"It works well if one can consistently pull it off. You do not seem as though it will present much trouble."

She nods. "I'm not used to spells like you have here, but - avoiding weird weapons is kinda a general guideline."

"Do you have any other tricks up your sleeve?"

She hums. "I've got a pretty extreme healing factor... I can also quickly but not instantly master anything related to fighting, war, or battles - I've mostly tested that on stuff from my home world, but it's held up to exotic weapons and tactics from other universes before. Things with a physical component are easier under that than technically offensive magic that's mostly a mental exercise. I've got super human but not insane speed, strength, and agility - I'm better in each than the peak an unmodified human could theoretically reach, but not by a ton. And I don't get exhausted from fighting, ever."

"And as of recently I can survive and stay conscious through most arbitrary injuries that leave my brain intact, I have an intuitive sense of what actions will hurt someone and whether that hurt would fall into a specific aesthetic category from my home world, and my mental capacity is larger than normal, mostly such that I can process more sensory information than a baseline human without getting mentally overwhelmed."

"The physical abilities seem a nice complement to my own skills. I prefer to fight at range, using magic to attack and control the field."

"We should work well together, then."

"That is the hope."

"Your sensory abilities. Are they... limited in scope?"

" - What do you mean by 'scope'?"

"Restricted to certain kinds of input. Like your skills at fighting."

"It centrally handles pain, but I don't get overwhelmed by my other senses either - though sensory input can still hurt."

"Mm. I am thinking that I need to find someone to read this Elder Scroll and if you are better at handling sense overloads... you may be able to read it without blinding yourself."

"Well, I'd be willing to give it a shot."

She holds the case out to Lace.

She opens it, removing the scroll and unfurling it.

Her gaze goes distant, face twisted in pain -

(The world is unfurling before her, fragments of eternity screaming into her mind - it hurts - it's actually nearly overwhelming - but she's been in plenty of pain before, even if not this chaotic swirling of everything - it's searing her soul, her mind, stretching her out along impossible thoughts - she sees herself, writhing in pain at the feet of someone cloaked in shadow and probability - a pale mouth clamps to her neck - sigils spin off into nothing, the world fragments and shudders - a heart beats red, enormous, alive, isolated, throbs with the pain of the world flowing into her - she's kneeling at the feet of pain, a hand stroking her hair as she sobs - a heart beats faster, seizes - but it's nothing like a heart she realizes why does she know that's what it is - the sky glows red with her blood - glass breaks as a serpent tightens its coils - blood drips up the hour - )

She would scream if her throat worked. Instead she whines.

(Dives into the nonsense, tries to parse it - )

(The blood of the progenitor is the blood of his slave - a clockwork world screams to a halt - a shell of myriad layered planes spins around this world clashing and a new one emerges - the light from without shines through the gaps - a madman laughing, don't you know the only difference between a thief and a prince is bandwidth - )

She tears her gaze from the scroll with a soft gasp.

Elana takes the scroll from her, carefully rolling it up without looking and sliding it back into the case.

She - really wants to have her hair petted right now - wants to kneel with her head in Elana's lap -

She presses a hand to her forehead.

"Well, I'm not blind."

"Are you in other respects hale?"

"Hm. My head hurts. But I don't think I'm insane or anything."

"That is good to hear. What did you see?"

She pauses to gather her thoughts, then summarizes as best she can - including the things she thought or felt were true and her own contradictory observations.

"That is- Hm. Interesting."

"I could make some guesses about what each part means... But I feel like I'm lacking significant chunks of the puzzle here."

"That is fairly typical of these readings. To those of us bound within Time's stream, the perspective in which the Elder Scrolls make the most sense is hindsight."

She nods. "Does having multiple Elder Scrolls help narrow down the truth, though?"

"It should, if only in the overlap of the cryptic references."