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.
"Hmm. Is their kind of invisibility something you can also do with sorcery? If so, I can check if they are still visible to our mage-sight, which can be used with scrying."
"I can see you," Leareth confirms. Both her life-force aura, not concealed at all, and the magical signature of the spell itself.
"Okay, so you'll be able to tell if anyone's there - they might also be inaudible and so on but won't have a reason to expect your specific weird senses."
Nod. "Even in this world, invisibility-illusions that do not leak any magic are very very difficult, it is possible but requires rare skill to cast."
"If you can provide us with transport to your world, and are willing to let me read your memory of the tree's location from your mind so I have it in enough fidelity to scry for it, then yes, I think so."
"A description does not give me enough information to aim my magic, when I have never been anywhere in your entire world. I suppose I could attempt it from a map of its location on the continent, plus a realistic drawing of your tree? I hear you are skilled at drawing."
"I understand. I still think I will be able to work from it, and Gate someone with Fetching to within range, but it will need to be me personally - I have much greater skill with Gates and other magic than anyone else in my organization."
"Of course." Leareth bows his head briefly, then looks at her again. "...How are you doing, other than that? Are you finding your stay here restful?"
"It's - okay. It would be more restful to have my tree and grow my own food, which is why I asked about it."
"That makes sense. We will certainly try very hard to get you that, as promptly as possible."
"Thanks."
She draws her tree.
It's a very big hawthorn-looking tree, with enough space for her entire little vertically-arranged apartment in the trunk, and prettily-arranged branches spreading above, leaves mostly green with some yellow and red and some flowers and fruits all at the same time, scattered around artfully. The leaves are the same shape as her wings. There's a garden plot around it. "I haven't been there for fifty years," she says when she presents the drawing. "It may have changed some."
Bundled with the drawing of the hawthorn is a map of a continent labeled Queenscontinent. It has the most detail around the tree's marked spot - rivers and mountains and canyons and deserts and steppes and lakes, marked out lines identifying not countries but seasons and times (the tree is in a forest labeled Autumn and in a band of the continent marked afternoon). She has identified where Thorn's territory is, though she clarifies he has several court sites and while they're all probably in this general region she can't pinpoint them. North of her tree, in a (Summer, dawn) intersection, is something called Queenscourt.
Leareth pores over it, memorizing the details. "I am curious about the place-names being seasons and times?"
"Those aren't the names of places, just features of them. They might not be their usual season or time when you go but it's the way to bet."
"- I am suddenly so much more confused about how time works in Fairyland than I was a moment ago! Is it not constant...?"
"Ah. That is less confusing, although still very odd. Fascinating." He looks at the drawing some more. "...All right, I think I could scry and Gate this. You can get to the other continent from here with a fairy gate?"
"Yeah. I'd been thinking way up in the air over the Valley Continent - it's more likely you'd run into someone at ground level - except you can't fly -"