"Sure, we could do that. I can head over the day before."

"I am almost ready to head back, I think, so when I do I will ask Aroden to spend some time researching it." A slight smile. "He ought to have much more free time now that we have finished the retaliation against the Star-Eyed." 

Leareth heads back the next day, but in the interim, he can still squeeze in a bit of time with Khemet, which he's less incredibly exhausted and out of it for. 

Carissa spends a while working on modifying her artifact. It's hard, with a blind target. How do you make sure you're - not blocking, blocking is easy, but allowing through just the right amount of - lifeforce, when you can't see it? 

If you spend a while working on something you should also spend at least a little while working out whether you should keep working on it. Is being a spy in the palace still the best way to accomplish her goals? 

- well, just fucking asking Iomedae hasn't worked -

- it's hard to reconcile this being important - and this has to be important, presumably? She wouldn't expect Iomedae to send her on a mission like this unless it was really important, she'll feel - betrayed, if it's about some tax fraud or something - no, she can't reason from that -

- there are no stories about Iomedae concerning herself with trivial things. Maybe there wouldn't be, but - for some of the other gods there are. 

Does she know the dreams are from Iomedae at all. She got two more cleric levels afer she embarked on this, and within the dreams there's the total certainty that they are, that her goddess is present with her, recognizable from the feeling of getting cleric spells, asking her to pay attention to this - but maybe that could be feigned. 

Towards what end? It's not like she would send a written report, if the dreams asked her to. She's not actually totally sure she'll tell Iomedae if asked. Certainly she'll want a lot of answers first. ...probably Iomedae can read it out of her mind, trivially, but -

There is some reason to think that there's something going on here with genuinely high stakes. There's a war between Abadar - Leareth's god - and the Star-Eyed goddess in Velgarth. Aroden's siding with Leareth in that, obviously - no, not obviously, why does Aroden trust Leareth so much? So much that everyone assumes he's his son - Gifts are inherited, she got that out of Jisa -

It doesn't fit together and it does look high-stakes, high-stakes enough that she can believe Iomedae wanted her here, maybe even that Iomedae thought only she could do this. But she'll have to take more risks. If she can't get a cactus past the man she can't learn enough to bring it to Aroden or to Iomedae. 

She tinkers with her artifact. She gets to the point where she thinks it should make a person look like they have a normal amount of life energy. She can't see it but it affects how large a gem is needed for Soul Bind and she's seen that enchantment and can infer, backwards, what it must be tracking. 

She makes up her mind to walk past him in the hallway, once. If he does a double take, she can flee. It'll just look like suspiciously good shields, if it looks wrong. She has Dimension Door. She has a scroll of Teleport. She can be out of the country in ten seconds. And if he doesn't notice anything...

...then she can get a cactus past him.

She talks Batty around by promising to resurrect it if anything happens (that doesn't kill her too). Batty is growing some flowers so it won't look like the same cactus as last time.

Leareth is in the hallway, walking from a meeting about city administration to a Work Room; he's in a Mindspeech conversation with Nayoki and occasionally fielding other queries. His Othersenses are passively open, as usual, alert for any unexpected magic or loud and worrying surface thoughts, but he's not feeling that paranoid right now. 

She activates her sword of Glibness, convinces a coworker to come with her, and walks down the hallway gossiping with her about the dinner arrangements. They step respectfully out of Leareth's way. 

She watches him. That's not weird; the other girl is also watching him. There is a general consensus that he's hot; it is the first thing she learned fishing for gossip among the staff.

His eyes play over her, but mostly the way someone's eyes would move over everything in their surroundings, if they had fought on battlefields and survived a dozen other kinds of harrowing situations. He maybe pauses on her a fraction of a second longer than her colleague, but not enough to be very notable, and then he's past them. 

Damn it she wishes she knew if that fraction of a second meant anything but -

Well, she doesn't have to run the experiment once and go straight to the cactus. She still has Glibness on; she can talk herself into a role serving food at the dinner party, if she wants, instead of running things around behind the scenes like she'd arranged previously. 

Khemet arrives to the state dinner party a day in advance so that Aroden can help him and his boyfriend out with telepathy.

(You would think that'd be a person it'd be easier to get a cactus past, since she knows it's not detectable by Golarion magic unless you think to cast a divination on it, and rumor has it Leareth's sleeping with him, but when she brings fresh sheets for his guest suite his guards Detect Magic on them at the door, and that itself she can get past but it's indicative of more paranoia, so she does not try.)

"Are you feeling better?"

"Much better! I still feel a little bit slow and scattered, but Vanyel says he cannot tell by talking to me." Slight look of irritation. "Aroden can, but he is Aroden. Nayoki thinks it will pass." 

"Hopefully the Star-Eyed has learned a valuable lesson but Abadar was a bit pessimistic. Maybe the new interface will help with that too."

They head over toward the Work Room where Aroden is setting up.

"Are you still annoyed with Abadar about it?" Leareth says quietly. 

"I don't know. I - didn't expect a downside risk of you being brain damaged in some way we couldn't heal and I'm not happy about it but I don't think He expected it either and - it made sense for Him to want to make a play for that resource, even a risky play. And it's going to save us both a lot of headaches in the future."

"I think it was a reasonable gamble to make, yes, given the upside. And - if it is anyone's fault it is mine, for misjudging the likely outcomes, the gods have never used that particular style of attack on me but I was not entirely unaware it was possible, and - I had never put myself so conveniently close to a god's centre of power before. And, yes, it means we can much more fully trust Valdemar's government now, and Abadar actively has a hold there." Shiver. "I was very scared, though." 

They reach the Work Room. Aroden greets Khemet warmly, thanks him for visiting. Asks how everything is going in Osirion. 

Reasonably well! They are excited that now that all the fighting in Velgarth is done with there can be more mages available for work in Golarion. For example on the permanent Gate-terminus he wants.

Leareth reminds him that he's on the list but they take weeks of multiple mages' full-time efforts to build. They'll get there, though, probably especially if he keeps incentivizing Leareth to visit. 

That is the plan. 

Aroden explains the spell he's redesigned. He can easily do one that is basically exactly like Mind Blank except that it doesn't block projective Mindspeech, but that only gives Khemet the receptive end, since he doesn't himself have a projective form of telepathy. They can do that part separately for him though. Aroden could also do a more complicated version that would only allow Mindspeech with Leareth, but he doesn't have that yet, and either way random Thoughtsensers won't be able to read his mind, just talk to him. 

He would also like other Mindspeakers to be able to talk to him, especially Companions!

Then they can go with the simpler version of the spell!

Aroden has it prepared and can just cast it for now and then he and Leareth can test that it works, Aroden also prepared Telepathy for Khemet to see if that gives him the projective side. Though for Companions and such he can just reply out loud, so if he's looking to get it permanent, given the range difference it probably makes more sense to get permanent Telepathic Bond specifically with Leareth. 

A permanent telepathic bond with Leareth sounds really convenient. They can test it out with Telepathy now, though. 

He dispels his Mind Blank. Waits for Aroden to put it on.

:Can you hear me?:

:Yes!: And it seems like he can answer, his Mindspeech isn't bouncing off a wall like before. :Did that work?: 

:It did! Now try to murder me or - I don't know, I'm sure Mindspeech has some concerning use or other -: