malduoni learns about some suspicious otherworldly visitors
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"Andalites Gated out," someone tells Mhalir back in Avernus.

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They can't extrapolate the coordinates from the last jump, Mhalir thinks they can once they've made the next jump but Hell-to-Hell and material-plane-to-Hell are different kinds of thing, and even then it's possible he's the only one on this ship who has the right maths intuitions to see the way to it, and everything is going so goddamned fast

"I am waiting for a Sending," he barks back. 

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And elsewhere:

"Coordinates?" Aroden barks to the nearest Andalite. 

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It takes them a while because the computers are not at all accustomed to doing jumps in this fashion. They read off a long string of numbers.

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"I'm going to sink a stinger into your shoulder so that I don't have to use a hand holding on," Nefreti says to him when she finishes the Forbiddance. "Also I only have one more of those so you need to make sure it doesn't get dispelled this time."

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"I will try my best. One moment." 

Sending normally takes a lot longer to cast but Aroden has a much less stupid variant on it, and prepares one to Carissa again. 

"Location," and coordinates - 

- and he turns his attention back to Nefreti and their surroundings, and in particular spreads all of his magic senses to their full extent, and tries to retrieve any inkling of what he sensed before Forbiddance went down the last time - 

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The problem is the ship's shields; presumably devils figured out how to get to right outside the ship and how to keep up while it tore across the sky at half a million miles a minute and how to get a spell through them, but his senses can't see out through the shields to infer how they did it. 

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How irritating.

All right, so the devils both kept up with the ship and got a spell through shields that presumably they couldn't see through either, what do his god-intuitions about magic think they might have been doing... 

Please tell the pilot to vary the ship's trajectory on a random bearing, he snaps out to Matirin, just in case that helps in any way whatsoever with keeping the demons in question from staying close enough long enough. 

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They receive the Sending. Mhalir doesn't need any prompting from Carissa, this time, he just barks the coordinates out to the engineer and waits, they absolutely should not stay here alone any longer. 

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Mhalir's ship jumps. 

The second layer of Hell is Dispater; its largest city is the enormous city of Dis, currently in utter disarray as its twenty million of inhabitants try to figure out whether and how to flee. It is less recognizably Hellish; there are forests, and quarries, and factories, and trains.

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The greatest market in the world is in Dis; it's called the Market of Breaths. Outsiders from the other Outer Planes come there, as do particularly bold adventurers, and particularly useful souls might be set to making magic artifacts for it. It's what she wanted, once. 

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Mhalir is not having emotions right now and so he's going to go on not having any emotions about that fact. Probably there will be emotions about it later. Later is fine. Later is not what current-Mhalir has to worry about. 

He orders the ship to start firing, without actually waiting for sensor confirmation that the Andalite ships are, but presumably they are. 

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The devils most likely used magic to anchor themselves to the ship, Aroden snaps to Matirin, and then some further magic to take down our magical precautions - can the ship vary how far out the shields go, very fast - 

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< - yes. What do they need to do.>

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We need to prevent anyone getting and staying close enough to cast a ranged Dispel Magic. About two thousand feet. If the shields can vary from immediately against the ship to that far out, in less than five seconds, it should kill anyone anchored to the ship before they can cast. 

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He conveys this. <That is very energy intensive but we can do it for - an hour, maybe.>

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All right. We will try to figure out something else. 

Aroden conveys this plan to Nefreti and asks if she has any ideas, though at this point they may at any moment be interrupted by the Mantis God bothering her again. 

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"He shouldn't be able to while Forbiddance is up. I wasn't sure if it could stop him but now I can see it and it can. If they can do sensors they can only do a shield flare when someone anchors on. It's impressive, really, that they managed to figure out how to do that so quickly..."

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"...Yes, impressive. They have sensors. Any idea what it would look like to them." 

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"Honey, I don't even know what things look like to you. I guess I could just tell them."

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"Probably a good idea, I will call Matirin over." He does that. 

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He can stand by, tail-swishing, for Nefreti to inform him when people manage to Teleport and tether themselves to the ship. 

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"- Can you also do it for Mhalir's ship, I am worried they will be vulnerable to this - where are they - Matirin, did they transmit a message...?" 

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<They sent coordinates and sent - their explanation of the altered hyperspace jump? We don't quite follow yet but the engineers sent some questions back ->

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