The spell fails.

"It seems you were correct. I could not read your memories."

Well. Resisting an archmage's attempt is substantially more impressive than resisting her mother's thought detection. More points in favor of a god doing it? Probably.

"In that case, do you have some other way to be convinced I'm not lying to you?"

"I can place you under a geas to tell the truth. Are you willing to have your mind altered like this?"

Right. Archmage. Still.

"As long as you take it off afterwards, yes." And if she doesn't, Tencednil will be less happy about it but it means she will have irritated an archmage in their sanctum and survived, which is probably a win.

"I will." Felandriel prepares another spell from her spellbook. It only takes a minute.

Lesser geas. "Respond truthfully and completely when conversing with me or conveying information to me."

Completely? This... may take a while. Alright.

"Completely? This... may take a while. Alright. —Why did I say that out loud. Because that's part of being complete, isn't it, if you don't understand what I'm thinking you don't have a complete view of things, and you're looking at me so I'm conveying information to you. Makes sense. ...and I'm also conveying information to you always, because you're going to be monitoring my ripples now, so I'm always responding truthfully and completely. Hmm. This is— strange, slightly terrifying, slightly exhilarating, worth it to be trusted here, wow that's a weird feeling, I don't know how the spell decided what should come put first. Where was I. I would ask for a moment to get my thoughts in order but that wouldn't work under this spell, because—"

She can't ask for a moment to get her thoughts in order because it would take her far longer to get her thoughts in order if they're moving at the speed of speech, which is slow. By the time she's finished that thought, she's only gotten through saying about half of it, though, so "—yes, that, alright I can think quickly. I was going to talk about the visions."

This is about what she expected.

"I will remove it once we're done, don't worry. You received information through visions?"

"Maybe. I think so. Maybe they were memories? I can sort of halfway cast second circle spells now and I couldn't before, so—" By the time she's said that much, she's finished that thought and moved on to the next. "On the 29th, Desnus 29th, I suddenly remembered three different futures. Just put this into words, don't try to interpret, the archmage is better at that. I said that out loud, of course I did— anyway. The first was about a week and a half, and in it I didn't know anything strange. I went down into the sewers, the ring stuff, I saw the Breaching Festival the normal way, the king died on the fifth of Sarenith. The papers said Glarataxus killed him while he was out on a balcony, yes I can see that seems implausible to both of you, I didn't know any better. Then there was a disease going around in Old Korvosa, I went to visit Mika, and an angry otyugh jumped out of the sewers and killed me while I was trying to distract it, no don't bother trying to rephrase that there's no point—

"Anyway, after that I remember it being the 29th again, and I thought that was all a vision so I was probably supposed to deal with some of the things somehow. I still did the ring thing and prepard for zombies better, then I bet on the Breaching Festival results as a fake proxy" (she does not explain what she means by this) "and had the Bank send a letter to King Eodred from the source saying he would die within the week because maybe his death was the problem, it was trustworthy because the Bank would agree the source knew the outcome of the Breaching. The next day he didn't meet with the Arkona family, the day after that someone broke in to the Bank and stole the paperwork, do I actually know that — yes I do now, they got the letters, but I didn't at the time, it was just obvious — anyway I went to the bank for protection because they were looking for the thief, they believed me enough to try, and then just before I stepped inside of the Bank I was possessed, no I don't know that, I was taken over and used to cast a many-circle spell to transport myself into a — it must have been a Bag of Holding, right? Anyway, giving information to the kidnappers could only hurt, especially if Ulon gave the vision and wanted to keep it secret, so I killed myself, that was way easier to say than I expected—

