Time:  About a week later.

Place:  The Imperial Palace in Egorian, capital of Cheliax.

This aerial view shows the side of the Palace that contains the Majestrix's quarters, including some rooms with windows and even the occasional exposed balcony.

All such are guarded by a permanent wall of force.

The surrounding aerial volume is patrolled by a species of keen-eyed flying devil with natural arcane sight and invisibility detection, lest anyone be so daring as to seek a glimpse of Abrogail Thrune in her nightgown, or maybe observe her in meeting and read her lips.

Forbiddance, wall of force, patrolling devils: these are the standard precautions taken in accordance with such security mindset as Cheliax has developed, pertaining to known and customary threats at their technology level, magical level, and accustomed levels of opposed intelligence.

Also in the air above Egorian is a Tiny Translucent Sphere.  Even a keen-eyed and arcane-sightful devil has negligible probability of spotting it; the floating glass bead is small, clear, weakly magical, and not that close to the Imperial Palace.

Let's take this moment in time to talk (as one often does) about IOUN stones.

IOUN stones look like simple floating colored shapes, unless you use Detect Magic on them, in which case they look insanely complex and maybe even paradoxical.

The spellforms they maintain behave like continuous spell-like abilities of living magical creatures, like something alive is maintaining a spellform that couldn't be held together by any static shape or cycle of magical forces, only by an organism that perceives and reacts.

IOUN stones circle above their wielder's head through any amount of gymnastics, and dodge blows as if they were alive; if you own more than one, they'll form themselves into pretty aerial patterns.

Outwardly they look like simple gems.

Inwardly they're filled with tiny three-dimensional magic-channels of surpassing complexity.

It's an obvious-to-Golarion-artificers hypothesis that IOUN stones are alive; and were (given known Azlanti habits) created by some horrifying sacrifice of intelligent lives and maybe even souls.  That the tiny intricate channels are there, not to maintain the outer spellform, but to imprison the essence of some living thing that does maintain it.

And yet no known divination shows any hint of necromancy about IOUN stones: no life, no soul.

It's a slightly-less-obvious hypothesis that some mysterious quality of animation or sapience was transferred into IOUN stones, extracted from an animal or a soul the way that the potency of spellsilver can be burned into things that are not spellsilver.

An awful number of awful experiments have failed to make any progress on this hypothesis either.

Not being stupid, plenty of wizards have thought of the possibility that both obvious hypotheses are just plain wrong.

Maybe there's some kind of living-magic effect that you could create with those intricate magical channels? and that is what navigates the IOUN stone's flight and maintains its spellform?

Nobody's ever made progress on figuring out this hypothesized Living Magic either, as might be the key to many different rumored aspects of Azlanti artifice.  Given the vast intricacy of IOUN stones, it doesn't look like an overwhelmingly promising thing to figure out by poking around.  Every artificer whose thinking gets that far dreams of finding the earlier prototype of an IOUN stone: something which (on this general class of hypothesis) maintains some much simpler form of Living Magic that you actually could understand, and maybe then you could decode the more complicated spellforms.

Carissa and her ex are not the only beings with INT 29 ever to examine ancient Azlanti IOUN stones.

They are, however, the first ones to do so already having some idea of what a 'low-tech computer' might look like.  And the first ones to do so having built their own Magical Simulator of Magical Physics, which gives them (a) actual experience in magical analog signal processing, and (b) the ability to simulate unseen magical interactions in some detail.

To be clear, the Tiny Translucent Sphere is very barely an IOUN stone.  It does not fly around its wielder through all combat circumstances, but only floats in a single place relative to the (rotating) planet.  The only spell effect it maintains is a special weaker case of Prestidigitation.  It could not restore itself after a Dispel.

You couldn't say it was reverse-engineered from an Azlanti IOUN stone, so much as re-engineered from scratch after looking at the partially decodable surface features of an IOUN stone for very loose inspiration.  Maybe the best metaphor would be somebody designing an Analytical Engine from scratch, after staring at a computer built from vacuum tubes and managing to decode key abstract concepts but not the actual software.

- and yet, in the final analysis it's fair to say that Carissa Sevar went and made a literal fucking IOUN stone, the first one to be made since Azlant fell.

Many artificers over many centuries have regarded this as the dangling ultimate capstone achievement of mortal magecraft, short of the differently-unreachable realms of artifacts.  But once you've actually built your first IOUN stone, you can see that it's really just a baby's first step into an unimaginably vaster realm:  The space of Azlanti artifice is just the space of 'all other magic items', once you move past the realm of statically constructed magic items and into those that cast a sense-compute-motor loop to model and maintain a dynamic spellform.

The spellform of the Tiny Translucent Sphere could be analogized to a stripped-down Prestidigitation, receiving small-dimensional input commands from a simulated wizard.

First, the Tiny Translucent Sphere maintains approximately the same station, relative to the Palace in Egorian or rather the rotating form of Golarion; it resists lesser wind currents over its quite small surface area, maintained by Prestidigitation's pound of force.

Second, when activated by a light pressure of magic cast through a scry, the Tiny Translucent Sphere changes the refractive index of light in a lens-shaped volume nearby.  Further light pressures of magic through the scry will rotate and shift that refractive lens.

Finally, the Tiny Translucent Sphere - this part took no additional effort at all - has a magical signature that is unique across Golarion and a number of neighboring planes.

Which is to say:  The Tiny Translucent Sphere acts as a combination scry anchor and telescope for purposes of scanning across the side of the Imperial Palace containing Abrogail Thrune's quarters, with windows and balconies shielded by a permanent wall of force.  You could use the IOUN Stone of Peeping to verify her presence, read lips if you focused closely enough and were sufficiently good at reading lips, maybe even get a glimpse of her walking around in a nightgown.  Whether you wanted to do that, of course, would depend on your utility function, and your purposes, and your plans.

Aspexia Rugatonn now walks those same halls, decorated in what another place would call 'doompunk', appointed in gold and crimson more than red and black, with traces of Imperial purple never permitted to overshadow Hell's colors.  The ignorant commoners of Cheliax are sometimes reassured "It's not that Cheliax serves Hell; rather it's Hell that serves Cheliax" but this is a lie and everyone of sense knows better.  Hell is far greater than Cheliax, and for a great Power to serve a lesser one is contrary to the Chelish state religion.

Aspexia Rugatonn is heading for a meeting with Abrogail Thrune, pondering, as she walks, the best way to share certain major recent news: a surprise from the distant Chaotic Evil land of Wanshou.  It could be seen as hopeful news, is the problem.  One of the few aspects of trope-reasoning that Aspexia is confident she's understood, is the notion that a hope once spoken aloud in front of a viewpoint character cannot come to pass, or at least not come to pass exactly as it's spoken.  Some of Keltham's spellsilver plans worked as he intended, but that was only possible because of the Conspiracy; things were not really going well for him by his current lights.

(Aspexia Rugatonn has, of course, considered the possibility that she herself is a viewpoint character; considered it, and discarded it.  Her thoughts simply are not as dramatic as the thoughts of the trope-girls like Abrogail; and the story has not so far seemed interested in tormenting her the way it torments Abrogail.)

In a chamber on that side of the Palace sits Queen Abrogail II, contemplating a recent report of her own; though at present she is just looking up from that report to gaze upon the Grand High Priestress of Asmodeus, whose attendance upon herself Abrogail has demanded.

"You said you had news of Keltham?"

"So I infer."

"I continue to imagine that such news was supposed to come to me, before you; not the other way around."

"That would require you to understand what you're seeing.  You have not the Cunning to understand or even notice Keltham's handiwork, or Sevar's for that matter.  Your underlings even less."

The quality of their interactions has been strained, of late; but if you don't know how to take that in stride, in Cheliax, you are not long for politics in the country.

"Tell me of it, then."

"That discussion may consume some time.  We should dispense with shorter matters before then, if you've any small reports to make or little questions to ask of me."

"As you will, then."

"I'm concerned with how you remain un-assassinated."

"People have been saying that about me for a while."

"Be serious.  I'm worried that Keltham hasn't killed you yet.  He has not much time left to do that before your child quickens with soul.  It's possible Keltham hasn't figured things out at all.  But with you staying so much in the Palace, he may not have had an easy chance to -"

"If I leave the Palace under unusual conditions, if I make myself an easy and predictable target for temporary assassination, Keltham may deduce exactly what I'm doing and why!  Asmodia was your own pet; did you learn nothing from her?"

Her voice is a bit dry.  "I am not sure I so trust all this complicated reasoning, that I wouldn't give Keltham a shot at killing you some easy way.  Instead of prompting him to, perhaps, crater all Egorian for it.  We should not neglect the ordinary form of the game while we chase this - absurdly elaborated one."

"I suppose I could stage some affair that leaves me exposed at a predictable place and time.  Whereupon Keltham, if he is truly Wished and headbanded up to INT 29, will deduce exactly what I'm doing and why, and maybe even that you were the one stupid enough to order me to do it.  Would that make you happy?"

"Perhaps.  I will think on it." 

"How goes your training of the would-be Keepers of Asmodeus, as holds you back from so much other valuable work in time of approaching war, on only the word of a Chaotic god?  Are there any hopes vague enough to be told me?"

She frowns.  "Vague enough?"

"If it's mysterious to me and not too hopeful, if the audience wouldn't know what you're talking about, that shouldn't prevent things from going mostly as you plan."

(Abrogail Thrune is not aware of how her own desperation to know - to be back in the loop on things - to be told anything, or for that matter given some hope of regaining her story-relevance and pride - is skewing this judgment.)

"Matters with the Keepers of Asmodeus go about as well as could be expected."  It would lack dignity if Aspexia Rugatonn cackled evilly; she hasn't done that since she stopped adventuring and went into administration.  Also, of course, she'd never show that much emotion in front of Abrogail; and also also it'd probably be too much hope to give her.

Matters with the Keepers of Asmodeus are going at least as well as could possibly have been expected.  Only the shadow of Cayden Cailean's involvement, that He somehow expects to benefit from this alongside Asmodeus, would hold Aspexia back from breaking into full-scale maniacal laughter if she were in private.

"You can probably go slightly less vague than that.  Are Asmodeus's Keepers all sixth-circles?  Has one reached eighth-circle?  Are they a significant-enough military force to matter?"

"Asmodeus has granted all of them His second circle, which is as much and more than any sane person would have hoped for.  All who've reached the second circle of wizardry are now training in mystic theurgy beside."

Which is another thing that Aspexia would laugh about maniacally under better circumstances.  Who would have thought that Intelligence, properly trained, could become a Wisdom bonus, to make for Asmodeus a cadre of wizard-priests?  Her eventual successor may have power enough to go toe-to-toe with Nefreti Clepati without two eighth-circles backing her up about it.

"But," Aspexia continues, "if twenty second-circles, of whom fourteen are training as bare-apprentice mystic theurges, are a military key to victory - the path is hidden from my sight."  Even if ALL TWENTY OF THEM would choose Hell over Elysium.

"You're almost smiling."

"You would almost smile too, in my position.  I've gotten them started on intrigues and backstabbing each other for pride of position, the stronger bending the weaker to their uses, and they are scrupulous about never doing so in a way that inhibits their group productivity."  Aspexia Rugatonn doesn't know why all this teaching matters, but it's so satisfying that she's not doing much questioning of Snack Service's claim that it does.

"Any good news from Korva Tallandria, that wasn't so good it had to be kept from you?"

Abrogail now deeply regrets having ever entangled herself with that woman, as now chains Abrogail to her management.  Abrogail had meant Korva to run the program for injuring Keltham with his asked-but-unwanted 144 children, but Korva's desperately-concealed revulsion at the thought was such that Abrogail doubted the tropes of forcing Korva to do what had been meant as a gift to her of satisfying revenge...

And as later attempts soon proved, Korva Tallandria seemed to be made desperately unhappy - Korva didn't voice it, of course, but it was unconcealable in her thoughts - by almost any possible task that Abrogail presented for her consideration. 

Abrogail's actual conclusion is that Korva is the walking emotional disaster that Keltham thought she was, that he in fact correctly identified her trope; and that Korva will remain an emotional disaster until Keltham somehow wins her back over, and fucks it out of her or beats it out of her or whatever he is supposed to do.

"Tallandria guesses that at her present rate of progress on diamond chemistry, she might in the best case be able to produce her first specks of diamond dust in another month or two, and greatly scale the process around a month after," Abrogail answers.  Every task Abrogail suggested had just made the jilted trope-girl tie herself into a tighter knot of unhappiness and self-hate, until finally Abrogail had left Korva to her own choice of tasks; and that had been what she'd picked, even before the news out of the City of Brass.  "Tallandria's alchemical investigation says that diamond is primarily a crystal of Element-6, the key ingredient of coal, possibly adulterated with some further element or quality that her spectroscopes can't detect yet.  If there is no hidden ingredient to it, she expects that the right use of heat and pressure should be able to form purified Element-6 into diamond, given that it seems to form naturally in the ground to be mined and what Keltham said of such 'geological' processes; but she guesses the synthesis results will come out as diamond dust and forming large pure crystals will prove much harder."

"Tallandria is skeptical of Keltham's maybe-capability to mate smaller diamonds into large ones.  She guesses that without knowing the exact crystal structure, Keltham shouldn't be able to Prestidigitation-alchemize two diamonds into one larger diamond, no matter how cleanly-cut their matched surfaces or if he's able to work within a vacuum. It didn't happen naturally when Tallandria tried it, nor when she attempted obvious blind manipulations of 'potential energy surfaces'.  Tallandria remembers, and transcripts agree, that Keltham at INT 18 said he couldn't think of any simple way to find crystal structures without advanced technology out of Civilization, specifically generators for ultra-tiny light particles and very fine detectors for those."

Aspexia doesn't bother to comment anything along the lines of 'Unlimited diamond dust for Permanencies seems enough to win this whole war', whether Cheliax obtained it first or Osirion did; this is obvious to both of them, along with the fact that they shouldn't take a few extra months to wait.

"It seems some evidence against the image of Keltham's apparent doings reported by Hell out of the City of Brass, I suppose, and the image of his purchase orders for smaller diamonds in Golarion.  I'm not Asmodia to say how much evidence in numbers."

