They're back in Krin's lair! Looking for more notes, more notes, more notesss. She hums to herself as she pokes around his desk, searching once again for another secret compartment to expand her collection. Ideally not bloody, this time!

No, actually, they're here to find some more amethyst, or another phial, enough to grow and hunt what they need to make it through the winter. Searching for secret compartments is the way though; she's poking around the long-since-raided chests again, seeing if they reveal any new secrets, searching for loose floorboards in the rough and uneven ground, and is working herself up for the climb down the ladder to the ritual room.

Ooh score, she pushed the desk and it caught on a plank and it wiggled a little and she saw a button, she loves buttons. Rasha doesn't love buttons though, she'll have to wait till she's going down to test it.

Okay. She can do this. Nothing new's gonna be down there. She opens the trapdoor, makes eye contact with Lorelei and nods, and then starts descending into the space below.

Button time! She stomps on it sharply. Ooh that's a satisfying click. Now, what's this one going to do?

"Lorelei what was that noise. Lorelei." Even as she's saying it she's scrambling back up the ladder. Oh gods, she can hear a circle charging up in the walls, chzn, chzn, chzn, what did Lorelei do—

She tried to pry up the boards so she could see the patterns of the circle the button triggered, but she was too slow! Oh well. With a final chzn-pop, they both vanish in a flash and re-appear Somewhere Else.

If this new location were embodied somehow and asked to pick the three words that best describe it, it might choose: snow, charming, and screaming.

They land in a deep drift of powdery snow where it has mounded up against the side of a cozy-looking log cabin. In the distance, a repeated, rubbery sort of thwacking is occasionally audible over the panicked screams.

Ooh, a new place. For it to be snowing they must have been sent a long way, there were no mountains anywhere near that might have snow this time of year.

What. She has a chunk of purple crystal wrapped in gold wires in her hand immediately, other hand touching a tangle of string around a purple blob on her belt. But this is enough new, shocking information that it takes her a couple seconds to do more than whisper "Lor get your artifact out."

...Panicked screams? Oh gods, people. She starts bolting towards the noises.

She blinks twice before starting to run behind Rasha, crystal wrapped in gold wire in her hand as well.

There are other buildings visible through the trees, making a small village. The screams are coming from only a little ways away, where a group of ragged people are fighting off a giant black tendril, armed with farming implements. The tendril is as thick around as a tree, and clearly almost as durable, because it has smashed a whole clearing in the forest. It leads away, back into the snowy forest, before vanishing out of sight.

The snow has been stained red, but none of the people seem injured — never mind, that man was just smacked into a tree by the tendril and is now lying there insensate. A child, sitting on the roof of one of the buildings behind the fighting, shoots him with the sniper-rifle version of a water pistol.

Sniper rifle version of a what now?

Damn, projectile isn't going to work here. She slides her right hand along her belt to a different knot of string and then the gem in her hand pulses with light and an explosion of pure force detonates at the base of the tendril, on the side opposite Rasha and the villagers.

(How does it react to the equivalent of 6kg of TNT detonating against its skin?)

It writhes in panic. Not because it is injured — the wound closes about as fast as it opens — but because it is still painful. The probable-villagers take advantage of its distraction to harass it. They can't do lasting injury to it either, but the tendril is at least more cautious in its motions, now.

The man who was hit against the tree stands back up and joins the fray again, apparently no worse for wear.

That did less than expected. Two more loud booms ring out as she repeats the casting in quick succession.

It did do less than expected. That man standing up again is also surprising. What might a solution to this puzzle look like... She unhooks her staff from her pack and starts tracing patterns in the air quickly, hands steady and sure. What looks like glowing thread follows the tip of her staff as she traces each one, and once a pattern is done its thread separates from the staff, revolving slowly around her body and writhing.

Mind's, Compass', Mind's, Alidade's, Scout's—

There is now an iota representing this particular tendril on top of her stack. It is presumably coming from somewhere, but as far as her magic is concerned this tendril is its own thing. It wraps around one of the villagers, who beats at it with a pitchfork.

Good, this would be much more work if the tendril and the body were one entity. Trapping it is the obvious thing to try, going to need a large mass to hold it down given the smashed trees.

