"Alright."

"I'll invite her then."

A portal opens beside Addy and a woman steps out. "Hello. I'm Libby. It's nice to meet you."

"I'm River. Nice to meet you too."

"I've been reading up on your world. I've also been looking into the facility where you're being held. I think I have a pretty good sense for the security procedures and I have all the electronic codes. I also have all the biometric credentials though those are a little harder to spoof. It should be possible with dreamscape magic though. Your government has a class of agent who's allowed to go anywhere and that's one approach to getting out but I don't know if we want to attract their attention. I guess maybe Addy could write software to wipe their audit logs."

"Sounds like it'd be doable pretty soon. Though I'd also want to heal myself and fix my own brain some."

"I have their research notes and all your medical records, but they weren't planning to reverse things. We can ask Cray to look into things if you want."

"The big thing I'll need to undo is the chemical restraints."

"There'a few approaches to that. The most straightforward one is just learning to purge your body of specific chemicals, though that doesn't work for drugs that are naturally present in the body. Similarly you could flood your body with enzymes, that has some of the same issues but it doesn't require as much conscious attention. The third approach which is somewhat harder would be to learn to isolate the chemicals when they inject them into you. The fourth approach would be to ask Cray to do it for you, but I can understand not wanting someone else manipulating your body after what you've been through. The hardest approach but the most comprehensive would be to force your body to behave regardless of whether it should be chemically capable of that but most people can't impose that level of control over physical worlds."

"I'd rather do the last one."

"Alright, I don't think I can help with that I hope it works."

"I can help a little with that, but I don't think anyone but Emma actually pushed the magic that far. I think the first step is probably to assert full control over your mind so your brain can't influence it. The way to do that is probably pretty similar to what you did with the telepathy and we can practice that somewhat accurately."

She nods. "The telepathy thing wasn't hard."

"Things are a bit harder outside. You could practice something similar by having someone else try to assert the rules of reality on you and the area you're in."

"Okay."

"Do you want to try that now or talk more first?"

"Try it now."

Addy, reaches out to the library around them and pushes to make both River and the area around River more real. It feels a bit like a suction trying to pull away the changes she's made to her telepathy and her safeties and any other magic she's applied to herself, and simultaneously a pressure, like the whole world is heavier and more difficult to handle.

She pushes back.

Addy grimaces a bit. The suction weakens. After a little while longer the suction stops. The feeling of weight remains but it seems a bit more tolerable.

After a little while longer Addy speaks, "I think that's roughly what being in the physical world will be like. It probably won't be weaker but it varies a lot from world to world how strong the pushback is. Your world already has telepathy so it's probably a lot less picky about it than some. I can stop whenever you like."

"I think I've got the idea. Thanks."

The feeling of weight disappears. "Alright, Libby is there somewhere safe outside the facility?"

"There's a few underground resistance groups which might be willing to shelter her. The government also has less influence on bodies further from the center of the weird multi-star solar system the government operates in. You should really look up the maps at some point Addy, I think their solar system might be a precursor relic or something, it's unreasonably complicated and unreasonably stable for how complicated it is."

"I'll have to do that at some point."

"It is big..."