"It's the sort of thing that a smarter Keltham would enjoy bluffing us about; that seems more than probable.  The probability that he could actually do it - Tallandria thought she'd have put 5% on it, if the question hadn't immediately made her think it more probable."

"I do presume you've instructed Tallandria that if she does have some unexpected breakthrough, she is to conceal it from you and report it first through Church channels?"

"Naturally," Abrogail says with considerable bitterness, all carried by the word itself rather than any slippage of tone.

"And the status of the rest of Project Lawful?"

"Doing no better or worse than I expected.  No great breakthroughs in chemistry since last you asked; no new information of Keltham's stolen from the Scientific Revolution beyond what we've spied already."

"Meritxell, Yaisa, and Gregoria, are all being maintained in a state that should fall well short of Keltham needing to rescue them.  Tallandria seems unalterably miserable; I've had her research section moved somewhere that Keltham seizing her wouldn't do as much damage."

"Maillol is not recovered, and will probably not recover fully, but I'm keeping him in best condition to be held as negotiating-material against Sevar, whom I read as possibly caring about him.  Likewise those Security besides Olegario who were most loyal to her; and that useless fool whom Sevar rescued from my dungeons.  We are not instructed by our Lord to hold no hostages against Sevar; and she earlier stated that the Lawful Evil form of 'decision-theory' should concede it no threat if you're the sort of person who'd enjoy wrecking somebody that Sevar cared about, but might refrain from doing so if paid."

"Careful.  That seems perilously close to stating a hopeful plan aloud; in fact I would say that you've gone and said it."

Abrogail's lips press together thinly, but she makes no reply to this.  "Any news of Pilar Pineda that I'm permitted to know about, since that, too, is now apparently being routed through your offices?  It can be good news so long as it's sufficiently enigmatic and confusing, remember."

"I expect many of the reports I'm receiving are false.  Either that, or Pineda has gotten herself into an amount of salacious trouble that I would have sincerely thought required time dilation."

"It's probably that second one."

"If they're all true, Pineda has gotten herself into way more salacious trouble than I expected even taking into account that she's a trope-girl."

"I'm sure people end up saying that in 'eroLARPs' all the time.  Are there any new major political implications of Pineda's deeds, that I should know in order to do my job as Queen?"

"Pineda was spotted in Wanshou.  In other news, the elder kraken who ruled that land has perished, and Wanshou's new government has declared themselves Lawful Evil now, with a state flag depicting a great city amid flames.  Quite the remarkable decision for a land claimed for the last century by Chaotic Evil, though they declare themselves strictly independent of Cheliax if not Hell."

The words are no lie, but they are very finely sliced.  It's the sort of thing that the Queen genuinely needs to know about, that Wanshou has been claimed in the name of Hell; that's going to affect her affairs of state.

Aspexia wants to try and see if it's possible to keep from Abrogail the news that Pilar's involvement was merely her self-prophesied kidnapping, in a scandal leading to the downfall of half of the Wanshou government's ministers...

...almost immediately after those ministers had been appointed...

...by Carissa Sevar.  Who had come to Wanshou's small mortal government amid their ruined capital Numijaan, presenting herself in Archmagi's Robes, with IOUN stones orbiting her head; claiming that she in single combat slew their former ruler Zhanagorr; whose vast eyeball, scorched and ruined, she cast down before them as a proof; and proclaiming that She now claimed their country in the name of Hell, to be ruled by and for Her cult; and that any within Wanshou who reached at least Neutral Evil from Chaotic Evil, and did Her service in life and called Her name in death, would have their souls claimed by Her.  Exactly one former governing-slave of Zhanagorr did challenge Sevar, but he died upon the spot and without Sevar having turned her head in his direction.

Sevar worked upon a gate of ruined Numijaan that had faced Zhanagorr's waters, setting in place prepared ornaments but enchanting the whole; a gate, she said, to sear the exact words of her compact with Asmodeus onto the skin of any who walked through; and none could join her government or lead in her cult who had not walked through.

Sevar then departed without fanfare, her appearance having lasted less than an hour.

'If Teleports were free', as the saying goes, quite a lot of Lawful Evil people would already be in Wanshou, Rugatonn doesn't doubt.  As it stands, an impressive number of Lawful Evil indivduals who can afford Teleports have appeared in Wanshou; and some of those were appointed by Sevar to be its new government answerable to herself as sovereign, in the name of Hell.

...Only half of those ministers, however, had political careers that survived Pilar Pineda's advent shortly after: posing as a Sevarist, young, beautiful, seemingly innocent, exuding timid submissiveness and frightened sexuality.  Witnesses interviewed by a Church agent afterward reported a level of seductive appeal more often associated with literal succubi than with Splendour 21.

That Pilar was promptly kidnapped and abused by some of the new government leaders is not what caused the downfall of the ministers responsible - Wanshou's new government is Evil.  Rather, apparently, those ministers were inept kidnappers and got in each other's way rather than sharing, which proved them to be bad at coordination and operations work.  Pilar, it is said, revealed her true identity as She-Who-Bears-Cake and told all her kidnappers to resign; and threatened the remaining ministers that if they didn't do better at Lawful Evil, she'd come back and get kidnapped again.

Some of the disgraced ministers hesitated to obey (the story continued) but in that very moment a roar had resounded as the capital was attacked by one of Zhanagorr's spawn; whom Pilar slew, and then provided condiments for its roasting and distribution to the citizenry.  The disgraced ministers had obediently resigned, then, after Pilar returned and eyed them meaningfully while hefting a bag of salt.

All this news should basically not be possible to keep from Abrogail, unless the tropes can prevent Abrogail from hearing, somehow.  Aspexia is curious to see if they do.

"How nice of you to fucking tell me, Rugatonn.  That's going to be so much fun to navigate in international relations, especially on the swift heels of Pineda's doings in Korvosa.  I suppose we're invading Osirion anyways, and that takes us past the point where Cheliax can present itself to even the most gullible countries as not being an expansionist threat.  But it would have been nice if the more distant lands had deluded themselves for longer into thinking that only our immediate neighbors stood in danger."

"I told you not that long after I heard."

Abrogail's lips press together bitterly; that it's deliberate doesn't make it any less her true emotion.  "I cannot rule like this, Rugatonn!  I can hardly think like it!  It is stifling to the point that I might as well be a statue myself, for all the good I can do!"

"You know," Aspexia remarks conversationally, "I have never been able to understand, on some deep level, why it is that mortals - other than myself, of course - find themselves compelled to think so many harmful thoughts, as will bring them injury or discontent.  I just don't think thoughts like that, haven't my whole life.  I've never truly understood why others don't do the same.  You are not Wiser than me, but you are Wiser than I was when I was twelve years old and doing better than this.  Have you tried to just not think those thoughts, and also not feel stifled about not thinking them?"

The Queen does not dignify this with a response.  "Those were all the lesser questions I had of you."

"And I of you.  Now what's this news you said you had of Keltham, that should have proceeded through the Church before it came to the Queen?"

The Queen lifts the sheaf of papers in her hand.  "I pray this report about the recent Whisperwood incident was routed to you literally at all?"

"Matters of the Dark Tapestry are reported to my office immediately, yes."

"- you believe Keltham was involved in that?  To what end?  Stranger things happen daily in Golarion, and we can hardly attribute them all to Keltham's hand."

Her voice is a pleasant one, now; and in truth a little of Abrogail's injured pride has been restored.  "You, and your underlings, are all idiots.  I will summarize this report, in case the general trend has been lost within the details."

"One.  A mad cleric, posthumously identified as Vediss Halurexis, kidnapped a Chelish farming village and brought them to the Pillar of Palamia in our northwestern Whisperwood.  The sacrifices were bound and enshrouded in darkness and silence, but one among their number was a tiefling of devil's line who could see through deeper darkness; hence, supposedly, our apparently accidental reception of this report."

"Two.  Vediss Halurexis shattered the Pillar of Palamia, previously thought to be a monument to some unknown god, with a great explosion of flames whose description does not particularly match any known spell signature.  The idiots who produced this report failed to consider that chemistry might be a means of producing this explosion.  I have commanded Project Lawful to examine the Whisperwood site, to see if they can detect any useful residues that can hint to us about how we could make our own great explosions."

"Three.  A huge horror from the Dark Tapestry bubbles up from the ground: a great ooze, forming and reforming hands and teeth and faces, and mouths presumably gibbering blasphemies that were silenced."

"Four.  Before the gathered villagers can be sacrificed, an as-yet-unidentified person in the uniform of Chelish Security appears.  The apparent Security approaches Vediss Halurexis without attacking.  Halurexis attacks with a quickened spell once the mage is near.  Halurexis's head explodes."

"Five.  The gathered sacrificial villagers hear a male voice informing them that rescue has arrived but they will wait in protective darkness and silence for a time, as there are heretical affairs going on outside."

"Six.  The strange mage flies above the horror from the Dark Tapestry and engages in several inscrutable activities.  They included casting flashes of light and trying to drop animal sacrifices onto the horror in different numbers and groups.  Our apparent witness thinks he remembers seeing early on one flash, one flash, two flashes, three flashes, five flashes, and a similar pattern appearing among the animal sacrifices dropped down.  Does that pattern signify any particular Dark Tapestry eldritchness to you?"

"Not that I've been told of.  I'll inquire of Gorthoklek."

"Mm.  I suppose it's possible you might be telling the truth about that.  In any case."

"Seven.  The mage eventually gives up on whatever ritual or bargaining he was trying to perform, if that's even what was happening, and spends nearly an hour casting an incredible variety of different attack magics on our Dark Tapestry horror, using items and scrolls for it, increasing in their magnitude and spell-circle over time.  The Dark Tapestry horror writhes and throws its bubbling self about, probably screams unheard in voices that would drive mortals mad, is little damaged by the spells and regenerates the damage swiftly."

"Eight.  The mage finally destroys the Dark Tapestry horror with another vast explosion.  Still guised as a Chelish Security, he unblinds and frees the gathered sacrifices, informs them that the day's events will no doubt be classified a secret of Cheliax, and commands them to go home and say nothing of this.  He throws down some silver and a few gold coins, saying that he's not troubling himself to distribute it but he does expect all there will receive and keep a payment for silence; and states that the consequences of running their mouths will be left to their imagination."

"Nine.  The next day, our single witness tiefling heads into the nearest town and reports."

"I suppose I see the connection to Keltham's chemical secrets, now that you've pointed it out, in the form of great explosions that a tiefling villager's description couldn't identify as spellwork.  I still don't see what purpose Keltham would have in -"

"If we believe our tiefling subject's eyes - then who the fuck else would have access to that quantity of scrolls and magic items and would use them to run inscrutable experiments on a horror out of the Dark Tapestry?"

"And if we don't believe his eyes, only Keltham would think of casting that illusion or falsifying that memory."

Aspexia doesn't, quite, think in that way herself.  It isn't really a compliment to notice that Abrogail Thrune seems able to put herself in those shoes.  "I see."

"And - do you know the purpose of all that?"

Abrogail Thrune laughs.  It's high and bitter, it might perhaps, be tinged with a touch of madness, if her Splendour permitted any such thing to enter her voice, which it doesn't.

"Oh, I know what we're meant to think.  The same way we were meant to think that Keltham has a means for aggregating lesser diamonds into greater ones.  Unless of course that simply is what Keltham was about, in the City of Brass, and he didn't bother to conceal it from us because he thinks there's nothing we can do."

"Things out of the Dark Tapestry cause fear.  They cause horror.  Even a very prepared mind will still feel that fear, it is said; you must find fighters and wizards with high Wisdom to gather about you and conclude the fight quickly lest they all go mad.  Who fights a horror like that for an hour, casting spells of increasing power, when they evidently have the means about themselves to kill it more quickly?  Why?"

It takes Aspexia a moment to get that, and then her eyes widen very slightly yet visibly, so vast is her dismay.

For wizards and sorcerers to deliberately put themselves in a situation that outwardly seems painful and scary, but is ultimately safe, in order to increase their power - does not in fact work.  Otherwise everyone would do it.  Abrogail Thrune staked her life when she went to Hell, forfeit if she could not reach at least the fifth circle of sorcery, so that she would be frightened enough despite having deliberately put herself into that situation.

As for putting yourself under sufficient stress via exposing yourself to a powerful horror from the Dark Tapestry; well, the obvious reason why not everyone does that, is that you would go insane.

"I quote from the Project Lawful transcripts:  'Civilization would cheat.  They'd figure out exactly what mental state somebody had to be in to absorb extra magic like Carissa did during her date with Abrogail, and then some sixth-rank Keepers would go into that exact mental state on purpose because they could just do that, and very very quickly Civilization would have its own powerful wizards.'  End quote.  He told us, back when he was more naive, exactly how a person like him thinks about the problem of only being a first-circle wizard, showed how much disdain he had for the thought of his Civilization needing to earn power the hard way.  Put yourself under the right kind of stress, into the right mental state, and channel sufficient magic from enough items and scrolls; that's how he thinks of it, and all our lifelong struggles a meaningless ritual we go through because we're dumber than he is.  Is he now fifth-circle, to match his rival and lover Carissa?  Ninth-circle, with Sevar finding her own way of it?  Who the fuck knows?"

"Or."

"Of course."

"That's all just what he wants us to think."

The thought occurs to Aspexia that perhaps Keltham tried his clever idea, spending increasing amounts of money on casting from more powerful scrolls, but by the time he was done he was, say, only second-circle and starting to go permanently insane despite his alien disciplines; so he slaughtered the horror and went on his way.

It even matches Aspexia's understanding of tropes - it would be humorous (she does understand humor, especially cruel humor) if Keltham went to all that work, maybe did himself some permanent damage, in order to gain one caster-circle he could as well have gained from harder longer study.  And a fine joke if Abrogail then became unduly terrified of him too.

Aspexia doesn't say it out loud; it's a hopeful thought, so it must be kept from anyone who might be a viewpoint character.

Or on the other side of things - also an overly hopeful thought - maybe Abrogail remains unassassinated because Keltham has already gained greater interests than Cheliax; maybe greater than all Creation, if the tropes operate on scales larger than that.

