- and something is WRONG the magic is twisting in a way it shouldn't and he's falling - 

And then everything is suddenly very still and quiet. 

Technically Carissa is the only person in the room when it happens but inside five seconds there are three other people interposing themselves. Her husband isn't one of them because he's in his demiplane doing negotiations about a permanent Gate with Tian Xia, and she can interrupt that if it's, like, an emergency, but shouldn't if it's a random adventurer whose Plane Shift went off target and who is about to be very embarrassed.

It...doesn't look like that, though? It looks like an underfed kid who is bespelled in some fashion and has been crying, and it actually could be an assassination attempt, if he's a Velgarth mage who's been coerced or forced to Final Strike, but the bodyguards are shaking their head - and if he's not Gifted then it's not an assassination attempt and is probably something else entirely. 

Well, the faster it's cleared up the better -

"Do you need healing."

What???? 

"No," and Masozi lies very still on the floor and tries to look absolutely non-threatening. 

"Does he need healing," she asks the bodyguard who also has Healing-sight.

The bodyguard steps in to touch Masozi's shoulder. 

- he doesn't flinch. It's an incredibly effortful not-flinch. 

"He's not acutely injured. He's - not in great shape, but - mostly just malnourished and a little dehydrated, maybe sleep deprived." 

- nod. "Do you know how you got here?" she asks the kid again. She somehow speaks his native language perfectly, but when she talks to the guards she's speaking something different.

That's really strange. She doesn't look like she's from anywhere where it'd make sense for her to speak Chichewa. 

- also he doesn't KNOW how he got here and it's making his thoughts loop and tangle as the truth potion tries to hold him glued to a reality he doesn't understand. He's panicking again, a little. "Dunno. Magic. Something - wrong - accident -?" 

"What - enchantment are you under -"

Wait - what - why doesn't she know and if she doesn't know how can she tell aaaaaaaaaaaaaah - it's now weirdly hard to answer because his mind is trying to insist that he understand the current situation in order to say true things and not false things about it - 

After fifteen seconds of lying there whimpering slightly, it occurs to him that he's...probably overthinking this? Or - not quite that - trying too hard to impose his understanding? This is an out of context event. He wasn't expecting it. So he shouldn't expect to know anything and that's fine and the truth spell should - let him - say things he does know even though he doesn't know the most critical things...? 

"Truth potion," he forces out. 

"Can someone cancel that."

       "Break Enchantment."

"Right, did that work?"

It seems to have worked! At least, the kid is no longer detectably under any enchantments. 

He still isn't moving. 

Carissa doesn't, really, know what to do about terrified people, but one of the edges that Iomedae is supposed to have is that underfed children don't need to be terrified of her, even if they manage to somehow teleport into a palace and inconvenience a Queen. He is right to think that he's probably dead but he's not, and Good has to be able to milk that for all it's worth because most of the asymmetries, realistically, go the other way. 

She kneels at his side and takes his hand. "You're in Cheliax now. Have you heard of it?"

Masozi flinches and pulls his hand away. 

"...No." 

"Cheliax is ruled by Iomedae and by Abadar, though maybe they are followed by other names, where you are from, and it is a prosperous place, and a safe one, and a lawful one. You can sit up, if you'd like. Where are you from?"

Masozi is struggling to follow half of that, and is not even slightly inclined to believe her on the half that he does understand. 

He sits up, though, because maybe that was actually an instruction/order. "I was born in Malawi." 

Place names don't always translate to the one your country uses. "Is Malawi in the Mwangi Expanse?"

Masozi is not especially up to speed on geography. "I...don't think so? I think it's in the south of Africa. But not South Africa, that's the name of a country where Johannesburg is. Malawi is...north of that?" 

"Can you name other places you know?"

He's so confused. 

"New York? And - Chicago - but I heard that enclave got destroyed." 

"What's the farthest you have been from the village you grew up in?"

"....Two months of walking?" Masozi doesn't know the distance in any other units. 

Well her information is consistent with a really extraordinary range of possibilities from 'he's a random Mwangi villager who landed here by accident' to 'he's a time traveller' to 'someone maliciously manipulated his head and his memories to feed me a story'. 

"Drop the King a note," she says. "I don't really think it's worth him interrupting his meeting but maybe he has some context that'd change that calculation." 

And to the kid, "are there people who use magic, where you're from?"

(The staff can do that.) 

The kid gives her a nervous look. "I - do people use magic here -?" If they don't then he shouldn't say anything else because that will just put them in more danger.

"Yes, we do. We dispelled your truth potion and we are using magic to determine that you are harmless."

It - doesn't make any SENSE - how could you use magic to determine that??? 

Masozi doesn't say anything about this out loud, but he is not exactly very good at hiding his emotions. 

