:You only want two copies?:

:If I get killed before I can even step out the door, more than two copies isn't going to help. ...If my junior colleague is struck by lightning on the way over here, I'll make more copies. I'm planning to wait inside and call for people from here, I just can't Mindspeak out with the door shut.: 

:Okay.:

Melody opens the door. 

Lightning does not strike. No wild animals inexplicably on the Palace grounds break in to tear them apart. It's...honestly a bit of an anticlimax. 

:Jeren. Jeren wake up and get yourself to -: damn it where is she again, :- er, Work Room Seventeen, it's the one by the greenhouses on the southwest path off Companions' Field. Priority One.: 

Technically that urgency designation is supposed to be about, you know, patients, but Melody does not care. 

:Bring pen and paper and - er, don't dawdle, but walk carefully, weather's nasty tonight.: 

Mrrrrrghwhat oh shit it's an emergency fine he's awake and on his way. :...Did someone forget who was on call tonight?: 

:Long story. I hadn't gone to bed yet. ...Put on a coat, it's cold out.: If Jeren unluckily slips and smashes his head on a rock or something, at least he won't freeze to death. 

Too soon to know which world she's in, which side of the distorted mirror. No point having feelings about it yet. Melody hasn't put any redirects on herself - she needs to be able to think right now, even if it hurts - but it doesn't actually hurt, yet. The Tayledras stimulant makes her emotions feel very far away (and also her feet feel very far away, which is weird.)

It feels like nudging the first rock at the top of an unstable hill, and the landslide is already inevitable but she doesn't know, yet, which way it's going to go. 

---

Four hundred miles away, Jisa is having an oddly similar experience. 

She hasn't slept. It's incredibly lucky that she just managed the Adept ritual, because she had to burn through like a third of the power generated by it over a dozen attempts at the comms spell. Mindreading Stef, who did meet the man albeit only in a dream, and reverse-engineering the spell thoroughly enough to experiment with targeting it partially off a bearing rather than entirely to a specific person, was eventually enough to get it to work. 

And then she had to keep it up for long enough to explain everything to Leareth, and then she had to raise an unscaffolded Gate to the message-drop location because he doesn't actually know where they are. 

Maybe a candlemarks to go until dawn, now, and she's finally ushering Leareth into the kyree caves. (It took only a short discussion with Hyrryl to convince them that they could trust the man enough for that.) 

The emergency stimulant Vanyel had in his bags doesn't feel like chava, which tends to make her feel disproportionately cheerful and then jittery. She feels very calm and very distant and maybe a little bit brittle, like she's seeing the world through a pane of quartz crystal. 

"No change," she says quietly. "He's not - I don't think he's a danger to himself." He's been through this before, or something like it. "But I don't know when he's going to be - functional. I don't think we should be counting on him for anything." 

"I understand." 

If Leareth is upset about it, or about the risk to his immortality, or anything about the situation, it doesn't show. 

How reassuring of him. 

"Do your people have any idea what's happening in Haven?" 

Leareth sits down on the fur-covered stone outcropping that Jisa points out to him. 

"Less than I would prefer. I do have a report of a riderless Companion being escorted into the city by a substantial guard and led to a particular unused barn, so unless that was something completely unrelated, we know where Enara most likely is. The priest, I am not sure, and checking every potential shielded location myself would be - costly." 

Of course Leareth can do that. 

"His name is Blai." Weird that that apparently failed to come up at all so far. "Enara hasn't said they need a rescue yet?" 

"No. Only that the negotiations were not going well and she was unable to contact Yfandes and they had not been allowed any other methods to communicate - which we already knew - and, shortly later, that she had been blocked from contact with Blai as well. I would prefer to know where he is in case the situation worsens quickly, but I am not sure I can afford to be tired, and my options to scry him very directly are limited if they have taken his artifacts." 

Jisa takes a deep breath. 

"I have an idea to get in and out of Haven without anyone knowing. I'll need Farsight or scrying coverage of Waymeet..." 

