"YOU WILL LOSE CARISSA FOREVER IF YOU DO THIS!  SHE WON'T EVER FORGIVE YOU, YOU WILL NEVER BE REUNITED!"

"Already lost her," says Keltham's voice, "but you did ruin a lot of Carissa's further work persuading me into not going down this road, so long as it turned out I didn't have children."

"I suggest, Hell, that you not ruin this one too badly in the next few weeks.  Sevar is busy now, but when her future self has a moment She may wish to buy Her own conversation on this topic, and She'll pay less if the conversation is just screaming and the breaking is already done."

"As for me, I'm finished."

There are lights appearing in the territory of Cheliax, and expanding, one by one.  The light that appeared over Egorian was first, and brightest.

She screams with everything she has, for the same reason that anything being tortured screams like that, not just because it has no choice, but because it has the tiny shred of hope that if it screams loudly enough the torture will hear and stop.

When there are no lights left in Cheliax and no green either, only a great patch of smoke-cloud slowly starting to spread out from its borders, the scry ends.

She stopped screaming when the last of Cheliax had been scoured with white light and orange fire, for there was no hope left then that Keltham would be satisfied one second sooner.

In the presence of Keltham her minders were contemptuous and beyond that unreadable; devils don't beg, even if you have something they want very dearly, and devils don't weep, even as everything they have ever worked for turns to ash before their eyes. 

In his absence Abrogail's custodian turns on her with a fury that quite plainly won't be satisfied with any amount of torture. "Anything else to say while you can speak, contemptible pathetic thing who manages through sheer incompetence and disobedience to serve Asmodeus's enemies a thousand times better than you ever served Asmodeus?"

There is nothing.

Right! Then they'll get to what Hell is best at, which is torture.

If they mean to sell a coherent conversation with it to Carissa Sevar later, it will be very unsatisfying for them.  Living mortals are easier to break mentally, and you have to heal them too.

They could torture it more if they took the curses off it.

They don't take the curses off. It turns out you can hurt someone very badly anyway, even if they're still alive, even if you need them intact later, and Hell knows how to do it. When she's in too fragile a state to torture further they have her watch the former nobility of Cheliax arrive in Hell and be crushed by it. It's not that she cares about any of them as individuals, of course, but she might recognize herself in them, and in their always-erroneous optimism that Hell would see them as special.

They don't let her sleep. They hurt her if she manages to sleep anyway. It makes it hard to keep track of time. 

(This about Abrogail Thrune:  She didn't think about what awaited her in Hell, for a different reason than usual: she knew that in Hell she would no longer be Queen of Cheliax, and this seemed to her awful enough that other features of Hell would be beside the point.  Maybe if she could be queen of something else, but that, she knew, would not be possible for a long time; at first she'd be reduced in status below the least child of House Thrune and maybe below a Chelish peasant.  Is that not terror enough?  What need for the fear of pain?  She fought in Hell to reach sixth-circle that she might become Queen, and that hurt but she won through it; and Abrogail thought herself suited to Hell, then, by the infernal blood that ran distant in her veins.  To the extent she made up her own theology about it, she told herself that if souls were allowed to remember nothing else, they'd be allowed to remember how they had served Asmodeus well.  And that if Abrogail built up Cheliax into a great and stable empire before her life ended, then that memory, at least, she'd be allowed to always have with her: that once she served Asmodeus better than any devil not at least a Duke of Hell.  And before then, she'd shine as brightly as she could, and enjoy her moment as Queen to the fullest, and not fear what came after...)

Abrogail knows, with the sparks of reason and lucidity that can reason through anything at all, she can see plainly that what happens to the dead nobles of Cheliax is much much worse than what happens to her living self; and she knows that their fates are what awaits her.  If it was only this bad and never got any worse than this, for eternity, then she could endure it; if she was dead and un-cursed and had more Splendour than this, if not her Crown, she could endure it.  But it does not get only that bad.  Hell is wantonly destructive, even towards the nobles and wizards whom any sane person would see as having value worth preserving.  It is not that devils don't understand how to torture better than that, it is that they do not care; if you grind souls into paste to be reformed over thousands of years, you get some devils at the end, so that result is good enough.

It doesn't take Abrogail very long at all to realize that she was wrong, not to fear Hell.

She doesn't think it was very long.  She doesn't know.

There are a few, it is shown to her eventually, who get better, but not because they served Asmodeus better; why would Asmodeus care about that? If they get better, if they will remember their name, it is because they bargained for that in advance, and Abrogail Thrune, of course, didn't. 

