"Maybe you should talk to the guy who was asking me earlier if I had gotten anything more detailed off you about what 'hentai' is. He seemed very curious."

She Thoughtspeaks the whole facility. 

Hey, everyone who has been turned on by vague rumors about me or things I said! Come take a number! Where taking a number is a convention from my homeworld where I start with 1, and then call 2 after that, and then call 3 after that, and so on! Numbers not necessarily assigned in the orders you arrive because I'm in a bad mood right now and am going to frontload everyone who wants to beat me up.

She gets a number of takers! Including from the Thoughtsenser who thinks tentacles-for-genitals is the most fascinating and intriguing sexual concept he's ever heard of, and has been trying and mostly failing not to fantasize about this for a while!

Also there's a mage who would be pretty interested in trying various magical restraints and hitting her with some levinbolts, he's always wanted to do that and he's picked up some rumors that she might be both into that and not likely to be maimed or killed by it? 

Yep for mysterious reasons she can only be killed with her secret weakness, which is secret, but not levinbolts.

There are a couple of people in the facility who failed to come take a number but should have, but whatever, she'll call them by name when it's their turn. 

What a recipe for a nice relaxing day without any moral dilemmas.

Leareth still has SO MANY unanswered questions, but he did get the hint that she doesn't really want to continue that avenue of conversation right now, and also apparently he can't trust himself to stay on topic when interacting with her, rather than ending up having tangential emotions that Leareth had thought he had finished processing centuries if not millennia ago. 

He spends a while taking notes by himself, going through everything he's learned so far and trying but utterly failing to fit it together into a coherent concept. His closest guess is that the source of Elfyn's magical powers is just a god - a god which is for some reason specifically interested in human sexuality - but that doesn't feel right, it feels like his mind is trying too hard to fit it into some known schema, and also it doesn't explain why she seems to think that she lives in a ballad with a plot. 

It's intensely frustrating to catch a glimpse of something powerful enough to solve all of his problems, but to have accessing it or even understanding it gated on...experiencing human connection and romantic feelings and wanting to have sex with her? 

Leareth spends a while mulling on whether he has any angles to just - nudge his brain directly in that direction. He's not sure. 

Eventually he goes to bed. Maybe in the morning he'll have had some key insight, and if not, probably Elfyn will keep chasing him? Since apparently he's her 'quest' in Velgarth? 

...And - very surprisingly from one angle, not surprisingly at all from another - Leareth finds himself in the frozen north, standing with an army at his back, facing a silver-haired man in ragged Whites. 

(Vanyel is not looking forward to this at all. It was definitely, absolutely justified, to ask Melody to unblock his Foresight so he could try to demand some answers from Leareth, because Elfyn was blatantly kidnapped from the middle of the Palace and there's only one obvious culprit. However, that doesn't change the fact that this is going to be the most awkward and agonizing social interaction of his entire life.) 

He walks forward, unhesitating. "Leareth. We need to talk." 

It doesn't take Leareth very long to orient. He's been mulling on the general situation for the entire evening. 

"- Yes, we do. I have a number of questions for you." 

Oh NO. 

"I suppose you have already gathered that I was responsible for detaining Elfyn Everyoung, the - alien with mysterious powerful sex-related magic - who was recently in Haven. I expect you to be unhappy about this, but - for what it is worth, she was not unhappy about it?" At least, not at the start. "She seemed to think it was the next 'plot hook' in her 'quest' to fight all the evils of the world by seducing them." 

Are they literally actually having this conversation, out loud, with their mouths? This is terrible. 

"We figured it was you, yes. I...can't actually say I'm surprised about his reaction– er, Elfyn was a man, with me. I knew about the - fact that they can change bodies, like that." Vanyel is now BLUSHING which is just humiliating. "But the thing about...plot, and quests, that came up before." 

Leareth can tell that Vanyel is uncomfortable with this, but he's not deterred by mass murder; he definitely isn't going to hesitate here just because of some social discomfort. 

