Monica did not learn to be obedient before school. Out of all of her siblings, she was the worst one.

She was curious. Even indignant. She did not accept that "because an authority said so" is a valid justification.

This caused trouble.

Sibling-fights, peer-fights, being hit by her parents. They named her a fool, an idiot, an insubordinate.

Monica was bright. Maybe a bit too bright. Curious, they also called her.

Curiousity was complicated in Cheliax. A virtue when closed-scope. A danger, when broad and free-reigning. 

Asmodeus dislikes the paths that curiosity leads mortals towards. Devils are not curious. But there is an amount of curiosity that is necessary, for producing more useful mortals. It also correlates with Intelligence, a most necessary trait for producing useful Wizards.

So, curiosity can lead to useful paths, with the right incentives and shaping. And incentives and shaping are what Asmodean Cheliax is built out of.

Abadarians think of incentives as something that leads to good outcomes when economical agents carefully consider the available playing field, and end up choosing outcomes that are net-beneficial to society, when averaged out.

An example of an Abadarian incentive is economic reward for a positive deed.

Asmodeus thinks of incentives as something that makes a squirrel able to traverse a maze from the beginning to the desired end correctly.

An example of an Asmodean incentive is a shock collar pain. When you cause a mistake free-willed agent pain when they try to turn towards the wrong direction, they end up choosing the correct direction more often.

There are various inherent issues that come up over one's childhood, with the Asmodean tyranny. And there are various ways to withstand it.

Some do not notice the problems. They develop the skill of willful ignorance.

Some notice the problems. They do not care. They develop the skill of willful apathy.

Some notice the problems and care. They create justifications and complicated narratives for why the problem is unavoidable and / or desirable. They develop the skill of rationalization.

But no matter the ways, every child eventually enters school.

School teaches. It teaches reading, it teaches history and theology, and most importantly it teaches navigating Asmodeanism among a group of relative peers.

The way humans, even children, naturally form hierarchies without much external influence, works as a demonstration of the inevitability of Asmodean tyranny.

Some children climb the hierachy due to their larger size. Some due to their parents. Some due to their results in school. Some due to random change. And some due to their smarts. 

Some children fall, for similar reasons. Due to their size, sex, parents, results, random change, foolishness, but sometimes also, due to their smarts.

Pride is a virtue in Asmodean Cheliax. But Pride without the power to protect it, is a vulnerability. Vulnerabilities make you hurt, in Cheliax.

A certain kind of child can have a good baseline of so-called smarts, an intuitive understanding of the mechanisms around them, and still fail to consider the consequences of their own actions thoroughly.

At first, performing well in school, Monica gains. She avoids the below-par punishments. Sometimes she gets to oversee the punishment of other, worse, students.

But humans are jealous. Especially children in Asmodean society whose natural inclinations are constrained to the ways that Asmodeus approves of.

Monica's peers start punishing her after a few months of school. Beating, insulting, humiliating.

Monica can take it.

This frustrates the peers. They move on to screwing with her schoolwork.

Monica thinks this is harming her schooling. The goal of school is to teach her what she needs to be useful in life. She can't get it done while being constantly harassed.

She reports the other students to her teacher.

The Asmodean stance on snitching is complicated.

There is a cost, if problems cannot be reported.

But the inevitability of tyranny greatly amuses Asmodeus.

Schools have a wide range of punishments. But there are guidelines.

Punishments for lackluster performance, expected mistakes, are planned to be compatible with schooling; they are quick to administer and avoid causing lasting harm.

Punishments for foolishness are significantly less constrained.

An adult in Asmodean Cheliax can die for herecy. Or if it pleases their superiors.

Children are not regularly killed for early-stage herecy; there is a level in the hierarchy where it is understood that humans are naturally oriented towards herecy. It is one of the reasons Asmodeanism needs to be Lawful, on top of tyrannical order pleasing Asmodeus in itself.

Ironical punishment also happens to please Asmodeus. There is a certain parallel to devilish contract trickery, that a good ironical punishment can achieve.

Monica is tortured. It is nothing like the beating her parents administered, and it is clearly worse than what is regularly applied at school.

The teacher starts by stating out the lesson. Monica must understand that in Asmodeanism her superiors are not there to protect her. Nobody is there to protect her.

After a long while, and in a completely disoriented state, Monica is detached. She is quite disoriented. The teachers mouth moves, and somewhere far away she processes words.

"You are to go home now. The extended punishment will last a week."

Monica does not understand. But she obeys. It hurts to move, but the fear of restarting torture, is much more painful.

Monica walks out of the school, and sees the idiots who screwed with her schoolwork. They beat her. It hurts so much more. She is not able to move or flinch normally. She tries to scream. It doesn't come out. She doesn't understand why.

Monica gets home, and they do not ask. She tries to go grab a drink of water, and it mostly doesn't work. Her hands are shaking and a bunch of water gets on her tunic.

She goes to sleep. It hurts, and is uncomfortable.

She wakes up, and it hurts and is uncomfortable.

She walks to school, and it hurts.

On the first lesson, she tries to answer a question. It doesn't work. She understands.

Days go by. Her body slowly recovers.

