A metaphysical Something sneezes and a person appears in the air, ten feet above a grassy field.
A steady wind blows towards the crisp red sunset. The field is perfectly flat, interrupted only by a stone shed a few hundred feet away.
A metaphysical Something sneezes and a person appears in the air, ten feet above a grassy field.
A steady wind blows towards the crisp red sunset. The field is perfectly flat, interrupted only by a stone shed a few hundred feet away.
Indeed, Mirana and Saiel are climbing out of a hole about a hundred feet away and running towards them.
He lets go of Tomas and gets to his feet. "If your vision gets worse tell me, if you hit your head you could be going blind and I can't fix that if I don't catch it early. It's fine, I've got him," he shouts to Mirana and the others.
Hey Rafiik is away from the shrine, get the undine over there!
...Which will take like fifteen minutes.
"Yeah, I'm okay!" He meets them partway, checking back every few steps to make sure Tomas doesn't get too much of a headstart if he tries to run off. "I did a Force thing to him so he can't easily lie to me; if he notices that I did it it might stop working, though, so don't act surprised when he tells me things." He's watching Mirana's emotions in particular very closely as he says it.
Incredulous. Afraid. Despairing. Overwhelmed. "Huh, okay." A brief flash of hope, followed by more despair.
Well, if she interferes with his information-gathering that'll also be information. He hopes he can resolve this with everyone safe and reasonably satisfied, and he's fairly confident he can if they're willing to work with him on it - he absolutely doesn't want to fight his way out but if he has to he should be all right, a thought which is accompanied by memories of past lightsaber training - but he's going to wait to tell her that until he sees what she does.
"He's injured, too," he adds, turning to head back. "I have some healing, I'll take care of it before we leave or sooner if he asks me to."
Healing too? He probably has every magic that could ever exist, or at least that's the upper bound for a Jedi. Maybe he personally has every kind, if he already knew about about catfolk magic - er, it would just be called 'fire magic' wouldn't it - and knew that Asrek was going to touch the flame and pretended to be surprised.
(The guard dispatcher is getting reports at a several-second delay but can't give guidance until the equartiers who carried the butlers come back and carry him and the whisshopper closer to the site.)
"Good." He offers him a hand up; he's not sure which wrist is sprained so he just positions it so Tomas can grab it with either hand. "So what were you doing, earlier?"
He takes the hand suspiciously. "Clinging to a bicycle while some equartiers pulled me over the surface faster than bicycles are supposed to go." ...but it would be funnier to lift his cup to the ceiling and totally screw up the Lei job: "Because they botched my Jedi clothes and you wanted to be a big hero and go bike riding through food."
"Ah-ha." Rafiik chuckles, briefly, as he pulls Tomas to his feet. "It wasn't the clothes, actually. Sorry about that, though; I didn't know what you were doing or if you'd be dangerous to anyone. Mirana, do you want to say anything about this?"
No, Lei is not so desperate as to have people go hungry because of a single incident that does damage equal to a couple of crashing kites. The importance of 'slack' is one of their many hard-won lessons. (Pride... Regret.) But she's not going to disclose that to enemies.
"It's true that we wanted you to think there was a Jedi here, who would tell you that this is not your job... just walk around singing and telling stories. I lied to you about... a lot of things. The species here, Jedi and Sith, the apple story... But it's true that FD wants to destroy us. That was all true. And I was telling the truth about you having privacy when the musicians were away!" She's feeling awful, probably about to cry... yeah there she goes.
Calm, calm; the possibility that people might go hungry because of him is upsetting but that isn't going to help anything right now. "I'm not upset at you," he says to Mirana, gently. "People do things like this when they think they're in danger. Why were you doing it?" The last question is directed at the whole group.
She shouldn't have mentioned Sith. But she had to, lying more isn't going to help. But - argh. And how could she possibly explain her terror at the turbulent, malignant ideas that people have when they reject the guidance of elves, to someone who has never had that guidance and is already infected, was born infected? She shakes her head wildly, eyes clenched shut and ears back.
Wait. Oh no.
"If you - I don't know, but if you tried -" she looks at Tomas "then it broke, for me. I was - and I realized..."
He's not sure if she's trying to break the Mind Trick or what, and he can't ask without risking breaking it himself. "Can you take Mirana over there and sit with her until she calms down?" he asks Saiel. (There's nothing special about the bit of field he's pointing to, it's just better to avoid asking people to make decisions in high-stress situations.)
Yes, away from Tomas! No, not away from Rafiik!
"Talk to Asrek! He's still asleep!" And now she will go cry on Saiel's shoulder, fine.
It seems like a bad idea to take suggestions from her if she was trying to break the Trick. Back to Tomas, then; fortunately he's pretty sure it's not going to be subtle if the Trick is broken. "So why were you doing it? Or, you said they're not your people, do you know why they wanted you to?"
"Because if you knew they're evil you'd kill them! FD is evil too. Everyone on this whole planet is evil!"
"I don't know the words evil or kill, yet." Fortunately it doesn't seem like the Trick has broken.