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When Vanyel is ready for the mad science tour, he shows him the monkeys. "They're monkeys," she feels it necessary to clarify. "I know they look very human at this point, because the whole point of them is that I'm going to move into one if I ever die, but they're not people, and I have forbidden the staff to name them. I could move into one now if I had to but I'd like to get one actually looking like me in particular first, and I want to stick more Gifts into them, I got Fetching out of some Changesquirrels but further work is needed." She shows him the mice, too. "Do you suppose Jisa'd like a winged mouse? What's her favorite color?" She shows him all her microbiology eggs. "That's a flu sample from the recent plague! I remembered to take one. Those there are other flus. The white eggs have more-alive microbes and the brown eggs have less-alive kinds - there's a cold one of the staff mages had a few months ago, there's food poisoning, there's the most common kind from healthy intestines - you could get your Sight this fine, you know, I don't do heavy Healing-Gift use apart from Sight for this work."
"It's... a little weird that the test mouse died in a freak accident," she remarks. "They don't fight that often when I don't cage the males together, so I don't. It could be a coincidence but if it's a hint it's a hint that this place isn't wholly out of reach and I might need my monkey."
"Hmm." Leareth seems unhappy at the prospect. "This place should be beyond the reach of coincidence-nudging by any gods, that is why I selected it."
:We went and talked to Shadowgod: Amshalan points out. :Could mean They had some sort of connection here, at least enough to do a little nudge:
"That is true. Though Vanyel and I have not been having it lately, probably because we see each other frequently and so there is never really new information to share with each other."
"But you did have it when you were here and he wasn't, though I suppose you could posit all the intervention was on his end."
Leareth nods slowly. "It might also only have taken one intervention, to link the dreams up in the first place, the timing of the dream each time need not necessarily be picked by a god. In which case it could have happened when I was elsewhere. You are right, though, this is at least weak evidence that some interventions are still possible here."
"I was expecting the mouse to die sometime in the next month or two of old age."
"In which case we might have wanted to move on the Heartstone before the system had been tested?" He frowns. "For the second trial, we could sacrifice the mouse in question to medical testing, or something, rather than waiting for its natural death and possibly delaying operations as a result."
"Yeah, can do, I guess I want to know how bad it'd be if we had a ventilation failure with the food poisoning."
They can attach another old mouse to another young mouse and use it as a mine canary of sorts.
The old mouse doesn't immediately keel over and die when placed in the ventilation route, though it certainly seems distressed about the smell. It can stay there for a while and be monitored, if Belrun wants.
Yup, she will keep an eye on it, may as well get as much information as possible out of this.
The mouse does become progressively more bothered over the course of the afternoon, eventually wheezing a bit and getting listless, and then starts suffering some digestive complaints, probably as a result of eating food that's been in the path of whatever is being ventilated out of the tanks. It's not dead yet by evening but it does look very peaky.
Honestly the fact that it doesn't die on day one, while mouse-sized and directly in the path of the gas, is good enough for her: they will notice by the smell before anyone's in danger if there's a ventilation issue that could hurt somebody. She tells Leareth, puts it out of its misery, and goes and has a look right then at the reincarnation process.
The newly-young reincarnated mouse also seems kind of disoriented and easily startled, but maybe a bit less randomly-spastic. It manages to sniff at her when she comes to collect it, and then, maybe recognizing her smell, doesn't resist being picked up and looked at.
She looks it over, takes notes, gives it overnight to calm down before putting it at the obstacle course and setting a strawberry at the far end.
The mouse is a lot calmer and ready to go in the morning, and it totally does remember the obstacle course! Almost perfectly, with just a few hesitancies.
Leareth comes down and checks on her progress. "Better success than the last run?"
"Yup! It recognized me and had to pause to collect its thoughts a couple times but went straight through the whole obstacle course."
"Wonderful." He hugs her. "I am so glad. ...Also somewhat jealous. That would be a reason to switch mine in addition to the murder part, although - all considered I would like to wait until after we have dealt with the Heartstone and are on verifiably good terms with the Shadowgod."
"Well, I do feel fairly ready to prepare yours, though of course we will hopefully not need it. What do you think? I suppose you still need to give one of the winged monkeys Gifts for it."