"We're moving." She holds up the bag of holding, in case he intends to cooperate with this.

Leareth can't understand the words - Carissa's translation magic seems to have worn off - but he managed to get his Thoughtsensing up instinctively while only half-awake, so he can read her intent. And the gesture is pretty clear. 

"Please do not suffocate me," he says; he has no idea if Carissa can understand him. He also doesn't actually have permission to move in order to cooperate, but he's not intending to resist. 

She can understand him. "It should be a lot shorter than last time. I'm not flying away, just casting the new one and climbing us into it. There's supposed to be enough air in the bag for a couple of minutes, you shouldn't even notice being short on it." 

Why is she trying to comfort the prisoner. She puts the bag over his head rather than process that where he can hear her.

And then she climbs out of the Rope Trick and casts a new Rope Trick and climbs up into it.

There's a very brief burst of powerful magic! 

- the Thoughtsenser, further off, has been following a scanning pattern and wouldn't have reached that spot in time, except that the other mage instantly contacts everyone through their linked communications-artifacts. (It's detectable, but they've turned the power level down as far as possible to still cover the range, and it doesn't take long.) 

The minds aren't there for very long, only a few seconds, and then they're gone again. 

There isn't time for the Thoughtsenser to actually Mindspeak Leareth, even if that were a good idea, which he would need at least thirty seconds to think about. But it...felt like it was probably him. 

Leareth takes slow steady breaths and keeps himself calm and waits for Carissa to pull him out of the bag. 

Which she does, watching anxiously through the viewing window for anyone approaching.

There's no one visible.

Probably no one will find them. There is definitely nothing to be gained by thinking about what will happen if someone does.

Leareth is calm and not panicking even slightly about having been shoved back in the bag. The effort of not panicking has dragged him all the way awake again, though. 

"Four candlemarks to go, then?" he says quietly. 

"Yeah. Assuming everything goes smoothly." She thinks they will. She has a great deal of confidence in the Chelish army; it's good at what it does. That's - part of what it means, on some level, that Asmodeus is right, that Asmodeus is on the winning side. 

Leareth has no doubt that Asmodeus' army is competent at what it does. They wouldn't have gotten this far in Iftel otherwise. 

He wonders how far his own people have gotten. How much resistance they're facing from Vkandis. 

...Whether Vkandis might have Seen, when the noisy currents of god-Foresight stabilized a little, just how badly things might go if Asmodeus had Leareth at His mercy. 

He wonders what Vanyel would think of his discussion with Carissa so far. Whether Vanyel would have come up with better arguments... 

Four candlemarks to go. 

"You know," he says lightly to Carissa, "I am not Good, but - one of the reasons that I suspect Vanyel is, is because he knows what I have done, and finds it monstrous, with good reason - and yet, I do not this this would dissuade him from attempting a rescue, if he judged it were the right thing to do." 

She is not sure what she's supposed to take away from that. Paladins...sure do be paladins? But they don't usually - like, the ones at the Worldwound would risk their troops to rescue Carissa at the Worldwound, because there's a treaty about that, but if Cheliax got into a fight with interdimensional invaders they'd be delightedly working to pick the best angle to stab it in the back. And they'd think that was Good, because they think Cheliax is bad, and therefore that it's good to defeat it? And presumably if Vanyel thinks Leareth is bad he should be angling to defeat him. ...you actually do have to give the church of Iomedae that, that they fight to win.

A thing people say about Good in Cheliax is that it's all about personally getting into Heaven, not about defeating Evil at all, that they'll gladly do a thousand counterproductive things that make the world worse if it keeps their hands clean and feels virtuous, and that thing is not true, at least not of the one Good church with half its forces stationed at the Worldwound.

Anyway. They wouldn't rescue her. She isn't sure what she's supposed to take away from the fact Leareth thinks this Vanyel would rescue him, or what 'if he judged it were the right thing to do' is doing, there. Presumably anyone even marginally worth respecting will do the things they judge the right thing to do.

...Leareth kind of wants to ask about Iomedae, now, that sounds fascinating - and also now he has two gods on his list to immediately attempt prayers to, if he does end up hauled into Carissa's world - 

"Well," he says, "I am not sure if Vanyel will judge it worth the risk, but - I told him everything I had learned about Asmodeus at that point. Including the torture, and the wishing to conquer the entire world and all the afterlives so that everyone would go to Hell. And Vanyel - well, he has often disagreed with my methods, and we have...faced challenges, in building trust. But - I think he realizes how bad it would be for his values and interests, if Asmodeus had me." 

So his point is just that he has allies opposed to him being captured? She did already know that. They already killed all her friends. 