— Gemini Decomposition, Introspection, Compass' II, Mind's, Alidade's, Five, hmm no let's go bigger, Evanition, Ten, Multiplicative Dstl., Prospector's, Prospector's, Additive Dstl., Rotation Gambit II, Subtractive Dstl., Gaia's Reflection, Ten, —

Shit, need to free that guy. Clip the artifact back on her belt, unhook her staff and touch a different knot. Scribe's Reflection, Hermes' Gambit, and he's on her stack. Is he looking more-up-than-down, yes he is, okay what does she need. She pauses for a second, then carefully traces more glowing white runes into the air, which join the two spinning around her already. Gemini Decomposition to get another one on the stack, this pattern to get a ten, wait I need to not drop him let's Introspection so we do it all at once and Blink so he gets out then 100, Blue Sun's Nadir to not drop him sort out catching him later Retrospection, does that look good, yes it does, okay Hermes' Gambit.

With a ringing clang the patterns spiralling around her vanish, and the trapped villager teleports forward in the direction he's looking ten metres, then starts slowly levitating higher into the air.

Um. This was not a particularly expected outcome. He was expecting to just get decapitated and have someone grab his head, but this probably works too?

The kid with the squirt gun hits him with a stream of water, and his ribs stop being crushed. He can't really do anything about the fight from up here, though, so he just kind of floats.

The tendril seems pretty confused to no longer be holding anything. It gropes around blindly and one of the other villagers takes the opportunity to stab it with a pitchfork, not that this does much in the long run.

Okay! We'll do the accounting on how much that cost later.

... What's Lorelei doing, haven't seen anything from her yet.

— Multiplicative Dstl., Additive Dstl., Aether's Reflection, 15, Multiplicative Dstl., —

Agh, whatever that is probably isn't going to go well for anyone nearby. "Get away from the beast!" She calls out, frantically gesticulating for people to get back from the tendril.

... that sure is a foreign language. She sounds kind of urgent, though, which is weird?

One of the villagers shouts back something that is probably a question. The one currently stabbing the tendril gets backhanded (back-tendriled?) into another, and they go down in a twist of limbs and crunching bones. The kid on the roof shoots them with some more water, and they stumble back to their feet.

Wow that sounded fucked up. Her adrenaline-filled brain has finally clicked together that these people aren't nearly as incapacitated by horrible violence as she's expecting. How is the water... doing that?

— Earthmover, Retrospection! Now, gotta get into ambit. Lorelei stops carving patterns into the air for the couple seconds it takes her to sprint closer to the beast, and then waves her staff through the final Hermes' Gambit with glee in her eyes. How's it gonna react to this?

The same clang sounds out, this time heralding a rectangular prism of earth vanishing from beneath the tendril and re-appearing ten metres in the air above it. Anything within ten metres of the thing will possibly have a bad time when subjected to a sudden 10m drop, rapidly followed by something like four thousand tonnes of subsoil, till, and maybe bedrock crashing down on top of it.

Oh, yup. That explains what the foreign magi were shouting about. The trapped villagers cannot really dig themselves out from under four thousand tonnes of soil, though, so they mostly just try to hold still and wait for someone to fetch the shovels.

The tendril isn't having a great time pinned under the soil here either. It's not dying, but it sure is trapped. The whole thing flexes back and forth, and a noise of displeasure echos off of the mountain tops from a long way away.

A woman in a bright red knitted bobble hat pokes her head around the corner of the building the kid is sitting on and stares at the displaced soil in concentration.

Trapped is what she was aiming for, yes! Noise of displeasure from the mountain tops is mildly concerning though.

Shittt. She runs over to the great mound of dirt now sitting incongruously in the snow, and gets out her staff. Mind's, Compass', Gaia's, didn't see how deep the hole was so let's go Twenty, Additive Dstl., Twenty-Two, Zone Dstl.: Person. How many people is she going to have in the list on top of her stack, not including herself? How many people did Lorelei just crush and trap under the soil, possibly suffocating? Do these people heal surprisingly quickly purely because of the water gun, and trapped down there could die before getting healing?

It looks like there are five people down there.

There's a sort of mental knocking sensation, and a cheerful voice speaks in their heads. It is somehow obvious that this is the woman with the bright red hat.

:Everyone's got their elixir teeth except Kolya, who already used his. So if you're thinking about grabbing someone, go for him.:

The thought comes along with a visualization of Kolya's position under the soil.

:I'll go get a shovel, yeah? Thanks a ton for dealing with the Lord. He's had a bit of a growth spurt, apparently.:

She flinches. Hard.

...Huh. Having someone else's thoughts in her head is a new sensation. Her pulse is still pounding, but red-hat-woman doesn't seem stressed so she's gonna shut her eyes for a couple seconds and take some deep breaths to get herself under control.

Okay, let's duplicate the list and then get Kolya out of it. Get their position, get mine, get the difference, project to vertical. How far underground is Kolya exactly?

