Carissa turns solid twenty feet above the ground and catches herself with Feather Fall -

The Dracon beams fire on the man suddenly appearing on the other side of the wall. 

Malduoni is a ninth-circle wizard and this does not work at all. 

He allows the Feather Fall, since he doesn't actually want Carissa to break her neck, but he does start casting another Lesser Geas for her to stop trying to run away and obey him. 

This time she's not cowering in a demiplane with all her fancy items disabled and she focuses her mind and throws it off and feels an astonishing burst of pride even though her extremely fancy cloak of resistance was definitely doing some of the work. She considers whether to go invisible and concludes that this asshole ninth circle wizard won't even be inconvenienced but her people might be impeded in rescuing her.

She casts Raven's Flight, and bolts for the shuttle in the form of a tiny black bird, even though probably he's just going to dispel it again and presumably at some point she will figure out what gets him to actually be angry.

Malduoni is operating mostly on instinct, at this point, casting Feather Fall himself as his eyes follow her trajectory - 

- and the shuttle is obviously very shielded or something, by technology rather than magic, and the minds inside are blocked from Detect Thoughts, but Malduoni has a number of permanent spells for various magical senses, and there's something there. 

He casts a second Quickened Dimension Door to what seems like roughly the centre of it, and his reflexes have him ready to transition instantly to casting Mass Hold Person as soon as he's in. 

That seems...not great...but there's nothing she can do about it. She goes invisible now because while the one guy can probably see through it his guards probably can't. Drifts groundward. Casts Alter Self to look local once she doesn't want to be invisible anymore. 

Runs.

Nobody follows her, because Malduoni's building security are confused by the very fast fight and can't find her, and Malduoni himself is distracted, looking around at four humans successfully restrained on the shuttle floor with Hold Person and trying to figure out which one of them is Mhalir - well, technically Mhalir's host with Mhalir inside. He can't read their minds because they're all wearing goddamned lead helmets or something. 

- not that one, he's wearing Golarion-style clothing and a headband. Two of the others had weapons in their hands and were firing on him, again without much effect, until he took them down. 

He rips off the fourth one's helmet. 

Mhalir is SCAREDSCAREDSCARED and so confused and also his host hit her head when they fell and it's making him dizzy too. 

Is the host all right, what is she thinking. 

Much more impaired by getting her head hit than Mhalir. It wasn't a knock that would even make an adventurer flinch but this person is basically the equivalent of a random commoner.

He'll get her some healing as soon as he figures out how to safely land this thing. For now it seems to be hovering fine rather than crashing, at least.

First things first. Lesser Geas on Mhalir, who is not a wizard with a dozen fancy magic items, to stay put and obey his orders and answer his questions, this should just work. 

And then he prepares a Sending to Nefreti. "Carissa got away but I have Mhalir. Advice?" 

"I think the fastest way to solve all your problems is to put him in your head," she replies immediately.

Aroden does not answer 'have you lost your mind' even though this is very much what he's thinking.

"I will not. Could bring him to Andalites? Might be messy." 

"No, no, don't do that, why would you do that. Just talk to him!"

Responding to that does not seem worth another fourth-level spell slot. 

He asks Mhalir how to land the shuttle, but Mhalir seems too panicked and disoriented from his host's concussion to think the answer clearly, so he pulls the helmet off another of the enslaved humans and asks the question again. A geas doesn't prove necessary, reading their mind is plenty, and the controls are designed for humans to operate and aren't that complicated for someone who regularly does immensely complicated magic research by intuition in his head. 

Malduoni lands the shuttle outside his office building in the centre of the city. Hold Person is going to wear off soonish. He casts Sleep, which is enough to take out the three regular humans and their Yeerks but not the wizard. He peers at him, considering. No, probably he'll throw off an attempt at a Lesser Geas, and regular Geas takes too long. 

He doesn't want to disappear off to his demiplane himself without talking to Parmida, but he can Plane Shift the wizard there without going along himself, and then figure out how to get the door open - he can't figure out how to un-invisible it - and yell telepathically to Parmida that he needs help out here. 

Parmida comes on over. Wow. Is that - an alien spaceship?

One assumes. I have Mhalir and two of his personnel plus hosts. Sent a wizard with Yeerk to the demiplane. Carissa got away. Nefreti said I should put him in my head and when I politely did not tell her she was crazy and just said no, she said to talk to him rather than take him to the Andalites at the pharaoh's palace. 

The 'help???' at the end is implicit. 

I have no idea how to conduct interrogations, dear. Unless you mean you are stuck on - basic practical elements of the situation? You could polymorph them human if you don't want to scare the hosts or make them keep hosting.

