Abrogail Thrune II: Being lit on fire by Abrogail Thrune is not like being lit on fire by fifth-circle Security weaklings.  It actually hurts.

Carissa Sevar: She loses her slaying-arrow-in-progress.

She screams. 

It's satisfying, though, in the incredibly hollow incredibly distant way that things can still be satisfying. 

Abrogail Thrune II: As the saying goes:  If fire seems to help, try even more fire.

Carissa Sevar: An interesting side effect of the headband is that you have more attention to occupy with being in horrible pain. 

A lot of people think of this as a downside, but Carissa doesn't have it in her, on a very fundamental level, to wish there was less of her. 

Which is - not an idea, she's in too much pain for an idea, but the threads of what might be able to turn into an idea once the pain stops.

Abrogail Thrune II: Then she can be not on fire and have a Greater Infernal Healing.  Abrogail is always interested in detecting the thoughts of Carissa when she lets herself have any.

Carissa Sevar: "Do you think," she says, once she can talk, "you are capable of hurting me enough I am ready for it to stop."

Abrogail Thrune II: That is the most flirtatious thing that anyone has said to Abrogail Thrune in 2 years and 3 months.  "My, I genuinely don't know."

Carissa Sevar: "Me neither. Do you want me actually motivated to find out."

Abrogail Thrune II: "I doubt you capable of more than a hollow imitation of real motivation, even now, but do go on."

Carissa Sevar: "Promise me that you'll only turn me into a statue if I tell you that I've had enough."

Abrogail Thrune II: A laugh.  "No, sweet Carissa.  If I were to offer your soul's eternity for anything, it would be you learning to suffer beautifully, with your true whole heart, as might keep me occupied for more than one day's dalliance.  It would be a futile offer, of course, because you are too hollow of a shell to fill yourself up that quickly and only because you must."

"Are you interested in buying up to one more hour of existence at any cost in suffering for it?  I could offer you that."

Carissa Sevar: What's she supposed to say to that, no?

"Please, your Majesty."

Abrogail Thrune II: "This is so unfair to me, you know."  Another light caress around Carissa's other cheek.  "I want you still sane and appreciating everything when you finally, slowly, bit by bit, feel your body starting to freeze up, and you know that those are the very last moments you'll ever have.  You invite me to try to make you say 'stop' and I do believe that maybe I could, but not if I still want you sane and feeling everything during the part I've been looking forwards to for days."

"But there's games we can play in an hour and still leave you sane, and maybe you're weaker than I thought.  So yes, sweet flirtatious Carissa, let us dally for a time, even if you're being naught but a tease."

Carissa Sevar: (Days ago Carissa hadn't even done anything! Was the Queen that sure she'd fail eventually?)

After that she stops being able to have terribly complicated thoughts, for a while.

It is better than not existing. If it were all there ever was it would be better than not existing. 

Carissa Sevar: At some point it stops and an Infernal Healing spell burns her back together and she has no idea if it has been an hour and is full of crippling terror that it has. Surely an hour couldn't go by that fast. 

Abrogail Thrune II: "No, not yet.  You know, my sweet, if everything about this relationship were completely different, I might start to feel insecure about my ability to satisfy you in bed.  At least more than once."

"And you're still holding back your feelings.  It's very annoying.  If you're trying to convince me to play for longer than an hour, you could certainly be doing a better job of that."

Carissa Sevar: "I don't even know what you mean. When you say that.... I could light you on fire and you could show me."

Abrogail Thrune II: "I'm not sure I even could fail my Will save against your level of Detection, dear.  But it goes like this, in words."

Abrogail leans in closer to Carissa, leans up against her, breathes into her ear.  "I'm sad.  I'm lost.  I'm terrified.  I don't want to stop existing.  This wasn't what I wanted.  Why did I end up like this.  I hate her.  I want to destroy her like she's destroying me.  How can this be happening to me.  I was meant for better things.  I was going to be ascendant in the world and then ascendant in Hell, and live forever and ever."

"Those are some of the things that a Carissa who wasn't a hollow shell might be feeling in your place.  Feeling, not saying, it's useless to repeat it back to me."

Carissa Sevar: "Oh.