The idiots keep disrupting her. It hurts, but it doesn't hurt like the teachers private lesson did.

She has a hard time concentrating on the lessons. But the lessons are easy. This does not cause additional complications.

After a week the teacher takes off the gag. Monica thanks her.

There are lessons, and then there are lessons.

One learns the alphabet with lessons. One can learn scripture with lessons.

But one learns to be an Asmodean though lessons.

A human mind is a frail construct. Even though humans are naturally oriented towards various things; curiosity, compassion, community, contentment; some of these impulses are quite frail.

Some lessons only need to be taught once. Some methods to each one lesson, end up teaching multiple.

Monica does not snitch again.

Monica starts to avoid attention.

Monica develops contempt.

Asmodeus prefers contempt. You are allowed, even encouraged to hate your superiors. You are allowed, sometimes required, to hate your inferiors.

Human minds can form many kinds of contempt.

A person can be contemptuous of foolishness. A person can scorn disruptiveness. A person can think that their peers are foolish, disruptive idiots, while still considering them their peers.

Monica starts hating her foolish-idiot-peers. She starts imagining delivering an ironic punishment on them. Punishing their inability to be orderly by sending them to Hell, where their inefficiencies and sadistic enjoyment of foolery would be beaten into a more useful shape. Monica doesn't hate her teacher, even when the teacher hurts her more than her peers physically could. The teacher has a purpose. Her peers do not.

As a physically weak schoolchild, she lacks the ability to perform her revenge fantasies.

But there is another kind of contempt. A contempt that is praised highly by the scripture.

Devils do not expect mortals to do useful deeds or avoid useless deeds. Devils think of mortals as fundamentally flawed, perhaps incidentally useful.

Monica starts to think of her peers as objects. As impediments put in her way that do not think, do not orient, and importantly, do not feel.

There have been times when Monica had a mean impulse, and did not execute it because she is not actually sadistic. It is one of her more obvious flaws, especially when looking at it from the inside. She doesn't enjoy causing pain. She flinches away from it in a way that she has been told is wrong and foolish.

Her mindset shift helps with this.

You don't think what a fly feels, when you swat it. You just do it. You do not want to be bothered by the fly, so you destroy it.

Monica wants to destroy her classmates impediments. They are in her way.

Monica starts to pay proper attention to pain-inflicting. To the movements. To the target areas, the tools, the non-target areas. 

She also starts to pay more attention to the impediments' actions. If she stepped on a nail, the nail wouldn't be able to humiliate her. Why would a few impediments shaped like human children be able to do that.

She notices that the impediments lack precision. Their pain-inflicting is emotional, unplanned, incompetent. They do not understand where the exact limit goes; they know what kind of pain-inflicting does not cause problems with adults, so they keep copying what they have done before.

She starts to figure out what she could do. She could their toes, surprisingly. She could sabotage their schoolwork. She could do some of that in secret. She could assemble a group.

The toebreaking seems promising. It isn't functionality altering. It's going to be their problem if they can't make it to school with broken toes.

But Monica isn't dumb. She understands cyclical escalation.

If they are idiots, they'll escalate and then it'll be an adult-including problem. They will get consequences, and Monica will get badbadbad.

If they are decently smart they'll break her toes. It will hurt. She has less toes than they do, though.

If they are very smart they'll figure out something worse that's still within the lines. That would not go well for her.

Monica first considers revenge for weeks. Weeks turn into months.

Then she has a breakthrough.

It does not actually matter what she wants to do. Her frustration, shame, anger, all worthless. Her feelings, desires, wants, all worthless.

Emptiness is simple. Emptiness is not heretical. Emptiness does not hurt her head or make her think dangerous thoughts.

The wizard visits. Monica's parents are told she is decent wizard-potential, and she is empty relieved. The impediments won't make it anywhere close to wizard school.

The Chosen visits. Words exchanged between Chosen and teacher. 

Two students from the school are chosen for seminary. Monica, and Carles.

Carles, who has made her life at school succesfully miserable empty for the last year.

Monica will do exactly as the Chosen tells her.

Seminary includes same kind of schooling as Monica's previous one. But after the scripture lessons, there is so much more.

The pain is different. They know more here. Of torture, of healing, of infection risk, and of long term psychological reshaping.

Their thoughts are read regularly. There are surprises. The first stages of seminary are not about pruning heresies. They are about additions.

Stopping thinking and feeling is a common reaction to intense torture, they are taught.

You can utilize tasks and incentives and escalating punishments to avoid it, they are also taught.

When you need an underling to perform at their job, you should do purposeful torture.

Their canvas for it, their classmates.

Most seminary students are reasonably wise for their age, that being the primary matter that the proxy metrics for selection are looking for. They have managed to develop different emotional and cognitive patterns for dealing with daily life in Cheliax. For avoiding pain, looking away, flinching more effectively.

In seminary avoiding and flinching mentally is forbidden.

"A common herecy is to think that one can eventually tolerate Hell." they are told.

When you add correct types of torture, eventually the avoidance and dissociation from suffering becomes painful in itself, and the subjects come back to a non-dissociative effective experiencing of suffering. The implementation is a work of art, for certain sensibilities.