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I know everyone wanted a thread where Leareth fixed all of the Survivorverse's problems, but this is not that thread.
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????????????????????????????????????

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....She will worry about what's going on with Leareth later, once the situation is at least slightly under control. 

:I will talk to him: she sends. :You should go elsewhere. Certainly if we are going to jump to removing the set-command: 

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:I will be fine here, I think. I want to explain that I did not do this on purpose and have no idea who his enemies are: 

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Something is VERY WRONG and Nayoki still can't really wrap her head around what, but trying to drag Leareth out of here against his will isn't going to help the situation either. 

She re-focuses all of her Sight on the armored man - mage-sight as well, why not - and reaches out with Mindspeech. :Can you understand me?: 

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And suddenly his mind shifts as his attention alters - weights changing, probabilities altering, theories discarded from even basic consideration and new ones rising - He did not know that anyone with this power existed but had strong reasons to suspect it was physically possible, a concept of telepathy that does not quite match up exactly to her Mindspeech but comes very close -

:I can. And you me?:

He is paying a lot of intuitive attention to the possibility that she is the one speaking with him, but has not confirmed it yet, watching tiny details of her facial expression and body language shift (In spite of his helmet's faceplate not appearing to have any eyeholes) as they communicate.

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:I can: And she can see everything else as well, but she doesn't strictly speaking have to confirm that just yet. She desperately wants Leareth's advice to navigate this conversation, and is absolutely not going to seek it when something is still mysteriously wrong with him and he won't LEAVE THE ROOM even though he might end up MURDERED. 

:I - my name is Nayoki. You are in the region north of a kingdom called Valdemar, that I doubt you have heard of. We did not kidnap you. My - colleague was testing a Gate technique and believes that he interrupted your, er, situation by accident: 

How does he react to this? 

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The odds that this is a bizarrely consistent hallucination remain significantly higher than the odds that any of this is true, but aside from that his instincts are telling him that she's telling the truth, and so the highest-expected-value thing to do is play along inside the dream while not taking any decisions that risk the lives of members of the Royal Court, should his actions here be being read.

(This is what one part of his brain is doing. Another part has already leaped ahead to conclude that conditional on this being real he is in a parallel or pocket universe based on his knowledge of history, the existence of Voidwrath - a concrete concept that stays readable for only a moment, (armies of monsters/a living story/worlds contained in a spell/limitless power and childish intelligence), and the one proper noun he has so far heard. A third part is calculating how best to communicate, and a fourth part is trying to map out exactly what is happening in Detroit, back where he came from, on instinct, a fifth part Is estimating the odds that Mindseech comes with Thoughtsensing or adjacent concepts thereto, and none of this has yet reached the explicit verbal level.)

: The existence of multiple universes is almost certainly more important than the actions I was taking prior to my arrival here.: Hopefully Thei can take over and get everyone out - they drilled the plan perfectly - but and he stops thinking about that.

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All of that is intriguing and also even more strange than the previous tidbits. Nayoki makes a mental note of the 'Voidwrath' concept, and the 'Detroit' placename, and that the man wasn't fighting solo, apparently he was there with a team of allies - who he must have become separated from, since Leareth didn't mention seeing them - and one of them was named Thei. She wonders who he was fighting, and why, but doesn't particularly expect him to feel comfortable just telling her, and he's (unfortunately) already caught on to the possibility that she's reading all of his thoughts and not just what he's trying to send deliberately. He seems to be rather good at controlling his own thoughts, if perhaps not quite as good as Leareth. 

:Almost certainly!: she agrees, ignoring the urge to demand to know what he DID to Leareth. :Anyway, my colleague says that he interrupted what looked to be a fight. Do you expect pursuit - does your world's magic enable instantaneous travel, by Gates or otherwise?: 

She includes Leareth as well, because even if he's worrying her, she doesn't expect things to go better if he's not kept oriented to the situation as it evolves. 

