She appears above a bit of frozen wasteland. She falls, conscious but without making a peep, to the ground, and breaks a few more bones.
She lies there.
She appears above a bit of frozen wasteland. She falls, conscious but without making a peep, to the ground, and breaks a few more bones.
She lies there.
She can scoot a little closer to his feet and put up a HOLD sign but mostly she's waiting on Nayoki at this point and healing him whenever he gets hurt.
:Done: Nayoki sends the instant she has the last of the set-command out - it wasn't a very hard one, the compulsion let her have that much leeway, though it forced her to cast the one on Leareth at maximum strength and getting it off him is going to be a bitch.
She starts trying to free herself from the sled. :Should I try to get us out of here:
"HOLD," Promise hollers at the top of her lungs. She starts trying to get names out of the kyree since they're closest.
And now no one is trying to attack Leareth anymore. The few people whose names she doesn't have quite yet are still trying to get in closer; the not-great mage is attempting to fling fireballs but he has bad aim.
The kyree does know all of the missing names and provides them within thirty seconds.
Nayoki cuts herself free of the sledge-litter with blades of mage-energy, and sprints over, dropping to her knees at Leareth's side. Carefully without touching Leareth. "Is he all right -" Well, obviously not, he is very thoroughly set-commanded not to do anything, she can see it like a nail hammered through his mind.
Nayoki raises a shield around them just in case. She's shaking. "I am so so sorry - they must have taken me when I was unconscious, I woke up a little while ago and - I tried to fight it..." Why is she almost crying, it's a stupid time for it. "Do you have everyone now. I need to - fix Leareth - it will take much longer than yours."
"What? Why - how?" Nayoki reaches for Leareth's mind, and then makes herself pause and take a deep breath, she should really be calmer than this before she goes digging.
Leareth is now shivering hard, the cold from the frozen ground soaking through his coat. He's also kind of having a panic attack. Very confusedly. He doesn't understand, why can't he move, what's happening...
"I have their gods' names. That may have been what spooked them to begin with, I read Vkandis's in a book and derived the Star-Eyed's later when it was clear she'd sent people too. I tried to make a - threatening Foresight footprint - and it worked on her but not on him."
This revelation does not, exactly, help Nayoki feel any calmer. "...That is absolutely terrifying. Do - we think that is what happened, why they sent armies after us..." She shakes herself a little. "I - gods - is it safe to leave them here. I think we should bring Leareth elsewhere." Nayoki can tell that he's very panicky, but she's not a Projective Empath and can't do anything about it.
"They won't be very comfortable but they can breathe and so on. The gryphons have contingency orders to go home in a few candlemarks, I haven't done that with anyone else yet."
Nod. "We can come back and - deal with them, figure out what to do. Just, Leareth is very very scared and I think he might be less scared in a familiar place. Where were you before, is it safe...?"
"I will Gate us to the nearest safe bunker I have a Gate-terminus at. Leareth has many more than I do."
She squeezes Leareth hand briefly - he doesn't respond to it at all - and then gets up, looks around for a moment. "Promise, is it safe for me to go steal those spears from the gryphons and ratha that have them? I need to make a doorway out of something to do a Gate, I cannot do it without one the way Leareth does." At least not reliably, and she's so stressed right now, she can barely focus.
Nayoki heads over and grabs some spears from motionless unresisting gryphons, and stabs two into the ground doorway-width apart, then takes some rope from a different soldier and uses it to lash a third spear across the top. The makeshift door wobbles but stays put.
Nayoki casts a Gate to the nearest bunker she's aware of that's definitely not findable from the air and thus safe from any new-arriving troops. It's about seventy miles away in the mountains. The Gate snaps up, opening onto a different low-ceilinged, dimly-lit room, shortly later lit by a mage-light.
Nayoki bends to lift Leareth under the arms, grunting with the effort.
While Nayoki is working on that Promise tells everybody that they may sit down and delivers the contingency order about going home if nothing interrupts in the next four candlemarks and tells them that if their lives are in danger from the elements or other definitely-not-Promise-or-Promise's-allies sources they may take minimal steps to protect themselves with no extraneous actions or consequences permitted.
She follows Nayoki through the gate.
Nayoki, very quiet and subdued, lays Leareth down on the stone floor and then finds a spare bedroll on a shelf and gets him rolled onto it and covered up with a blanket.
Leareth is still shivering uncontrollably from lying on the frozen ground for a while, and still panicking, and vaguely aware he seems to be somewhere else but mostly unable to have directed thoughts about it.
Nayoki casts a gentle heat-spell, sighs, and squeezes his hand again. :Leareth, I am going to undo the set-command now. Do you want to be unconscious while that is happening?:
Leareth can only half-parse the question, but nonononono he doesn't want to be unconscious at all, that's pretty much the only thing that could be worse than whatever in all hells is going on right now.
He's not answering out loud but his shield-talismans are all broken and Nayoki can pick up enough of his reaction to get the gist. :All right. Try to stay calm: She gets started.