<I don't think I noticed you doing anything - is it something I'll notice if I try to -> And he tries to walk and knocks the human over, shifting his weight wrong for the feet that don't move to catch him. Lands gracefully enough in a crouch on the ground. <Huh.>

She is giggling internally at this. (Practicing compulsions in her training group was generally hilarious, perhaps using humour to make up for the disturbing element of it.) 

:Can you do a Gate again?: Leareth prompts. :A mage-light?: 

Gate: no! Mage-light: yes!

Leareth tries a positive compulsion rather than a banned action, prompting the Yeerk to lift the mage-volunteer's arm, and then - 

:I am going to try something else: And, with great care, he places a compulsion somewhere between a positive command and a banned action; the Andalite-Yeerk has to let the mage use her Gifts. He can keep control of everything else. 

<That did something, I could feel it do something. Is it - can you make Yeerks relinquish someone?> He sounds awed.

:Apparently!: Leareth is visibly rather pleased with himself. :I could definitely compel you to leave her head, but that would be rather conspicuous: His expression dims. :Though it may be harder on a real Yeerk; I expect their minds are even more alien than Andalite minds. I would place a high priority on capturing some when we reach Earth, to test what I and my mages can do: 

<Well, since you can detect them it shouldn't be hard to grab and kill some.>

:Ideally take at least one alive. Nayoki is insistent that she needs to see how they show up to Mindhealing-Sight: 

He glances at Matirin. "Is there anything else we should test before stopping?" 

<I assume compulsions on the human do not affect the Yeerk?>

"The ideal test would have been to place one on her beforehand, but I will try it now." And Leareth, after checking with her again, does his best to slip in a compulsion preventing the mage from accessing her own Gifts, then releases the compulsion on the Andalite volunteer. 

The Andalite can indeed use her Gifts however she is compulsioned.

"Ah. I suppose at some point we should test if Mindhealing functions any differently, there are some reasons it might, but - not now." 

The Andalite will delightedly withdraw and demorph. He hates being a Yeerk so much. 

Leareth thanks him for being willing to help with this, he understands it's a lot to ask. He leaves his mage to excitedly debrief with the others, and goes to join the engineers. Who wants to come on a tour of the Void with him? 

He wants to!!

Perfect! Leareth sits down comfortably on the grass, and then extends a Mindspeech link to Cayaldwin, and tries out pulling him into the deeper mind-rapport needed for sense-sharing. 

It takes him a little while to catch the hang of it but eventually he can figure it out. 

(This makes it fairly apparent that he is mostly a pit of grief about his father's death, papered over with math).

Not acknowledging it seems awkward, but also Leareth has no idea what the cultural conventions are around bereavement and condolences, so he leaves it alone and just tries to be a very calm, stable point to hold the rapport. 

:Ready?: 

- and he takes a mental step in a direction that isn't any of the ordinary ones, an odd wrenching sideways twist, and launches them into the Void. 

The Void wouldn't look any particular way to normal senses, if someone had the misfortune to be there physically. (It also doesn't support life.)

To mage-senses, chaotic false-colours swirl all around them, almost reminiscent of the emissions around a black hole. Mage-energies, draining through the planes, finally coming to rest here. There's a feeling of falling forever into a bottomless well. No ground; no sky; nothing material at all, only the sucking emptiness at the end of all things.

This is not a bad match for the Andalite theory of what z-space is like, though for obvious reasons they have not actually been there.

Leareth navigates through at the speed of thought. The Void doesn't have many features, obviously, but it does, when one knows it very well, sort of have a landscape. Wherever the Andalites' world is, he's never ended up there by accident despite thousands of years of Gate-research, so it's presumably in another 'direction' he wouldn't have thought to look. 

Leareth's plan here is mostly just to explore, maybe hop in and out of other adjacent planes since that'll often bring them back to a different 'region' of the Void - does Cayaldwin want to see the Elemental Plane of Fire, or of Water? 

That sounds fascinating.

It's hard to follow the passage of time from the Void, but they can wander and explore for a while, Leareth not trying too hard to make sense of anything yet, just absorbing his surroundings. 

When he finally takes them back, it's past noon and he's so tired. The thing about projecting his mind to other planes is that it doesn't feel draining at the time, since he's not in his body, but it still is and it adds up. 

He is pretty staggered too, though he quickly starts pretending not to be. <Did you learn what you were hoping to?>

:I am not sure yet: Ow his head. Leareth switches to speaking out loud. "I am leaning toward confirming my sense that Gates and your hyperspace jumps work via a similar mechanism, and I will let my mind stew on the correspondences there for a while and see if tomorrow I have any brilliant insights for the navigation aspect. - I might take a nap first, and then if anyone else would like to go as well, I can take them."