That would hurt. Worse than -" gesture. She's not sure why her hands are free. "That's - your schools teach children not to do that. No- wishing anything was different, no hating anything you can't destroy."

Abrogail Thrune II: "Yes, and that's necessary to my Cheliax for I know no other way to keep power over its people.  It does make it so hard to find good bedmates, though.  I wonder if your Cheliax could have been different, had you not failed the game laid out by the gods and lost your chance to keep hold of its prize."

"But I will enjoy this more, the more you hurt, and that's true and should also be obvious.  It doesn't matter any more, now, what you were taught in school.  Undo it all.  Forget it all.  Be the child you were taught not to be, and hurt for me, and maybe I'll be pleased a little longer."

Carissa Sevar: "I don't want to die. don't care about - being special, being important, being the best - care about it but not really, not much, next to - next to there being a next thought - was - the thing that made me loyal, always, that I'd continue to - be - didn't betray you, except by trying to go to Hell. don't really think that should count."

Abrogail Thrune II: "For so long as you find new hurts inside you," Abrogail breathes into her ear, "I won't stop hurting you, but they have to be real and strong and you must really be feeling them, Carissa.  The game can't last forever or even very long, but it might last for longer than when your hour has passed."

Then Carissa can be in pain, again, pausing at intervals to see whether she's found enough hurt inside her to make the outward pain go on.

Carissa Sevar: "I don't actually hate you," she says at one point. "you're not good enough at your job, but I would be worse. 's the thing where humans suck. ....hate that security guy who kept sending me stupidly long messages while I was trying to think what to tell Keltham - did you catch him -"

Abrogail Thrune II: "I've already bargained with his owner to have him tormented for a time and then destroyed, however and whenever he gets to Hell.  It's not cheap, but it can be done.  Isn't it funny how he ran away into a gameboard he imagined in his mind, a gameboard where he imagined that he could ever win against me, and so lost his one and only chance at the mercy he could have received by not betraying me?  Do you think you can laugh at that, Carissa?  Hating a man you hardly met isn't a deep enough hurt to satisfy me; but if you can really laugh along with me at his foolishness in defying me, I'll count that, on a whim."

Carissa Sevar: "No. Because, tomorrow, he'll be alive, and I won't. He can - live his whole life. Go for the Starstone. 's not good enough. Wish I had that foolishness, if that's what it is."

Abrogail Thrune II: "I wouldn't have buried him as a statue for ever, if he hadn't turned traitor at the end.  Wouldn't have buried you as a statue for ever, if you hadn't turned traitor at the end.  It was only and ever your fear of this place that led you here.  If you have true laughter for that, or true tears, I'll count it while they last."

Carissa Sevar: "oh."

She does cry, then.

"Asmodia - wants to stop existing. so she - gets Hell - and -"

Iarwain: There comes a time, though, when Carissa has run out of new ways to hurt.  Even Abrogail offering to accept the coin of any other deep strong feelings that she's buried, does not rescue her from bankruptcy; no human being can play that game for very long.

Carissa is informed that it's time for her to be a statue now.

Carissa Sevar: "Please don't," she says, not because she expects it could possibly work, but because not saying it won't work either, and not feeling it was boring. To Abrogail. Who is the only thing that matters in the whole world, and isn't that exactly what she wants. 

Abrogail Thrune II: "I hazard my true oaths warily, dear Carissa, and scribe them all out in advance, so this is not an oath in Asmodeus's name or otherwise, but just a promise."

"I promise that if, as your slow petrification ends, I do truly believe that you have let out all the suffering inside you and held none of it back from me, you will, at the very end, be saved from the very worst fate you fear, and not be a statue for ever."

"I don't think you can, but I promise I'll be fair about judging it."

"I don't hate you so much, sweet Carissa, that I'd rather be certain of destroying you completely, than have a little more fun while you end."

Iarwain: It starts as a tingling in her toes.

Carissa Sevar: "Okay, now I hate you," she says, and it occurs to her, wildly, ridiculously, that Keltham would call that the same kind of error as all your predictions being wrong in the same direction, and Keltham, Keltham, Abrogail has already heard every feeling Carissa is capable of having about Keltham, and she'll never know if he intended this, or not, or didn't care, or might look, someday, when he understands - but maybe he does - 

- and she thought she was kind of out of things to cry about but she's crying again anyway. She hopes Abrogail is pleased. Even though she hates her. Because - no, she doesn't know why, she's too tired to think, she has no idea why she hates Abrogail and hopes she's making Abrogail happy and in fact doesn't really know why, or for how long, there will be anything at all clinging to its place in her head in the rising tide of terror.

Iarwain: Abrogail is inscribing runes into her flesh, with molten metal laced with spellsilver, the sort of work that really will stay in place for a long long long time once those places have petrified.  It hurts, but not much compared to some other things.

Abrogail Thrune II: "You're allowed to fight back, you know," Abrogail informs Carissa.  Her voice is so soft now, so gentle.  "You're not allowed to win, but you're allowed to fight back, with magic, with your hands when you have no magic left.  It's why your hands are free."

Carissa Sevar: "Is there the slightest reason to think that might change anything at all."

Abrogail Thrune II: "There is," Abrogail murmurs, not looking up from the lines of fire tracing an absence of eternal damnation into Carissa's skin.  "It's something inside you that school taught you to never let out, against someone like me."

Carissa Sevar: Sure, then, she will try to gouge the Queen of Cheliax's eyes out. May as well be not-damned for every crime in the reach of your arms.

Iarwain: Carissa's hands scrabble uselessly over Abrogail's face.  There's no obvious magic opposing Carissa, it's just that what she's trying doesn't work.  She can't do this any more than Keltham could bite through her lip.

Carissa Sevar: This is objectively not surprising but it's still infuriating. Can she interfere with rune-drawing. 

Iarwain: Not as such, no.

Carissa Sevar: Can she scratch the runes off her own skin.

Iarwain: What do you think.

Carissa Sevar: She stopped being competent at thought some amount of time that she has no guess at ago! She's just trying things!!!

Abrogail Thrune II: "They say that it's less dignified for a wizard to die with spells still uncast," Abrogail observes.

Carissa Sevar: Ah, yes, she definitely thinks Abrogail's going to let her get away with Gaseous Form, that definitely seems like something Abrogail will let her get away with. 

Abrogail Thrune II: Spell's stuck!  It's not even being countered, it's more like she can get halfway through casting it but then can't cast it any further.

Abrogail laughs.  It sounds more cheerful than sadistic.

"Apologies, apologies, I just kept wanting that to happen at some point while I was destroying you."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa spits in her face. 

Can she Prestidigitate the runes off.

Abrogail Thrune II: One of the runes comes right off!

Carissa Sevar: This is a stupid game and she's going to lose but she can't, actually, make herself not play it. Next rune.

Abrogail Thrune II: Also right off!  Abrogail doesn't seem to care about that at all.

Carissa Sevar: Are the runes literally just for added fun. She will keep erasing them, then; she'll have a minute's duration of Prestidigitation even once she's too petrified to do the motion, which will be very soon -

Iarwain: Well, her arms now seem to be frozen in position - it's not particularly aesthetic, where they ended up, but that's fine because nobody will ever see them.

A minute later, Carissa's last Prestidigitation - her last spell, possibly, unless she succeeded in letting everything out - runs down.

Abrogail Thrune II: Oh, whoops, looks like that was a very powerful illusion that was capable of even fooling Carissa's own magical senses.  All the runes are still there!  It had really felt to Carissa like her magic was working, too.  Apparently you can just do that when you're eighth circle!

Iarwain: The line of gentle tingling is slowly, slowly rising up her neck.

Abrogail Thrune II: And Abrogail is kissing her.

She would be a pretty nice kisser, if, you know, everything about this relationship was completely different.

Carissa Sevar: Asmodeus, she thinks, when You've corralled all the other souls in all the other afterlives, when You've made every last angel and azata Your possession, if You're bored, someday, look for me -

Irori?

Iomedae?

Keltham?

And she sobs, and lets all her thoughts stop happening in a tide of terror and grief and loss and longing, and she bites Abrogail's lip, because, you know, it's right there.

Iarwain: For some strange reason there's a feeling of peace, right at the very end.

Iarwain: And then it ends.