"We can use magic to see how powerful someone is, and you aren't very, and to see whether there's magic defending them, and to see whether they're Evil or not." The kid's just neutral, exactly as you would expect from a random kid. "We can use magic for all kinds of things, because Cheliax is a powerful kingdom, and the powers of the gods stretch far beyond it; but they desire that all people live good lives, so you are safe here."

Masozi knows that he isn't very powerful, but it still kind of hurts, to hear that repeated. 

- He isn't really sure what she means by 'gods'? But it - seems kind of scary and dangerous, to ask about that. It's the sort of thing that people get upset about, sometimes, and Masozi's recent experiences are that people getting upset usually leads to them wanting to kill him. 

".....I don't know what you mean by 'evil'?" 

(He should probably ALSO not have said this, but - it seems important to understand -)

"Have we found anyone who knows the language?" she asks her bodyguards. 

          "No. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's anything weird, there are lots of small tribes that only speak their own thing."

"And do we have a trace on where he's from?"

        "No. Which is -"

Slightly more indicative that something's weird. She nods. 

"Okay," she says to the kid. "Evil is hurting people. Good is helping them. It gets more complicated than that, lots more complicated than that, but no one expects you to know all the Law of a place you've never been. We know that you aren't here to hurt me." 

Why would he want to hurt her. He has no idea who she is - which she must have noticed by now if she's not stupid - and also she hasn't hurt him? Even a little bit? And she definitely hasn't hurt anyone else who he knows or been responsible for their deaths, because he would have NOTICED and also all of the hurt and dying is already more-than-sufficiently explained...

Nevermind. Focus. 

"- Why do you know I'm not here to hurt you?" he hears himself say, even though he already knows this isn't helpful for his continued survival. He's confused. She - checked that he wasn't 'evil', but it seems like from her perspective it would be perfectly reasonable to think that he never hurt anyone else before but might still want to hurt her? 

"Because in addition to checking if you are aligned with Our enemies We are also reading your mind."

Oh. 

That's very clever and careful of them? (He thinks this with significant respect.) 

Focus. Orient. 

"- I haven't ever heard of Cheliax?" he says, hopefully. "What is Cheliax - like...?" 

"It's safe, and there's enough food, and children go to school, and a laborer can pay with a day's labor for bread for two." 

Why is she saying exactly the things that Masozi thinks are most relevant–    oh right she just SAID, she's reading his mind. 

FOCUS. 

"......Where I come from, there's magic and - if you believe in it then magic works? And - then there are magical monsters, called mals. I - I don't know if it's like that here but - they might've followed me through anyway - however I got here I don't know how I got here–"

Possibly - probably? - the mysterious rich powerful lady already knows all of this, but it feels important to say it anyway. Just in case. And - so that she knows that he knows it too?

She looks surprised, actually. "And magic - doesn't work, if you don't believe in it?"

"- Not really? I - it can work at all - if the monster's big and strong enough?" 

But he brought his baby sister to a mundane family because he thought that would keep her safe and so he has to believe that will work that isn't how reality works at all. 

"Everyone here believes in magic so if that's the case we might not have noticed," she says slowly. "But also I am pretty sure it's not. You ...might be from another world. There are other worlds. Can you tell me more about how monsters might have...followed you through? Would they show up here, if they did that?"

"They eat people for their mana? I - if there are people here who do magic then they'd have lots of mana and the mals would go after them." 

(Masozi is thinking that he is, for once, not the tastiest and most mana-rich target around here? Apparently? Since the rich lady in her beautiful rich-person clothes just said that he's not even powerful enough to be dangerous, according to her standards.) 

((....In a quiet corner of his mind, he's also thinking that he could probably try to nudge these people's minds in a direction - if he had any idea what was happening, which he doesn't, and so he can't possibly know what direction-of-nudging would help - and also their minds feel really hard to poke and he doesn't exactly have a lot of mana right now....))

"Do you know if it's that way in other countries too. Do you know if there are any places that don't have that problem."

"No? But I - there are lots of places and I don't know very many things? ...I think it might be safer in New York." 

"Is New York another country - is it a place you can only get by - magic travel, or boats, you could never walk?"

"I - don't think you could walk there? I think it's on the other side of an ocean? ....I don't know if boats can go that far either. I think there're storms and stuff." 

Probably. Masozi looked at a map in a library book, like, once. Mostly his thoughts right now are that New York is very far away and also in America which is the place where everyone is unimaginably rich.

"All right. I am going to pray for divine guidance. Please don't interrupt me. If you think of things while I am praying, you can tell him." and she touches the nearest security, one of Leareth's Thoughtsensers, with Tongues. "Iomedae will know whether mals can follow you to Golarion and whether we ought to let them do that or not."

....He's so confused. What does praying for divine guidance even MEAN. Also who's Iomedae - actually he thinks this was explained earlier? but he failed to process it at all because he was panicking? - but STILL he's SO CONFUSED. 

One of Leareth's security staff steps forward. 

"My name is Ramel." 

This child is visibly terrified. 

