Contemplating who in this room seems like they would make good prey. Idly wondering whether it would've been better to bring different genitals. Mildly annoyed that it's probably going to be inconvenient to set up a proper flesh pit here anytime soon and so "which genitals should I have brought" is actually a meaningful question.

Okay, so, the prey thing is definitely relevant, but now she has to know: what the heck is a flesh pit?

Well, there's a pit, which is made of flesh, and you put flesh in it, and it turns the flesh into other flesh. There's a connection to a god of some kind involved but Dima is hazy on the technical details and mostly only understands the direct practical aspects.

That is so concerning. 

Okay what about that woman with the drapey sleeve things. 

The woman with the drapey sleeve things is contemplating the logistics of waging a conventional war against the foreign dictator who is in the process of conquering her home country. Lots of math and administrative details, and plans branching out into entire forests of possibility as she accounts for the various resources Lord Rahl could have at his disposal. The picture in her head is not very optimistic, but she's patiently working it all out anyway. Her thoughts are kind of hard to follow; she has a tendency to skip rapidly through familiar chains of logic, leaping from premises to conclusions in a single bound.

(The logistics and conventions in question seem to be of an approximately medieval-to-renaissance tech level, with magic as a presence in the world but a rare and idiosyncratic one.)

Huh. Neat. And that stiff-looking person?

Standing near the back of the room, wearing a jumpsuit that calls to mind both janitors and convicts, and—

—there's something just under the surface of her mind, something that's all hard planes and crisp angles, like her thoughts are tucked away in a maze of softly humming prisms. If there's a way past the prisms and into the thoughts, it's not obvious how to find it. On the other hand, she doesn't seem to be reacting to the contact at all.

Hmm. She might want to poke at that. Later. 

She looks around to see if she missed anything important. 

There's a statue tucked into the corner, of a sad girl with wings, carved in exquisite detail.

...it's sort of weird that there's a statue in the room, and even weirder that there's a statue there, all the way in the back corner where the doors will block anyone just stepping into the room from seeing it. And if Edie looks closer... sure enough, there's a mind in there. So quiet and subtle that it's hard to notice her even when you're looking, but present all the same. And, if Edie looks at her quiet subtle thoughts...

Saying that she's sad is like calling a fish wet. It's not false, but it's also not obvious to the fish. This is just how the world is. She is sad, and lonely, but she has always been sad and lonely. She has not always been uncertain and afraid. Those are new, a reaction to her current environment. She isn't sure what's going to happen to her here but she's pretty sure she isn't going to like it. There's so many people, and all of them are here to learn about mind control, and in her experience people who are interested in controlling others are never good news.

What. 

Okay, the thing about people who are interested in controlling others is super valid but that's not, actually, her reason for being here...it's super super super weird that she just. Failed to notice. A mind??? What the fuck???

Hey, did you notice the, uh, statue, in the corner? she asks Iirve. 

took me a minute when I got here but yeah

Her ambient sadness level is extremely concerning.

isn't it though!

You kind of have to wonder what the world she's from is like. I mean, I'm from a literal apocalyptic hellscape and I'm not that unhappy. 

I mean, sometimes people are sad even though they don't live in apocalyptic hellscapes!

Usually people like that...notice that they are sad.

yeah she seems pretty depressed but I didn't poke around enough to find out why

I want to but she seems pretty benign so I'm not going to violate her privacy more than is necessary. 

reasonable!

Yeah. 

After a little while, the doors open again. 

The new arrival stands a little over six and a half feet tall, with blue skin, black hair, talons on his hands and bare feet, an asymmetrical assortment of horns, and folded batlike wings protruding from the back of his shirt. 

When he sees who else is in the room, he winces. 

To anyone who cares to check, his mind is mostly filled with guilt, connected to the wince. Apparently the fact that humans are people is new information to him and he has some Regrets. 

Con...cerning...but mostly not in a going-forward way? Probably? 

She pokes at the source of the guilt but flinches back before she can get any unwelcome details from the haze of sex and violence. 

The next person who enters is a cheerful-looking blonde woman carrying, oddly enough, a tape recorder. 

Her mind feels unsettlingly like the sensation of being watched. Underneath that, though, she's nervous and excited and oh so terribly curious. She's surveying the already-present students-to-be for potential threats, but the concept of "threat" in her mind is less associated with alert, alert! danger! and more with a sort of accepting half-fond resignation as of the neighbor's ornery cat who has dug up your tulip bulbs again. 

After that comes in a pale, possibly-albino woman with white hair in a style of dress you might imagine had been stolen off a hobo who used to be a flapper. 

Her mind is bizarre. It twists and turns and folds into itself at odd angles, and seems almost blueshifted, if thoughts were colors. 

But once you put in the effort to actually translate it, the thoughts themselves are fairly normal. She's nervous about interacting with this many people, she's worried for her brother, she hopes she didn't make a mistake in coming here. 

There's a low-grade chronic hunger in the background of her physical awareness, and an accompanying low-key strain of fear. 

The chronic fear in the mind of the next arrival is much less low-key. She is sort of vaguely hopeful that maybe everything won't be terrible forever, and this is a fairly novel sensation, but she's trying not to let it distract her from constant situational awareness of everything in her environs that could possibly pose a threat to her. She notices the statue right away, but less as a person and more as a landmark feature someone might jump out from behind in order to attack her. She is high-key terrified, not even necessarily of anything in particular, but just in general.