Abrogail Thrune II: 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 -
Abrogail Thrune II: She absolutely shouldn't be thinking that question. Obviously.
Abrogail Thrune II: Ha. If she was Carissa, she'd already be thinking exactly the thoughts that would be advantageous for her captors to observe her thinking -
Abrogail Thrune II: 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 II: 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.
Abrogail Thrune II: 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 -
Abrogail Thrune II: She waits, then, her body tense, now that she can move any muscle at all.
Iarwain: Obviously and as any sane person would expect, nothing happens.
Abrogail Thrune II: When her lungs start to hurt, she realizes she was unconsciously holding her breath and lets it out.
Pit Fiend: 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.
Abrogail Thrune II: 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.
Pit Fiend: 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+: 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.
Pit Fiend: "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."
Keltham+: "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."
Pit Fiend: 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."
Keltham+: "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."
Pit Fiend: "Where is the Crown of Infernal Majesty?"
Keltham+: "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."
Pit Fiend: "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."
Keltham+: "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."
Pit Fiend: 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 Thrune II: 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.
Infernal Fortress: 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.
Abrogail Thrune II: 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.
lintamande: 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."
Abrogail Thrune II: 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.
lintamande: 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.
lintamande: ....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.
Abrogail Thrune II: 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.
lintamande: 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."
Abrogail Thrune II: 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?
lintamande: "If I command you to answer, answer." Implicit, of course, is that one would answer truthfully only if that were commanded.
Abrogail Thrune II: "I'll obey."
lintamande: Then they'll put through the Greater Scry.
Keltham+: 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.
lintamande: "Yes," says the devil, bored.
Abrogail Thrune II: 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 -
Keltham+: "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.
Abrogail Thrune II: no no no no no NO NO NO NO
lintamande: "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.
Abrogail Thrune II: "I have not -"
Keltham+: "I am unassured by her words and only satisfied by what you swear in Asmodeus's name were her thoughts."
Abrogail Thrune II: 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 -)
lintamande: "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."
Abrogail Thrune II: 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 -)
lintamande: "Who kept the records?"
Abrogail Thrune II: 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)
lintamande: 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.
Keltham+: "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."
lintamande: "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+: 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."
lintamande: Then the devil will turn to Abrogail, and ask these numbers.
Abrogail Thrune II: 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.
lintamande: 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.
Keltham+: 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."
lintamande: And does Abrogail Thrune, with this assurance made, have anything to say for herself?
Abrogail Thrune II: 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.
Keltham+: "Why did you do that? The actual cause and reason."
Abrogail Thrune II: "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."
Keltham+: "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."
Abrogail Thrune II: 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."
Keltham+: "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."
Abrogail Thrune II: 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."
Keltham+: "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."
Keltham+: "Why didn't you query Maillol? How did Rugatonn let this happen?"
Abrogail Thrune II: "Neither of us thought of it."
Keltham+: "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."
Abrogail Thrune II: 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+: 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."
Abrogail Thrune II: She does, in every last bit of possibly-relevant detail she can remember, all of it, all of it.
Keltham+: "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?"
Abrogail Thrune II: "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 -
Keltham+: "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."
Abrogail Thrune II: "No single person there, but the country of Cheliax - is my own child."
Keltham+: "Symmetrical tragedies are prettier."
Abrogail Thrune II: "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.
Keltham+: "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."
Abrogail Thrune II: "Have I taught you hate, then?"
Keltham+: "All of it that I now know."
Abrogail Thrune II: "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."
Keltham+: "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."
Abrogail Thrune II: "You are displaying a very great and tyrannical dominance, and Evil, for someone who isn't fated to -"
Keltham+: "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.
Abrogail Thrune II: "YOU WILL LOSE CARISSA FOREVER IF YOU DO THIS! SHE WON'T EVER FORGIVE YOU, YOU WILL NEVER BE REUNITED!"
Keltham+: "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.
Abrogail Thrune II: 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.
Iarwain: 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.
Abrogail Thrune II: 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.
lintamande: 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?"
Abrogail Thrune II: There is nothing.
lintamande: Right! Then they'll get to what Hell is best at, which is torture.
Abrogail Thrune II: 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.
lintamande: 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.
Abrogail Thrune II: (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.
lintamande: 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.
Abrogail Thrune II: 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.
lintamande: 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: 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."
Abrogail: Then she does not have any time to feel relief, however desperate.
"I should have asked Maillol" shouldhaveaskedMaillolshouldhaveaskedMaillolshouldhaveaskedMaillol
Carissa Sevar: "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."
Abrogail: "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.
Carissa Sevar: "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?"
Abrogail: "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.)
Carissa Sevar: "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?"
Abrogail: 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 Sevar: 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."
Abrogail: "I am very eager to become her," Abrogail says; there is no reservation in her mind at this moment when she says it.
Carissa Sevar: 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."
Abrogail: 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.
Carissa Sevar: "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."
Abrogail: 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.
Carissa Sevar: 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: 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.
Carissa Sevar: (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.
Abrogail: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.
Carissa Sevar: "A puzzle for you. If you could go back - to Cheliax, had Keltham spared it - what would you do?"
Abrogail: 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.
Abrogail: 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.
Abrogail: 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.
Abrogail: 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.
Carissa Sevar: "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."
Abrogail: 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 -
Carissa Sevar: "Try two weeks."
Abrogail: 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.
Carissa Sevar: A gesture, and the now-familiar feeling of getting smarter - Splendour also -
- "I have encountered an interesting opportunity which would require your knowable loyalty."