Ramel kneels on the floor. (While carefully maintaining his personal shields.) 

"Can you understand me?" The mysterious foreign kid should be able to understand him, he knows how Tongues works, but - apparently this could be other worlds business, again, so it's worth checking. "- Nod if you do. You don't need to say anything."

Nod. 

"Do you have any questions?" 

The last time he tried to ask questions he almost DIED. 

So, no, he doesn't have any questions. 

......Okay. This doesn't seem great but he - will wait and watch? 

Carissa has never, actually, talked to Iomedae like this before. She's asked Leareth what it's like - what it's like with Iomedae in particular, because Abadar's quite different - and felt strange, about knowing that from him and not for herself, but she didn't need much direction, as it turned out, and Iomedae's very busy.

There's a rushing feeling like being the magic of a spell instead of being the force moving it. And then a feeling, in the dark of someone taking hold of her by the shoulders - not by the shoulders, by the chest, by some metaphysical handle that she doesn't actually have -

" - first off, you're pregnant! Congratulations. It's a girl. If you're doing any further transit to this other world do it through Velgarth, with adequate containment so Foresight works - so not with regular inputs from Golarion clouding everything. Given apparent trends in inter world accidents - or non-accidents, but I'm not causing them - you should have a routine for this, and it should be a routine that puts everything very cleanly where We can see it. I can't see the child very well, don't take this as orders regarding him." And she steps up to Carissa, takes her face in both hands - Carissa thought she was looking down, but isn't, suddenly, without Iomedae having moved her neck exactly - "I love you, child. Act as my self, not my soldier. Go."

- Carissa bursts into tears, and then reminds herself that she's Good now and can't kill everyone in the room to see it, and then stops.

Aaaaaaah what's happening??? Is it a psychic mal - he can't sense any but it's not like he's very good at things - 

- also he should not do things because the last time he tried to help people and protect them, he instead accidentally offended some political entity he'd never heard of and then almost got executed because they thought he was suspicious and decided he had killed a student? 

(Sophie is DEAD and Masozi hasn't even started processing this and he's still at the stage where even thinking about it hurts but he has to keep looking away.)

:- Are you all right?: Ramel asks Carissa. :- I can send you what I Thoughtsensed from the boy while you were, er, busy. Whenever you're ready: 

Velgarth. Supposed to - do interworld stuff - over Velgarth where She can see - 

- I don't think that counts talking to the boy, though, Iomedae had no specific concerns about him, just - let me write it down -

And she scrambles to do that. It feels impossible to forget but also she's already uncertain of a couple words.

Foresight. Right. 

Ramel will wait very quietly and patiently.

Masozi is also waiting very patiently and quietly, for rather different reasons. 

"Right," she says after a minute. "Iomedae says, first off, congratulations, you're pregnant, it's a girl. If you're doing further transit to this other world do it through Velgarth, with adequate containment so Foresight works - so not with regular intervention from Golarion clouding it. Given apparent trends in interworld accidents - or non-accidents, but I'm not causing them - you should have a routine for this and it should be a routine that puts everything very cleanly where We can see it. I can't see the child very well, don't take this as orders regarding him. ...I love you, child. Act as my self, not as my soldier. Go. 

I'm - fine, it didn't even hurt. Did you startle the kid."

"I don't think so? I - asked if he had any questions, was all."

He switches to private Mindspeech. :It seemed like it frightened him when you, er, started crying: 

Terrible how she can't murder everybody who saw that. Thank you, she says instead. 

And to the kid, "it sounds like the world you are from is different from this world. That's pretty important, so we're going to figure out what to do about it. We'll probably have lots of questions, so you should eat and drink and get comfortable, so that you can answer them without getting too tired."

Why do people keep offering him food and water before interrogating him? It's very confusing of them. 

Masozi is having a lot of trouble making himself move, so he just looks at her blankly. 

Is this what it was like for Aroden when he was trying to get who she worked for and what she was doing. No, she's pretty sure that while she was having a breakdown and cringing on the floor and so on she was also successfully answering questions out loud with her mouth and obeying clear instructions and so on. Maybe the instructions are insufficiently clear. She dumps a lot of honey into a cup of tea. "Drink this."

Masozi can follow clear instructions even when he's terrified that he'll do the wrong thing in some opaque confusing way and get murdered by powerful people! He drinks the tea, even though his hands seem to be shaking, which he hadn't noticed before. 

He's surprised that it's sweet. It reminds him of the candy that Nie Huaisang shared with him, three days and a lifetime ago. 

...Nie Huaisang is probably going to die. Wen Ning is probably going to die. Masozi has no way of DOING anything about that, anymore. It would be stupid of these people to try to rescue the children in a school in another world. 

He's - mostly not processing the fact that this is another world. Everything feel distant and floaty and half-unreal again, and most of all it feels inevitable. Like gravity, how Wei Wuxian explained it to him; like he's falling and falling and falling, but never landing, just falling in circles, on a track he no longer has any power to affect. 