It's like her mind goes blank, at first, seeing it, hearing that, she believes at first that she is dreaming, hallucinating.  All her life Abrogail Thrune has been told that was not on offer from Hell, that Hell never offers that no matter how a summoner pleads with them no matter what is offered Hell, that any stories about it are lies and bait to get somebody to the point where they hopefully summon a devil only to find their soul already damned -

- no, not told, not told by devils, not sworn to her by clerics, she was never told that only given the overpowering impression her whole life that it would be catastrophically pathetic to even ask and the answer would certainly be no and Asmodeus would never compact with her, she would never be Queen, if she made such a pathetic hopeless fearful request -

- why -

- why, why deny her that, when she was the greatest of all Asmodeus's mortal servants -

- it would have cost them so little more, to offer her that bargain, she would have been - more faithful - why give it to these PATHETIC WORMS, this SLAVEMASTER, this SLIMY COLONEL, and not to HER, if it wasn't against Hell's principles -

- why this, trick, that seems so, small, and petty -

- because that to Asmodeus was fun.

Abrogail does finally scream, then, and try to attack her tormenters, with bare fists and teeth for she has no sorcery.

It is of course the only time she ever tries.

Some time later they heal her, and tap her with something that lifts some of the haze of fatigue (though not the curses), and tell her that she might, at least, try to look like a good investment which won't break immediately, advice that they then make more difficult to follow by dragging her painfully, by her hair, up several flights of sharp and burning stairs.

She feels the presence of whatever being is at the top of the stairs before she sees Them.

Carissa Sevar, or whatever share of Her attention is here presently, twitches her fingers, and some of the curses on Abrogail melt away; her Intelligence and Wisdom are enhanced as with the minor spells for that; she has whatever self-possession she ever possessed. 

"I want it understood," she says, in Infernal which Carissa Sever was actually always terrible at speaking, "that my disappointment with you is as great as Asmodeus's. And yet it has room to grow, still, if you don't yet understand where you went wrong."

Then she does not have any time to feel relief, however desperate.

"I should have asked Maillol" shouldhaveaskedMaillolshouldhaveaskedMaillolshouldhaveaskedMaillol

"Indeed. You could also have asked the foolish little girl I once was what Keltham would think of it; I would have recognized, I think, that there was danger there you couldn't seem to fathom."

"I would have ignored you and failed Asmodeus still."  Hell has had little opportunity for what they called 'real training', but such false pride as Abrogail once possessed has long since been smashed out of her, every bit of it, nor is she still under the impression that she can lie.

"Indeed. The only hope for Cheliax, I think, was that someone worthy would rise to rule it. No one could have saved you from yourself, not while Cheliax still lived and you were still her Queen; and now it can be done, but who would bother?"

"Only one who still had use for her."  The words are pathetic, but it's beyond improbable that She is not reading Abrogail's thoughts, so She already knows the one tiny shred of hope that isn't crushed in Abrogail, that - a goddess would - not be grateful, certainly, absolutely not, She owes Abrogail nothing but pain and Abrogail knows that - but maybe She would be - reminiscent, nostalgic; Abrogail only ever used Carissa, during their mortal time together, but she hurt Carissa in ways that made her stronger - could certainly have treated her far worse - maybe would have treated Carissa far worse, if Carissa did not seem to Abrogail to have a use to her, but Carissa is, was, Carissa was and is something of value - something beautiful, even, and Abrogail was not wasteful not wasteful like Hell -

(Abrogail's thoughts are obviously going to keep running around this point indefinitely until she is spoken to again.)

"Stop it. You did as you wished, and I'll do as I wish. If there's anything in you I have a use for, I'll find it; but there might not be. 

A thing I have noticed about Asmodeans, which I dislike, which tends to make them nearly worthless to me, is that they care only for what they rule, who must cower before them. You will never be the queen of Cheliax again; you bargained foolishly, and have nothing of Hell; so what are you? What use would you possibly have?"

It has not really occurred to Abrogail before, in her life, that she has anything that is not being Queen of Cheliax.  Her place in the tyranny is who she is.

But if she gets asked that question under these circumstances, she will think very fast, or as fast as she can in her state, and shift her entire viewpoint around to that of a Lawful Evil goddess who once was a priest of Irori.

"Experience in politics, in ruling, in plotting with and against nobility, in defending against Iomedae's plots, in reshaping people, seduction and the bedroom arts, eighth-circle sorcery - you know the important things I can do, I think -"

What else what else what would She not already know about until Abrogail thinks it - she's commanded the production of romance novels, had an advice column, but that is not important -

The thought comes to Abrogail that she is also one of very few people in Golarion who has experience in trope-manipulation, but no sooner does this thought come to her than she wishes it had not.

Carissa lights her on fire, but not with any visible irritation, and after a moment she lets it die out. "I know, now, how this story goes. You barely feature in it, except as you touched on me, and except, perhaps, as the reason Cheliax is not the center of my empire. If you are useful, it'll be as someone who would not have made any of the major choices you made in your sad little life."

"I am very eager to become her," Abrogail says; there is no reservation in her mind at this moment when she says it.