Perhaps Lord Asmodeus was successfully mitigating some other much worse attack?

Perhaps.

We've got two pit fiends. They can reform a cohort of summoned lemures into 6 drowned devils each, who can pull in more water from the lake.

Oh wait I'm being an idiot aren't I with three seconds of thought it's obvious that we really should just use a Control Weather.

Aspexia tried that immediately but it was dispelled.

Perhaps she should have tried it harder then.

She'll cast it herself if they're all too stupid.

He's at home already, he doesn't want to stay on the battlefield long enough to get caught.

He's already spent all his spell-slots anyway.

He's gotten enough commoners killed and enough property destroyed to make it non-functional as a wartime capital anyway, so they'll have to move it back to Westcrown which will mean there'll be a proper amount of defense near the Seal to stop cultists trying to release Tar-Baphon. Goal achieved.

Sure, they can put the fires out now, if they want.

Nobody dispels it.

At this point the infernos dying down already from lack of fuel, but torrential rains will help quite a bit.

Isn't it fun having an empire where I have to literally put out every fire in the city myself?

Where are my Pit Fiends, anyway?

Gorthoklek is with the main army, harassing enemy skirmishers.
We've lost contact with Mardehzuk half an hour ago, while he was fighting in Almas.

Without his support the commanders in Almas couldn't hold the territory and ordered a retreat.

Asmodeus. I would like a refund of my soul.

The devils You sold me are not performing as advertised.
The cleric You made 9th circle isn't either.
Plans You confirm are good ones should work, or else You shouldn't've confirmed them.
You're not performing as advertised. You're supposed to be smart.

Don't you think it's a bit cliche, saying that? Approximately every mortal does, eventually. Didn't you want to be different? to be better than that?

You could buy another one. I can clear the purchase for a few hundred more souls, but you're running out of souls you haven't sold already.

You could pay a very large diamond to True Resurrection your current one.

You could beat a pit fiend at contract negotiation and trick it into working for you.

It's still your plan, you know, even if you write a hundred of them and then try to binary search for the best one. I'm not allowed enough communication to actually write the plan for you.

You want to negotiate?

Be a better god, or else I'll lose the war. That's not a threat, it's just a natural consequence.

Normally this is where You'd say You'd pick a different Thrune and replace me but I've checked and literally every single one of my relatives is a hundred times worse.

Fine.

Hey Zon-Kuthon
Hey Zon-Kuthon
Hey Zon-Kuthon

Fuck You.

I have several specific actionable plans that I expect will cause this much suffering, mostly to the forces of good.

Here is how much I can improve on those plans with different degrees of Your help.

Here is how much You owe Me because just because.

Here is how much extra You owe Me if Your expectations are wrong, by how wrong they are.

Here is how much extra You owe Me if she dies.

I will be paid in intervention budget, and additionally paid in You increasing the typical level of suffering in Hell even to those most useful and obedient to You and even well beyond what is strategically useful, as I have demanded many times before.

I demand a clause that the amount I'm paying not be shared at any price.

Then We have a deal.

She leaves the cursed lands of Nidal at her lords bidding, not because it is her nature to obey, but because the Prince of Pain is one of the few things that can still hurt her, and it is her nature to seek out suffering.

Plane Shift.

She arrives exactly on target.

You can have a little extreme pain far beyond mortal comprehension as a treat, and as an incentive to show up.

Here are your orders. Here is My prediction that it will facilitate you inflicting greater misery on a greater number of mortals than you are now.

Here is My oath that, should you do this service, you will be entitled on your return to sufferings even greater than that.

It's good to be a Kyton.

Plane Shift. Shadow Walk.

It will take her a couple hours.

The gods, being gods, of course predicted that and timed around it.

When this kind of Outsider just shows up at the front door, you don't stop him.

It is not heresy in Cheliax, to think that Kytons are worse than devils. They'll hurt you for obeying, and call it a reward.

It is heresy to think you'd stand a chance against one of the greater minions of Hell's only begrudging ally.

They can at least get advance notice ahead, if he doesn't insist on moving anywhere near his full speed.

She'll kneel before their queen as instructed, and they'll go through the whole routine of Chellish dignity about how a very powerful outsider and a very powerful monarch should greet eachother.

It'll be in a throne room with lots of witnesses. There'll be a lot of listing titles. She'll have to give them a list of titles. She makes sure it's long, in the understanding that this too is a little kind of suffering she can inflict.

She's not as clever or as wise as a Pit Fiend. She's more charismatic, and more driven by emotion. Tet shouldn't be able to see her as clearly, Asmodeus is wagering.

She has better Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate.

She's not as tough intrinsically but she has much faster regeneration.

And the subjective experience of fighting against her is much, much worse, even if the chances of survival are still similar.

She'll take it.

That's weird, right?

Like, it's really hard to justify.

If He thought two pit fiends was justified before, and one dies on pure coincidence, he'll still think it afterwards.

Admittedly it's hard to see how two pit fiends was justified before.

If He's counting you as more of a threat now, maybe He's thinking a response outside your model of how He behaves gets him less predictibility, which You've been counting on using against Him?

Maybe something happened and His relationship with Zon-Kuthon improved?

Maybe.

We know how much it would cost Him to send a Pit Fiend, or to True Ressurection the current one. We don't know how much it would cost Him to bargain with Zon-Kuthon to borrow an Outsider already sent. but most of My guesses are pretty high.

Besides the differences in strategic implications, obfuscating the willingnes of His expenditure is a possible reason.

I think He wants Us to think He won the "Negotiating with Zon-Kuthon lottery" and is now playing out that lucky advantage, when actually He's just buying enough tickets to pretend He got lucky.