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.

For some reason, she seems to think this is funny; she half-smiles, at it. "Are you. Well, then, come here. I have decided to test Myself to see if I can make something useful to Me of you, and if not you can die and go to Hell properly."

No thought other than obedience even crosses her mind, when Abrogail 'comes here'.  This is literally what her best-scenario looked like, that she would be painfully reshaped and tested and set some task at which she might fail, by Carissa Sevar and not by wasteful Hell.  Abrogail played it out in her mind enough times, in Hell, that she doesn't let herself feel even a shred of goddess-annoying hope, to be crushed down with some task she really can't do at all.  She'll obey, is all; she is ordered so she obeys and that's all that's here nothing else.

"I'm not Asmodeus. 

I plan to just build constructs for matters that just require uncreative obedience.

Which may of course, include any ruling of countries I find myself wanting to do in the Material Plane, and definitely includes any fulfillment of complicated godnegotiated conditions I want done in the Material Plane, but it doesn't include what I want you for. You will be grateful, and apply yourself, and offer Me all that you are and all you can learn to achieve, and we will see if there is anything in you, anything pain can shape you into, that's worth saving."

It's the last that she hears of her new Goddess for a while; and what follows is in some ways less pleasant than Hell.  Because - while Hell does not let you stay passive and suffering, Hell definitely makes you participate in your own torture and breaking - Hell at least doesn't demand that you think about complicated problems at the same time.

It is still, clearly, much much much better, to the point where some tiny observing thing in the back of Abrogail's mind is surprised that the Goddess did not make it worse for her in order to test her loyalty.

...things as bad as Hell probably just - aren't compatible with actually shaping people stronger.  The awareness in the back of her mind says that this of course is something that Abrogail Thrune once knew, when she herself was a shaper; when Abrogail Thrune set Carissa to forge +6 headbands for herself, she could not have been hurt any worse or any more frequently without it impinging worse upon the quality of her work or her learning of speed.  Abrogail is being pushed as hard as she can go, not as hard as she can hurt without breaking.

There are problems and challenges in ilanism, as set down by an intellect that had obviously solved the entire thing for Herself but was far less certain of how mortals could be taught any of what She now understood.  There are math problems, there is Abrogail being forced to fight with bare hands as monks of Irori do and being trained some tiny bit in that, there is always adequate sleep.  Any failure is punished, but if it really was too hard and anybody reading your mind would've seen that, the next problems are easy enough to fall barely at the edge of achievability.  Some problems are just outright impossible, but not in the way of somebody torturing you, more in the way of a Goddess who isn't paying you Her entire attention and sometimes has a hard time simulating or remembering what it's like to be only INT 16.

Sometimes Abrogail wakes up a little smarter, or a little more durable (particularly if there's a hard day ahead), or a little wiser. The only thing Carissa seems uninterested in granting her more of is Splendour.

Abrogail has had a few of her stats enhanced by Wishes, mainly Splendour but also some droplets of Cunning and Wisdom as well; she can tell the difference between Wish and spell.  The first time she realizes that she has become more intelligent, she kneels by her thin bedroll and prays to her Goddess with her eyes squeezed shut, astonished and contemptuous at herself for how it is taking actual effort for her not to weep.

Even a Goddess does not spend Wish-tier interventions on something She expects to fail and be thrown away.

When later Abrogail realizes that she is also become more durable, as is a subtler thing to observe, she is astonished again, to the point of being puzzled; and says aloud "I notice that I am confused" and thinks as quickly as possible because if she doesn't think right away it is entirely possible that she will thereby fail a test and be punished; but, even having so thought, she is yet confused, besides the obvious point that her Goddess probably really does mean to keep her, and has some genuinely important use in mind for herself.

This realization ought to be met by fiercer efforts, not weaker ones, if she ever wants to be allowed any shred of hope again or considered worthy of any reward; and somewhat to Abrogail's own surprise, she can try harder, with excitement as well as fear in her.  Or maybe it's just the extra Constitution.

When she's been boosted enough times to notice that her Splendour doesn't go up - Abrogail has been trained enough, by this point, that she will wonder openly to herself, rather than in the back of her mind, about whether it's difficult/impossible for her Goddess to enhance Abrogail's intrinsic Splendour past the +5 that it's already been Wished-up to.  Her Goddess has made it clear enough by now that She does not appreciate fawning praise, or Abrogail not daring to think thoughts about Her possible limitations...

Carissa Sevar was the same way, as a mortal; Abrogail has not forgotten her past.  It really didn't take all that long for Abrogail to make the leap from the Goddess's preferences to Carissa Sevar's preferences.  You learn to make leaps quickly, to at least think of the thought, when failure hurts immediately.  The hard part wasn't in seeing how the Goddess / Carissa Sevar might be like that.  The hard part is trusting in Her; for it requires remembering hope, after Hell.

She wonders sometimes how long it's been, since the first phase of her Hell ended for her.  There is always enough sleep, but it doesn't always come in eight-hour chunks - or however long constitutes a full sleep for her; she isn't fed often enough not to be under some manner of Sustenance effect.  Questions not explicitly prohibited are allowed, in the service of the Goddess; you can always at least ask what questions are allowed.  When Abrogail realized that it might be only her own fear holding her back from asking, from knowing, she did ask whether she was permitted to ask: how long it had been, how much time remained, what use the Goddess intended to make of herself.  And she was told, then, that those questions were indeed prohibited; but she was not punished for asking if they were askable.

