....Carissa successfully distracted!

Well then she'll arise out of the bed and begin to clothe herself in the fresh clothes that shall have been laid out for her there, making a needlessly artistic production out of that.

Simultaneously, Abrogail Thrune silently requests an update on any overnight disasters through one of her permanent Telepathic Bonds.

Detect Thoughts, Greater Magic Aura to disguise it, it's almost a single action to her, but with true arcane sight Carissa is still liable to notice the act before the disguise completes.

How is her further-improved creation doing, this morning?

Well right now she's just thinking about how Abrogail is very pretty, the prettiest.... if Keltham is getting accurate intel about Cheliax he could probably trigger that contract provision, by now. Maybe that was her Keltham-seduction plan. 

"I think I came back from Hell fifth-circle. I'm not sure, won't be until I get the spell hung, but - it feels easier, it feels like the magic's moving more naturally -"

Well, maybe Carissa could pass a truth-spell about that if she's deluding herself hard enough.  Abrogail obviously doesn't say it; it seems a good delusion for Carissa to have temporarily.

"So much good news; it makes one to fear the tropes, if nothing at all has gone wrong," Abrogail states.  "Why, who knows what doom you'll find when you return to the Project? - I sent Pilar back ahead of you, obviously."

"How much nonsense could they possibly have gotten up to in - how long has it been, actually -" She doubts that time in Dispater's realm is particularly beholden to time on the Material.

"You came back the evening of the day that you began at dawn."

"Thankfully, I have foreboding news to report that's not about your Project!  This, we may hope, has fulfilled the tropes' need to present us with a disaster after things went so well."

"Our spies say that Keltham has accepted the Kelesh Empire's offer to supply him with spells, items, scrolls.  It was plausibly immediately after he would have learned you were selling your soul."

" - huh. What would my selling my soul even have changed for him -

- I don't understand it but I don't like it. What have they supplied him."

"That's harder to be sure of.  There's a 9th-circle caster of Sarenrae with whom they trade favors; Chelish intelligence thinks she is preparing to travel imminently based on echo effects around Sarenrae's temples, an administrator to replace the priest who'd be temporarily replacing their grand high priestess.  They could supply him with a +6 intelligence headband if he doesn't have one already.  They could possibly supply him a bound genie if he has the Wish diamond for it, which, if we're lucky, Keltham will use only for +1 Intelligence and not for destroying Cheliax."

"If he's gone back on only dealing with Lawful Evil people, it implies some change of plans.  The question is from what to what.  Looking at it from what might be Keltham's own perspective, he has just lost Asmodia followed immediately after by Carissa."

"Do you think I should be preparing to go to him even if I don't know what my original plan was. It does not seem worth taking a chance on his destroying Cheliax."

"I believe you should take a day or two to think, Carissa, with your new crown, before we decide that the tropes have given us no choice but to fly blind into your seduction plan.  But I also think it is your own call, now.  You are relinquished of Irori, and there must come a time when you tell me that you're making the next move of your game and I trust you in it."

- nod. "I'll check in on the Project, then, put it in better shape to potentially manage my extended absence than it was last time, think with the new headband about ilani-making, Keltham seduction, Cayden Cailean, what Nethys does that gives Him almost-prophecy, assembly-lines for Geased Rings of Sustenance - I was thinking, what magic item could we give almost everyone, that'd be too useful to do without -

- and I'll let you know the next move, once I know it."

"Drop me a note if you want to visit Egorian, or Absalom for that matter.  At this point it's going to take a Mind Blank and 8th-circle escort to make sure nobody simply kidnaps you once you're outside a Forbiddance, by means up to and including Wish spells.  We might as well go together if we go.  - disguised, obviously."

Is Abrogail just being - friendly? In a friend way?

No, she's probably misparsing it. 

"I expect if nothing catches fire I will want to visit Absalom in a week or two. It's getting embarrassing never having been. And I imagine we could have some fun. Disguised, of course."

"You don't need to be friends with somebody to enjoy the thought of escorting her through a dangerous-looking part of town, looking weak, and what she'll do to those who offend her."

"Unless you're Pilar Pineda, in which case feelings of friendship are required to power your most effective special abilities.  I asked Aspexia Rugatonn if the Asmodean injunction against pity still applied when the victim was Pilar Pineda having to put up with this, and Aspexia Rugatonn had to think for a round before she said yes."

"I'm pretty convinced at this point that the silliness of Cayden's intervention is meant to distract us from something but this realization has helped not at all with figuring out what we're being distracted from."

"I think He's possibly just that kind of god and doesn't have a choice, but He may yet use His domain of frivolity to distract us so long as He has to do it anyhow."

"...I must be about annexing Nidal, Carissa.  You can linger about my Palace do you wish, if you need an hour's true rest, but for myself I must be about my way."

"Goodbye, then, your Majesty, and good luck. If you miss me, kill some people I'd specifically find annoying, and I'll feel very thought-of."

That's still not a permitted way for proper Asmodeans to relate to each other.

But all things considered within the Carissa Sevar Seduction Plan - to which Abrogail is minister as much as Carissa Sevar was to Keltham - Abrogail isn't going to say that to Carissa until later.

She'll kiss Carissa thoroughly, instead, and be off about her way.

Right, then, she too should be getting back to work. She may have only been away from the Project for one day (she's pretty sure subjectively the time in Hell was at least thrice that) but people can be very much idiots in one day.

Abrogail Thrune heads off to work, and wonders, in the back of her mind, if she's done Carissa Sevar more service than disservice, in her life, and would be permitted to go to Her someday if she entered into Hell calling Her name.

Well.  She's definitely done Carissa more service than disservice by the standards of Hell.

One more reason to conquer at least Avistan, though it's not like she'd need any reason at all.

Carissa Sevar returns to Project Lawful beautiful, terrifying, wearing an artifact out of Hell on her head. She explains that she sold her soul to Dispater for a price the Church would like her to not disclose at this time, and then went to the Queen's celebration of Nidal's surrender. No one questions her. 

Her priority for the day is trying to get Pilar's candidate ilani to notice the thing about the world where all its features are connected, where every observation tugs a hundred invisible strings, where if the spellsilver process gets slightly worse when you substitute eggshells for bone then that's almost as informative as if it got slightly better, but also where if the price of a good is puzzlingly high, you had an error elsewhere in your picture of the world, where the question isn't whether anything has been proven or even whether anything is suspected but whether anything is likelier in one world than another.

If she has time then she's also going to try to convey the intuition that if there's a vendor who sells out of his goods three hours earlier than anyone else there needs to be an explanation for that which isn't just 'his are higher quality', and that if countries go to war that's confusing because it suggests two opposed people believed they would benefit from something that would superficially appear to benefit only one of them, and the whole general complex of habits of expecting things to be in balance, and, when they're not, seeing why not. 

She's no Keltham, as a teacher, by which she means that she remembers near-perfectly everything he said and can refer to transcripts and also has something like 6 Splendour on him at this point. Her ilani ought to learn faster.

She'll get about an hour into that before some poor Security fool has the temerity to interrupt Carissa Sevar's important work with a supposedly very very urgent message:

There's a Gate to Hell at the edge of their Forbiddance and a Cornugon (greater devil, could probably slaughter this whole facility) who wants to see Snack Service within the next two minutes.