Stef tries to clap a hand over Maitimo's mouth. 

:Stef I'm on it:

The light of the Gate winks out and half a second after that, everything fades to black. 

Elsewhere a confused and enraged Maia stands, in a manner of speaking as he doesn't have a body, in a crater.

Sunpriest Ulrich is kneeling considerably further back, the ground is still too hot for humans. Also he has no idea where Sauron is right now, except that he's presumably here. 

"We are very unclear on what happened," he admits. "No unauthorized mages entered the city, our checkpoints are very thorough. None of our known mages were anywhere near this point, you know we track their locations now. A sentry felt a Gate and was able to pass that message on, but nobody who was close enough to witness it survived, so we are not sure who did the Gate. It must have been a mage Gating in from outside. Possibly one of the Tayledras. We retrieved records claiming that several of them visited Haven at one point." 

The ground may be too hot for humans but Sunpriest Ulrich is now going to be kneeling on it ANYWAY. 

HOW MANY OF THEM?

"S-six, I t-think. k'Treva Vale. Among them were," he gulps, "Moondance, lifebonded partner to Starwind k'Treva, who we suspect was killed in the attack on Vanyel. And their son. Both mages. We d-did not think his lifebonded would have survived. But it would explain why he was willing to Final Strike." 

WHY NOW?

"...We do not know. One explanation is that Leareth is ready to attack soon, and the Star-Eyed Goddess is actively aiding him." 

I DON'T KNOW WHY MAITIMO LIKED YOU, he says irritably, and lights the man on fire.

Maitimo will wake up in a huge comfortable bed, screened off by beautiful silk curtains, one of them pulled open a little to show a much bigger room outside. There are no windows apparent but the area is comfortably well-lit by mage-lights.

He's unhurt, and not restrained in any way, but there are a couple of what feel like walls in his mind. One of them is in the way of speaking oaths; his mind just won't go toward saying the words. He is also blocked from suicide and from using osanwë. Something else feels different - he's not foggy-headed exactly, but it seems like an entire area of his thoughts is missing. 

He is no longer wearing his amulet against Thoughtsensing. 

And they'll be listening - 

- honestly the listening feels like more of a constraint than whatever they've done to his head, he seems capable of stringing thoughts together but he shouldn't. Should - what did he do last time, scatter his thoughts to the winds, but he could do that because there were people - 

- safe thoughts, there have got to be some thoughts that are safe to have -

- how did they do it? Jisa and Stef. One of them did a Gate - Jisa did the Gate. Jisa wasn't a mage. She must've figured out how to become a mage, figured out how to conceal that she was a mage, figured out interdimensional Gates, smuggled herself and Stef into Valdemar - Stef could've made them seem less suspicious - very well done, every step of it, and not Leareth's plan, probably because they had guessed how thoroughly Maitimo had defended himself against every avenue he knew Leareth could use. 

Bad luck, over and over - the sign the gods were against you. The Companion god, probably. And the Star-Eyed. And probably soon now - no, he mustn't think about that -

- he'd be touched, by the lovely conditions, but it says nothing about what they mean to do with him aside from that they need him alive. And obviously they need him alive. 

He tries not to consciously think through his plan. It is in one sense easy, because he's thought about it before, and in another very hard, because - why, actually - oh, because he's alone except for Leareth probably reading his thoughts from a distance and he misses him so badly - that doesn't matter right now. - or actually that's a fine place to start. 

He rolls over and sobs. And waits.

:He's awake. Maybe wait a bit, he's - pretty upset - actually waiting probably won't help - be careful: 

Telumë nods. It's Melody's turn in the rotation of watching Maitimo from within Mindhealing range; she doesn't need line-of-sight, being on the other side of a wall is fine, it doesn't need any shields because Maitimo isn't a mage and cannot currently even use osanwë.

He heads in, the noise of his footsteps covered by the burbling of a little indoor water feature, and pulls the tapestry back over the door to outside. Probably Maitimo won't find it.

He nudges the curtain wider. It's very inconvenient that his (currently evil) boyfriend isn't even going to recognize him, because he looks like a random fifteen-year-old from Rethwellan. Maybe sixteen by now.

"I would like to speak with you," he says quietly. "It does not need to be now." He waits for Melody to prompt him if Maitimo has any interesting thoughts in response. It's irritating that he can't talk to her from his end. 

- probably he should delay as long as he can so that they have time to change all the codes he knows.

He doesn't move.