He wonders, vaguely, if New York and Shanghai will end up at war after all. Maybe not - maybe now that he's gone, there's nothing left to fight over - but maybe New York will be scared about him having disappeared, maybe they'll think Lan Xichen did some sort of spell to hide him, maybe - no, he has no way of knowing, speculating is pointless - but it's going to happen, without there being anything he can do about it, and that too feels as inexorable as gravity... 

This is not great. 

Ramel...will get the terrified child a blanket, first.

And then Mindtouch Carissa. :He's thinking about - it sounds like some sort of very messy geopolitical situation, in the world he's from? I'm not entirely following it but he's scared there's going to be a war between two major powers. He seems to think he's responsible for it?: 

Fantastic! Not just a random child but a random child whose disappearance might touch off a war!

"Tell me more about the monsters that might be following you here. What do they look like?"

"Like...lots of different things? Some of them are oozy and - like liquids - some of them are sort of made of metal or stone or paper - some of them are different animals smushed together - some of them are just eyes or just teeth or just legs..." 

He can go for a while trying to fumblingly describe different varieties of mals. The Maleficaria Studies classroom had illusions of so many kinds. 

- wow the images in the kid's memory are intensely disturbing. 

She looks undisturbed. She served at the Worldwound and demons, too, come in many horrific varieties. "Are the people of your world trying in an organized way to defend themselves from mals?"

"The powerful people are? New York and Shanghai have enclaves, that's - they're in the void with just the doors attached to the normal world, I think. Mals can't go through the void. So you just have to guard the doors. ...And someone built the school." He doesn't actually remember which enclave did that, he thinks it might've said next to the blueprints when he went to memorize them but he wasn't paying as much attention to that part. 

"The school?"

"S'called the Scholomance. It's in the void. Someone really powerful decided to build it because - for when kids are growing up and more mals go after them. ...Most kids die, on the outside." 

All of his siblings. Except his baby sister, but she's not going to survive, if he can't go back for her, and he can't, and he's too far away from everything to cry but it's suddenly hard to breathe. 

...Offering the kid a hug clearly won't help at all but Ramel still wants to. 

:He's - you should be gentle with him: he tells Carissa instead. :He's clearly had a bad time: 

She has noticed this! She is not sure she's ever met anyone who hasn't had a bad time so she is somewhat less sympathetic than she probably ought to be but she's trying quite hard to not look like she'll bite since that will not help her get her questions answered. " - where do people in your world go when they die?"

"What?" That question makes no sense. "Dying isn't going somewhere, it's just - dying." 

"Do you know if that's what other people think too?"

"- Some people think that God takes you somewhere but I don't think that's true, I don't think magic works that way." 

"Where does God supposedly take people?"

Shrug. "I don't know. Someplace. ...I think people might say there's two different places, sometimes? For good people and bad people." 

"Okay. Does God do - miracles, or appoint followers, or do other things that would help with understanding Them and what they want?"

"I don't know. I - think maybe some people think God does miracles but only a really long time ago." 

"Huh." Convenient, less intervention is easier to work around. But hopefully there's an afterlife because otherwise what a catastrophe. "So children go to school because otherwise they usually die to mals? Has it always been that way?"

"I think there weren't as many mals a long time ago and then it got worse." 

"Do you know if the people in charge want help, with the mal problem."

"- Probably? But they - get scared, if they think someone's powerful and isn't doing predictable things. And I don't know any of the rules so I can't tell you what to do to not scare them." 

"You're very young, that is not your job, it's our job. Do you know specific things that scare them, though?"

"If you do maleficing. That scares people. But you shouldn't anyway because it makes you crazy." 

"If you do what?"

"S'when you get mana from other things that're alive. Except not bugs, that doesn't count for some reason, people just call it 'cheating'. And it's not called mana, it's called malia instead. If you get malia from rats and stuff, it - hurts, and it's bad for you and gives you brain damage, and...also it's maybe addictive and maybe stops you from using your own mana ever again? And then sometimes maleficers start murdering people for their malia. So - if you do maleficing, even if you just use animals, the big enclaves get mad and want to kill you." 

Is that why people were mad at him? she sends at Ramel. 

"I see. Are the people from your world going to be looking for you?"

:....Yes. He was - shit - he might've been on trial for a suspected murder, right before whatever just happened to land him here? I think that's why he was under an enchantment: 

Pause.

:...To be clear I - don't think he did the specific murder they were accusing him of? But he's not exactly being obliging in laying it out neatly in his thoughts, and he's definitely done - the thing he described. Do we want to ask him directly and get a confirmation now: 

Shiver. "I don't know. Maybe." New York or Shanghai might both look for him, for thoroughly different reasons. 

"Were you in trouble, in your world, for using malia? For hurting people?"

