How long would it take, hypothetically, if that person was really fucking terrified and unusually good at spellcraft and willing to burn a lot of the spellsilver trying to make it happen as fast as they possibly could.

...less time than that.

She should take the blanket and the spellsilver and the satchel with her name on it and leave now, and tomorrow she'll decide whether to, with a new very very nice Bag of Holding, risk going back.

She's used an Infernal Healing, two Feather Falls, two Rope Tricks, two Invisibilities, a Detect Thoughts, two Flies, a Nondetection, a Gaseous Form and a Protection from Energy, three Dimension Doors a Sending and a Scry and a Teleport. It is a ludicrously dangerous amount of low-on-spells to be. She has one more second circle spot she's been planning to use for a Rope Trick and she can't even put it safely up in the sky because she has nothing left above second circle. She has three first circle slots. And it's...not yet noon.

Realistically it's not going to be safe to come back tomorrow. 

She prepares and casts Comprehend Languages, and shapeshifts into something with darkvision rather than light the cave again. What's on the inventory list?

And...what does Altarrin's note say?

Inventory list: soooooooooooo many protective mage-artifacts, including half a dozen Altarrin never mentioned existed. There are a set of six that supposedly shield different aspects of mage-energy that covers nearly all kinds of attack. There are three for different kinds of physical force shielding and one for non-magical heat-shielding - rated to let her walk safely through a bonfire although it'll run down the power reservoir fast to do that repeatedly. There's one that should let her shrug off mage-techniques that aren't technically attacks, like paralysis-spells. There's another Thoughtsensing talisman, of a weird different design; the note says it's not known in the Eastern Empire, which provides a little extra security. She can make herself invisible to Velgarth scrying. She can make her person not a valid Gate search-target (the notes are very clear that this does not block Gates in her vicinity, that's much much harder, but it means a mage can't use knowledge of her life-force and magic, or anything she's known to be wearing, as a search-target.) There's one that will form an air-bubble around her if she needs to spend a while underwater, though it's only good for twenty minutes. 

They're all at full power and there are are four of each kind, and notes on how often they need to be re-powered by a Velgarth mage. The least durable are the physical force and mage-attack shields, which last a day if she walks around with them at full power all the time, three days if she keeps them on passive mode but she won't, like a Velgarth mage, be able to activate them instantly in the case of a sudden attack. There are instructions on how to interface with them non-magically, she can toggle the powerful shield ones on and off by moving a bead along a wire. The ones against detection are permanently on once she takes them out of their boxes, and will last three days each except for the Gate one which is two days. 

A note added by hand at the bottom: Altarrin is apologetic that he didn't give these to her earlier, but they're (deliberately) obscure designs that either aren't known at all in the Empire - some are only known by him personally - or are at least very rare and nonstandard, and it would have given away information that he very much didn't want given away. Not to mention most people don't go around constantly shielded against six different aspects of mage-attacks and it would have stood out. Also, none of them were technically made by "Altarrin", so even if someone decides to do a completely ridiculous search by trying to track every magic artifact that bears Altarrin's signature, they won't show up. 

...The note on the satchel is literally just her name, though it's underlined twice as though to indicate importance and urgency. It continues to be impossible to get into without a Dispel Magic. 

Damn it. 

Hundreds, probably thousands of hours of work.

It's what he was busy with, while she was annoyed he was so busy. 

If she's crying, no one else will be able to tell even on pastwatching, because it's dark, and also crying would be very stupid. Just because Altarrin was, fucking obviously, smart and had a plan he was magically bound to convey to her only indirectly, and she - was too stuck in her own head to notice - she didn't even spend much time considering fleeing, because the Emperor liked her and she felt special and - and she was a fucking idiot and how many times, right, can you be a fucking idiot, before you start to wonder if maybe you just deserve to be a paving stone forever WHICH IS NOT EVEN AVAILABLE ON THIS HORRIBLE PLANET YET.

She can't take it with her. Knowing how much it's worth doesn't change that at all. If she sets all of her ONE ACTUAL TALENT WHICH CLEARLY DOES NOT REALLY REQUIRE ANY INTELLIGENCE OR SHE, THE STUPIDEST PERSON, WOULD SUCK AT IT on the task of making a Bag of Holding, she might have something workable in half an hour.

If Altarrin's in fact recovered and they're using him to look for her she doesn't have half an hour. The fact it'd be really fucking impressive to build a bag of holding in half an hour doesn't actually matter.

She is glad that she read it so she knows what she's leaving behind, but the part of her that's glad about that is also the part that would be glad to be on fire right now. 

Unfathomable, how she is literally the most intelligent person on the face of this planet and this much of a goddamned idiot.

She leaves without it. Spellsilver, and some blankets, and the packet with her name on it, and the knowledge that Altarrin arranged that for her, which is maybe worth something in itself, though probably not in fact worth the wasted several minutes of crying.

Maybe they won't ask him where she is in the first half hour. 

They are not, in fact, going to ask Altarrin in the next half hour. (Or the next six candlemarks.) 

Once they've confirmed his identity (insofar as they can given the level of uncertainty about otherwordly magic), the Emperor orders the Thoughtsenser out of the room and into quarantine, in case there's contagious mind-control and it's cumulative. Nearby; they may need him again. He can have lots of books to read and nice food, they're not trying to make this a punishment. 

Altarrin certainly seems helpless. They have a mage watching (from well outside the room) ready to slam more compulsions on him if he so much as twitches or if any of the current ones do anything weird. The Emperor tells the temporary lead Mage-Inquisitor that he thinks it makes sense to interrogate Altarrin later, once he can speak in coherent sentences; it might be lower risk to do it with less contact, relaying verbal questions by communication-spell through someone unimportant in the room. 

