:- Leareth, you figure that's the same thing as the Abyssal Plane?:

:Could be. I - can scarcely imagine what kind of event might tear a permanent opening between separate planes like that, though. Ask her if this is - known to be easier or more common in her world: 

:How did the Worldwound get torn open? Are there any other interplanar, er, openings, like that?:

:There was a fight between gods. Asmodeus won but the Worldwound got torn open in the process. I think there's a much smaller one in Garund, to Abaddon, Cheliax has offered to go close it but the local government has been refusing so far.:

Lacie shudders slightly. :How - often, do gods in your world have wars on a scale like that: 

:I can't think of another example in recorded history. It was very awful. I have seen estimates that something like fifteen percent of the population of the world died. - not mostly of the Worldwound, there was also two weeks of violent storms and a storm surge that basically destroyed the entire harvest that year, everywhere north of the equator, and there were earthquakes that swallowed cities.:

:...That's awful:

Lacie can't think of further questions, mostly because she's utterly horrified. 

:I think we ought call it off now: Leareth instructs her. :Tell her we - need some time to consider things. ...Oh, and ask what magic she can do right now: 

:I...think...that's all our most urgent questions about your world: Lacie says, shakily. :Er, you said you're a wizard - what sorts of magic can you do, here, when you're not in your own world: 

She wonders what these peoples' deal is. Probably the location would not have been chosen if they were going to help her but that could be 'won't want to' or 'won't be able to'. Probably Nefreti at least thought this would be better for Carissa than being married or petrified -

- Nefreti would understand, she thinks, a bit absurdly, an Osirian woman, unmarried, at whatever cost she must have pulled that off - they marry them at eighteen, nineteen, she would've needed to be sure already she could support herself -

- or maybe it served Nefreti in some way that had nothing to do with Carissa and she should stop being pathetic and assuming people were doing her personal favors when she has absolutely no reason to think that.

:I could test whether I can do magic here if you untie me.: The only thing she could do without that is summon her spellbook but she doesn't want to summon it here if she's going to be unable to use magic to put it back.

:...Leareth?:

Leareth grits his teeth slightly. Forces himself to relax. 

:This seems important to know, actually. Please untie her. Have Allentara watch: (Allentara is the mage summoned to test Sevar's Gifts.) 

...It's important to know, and so far Sevar does not seem to feel that she's in a position where trying to fight her way out will help, or work - she's right about that, almost certainly - and, at worst, he can afford to lose everyone in the room and if the shields don't hold he should still have a second's warning to Gate himself elsewhere. 

:...Yes, of course:

Lacie glances at the Healer and the mage standing by, then unties her.

She tries dancing lights.

It works.

She feels - like she can breathe, again. 

She wants to read their minds. Probably a bad idea right now. But they're obviously consulting someone invisible or something and she wants to know what's going on, she wants to understand them, she wants to -

- there's no afterlife here, she's going to have to be really careful if she wants anything she cares about to be real....

:It looks like my magic works normally here: she says. :I mostly prepared translation spells, the day I was kidnapped, I could cast one of those to give you my language, if you'd like it. It won't be permanent but it does aid in learning the language.:

Lacie relays all of that to Leareth in real time. 

:Translation magic?: she says, impressed. :We - don't have that, I'm not sure how you'd do it even in principle given what we know about magic here. Any chance you know how it works?: 

(And Leareth is thinking, absorbing it, noting that - she's very clever, she's very strategic, he's impressed - and she's also very dangerous, clearly misaligned with what he cares about in some deeply confusing way...he's deeply confused about most of what they've learned, actually... For now he doesn't give Lacie any additional instructions.) 

:I can explain it in terms of my magic but I don't know enough about yours yet to explain it in terms of yours. It's a divination, which is the school of magic that deals in information - scrying, and reading minds, and detecting magic or minds or Evil or whatever else. It's second-circle, which has to do mostly with how complex a spell is, though complexity in magic isn't exactly the same as complexity in language or complexity in human terms. It lasts a bit more than one day on my planet.:

:Huh. Does the spell work by reading both of our minds to get our respective languages and how that correlates to the thought-concepts, or something in that vein?: 

:It just gives you my vocabulary and concept-associations, it doesn't do anything to you.:

:Ah: Lacie isn't sure she follows, magic giving her Sevar's vocabulary definitely sounds like it's doing something to her mind, but whatever, not really the point. :Sure, you can cast it: 

(The mage nearby is watching very closely.)

And she moves her hands and pulls out from nowhere an elaborate web of magic, beautiful, very complicated, and draws its ends together in a motion sort of like tying a knot, and touches Lacie, and the spell discharges. There's - a significant amount of magical power, enough to easily kill someone unshielded if it were directed as force or fire rather than as this elaborate thing.

Lacie now speaks Taldane. 

Carissa notes the mage watching. She continues to be pretty sure she can't fight her way out of here and actually the thing to do is to see if she can specialize into conjuration and pick up that dimension-stepping power they get. Anyway the spells she has prepared right now are all mindreading and translation and Endure Elements.

Leareth’s people are all very disciplined and don’t show much reaction, but that is SO COOL!!!

”- Probably it makes sense to use this to start a dictionary between our languages,” Lacie decides. “If I talk to you and then repeat everything we are saying to my colleagues so they can note it down...”

She doesn’t want to keep being distracted by shocking and confusing revelations, right now, so she starts asking the most innocuous questions she can think of - what’s the food like in Cheliax, what about the weather, how are schools run, how good are their sewage systems...

Carissa is in a much better mood now and can answer questions. She's from Corentyn, which is a port city, lots of fish and seafood and imports from faraway, with the coastal climate of mild summers and mild, wet winters, though even a little bit inland it's hot in the summer and snows in the winter. Schooling is universal, Cheliax being the only place in the world that accomplishes this, students divided up by age and aptitude and more strongly by aptitude as they get older. School is six days a week, the seventh being the holy day. Corentyn was badly damaged in the catastrophe previously referenced and in the subsequent civil war and but repairs to the aqueducts and sewer systems and roads and seawalls are well underway, the nice part of town is pretty much back to its former glory. 

This is all very interesting in its own right and Lacie can keep up the conversation for a while; she switches to relaying/translating in Mindspeech to the Healer who takes notes, so they can do it more simultaneously. 

Leareth can catch up from their notes later. He paces the hallway and thinks very hard. 

...After a bit he goes to review the ward-alarm notes taken by his sentries, trying to see if he can gauge anything at all from the magic signature left by her means of transport here. It's - hard to tell if he can or not. Maybe. 

Other worlds. Multiple other worlds. This changes everything. 

Eventually he heads back to his office and sits down. Dawn was a candlemark ago, now; they've all been up since the middle of the night, but he barely feels the exhaustion. His other staff may not be as thoroughly energized by the news as he is, though. 

:You all ought take a break and rest: he instructs Lacie. :Excuse yourself whenever it is convenient and leave her alone. You can tell her that she can call if she needs food or anything. She does not have any combat magic prepared and the room is shielded anyway.: 

And he summons another of the strong Mindspeakers on site, also keyed to the room-shields, to sit outside and read Carissa Sevar's mind while they give her some time and space to consider her situation. 

Leareth is very curious.