Maybe the story's ending, from Golarion's perspective, is that Keltham simply pursues his own inscrutable purposes from now on, in a way that leaves world politics untouched?  It would be a beautiful blow to Abrogail's mighty pride, if Keltham's pride deemed her beneath its own notice.  Maybe he has reached the ninth-circle indeed, now, and the report was accidental from his perspective, and none of it is about Abrogail in the slightest because she isn't that important.

To Aspexia, at least, it seems like this would be a nicely dramatically resonant 'ending' to the story, which really does give her some substantial hope for it being true.  If Keltham is in some sense smarter than just INT 29 implies, he may be so intelligent as to be, in an odd way, harmless to Asmodeus's plans for Golarion, having outgrown the mortal concerns that once led him to meddle.

"Is there anything you believe we ought to be doing about it, if you're right?" Aspexia says aloud.

"If he's now fifth-circle?  It makes no difference I can understand.  I can't see the plot which depends on Keltham being fifth-circle in his own right rather than using scrolls or hirelings.  If he's gone over to the upper end of ninth-circle magic, and can cast Wishes in his own right from an unlimited supply of diamonds?  Then our planned assault on Osirion, which approaches by the day, is doomed even if Keltham would not destroy all Cheliax to halt it."

"It's a hopeful thought and so I wouldn't usually speak it to you, but you can't have missed that Keltham might have arranged that play intending you would conclude that -"

"Fool.  Keltham would know that, did I find myself deciding to stay my invasion for reasons traceable to information Keltham might have chosen to give me, I'd question if that decision might have been intended; and not actually stay my hand from Osirion, without first, for example, asking Keltham to demonstrate his ninth-circle power.  If he was actually ninth-circle and wanted me to not invade, he could do it that way directly; only hinting at it implies his actual weakness."

"Therefore he is not doing it for hopes that I'll refrain from invasion, for if I found myself refraining from invasion on that account, I'd thereby know he'd planted the information to that end; and so, since I will not refrain from invasion, I go back to wondering if he is in fact ninth-circle, or if he planned my receipt of the information and it is meant to accomplish something else."

"You lack talent at using Cunning, Rugatonn, for all that your headgear grants you a little more than you were born with."

"My Wisdom whispers to me that such intricate reasoning seems risky.  I sometimes reason as if gods can predict our choices, since often they can; but when I reason so, I reason in fewer steps."

"It would not be reliable thinking if we were trying to ravel anyone else but Keltham or perhaps now also Sevar.  They might miss some step of that reasoning that I have reasoned they would use.  But Keltham has grown up in an entire society that makes legend and custom of games like these; he will not miss any step of the reasoning, and therefore my reasoning over his reasoning is reliable.  And he knows that I will not miss it, for he taught that subject explicitly and he knows I have read his transcripts.  There is no consistent story where Keltham tries to scare me off from invasion, for he knows that, in the moment of my deciding not to invade, I would thereby know that had been the purpose of his bluff.  So whatever is going on, it is not that."

"Perhaps he's doing it to drive you mad with worry and make you less useful to Cheliax, since that seems to be the result being achieved."  Or maybe Keltham is tormenting Abrogail for his own sadistic amusement, in preparation for returning to claim her as vengeance-bride and torture-doll; he's intelligent enough by now to have thrown off the chains that dath ilan lays upon its peasantry.  But this yet again is a hopeful thought and should not be spoken aloud before Abrogail.

"That presumes there's something I would figure out, of danger to him, if I'm not given other things to worry about."

"Isn't that a hopeful thought?"

"Not for these purposes, no.  It sets up a mystery whose answer the audience hasn't heard yet."

"- this situation is not tenable, Rugatonn.  You may be wise, but you are not smart enough, to ravel these puzzles in my place."

"And you're not smart enough either, and less Wise than I.  We will keep the command structure as it is."

"It is ultimately my decision."

"So it is; and I've just informed you of which decision is the correct one."

Abrogail doesn't give her the satisfaction of snarling.  "This is madness.  Cheliax cannot possibly win like this, with its greatest mind cowering inside a prison cell with imaginary bars.  Better that I should take all the knowledge and decisions back into my own hands, and trust that the tropes will reward a real fight more than these pathetic attempts to manipulate them."

"You tried your hand at tropery, calling on them to witness your tryst with Sevar; and that went miserably, to all our costs.  You were given your one chance at this way of thinking, and you failed it."

"And you are succeeding?"

So far as Aspexia knows, Cheliax has had no further disasters brought on by hubris, which is really a lot of what Wisdom buys you in life, she feels.

"That's a foolish question to ask out loud.  What do you expect the tropes to do to me, if I go and answer yes?"

"I am beginning to fear that you are too ignorant to recognize whatever stupid disasters you are blundering into, that I am not being told about!  You heard the report of the Whisperwood Incident and didn't recognize Keltham's hand, or his purpose, or his person!  You haven't figured out that it was Sevar and not Pineda who slew Zhanagorr and claimed Wanshou for Hell!"

(Well, that answers that, at least.)

It hasn't been lost on the Most High that Abrogail's been put to unusual-to-her travail this last month, not free to pursue her usual plans and plots and whims; forced instead to wait on a child growing in her belly and Keltham's possible destruction of Cheliax, while Carissa Sevar's doings and Aspexia's own paltry plottings are kept from her.

Aspexia is, for a fact, starting to worry that the Queen may be going mad of it, being permitted little or no important action.

As the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus, it falls to her to deliver solace in such situations.

"Is this truly all it takes to drive you unstable?" Aspexia says acerbically, letting some of her real contempt creep into her voice.  "One month, living as a literal queen in fine palace, only you have to contend with a few unfamiliar uncertainties and aren't allowed to meddle as you feel like it?"

"Don't fucking patronize me, Aspexia.  I'm not a child in need of some motherly cruelty.  The aspect of this situation that is giving me difficulty isn't the lack of action, it's trying to play the game against fucking Keltham, who I suspect of falling barely short of a Dark Tapestry horror himself in terms of his effects on others' sanity.  Sevar's doings at least make sense.  This report of Keltham - is it a record of a true event that reached us accidentally, or sped along only by tropes?  Is it a report that Keltham permitted and intended to reach us?  I can't analyze the plot just by comprehending its obvious effect if I believed it, because Keltham hails from a world of over-intelligent madlings where my imagination of that intended effect would just be the first layer of his own intended plot.  Calculate the consequences of that?  He expects me to do that too!  And I can't guess how many layers deep he'll think I'll go!  He's from a world that plunges their children into false realities to toughen them!"

"There must be, there must be some Law to govern it, but Sevar is lost, Asmodia is lost, Avaricia and Meritxell and Shilira are not trope-touched and haven't the skill, Tallandria has twisted herself into a knot that's fucking useless for any plots more diabolical than diamond chemistry, Gorthoklek won't give me any useful answers unless I ask exactly the right question, and you are fucking useless because for all your vaunted dealings with divinities you seem to have no concept of what it means to fight someone, fight something, that -"

The math that Abrogail Thrune lacks is not actually all that complicated; it's just the notion of a mixed strategy in an adversarial equilibrium.

Once you've fixed a probability distribution over your adversary's probabilistic models of you, there's some mixed strategy that brings maximum expected dismay to all the probable people your adversary might be, given (your beliefs about) how they're unsure of what the reality is, and unsure of how many layers deep you might go, correctly modeling that you'd randomize in choosing layer depth in order to make the problem as hard as possible for (their beliefs about your beliefs about) their intelligence to solve.  Just answering "one level higher than you" only works if you can predict them perfectly, and also they can't predict themselves.

Once you phrase it that way, it's obvious that any deterministic rule would make things too easy for the adversary, if they correctly guessed that you'd reason that determined way.  And conversely, once you realize there mustn't be a deterministic rule for determining the number of layers in a deception, the notion of a mixed strategy follows quickly.

Really, when you put it that way, it makes you wonder why Abrogail Thrune herself did not work it out.  She is not less Cunning, as measured by Detect Thoughts and raw Intelligence, than those mathematicians who first worked out the notion of randomized fixpoint strategies of adversarial games, somewhere in dath ilan's buried history.  So why didn't Abrogail Thrune solve it herself?

Let's take this moment in time to talk (as one often does) about the notion of conflict between entities of asymmetrical intelligence.

Such conflicts are a surpassing theme of dath ilani literature, usually with the smarter entity starting out with the worse position in resources, and having to overcome that through wit that the other side failed to anticipate.

And because there are buried warnings in that same literature, it's emphasized also that the conflicts between humans of shared culture are only a small special case; what matters more than disparities in time-local thinkoomph are disparities in cumulated thinkoomph.

When you get into a contest of intelligence with one of your contemporaries, it's really two tips of one iceberg that are fighting each other: you and they are each the inheritor of a roughly equally vast body of ancestral thought and literature, and then they did a little bit more thinking of their own on top of that.  Even if you're exploring some entirely new territory to your shared culture, you'll be coming in with similar concepts of math, science, how broadly and basically to think.  (At least, that's how it is in dath ilan where people wouldn't just not learn probability theory, or the litanies of known heuristics and their exploits; there, most people do start out with a common broad base of basic knowledge.  Dath ilan, in the course of making sure that everyone gets all the boosts they can, does tend to eliminate that source of variance in advantage.)

Abrogail Thrune wearing the Crown of Infernal Majesty is decently smart as an individual.  She didn't invent the notion of mixed-strategy equilibria in layered reflective deceptions from scratch, or solve for that equilibrium, because it's surprisingly hard to invent that sort of thing if you have literally zero hints; literally surprising in the sense that people would be surprised by it.  (Most dath ilani would be shocked out of their heavily technologized shoes to learn how late in their history probability theory was invented, far after the dawn of agriculture, and even after the dawn of gambling as turned out to have motivated the question.)

Nex and Geb had each INT 30 by the end of their mutual war.  They didn't solve the puzzle of Azlant's IOUN stones... partially because they did not find and prioritize enough diamonds to also gain Wisdom 27.  And partially because there is more to thinkoomph than Intelligence and Wisdom and Splendour, such as Golarion's spells readily do enhance; there is a spark to inventing notions like probability theory or computation or logical decision theory from scratch, that is not directly measured by Detect Thoughts nor by tests of legible ability at using existing math.  (Keltham has slightly above-average intelligence for dath ilan, reflectivity well below average, and an ordinary amount of that spark.)

But most of all, Nex and Geb didn't solve IOUN stones because they didn't come from a culture that had already developed digital computation and analog signal processing.  Or on an even deeper level - because those concepts can't really be that hard at INT 30, even if your WIS is much lower and you are missing some sparks - they didn't come from a culture which said that inventing things like that is what the Very Smart People are supposed to do with their lives, nor that Very Smart People are supposed to recheck what their society told them were the most important problems to solve.

Nex and Geb came from a culture which said that incredibly smart wizards were supposed to become all-powerful and conquer their rivals; and invent new signature spells that would be named after them forever after; and build mighty wizard-towers, and raise armies, and stabilize impressively large demiplanes; and fight minor gods, and surpass them; and not, particularly, question society's priorities for wizards.  Nobody ever told Nex or Geb that it was their responsibility to be smarter than the society they grew up in, or use their intelligence better than common wisdom said to use it.  They were not prompted to look in the direction of analog signal processing; and, more importantly in the end, were not prompted to meta-look around for better directions to look, or taught any eld-honed art of meta-looking.

So Nex and Geb weren't really, in the end, that much smarter than their societies; not least, because that society and its cumulated thinkoomph didn't tell them to try to be any smarter than their society.

The real cautionary warnings in dath ilani literature, then, are woven into stories of meetings between humans and aliens, not conflicts between one human and another.  Aliens with a culture a thousand times as old.  Aliens from a chronologically younger species but that think faster.  The real disparities in cumulated thinkoomph would appear in meetings like that.

You can imagine (and dath ilani authors have) an individual alien so smart that it doesn't need to learn about standard openings and ploys in Go (a game that exists in many places), it doesn't need to come from a culture that plays Go, it can just play out possible games in its head for a few hours and be superior to every human player at the end.

You can tell stories about how, if you yourself have higher thinkoomph individually than your opponent, but your opponent comes from a society of greater cognitive depth, you could perhaps try to move your conflict to some new territory that your enemy's society knows not; and beat them on conflict-grounds of fluid intelligence, having moved out of crystallized known facts.

Conversely (the stories go in dath ilan), if you are facing a terrifyingly smart opponent who is but for the moment more ignorant than you, you had better be ready to try to fight them on grounds that you know better, and defeat them very quickly before they can learn from experience much faster than you would learn from it.

There can be stories about how one side has greater depth of cumulated thinkoomph, and fluid thinkoomph not inferior to yours - minds of the same level but with better technology including mental technology - but the side with better technology is outnumbered and ill-resourced.

There can be stories about fighting aliens that have greater cumulated thinkoomph and greater resources and equal fluid thinkoomph, and your one advantage is surprise; you have time to prepare with your lesser resources, and you can choose your battleground, but you must make all your moves without alerting them, and once you strike you must win very quickly.

As for a story where the opposition has greater fluid thinkoomph and a far greater depth of cumulated deep-thinkoomph and has had time to acquire roughly equal resources and holds the advantage of surprise - well, what would be the literary point?

It wouldn't even make a good sad story about a desperate doomed battle.  If the truly smarter agency has had time to think and prepare and plan, it's not going to battle you at all.  It's not going to attack you through any channel you've thought of, unless your knowledge of that vulnerability still leaves you helpless to defend it.  The smarter agency is not interested in fighting you if that can be avoided.  It would rather just win, in a way that doesn't make a good story.

If you get a chance to fight - if you get a chance to act - the alien is doing it wrong.  There does come a point of wisdom beyond which an agent does stop doing it wrong; or at least, stops doing it wrong in ways that sufficiently smaller agents can understand in advance as wrong.  If there's extrauniversal forces that want things to be dramatic (dath ilani authors, for example), they'll have to content themselves with picking a dramatically suitable moment for the instant win to occur, or maybe focus on the aftermath (if there is one) - at least if they want their stories to be taken seriously by the Very Serious literary critics.