"Next memories, it was the 29th again and this time I was more careful, I warned the king with Prestidigitated letters for the bank to copy so the materials wouldn't give me away and I didn't associate the account with me at all. I also warned him about the otyugh and the bank about the break-in. The break-in still happened, and still killed two priests, but nobody chased me down. The guard did ask for assistance investigating the sewers, so I went with them, we found the Urgathoan cult and attacked it, that's how I knew about the plague and the cure and all that. Then there was an announcement to everyone in Korvosa and under it that the Urgathoans killed the king, but it was under a Control Weather and Glarataxus's attack was also under a Control Weather, and there were no signs of another Urgathoan and there was clearly a conspiracy to kill King Eodred because it hunted me down for warning him, so I guessed that was them as well. He died and Ileosa, Queen Ileosa, took the throne, and I guessed whoever took it was probably in on the conspiracy but I wasn't sure when it was just her, but there was no clear competitor and she managed it both times so it was almost certainly her. Then I helped the guard and things like that for the rest of Sarenith, there was a cure for the disease but it was made slowly, I thought it might be to help Queen Ileosa in public but it was slow if they wanted that, but they were harvesting blood to make it. So I went to the alchemists who made it, they said they really did need to harvest the blood, so I thought maybe that wasn't just a ploy and they really didn't have a cure at first? Of course the cult was because of the conspiracy, it's too conveniently timed otherwise, but they should have planned around it. But then at the end of Sarenith there was another Control Weather and when I woke up in the morning everyone was dead and their blood was sucked out of their bodies, so probably the blood was for some blood sacrifice ritual. Oh and the Queen hired Togomor as a wizard, and he made no sense to hire, he wasn't good with the public or anything, and I know there was a strong wizard in on the conspiracy, so I'm pretty sure it must have been him. I don't know who did the blood sacrifice ritual or what it was actually for, but they definitely did it."

She breathes in for a moment. "And that's the visions, I think? There's probably something I missed but you can tell me what you're interested in, I can see that there's something you want to hear but I don't know what it is. Yes, it's obvious, just how you hold yourself, like that, exactly."

Felandriel now has additional questions. Quite a few of them.

"You spontaneously gained the ability to cast second circle spells? Did you have this ability in the visions?" She pauses. "To be clear, you appear to me as a first circle sorcerer."

"Oh right that. I'm a first circle sorcerer, but I can do metamagic that puts a second hole in the spell form? It's not a real second circle spell, but I can pull in shadows nearby to make my spells a little stronger, and it definitely looks like they should be second circle after I do the redesign. Here I can show you— no, that would be rude, yes it would be more complete but you didn't mean me to cast spells around you unannounced, can I please show you what it looks like."

"Go ahead."

"I'll do the one I don't know the name for, maybe you'll have an idea." She concentrates, shapes the spell carefully, and— Silent Image, pulling in any shadows around her in case that helps Morgethai see what she's doing, showing the basic spell structure of Moon's Reflection. The shadows don't actually help much, because there aren't many here, but it still takes on the relevant spell form.

"This is what one of my spells looks like normally to me, it makes a metal object glow like it's reflecting the moonlight and then I can break it off to shine that all in someone's face and blind them. And then I can cast it like this as well." She twists her Silent Image, showing what the altered version looks like.

"Like this it's a little more powerful, I think? It pulls on darkness and shadows nearby to power it, but I've never actually used it on someone. I did the same thing to this Silent Image, but there's not enough darkness around here to show you the effect, it would just make the image a bit larger. It's definitely a second circle, though, and I can only do it four or five — no, five, I've done it five before and I don't know that it's random, five times a day total between all my spells, it feels like a different pool than my normal spells. And then I have the normal castings, which I can do about eight times a day, and first circle sorcerers aren't supposed to have thirteen first circle spells a day, so I think I just have halfway second circle casting and no actual second circle spells. But maybe I'm wrong."

"That spell is dazzling blade. It's a rather obscure first circle illusion. I believe you are a second circle sorcerer with no second circle spells known, although I've never encountered this before. But you did not answer my question. Did you spontaneously gain power or did you experience a circling progression inside the visions or both? From your explanation it is unclear to me how your power increased from Desnus 28th to 29th."

"Oh! In the visions I remember gaining new spells and the new circle at a sort of normal rate, they happened when I just fought a pack of wild dogs and when we got through the Urgathoans and things like that. I just think they might not be visions because when I came back to the 29th I could still use them, so if they were visions I actually just suddenly gained power with them. On the 28th I didn't know any first circle spells besides Color Spray, and I could only cast it six times, so knowing the new ones was definitely new, but the visions taught me things so I thought maybe they could also teach me spells if they were real. But I don't think that would get me a new circle, so because I have the second circle spell pool I'm not sure whether they're visions or something else."

Felandriel is silent for some time.