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:Ask if he is injured: Leareth interjects. :He seems well-protected enough, but the fight was - violent: 

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This is, on the one hand, a reasonable clarification, and on the other hand it also feels off for Leareth's usual prioritization????? 

:Is something the matter with him?: she sends, privately, to the Healers. 

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:Not physically?: But the concern is evident in the Healer's reply as well. :He - seems to be behaving uncharacteristically, though. We thought maybe a head injury, but nothing's obvious to Healing-Sight: 

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Fine. Nayoki can briefly turn her own sight on him. Mage-sight, at least; Leareth habitually shields out at least half of her Mindhealing-Sight, and strongly dislikes when she peeks at him without asking. 

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The helmet is still on his head, and still very magical, in a bizarre alien way! 

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She turns back to the strange man. :Where were you when this happened? Are you familiar with the artifact that seems to have come along with you?: She gestures at the helmet. Her mindvoice is only slightly leaking hostility and blame. 

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:I do not, though it is not impossible.: He clearly has a very, very large category of things that are theoretically possible through superpowers - he isn't thinking of it as magic, though he can translate instantly - but that he does not know of anyone who can do. 

He was trying to pull off a successful evacuation; if the plan went appropriately, Thei could have incapacitated Radiant (the woman in white, apparently with ?compulsions?) and there would have been very little violence; unsurprisingly, it had not gone that cleanly.

:A battle took me through a museum. I have never seen that helmet before and have no idea what, if anything, it does.: He assumes it does nothing, essentially on base rates.

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Nayoki makes a mental note of 'Radiant', pinning a name to Leareth's brief memory of the flying magical not-a-Herald, and of the not-compulsions that his world's magic can apparently pull off. 

:I see. Thank you: She even mostly believes him; his mind is bizarrely structured enough that it's not impossible he could slip a deception past her Truthseeing, but she doubts it. :Anyway. Are you injured? Do you need anything urgently?: 

She's suddenly sort of curious if his armor actually comes off. And if not, how he eats, or goes to the bathroom. 

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He would actually very strongly like not be paralyzed, but thinks it is pretty reasonable of them to not provide this, because although he doesn't want to particularly, he expects he could kill them all before they noticed he was trying. (This is not so much a boastful thought as it is one of many constant combat estimations.)

:A slightly more complete explanation of where I am, and a chance to move, once you've made whatever security precautions you need to?:

(His armor does come off, that's visible in his thoughts, but he's not currently thinking about the details of how.)

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Nayoki isn't delighted but she's hardly surprised. 

:Leareth: she sends privately. :I would really very much rather you go elsewhere, ideally an entirely different facility, while we negotiate with him: 

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:Is your impression that he is hostile? That was not my sense, particularly. I expect we can help each other: 

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This is SO WEIRD she is not used to getting into stupid confusing arguments with Leareth!!! 

:Not currently. He was - thinking that he could easily kill all of us before we had time to react, which having seen his mind as well as the abilities of his armor, I do not actually doubt. He is not currently inclined to do so but I think he is not pleased about the set-command: 

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:That seems quite straightforward to remedy! You could just remove it and apologize for reacting hastily in a confusing situation: 

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?????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Nayoki is fairly good for a normal human at controlling her visible reactions, but Leareth knows her very well, and he can sense that she's startled and confused and discomfited by something

- it actually takes him several seconds to reason through why, because it feels so natural, but - no, he thinks in historical situations anywhere near this tense, he would have been the one immediately making the decision to evacuate. 

He just, for some reason, very badly doesn't want to leave Nayoki here to take on the risk in his place, let alone one of his more junior people. And he even less wants to leave the powerful stranger who he just accidentally kidnapped alone and paralyzed in a room - 

Now that he's actually noticing it, this is very odd. 

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:Leareth?: 

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:...Something is strange about this. I - will evacuate elsewhere, but - I wish to stay within Mindspeech range, so that I can speak with him myself if he requests it. And you should remove the set-command and then explain some things about our world: 

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