:He's thinking about delay tactics - codes he knows. And he misses you a lot. He's - there are several areas he's carefully not thinking about, he's unfortunately good at that: 

Telumë is well aware of that. 

"In a moment I am going to ask somebody to lay a second stage Truth Spell so that we can question you," he says softly. "We cannot ask or expect that you will cooperate, given the givens, but." I miss you too, he thinks, behind the privacy of his shields. "If there is anything you wish to say of your own accord, now is the time." I love you. He can't say it.

He keeps all expression out of his voice and face. It's hard, especially in a new body; he's spent days practicing tamping down his feelings, ever since he got word of the successful extraction. (It doesn't feel right, yet, to call it a rescue.) He wants to hold Maitimo, to comfort him, and he can't. It's better if he doesn't even let on that he wants to. 

He picks himself up a little. Looks at him -

" - 's you -

- 'm so sorry -

- can you hold me -"

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa–

–and probably Maitimo can tell that it's getting to him, at least a little, because his entire thing is understanding people. "It is me. My name is Telumë now. And, no, I will not." He folds up the pain and puts it behind a wall and focuses. 

:I'm sorry. I know. He won't remember this tomorrow, right - we can try the other strategy then, but I think you're right about trying this one first. I'll send Dara in: 

Herald Dara isn't a mage but she has several layers of protective artifact, including very thorough protection against physical blows, which is pretty much all Maitimo can do right now even if he decides to do anything other than lie in his bed and cry. 

She focuses on the vrondi, summons then for a Truth Spell, pushes them in a little deeper to get the coercive version. "Go ahead," she says tonelessly, backing off behind a screen. 

"Tell us what precautions you expect Sauron to take as a result of your kidnapping," Telumë says levelly. (For now, in case he hasn't guessed, they're not letting on that it probably looks to Sauron like Maitimo was just murdered in an enormous fireball.) 

"Obviously everyone should stop taking orders from me. They'll change communications methods I know the codes for. Recall spies. There were plans for once Arda was back in play. Once Vanyel was. Might go back there - he figured out how - get the humans with mage-potential - assume everyone else is in Valinor or at least in hiding but if not, maybe kill them too. Don't know if it'll be a priority, it wasn't before and it'll be harder now, without me to find people at range."

He didn't miss that Moondance jumped through. "- if they think I'm dead I think they'll still do that. Maybe take a chance leaving out any spies who aren't hard to replace and who don't know more than I do - which would be most of them -  if they think I'm dead they might not know Van's alive, don't know if that makes intervention in Arda more or less likely -"

"What were the other plans for once Vanyel was back in play?" 

Grits his teeth. "Van's not dead means Van's god isn't dead. Vkandis thinks they are. Thought they are. But that's how - that's how he kept doing it, that's how he'll have done it this time, Starwind's dead so the report we got wasn't wildly wrong - changes a bunch of things. Stuff they can do in Valdemar, to move more of it under Vkandis's control - shuffle civilian populations with Karse and Iftel, consecrate more ground - there's the question of where Sauron'd prefer to have the fight with you, right, if Valdemar's god is still around then the mountains are probably better - will probably motivate them to have a go at killing Treven, too, that's got to be the last two Companions, that might be what has Valdemar's god clinging to life - but unless you're idiots he's in Valinor. Not a lot of options there. " He keeps wanting to say 'we' and saying 'Sauron' instead, no need to keep reminding them.

Treven and Vanyel should both be in Valinor with their Companions, right now. They can't Gate from there but it's not too far to Tol Eréssea - Van can probably Gate as soon as he's on a boat, even - and they can still communicate. 

(There are four Companions, actually, since Dara and Katha both got out with theirs. He decided it wasn't worth trying to hide Dara's existence, given that she's the only one who can cast a coercive Truth Spell, Katha's not strongly Gifted enough to do more than the first stage and Vanyel isn't here and shouldn't be here.) 

Melody relays Maitimo's thought about wanting to say 'we' and switching it to 'Sauron', so Telumë is in fact reminded. Right now, that makes it easier, if anything. He's not angry, that would be - so pointless - but he can on some level convince himself that this isn't Maitimo, or not quite, it's not the version of him that they're somehow going to get back. 

He keeps asking questions, not giving Maitimo any pauses to think. What are the communication methods. How many mages, where, how many other troops. Contingency plans and standing orders already in place for various events. How the spy networks are set up in general. Melody prompts him with what Maitimo's thinking, he tries not to let on too obviously, only circling back to items that gives him a few questions later when there's a natural place for it.

He wonders what Maitimo is feeling right now. It's hard to tell from the outside.