Did Greater Carissa arrange this? Is it part of the Keltham seduction plan? It seems, at least, a good time to urgently try to rederive it, along with whatever else she figured out about Keltham and what he was trying to do.

The steel door opens, the 7th-circle Security takes a Bag of Holding from the person on the other side, the steel door closes.

"We now have two scrolls of Plane Shift, tuning fork for Avernus, I already have a tuning fork for Prime Material," says Hadrian.  "Update from Project Site, Lady Pineda can't find anybody there threatening her friends but warns that a Keltham kidnapping may not count as a threat to her curse."

"Mmmhmm."

She wishes she'd gotten Maillol out and on his vacation before the next emergency. She's annoyed at Keltham, actually, for interrupting that, even though this is the stupidest possible emotion along any imaginable dimension since one, Keltham couldn't possibly have known that, two, if he did know there is no conceivable justification for him to care, three, Carissa could literally just have not tortured Maillol and then she wouldn't have this problem no matter what other people had chosen to do.

Also this could be a test. It'd be reasonable of Abrogail to test her, really, and this is the way that a test run by Abrogail would be.

....no, wait, that's important enough she should actually be ilani about it, at least briefly, and if the result of Abrogail's test is that Carissa is too ilani to test anymore, well, so be it. On the 'test' hypothesis, she predicts that Abrogail dies and she is faced with a choice about whether to track down her soul and get it back or take the throne and rule Cheliax. On the 'not a test' hypothesis, she predicts..... a Kelthamish sort of thing happening, from a completely unexpected direction, the sort of thing none of their planning accounted for because Keltham is an alien with alien patterns of thought and alien triggers for escalation and alien constraints on his being.

Well. She will prep her spells and wait and see which it is. "Abarco, have you prepared spells this morning."

"Some of them, sir."

"Open slots at each spell level?" It's pretty typical in security roles where your precise needs for the day might vary.

"Yes, sir."

"Put up a scaffold and put Teleport, Greater Invisibility, Fly, and Detect Thoughts on it. - I want to see if I can master fifth circle faster if I have Arcane Sight up and am mirroring someone while they do it."

Abarco looks to the seventh-circle in case he's supposed to do something else with his free spell slots.

"Put them up partially, so she can observe, and then take the manifold down before completion, so you don't lose the slots."  He'd ordinarily hesitate to go with even that much, it distracts Abarco, but they may have to escape to Hell in the very worst case and Sevar having those slots then may help.

Right, then. Carissa wants to be a fifth circle wizard and with the world's fanciest headband, Arcane Sight, and a cooperative existing fifth circle wizard trapped in a room with her she ought to be able to do it. And it'll take her mind off the possibility of Cheliax being annihilated by her boyfriend. 

If they do have to flee to Hell, they'll be glad if she can hang the Teleport anyway; Plane Shift won't land neatly on a fortress between Avernus and Dis, like Aspexia's Gate did. 

And while she does that, she thinks. 

Keltham, what are you doing? What conceivable plan involved refusing to trade with anyone but Lawful Evil until I sold my soul, and then allowed for trade with the Padishah Empire? Did you have something to do with the assassination attempt at the party?

What would you do, if you were Keltham, and had fled Cheliax?

....why is she scared to think about that?

Quite abruptly, Carissa Sevar casts True Seeing with her crown. 

Nothing happens. 

Because she's not in a dreamscape of Abrogail's, and not already kidnapped by Keltham in a clever fashion that he for some reason wasn't yet revealing, and these are in fact Olegario and Abarco and the new seventh-circle assigned to monitor her.

If a more important occasion to cast True Seeing comes up she's going to feel like an idiot. 

" - is there something -" says Abarco, in the middle of patiently assembling his Teleport while Carissa attempts to mirror him. 

"No. Just feeling paranoid."

"Right. - the lower cross at your four-o-clock is sticky."

'sticky' is what happens when you've miscalculated a spellform slightly, and the magic is interacting with nearby magic that it was meant to be noninteractive with. It can ruin a spellform, or just make it sloppy and more energy intensive than it'd need to be. 

Carissa wishes Elias Abarco was either slightly more, or slightly less, of a dick. He could pick either, really! 

She fixes the lower cross at her four-o-clock. 

There's the optimistic hypothesis, that Keltham was going to do something to benefit Lawful Evil at everyone else's expense. Which implies the interpretation that he's now...also going to benefit the Padishah Empire? ....doesn't quite fit. She isn't sure how to break down 'doesn't quite fit' into pieces she could be ilani at, but it feels like she's trying to write a story, not seeing a set of motivations Keltham might really have beneath the actions she can see. 

Under less optimistic hypotheses, he was willing to trade unfairly with Lawful Evil people because they trade unfairly, and the trade wasn't, in fact, fair. 

If Keltham had been planning to conquer the world, he wouldn't want to trade with people he was about to conquer, to present himself as engaged fairly with them when in fact acquiring the resources to destroy them. And maybe, in panic about Carissa selling her soul, he's now....decided to conquer the world less the Padishah Empire?

Also doesn't fit. If Keltham had to pick someone to not conquer, the Empire is probably unusually bad by dath ilani sensibilities. It has slavery, not halfassed Osirian Abadar-friendly debt slavery but full proper human slavery and a slave trade. It is engaged in wars of conquest of its own. 

...maybe Keltham decided it counted as effectively Lawful Evil, or the Emperor revealed secret proof of his Lawful Evil to Keltham, and she's way overthinking this.  

If you're confused, something's missing, from your picture of reality. 

What is she confused about. 

Where to start. 

Why Keltham stopped trading with everyone. Why Keltham told her it would be better for Cheliax if she didn't sell her soul. Why Keltham started trading with the Empire. Why Cayden Cailean didn't want Carissa to sell her soul full-price. What greater-Carissa wanted and was planning. What Nethys is playing at, here, why Nefreti said she couldn't help Keltham - and then kidnapped Ione, who by all accounts is helping the Scientific Revolution, so maybe Nefreti was just lying -

Why Zon-Kuthon attacked the Project, when He in fact wouldn't have minded Asmodeus taking over the world. How Osirion's spies are so effective. How the Rovagug cultists found out where Keltham was being kept, and how they were able to get right to his bedroom. Why Cayden/Nethys warned the Project about that. Why Dispater offered to make Asmodia and Peranza retroactively never have suffered, that was in hindsight not a remotely normal kind of god-clause, she was just too busy evaluating it as a test to evaluate it as anything else. Why Asmodia killed herself, if it wasn't because she knew she'd go to the Gardens, and if it was, how she could've known something she caused by killing herself - no, that's probably just 'Erecura, too, still has a scrap of prophecy' -

- what does it mean to still have a scrap of prophecy, what are Nethys and Erecura doing -

Why Cheliax hasn't attacked Osirion, if war is inevitable, Nidal's disposed-of, and Keltham's bluffing about his ability to destroy Cheliax. Why Osirion hasn't forced Cheliax to terms, if Keltham's not bluffing.  

There's a problem with the comforting theory that the Padishah Empire is just Lawful Evil too. Keltham has been at whatever he's up to for a while; he did that the day Carissa left to sell her soul. That strongly favors explanations that have something to do with Carissa selling her soul. 

What does Carissa selling her soul change, for Keltham?

Maybe it means that he - lost hope - that she would oppose Cheliax and oppose Hell. Which - he can't have been considering that all that likely to begin with. 

Could he? From an outside perspective it does seem like many people, infected with ilanism, become opposed to Hell. However, Asmodia wanted to go to Abaddon, Carissa feels like it is straightforwardly obvious if you've ever met Carissa that she isn't going to become opposed to Hell for Asmodiaish reasons. 

She kind of did become opposed to Hell for Carissaish reasons. Namely how it's wasteful and not very good at what she thinks should be its job and keeps turning people into paving stones when they're possible to use better than that. Namely the thing she said to Maillol, stupidly, yesterday, that she does owe him something, she owes it to him to make as much of him as she can. That's heresy, of course, but - Asmodeus did compact with her - does Keltham know about Asmodeus's compact with her? Did that change his plans, make them more the sort of plans that are in line with the interests of people on Golarion?

What if Nefreti Clepati wasn't lying. What if it's true, that she can't help Keltham, that Nethys can't help Keltham, and it's just that the Scientific Revolution doesn't help Keltham, because Keltham is not, at this point, aiming to build Civilization on Golarion. Doesn't have any goals on Golarion at all.

Because he's trying to kill Asmodeus. 

It's totally what he'd do.

she loves him very much.

Snack Service insists it's serving Asmodeus's interests somehow. How? Well, see, Keltham is planning to kill Asmodeus, and Nethys and Cayden are steering for - something better for Good than killing Asmodeus, but also better for Asmodeus than killing Asmodeus, which would have to be pretty much anything - 

- there's that prophecy, that if Asmodeus is threatened He'll unleash Rovagug to eat the threat, and then the whole universe will be consumed -

- and it'd be just like her idiot boyfriend, to decide that's a THREAT and he's IGNORING IT -

- there's a thought knocking at the back of her skull, waiting to be thought, a terrible and dangerous one.