(That works). 

Annisa is glaring suspiciously at the non-rattling door. She's not going to check her watch every five minutes, that won't help. She's not going to contemplate how best to kill the guy, he can hear her and even if it's not remotely surprising it's probably somewhat distracting. She's not going to think about how the horse can learn to sing, that's a problem for morning Annisa. She does at least feel very awake, yay cocaine.

Oh, right, he should probably keep her up to date on what he's doing. 

:I have a stationary lightning sheet around the door because this stops most of them: Leareth informs her. :I can hold it for a couple of candlemarks on reserves alone, but less if I need to also attack other creatures that get past it. ...I am not sure what you cast to take out the puddle-shaped one, but - how many times can you recast it?: 

Salt? I can cast Salt all night. How long is a - how long in candlemarks since you arrived?

It really hasn't been very long. :...A little less than one-tenth of a candlemark, probably? I can rework the defenses to be more efficient, I hope: 

Okay, we've got, uh, maybe three candlemarks to go. If you let some stuff through I can stab it, that doesn't burn mana.

He's not going to be able to hold this for three candlemarks, not without an outside energy source. (Her shield is right there and she's not even using it - but she might have to, if something else shows up that he can't hold off, and besides Leareth doesn't want to antagonize her...) 

The lightning-sheet is simple; it'll stay up as long as he keeps feeding it power, and he can direct most of his attention towards trying to piece together a physical mage-barrier, woven through with very fine threads of stationary-lightning that can draw extra power and flare up if anything actually touches them. It's not something he's done before but it's made up of components he understands well, at least, and he can probably figure it out in five or ten minutes. 

(During which time he's not able to zap anything else that slips past, though if any more of the insubstantial ones show up, he'll risk pausing the casting at the next stable point and attempting to compulsion them into stillness.) 

That's fine, it's only a couple of mals and her shortsword, which is very very enchanted, makes short work of them. She's watching him and grudgingly, very much against her will, feeling awed. (She wants to be an adult. She'd be so cool if she were going to get to be an adult.)

A couple of minor mals that are dissuaded by the shield go for Lee across the hall's room, and she hears shrieks from in there, but she doesn't have feelings about that, he might be fine and if not that's his concern.

Leareth also hears this, from a long way off, but he doesn't have nearly enough focus to spare for dealing with that as well. 

He gets the more-efficient barrier up. 

:- There. I can - I ought be able to hold this for half a day. Though I hope I will not need to. Are you all right?: He was vaguely aware that some of the creatures got past him and through the door but he wasn't really focused on that. 

You know, I've had better days, now that you ask. The end of the shortsword is gooey; she's not injured. But maybe there'll be pancakes at breakfast, so, you know, you win some, you lose some.

:All right. I can hold my barrier and also handle the insubstantial attackers. ...What are those, by the way? I thought at first they were some kind of elemental spirit but they feel unfamiliar: 

I can tell you what I stabbed but if you turned it away on the other side of the door I haven't the faintest idea, I haven't exactly been running divinations on the stuff that's not yet in stabbing range.

:They look like this?: and he pushes the vague memory across to her, the thin-cloud visible on the scry and the way it looked and felt to mage-sight and the sense of brushing against a bizarre, alien mind - not at all human, and no actual thoughts he could decipher, but not an animal, either, animals don't show up to Thoughtsensing like that... 

Slikelet. Insubstantial but not actually incorporeal, airtight barriers block 'em, give you unending nightmares though in practice they end pretty fast, something else eats you. - maybe that's what had Lee screaming.

:I can make the shield airtight - is the door not already?:

Lee. He must be the other mind that Leareth was able to sense— oh, that’s not good.

Can Leareth still hear the kid screaming, or sense his mind at all?

Nope!

Annisa is completely unconcerned with Lee! His friends might be pissed at her if they figure out why there was a party on this corridor but that is a problem for future Annisa. Door's not airtight because we're surrounded by Void otherwise and we need to, you know, breathe. She has no idea if there's enough air for two people in here if he does make it airtight? It's probably one of those things that works better if you don't think too hard about it.

Leareth can have feelings about the kid across the hall later. 

He does some very quick mental estimates. :I think we should be fine for several candlemarks: And he can make the shield airtight, although it's going to need re-patching every time one of the corporeal creatures bullies its way past the lightning-flares - which also drain extra power from him, whether or not the things make it across. He might be able to hold this shield all day if it were left unmolested, but at this rate of attack he's going to be exhausted by the time they hit whatever deadline the girl is thinking about. 

He sighs, and scans the hallway with his scrying-spell for signs of more incoming monsters. 

There's a bunch more of them! A few are scared off by the shield but most are undeterred except tactically; they'll rush as a group or try to sneak around or start trying to break through the wall.

Lee being dead, if Lee's dead, might be an opportunity, actually; she can break down his door right at six and steal his stuff, and assuming he's been preparing for graduation she won't be fucked even though her own preparations are now in tatters. 

Feelings later. 

(The hallway also has other doors, though Leareth's Othersenses are discombobulated enough that he can't sense what's inside those doors. They look the same though, so - more children in this mysterious 'school'? ...He can't worry about it now.) 

Rather than trying to shield the wall as well, he individually levinbolt-zaps the monsters going after it, and tries to keep his shield reinforced, and if he has any attention left over he'll see whether compulsions work on any of the embodied ones as well. If he's lucky maybe he can even convince some of them to attack each other instead of the door... 

Some of them seem to have enough of a mind to compulsion. Some of them will eat each other, and all of them will eat the corpses of the dead ones; they're not slowing down even as the corpses rather pile up, though.

Annisa watches him, trying to assess how close to getting tired he is and not get distracted by how cool his spells are. She can probably hold for a little while herself, but not even for an hour, she thinks, not this time of year.

Leareth is not yet that magically exhausted - he did the Gate from one of his permanent thresholds, it wasn't especially draining, and none of these beasts individually call for high-power spells - but he's definitely getting somewhat frazzled. There's just...a lot to track, and he has to worry about the attacking monsters damaging the girl's door or wall or the wards. Which he can't redo for her later because the magic for them is completely unfamiliar. 

He's going to switch to compulsioning anything with enough of a mind for that to work, into attacking the other monsters. It takes more concentration but less energy. 

:...To check whether I understand what is happening here: he sends, eventually, :we - are specifically under attack because we are 'breaking curfew' due to my accidental presence here? And curfew will be over in several candlemarks?: 

Yep! No guests in the room between 11 and 6 and at 6 they'll lay off. They'll also lay off me if you leave the room but they'll go after you even harder, being in the hallways during curfew is also not allowed. That's a less defensible position for him even with Annisa contemplating his murder in here so she doesn't expect him to go for it, and she doesn't very strongly want him to because if they survive this maybe she can trade for some of those beautiful beautiful spells he's casting. ...probably not, she bets they aren't English.