"She - implied that her powers might be able to resolve my difficulties with the gods, here. Which would obviously be of the utmost importance. Inconveniently, she is literally unable to speak of it openly with me. Even when she tries, it just - the words do not parse." 

WHY IS HE SURPRISED that within a few candlemarks of meeting Elfyn, Leareth immediately jumped to scheming how to fight the gods??? Also aaaaaaaaaaah! 

"I already half-expect that - whatever is going on there - will be too thorough to route around in this way, but she is claiming that she will not be able to explain any more until we are 'closer', by which she mostly seems to mean our having had sex. I think you did have sex with her - them - so I am wondering if there is anything helpful you can convey?" 

WHY is this the thing that has to be happening in his life right now? 

...He does feel slightly bad for Leareth, though. Even if it's also on some level quite amusing to watch Leareth being so visibly confused. It feels like it needs a stronger word than just 'confused'. Discombobulated? Flummoxed? Befuddled? 

"I don't know if I can help you that much," partly because, to his sudden eternal humiliation, Vanyel is noticing that he didn't...really make that much of an effort to ask? It was just really awkward, after that first conversation where Elfyn conveyed that he literally couldn't talk about his magic. And even afterward, it was– he would look so sad and tired, sometimes, talking about his past, and that was awful. And there were plenty of not-even-slightly-awful things to do instead. 

"- Er, he did say at first that he couldn't tell me anything? Later on he, ummm, said he was from another world, somewhere very very far away. I know it sounds really weird and crazy but it's - not like it was less weird than...everything. He said he was here to add a," embarrassed cough, "um, a 'supervillain' to his 'harem.' ...I did immediately assume he meant you but I hadn't wanted to say anything before I had a chance to speak with the Senior Circle about it. Which didn't get resolved before you kidnapped him. And he didn't really ask." 

Leareth listens. Nods, thoughtfully. "I had noticed. That she is - not asking all of the questions that I would be asking. She seems -" 

Honestly, what he's thinking right now is that she reminds him a little of Vanyel, but that seems unproductive to say. 

"- she seems tired, sometimes, about the - scale of power and influence involved," he says instead. 

"...Oh, gods. Yes. That. He - so I don't know if this came up, yet, but he was - basically a normal person, before the magic chose him." Like Vanyel himself. "And he's...not entirely glad it did. He said he's - obviously not going to stop doing things with it, and he does actually really like the 'supervillain harem' thing, but he - did say to me that sometimes he gets really tired." 

Leareth nods. That...fits, with the rest of what he's seen so far. 

"I hope you were able to exchange some mutually satisfying hugs about your similar life experiences?" 

Why is this the conversation they're having?????? What is Leareth even trying to accomplish by asking him about that? 

Leareth sighs. It's not a very obvious sigh but it's there. 

"I am not sure where to go from here. This is - unexpectedly complicated. But, since I do place significant trust in your judgement, I might as well ask. Do you trust her?" 

What??? 

"I - hadn't really been thinking of it that way," Vanyel admits, after concluding that ten seconds of awkward silence is plenty of time to waste on mental flailing. "I...guess not enough to tell him about you. ....I never thought for a moment that he would hurt me. I think probably he won't try to hurt you either? He's going to want you to quit using blood-magic for all your infrastructure projects but I wouldn't be surprised if he can just pull out a better solution for that." 

"....Most recently she seemed very concerned that maybe telling us about advanced technological solutions to various problems would result in our civilization wiping each other out? I - was not sure how to be reassuring on that, or whether I could reassure her while being honest." 

Wow. Vanyel isn't sure he has any idea what to say in response to that. 

"- Are you all right?" he hears himself say, even though this is totally not something he intended to say out loud. 

Leareth shrugs, slow and deliberate. He looks...tired, more than anything else. 

"This is good news in expectation, I think, so - I am better than I was before?"