"You can give yourself a little bit of a headache snapping a badly placed one. It won't kill you. Dislodging ones that are much more skillfully placed might hurt more, I guess, but - it's worth it to me. If you think you have some way to try I would like it very much if you did."

"I also have no idea how I would target particularly the ones restricting your movements."

"Well, it's not as if I was hoping to keep any of the other ones in place. I don't even know what they all are. Do you have any kind of way to see them, that feels like it might be a necessary element and maybe it'd also give a hint about who was doing what?"

"I cannot see your spirit. I can sense that it is very - pinned, contorted -but not with sight."

"I didn't even know it was possible to do that much."

He glances at his ring. "We have learned some things since you died."

A second's hesitation, figuring that out -

"Of course you would have." Proudly.

"How does magic work in Velgarth?"

"I don't know much about it. Belrun has Fetching, you can see if you can learn anything from watching her."

"I have Healing too. And Thoughtsensing and Mindspeech but I only found out about those recently and can't do anything fancy, though they should be safe enough to experiment with if it's useful. Uh, to clarify, I have enough general Healing training that I don't expect I'd hurt anybody by mistake even in a new species, but my actual specialty is microbiology so I can't promise I'll be able to do anything useful in other domains - not that this is applicable to Russandol's issue but in general."

"Does Thoughtsensing allow for reading more than what osanwë permits -"

"It does."

"Some people take Gifts like that and unconsciously use them for shielding instead of having uncontrolled active use, and I'm one of those, I didn't know I had either Mindspeech or Thoughtsensing till Leareth checked me and the extent of my actual historical use of Thoughtsensing is what I looked at when Russandol offered, and also accidentally catching a stray thought off my father when he let me check to see if I could Mindspeak him even though he isn't Gifted."

" - okay. And your - lifebonded, if he shows up -"

"Mage gift, Thoughtsensing, Mindspeech, I think that's it but mage gift is very flexible when you're good at it and he is."

"Telumë doesn't have Thoughtsensing or Mindspeech, he just uses mage-gift to make me send thoughts. - when he gets a new body he gets new Gifts."

"Are there any other people we could send a message about how you two are trapped in the wrong world."

"Belrun's Vanyel, maybe? He managed to derive interworld Gating himself, in our timeline. But I don't think either Leareth or Telumë will hurt your people as an opening move. - I guess Leareth did secretly practice compulsions on my people as soon as he showed up, to make sure they worked as he expected. ...but they won't hurt your people very much."

"Mine has to keep me happy, which I think, uh, tones him down some in the messing with people's heads department. Also like he'll be able to tell that I'm not dead or alarmed as soon as he's close enough because lifebond."

"What exactly is a lifebond?"

"I described what they - I guess I described how they happen and not as much about what they do afterwards? Uh, hurts to be far apart, usually drives people to suicide if the other party dies, direct experiential access to the other's emotions within range though I wouldn't expect him to get anything at this distance, I'm not. Though I can tell he's alive, I think I'd notice if he weren't or at least if I were too far away to tell then not being able to tell would feel like him being dead. Lifebonded partners find one another particularly appealing and interesting and attractive and important. It wasn't actually obvious to me right away that he needed me not only happy but genuinely happy without my own slate of mind control keeping me that way while things sucked around me but that was cleared up pretty early on, it does seem like he either actually can't take shortcuts and have that work or he's strongly enough averse to it that he wouldn't try even if it wouldn't be directly disabling."

He does not venture a guess.

"Our marriages don't involve any kind of mind control. They have some of the same sensory effects, varies by couple -"

"We get shared dreams, and empathy - attenuated over this distance - and I can sense when he's doing magic, and details of it when I'm closer."

"Empathy is kind of mind control."