(It'd be astonishingly wasteful to improve someone in the manner of a Wish, one drop at a time; one would either invest up front in a full sequence of five Wishes, to do as much for them as magic can do, and then carefully curse them back down, or else have diamonds flowing like water from a spring, and think nothing of spending them; or else be entirely beyond the limits of mortal magic.)

Abrogail is summoned before the Goddess for an audience, her first in some unmeasured time.

AI art

She goes, wearing a thin +2/+2/+2 circlet that she was granted not long ago.

Abrogail has by this time deduced that the Goddess's magic obeys some of the same limitations as mortal Wishes, about how far it can go, which in turn increases the chance that she was originally amped to +5s and then cursed back down, if the Goddess knew in advance when She first laid Her plans that Abrogail would be adequate to them.  Possibly the Goddess, or K̵e̵l̶t̷h̴a̸m̸ if he also became a god, did indeed crack diamond chemistry; and Abrogail was at some point subjected to the ministrations of Efreet, here or by being transported temporarily to the City of Brass while she slept, to save on the Goddess's interventions or even Her true effort.  It's only one hypothesis among many, but she considered it explicitly; it doesn't hurt to consider many hypotheses, if you trust yourself more to evaluate them, and that is the sort of mental habit that might have saved Abrogail-Thrune-who-was a very great deal of pain.

There is a different kind of pride about her, now.
It cannot replace what she lost.
But it is the kind of pride where she actually does accept that she brought that loss upon herself.
She could list out every one of her reasoning errors, one by one.

"A puzzle for you. If you could go back - to Cheliax, had Keltham spared it - what would you do?"

This sure is a horrendously painful question!  Abrogail's mind very quickly turns to considering it without holding back, especially from the most painful thoughts; failing a challenge like that quickly leads to actual pain, even when it is not the Goddess personally asking you.

Thinking quickly is not thinking sloppily; the first thing that Abrogail does is mentally set up a list of desiderata and internal questions.

Things her Goddess wants:

- To claim all of the souls in Cheliax, which under Her compact with Asmodeus requires either reconquering a Cheliax that otherwise wouldn't be held by Hell, or conquering three-quarters of the rest of Avistan in Hell's name - actually her Goddess probably just wants souls, in general, so Cheliax should take as much territory in Hell's name as possible or support the Goddess's other worshippers in doing so.
- Her Goddess is - probably? 80% probability, mark as further query to Goddess - unhappy with the way Hell wastes souls in general and not just what was going to happen to Abrogail; her Goddess probably doesn't want souls going to Asmodeus except by way of Her.
- To straighten out the ridiculous fucking mess of Asmodean politics and replace it with Evil that's actually Lawful.
- Actually now that she actually thinks about it, her Goddess obviously aims to conquer all of Creation and convert it to Her own ways, and a hypothetical Cheliax that still exists is useful to Her because it can serve as a springboard.

Things she wants, her Goddess permitting:

- To be Queen again
- To be Queen again
- Her Goddess said she'd never be Queen again, does that mean this desideratum should be struck
- If it's an impossible painful imagination then she's probably supposed to imagine the painful parts
- To be Queen again, and wear the Crown of Infernal Majesty once more; and have back her Palace, and all that was hers within it, and all those who obeyed her and all of their respect, and fine sheets as comforted her and hours of her own to spend as she pleased
- She would obviously not use that power in ways that displeased her Goddess, such as breaking people for her own amusement rather than to make them stronger from it
- Is there anything she can think here that pleases her Goddess and is also actually true
- She would want, even for herself, to keep this new pride alongside her old pride, and not be an idiot, and go on practicing in the skills that her Goddess was having taught to her.
- There is - a tangle inside her, that she knows and admits she cannot resolve in seconds without risking resolving it wrong - about how she always even as Queen felt herself to be surrounded by idiots, and she wished for Something Else even at the cost of doing some unsensible things, like personally visiting Carissa in her bedroom; but it was not fundamentally a problem solvable in an Asmodean country.  It is solvable, required to be solved, in a Sevarist one.  Abrogail would do something about that, as would also please her Goddess.

Already-known questions:

- Is she allowed to be Queen or is this something her Goddess forbids?
- Does she get the Crown back, ditto.
- Can she call upon the Goddess's power?  Was diamond chemistry solved and used to enhance herself, does she get a diamond supply and if so how much?
- Is Cheliax in any kind of near-term hypothetical mess that needs resolving as soon as she shows up?
- In particular, does she hypothetically need to take back the throne from another who now holds it?
- Does it stand in danger of imminent destruction by K̵e̵l̶t̷h̴a̸m̸?
- Are there other Goddess-aligned countries to keep in mind besides probably-Wanshou?

Abrogail can go on from here to make up plausible background settings and sketch out a plan for what she'd do immediately upon arriving in hypothetical Cheliax that still exists, if her child were not dead; but she will pause (quite briefly) to see if her Goddess has corrections for Abrogail's current thoughts on background settings and desiderata.