While she's working away at that she also tries loud-thinking at the red-hat-woman to see if that does anything. What's the Lord? How long do you think this'll hold it, and how pissed off will it be? What's an elixir tooth, and how long exactly will these people last trapped down there with versus without one?

:The Lord of Lake Bikal is this freshwater squid or something that's grown really big. That's one of his tendrils. He doesn't get angry at us, exactly, he just likes grabbing things and dragging them into the lake. If we make the process too difficult or painful he concentrates on other areas. Usually. Now that he's grown I guess we might have to relocate the village — his being able to reach came as a nasty shock!:

She walks over with a shovel. The kid from the roof scurries down a ladder and gestures inquiringly at Rasha and Lorelei with the squirt gun.

:I'd guess that it will hold it for a few hours, and then the Lord will pull it back for a while. An elixir tooth is just a hollow tooth with a little bit of elixir stored in it, and an enchantment that makes it dissolve if you're about to die, or if you bite down hard. It takes ... I think around ten minutes to completely asphyxiate, usually, although I'm reminding everyone to keep calm, which will extend their air reserves. So Kolya has about ten minutes and everyone else has at least twenty. But if it gets too close we can just soak the area with hoses. I hate digging through mud, though, so let's keep things dry to start with.:

Wow, healing must be cheap cheap here.

Alright, let's have a think about how to get these people out as cheaply as possible.

(She's still reeling internally, at there being other people(!) that they can talk to(!!), but for now there's a job to do.)

Lorelei is going to walk straight up to the telepath, with an expression both somewhat manic and desperately hopeful. From up close Lorelei's a fairly tall woman, who looks like she could be quite pretty if she took better care of herself. As she is though, her hair is ragged and slightly matted in places, her fingers covered in small cuts and scrapes, her tunic frayed, and her eyes have great dark circles under them.

:How are you talking into our minds? Can it be taught? How much are you seeing of what we think?:

:It's called Lectio Mentis — which is a bit of a misnomer, I think, because minds can't really be 'read' like a book and also the skill permits projecting thoughts too, like I'm doing now. It can be taught, although it takes a lot of study. I'm a natural lectitioner; I've been able to do this since birth. Right now I'm just listening for things-that-you-intend-to-communicate. I can push deeper, but that's rude. If we can find a language we have in common I can stop, though. Do you know Latin, Russian, Polish, Spanish, or Cantonese?:

As she talks, she starts digging. She's not particularly strong or anything, but when she starts to feel the slightest bit tired she takes a sip from a backpack/waterbottle hybrid and keeps going.

The kid actually looks pretty distressed, once he can see Lorelei's state. He glances at the telepath with a look of concern, and then disgruntlement, and then he turns and shoots Lorelei with the water gun.

The thing about the Elixir of Life is that it is a panacea, emphasis on the pan. From the amount that absorbs through her skin, Lorelei is now healed of any condition she would consider an injury, disease, ailment, disfigurement, or otherwise a barrier to being in perfect health.

As her scratches close up and the circles under her eyes disappear, the boy looks immensely relieved.

:Sorry,: the telepath tells them. :I tried to tell him that if you were injured you probably had your own reasons, but you know how children are.:

She barely notices the healing. "Children," she says with a nod. "I doubt we know any of your languages, or you ours. What's... What's your name?"

That jars her out of crafting a hex to dig these people out, patterns slowly orbiting her as she stares at Lorelei in shock. She wouldn't in ten years have guessed her friend would ask for red-hat-woman's name. 

... She's desperately curious what caused that, but it's probably not urgent and unburying this guy is. Grumble Subtractive Dstl., Aether's Reflection, grumble grumble.

:Oh! I'm sorry, how rude of me. I'm Dominika Clearwater,: the telepath answers. :And the kid is Adam. Down below we have Kolya, Ekaterina, Ilia, Lera, and Mikhail. They say hi too.:

She nods again. "Lorelei." And a beat later, "—and Rasha," with a gesture to her friend. " Can— could you keep— please keep talking? What kind of study does it take?"

It feels real. The world is a thin facsimile of itself, paper-shallow illusions over the tangle and the loop and the pattern that sees itself and writes itself and— And this feels real. She's got misty eyes, and her mouth is scrunched slightly, and she's going to hold onto this person that feels like a person with everything she's got.