"....I used malia. But only rats and only because I would've died otherwise and I promised I wouldn't do it ever again!" 

He starts crying again. Tries very hard to do this silently and non-disruptively. 

:- He's telling the truth about all of that. He - I don't think he knew about the risks of it that he just told us. It sounds like he only found out a few days ago, at this 'school': 

"When Cheliax first came to be ruled by Iomedae and by Aroden, I thought they would want to kill me, because they were Good, and I had done bad things, and I thought that Good was about killing people who do bad things. But it turned out all right because actually Good is about making things better."

Masozi has NOT had good recent experiences when it comes to 'believing reassuring things that people tell him'. He is extremely dubious of this claim! Lan Xichen said it would be okay, when Masozi confessed having gotten into a fight with the New York enclave, and then it was NOT okay and there's maybe going to be a war about it.

He doesn't think that they're going to kill him right now, but mostly that's just because he's their only source of information on another world. 

Carissa has many talents but calming panicked children isn't really one of them. If they were a Chelish child she'd slap them just because you don't slap someone in a shape-up sort of way if you're planning to execute them, why bother, but by the norms of other places this would probably be more threatening than not doing that. And obviously saying things to them doesn't work. Iomedae said 'act as my Self', which probably means to do what Iomedae would do, more than that's her normal strategy, but she doesn't know what Iomedae would do. Exude an aura of paladiny paladinness? They do have an aura, and it's not just magical. Carissa has never contemplating imitating it. She could...try that?

What are even the essential elements of a paladin aura. Fearlessness, unshakeableness, slight smugness - maybe the slight smugness is a way in which paladins differ from the Iomedaen ideal, maybe Iomedae herself isn't smug - no, what Iomedae is is angry, and being angry at the kid doesn't seem like it'd help at all -

"How about you draw me a map of your world," Carissa says, and gestures for someone to get him paper and pen. 

Oh no this is an unfairly hard request! 

He draws. It's not a very good drawing because he can't stop shaking and he's having even more trouble remembering the map he saw than he usually does.

It could be Golarion? It probably isn't, it'd be a pretty bad map of Golarion, but it could be. The place he identified himself as from is the right place for the Mwangi Expanse. There are some islands where Absalom is. Iomedae said he wasn't from this world, so probably it's just a coincidence, but. 

"Thank you," she says, reading through it. "What do you think you'll need to be safe and comfortable here while we figure out what's going on?"

Why is she asking him that? He's so confused! If anything the question makes this more stressful, because he doesn't understand what any of these people want. 

"I dunno." 

:He might benefit from some time alone: Ramel offers. :He's - very very overwhelmed. I would say that he should see a Mindhealer but unfortunately that's also pretty overwhelming: 

I think you shouldn't do therapy on people who think you might kill them, they'll be too cooperative. Can we find him a guest room, and guard it, mostly in case the monsters do follow him -

:Sure, we can do that–: 

He cuts off, eyes going out of focus; it's the way Mindspeakers look when suddenly interrupted. 

:- Message from your husband. He's going to wrap up over in Aktun as soon as he can, expect him in thirty minutes, and he's sending Nayoki over to get the full run-down on what you know so far, and to look at what if anything the Velgarth detection-wards on the room picked up when he arrived: 

Good. Let's have someone draw up a bath, for the kid, too. He smells like he's maybe been hiding in an outhouse for a while. And say comforting things to him? Do we have anyone on staff with children-comforting expertise? 

:One of the Healers, maybe? I'll get someone for it - ideally someone with Projective Empathy to help calm him down a bit...: 

He kneels again, to bring his eyes level with the kid's, and speaks very gently. "Can you come with me? We're going to get you a bath and then a room where you can rest." 

Masozi manages to nod. He picks himself up from the floor, moving mechanically and not making eye contact with either of them. 

He's...more exhausted than anything else, at this point. Things keep happening and he can't keep up and he has no idea what's happening, which gives him a dizzy falling sort of feeling again. 

The kid looks slightly unsteady on his feet, but Ramel suspects that touching him at all will just scare him even more. "Thank you. You can follow me this way." 

:Carissa, Nayoki's going to Gate in and meet you. Meeting-room nearest the Gate threshold: 

Carissa heads over there.

Nayoki reaches the meeting-room at a run, seconds after Carissa does. "- What in all hells is going on - I was running an experiment Leareth made me drop everything, he never does that -" 

"Kid showed up in the palace from - another planet? Sounds like a lousy place honestly but we should definitely check it out. Also he thinks monsters might follow him, though we haven't observed any. Iomedae says do all interplanetary contact in Velgarth where she can see it."

"...More other world things. Perfect." Nayoki sits down. "What do you know about his planet, so far? And the kid himself?" 

"Practically nothing, Iomedae can't see him that well either - he's Neutral. On his planet, there are lots of varied monsters, called mals, and most children are eaten by them, and to protect children people send them away to school, which is...in a demiplane? I think? So the monsters can't get them. But the kid had gotten in trouble in the demiplane for killing for mana - just animals, but they think it's addictive and if you start with animals you'll escalate to killing people? It sounded kind of like what people say in Velgarth but also no one in Velgarth would bother killing rats for blood magic, would they? Because you don't get enough? So maybe there's a difference. Anyway, the place is ruled by 'enclaves', several of which were involved in a power struggle, and the kid was - adjacent to it? He was worried there'd be a war." She hands over the map. 

Nayoki studies the map. 

"Wait, so - the demiplane only has children in it? And the children are having a power struggle and might go to war?" 

"I'm not sure? He's almost an adult, as Cheliax counts it, and he was thinking about people older than him. But I think it's mostly students."

"...I see. How old do you think he actually is?" 

"I don't know, thirteen, fourteen? An underfed thirteen or fourteen but poor kids always are."

"He was poor, in his world? Do we have any idea how his blood-magic use - or whatever it is that they do in that world - was related to a power struggle between these 'enclaves'? And do you happen to know the place names on this map?" 

"I don't know, I don't know except he tearfully assured me he hadn't known it was bad and he promised to stop, and I can read the map with Comprehend Languages up but I don't know how far that gets me -" She speaks all the unfamiliar place names out loud. "New York and Shanghai were the ones he was worried might be at war."

"They are not even on the same continent! I am surprised they would have much geopolitical tension. Or interaction at all. Teleports are not cheap - actually, hmm, do we know if his world has that, or Gates?" 

"He said he'd never been farther from his village than two months of walking but that just suggests that if there's something, poor people don't have it."

"Ah." 

Nayoki sighs heavily. 

"So - it sounds like mostly we just know very little? And the situation there may be unstable and time-sensitive. We need to talk to the boy more. What kind of condition is he in - was he injured -?" 

"Not injured just very panicky and very tired. Probably we should just go in there with someone with Empathy to keep him calm. Realistically we don't have a way to get to his world, right, even if we could prevent a war by dragging him back there right now. I don't think we have enough targeting information for anything less than a Golarion Gate and it'd be reckless to open a Golarion Gate to a planet with a mana-eating monster problem. - another thing I asked about were their afterlives, which the kid believes they don't have, though he did concede that many other people think that they do, maybe two, one for Good and one for Evil."

"Do we maybe have enough information for someone to try scrying it? If the kid knows any other students there well enough... Unfortunate that Aroden is no longer available for this." 

"Seems worth trying. From Velgarth. That was Iomedae's one instruction but she was very emphatic about it."

Nod. 

"Right. I am going to go check what if anything the wards picked up, and delegate the analysis of that. And then maybe we can go talk to the kid some more?" 

"Sounds good. Maybe he'll like you better, you're the same color as him."

"Hmm. Maybe." She stands up. "Where is he now? I can meet you when I finish with this." 

"Guest room. Ramel's guarding."

"See you later." And Nayoki gets up and heads out at a very brisk walk. 

Elsewhere, Lara, a Healer and strong Projective Empath in Leareth's employ, is trying to coax the poor terrified child into a bath. He...seems to have never seen a bathtub before? And he's clearly exhausted; as soon as she started pushing calm at him, he was half asleep on his feet. 

What is it with people being obsessed with him bathing regularly??? Masozi isn't exactly objecting but it seems like a lot of hassle, he took a shower two days ago and it's not as though he's gotten dirty since then. He's even been wearing different clothes every day! 

He rubs soap on himself without needing to be instructed, he wants to be cooperative even if what they're asking him to do is deeply mysterious, but he does so with a decided lack of enthusiasm. 

By the time Carissa gets back, he's bathed and wearing a clean borrowed shirt and loose pants with a drawstring at the waist to stay on him, and sitting in a chair in his guest room eating soup. 

Ramel is guarding the door along with two other Velgarth mages and two of the Golarion wizards employed by the palace. Lara is in the room, watching him, from halfway across the room and not trying to talk to him anymore. She glances up when Carissa approaches. 

"The King will be here in twenty minutes; Nayoki sooner than that. Report?"

Glance at the kid. "I...don't have a ton to report? I've been trying to get him settled and not stress him out too much, and he hasn't been volunteering any information. Did you have more questions for him." 

"We want scrying targets, I think, and an estimate of how time-sensitive the war situation is." 

And she turns to the kid. "If there is a war, would it be the sort of war that starts right away? Or in days once everyone has gotten messages back to their superiors, or in weeks once they have moved their armies?"

He twitches, tensing up again despite Lara's steady push of calmcalmcalm. 

"I - wizards don't fight with armies. And...you can't get any messages out of the Scholomance. Except at the end of the year when people graduate. If there was a war, it...would just be in the school, I think, until the end of the year. - And all the seniors might die and not graduate? Even if the war doesn't kill everyone, it'd use up all their mana." 