And if you had to derive a single cautionary message from all that dath ilani literature, about what-if you end up in the position of opposing an agency of greater current and cumulative thinkoomph - and you do not have the advantage of surprise - and you do not have greater resources - that message would be -

A short time ago, Abrogail Thrune was observed in the presence of Aspexia Rugatonn.

Some swift final preparations were set into motion.

They are now completed.

At some distance from the Imperial Palace, a hovering rocket ignites, very quickly accelerating towards nearly the speed of sound.  It's harder to keep a projectile stable over the speed of sound; and by the time it nears the Imperial Palace, it will already be moving faster than the reflexes of anything that could stop it.

"- is -"

No mortal hand could guide the rocket precisely enough, to the point where it's now been targeted, given the turbulence of the rocket's wake and the way that tiny errors would amplify.  So the fine steering is being done by an analog magical processor inspired by the navigators on Azlanti IOUN stones, as hinted at by a more cumulated civilization's concept of a "guided missile".

The rocket approaches the wall of force guarding the palace, and a Disintegrate already in the process of going off completes at just the right time and destroys the wall of force.

"- smarter -"

The rocket crashes through a window at nearly the speed of sound; at nearly the same instant, a Dispel completes on a half-ton of low-quality high explosive previously under the effect of a Shrink Item spell; at nearly the same instant, that explosive detonates even as it expands back to normal size.

This explosion has been targeted to launch the Crown of Infernal Majesty out of the Imperial Palace into the air over Egorian.  Not on an exact precalculated trajectory, you can't do that with explosions at this magitech level; but the vector between the Crown and the center of detonation has rendered it predictably the case that the Crown will get launched in a known rough direction.  A certain person has just Teleported into Egorian to watch from that direction, ready to spot the magical signature of the fast-moving major artifact and move to grab it after.

Abrogail Thrune and Aspexia Rugatonn have impressive resistances and saves and protective magic items, none of which mattered any more than the Palace's security precautions mattered.  A half-ton of explosive going off in the same room isn't a combat attack, it's just you being dead.

- don't.

It's not her first time dying, not her first time waking in Hell in company of the devil who holds her soul as custodian for Asmodeus.  But along with everything else it means that the Crown of Infernal Majesty has been abruptly removed from her; it's that, more than the shock of being dead, that she struggles to recover from, in that moment of surprise.

(And because of that, she doesn't think, fast enough, to think all of the things that she could have thought -)

Those devils that deal at all with mortals in their tedious unpolished form are not held in particularly high regard among devils; mortals are, after all, paving stones in expectation and mostly in practice, and those torments and betrayals that can be visited on stronger and more interesting beings are more sophisticated, more impressive, all-around better, than those routine, boring, and limited torments that can be attempted on the recently-dead without destroying any hope of further use from them.

There is another reason why such devils are held in less regard, and it's that they have to pretend the mortals are interesting and important and impressive, at least a little bit, to lure those mortals into signing their souls away, to give those mortals a tiny fragment of a line with which to trick themselves into believing they matter. They can call the mortals worthless worms, of course, but they have to do it in a tone that concedes that this great devil is here, after all, treating with them. Mortals love that. 

Abrogail Thrune II is generally to get a warm welcome, on arriving in Hell, because her presence is likely temporary, and her loyalties need to be permanent. Abrogail Thrune II is certainly smart enough to know that the greeting she gets on arriving to Hell, with hope of resurrection, is nothing like the greeting she'll get when she falls to them forever. But still, she's a mortal, and like most of them she thinks she matters, and feeding that little delusion of hers is critical to not losing her entirely. 

So the senior contract devil in possession of Abrogail Thrune's soul pauses in his conversation when Abrogail Thrune arrives, much as it galls him, and turns from the beings that actually matter to the disoriented shell of this mortal, and says, "well, well... I take it this one wasn't on your schedule?"

He's reading her mind, of course, in case she has the expectation she won't be resurrected and he can drop the farce, or in case she's in a mood where he can light her on fire and then claim later it was for her own good really.

Her sorcery is not about her, a gaping hole in place of what is, at eighth circle, more a part of herself than her own hands -

- schedule.  Devil talking to her.  She's dead.  Being dead... wasn't on her schedule?  That doesn't sound right.  Aspexia was just worried that she hadn't been assassinated -

Keltham.

Keltham killed her.

She doesn't even know how.  Didn't feel it.  She was in her own palace.

Clever boy, thinks the part of herself that, without a whole coherent mind in control of it, thinks such things, remembered condescension mixing with a touch of actual admiration.

But does that count as it being on her schedule?

"It's complicated," her mouth says regally.

"Tedious mortal complicated, or is there something in your latest complications of interest to Hell? - actually, think of that but don't speak."

Someone's attempting to scry them. It is trivial enough for a devil to shut down a scry on his own person or his own slave, but not obvious he'd care to; perhaps these are Abrogail's allies, and serve Hell, and if not, well - Abrogail's enemies can see her in Hell, if they like, and if they look again next week and she hasn't been resurrected, what they see will be a great deal more fun.

Interest to - Hell?  Her life has been so enormously complicated that she doesn't know where to start (isn't prioritizing in this scrambled state), with 6 INT missing from herself all the endless complications feel like a ruined tower collapsing down into a heap of stones.  Her mind goes to the most-recent complications, possible layers of what Keltham could be trying to trick her into believing, about whether he leveled from his fight with a thing from the Dark Tapestry, about diamonds and the City of Brass (no, Hell already knows about that, Hell was first to inform Cheliax), she's not supposed to think about hopeful plans because then they can't come to pass the way she hoped them, only that - somehow seems much stupider, in her own stupid state, Aspexia can't be right about that, she suddenly feels -

He takes her hand, then, and crushes it within his own until he can feel the bones break, but with his expression focused. "I am your custodian; you have been commanded to think."

It helps.

But not instantly.

Seconds go on ticking while she focuses on the pain, lets it wash through her and remind her that she is failing to impress; one second, two seconds, half a round, her thoughts collect -

Aspexia Rugatonn was there, is she dead too, yes because the attack wouldn't have been timed like that otherwise, does Keltham have something planned to stop Aspexia's Resurrection and her own -

If all Keltham wanted was to see his child dead, she should be resurrected soon.  Minutes, though, not rounds, because with both her and Aspexia dead, the protocol calls for resurrecting Rugatonn first.  Not as a power struggle between Church and Crown - well, of course there's always a power struggle, but in this case it works out to a common-sense answer and a tiny flow of political capital - Aspexia can cast True Resurrection herself, if she happens to have it prepped, it might save a scroll -

Let's take this moment in time to talk (as one often does) about the theory and practice of counterassassination security in Cheliax.

In Golarion generally, the vast majority of heads-of-state are defended primarily by custom, by inertia, by the country's sovereign not actually being important enough to be worth defending against the equivalent of one person with a distance-targetable projectile weapon.  Security-through-nobody-actually-bothering-to-attack-you-all-that-hard-or-creatively is the most popular kind of security.

The Queen of Cheliax, Abrogail Thrune II, is one of the rare exceptions to this rule.  From the standpoint of, say, the Church of Iomedae, Abrogail Thrune makes Golarion significantly worse just by existing, and if she stopped ruling Cheliax her replacement would probably not be equally creative and dynamic.  Iomedae's Church would pay a lot of money to any creative person who managed to kill Abrogail Thrune in a way where she didn't come back; or, better yet, to anyone who could take the Crown of Infernal Majesty permanently off the board.

So Abrogail Thrune's personal security model centers around the presumption that the attacker's primary goals, and the primary negative outcomes that Cheliax wants to avoid, are:

1)  Somebody taking Abrogail Thrune down in a way that True Resurrection, or at ultimate need Miracles and Wishes, cannot fix.  Soul Bind, most obviously, and then getting away with the soul-gem.  Just having a daemon-worshipper Maledict her to Abaddon would not suffice; if you are willing to pay enough you can Wish back a Maledicted soul.  If the body was destroyed, you can Wish up another body first.  You'd need to do that before her soul was eaten, but unless you are really dawdling about this there will likely be time.  Similarly, to have a daemon consume Abrogail Thrune in the process of an assassination would require quite a lot of time during which Cheliax had not caught up with you.  Still, it wouldn't do to let Abrogail Thrune - or her soul gem - get Teleported onto the front doorstep of the House of Oblivion.

2)  Getting the Crown of Infernal Majesty permanently out of Cheliax's reach, presumably out of the reach of Hell and Asmodeus.  This isn't going to be easy; Asmodeus can definitely see the Crown wherever it goes.  Putting the Crown into a bag of holding and tossing the bag into a portable hole, which usually suffices to lose a thing forever in the far distant Astral Plane, is not nearly going to suffice here.  But if you can get the Crown to Heaven - that might do it.  Even if Asmodeus could pay Heaven to get it back, the payment would be huge enough that the injury to Evil would be vast; paladins would offer their souls for it; and in the aftermath Abrogail Thrune would no longer be Queen, or much of anything at all.

All of this points to a security model that centers on keeping Abrogail Thrune where she is rather than alive.  The Queen is not without her defenses, over and above the crazy levels of protection from the Crown of Infernal Majesty; but this is because while the Queen is alive she can better stay in one place, and defend her Crown and her soul.  Defending the Queen's life isn't the point the same way.  That's a Raise Dead issue, or at worst a True Resurrection, or at real worst a matter of Wish and Miracle.  So long as she's not inside a gemstone.

If the assassination is taking place outside the Palace, the threat model, then, is an attacker who has a plan for making off with a gem containing Abrogail Thrune's soul, or with the Crown of Infernal Majesty, or less likely kidnapping her living body.

The full details of Abrogail Thrune's security entourages outside the Palace would be lengthy; and, of course, heavily classified.

But a primary element of her personal Security is that Abrogail Thrune's entourage will be decorated with Telepathic Bonds and Status spells.  Someone on the other end of those will be in telepathic range of Gorthoklek, who will promptly Greater Teleport in - not to that exact location, as will obviously be Teleport Trapped by at least one side of the security game; Gorthoklek will Teleport in above and dive quickly.

(Abrogail Thrune does sometimes appear in a place without heavy Security - life would be less fun for her, otherwise - but when she does, she goes Mind Blanked and never ever lets it form anything resembling a predictable pattern.  The one Competent Security on her personal guard invariably tears her hair out anyways.)

Abrogail Thrune's counterassassination security model has also obviously considered an attack on the Queen inside her Palace's Forbiddance; there's just way too much weird shit in Golarion for it to be realistically possible to keep everyone out of a place.

The advantage to the attacker, in this case, will be that Abrogail Thrune will be less prepared than when she ventures outside, without a dozen protective spells that are too bothersome or too expensive to constantly redo.  She also will not be able to immediately Dimension Door or Teleport away, because of the Palace's Forbiddance.  Gorthoklek cannot immediately Greater Teleport to her side.

The attacker's primary disadvantage is the Forbiddance; and the security model assumes that the attacker's primary goal is getting outside of the Forbiddance, carrying a gem with the Queen's soul or her head still wearing the Crown (or both).

Permanent walls of force are Very Expensive.  One-time walls of force, rather less.  If the Queen's Status indicates that she is severely injured or dead while inside the Palace, multiple layered walls of force and several other complicated measures will spring up to enclose the Palace Forbiddance almost immediately.  Other security measures are then invoked with the aim of sweeping the enclosed volume inside the countermeasures before they run out of time and come down; against an attacker determined to hide and ride out Cheliax's supply of temporary enclosures.  (An attacker trying to hide probably has the Queen's soul gem; the Crown should be impossible to hide.)

Of course Security has not failed to consider the possibility of the Forbiddance itself being taken down, by a Dispel from Nefreti Clepati or a Mage's Disjunction.  Could the attacker also have cast a Teleport Trap before then, in case Abrogail Thrune tries to just Teleport right out?  If it was some other sovereign being targeted, then maybe, but a Teleport Trap allows both a Will save and Spell Resistance; an 8th-circle sorcerer wearing the Crown of Infernal Majesty is probably fine here.

Again the details of measure and countermeasure would be lengthy; but one very pragmatic countermeasure is that if the Palace Forbiddance goes down while the Queen is inside it, Gorthoklek teleports to her location and then scries for Aspexia Rugatonn.

Wishnapping is a whole entire other class of threat.  Almost nobody besides Abrogail Thrune needs to worry about it.  It's just too expensive.

If you are Abrogail Thrune, or somebody else worth well more than a hundred thousand gold pieces to kidnap, the first elementary precaution is to be Mind Blanked whenever you're out of a Forbiddance.

But as for a Mage's Disjunction or a Nefreti Clepati Dispel being levied on a Forbiddance, while you're inside it, and a Wish following immediately after -

Well, then, if you're Abrogail Thrune, you laugh.  Involuntary Wish-movement allows both Will-saves and Spell Resistance, and Abrogail Thrune wearing the Crown has plenty of both.  Even without the Crown an 8th-circle sorcerer still gets a heck of a Will save, and Abrogail Thrune's luxuriously spoiled aristocratic upbringing has granted her something of an extra-strong Will save on top of that.  A circle of a hundred noble Efreet could all Wish for her to be moved, one after another, and Abrogail Thrune would not move did she choose to stay; the Efreet are not such mighty casters, after all, even if they have a strange affinity for Wishes.  You'd have to render her unconscious outside a Forbiddance and take off her Crown, and if you can do either of those things, you can just take the Crown.

With all that said, it isn't realistically possible to prevent anybody from ever killing the Queen.  The primary pillar of security there is that resurrection is in fact a thing.  For this reason did Abrogail and Aspexia believe that Keltham ought to not have too much trouble assassinating the Queen, so long as Abrogail occasionally appeared outside the Palace at a predictable place and time, no matter how much Security she brought with her and even if they were not instructed to leave gaps.

...Of course, then, another obvious thought is that you could first assassinate Abrogail Thrune in a very normal way, and then hire a Lawful Evil spellcaster to resurrect her; or even with some work and the right set of lies, get an Asmodean to cast True Resurrection from scroll, aimed at Abrogail Thrune while she was vulnerable in Hell.

To prevent Abrogail from giving her consent for resurrection unwittingly - or her asking the devil who holds custody of her soul to do the same - there's an obvious sort of setup that involves a Greater Scry spell and a Message through that scry (as can be enacted much more swiftly than Sending), containing a password telling Abrogail that the upcoming resurrection is an authorized one, and naming a randomized exact number of rounds before that resurrection.

Depending on how badly things got fucked up when the Queen died, and especially if Aspexia Rugatonn is also dead or if there's an ongoing Security penetration, their True Resurrections may take place within the sort of tiny unambitious demiplane that isn't too insanely expensive to stabilize with a Permanency.

That resurrection isn't the priority, though, the priority is securing the Crown of Infernal Majesty - and oh there's all sorts of complications involved in Abrogail Thrune trying to prevent anybody else from putting on the Crown during that process!  Especially if they happen to have maybe executed a compact with Asmodeus, or if they're a Thrune; or maybe a Thrune in disguise who's secretly executed a compact... 

The only reason why that resurrection should happen shortly, if nothing has gone wrong, is that the resurrection process doesn't depend on the Crown-securing process.  The rez can proceed in parallel as soon as the process for trying to get Aspexia Rugatonn to do it fails, and the find-Rugatonn process is on a sharp time-bound.

- but if all Keltham wanted was to still his child - he would not have tried, probably succeeded, in killing Rugatonn at the same time.  That's - Abrogail doesn't see it yet, the reason, but there must have been a plan -

A flash of disoriented horror and dismay, would Keltham take the Crown - to cast into Heaven, or wear himself - no that's madness, it would have been Carissa, obviously Carissa, surely Carissa, as the motive power, she'd never let the Crown be thrown into Heaven like garbage.  If, with Abrogail dead, Carissa compacted of Asmodeus can lay her own hands upon the Crown of Infernal Majesty - then Carissa wins, obviously, if she can prove her continuing Asmodean loyalties to the Most High beyond all doubt, and has strength enough to force skeptical eighth-circle wizards to kneel to her.  And otherwise there will be a horrific mess -

None of this is very interesting, if you are a devil; mortals can have their mortal power struggles. He dismisses the scry with an irritated flick of his tail; whether it is Abrogail's allies or her enemies, they've seen enough, and squeezes her hand further as it seems to be salutary so far. "You may speak aloud," he says. Sometimes mortals can think more clearly that way.

And then suddenly, Abrogail Thrune is somewhere else!

Wishes don't obey all the usual rules for resurrections, which is why they can beat Maledictions and in some cases temporarily infernal contracts (if the contracted didn't die of old age).

But Wishes do get Will saves, if they try to resurrect you without consent.  Even in death, some pissant Efreeti cannot just yank Abrogail Thrune back to life against her will.

And a petitioner in the afterlife who does not consent might also be assisted by the authority of that plane in resisting.  Usually would be, if that plane wants to keep that petitioner.  Hell can't go around Wishing its enemies out of Heaven for funsies, or vice versa.

But there were three Wishes remaining, of fifteen Wishes bought with a soul; and if you are a damned petitioner making a Will save against a pit fiend, the usual rule is that the pit fiend wins.

Abrogail Thrune is currently looking up at an expressionless pit fiend towering over her!

And alive!

And Greater Cursed.

He can't just do that!!  Abrogail gets a Will save!  She should've gotten a Will save!

And why can't she move - why can't she cast - why does her mind suddenly have this awful hollow empty feeling where her drive, her core, should be, to call down flame and ice -

The procedure for revival via Wish, if you need to beat some unusual impediment to resurrection using a tremendous amount of money, involves using one Wish to recreate the body and a second Wish to revive it.  (Though the first Wish, in this case, could just be carried out in the City of Brass, before going to Hell for the second.)

Thinking about it, this implies a phase of the process where a lifeless Abrogail Thrune body is just lying there all vulnerable-like.

Before revival her lifeless body was bound in fetching-looking chains of magical steel, and also this new body comes pre-equipped with the following magic items:

Amulet of Held Person:  Casts Hold Person on the wearer.  Prerequisites:  Hold Person, Bestow Curse, Craft Wondrous Item.

Crown of Splendourlessness:  -12 to Splendour, as if subjected to Greater Bestow Curse.  Prerequisites:  Greater Bestow Curse, Craft Wondrous Item.

Tiny Sword of Will Save Failure:  -10 to all Will saves.  Prerequisites:  Greater Bestow Curse, Craft Magical Arms and Armor.

(Note:  Missing prerequisites can be bypassed with an increase in crafting DC that is beneath INT 29 Carissa Sevar's dignity to acknowledge in any way.)

Keltham, who does not seem to be bothering to speak to her paralyzed form - nor to the pit fiend - unceremoniously picks her up with obviously augmented Strength; slings her over his shoulder; and hauls her quickly out of the iron room, exiting from there to what's clearly Avernus, the first layer of Hell.  His moves are Hasted, not in the fashion of somebody who fears the consequence otherwise, just someone who doesn't want to waste time.

It is hard to think, in this state.  She was fifteen years old the last time anyone trained her to operate with Intelligence, or Wisdom, or Splendour cursed; and then Abrogail was not cursed this terribly.  It is the sort of training that she just did not dare keep up later in life, it would make her just too vulnerable.

Feeling impressed, feeling scared, those are both emotions she should not let herself feel without deciding about it, but there they are and it is much harder than usual to grind down everything that ought not be part of Abrogail Thrune.

Her mind does manage to make the connection, once it sorts out the bodily feeling that she's already wearing a cursed amulet and cursed crown, that Carissa Sevar must be working with Keltham on this or at least fulfilling magic item orders for him.  Abrogail's mind, looking around for anything allowable to think, decides that this means the Crown wouldn't just be given to Heaven; Sevar wouldn't allow it.

He passes through a Gate that opens for him, into what looks like an unfamiliar demiplane; speaks a password, crosses a marked boundary.

She can't move.  Can't cast.  Can barely think.

When she looked forward to playing the game of thrones against Carissa, or maybe against a Lawful Evil Keltham someday, she did think it would be later; and that she would get a chance to make a move, in the game, rather than getting no chance to act at all.

(Her mind does not let itself think any thoughts like 'lost the game' or 'not queen of Cheliax anymore'.  There are all kinds of ways that she could still end up being Queen after this.)

(There's no thoughts like that, but an awful sinking pit in her stomach; for Abrogail Thrune hasn't Splendour enough to cast one cantrip, now.)

He casts a second Greater Curse upon her, from scroll, and then a third; duplicating with those Curses the effect of the cursed magic items already on her.

And then a fourth and final Greater Curse, one that would seem nonstandard even to Aspexia Rugatonn; whose purpose Abrogail Thrune simply cannot read, in the gestures he is making to tell the Curse what it should be; casting it over a longer period than ordinary even with gestures Hasted.

She would protest, say something, persuade him somehow, maybe ask the seductively frightened question 'What are you doing to me?', if she could speak and had Splendour.

If this doesn't end well, it's all Aspexia's fault for insisting that Abrogail wait paralyzed and frightened in her palace instead of playing the game like a sane person.

Keltham lays that final curse upon her, as she lies helpless to resist.

He then moves out of her field of vision, leaving her bound and paralyzed upon the flat surface of what appears to be a gray-lighted simple demiplane; though to be sure, in Abrogail's state, she could not see through an illusion maybe even of an ordinary wizard, and never mind one cast from INT 29.

She could not feel herself failing her Will save, cannot tell what the curse is doing to her, she feels no more stupid or crippled than before.

But even with 6 less INT than usual, even with an utterly crippling 18 less Splendour than usual, Abrogail Thrune is not hollowed-out enough not to wonder why they're leaving her conscious at all, nor fail to question whether she's actually unattended -

The Hold Person from the Amulet wears off, though she's still chained.

Okay haha no she's not stupid enough not to think that they'd hold her in such disregard as to leave her conscious and unparalyzed just to show Hellish contempt; it'd be an unnecessary risk.

...Detect Thoughts.  They've left her alone to see if she thinks anything interesting once she thinks she's alone.

She has 6 less WIS than usual and her core is hollow and empty; if anything that almost saves her, that her INT is collapsed along with her WIS, and that there's so much more internal suffering to distract her.  Her mind literally fails to prioritize all the things that she'd least want Keltham and Carissa to know, just like she had trouble prioritizing for her custodian devil any thoughts like 'this might just be the first stage of Keltham's plan'.

Well, what shouldn't she be thinking, right now -

She absolutely shouldn't be thinking that question.  Obviously.

Ha.  If she was Carissa, she'd already be thinking exactly the thoughts that would be advantageous for her captors to observe her thinking -

Okay THAT was not a smart thought to think while Carissa was possibly reading her mind and maybe being reminded of some things to possibly get angry about.

Abrogail Thrune humbly acknowledges that Carissa Sevar is much better at this important life skill, which Abrogail, in her spoilation, has not had due chance to practice after she took the throne.

Standard advice about beating Detect Thoughts - during that transient pleasant interlude while your captors haven't yet gotten around to torturing you until your will is broken, or also cursing you with -12 WIS so you have a four-year-old's self-control - is that you find something to think about, rather than not think about.  It's fine if it's something horribly fascinating.  And in the back of your mind, you have something else to not think about which is not as ruinous - Abrogail's passwords, maybe, such as a would-be Queen might need - actually she does not want to share that with Carissa either.

That time she noticed that some part of herself was glad that Carissa was having fun.

There's a thing to try not to think about.

Or tropes - not thinking of any hopes where the audience might watch her thoughts - she has some practice in not thinking that.  So she can carefully not think any tropey hopes, even while trying to focus her actual thoughts - on -

The two times she's had sex with Carissa?  Would that make Keltham jealous, or aroused, or angry, would he take revenge on her in - in a useful way, in a way that means she wins - no she shouldn't think that, it decreases the chance that Keltham -

How strange, she actually does not want him doing that to her, breaking her pride as a woman, not even if it's useful.  She would have thought that it would be a more sexual thought than that, to her, being wholly overcome by a man.  Maybe it's the aching hole in her Splendour, that it takes stronger feelings to be that more interesting Abrogail.

Well.  If she really would hate it, that definitely increases the chance he'll bother to humiliate her, if the boy has gained any manhood at all.

Romance novel tropes -

Surely she cannot be taken, subdued, conquered, this easily, this cannot be the end for her, just like this, it lacks drama -

(That's a hopeful thought, Aspexia has forbidden her to think those -)

No!  No it's safe to think that.  It's a vague hope - and Keltham or Carissa or both are reading her mind, and now their character viewpoints matter - if she thinks 'it can't end for me with this little drama' and they believe it's the end for her based on their specific plans and this is true, that doesn't fly as drama.

Something unexpected would happen from their standpoint, something would shake up the story -

She waits, then, her body tense, now that she can move any muscle at all.

Obviously and as any sane person would expect, nothing happens.

When her lungs start to hurt, she realizes she was unconsciously holding her breath and lets it out.

There's a rumbling cold chuckle, and then a pit fiend - the same pit fiend who was leaning over her before, as you can recognize if you've had enough dealings with devils - leans over Abrogail once more, and picks her up much as Keltham did, though with far greater Strength.

...it is possible, it is imaginable, that the lesser Carissa Sevar within Dis might have failed to negotiate any explicit compact-term along the lines of 'When I use my Gate back, the pit fiends are not allowed to follow me, invisibly or otherwise.'  It is not the sort of thing you'd imagine a pit fiend to bother doing, if it wasn't an effortless cruel-prank to play while you were right there.  Or the lesser Carissa might imaginably have thought - especially if she feared her own true loyalties - that a faithful subject of Asmodeus ought not want to impede a pit fiend, if something mattered that much to Hell's third tier of nobility.

Hell does like its little games, you could say, especially when it comes to granting Wishes that are the least bit interesting.

HAHAHA YES SHE DID IT, SHE FINALLY DID IT, SHE DID A TROPE

no that's definitely a bad thought, that's hope, now what terrible thing happens to her as a result of thinking that, also why is she worth a pit fiend's trouble to rescue -

Abrogail knows the answer almost as soon as she thinks the question.  This isn't about her.

The pit fiend turns to where Keltham now stands visible, rumbles in Taldane, "Where is the Crown of Infernal Majesty?"  It doesn't add any threats, possibly because threats are a superfluous part of speech when the sentence is spoken by a pit fiend.

Keltham replies to it in Infernal with unchanging expression.  "You stand on territory governed by compact recorded by the erinyes Lrilatha, between Keltham of Elsewhere, and Asmodeus the Prince of Hell, and Otolmens the Preserver of Creation."

He is holding up a sheet of parchment inscribed with ornate Infernal letters.  Abrogail can hardly crane her neck to see it, and she is no longer smart enough to memorize the contents at a glance if she could.

"I am forbidden to take from this place what is yours," the pit fiend's voice replies in that same language.  "What you win from mortals and devils may be yours, but this sold itself to Asmodeus, and is Asmodeus's.  I so rule."

"This is a matter between myself and two gods, and neither I nor They designate you as arbiter in how Asmodeus's part governs you."

The pit fiend's voice deepens; there is a tangible power to it, when it speaks.  "And yet I am taking this back to Hell, and that is reality, and there is no meaning for you in considering any other possibility."

"Then perhaps I shall leave this place, and tell Lrilatha why, so that Asmodeus can explain to Otolmens how and by who Their ongoing compact with me was broken, as I judge it."

"Where is the Crown of Infernal Majesty?"

"In a safe place.  I, who was cleric of Abadar, had meant to offer that Crown to Hell at a fair price; to that price I will add the return of what you now take, and a penalty."

"The price of disrespect will be extracted from you in due time."  The pit fiend with its power strong about it pulls the cursed crown from Abrogail's head, the magic yielding without visible effort to it; pulls the cursed amulet from over her neck without damaging it, strips the chains from her and also the tiny sword woven into her hair; and drops them upon the ground.  "Here is all that is yours."

"Placing her where she could be retrieved by me, after a ruling by an agreed arbiter, would guard against Asmodeus being irrevocably foresworn to the god who guards all Creation."

The pit fiend does not dignify this with an answer, but turns and strides out of the Forbiddance Abrogail was brought inside, to the edge of the demiplane.

There's the sensation of the pit fiend plane shifting, then plane shifting again, followed by the sensation of an ordinary Teleport.

Abrogail does not know where in Dis she has been brought, but it is easily recognized as a fortress of Dis to anyone who has traveled there.