"I don't know how prophecy worked. I was alive back then, of course, but prophecy is a capability of the gods they gave small glimpses of to their servants. But... hmm... suppose hypothetically one wanted to create prophecy without its prior existence. And let's suppose one is a god of vast capability. One way prophecy might be implemented is by creating a parallel plane of existence, perfectly identical to the Material plane and containing perfect copies of all its inhabitants, and then accelerating time within this plane to a very fast speed, say ten times as fast as time on the real Material. Thus, for every day passing in the real Material plane, ten days would pass in this alternate Material plane, and one could predict the future by witnessing it occur. We know that prophetic visions did not always come true. Gods have been wrong before. So prophecy was not perfectly accurate. Thus, under this framework, the gods might need more fake planes of existence than real planes of existence to maintain accuracy against whatever is introducing uncertainty. Assuming this is true, each creature in any given plane would necessarily gain circles as normal, but if such a creature somehow moved between realities they might appear to gain circles spontaneously. Perhaps more disturbingly, given there are more fake planes of existence than real ones, the probability that we are in a fake plane is higher than the probability we are in a real one. If this is true, which it almost certainly is not, because a demon lord would've told someone by now. I am not sure if the gods can create perfect duplicates of most creatures but I am certain they cannot create duplicates of demigods. If they could there would be far more than nine archdevils."

"I don't know if any of my visions contained actual demigods? I didn't see any demigods, or any gods doing anything besides the automatic things like granting spells. Probably gods can't duplicate other gods but I guess you would need to see two gods to know, and probably two who wouldn't work together or they could just be collaborating to make prophecy for themselves. And I definitely haven't seen that. I... don't see any obvious ways to change that, poking a god seems like a terrible idea and I wouldn't know how to anyway, unless Norgorber really dislikes me saying he has prophecy I guess. —Oh, I tried to attribute the blackmail letters to Norgorber as the blackmail face betraying his other faces by exposing that he had prophecy, I don't know if it worked at all. Or if Norgorber does that. Or if anyone would know if he doesn't."

"Your visions would not need to contain demigods explicitly for duplicating them to be required because interplanar travel exists and many extraplanar beings take orders from demigods. Communes happen regularly enough that you would also need to duplicate at least the responses of the gods to commune, which I expect to be impossible for chaotic gods as they sometimes answer randomly. This theory is very unlikely to be true because it is too complicated and requires the gods have a hitherto unknown level of coordination. Prophecy is currently broken on Golarion anyway, so even if this was true elsewhere it would not be true here. I have not known Norgorber's faces to be anything more than a construction of his mortal cults. As far as I am aware, he is one god."

"That probably didn't work then. Oh well. Do you need to duplicate the responses perfectly? I guess if something important depends on what the response is you wouldn't be able to check that, and probably someone does check things like that. Still, I don't think I would know if that were happening, and even if you don't actually have the demigods and gods right, you could probably get some information? But it would fall off quickly, and a month is way too long, of course it is I'm being silly, where were you going with this?"

"There are many remaining possibilities for what could be going on. The simplest one is that either or both of us are within a very complicated illusion and none of this is real. While I cannot rule this out, it is not a useful theory. If it were true, knowing it was true would not help us. A god could have retained prophecy secretly, hiding it from the other gods, as your lie about Norgorber claims. This is unlikely because I cannot imagine how this particular set of events serves the interests of any god who could afford to send such detailed visions to the Material plane. However, most explanations other than the one about parallel realities we previously discarded suffer this penalty. You may have travelled backward through time via some unknown mechanism. I know of no real instances of backward time travel but there are legends and tall tales of such things."

"I thought about the realistic illusion but I decided it wasn't worth worrying about, because if anyone could do that to a first circle sorcerer they could just do whatever they wanted to do directly instead. I guess you aren't a first circle sorcerer, so maybe you should worry about it more, you know more than I do so — anyway. Maybe I should look at time travel legends? And you should probably assume my memories are just tampered with, I haven't actually predicted the future from your perspective at all and overwriting the memory of a first circle sorcerer for unclear reasons is probably easier than actual time travel, I only don't think that's happening myself because I've seen the relevant things happening, so at first it had to be actual prophecy, and it would make no sense to overwrite my memories only at this point. Probably. If I got another set of visions like this I would have to be sure not to trust it more because of the previous set, but without that I don't know why it would benefit anyone to overwrite only my memories up to this point, so it's probably not happening."

"I was assuming someone had not simply tampered with your memories because someone did give me three real wish diamonds and a large sum of money and you do have the code to redeem the wishes. Of course, the fact that I cannot read your memories does increase the chance they were tampered with."

She pauses for a moment. "Please remove all of your clothing and equipment and stand still."

"That's true, I guess that's pretty much as convincing as the visions coming true."

She takes off her clothing, sets aside the crossbow (she probably didn't need it coming across town, but it's habit), focus pouch, and sickle, and stands still.

Gallipsiwhoop flies a few dozen feet into the air.