"I see. And when would it probably happen."

Masozi really really does not want to be discussing this topic. He's pushing through that because it's important, and because he wants to be cooperative and avoid offending this new set of powerful people whose mercy he's under. 

"...Dunno. Probably not today? But - if it's going to happen I think it'd be in days, not weeks." 

"Thank you. In a little bit, Nayoki is going to come - she is a powerful mage who works for the King - and in a little bit longer, the King will come. Do you have any questions about that?"

His question is WHY the KING is going to come HERE, this is a way bigger escalation than he was expecting? What? 

He shakes his head, dully. 

Ramel is still on mindreading duty, which is terrible, this is his worst assignment all month. 

:He's wondering why the King is taking this so seriously? I think it has him pretty spooked: he informs Carissa. 

Leareth should have his people torture dissidents to death more so they're not so mopey about mind reading assignment- no, he shouldn't, that would be Evil. What would Iomedae do. Iomedae would -

Thank you. That makes sense. For what it's worth, I don't think it bothered him at all, that you were reading him. He seemed relieved that we had a reason to trust him. 

"Ramel says you're confused that we think you are so important. I guess being important has not always been a good thing for you?"

What. Why. 

....Oh wait is that a question he's supposed to answer? - Out loud, with his mouth? 

They're reading his mind. They'll know exactly what he's thinking anyway, so he might as well try to visibly and obviously cooperate. 

"- I don't really know what you mean by being important, but - I think it's just bad, for people who aren't powerful to...be noticed by people who are powerful..." 

"You're not wrong. But there being an entire other world where no one knows if there's an afterlife and monsters eat most people is very important, so very important people are going to pay attention to it. We have magic that can help you feel less scared, but it's objectively fairly scary. We won't hurt you, not that I expect you to believe that."

...He doesn't believe it, but - oddly, the fact that she's pointing this out directly is, in itself, a little bit reassuring? Masozi nods. 

Lan Xichen had magic that could make you feel less scared. Masozi found that disconcerting at first, but...it did help him think clearly. And being able to think clearly right now seems important. 

Ramel relays this line of thought. :He's - taking this impressively well given how disorienting it must be: he adds. 

A Chelish child wouldn't even look distressed. ....Carissa is aware this does not uncomplicatedly say good things about Chelish childhood. 

"We want to learn more about what's going on back in your school," she says. "We're likely going to try to scry it with magic. For that, we need a description of a specific person in the school. Is there anyone there you know well and can tell us about?"

Masozi considers this. "Lan Xichen. And Wei Wuxian, I guess, and Lan Wangji. What sort of things should I tell you about them."

"How old are they, what do they look like, what are some things that are true about them and not true about any other people...Do you happen to have anything on you that is theirs?"

"They're - I think Wei Wuxian is the same age as me, because he's a new student? And Lan Xichen is older, but - I don't think he's a senior - so two years older than me? Lan Xichen has black hair, it's very straight, it's - long like so?" He gestures to indicate hair a few inches long. "Wei Wuxian doesn't have any hair because he's a new student. They both have sort of...light brown-yellow skin? And their eyelids are - tucked in, sort of?" Masozi can't think of a better way to describe this. "I...don't have anything that belongs to them, these clothes - belonged to the same enclave? But the kid who was going to have them either died or got stuck outside the school. Probably died. Since there's a murderer." 

"Is it the kind of school where the most incompetent kids tend to be killed or the kind of school where a fairly random selection of kids tend to be killed."

"- I think the most incompetent. Because if you're good at things you can protect yourself." That seems like just...how things work? 

"Okay. And if everyone had more ways to protect themselves they'd almost all be fine? I assume it doesn't do them any good if they're so protected they don't grow stronger?"

"I mean, you need to learn spells, that's why it's a school. ...And the homework attacks you if you don't do it. To make sure people do it, I guess." Masozi personally thinks this is very baffling. The homework is interesting and important, too, he doesn't see why further incentives would be needed. 

"All of that seems reasonable if you have a nice afterlife setup! But if you don't we're going to have to change a lot of it and I am not sure what changes will make things better for people instead of just - making them safer but less capable, say, that wouldn't be any good."

Masozi continues to be really confused about this person's priorities here! This is significantly because he's still not really processing the situation, not fully. Confusing and terrifying things keep happening and he hasn't, yet, managed to shift himself into a mental stance where 'try to understand see how the puzzle pieces fit together' is a direction he can take. On some level he's noticed this, and he knows he has to orient, sooner or later, if he wants to survive this and especially if he wants to go back and help anyone else. But he can't quite find purchase, not yet. 

Ramel observes this train of thought. Then leans in closer, stretching out his Thoughtsensing to get a better close-up of the details there...

:Huh: he sends to Carissa, semi-involuntarily. 

Hmmm?

