sevar knows even less, and she doesn't want Carissa Sevar praying to Asmodeus about any alarming such possibilities.  Many Asmodeans lack a certain basic understanding of what it must be like to be Asmodeus, hearing prayers.

Well, that's good, then.

It isn't 'I'm not going to execute you on the spot' but we can't have everything.

Earlier

Right. Last step. 

IRORI? I KNOW YOU CAN'T ANSWER ME, BUT LISTEN UP. 

I AM PLANNING TO SELL MY SOUL FOR ALL THE PROJECT LAWFUL STUDENT SOULS AND A LOT OF WISHES AND A VERY FANCY HEADBAND SO I CAN OVERTHROW ASMODEUS AND TAKE HIS PLACE AND DO HIS JOB BETTER THAN HIM. 

PLEASE DON'T GET IN MY WAY. 

Is Irori watching?

Well, let's put it this way.

She didn't need to shout.

If you were gazing down on a night sky from far away, and one of the stars suddenly lit up like an UNUSUALLY BRIGHT SUPERNOVA, you'd look too.

He's been watching her since her mind blazed up like sunlight.  And all of this searingly bright effort and cunning determination and swift unhesitating thought and unyielding courage would be something Irori was appreciating with LESS MIXED feelings, if not for the part where Carissa Sevar deduced that Keltham was planning to destroy Pharasma's Creation -

- and then took that on as her own personal task and told Irori to stay out of her way.

Irori has never accepted the concept that god's natures are allowed to constrain them absolutely.   It would be more agonizing to Him than to any mortal being, but Irori could put aside everything He is long enough to inform Otolmens of Keltham's intent.

Other gods, perhaps, might accept that final limitation on what They are, to the failing of the world; not Irori.  Gods are creatures of means, not only ends, you say?  They cannot act in outright contradiction to Their domains?  No, says Irori, They could, They just don't try hard enough.

The costs to him wouldn't just be metaphysical strain, it would permanently damage all that He is to those He inspired - if his students knew that, if faced with any really important problem, like the destruction of the multiverse, Irori would be standing above them like a protective parent, ready to take up their task if they failed, even after they told Him to stay out of their way.  Irori certainly wouldn't hide the fact, if it became a fact that was true.

To take Carissa Sevar's task away from her, or even prepare to stand ready behind her, would deal an unhealable wound to that-which-is-Irori-Himself.

And so what?  Protecting all of Creation is a good reason to hurt Himself.  He's not Good and doesn't treasure every soul inside it, but everything Irori does care about happens to be in there.  Irori will not be less hurt if Creation ends.

But Carissa's thoughts have touched on tropes, if not centrally, and Irori has bought enough information from Abadar about Osirian prediction markets on a very confused topic, seen enough Himself about how probability twists around Carissa Sevar and godly actions don't have their god-expected effects, to fear/hope/want-to-accept-in-accordance-with-His-nature that to save the world from Keltham is Carissa Sevar's task and not His.  To fear/hope/want that forces above even Pharasma dictate that success or failure is down to Carissa Sevar alone.

She believes and feels that way, and it blazes out to Irori in a clear light bright enough to shine across a thousand years of distance.

Irori... is not at all sure she's correct.

But the problem is, it creates something like doubt within Him, about the usefulness or counterproductivity of intervening.  It is not even in His nature to secretly resolve to save the multiverse if Carissa Sevar fails, because then it's not really her task, is it?  Irori does not do that sort of thing; and also, that force above Pharasma might not look kindly on it, if this task was meant for Carissa Sevar alone.  He's not sure of any of that, but it's all too possible, He thinks with despair for the world / glorious exultation for Carissa Sevar.

And if Irori is not very very sure, then it really is not in His nature to take one of the brightest stars of cleverness and determination to shine from a dozen watched planets, formed without the slightest note of deference to Irori Himself, aspiring to ascend for reasons that have nothing at all to do with a Vudran social expectation that this is what monks are supposed to do -

- and help her when she told Him to stay out of her problem.

He could destroy the realness of Carissa Sevar's challenge, to save all Pharasma's Creation, if He was sure that was the choice He faced.

He isn't sure.

If Irori was any other god, He would have no choice at all, but to act in accordance with His nature; and though the Master of Masters is not content to accept the ordinary limitations of godhood, He has not risen very far above them yet.  Irori still has an extremely strong tendency to act in accordance with His nature if it's not clear He must do elsewise to prevent utter ruin.

Irori could take Carissa Sevar's great task away from her, or secretly resolve to finish it did she fail, in outright contradiction to His domain, if He was nearly-certain that this alone was the way to save the world.

He's not nearly-certain.

And so Irori will let Carissa Sevar go on about Carissa Sevar's Way, with a great deal more mixed feelings than is usual about such a case.

Right, then. That's everything.

This isn't dying. People get their memories erased all the time.
 

Keltham would say that she should just expect to wake up somewhere else, anyway. 
 

However, Keltham is a dumbass. She loves him, but he's a dumbass.

Doesn't matter. If she's to wake up somewhere else, how about it be somewhere else with Keltham who doesn't hate her, who can be happy.  And lots and lots of spellsilver, why not, while we're wishing for stupid things. And a pet dragon. 

And if this is just all that there is, of this, until she reaches this point in her thoughts again -

Well. She used it well, she thinks. 

The items of Modify Memory are not trivial to bend to their intended use. She's never tried it before. 

It would be terribly tragic, terribly ironic, for all this to be lost because she's not concentrating well enough to wield the sixth-circle spell correctly; and while Asmodia would have had time to activate the item carefully and slowly, and possibly without any specific result in mind, she has a very tight timeframe here, and needs both activations to be exactly correct and line up perfectly; and she needs to not, in the middle with half her memories missing, forget the completion of her task.

She takes the item, then, and tries not to be terrified, not to be miserable, just to hold the plan in her mind and follow it with blazing clarity that can survive the sudden disappearance of its motivating convictions. 

Modify Memory.

Modify Memory.