:Uh. Sure, no problem. It takes practice with mind magics, I guess. So you need a good starting point with charms. ... Oh, Adam says that there was a optional vocational track on mind magics in his schooling options packet. Apparently you need to take choir, for the voice work, and then you can move onto introductory charms, any of your choice of finesse-based extracurriculars, and then introductory mind magic, meditation, Obscuratio Mentis, and then advanced and offensive mind magic, where you finally learn Lectio Mentis. So that's, like, normally about four years of course work, but that's intermixed with other stuff. If you were really dedicated and could get one-on-one tutoring, you could probably have decent casting-tool-assisted Lectio Mentis in six months or a year. And then, of course, getting it toolless, passive, and automatic like I've got it just requires a ton of practice. Maybe another decade or so. Why do you ask?:

"I... have a damaged mind. Talking like this is helping."

:Oh! Oh no — are you, I mean. Um. Is there a reason you haven't healed it yet?:

"I—"

Heal it? She's thought before about what could have happened if they'd drawn straws differently, if her eyes and pattern and self had stayed swaddled and Rasha was the one who learned of the tangle, saw the knots and loops that are the true world. Going back to that state of unknowing... is very tempting, certainly.

Do they still need an enlightened caster? ... Probably, if they want to be able to get back to where they came from. Maybe Greater Teleport will be enough, or maybe they'll need something can go even further, but either way she wouldn't be able to cast it unenlightened.

"— it's a requirement, for the higher forms of our magic."

Dominika hisses through her teeth.

:I'm sorry. That must suck. Do you ...? No, none of my business. I'm not sure we have any cloudwater here, though, so you might get a bit thirsty. I'm glad that chatting with you helps, though. Once we've got everyone dug up, I could try doing a deeper look at your mind and seeing if I can help more directly? I'm not a licensed therapist or anything, so it's understandable if you don't want me poking around in there, but I do have a natural talent with mind-magics.:

Oh man, cloudwater?

Yeah, it's pretty wild.

And she asked a question. "If you'd like to take a look I wouldn't oppose. I would warn it could be transmissible from a close enough view."

Ten minutes is enough time that she double-checked before casting, but not enough she's going to triple-check. Hermes.

A sqrt(2)-metre-to-a-side pillar of earth vanishes from below, and re-appears to topple immediately some distance away. There is now a shaft, shored with subtle glowing white light, at the bottom of which is Kolya. He may have suffered a small fall as all the dirt encasing him suddenly vanished down to the level of the bottom of his lower foot.

The kid darts forward and squirts him, so he's not hurt for long. Kolya says something grateful sounding and makes a hand gesture at the side of the hole.

:Oh, thanks, that will save us a lot of digging. Do you think you can grab the others, or should we dig in sideways? I think it's a much shorter reach sideways.:

:Also, Mikhail points out that vodka is distilled, and we do have some of that. So I guess it's your choice between getting thirsty or roaringly drunk.:

Ah damn, going in sideways probably will be more efficient. Time to remake the spell again. "I can dig the tunnels sideways, give me a couple minutes. ... It's a good idea, thanks."

"Hah. We'll be able to make our own water, but thanks for the offer."

Well, if the mysterious strangers are going to get people out with magic she will go grab a rope to dangle down to Kolya so he can scramble back up.

:So where are you folks from? We don't get many visitors up here in the mountains.:

Where are we from, Lorelei?

"Well, before here we were near the town of Greyston. We unfortunately have no idea where that is physically located with respect to here."

"A long way, I'd guess. Our home... well, we haven't run into any people with minds undamaged enough to speak in a long while. Wouldn't shock me if Lorelei and I were the only ones on the continent we came from, maybe the planet."

She's grimacing slightly, but not showing much emotion on her face as she's working. The pain-misery-regret is much closer to the surface of her mind than normal, though; fairly tightly woven with the words she speaks.

:... yikes. I don't think the Americas are that bad? Unless there was a recent catastrophe, I guess. Is 'a long while' more than fifty years or so? That's about how often someone attempts the Siberian crossing, I think.:

"More recent than that, I think. We were in the Nether when the bombs went off, got trapped in there for a bit. Less than ten years since it happened, though."

:... the Nether?:

She knows she didn't mishear, on account of being a telepath.

:I've never heard of that. I guess if it's that recent it could be the Americas. I hear they've got a big endorheic basin.:

"I..." She pauses for a second to think. "Is a big basin relevant for how your healing water works?"

:... yes? Distilling elixir turns it back into cloudwater. And it's empowered by the Philosopher's Stone, which is hidden in the sea somewhere. So in an endorheic basin, there's no route from the Stone to the cloudwater, and it stays that way even though it's in contact with the ground.:

After a moment's thought she adds:

:That's one reason that people avoided Kyrgyzstan before they got a canal.:

There's a sinking, twisting feeling in her gut. She whistles softly and says, "We're really far from home, huh?"