The pit fiend hands her over to a lesser devil that guards the gate, of that fortress; if there are instructions spoken they are conveyed telepathically and not for mortal ears to hear.

...this is probably, still, on net, a good thing; the pit in her stomach has fallen only half as deep, now.  She doesn't know what Keltham wanted of her, and he might be able to buy a disgraced Queen with the Crown; she is not escaped from his grasp, if she matters to some plan of his.  But whatever is to follow, Hell has much more of an interest in Abrogail Thrune still being Queen of Cheliax when it's over.  They'll extract a price in pain, for her failure; but pain is something she knows how to bear, even if it can't be borne, you just go on.

She is carried swiftly and uncaringly through places of flame.  When her living form chokes once too often on the air, despite a fire resistance she was given early on, she's hauled aside to some unfamiliar higher devil who bothers to lay a more comprehensive protection on her.

She wishes that someone would undo the curses on her.  She does not ask it aloud; this is Hell.

There - cannot have been a way that this is all part of some other plan by Keltham and Carissa, can it - the mysterious fourth curse laid on her - maybe she's set to explode curses should really not be able to do that and Keltham has no reason to so offend Hell.

The thought that the pit fiend actually violated a compact, by taking her, that this could be Keltham's plan, is mulled for only a few moments before being rejected as utterly impossible.  Mortals may make mistakes like that; greater devils whose actions reflect fully on Asmodeus simply would not make that mistake.

It's only as she's thrown into what seems to be her final destination, a slave's holding cell of that fortress, where a mortal could live for a time if for some strange reason they were not being killed, that the thought finally occurs to her:  Discern Location remains a thing in Golarion, Mind Blanks are expensive, and fighting Gorthoklek is risky.  If the goal is to take Abrogail Thrune out of the game for a time - then arranging for her to be held in Hell, while Keltham seeks an arbitration, could be superior to placing her somewhere that you'd have to pay to defend from Hell.

...if that's all Keltham is doing, it will be good news, so she had best not hope it.  She wishes, in fact, that she had never thought of that plan, so that it could have come to her as an ironical surprise.  But her thoughts are less controlled, now, and now it is too late.

She needs her Wisdom back, and her Intelligence, and enough Splendour that her mind stops fucking whining.  If any devils nearby are reading her thoughts and are annoyed about all this fucking whining, Abrogail understands if she gets hurt about it, but the whining will only actually stop when somebody dispels these curses.  She is possibly the leading expert in Creation about whether you can quickly and easily hurt low-Splendour mortals for whining inside their minds, in a way that makes their minds stop whining, without just completely breaking them, and the answer to this is no.  Obviously she'll have to be hurt too, for whining, you can't get out of hurting by needing special treatment instead; but she doesn't want her mind doing this either, and her own best judgment is that the mortal's mind will keep whining until somebody dispels the low-Splendour curse and then presumably hurts her for requiring special treatment like that.

The horned guard at the door turns, irritably, after a bit of this, and says, "that, done by Hell, is an intervention in Golarion should you return to it, which Hell cares not to pay for; get a grip on yourself, or don't."

She tries, and doesn't particularly succeed about it, with Splendour too low to cast a sorcerer's cantrip.  She hates herself and knows that this too is probably annoying the devil.  It would be nice if Abrogail was one of those relatively more tolerable people who do stop mentally whining when they're hurt, but she's not, Abrogail is the sort to never whine in the first place because she accepts it as her place to overcome adversity or die, and everything that makes her that Abrogail has been crippled by losing 18 Splendour her mind is fucking doing it again.

The horned creature, without even any visible irritation, says to another "it needn't be conscious", and then there's an excruciating stab of some long, needled claw, and then darkness.

....and then, elsewhere, a more luxurious elsewhere with screaming faces writhing at her from the floor, with both her custodian and a different senior devil present, there is consciousness again.

She realizes within moments, taking stock of herself, that she's at +4 INT and +4 WIS relative to her pre-Crown baseline, the recognizable feeling of the standard spells or some minor infernal variant of them.  There's a thin headband on her skull that's likely giving her +6 Splendour back out of -12 cursed and -6 Crown-lost.  She could cast lesser sorceries like this, if not Teleport.  Knocking her unconscious didn't exactly give her the equivalent of a good night's sleep, and her body feels stiff in a way suggestive of having been left in a heap for longer than one night, empty in a way that suggests hunger magically fed.

The senior devil is a Bdellavritra, a three-headed worm that by reputation is intelligent, wise, charismatic, and excels at cruelly manipulative schemes.  With some lesser part of her wit restored, it takes little time for Abrogail to deduce that this meeting must concern Keltham.  Also somebody's thrown a black cloak around her, which implies that either Cheliax or Keltham might see her; no devil would care.

"I'm functional," Abrogail reports briefly, and awaits requests or explanations.  She has lost far too much pride already before Hell.

And the devil gestures, and with the gesture takes down an illusion concealing a scrying mirror, a very nice one. "Your testimony on some matter is required, and my oath as to what your testimony is."

At +4 INT and +4 WIS, Abrogail Thrune would probably figure out which matter, given a minute, if she were just given one minute to think.

She's not told in advance what she's to be questioned about?  So somebody can see her reactions, so she doesn't have time to invent a story, according to negotiated conditions?  But even at this little Splendour she can control herself.  Does that imply that it's just her testimony to be transmitted and not her thoughts?  How would that end up relevant to a bid by Keltham to have her returned to him?

"Required under what authority?" she says, making her voice and expression empty, for at this Splendour she will not essay an active deception.  "Few compacts with Keltham were signed by me or in my name; and my compact with Asmodeus does not require me to obey all Hell's orders so long as I serve Him well through Cheliax."  Will it violate an oath if she lies?

"If I command you to answer, answer." Implicit, of course, is that one would answer truthfully only if that were commanded.

"I'll obey."

Then they'll put through the Greater Scry.

Keltham appears within the mirror, glances at the apparent camera location, and casts from scroll a Greater Scry of his own.  His eyes within the mirror focus then on the two devils, and don't particularly seem to see Abrogail - not in the fashion of ignoring her, but in the fashion of Abrogail not being visible to his scry at all.

"Is the living mortal Abrogail Thrune II, who was born to that name and compacted with the god Asmodeus and once signed a compact with myself, present nearby and ready imminently to be interrogated by you, in accordance with that agreement made between myself and Hell one hour and thirteen minutes earlier in the mortal realm?"

...there's only stars and blackness visible behind him, in the mirror, in the scry radius around him; and there's something wrong with those stars, they are too many and too bright in the blackness for him to be standing silhouetted against ordinary night.

"Yes," says the devil, bored.

With enough INT and WIS she sees those too-bright stars and makes the connection, where Keltham must be, what must be below him, and her heart almost stops; she knows then, she knows the question which Keltham is going to ask of Hell, and why he expects that Hell might answer, and she knows he'll demand they read her thoughts and swear to it -

"I plan to ascend to godhood shortly, and expect to succeed about that plan.  I am checking whether there exists a mess in the mortal realm that I need to clean up first."

"If the matter I speak of is not resolved to me with surety, I will use knowledge out of Elsewhere to utterly destroy the entire territory of Cheliax, as my default action in ignorance; as I would have done simply to be sure, had there been no way whatsoever to confirm the matter from Abrogail Thrune or Hell.  You are now being offered an opportunity for an outcome which is not that."

"The blood of dath ilan is adept at finding creative paths to destruction, in a way not fully captured by measurement spells for Intelligence and Wisdom and Splendour.  If anyone has stolen children from me, they will when grown present some additional danger to the continued existence of Golarion and perhaps larger regions than that."

"I suspected Cheliax of having stolen children from me by way of substitution plots of Abrogail Thrune, Willa Shilira, and Jacint Subirachs, all of whom I have already slain.  I am concerned that perhaps more children than that have been stolen from me."

"If Asmodeus's instructions sent by vision to Ferrer Maillol, not to take hostages against me, have been obeyed diligently rather than cleverly and dancing around the edges, those instructions interpreted generously should have covered that contingency, for any child of mine permitted to be ensouled might be hostage against me.  I have taken Maillol and read his thoughts under interrogation and confirmed that this would be in the uncertain edges of Asmodeus's instructions; more hopefully, from my perspective, he recalls no such question being asked of him, as any sensible person would surely have done.  However he also recalls his mind being read by Carissa, and I cannot rule out the event that he was asked this question and then had his memory erased about it.  Nor, for that matter, can I rule out that Abrogail was enough of an idiot to not ask him, or to dance around the edges of Asmodeus's instructions, as she certainly did with respect to many other potential hostages that she claimed were not really hostages."

"I therefore ask you to read the mind of Abrogail Thrune and confirm to me that I have no children of Cheliax remaining and known to her nor in the least bit suspected by her, now that she, Willa, and Jacint have been killed.  Or, if there were other children stolen of me, I would have Hell and Cheliax swear satisfactory oaths to see all pregnancies ended swiftly before they can be ensouled.  I will pay for costs incurred there, as a salve to Hell's pride, though it would be greatly in your interest to do so even if I paid nothing."

"I will see this matter on an oath-assured path toward satisfactory resolution, or else burn all Cheliax to ash, before this scry ends."  Keltham holds up a lesser mirror to the scry-node, angling it so that it shows the land of Cheliax far far below him, upon the curve of Golarion where it floats in space.

no no no no no NO NO NO NO

"If we are inclined to give you this assurance, we will do so before this scry ends," the devil says, and turns to Abrogail, looking, now, substantially less bored. "Have you assurances of interest to this Keltham, your majesty?" The title is, of course, mockery; they weren't using it when they thought she was the Queen of a powerful and capable Cheliax.

"I have not -"

"I am unassured by her words and only satisfied by what you swear in Asmodeus's name were her thoughts."

Her thoughts?  She tries to bend them, of course she does, she has never given Keltham any children other than the one she held within herself, now slain by him before it could be ensouled -

(Scattered his children wide, priestesses and wizards and noblewomen; a few where not even Church or Crown knew where to find them, peasant women taken anonymously and returned anonymously and told to keep silence, and some of those beyond Cheliax's borders -)

"Do the means exist to identify all those in Cheliax, or all those in any specific duchy of it; or who would that question be asked, if not you."

Yes, of course, they kept records -

(But not complete records, for they wished to ensure that the story would be irrevocably a tragedy according to dath ilani tropes, so that having ensured a dath-ilan-unhappy ending they could then work further to make it the specific kind of dath-ilan-unhappy they wanted; they tried to make it impossible for Keltham to retrieve all his children no matter how hard he tried, impossible even for Cheliax to retrieve them, leaving no pathway or possible twist of the story by which it would all have a dath-ilan-happy ending after all -)

"Who kept the records?"

The task was delegated to a fifth-circle of Asmodeus by herself and Aspexia; records would be within the Palace Forbiddance in Egorian, probably in a section that deals in secret project records.

(nothing written down or recorded about the extra babies, they weren't that stupid)

(doesn't think about how Aspexia Rugatonn thought it was fine, because there are no excuses, no defenses, but there sure is a pre-thought about how that is a defense she's not trying to offer Hell)

Then the devil will state to Keltham, that Abrogail has thought of a secret project, for which records are contained within the palace in Egorian, and that Hell will accept Keltham's payment for their trouble in pursuing every woman in those records, and ensuring that his children never come to be. 

"You did not swear that Abrogail Thrune expected there to be no child of my blood unknown to me, that is not recorded in those records."

"You did not swear that these were her thoughts that she thought to be true, rather than thoughts that she thought deliberately."

"You did not swear that she had no other thoughts that negated those you described to me."

"Unless you have far better cards in your hand than those, you do not have the option-resources to trick me about this.  That wouldn't have worked on an INT 29 four-year-old.  The deception you tried was one that I'd visualized in toto as a possibility before I contacted Hell to open negotiations; it corresponds to a class of scenarios where I have some children in those records and some unrecorded children."

"Is there another set of records to trace those other children?  Unwritten memories of them?  Near-deterministic procedures that could be re-run to reproduce trajectories from a small set of possibilities?  I would like to not destroy Cheliax, here.  What exactly has Cheliax done, and is there any way it could be salvaged if we all cooperate?  Even if you cannot think of one, perhaps I can."

"There are some children not in the records, and some of them outside of Cheliax entirely. You will have to destroy all of Golarion, if this is how you are so moved to act. Hell will gladly receive them; people often repent, in their old age, so calamity is not often our enemy."

Keltham's face doesn't change expression.  "If I destroy Cheliax, some people go to Hell today, fewer people go to Hell later, my later dealings with Asmodeus are more fraught, and I'd need to delay to do something about the Worldwound once Cheliax can't help fight it and the Worldwound isn't needed to occupy Cheliax.  I've already had this argument with Carissa Sevar and she's smarter than you and has more complete information."

"My function for whether it's worth destroying Cheliax to destroy some number of unrecorded children there, given that I have a second number of untraceable children outside it, is a complicated one.  Tell me those two numbers straight.  Tell me the complete details on what Abrogail Thrune has done, in case I can think of a solution not apparent to the devils containing this negotiating-information."

Then the devil will turn to Abrogail, and ask these numbers.

She, herself does not know the exact numbers; unreported is unreported.  Based on - the broad orders she gave, the resources she assigned - there should be around five times as many children within Cheliax as without; and the fourth part of Keltham's 144 children will have gone unrecorded.  She - did say that there should be exactly 144 at the end, because tropes and irony, so - the officers that she designated to do this, should be able to reconstruct the exact numbers inside and outside Cheliax, if asked - probably - though there were three Modify Memory scrolls that she designated to be used, there.

This the devil will report, this time adding that Abrogail Thrune II did not think thoughts contrary to these, and that she believed what she thought was true.

His expression does flicker, barely, when it's said that he was to be given exactly 144 children.

"I'd speak to Abrogail Thrune directly, with her words made meaningful by your prior assurance that you'll speak out if her thoughts contradict her spoken words.  Perhaps she'll have something unforeseen to say that implies I should not destroy Cheliax."

"There is a thresholded binary outcome here and it is not presently leaning favorable to you; you should seek to expose me to complicated unknowns that stand a chance of changing that outcome, even if you cannot foresee their exact impacts, so long as they do not seem net negative in the presence of other unknown unknowns that might also save you.  If that goes against the grain of a devil who seeks predictable paths, we may negotiate whether you could bind a superior devil to the secrecy and information-nonuse conditions, and ask them for authorization; this is not the right time for the narrowly-thinking way that the lesser ranks of Hell deal with uncertainty."

And does Abrogail Thrune, with this assurance made, have anything to say for herself?

If she knew words to dissuade this Keltham from this path, she would have thought them at the devil already!  There are no brilliant strategems in her, that might outface this Keltham. Only horror and sickness in her that she cannot recall ever having felt, for never in her entire life has her future looked this dark.

Abrogail Thrune considers, as very few other people in Cheliax would even think to consider, telling Keltham that she's sorry; Abrogail has met more foreigners than the average Chelish citizen.  But she does not foresee it ending well for her, it wasn't like she injured Keltham by accident and regrets the harm to him, as might lead one non-Asmodean to forgive another.  She sincerely regrets the harm to herself, to her interests, maybe even to Cheliax; her feelings toward Keltham are poisonous hate and horror.

She considers begging, groveling - it wouldn't help, is the thing, even if he wants to see it, he wants to see it and then he wants to see her anguish as Cheliax is destroyed, in those cases.  Or should she try it, even if she doesn't expect it to work, because it's not sure?  Is that the message he was giving her, when he spoke it to a devil before her?  If so, she will do it, because - people often want vindication, the proof of their triumph and rightness and superiority, and it's worth gambling on the tiny chance he'd be satisfied -

"If you want me to beg, grovel, I will, and mean it, the only reason I'm not already is that I'm not sure what you want and I don't want to annoy you instead," Abrogail says.  Her face shows the real horror, her voice bears the anguish that's there.  It's not a familiar mode of thought, to her, but she does know what torturers look for in a victim.

"Why did you do that?  The actual cause and reason."

"A miserable, foolish attempt at trope-manipulation.  I had thought it would make the story a tragedy from a dath ilani perspective, irrevocably and whatever else happened, so that we would not need to fear - some twist leading to what the tropes would call the story's happy ending."

"And that was, as best you can recall at this intelligence level, the actual first thought you had about it?  No thoughts about how it would be amusing to give me my 144 children in a way I didn't want, and then you thought of the trope-manipulation reason afterwards?  I demand that you stop and think about it, and then tell me that you actually tried to recall the memory."

She does as he bids, but when she closes her eyes and recalls - it is the reason, she thinks.  "It - is the reason I did it that way, the only reason I scattered children where I could not find them - I did think, before then, that your children would be good for Cheliax."

"No thoughts about how it would be funny, even, to make it exactly 144?  You will stop and think and try to remember before you answer; you will tell me that you've done so, that the devil speak forth if you lie."

And she does, and says, "I knew it for a cruel irony, but it was the tropes I had in mind, for that irony, not you.  I don't think - I ever imagined your chagrin, on learning of it, as I'd have done if," it had been about you, the foolish boy, "I'd been amusing myself to think of your reaction.  The thought I had about you was about dath ilan's tragic ending, where you turned to Evil, and rose high in Cheliax, and how you'd embrace our children then as your own."

"If anyone had bothered to ask me about the tropes you were trying to manipulate, I would have warned them that a dath ilani tragedy isn't about the triumph of Evil over Good.  It's about the triumph of erroneous reasoning and ill-coordination over everyone."

"Why didn't you query Maillol?  How did Rugatonn let this happen?"

"Neither of us thought of it."

"Are there any questions I should be asking that would illuminate more of the causality here?  Close your eyes and think before you speak, then tell me that you sincerely tried to do so."

She thinks as she is bidden.

"Why Snack Service didn't stop us from doing that.  It stopped other mistakes that would've injured your interests."

Keltham doesn't say anything to that; perhaps it's a question that somebody at INT 29 would have considered long since, if at WIS 27 they dared to think of it at all, thought their own thoughts controlled sufficiently for it.

"Describe the entire procedure used to generate my children in as much detail as you remember.  Maybe there's some security flaw in your randomization, transparent to me but not to you.  I am still trying to think of a way out of this."

She does, in every last bit of possibly-relevant detail she can remember, all of it, all of it.

"You evoked your disaster too well, Abrogail Thrune.  I have no marginal hopes left; the matter is simple enough that I would have seen it already if I was to see it at all."

"Is there anything else you'd say to me before I destroy Cheliax?"

"Please don't?" she says, and permits her voice to crack, as is real.  "I beg you?"

There are tears that she lets come to her eyes, as she hasn't allowed forth since she wept that earlier time in Hell, just in case it's enough to satisfy Keltham just in case just in case -

"Can you say without the devil contradicting you that you care about one single person there who's about to die, rather than the effects on yourself if they do?  Call it curiosity."

"No single person there, but the country of Cheliax - is my own child."

"Symmetrical tragedies are prettier."

"What would dath ilan think of this?"  She asks because she truly does not know, and therefore it's a path that might be real.

"That I should do what I've decided to do, if I'm going to do it, and not tell it to you, or show it to you, or watch you hurt about it."

"Have I taught you hate, then?"

"All of it that I now know."

"Spend it on me, who did you the harm, and do not slay my child, I beg you, buy me from Hell as Cheliax's ransom, I can be made to hurt and serve you in ways far more satisfying than watching a country just die."

"You hurt me in too stupid a way for that, Abrogail Thrune.  This isn't the ending where you join my harem.  You didn't earn that one.  It's your ending where you betrayed Asmodeus and got removed from power, and if there's anyone to rescue you from Hell's deserts it won't be me."

"You are displaying a very great and tyrannical dominance, and Evil, for someone who isn't fated to -"

"A boy can learn hate, being stung of a wasp.  He can learn the desire to pull the wings off that wasp, wish to watch it writhe on the ground while it dies."

"It's not the same feeling as wanting to fuck that wasp, or have any kind of extended relationship with it, even the kind where you torture it for longer.  It's just a wasp, in the end."

Keltham turns the mirror that he holds, then, again, to show Cheliax against the curve of Golarion.

"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.

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.

"You could suppose that the Crown and throne would have fallen to another," she says, absentmindedly; she often has the air of being mostly somewhere else, as a goddess of course would be. "And you could suppose further that I have no particular interest in aiding you, with diamonds or any other way, though I would probably ensure you weren't unenhanced and stupid; you would suppose that if Cheliax does stand in danger from Keltham, that is not your job to plan for."

It doesn't make - any sense - and therefore a spark of hope flares up in Abrogail that she cannot allow, because it will distract her from her actually assigned problem, and indeed might've been designed as just that sort of endurable torment.  

Take back the Crown and throne - there's only three Thrunes who are plausible candidates for it.  She picks a best guess: Calantra Thrune.  How long have they had to entrench themselves - a forbidden question, Abrogail will make up 'two months' because that is about how long it feels like since she went to Hell, after a best-guess correction for how her experiences probably warped her sense of time to feel like longer -

"Try two weeks."

That - legitimately does not seem like an amount of time she could actually have been here while Cheliax went on existing, the torment has been fucking with her sense of time but not that much - so the hypothetical wasn't real after all - but time dilation could be a thing if you're a goddess? - but Carissa Sevar would not have ascended immediately after Abrogail died -

- she has spent too much time hoping.

Abrogail's thoughts turn back to the posed problem, which now seems more likely hypothetical:  Calantra Thrune has held the Crown and throne for two weeks, could perhaps have tried to set up her own new trusted Security for fear of Abrogail's return, but that would come with its own vulnerabilities - if she is not specifically expecting to defend against Abrogail, she will not have done anything so sensible as setting up an entirely new Palace with its own Forbiddance and entirely changed imperial guards -

Which is, in fact, approximately what it would take to prevent Abrogail Thrune from being able to kill a pretender and put on the Crown, a rather simpler condition than most assassins face, and that was true even before Abrogail was enhanced...

Can she still wear the Crown?  Abrogail has at the very least betrayed Asmodeus in the depths of her own heart, by now, she is willing to entertain possibilities where Asmodeus does not get to have His fun, as she herself was no longer to be allowed hers... then again, those terms do obligate Asmodeus as well, she is not obliged to go on serving Asmodeus in that way, if Cheliax is no longer hers by compact and has gone to another after her death... but then in this scenario she must not name herself Queen, nor demand Cheliax as hers by right of compact, and would maybe be foolish to wear an artifact that Asmodeus made.

Well, kill Calantra and take the Crown at least, Abrogail doesn't have to wear it, and doesn't have to call herself Queen either.  But then the situation with the Church of Asmodeus becomes fraught.  How would Aspexia or her successor react, to Abrogail returning and claiming Cheliax in the name of Hell but under Carissa Sevar?  Taking power in that form would run a risk of the Church-Crown conflict becoming real, Abrogail would need much more in the way of internal allies before making her move, it would not just be a matter of slaying Calantra and putting on the Crown and claiming to everyone that things had gone back to normal.

Where would the Keepers of Asmodeus fall?  They would not have become a significant military force in two weeks, but their opinions might sway Aspexia, and Abrogail now speaks more of their language than before.  More of Aspexia's language, for that matter.  By that same understanding Abrogail is unfortunately pretty sure that she cannot offer Aspexia better prospects than Asmodean Hell.  Aspexia, if she is not sent to Asmodean Hell herself and preliminarily broken by it, can simply refuse to think any thought implying that she should not serve Asmodeus.

All of this might be noticeably more straightforward if Cheliax were under the right sort of threat; for then Aspexia or her successor would have little choice but to accept Abrogail under the Goddess, if they wanted Cheliax to stay under Hell at all... but Aspexia would ask Abrogail to swear she had no hand in making that threat, or that it was in Abrogail's interests to do in any case...

Abrogail will continue to think about this for a while, if not interrupted, queuing up questions like whether Aspexia is still Most High in this scenario, or if there are any pre-existing threats that would force the Church not to make too much fuss right then.  There is pain, in all of it, but she sets that aside, and tries to tell the part of her mind wondering if the hypothetical scenario is a real one to shut up or at least not consume so much attention, even as that voice gets louder inside her.

A gesture, and the now-familiar feeling of getting smarter - Splendour also - 

- "I have encountered an interesting opportunity which would require your knowable loyalty."

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."

Snack Service has been silent, now, for a long time.  Pilar does not need its hinting nor even any sourceless knowledge, to do as she does now, after hearing the Sending; it proceeds from her own will.  Splendour 26 is a lot of will.

Some time earlier, before her stat increases, Pilar did think to herself that what they all had been envisioning as a "Keeper" might actually be more like one-quarter of a child of dath ilan.  They did mock Keltham's obliviousness, some in Project Lawful, seeing about him the simple pathways of thought that he could have taken to dispel the illusions about himself.  But at the end, when Keltham realized that he was doubting, he made a mildly determined effort to pierce through illusions and put his perceived reality to a real test, one that might actually destroy it, if it was false.  Keltham found no decisive error; only insufficient evidence of the sort that should have been there, to support his reality if it was reality, and a sick feeling that something was wrong; and then he looked back and reinterpreted in the light of small hints about where the problem might be, and destroyed his own world of his own will; and didn't hesitate or try to hold onto anything when it all fell apart.

It's not - Pilar is certain that Keltham would say, if asked - it's not the performance of a true Keeper out of dath ilan, not even close; they would not have been led astray even for moments, by their own hopes and fears.

But it's not something that any of the self-proclaimed would-be "Keepers of Asmodeus" have been observed to do.

There is a dread in Pilar now, an intuitive intimation; she can guess that her own thoughts are winding around themselves in tension and conflict, somewhere out of her mind's willing sight.  Putting on the artifact headband would probably be enough to set it off, the godwar inside her own mind.  But there's a simpler course than that, a lesser trial even than fool Keltham essayed when he tried to destroy the reality about himself.  If she cannot do even this small thing, then she couldn't call herself a would-be "Keeper" or aspire to be one quarter of a dath ilani child.

She knows where she might find her doom, there is a place she is more afraid of than other places, a person she fears to confront and a question she dares not ask.  So Pilar will just go there.

Pilar draws forth from her storage a tuning fork.

And she Plane Shifts.  She's not sure of exactly where she's going, aside from the general plane, but that's fine since Plane Shift isn't very precise anyways.

ai art

Elysium is as it was before, last that Pilar was here.  She is in some section of winding narrow canyon in which the stony walls are covered in flowers that burn with a warm golden fire, and are not consumed.  The sky is visible, far far above where the canyon-walls of stone cut out.

The flowers that burn and are not consumed do mind her of the garden-conservatories that her lover Befutig showed her in the City of Brass, and regret stabs at her heart, for everything that she'll never have, never do.

But she accepts reality, immediately, for that is what Keepers are, and the purpose to which dath ilan made them: to realize not eventually but now.

Pilar looks about herself, but there is no one here to greet her, and this narrow canyon is ill-made for meetings.  So she casts Fly, divine magic in imitation of wizard magic, and rises up up up and up through stony walls and gold-glowing flowers, until the blue sky of Elysium widens in her sight like a mouth opening to swallow her.

Beyond the sky's mouth, when it has closed around her, lie the tops of many deep winding canyons, like a vast maze, extending out of sight to where haze clouds further vision.  If those lost within were not already dead, and could not fly out nor climb up, they would have to fear starvation or the thirst-death long before they emerged.  Probably someone would come, though, if those within cried out loudly enough in boredom; not because there is a watch laid on this place, but just because somebody would be in earshot, and whoever heard would be friendly.

Pilar reaches deep within herself, then, to the well from which she draws her divine spells, from which Snack Service once spoke and is now silent; and she cries out with more than voice:

"CAYDEN CAILEAN!  CAYDEN CAILEAN!  I CALL YOU, I INVOKE THE DEBT YOU OWE ME BY GOODNESS'S WAY, FOR ALL THAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME AND ALL THAT I'VE DONE FOR YOU!  IF ANY WHO HEAR MY VOICE DO CALL YOURSELVES ALLY TO HIM, BID HIM BE HERE AND NOW!  CAYDEN CAILEAN, CAYDEN CAILEAN, CAYDEN CAILEAN!"