That is a good idea, thank you. I need healing for Mhalir's host and perhaps the others, but I could leave the humans with you and you can sort that out? Actually, first I need to go collect some scrolls of Polymorph Any Object from my office, I do not exactly prepare it routinely. Can you watch them? They should stay asleep for a while. 

I can watch them. 

Malduoni is in a hurry. He burns another Dimension Door to reach his office rather than walk in. 

Carissa, now in the form of a paunchy middle-aged Garundi man, runs, stuffing her magic items in her bag as she does. 

This is stupid. The powerful wizard might have more important priorities than her at the moment, but as soon as he wants her he can scry her and Teleport to her and take her prisoner again. Without Mhalir, without the spaceship, she doesn't stand a chance. 

She could try to contact the bigger ship in orbit. But she's not sure she trusts the Yeerks other than Mhalir either. They'll stick one in her head, obviously - briefly allowing her to work without one was obviously Mhalir's personal call, and everyone's going to be concluding he wasn't paranoid enough - also the powerful wizard might easily be able to reach the spaceship too. Gate could probably do it, once he can mindread Mhalir for all the details he needs. 

She could - what? 

It might be there is nothing she can do and she should in fact return to the palace and surrender. She - does not want to do that until she has at least given all of her options real consideration. 

She has a scroll of Teleport. But he, too, can Teleport, at a range of more than twice hers, and 900 miles from Azir on the far western coast of Rahadoum doesn't get you many places. It gets you - Cheliax, she could teleport anywhere in Cheliax. Or anywhere in the desert of northern Garund. Or Nidal. 

She doesn't want to go back to Cheliax. In one sense it is insane to prefer being taken into custody again by the mysterious powerful wizard to returning to her own people with a verifiable story about how she was kidnapped and then kidnapped again and then escaped and returned to them. On the other hand - no one has tortured her, since she left. People keep not killing people they have no reason to leave alive. Of course, it keeps not working out very well for them, but -

- Good might be as stupid and confusing as she thought but it seems to be more complicated than just a selfish system for getting a nice afterlife. And she...wants a nice afterlife. Probably eventually it'll be eaten by Asmodeus but - the universe is, apparently, very big, and it seems a bit less inevitable than it did. 

It's just too bad that whether she'll ever see any of it is now entirely in the hands of -

- no. 

She doesn't want to go back to Cheliax and turn herself in. But Cheliax has thriving rich cities full of wizards, just like other places, and she knows how it works, she can navigate it safely, and she can buy another scroll of Teleport there. 

She fixes Egorian in her mind, the glorious capital city of House Thrune, the seat of Hell's power on Golarion.

She pulls out her headband, and her scroll, and reads from it.

She Teleports. 

It is worse than she remembered it. Which is a weird way to feel. It's not like the cities she's seen since are richer - they're mostly poorer - they're mostly dirtier - lots of them have beggars in the streets -

- you don't need 25 intelligence to figure out why Cheliax doesn't have beggars in the streets. 

She slouches into a magic shop. "Scroll of Teleport?"

          "Down the street."

That one, then. "Scroll of Teleport?"

          He narrows his eyes at her. Mid-level adventurer. Lawful evil. Garundi-looking. There'd be more questions if she was Chelish and wanted it. Can't have people smuggling themselves out. "Fifteen hundred."

That's twice what it is in Absalom. She tells him so. Pays it. 

She walks out of the store and fixes Vigil in her mind, instead. Mhalir got her pictures of everywhere. The whole world. Because why not. She reads off the scroll right there in the street, because she doesn't want to delay. 

And there it is, a city with layers of walls on a mountain, reminiscent somehow of something she's never seen before. The knights at the gate detect evil, presumably, and step in synchrony into her path. "Who're you here to see?"

"Uh," Carissa says. "I'm - here to ask about an atonement and request sanctuary and - I'm a weapons enchanter but I want to do ones you use for - the Worldwound, not for whatever you do in Cheliax - is that okay?"

Malduoni retrieves his scrolls, plus a scroll of Plane Shift because it was in the drawer over and he might need that spell slot later, based on how today is going.

He asks Mhalir, his voice very calm and courteous, to leave his host. 

Mhalir wakes to hearing an order and finding himself doing it. He probably would have anyway. His host isn't that functional right now and he's in the hands of a ninth circle wizard and - do they have Carissa - he didn't see... 

Mhalir's other personnel aren't geased, but the obey the perfectly mundane request when woken for it. They don't have a lot of options. 

He casts Polymorph Any Object three times from the scrolls and turns the tiny gooey-looking slugs into humans. They look the same as their hosts, just for simplicity. 

Take care of them, he asks Parmida, meeting her eyes for a moment but not touching her, and then he places the three polymorphed Yeerks' hands together, and Plane Shifts them to join the wizard. 

He attempts Detect Thoughts on the wizard to gauge how upset he is about presumably still having a Yeerk in his head.