This is clearly IT, but - Abrogail doesn't - doesn't see -

(Cheliax?)

"I cannot immediately see any realistic conditions under which I'd betray You, when I expect salvation from Your ownership and my alternative is Hell," Abrogail states honestly, setting aside all whirlwinds that threaten to roar inside herself.  "Someone would have to convince me that You were planning to send me back to Hell, or that -"

Abrogail pauses, and reflects on whether she'd go obediently back to Asmodeus, if Hell compacted to stay her torment.

...Asmodeus has burned some bridges with Abrogail, in fact, by setting her up for that fate in the first place.  "Hell cannot easily bring me back by offering me an afterlife even more to my liking than Yours," Abrogail states more confidently, "unless there are other strong conditions in their offer's favor.  And if You saved me from Hell and gave me all You've given me, predicting that I'd serve You in this even if given a chance to betray You, then I would not depart from that prediction even to become an archdevil."

"A better answer than you would once have given Me.

I am not fully satisfied.

You dare hope that I am not just toying with you, that Cheliax is not gone; or that if it is gone, I could return you to a moment, or a world, where it lives.  But if so, then in that world Carissa Sevar has not ascended and not saved you from Hell - yet - though you've seen a true glimpse of what it would be for you, when you died again."

Time travel?  That's - maybe it only became possible with prophecy broken, but - and ilani knowledge - but - but - she'd obviously give anything, everything, but -

"Is it permitted that I ask - if You are toying with me."

"You may ask."

"Are You toying with me?"

"Oh, definitely."

Abrogail has always been foolish, never stupid.  "Am I to be sent to a Cheliax that lives, and an unascended Carissa Sevar?"

"The first Suggestion was: 'this is reality, and there is no meaning, for you, in considering any other possibility." 

And as she says it, the curses remaining fall away, the one that suppresses Abrogail's Will save, the complicated fourth curse, and Carissa sits there, plainly more beautiful than Abrogail, more powerful than Abrogail, more wise and dangerous and capable than Abrogail -

- but not a god. 

She can feel Carissa Sevar's mind reading her own, now, and without having to think too much about it, knows better than to dare try to cast her out.  They will be ready, very very very ready.

But Abrogail knows where she is, now,

remembers if not the person she was then still that one key,

gathers her strength of personality about herself,

gathers herself about herself,

and

makes

her

fucking

Will

save.

And she's in an obvious demiplane, the nice kind with grass beneath her feet and dirt beneath the grass, and a bright white aboveness like somebody blended yellow Sun and blue sky together,

and Carissa is there, apparently unarmed, in a robe of the archmagi and draped with a dizzying array of expensive and unfamiliar magic items, crowned in the artifact Dis gave her, watching Abrogail with amusement and curiosity.

There's a lot of thoughts and feelings running through Abrogail, right now, and if no one with the power and temerity to compel her is making her think them through quickly, she will not force them to heel quite as fast as she did when she was more afraid.

"I presume you are ready to swear to me regarding the truth of what would have become of me in Hell, of what you think you know and how you think you know it, regarding that; and likewise regarding that Hell does offer scum better treatment if they bargain for it."

And such assurances Carissa can provide, because 'what actually happens to people when they go to Hell' has been something of an urgent priority for her, and by this time they've made secret information-purchases on many, many related questions. She did not deceive Abrogail, as to what would have happened; only as to whether it did. 

She does not know, not for sure, not without seeing it unfold before her, whether she's made someone trustworthy, out of Abrogail; someone who would betray Asmodeus for a goddess who, technically, hasn't ascended yet. Abrogail will have to think about it herself, with the clarity that almost no one in the world could bring to bear on the question, if she wants to ever leave this room. 

"Are you sufficiently prepared to kill me at any instant that I can have some tastier rations and think about it?"

Carissa just laughs.

Earlier:

When the Sending comes to her across the planes, Pilar Pineda is resting.

Snack Service has been silent, now, for a long time.  It hasn't even been directing Pilar into trouble; Pilar has found that sense in herself, fragments of knowledge/direction appearing from time to time.

Pilar Pineda hasn't needed anyone else's push, to get her into trouble, she got into all the trouble she made for herself out of her own will.  Pilar Pineda has still not put on her artifact headband, but she's put on her headband of +6 Splendour.  Splendour 26 is an awful lot of will, as willfulness goes.  Pilar Pineda hasn't needed any other push at all to get herself into trouble, despite her increasingly desperate efforts to be more sensible than that.

And now Pilar is resting; she is tired, after her last set of misadventures, even wearing a +6 Belt of Mighty Constitution that takes her total Constitution to 22.  Pilar has had an unreasonably large number of Events happen to her, in a really unreasonably tiny amount of time; even taking into account the part where Pilar got tossed into the Maelstrom a couple of objective-days ago and time just happened to be running faster there.  She couldn't have been in there more than a week, really.

She made a friend, in the Maelstrom; that friend is dead, in the way that outsiders die, forever and beyond resurrection.  All too obviously in retrospect, that outcome was planned by the same divinities or 'tropes' arranging this whole operation.  For Pilar had known and thought that she would be resurrected, that she was just having an Adventure; she wouldn't have been under enough stress to level, if she'd had only herself to defend.  She needed to open her heart to a friend, which Pilar did because that's been made the key to her power; and that friend needed to be placed under true threat, to motivate Pilar to really fight.  And Pilar almost almost won, but she didn't, maybe because deep in her heart she still thought it was all a story with her victory foretold.

So now Aaeme'nagh is dead forever, slain by its own vengeful slaves who didn't appreciate its mastery at all; and Cayden Cailean would probably consider that end well-deserved and Good on net; and Asmodeus wouldn't care in the slightest so long as Pilar's leveling ended up serving His interests.

Pilar has fought and fucked and casted and fought, and after that last "adventure" it is not feeling as fun anymore.

So now Pilar Pineda is resting, in her own demiplane that she made.  Her last lost battle and its aftermath, on top of all her previous misadventures - and probably an increasing amount of siphoned divinity in her - has brought her to the eighth circle of an oracle's power, also the fifth circle of wizardry via mystic theurgy.  To create the demiplane she had to take off the Splendour headband and put on an Intelligence headband, for that takes comprehension and not just power; but with that boost she did it, and the Permanency to make the demiplane lasting was strangely easy after.  There's no minimum caster circle to make a demiplane Permanent, you just need an unreasonably large amount of diamond dust; and that, Pilar has.

Also after reaching that fifth circle of wizardry, she went to a juncture of leylines, knocked out a grizzly bear and dragged it over and sacrificed it with a blade bought of Fommok Madinah.  Now there's also Permanent Arcane Sight about her at last, despite her unsaleable soul.  And Permanent Tongues though not non-dispellably so, and Darkvision and Aura Sight and Enchantment Sight and See Invisibility.

And now Pilar rests, in her own permanent demiplane.  It's not very large or decorated, yet, but it's the famous thing that people like her do, once they can.

Aspexia Rugatonn is still mightier than Pilar, if neither of them take the other by surprise and neither can use magic items or allies and both are prepared for battle.  Aspexia Rugatonn is mightier than Pilar, as is Abrogail Thrune wearing the Crown of Infernal Majesty, or Razmir or Felandrial Morgethai, or Gorthoklek, and Nefreti Clepati is her superior in every dimension; but not many others in Golarion.

None of these important facts have been communicated to Cheliax.

Pilar has been walking around for some days with the equivalent of an artifact headband she cannot take off.  Days are a long time, at INT 21 and WIS 19, if despite your best efforts to keep yourself extremely busy you sometimes have time to think, and Keltham out of dath ilan once taught you such children's knowledge as might in Golarion make you be relatively a Keeper.

She has understood what she'd been too stupid to see before, for all its obviousness; she knows who "Doomlord" is, and why Keltham had all of his stuff.

There is some vast story winding around her, and she has not grasped its ending or its purpose.  She knows that Cayden Cailean considers it worth dying for.  She knows that this story's meaning is not accomplished by delivering however-many diamonds to the Church of Iomedae, that Keltham out of dath ilan calculated how to synthesize after he donned an Intelligence headband.

She knows not how this story goes, but she has a guess about what becomes of Pilar Pineda in the end.

"Incandescent foil.  Queen assassinated by ilani weapon and kidnapped from Hell, Crown not recovered.  Military moving to defensive posture.  Any advice or aid?"

She knew, on some level, and also explicitly, that she might be awaiting some Sending like this.

Pilar Pineda speaks back without much tone.

"Midnight quill.  No advice.  No Snack Service response.  I plan to don artifact headband.  Tell Rugatonn not to trust me afterwards without oaths.  Pineda out."