They've left him alone in his cell.
He can't really be said to be lucid but he has very acute instincts for when there's someone and when he's alone - it's the last of his senses to depart him - and he's alone.
And then suddenly he isn't.
Nothing I can see from here, she reports. Hold on and I'll get a skin to put a portal in to have a look at the rest of the camp.
Not especially, I don't think, and she disappears to get a skin; a minute later she's back and snuggled up and checking the camp from overhead.
Oh, good. Can a better one be developed that sees what a spell does, or is that just impossible?
I can probably do that, one sec. She does that; it works. You'll want something that's set high enough that you can see the whole camp, though, I wouldn't've been able to see individual people if I'd done it that way... she clears the portal spell and re-casts it. There you go.
That's useful. Could there be a way to design something with the spellform that does let people see what a spell cast on them does?
It'd be great if there were something, but I guess it's not the highest priority.
She nods. It'd be nice, but I don't think we actually have that problem to worry about right now, and there's enough other things to do as is. And if it comes up we can try going to a city and seeing what spell forms we can get that way.
Yeah. Okay, I'll pick a few people to potentially teleport Melkor, ones who don't have any information yet about other worlds.
Nod. I'm not going to teach them how to target random places, so it doesn't matter if they know about other worlds, just that they don't go to any once they have the mage-sense.
Depending on how hidden you're depending on your city being, you might not want to let them go there, either.
I'm not sure splitting our forces would be wise, but maybe it's worth it to have one civilian city and one less civilian one.
I'm kind of assuming I'll be doing a lot of spells for you anyway; if people can mostly go back and forth it might not be that much of a split. And with portal rooms - there's no reason I can't do the same thing to a room that I did to the tents, to let you guard and shoot from them - having more area to defend might not be such a big deal. Or it might, I don't know, but it seems like something to think about at least.
Sure, hold on.
She goes and gets a pile of hides and spends a few minutes putting portals in them, piling them beside him as she's done with each one.
There's a pretty good variety of terrain on offer; some of the spots from before turn up again in this set, but also several new ones.
No; I didn't keep trying long enough to get every possible place last time. I'm not sure how long that'd even take.
Oh, I was imagining it does it by some kind of order. It's random, of places that qualify?