"- I highly doubt my people killed your colleagues? That would be stupid of them." This seems incredibly obvious to Leareth. It's not even hard to keep non-mages captive, and the thing his people need most right now is intelligence on Cheliax. 

None of that is really the point, though.

"I have spent over a decade explaining myself to Vanyel," he hears himself say. "I - if this had happened a year ago, I might not have expected a rescue - he was very angry with me over Highjorune. Understandably, I suppose." 

Are we just doing emotional processing now? Carissa is not incredibly comfortable in the presence of intimate relationships between people. Cheliax does not really do that because it is stupid. 

"Highjorune?"

Leareth also does not usually do intimate relationships with people. For different reasons. Cheliax continues to sound deeply concerning in multiple ways. 

...Separately Leareth would not at all have described his relationship with Vanyel as 'intimate' and now he's very confused about Carissa's model of how destined enemies relate to each other. 

"The capital of what was formerly a tiny kingdom bordering on the west of Valdemar. I - had provided a trap-spell artifact, powered by blood magic, to their neighbour, Baires - I wanted Baires as an ally in my later plans, mostly because they have an absurdly high rate of mage-gift. The trap-spell could be triggered on a person, and would summon Abyssal demons to attack that person and all nearby blood-relations. The intention had been to stage a coup, taking out only the royal family. ...I had not intended for the plan to be carried out when it was, but it appears my contact was impatient. And also that I was - missing some critical intelligence. Valdemar intervened. Vanyel risked his life to save the capital of Lineas. Two of his friends died. ...Semi unrelatedly, an assassination plot against Vanyel which I had set up as a contingency a decade earlier, which I had been very confident was called off, ended up triggering." 

"I guess that might make someone mad at you. You can set up contingent spells a decade out?"

It's not like there's any particularly good reason not to tell her. 

"- I placed a conditional compulsion on his family's priest, which would take effect only in the event that Vanyel was incapacitated at his family home while in the priest's presence. Honestly I am surprised that the compulsion lasted that entire time at all, but - I am quite good at that. And also the man may not have fought it very hard. He seemed to harbour an inexplicable dislike for Vanyel. ...Possibly because of Vanyel's sexual preferences, even though that is very stupid."

This immediately sets her trying to imagine what sexual preference Goody mcGoodface might have that his priest would object to but that is actually fine, since Goody mcGoodface. Kids? Dragons? Dead bodies? Dragon kids? Dead dragon kids? Murdering Evil people counts as Good, does raping them - maybe he's just, like, a really intense sadomasochist and other Good people are confused about whether you can be that and also Good, though Carissa has it on good authority that you can - maybe he enjoys, uh, cock and ball torture, with dead dragon kids...

- possibly it is bad to only be able to communicate with your prisoner via him mindreading you -

Change. Of topic. "Why were you trying to assassinate him?"

Now Leareth is chuckling slightly, even though this is not at all an appropriate time to be amused.

"Your world must be very different. Vanyel prefers men - which really does not harm anyone, but this part of the world - and particularly some of its religious orders - has some baffling prejudices. Anyway. I was not trying to assassinate him then. I set up the contingencies when I first learned of his existence, from the Foresight dream. For the obvious reason; he was my destined enemy, the vision showed him sacrificing his life to defeat me." 

"But then you decided not to, but the guy was still compulsioned to do it if the opportunity ever presented itself?"

"The compulsion should have been removed! I sent very clear orders for that to the organization in question and I–" 

Leareth stops. 

"...Somehow I had not until now made this update, but there was obviously god-meddling at work, with the exact timing of the events. - The Star-Eyed Goddess, presumably - there is a Heartstone in the palace in Highjorune, that is one of the miraculous magics She granted the Tayledras people as part of their pact. Also a piece of intelligence I was missing, despite having done a thorough investigation, it seems that no one knew of its existence including the royal family... And the fact that Vanyel was almost murdered immediately afterward -" 

Leareth is feeling kind of shaken, and - somewhat slow and stupid and several steps behind. In his defence, he's very not used to the gods intervening in ways that make his plans work better. Or, well, "better" - it's not as though the sequence of events there achieved any of his goals... 

In fact, he's not sure what it achieved. For Her either. Some sort of opaque god-Foresight scheme, one that hasn't fully paid off yet...? 

"....maybe She wanted the guy and his friends dead?"

"Perhaps? Fortunately, he seems to be rather difficult to kill." 

"I'm confused about the destined enemies thing. I...don't think we have that...of course, we don't have prophecy at all anymore but even before that, I haven't heard any stories about it."

Leareth goes very still, even his breath catching mid-inhale. 

"You - what - you do not have prophecy anymore - but you used to? What happened to it?"

As far as Leareth understands, Foresight is...approximately as basic a physical law as gravity, in Velgarth. The concept of it ceasing to work is making his head hurt again.