"You don't, actually, need all that -"

She turns in midair and drives her fist into his face with all her strength.

Yes, she knows this isn't going to help; she is doing it anyways.

"Ow," He says, as He does every time this happens, having obligingly given Himself a face real enough and with nerves enough that He feels as much physical pain as He still can, for whatever it means to Him now.

(He's sometimes granted an additional cleric circle for that act, coming to Elysium and punching Him in the face, as is common among His more promising priests and even more so among His priestesses.  But saying that won't help either.)

"That wasn't even for me," she says coldly.  "We haven't even gotten started on me.  That was only for Aaeme'nagh.  You put fucking Snack Service into my fucking head, and that isn't even the tenth worst thing you did to me.  You've taken literally everything from me.  My family, my career as a Chelish wizard, all my mortal bonds, every part of the mortal destiny I would've had, my one Pharasma-given life, even my -"

How strange, that she can't say it, that last fatal acknowledgment.

The manifestation of Cayden Caylean rubs His jaw, thoughtfully and as if wincingly, where he was punched by a mortal soul so stuffed with power that it now trembles on the verge of least divinity.  "Sorry about that?" He says.

She can't even speak.

"Well, I am sorry.  I don't like pulling anybody off a way that they chose for themselves, even if some might call it a favor, if they didn't ask Me to do them any favors.  I'm not a god of compacts, and I'm sorry about putting you in a position where you'd get offered something you wanted enough to trade all the rest of that away.  I am not a god of redemption, and I regret doing that to you."

It's strange, how much the presence of Cayden Cailean impacts her less, now, than did the presence of Dispater.  Pilar has now intuited something of the way of gods, from her uneasy dreams when she sleeps; she can guess that no casual splinter of a deity could stand before her bodily manifested, and speak to her in an ordinary tongue.  She knows this seeming man must be, if not all of the true Cayden, a very large chunk of Him.

Cayden Cailean feels no less like a god, to Pilar, than that time she felt Dispater direct His ire at Snack Service.  And yet she is not moved, or moved but too little.  In Dis then she felt like a stone in a hurricane wind, caught in its full force but too heavy to blow away or even tip over.  Now she simply feels like - like the god Cayden Cailean, directly manifested within Elysium in nearly the fullness of His power - is a thing that is large but not overawing, like a castle or a mountain.  You can look at a castle and know it's larger than you, without feeling that you have to address it respectfully.  Even if Cayden Cailean bent His full anger towards her, Pilar can somehow feel, she would be able to withstand it.

"I suppose I can't say," Pilar says, because at Splendour 26 it takes a lot to make you unable to talk, "that I never asked for this.  But I never wanted to end up like this, even if I asked for it after you killed my family and told me to become a Power if I wanted them back.  The old Pilar would have screamed and fled, if you'd told her that she'd end up as an eighth-circle caster talking disrespectfully to a god.  How much is really left of the person I used to be, at this point?"

"Sounds like more of a moral question than a factual one, if you don't already know the answer based on self-observation.  I may be the wrong god to ask, either way.  I became a god while I was too drunk to think clearly."  The materialization of a charming, leather-armor-clad man holds out a hand to Pilar.  "Shall I teleport us to somewhere more comfortable before your Fly runs out?"

She cannot find any sane reason to answer 'no'.  Not even saying 'no' just to be contrary, for that itself would be too Chaotic Good and give Cayden Cailean too much satisfaction.

She holds out her hand to the Swashbuckler in wordless response.

A moment later they are standing together in a natural tavern, a cave-entrance open to a larger and mostly-unseeable forest in which night has fallen and the colored light of three moons is visible in the negative shadows cast by trees.  Within the natural tavern there is a ledge of stone like a natural bar, and soft-looking mushroomlike growths like natural chairs before it; by each mushroom-chair is a bush that grows bell-like transparent flowers with flat bases, as you could obviously pluck and use for glasses.

Behind the natural bar is a thing that looks half plant and half animal and not particularly sapient, a floating balloon of transparent bark or skin half-filled with liquid, with a nipple at its bottom that could serve as a spout.

It is all lit by a fire that burns in a wall-nook of the cave-entrance, like a natural fireplace.

"I'm not going drinking with you," she says flatly.  At this point Pilar doesn't even know the bounds of what her curse can accomplish if she gets drunk and throws a party, but she sure is not doing that a third time.

The Swashbuckler sighs.  "I know.  It's not easy to get really actually drunk in My true self; and it isn't in My nature to invite somebody to the sort of drinking party where only she will be made inebriated.  One of several downsides of being a god that I did not actually think of before I went for the Starstone on a dare."

"So we'll have some mild alcohol that won't really affect either of us, with your Belt of Mighty Constitution, and agree to just decide to have the sort of conversation we might have if we were both a little tipsy."

"What's the entire point of - this whole pretend tavern business, why not a real tavern -"

The form of a leather-armor clad human male, with ordinary sword at his side and leather boots of no magic in particular, does nod to Pilar at this, his lips touched by a brief charming grin.  "It's the dream at the heart of Elysium - that you don't need to hire loggers and carpenters to build a tavern and its furniture, you don't need to grow barley and malt it to make ale, you don't need to be Lawful and organized and get told what to do, or worse, have to tell others what to do, in order to get the nice things that require Lawfulness within mortal Golarion.  You just have to go exploring with some friends and find a cave somewhere that works as a tavern."

"How unbelievably sad.  No wonder Rugatonn said she'd take Abaddon over Elysium."  Pilar floats over to the stone-bar, rests her weight on a mushroom-chair, yanks one of the flower-glasses off its stem, and slams it down hard enough on the stone-bar-surface that it shatters with a pleasant tinkling sound.

She plucks another flower-glass, and sets it down more gently, this time.

A gesture from Cayden Cailean sends the shards of the shattered flower-glass flying into the natural fireplace-nook, the fire there flaring as the not-glass begins to burn.  "Tradition," he says, with no more explanation than that.

One of His hands plucks a flower-glass of His own.  His other hand pulls over the floating balloon of liquid, to milk some of its juice into His glass from its bottom nipple.

She casts Mage Hand, when Cayden's done, to fill her own glass from the same source; she's a wizard, not a milkmaid.

"Cheers," says the Swashbuckler, and lifts His glass to Pilar.

"Fuck off and die," says Pilar, and doesn't tip her own glass to him before she drinks from it.

"If that's all you came here to ask of Me, this is going to be a quiet drinking session," He observes.  "I've done as much fucking off as anyone ought to, and you already know that I've scheduled Myself to die."

"Die for the divine crime of vastly exceeding your rights to intervene in Golarion, or die so that I can finish consuming you?"

"I'd dispute that I exceeded any such thing as a right to intervene in Golarion.  I didn't break My sworn word to anyone either.  Long ago I was shown a treaty and told that I'd die if I didn't look like I was predictably going to abide by it, so I abided by it.  The fun thing about that arrangement is that, given the right prompt from a planet of shattered prophecy, you can suddenly decide you're willing to die, and say, 'Fuck that treaty, I'm doing what's right.'"

"And I suppose you don't care about the general reckoning that might trigger, with all of the Chaotic gods who can't be trusted any more now that prophecy has shattered?  Or is this entire Keltham and Snack Service business meant to - prevent that godwar, somehow?"

"You're not quite on the right road there, though you're near the right town.  Keep in mind that one of the options that the gods possess, if it looks like they're otherwise headed for a massive godwar - not just a little godwar like in the wake of Aroden's death - is for them to wipe Golarion's solar system clean of life, and declare the whole Rovagug-affected volume off-limits to all deities.  Prophecy still works in the rest of Creation, so long as Golarion-originating events aren't allowed to disrupt it."

"Aroden's death and prophecy's shattering doesn't automatically mean that Chaos gets to have its own way with everything.  The other gods can see the predictable ways that changes the balance, and respond in advance."

Pilar frowns minutely, too distracted in this moment to use any of the arts she's learned over the past couple of weeks for having facial expressions that non-Chelish people can read.  She'd be lying if she said that she wasn't feeling a chill go through her, a coldness, a reminder of how high the stakes almost certainly have to be, and how much a tiny insignificant dot Pilar Pineda is within it, weighed up as a person rather than a future goddess or (perhaps greater yet) a trope-girl.

For lack of anything clever she can think of to say, she gestures around at the whole tavern.  "This - isn't the actual center of Your divine realm, is it?"

"I don't really have one, apart from Elysium generally?  When I wandered Golarion I never quite understood the point of wealthy people who owned houses, when one large Bag of Holding can carry everything needful wherever you go.  What would I do with a divine realm?  Buy a lot of fancy stuff and keep it there?  Pen up My followers having one long intoxicated orgy in that particular place forever?  Who'd sign up for that afterlife?"

"You're a very strange god."

"Not at all.  I'm a very normal god.  It's all the other gods who are the strange ones."  Cayden smiles as if He's said something deeply wise, and takes a meaningless drink.

She takes another small drink from her flower-glass.  It's flavorful and tastes hardly at all like it's tinged with experimental medical disinfectant, but it's not as good as what they serve to favored customers in the City of Brass.

"Well, how about if you break a few more treaties, and instead of my getting pushed around for vague reasons, you just tell me plainly what's going on.  Not after I put on the artifact headband and end up halfway a god myself.  You explain yourself to the little mortal while she's still got some of her mortality left."

Cayden Cailean's manifestation raises His eyebrows.  "That's rather more a Chaotic Good way of looking at things than a Lawful Evil one."

"Calculated to appeal to your domains.  Yes, explicitly calculated before I asked, I did not make up the reason afterwards."

"It's not so much the phrasing of the demand as the thing you demanded.  The part where you've come to dislike having your life controlled, rearranged, and moved about by a greater Power, if you don't know the ends to which you're being used."

"I think a lot of Lawful Evil people would start to have feelings like that if they were being inexplicably moved around by fucking Cayden fucking Cailean."

"Definitely!  Many other Lawful Evil people would feel the same way, in your circumstances, because sorting Lawful Evil doesn't mean you lack a Chaotic side.  There's a myriad shards of desire, in a human being, and the alignments and allegiances you hold are patterns that stick a few of those shards together, grown strong enough to run your lives for a time.  Even I have a Lawful side, an Evil side, left over from what I was like before I touched the Starstone.  My Good and Chaotic aspects are strengthened, compared to when I was mortal, but not so much as to drown out everything else."

Pilar frowns again, trying to track this, see implications.  She didn't think for more than a resentful moment that Cayden Cailean was just taunting her; she knew well that there would be a point.  "Because the Starstone gods are different?"

"Did you know that Norgorber lives in Axis?"

She hadn't, actually.  "No, why - what - why would He want to, isn't He Neutral Evil -"

"Because Axis is a nicer place to live than Abaddon and Norgorber is selfish."

"And the Powers of Law allow the god of crime to hang around in their home plane because..."

"They are lawful, and proceed by due processes of law.  Nobody has proven Norgorber guilty of any crime in His entire life, either as a mortal or a god, so they can't kick Him out of Axis without breaking their own rules.  There's a reason that criminals worship Him."

"I see.  And Iomedae has a hidden Chaotic Evil side and goes on secret dates with Nocticula?"

"Iomedae is almost pure Lawful Good, by Her own choice."

"Touching the Starstone is like consuming the corpse of a god, in terms of the underlying mechanics.  You don't embody some domain to the extent that the universe recognizes you for that and grants you divinity.  You get stuffed with enough power that the universe recognizes you as clearly some kind of god, and you end up with a domain.  Going that route means you get more of a choice, if you know it's coming and plan ahead."

"You're not explicitly saying that I have that choice coming," she notes.

"It's a possibility.  Nothing is guaranteed, in the visions that Nethys showed Myself and Milani."

"Milani?  Wait, then Asmodia wasn't joking when she said she was Chosen of -"

"Asmodia ended up getting blessed by Otolmens, which is what We were steering for.  There's possibilities Nethys showed Us where Asmodia ends up working with Milani.  In other possibilities she ends up on the side of Rovagug, and that We definitely wanted to avoid."

"Look, I'll just ask straight out.  What's up with that entire weird business?  Why are the trope-girls even a thing, why do we exist?  Can I hear the actual truth or at least what Ione knows?  I won't use the information in a way that hurts your interests."

"And yes, I can guess it would be easier to understand after I put on the artifact headband.  I'm asking now anyways."

Once she puts on the artifact headband, Pilar can guess, she will not perceive herself as having any real choices; she will know the way ahead, and do what maximizes expected utility, and it won't feel like much of a choice.  The choice to put on the headband is the last choice she'll make, in some sense; and she wants to know, before she does, what it is she's last-choosing.

"It's genuinely not easy to explain.  It's the sort of thing that even gods can understand only in metaphors, and you don't have those metaphors."

"This does not surprise me.  So, are we all inside an 'eroLARP', or -"

"Dath ilan's eroLARPs, according to Keltham, have paying player characters and paid non-player-characters, both assigned background stories.  The player characters act freely not knowing the story's possible ends, and the non-player-characters act in secret conspiracy to keep overall developments on course for a satisfying ending."

"We're not inside one of those.  At least, not so far as I can tell.  What we're inside instead -"

"In some worlds, according to Nethys, there are games that are like magical books, books containing choices.  You go to the store - a metaphorical store, because books like that aren't physical enough to be contained in a physical shop or handed over when you buy them - but you go to the metaphorical store, and you buy a metaphorical novel-game.  You metaphorically read it, and you get to the point of the book where the novel-game offers you a choice, and you choose an action at that choice-point, and then new pages appear in the novel-game and you keep reading."

"In some worlds, the artistic idiom of the novel-game is manifested in their versions of dath ilan's 'computers', with illusions of people's heads talking and text flowing, and players who 'click' to make choices.  In other worlds, a novel-game enchants the player into feeling like they're inside the world it describes, and if the novel-game is cursed you might die there for real."

"And we're inside one of those magical books?"

"We're not actually in one.  It's just a metaphor that you can understand without putting on the artifact headband.  Or to the extent you could say we're inside one, it's because the idiom of the novel-game is one that's repeated in many different forms across many worlds Nethys can get information about, which is part of why Nethys guesses it might be a good fit for something that's happening around and above us."