"I understand why you asked us to swear not to harm you, now. There aren't--back home there aren't any mals smart enough to trick people other than, like, mimicking someone's voice from the other side of a door. Who is Leareth and why did a goddess try to kill him?"

:....I wanted to talk to him a bit more before, er, telling you everything about him. But on reflection it'd have helped if we'd told you more about the situation earlier, so you'd understand why we're so nervous. Leareth - is a very powerful mage who was working on a plan to - make the world better, but that meant opposing some of the gods. So they keep trying to kill him. Leareth...is also very very ruthless, he's not a nice person, but he's - he actually does just want to fix all our stupid problems. I've read his mind, I know. ...Gods, he'd want to fix your world's stupid problems even more: 

"That makes sense. I--it's good that someone has an idea for how to do something about the god problem. I can see why he'd have to be very cautious."

Jisa nods. And then lets her head stay hanging forward, because she's still so, so tired. 

Joshel is the next one to interrupt. :Heard back on the relay. All the descriptions match. Do - you have any way of contacting them? Because right now we don't have the faintest idea where they are, and if Karse or Iftel has them, then...that means Vkandis has them. And that they'll only end up hearing that side of the story: 

"I--it's possible? I've never tried to do anything more than a mile away . . ." She should be excited about the research project. In junior year she would have been excited about the research project. Being tired has never been a reason not to do the thing in front of her. "I could try casting runestones to find out what direction they're in? I'd need 24 small rocks and some way to write on them, charcoal or a pencil or something." There are divination spells that don't need materials, but for something that's pushing the edges of what a spell is supposed to be for she'll do best with runestones. They've always worked better for her than anything else; she doesn't know if it's because dropping them makes it sort of in-affinity or because she expects them to work or what.

:We can get you small stones, sure, and charcoal. Is it important what type of stone?:

"No, just small enough to hold several in my hands at once."

:Should they all be the same size and shape?: 

"Not especially, just bigger than a pebble and smaller than my fist. I could go to wherever your rocks are and find some if that's easier? I'd just want to wake Abigail first."

Shrug. :Everything's covered with snow. I'll just send Joshel to have a look around for you: 

Clearly she needs to get better at modeling this whole thing where items are just lying around in places rather than being in a designated room for that kind of item or a designated location for stuff belonging to a person. "Thank you. Sorry for the trouble. If I tell you which direction and roughly how far away will that be enough for you to find them?"

:For the stones– oh, sorry, you mean for the other students. It would certainly be enough to narrow things down. Might not be enough to actually go retrieve them. Which we're going to have a lot of trouble doing anyway because none of our Gate-capable mages are in very good shape, right now: 

"I don't really have anything for long distance travel either but I could give someone some mana if that's the problem. If they're all injured that's harder." 

:Sandra's injured, but Leareth and I just have awful backlash. Er, do wizards get backlash - where if you use too much magic, you get exhausted and have a headache and doing more magic hurts?: 

"No, we just run out of mana. A lot of spells and potions that make you stronger or more alert or whatever have a nasty comedown though."

Jisa nods. :Your painkiller spell did help with my headache. Though I think I'd still better not Gate. Er, how long will the rune stones thing take you to cast, once you have the stones for it?: 

"Like ten minutes? Maybe more if they're really far away."

:Er, what's the furthest you've ever done? Is there a range limit on the spell?: 

"I learned it in the Scholomance, and there isn't any distance more than a mile in the Scholomance and also the dimensions aren't super fixed because of all the void, so it was long enough for everything I needed but that's not saying much. The book I got it out of only talked about finding stuff in the same town but it wasn't clear if that was a range limit or the author just didn't care about anything farther away."

:I....suspect they're almost definitely further than a mile away. Probably hundreds of miles. The battlefield up north is five hundred miles from here, and the capital of Karse - if they actually were evacuated there - is about that far as well. Er, is the energy-cost going to be higher for longer distances? We might be able to give you extra mage-energy for it: 

Somehow. She's certainly not in any shape for that right now. But. One thing at a time. If that's the next bottleneck then she'll damned well figure it out. 

"It will probably cost more for longer distances but I can get mana from one of the others if you're out. Wait, didn't you say you had big pools of it? Is your pool out?" Enclaves don't, as a rule, get so low mana that one divination is a hard decision, but a war would do it if anything could.

:Er, no, but - I don't know that you'll be able to pull directly from a node, since you don't have the same training and probably don't even have the same kind of mage-gift? And so probably we need to either teach you how or channel it over to you or do something else, and that sounds....really hard to do while I still have backlash. Sorry: 

And then a Mindtouch taps at Jisa's shields, politely but with urgency. :Jisa. Are you busy. We have a situation and I need you: 

....What. 

She is too tired for this. 

:I - what -?: