promise and leareth
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"Maybe. Or cram a leaf off my dress down their throat. Would anything bad happen if I - they see by foresight, right, if I just plan to issue them both a general stop order unless their armies both surrender immediately -"

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"Hmm. What would the effect be of a general stop order, would that stop the armies as well or would they keep going -?" 

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"They would presumably keep going, but I can't die, so they'd be stopped indefinitely till I found something else to do with them, and might not prefer that even if their armies could continue to act. Hopefully they'd see it coming and have them surrender."

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"I am not sure how it would show up to Them but I suppose it is worth trying." 

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"Can they communicate a surrender to you?"

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"I very much hope They have no idea where I am, but I would notice a surrender, if I am scrying the area under attack– I should do that now, to find out if the armies are still there or coming after us here." 

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"Okay."

And she makes up her mind that if there isn't a clearly communicated and legitimate surrender in the next hour she will issue stop orders to both gods and go from there.

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Leareth digs out a crystal focus and scries the previous site. 

Nothing seems to be changing at first. Quite a lot of people - a variety of humans and other species in red-and-gold uniforms, that's the Ifteli army, and more humans in robes with long white hair who look Tayledras - are digging through the wreckage of what used to be his favourite secret base and library. Leareth is pretty ticked off about that. 

He moves his scrying higher. "- Damn. The rest of them are headed this way. Or - searching a variety of directions, but they seem to be able to tell when they are drawing closer to us, perhaps that appears in Foresight. I think it will take them more than an hour at the rate they are moving, but not much more. No sign of any surrender yet." 

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"I could tighten the time horizon?"

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"We can wait five or ten minutes and see? I am not sure how quickly They could actually arrange to communicate with the troops - probably They need to send new prophetic visions to the priests, I assume that is how They directed armies to do this in the first place." 

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"Okay."

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They wait. Leareth gets up and paces. 

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She sits. Maps bits of the room, with little five by five grids of weak fairylights, even though there's no way she'll have a useful amount done before she needs to cast something.

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Leareth watches through his scrying-artifact. When ten minutes have passed, he stops. "Nothing. Maybe They somehow think you are bluffing - I have no idea. You could try shortening the time interval now." 

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If they haven't surrendered by the time she does five more grids - or if she is interrupted - they're getting stopped.

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She has time to do three and a half more grids, and then Leareth makes a startled sound. "Promise? Something is happening, I am trying to figure out what. The ones on the move are stopping - seem to be having a dispute... I think possibly some are getting orders to surrender and the other half are very confused, but I am not sure yet if that is it, or which is which." 

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"...I can enforce it on just one of them if only one of them is cooperating."

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Leareth is still watching. "They are so confused - I almost feel bad for them..." He squints, narrows his eyes. "...I think the Tayledras are surrendering - the Star-Eyed's people - and the Ifteli army is not, the gryphons are moving toward us again." 

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"I'm going to give the original amount of time I had in mind, please make sure," she says, finishing the grid and making a new one.

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"...The full hour?" Sigh. "I will keep watching. They are still a very long way away and this argument temporarily slowed them down. And I can Gate us further if I must, unless one of the gods pulls out a new surprise, which would be entirely characteristic of Them." 

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"Just the next couple of grids." She finishes the fourth. Lights up the fifth.

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"The Tayledras are definitely standing down," Leareth says, when she's nearly done the fifth. "Iftel's army is - not." 

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She checks the last light.

Then she says, in a perfectly normal tone of voice, "Stop."

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Nothing observably happens. Leareth watches the gryphons keep flying, intermittently stopping for someone to Gate the ground troops further. The Tayledras who had been following them are still paused, looking kind of frozen. Back at the remains of his compound, the Ifteli troops are still digging through rubble and the Tayledras are backed off. 

Leareth conveys this. "- Can you tell if Sunspring is still alive?" he adds, suddenly. "I would attempt to scry for her, but scrying for people is difficult." 

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"I don't have a way to do that."

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