---

Nothing seemed to go disastrously wrong from Blai's perspective when Melody reported in. She was escorted away by Savil, who seemed kind of angry about the whole thing but did make sure they were very well shielded before they stepped out. Melody's overwhelmed-looking junior colleague had carried away more copies of the note, first, and before she left Melody confirmed that half a dozen of the Heralds were awake and she had confirmed personally via Mindspeech that they had the report. 

He's left alone, after that. 

A couple of candlemarks later - though he can't actually see it from inside a windowless room - dawn arrives. 

He goes back to sleep once she's gone. He wakes with the dawn. It looks like he can prepare spells, just not cast them.

He's keeping the Suppress Charms and Compulsions, keeping the Owl's Wisdom, preparing a Lesser Restoration. This doesn't leave room for a prophecy if he uses the third circle slot on a Planar Inquiry. He should have told the Mindhealer about that, gotten her opinion on the tradeoff, but he was - tired, jittery -

- he takes the Planar Inquiry. Preps an Endure Elements in case he winds up in the snow coatless again for some reason. Air Bubble's good if there's a fire. Comprehend Langauges in case he needs to read or communicate with a non-Mindspeaker, even though in this scenario he'd have to have been allowed to cast spells first. ...and Forbid Action because he can at this time rather vividly imagine needing to forbid someone to EXPLODE.

He... has room for...

...another second-circle spell. Maybe the lake monster put him pretty close to it and all this bustling around with messages and prophecies and archmages got him enough beyond that. That little step closer toward another circle.

He prepares the Minor Prophecy.

The sun will be rising in Haven now, Jisa thinks. Waymeet is a lot further north; it's dark for almost a candlemark longer. 

She unties herself from the kyree sled, thanks Aroon, and slips out of the forest into the streets of the town. She hides in a stable – not one that Companions are sleeping in, it's just the ordinary horses, and not the Guard horses either. 

The plan only works because she just made White Winds Adept, and had a little time to play with the illusion forms before everything got worse again, and also has access to a degree of personal shields she didn't before. And because she practiced, at one point, hiding her active mage-gift - from a mage, at least, if not from a Mindhealer - by voluntarily tucking her channels into a "closed" position. It seemed like it might matter, back when her new Gift was a state secret, and now it matters for a different reason. 

And she knows, from Leareth's past Farsight and scrying coverage of Waymeet, that Melody's granddaughter Clara apparently volunteered to station herself in the north with Agnetta. 

Right now, Jisa looks exactly like Clara. White Winds Adepts can create illusions that fool all the senses, including touch; it's not just her hair and eye color that are different, she's also taller and significantly plumper. (She slightly had to resist the urge to spend time she can't afford examining her larger breasts and wondering what Treven would think. This could be a fun game for them in it can WAIT.) She's wearing her Mindhealers' robes - when she was leaving Haven, she packed them in case it made sense to show up in Waymeet as that - which don't quite fit Clara's form, but no one should notice that, especially in the dark. 

Clara is asleep in the newly-erected Healers' barracks, but not shielded from Jisa's Mindspeech. 

:Clara. Wake up. ...Don't move or tell anyone you're awake.: 

Huh what. 

:Jisa? What are you doing here?: 

:It's a really, really long story. Do you trust me?: 

Why is Jisa like this.

:Depends. Do you promise it’s not like that time with the Herald-trainees and the treehouse?:

The worst part is, Jisa’s younger self did absolutely everything to deserve that.

:It’s not a prank, I swear. I’m a full Herald and a full Mindhealer now, I don’t do that anymore. This is serious. And really, really, really important.:

SO ominous. But they are at war.

:Fine. What is it.:

:I need to pretend to be you, so I can catch the dawn supply-Gate to Haven with a message for Melody. So I need you to either hide so no one sees two of you, or - well, if you were up for a really interesting Mindhealing case…:

:Jisa, your idea of an interesting case gives me nightmares.:

:You don’t have to. I - think it’ll be all right even if I’m gone for half a day, and there could be some danger - though Waymeet may not be safe either…:

Aaaaaaaamd here comes the guilt trip. Jisa is so good at those, and even when you know that it STILL WORKS.

:Fine. Where?: