The ship is waiting for her and Mhalir is relieved and glad to be back in her head. They're hovering for a bit to see if they can get good coverage on what that archway is for - 

- it turns out that it's for some sort of instantaneous-transport portal! In fact, it's obvious where the other end is to, a little north of the Tower, because both ends are lighting up clearly to the magic sensors, and with the video footage maximally zoomed in, they can make out boxes being loaded in the one and and appearing on the other side, seventy miles away. It stays open for about ten minutes. 

"I want it," she says, watching.

Mhalir is awed. <It would be so incredibly useful! What is that - it seems to serve the same function as Gate but magically it - oh - it also shows up to our ordinary sensors, a little! It looks like...>  

"Like a hyperspace jump," the ship's engineer finishes for him. 

" - that's incredible."

<It is! This must be - I think I remember hearing mentions of Urtho's Gate network... Amazing. No wonder they say he is the best mage in the world.> 

The show seems to be over, the spike on the magic sensors subsiding, so they move on to the planned stop over Predain. This time it's a training ground, one of the less busy ones, but still with enough traffic that the recording device will have something to pick up. 

She hands Mhalir off, turns into a bird, and flies out to drop her pebble. 

No one at the site reacts visibly to her presence or does anything to impede her departure, and Carissa is retrieved without further complication. 

Flop.

Okay. So we have a little bit of ability to hear what's going on. What's - the path from here to talking with Adept Kiyamvir -

<Hmm. First, I am torn between giving him as little information as possible, to keep him from guessing our full capabilities and make it less likely he could capture us if he wished to, versus telling him more information because it will start us off on a less hostile footing. What do you think?>

You could tell him - everything about you and nothing about Golarion. Or vice versa. Since both of those are - complete, and account for us having strange capabilities - I guess they don't account for you thinking you know this story, but that part is probably the hardest to explain...

<Yes. I am not sure that I could explain it believably at all, and certainly not within the word limit of a Sending. I suppose I could use a Sending to tell him where to pick up further explanations - can you use Comprehend Language to write them in the local language?>

No, only to read. Actually the highest bandwidth way to pass a message would probably be to kidnap one of his people, not a mage, and explain to them whatever it is we're explaining, and then drop them off safely. With a comms device.

<...That sounds extremely dangerous, at least if we are going to try for someone he considers trustworthy; it would be less risky to kidnap a randomly chosen farmer, but I am not sure if he would take a message from them as seriously.> 

Random soldier, if he's Dominating them all he doesn't need to trust them. The Sending thing is definitely safer at the point of contact, it just seems harder to make sure he doesn't overreact or something from there. 

<That makes sense. Hmm - I think we can pull off kidnapping a random soldier, but it will take some planning. We can try for a sentry at a minor facility that is unlikely to have mages on site, maybe a guard station on one of their non-Tantara borders, and - probably it makes the most sense to stun them and get them out on the shuttle very fast...>

I could shoot them and Dimension Door with them.

<Oh, that would probably work. And you could cast Invisibility to sneak up on them, if we drop you further out and then hover in the shuttle?>

Yes, though firing the Dracon beam's going to make the illusion snap, and I can't do Greater Invisibility until tomorrow.

<Hmm. I...think it is worth going ahead tonight, if we can find a guard facility with a small number of personnel where none of the sentries are in range of each other. I will have my staff review the sensor coverage for our options.> 

Carissa still has the nagging sense that something terrible is definitely going to happen to her and it's probably going to be Adept Kiyamvir Ma'ar's fault but fifth level is very tantalizing and she's the one who can teleport and Polymorph and Adept Kiyamvir Ma'ar doesn't seem like a wasteful person. And she's not even any use for his breeding program. 

All right. Let's do it.

They hang out on the ship for an hour while their annotated aerial footage map of Predain is pored over. The best location they can find is closer to the border with Tantara than Mhalir would have preferred, only about fifty miles north of it, but their estimate is that it doesn't have more than a couple dozen soldiers staffing it, and there's no record of magic readings except for the basic shielding on the main barracks. The region is forested, which should make it easier for Carissa to sneak up on a sentry who isn't in view of anyone else. 

It's late afternoon at this point; they have a couple more hours of daylight to work with. 

<Are you ready for this?> Mhalir asks her. <If you prefer to have Greater Invisibility for it, we could do it in the morning...> 

I think if we bop around doing things for long enough eventually someone smart - and the best mage in the world is going to be smart, and the you is going to be smart - will notice, and I don't know what they'll do, but - sooner is better. Dimension Door doesn't take long to cast.

<All right.> 

And then fly the shuttle back down. They have a medic on board in case local humans turn out to be more easily damaged by stun beams or something else goes wrong, and a few other staff, armed, in case something else they haven't thought of goes wrong. 

Carissa is kind of a single point of failure, though, as the only wizard. The other team is making more headway at recruiting for 'mercenaries' on the eastern coast, but they haven't gotten a voluntary mage yet. 

<You should be ready to abort and Dimension Door out of there if it seems anything is not going according to plan> Mhalir says to her. <I would rather lose this opportunity than have you end up captured.> 

Yep. And if it seems like anything went wrong, you should be careful when I come back, until you've gotten a look at me. Since they have mind control and we still don't know much about it.