This isn't putting maximal priority on intelligence. His explanation is that he doesn't know how much it would help. If he can really do arbitrary mind-control, it would be stupid of Caris to leave Altarrin as a repository of too many secrets, and if Altarrin does know key secrets it would have been stupid of Caris to heal him. 

What's the status on pastwatching? 

It's really confusing! They think Caris appeared from midair and was very briefly visible and there were a couple of mage-energy signatures at oddly precise intervals (unfamiliar ones) and then he wasn't visible but was presumably still there. There was a rope in midair and the talisman was on it and pastwatching is having trouble resolving what was holding the rope up - it didn't leak mage-energy. 

...Going further back, at an earlier point there were two dangling ropes? The previous one fell out of the sky a brief interval before any of this started - there was maybe a mage-energy signature but a very very faint one. 

There's the Gate. There's a visible Altarrin. He falls normally for a kind of unnerving interval and then there's another unfamiliar spell signature - but maybe similarish to the first one after Caris appears? - and he's still falling but slowly and then, again at an oddly precise interval, there's yet another spell-signature, this one more different. Then a final spell-signature, different again and - more powerful? Brighter? 

The second rope and talisman fall. They found both of them on the ground; they don't actually, at this point, look magical. 

They are memorizing impressions and getting them down in notation as best they can, in case Altarrin recognizes any of this once he's recovered enough for a non-mindreading interrogation. 

He'll keep updating people and coordinating searches and arranging obvious precautions. For some reason, none of them have anything to do with a cave several hundred miles away. 

 She makes a single-use item of Teleport first. She's really expecting they'll show before she finishes it, but the area around the cave is peaceful and quiet.

She makes a Bag of Holding. Not even a small one, one big enough for everything in the cave.

It's been about an hour.

No one on this planet will appreciate how ludicrously fast that is but it does slightly soothe the desire to be a paving stone. 

It's possible that there's a trap laid for her. It's also possible that Altarrin, who is clearly way smarter than she accounted for and way better at planning ahead than she accounted for, has some strategy for not giving up locations when captured.

It's also possible that Bastran isn't trying to send his army after her now that she's made the point that it might be a god plot to kill her. 

They did a bunch of scrying. They know it didn't work. They now know that she was somehow sitting in undetectable pocket dimensions right above their city. They saw her Teleport, and don't know it was their only one. Maybe the first set of questions to Altarrin isn't 'where is she' but 'what do you know about how her magic works'.

Which still result in them steadily narrowing down on her actual capabilities and being much more dangerous to oppose, but -

She goes back for the stuff. Higher risk of death now, lower risk of death in the long run. That's how it goes sometimes but it is in fact pretty emotionally brutal having to make that tradeoff with quite large chances of death multiple times in the same morning.

She can't be sorry she rescued Altarrin, even though this cave would be safe if she hadn't. He did this for her. It would be - really something - to realize that he'd done this for her if she hadn't tried at all to save him. 

Ambush?

No ambush! The cave is quiet and undisturbed and continues to be that way for however long it takes her to load her Bag of Holding. 

It feels like implausibly good luck. You shouldn't expect that when the gods want to kill you. Of course, Altarrin presumably chose this location for the lack of god-influence.

She will pick up all the stuff and put it in her Bag of Holding. Go human-of-local-ethnicity. Then she will Teleport....seventy miles from here. Southwest, why not. Hopefully not far enough to put her in god-territory, hopefully far enough to be outside a reasonable search radius. 

(She cannot at all afford to burn spellsilver at this rate and really needs to make a Ring of Invisibility and some Boots of Teleport. But that will take a while, even for her, and a growingly loud voice in her head is pointing out that she said she'd surrender said she'd surrender why's she doing all this running -)

Okay actually. This is going to become a problem.

She needs, in order to serve the Empire, to be able to think. Altarrin thought so, and he's the expert on the Empire. And fighting gods is hard enough when you're using your whole brain; it doesn't work at all if you aren't. 

Can she.... imagine a different Carissa who does not happen to be a subject of the Empire. And imagine what that imaginary Carissa who is only here as a mental aid to help the real Carissa serve the Empire better would have to say. 

...the mind control is bad. It was bad for Altarrin and it's bad for you. 

You know, if everything hadn't exploded, I think you could've convinced the Emperor to take it off Altarrin. Not off you, not right away, but you could've pointed out it was why Altarrin was working himself to death, that he was leaning into it wrong.

But now, of course, you can't convince anyone of anything because that has been established to be you having mind control powers. 

Thank you, extremely helpful, what I really needed here was more ways to replay the events of my life up to this point and imagine how well it would've gone if I hadn't been weak. 

I think that in the long run it will serve the Eastern Empire best if there aren't gods trying to fight it, and that you and Altarrin have a better chance outside the Empire of succeeding at that. 

See, at some point that's just too much of a stretch. If they're literally trying to kill me, no, but - Bastran wants to help me surrender safely. I told him I would.

He didn't believe you! It wasn't an operational context in which anyone would take that as a promise!

He wanted to believe me - are we hypothesizing here that the way I feel about Bastran is compulsion-induced and you, without the compulsion -

I mean, he compares well to all of the other absolute monarchs I've ever met. 

But you can't achieve your incredibly ambitious life goals under mind control. 

Then I have to convince him of that. Turn myself in and convince everyone that I don't have weird mind control powers in the first place, and then - tell him true relevant things. He can decide to release us if he wants to.

You could cast a Dispel Magic on yourself tomorrow not to get at your compulsions that you're supposed to have, but in case you have any you aren't supposed to -

No. I can't. - actually okay I'm stopping that mental experiment it feels like a very dangerous kind of mental experiment to be running and if I explore the space of things that I might have other reasons to do which would incidentally solve this problem then it's going to get harder to do.