:Nothing wrong. Just - the way he thinks is interesting. Reminds me a little of Leareth: 

Carissa has a hard time imagining Leareth looking like a kicked puppy no matter what you did to him. Huh, she says back. 

Ramel agrees this is true but he's pretty sure that Leareth also hates feeling powerless and disoriented, and it's just that almost no one who knows him now has ever seen him in that situation. 

Masozi shifts his weight. Looks at Carissa with his head tilted a little to one side, and almost a searching expression. 

(He's being kept forcibly calm, and this makes it much, much easier to notice how confused he is, right now.) 

"I - still don't think I get why you care, about - what will make things better for people or not?" 

"That is a very reasonable confusion! I care because it will be good for me personally if the forces of Good triumph and the forces of Good can only have triumphed when everyone in all the universes is rich and safe and immortal. Which is going to take a while but you know, we will get to learn lots of magic in the meantime."

This is the point at which Nayoki arrives. She sweeps into the room. Pauses near Carissa, looks at the kid huddled in front of her - 

:Oh: 

Hmm? she says again, this time slightly irritably. 

:- Nothing urgent. Or fast to explain. It can wait for Leareth, I think. Updates on the last few minutes?: 

He has some descriptions of people we can try to scry, and is confused about Good, which is very understandable.

The new person is scary. Masozi holds very still. 

Maybe she will be less scary if she sits down? 

She does this. "I want to ask you some questions about what's possible to do with magic, in your world. What kind of spells exist and what do they do?" 

"...I don't know that much about it because I didn't go to school. You can do - wards - you can set things on fire - you can make shields..." 

Masozi will fumblingly try to go through a full list of spells he's ever vaguely heard of. It sounds - sort of midway between Velgarth and Golarion magic, in terms of structure? Spells are discrete units with specific incantations that take a certain length of time to cast, they're not freeform, but they don't need to be prepared in advance, if they've been learned, and you can cast more of them per day by 'building mana' which means doing effortful things like exercise on purpose. 

"Can anyone learn it or do you have to be born with a gift for it?"

"Think you gotta be born with it." 

Awww, and it's probably too late for Iomedae to give it to the baby, if it's like Gifts and has to be at conception. 

"How do people learn new spells?" 

"From classes? Or you ask the void for books or find them in the library." 

"Ask...the Void...for books?" 

"Yeah? It gives you books. Only spellbooks, I think? 'Cept the school nurse, she can get medicines too." 

What. 

"What...is the Void."

"I dunno, it's - dark and empty and mals can't go through it? And it's - sort of outside normal space - s'why the school is there, it's safer from mals, I think enclaves are sorta in the void too? And it has...lost things? In it? Or spellbooks might run away there on purpose." 

Glance at Carissa. "I - am not sure if it is the same as our void? It sounds similar but somewhat different." 

"Yeah. ....it goes on forever, right, is it known to be physically consistent everywhere it is?"

Blank look. "Dunno how you'd tell. You can't go in it - or, you can, but then you die." 

"I see. How do people get into the Scholomance?"

"There's a spell, it - grabs you and moves you there instantly? It doesn't work if you're too heavy so you can't be carrying very much." 

:Teleport with a weight limit?: Nayoki asks. 

Plane Shift, presumably? But yeah - it feels like they might have approximately the same building blocks as us but a different kind of sorcery for using them...

:Sorcery, right, that would be the best match for it - but with more spells, maybe...?: 

She turns back to the kid. "What does a wizard's education look like, in your world?"

"In the Scholomance you have - lab class, and shop class, and classes about history and math and things, and languages. - S'important to know lots of languages, then you can get more skills–"

And he remembers Lan Xichen teaching him Mandarin, his voice gentle and intent and infinitely patient - remembers him hugging Masozi and casting his calming spell and promising it would be all right, remembers him sharing his emotions that said so loudly that Masozi was one of his people - 

- remembers the guards arriving at his room, and then Lan Xichen's stony distant face, and the mysterious nameless thing-that-hurts is back, he hadn't known something could hurt that much and he doesn't understand it and suddenly he's sobbing again... 

Nayoki lifts a hand. :- I have no idea what specifically set that off but I think we should probably pause it for a moment there. ...No, Lara - no one touch him, it is not going to help: 

She's going to need to get more competent at crying children before the baby arrives. 

Nayoki does not have any particular skill with upset children either, despite her particular Gift. She...can hold very still and wait for the kid to calm down? 

His mind is under very intense strain but he's clearly wrestling for control, including via some concerningly violent squashing-and-stepping-on large swathes of his mind. When he stops crying, he stares fixedly ahead. 

Nayoki is still trying to figure out exactly what bit of that question, or his answer, was so upsetting. Was it the languages? Either way, she's not exactly sure where to go next, aside from waiting for Leareth.

Yeah, Carissa's got nothing. Her mother would have slapped her and sent her to her room, but Carissa's not sure this helps in the short term as opposed to just helping with incentives in the long term.