"Well, the ocean sure isn't made of healing potion where we came from."

She shivers slightly, then executes the hex she's been constructing throughout this conversation with Hermes'. The patterns swirling around her fade away, and new passages appear under the ground from Kolya's original position in the hole to each of the other people trapped underground. The people within suddenly find the pitch blackness that surrounded them replaced with the soft white glow of the shoring on the walls and ceiling keeping the tunnels from immediately collapsing.

Dominika spends a moment prodding everyone into an orderly retreat, and they help each other out of the hole, brushing dirt off and grumbling.

:They say thank you,: she translates. :While we have it here we're thinking we might try to pin the Lord's tendril down more thoroughly, make him less of a nuisance. We'd welcome help with that, but, uh.:

One of the villagers says something unintelligible.

:Yeah. If your magic wounds you it seems like the kind of thing to use only at need, and we don't actually need the help, yeah. We have some chains and self-setting anchors we can use. Can we offer you some dinner? The non-fighters of the village are holed up in the inn, since it's the sturdiest structure that will hold everyone.:

"Casting spells doesn't make it worse," if anything it helps, the patterns in her mind's eye having a realness to them the rest of the world can only wish for, "so—"

"—But it does use a resource that's very finite if we can't get back where we came from, so we'd love dinner now."

Ohno, they're going to need to ration media? Ughh.

:Sure!:

Dominika leads them back toward the village proper ­— closely set wooden buildings with cheerful red tiles for shingles — and toward one large building in particular. Inside, a number of people sit anxiously around three large round tables. Dominika says something, and they cheer up. A man in a long green tunic disappears into the back and returns with extra plates.

Dinner today is roasted rabbits, leeks, and beets on a bed of long-grain rice, served from communal platters in the center of the table.

:That cup is elixir and that cup is vodka,: Dominika points out. The vodka is served in portions appropriate for a population that has not had a hangover in 600 years.

:If you want, I can try relaying translations of what everyone is chatting about,: she offers. :Although I'm not that good at it, since it's a lot of mental streams at once.:

Wow that's a lot of vodka. ...I haven't gotten drunk since awakening. I wonder what'd happen if—

Absolutely the fuck not. "If you bring another mug I can fill it with water. Getting drunk seems like a bad idea right now."

"...And relaying translations would be helpful, thank you."

Spoilsport.

Dominika turns to say as much to the man, and this time her spoken words come along with the impression that she's asking about another cup. He says something that is understandable as cheerful agreement, and returns with another wooden cup.

Dominika doesn't have infinite parallel attention, and she is, as promised, a bit unpracticed at this, but she closes her eyes and the general chatter in the inn starts to be shaded with meaning. It's different from when she is directing her own telepathy — normally, she can adapt the 'framing' to match the receiver. This is more like sharing her own senses, with raw semantic intent adhering to the spoken words in whatever way is most natural for the speaker.

This group of people in the corner are going to go get some additional chains for the Lord's tendril. This group over here is fretting about whether it would be more expensive to pack up the village or to hire an expert to place sufficient protections. One man is advocating for protections that just cover the main buildings themselves, since the farming areas are expendable.

The man who brought the cups gestures at a seat near Lorelei and Rasha, and wonders whether he can sit there and bother them.

Oh, this is funky.

...Both less and more than when Dominika was thinking at them herself. The rawer read of what people are saying, forcing her to get their intent rather than her own, is helping a lot. But split over this many people at once it feels like she's in a room full of echoes-of-people. Better than them feeling like paintings, but not enough to stop her thoughts from drifting. Filling this mug with water should be pretty easy, she's already got a cypher for collecting the list of points she'll need to define the internal cavity. May as well get started...

She nods. Absolutely he can sit there and bother them. What's he got to say? (And what can Dominika's body language as he makes the offer tell her about the relation between them?)

Dominika is familiar with him, but not paying too much attention at the moment as she focuses on getting the meaning-relay properly established. When she does blink and open her eyes, she smiles at him in a friendly way.

:I think I can hold it like this for a while. Is everything coming through clearly?:

The man pulls out the chair and sits in it. He means to indicate that he is called Ivan. Dominika told him that you're from really far away, and he's curious about stories that you might have to share, because he's a collector-of-stories and also a busybody.

"Clearly enough," she says idly, clearly focused on exploring the inside of the mug with her pointer finger while a copper-wire-wrapped chunk of purple gemstone in her other hand pulses with light regularly.