"Who are you?"

"Temperance. I found Kaede and she explained that I got a sorcery-gift from picking up an old artifact that tortured me - instead of being a metamancer like I was fearing I'd become - and she asked me to sort of help her in case something happened to her."

"You feared you were a metamancer? Even though you're clearly already an arcanist?"

"Well, yes," she says defensively, "I thought it was something... weird going on because of the artifact, or something."

"Uh huh."

"I don't have to justify myself to you! You-you capture people!"

She casts a spell on him, something with multiple threads of energy that move to envelop him.

—yeah no she doesn't. He cuts it off. "Wordless spell? Costly, that."

"Wait, what? That wasn't supposed to-"

She casts again.

Stop again. "Extremely costly. What are you even doing?"

Temperance cringes and then -

- there is a sudden hurricane in the room, too fast to be reacted to.

Felix sets up and then completes a ritual at super-accelerated speed, which once finished (it takes a fraction of a second) blocks Jintes from using any of his batteries.

- then she grins and says. "I'm stalling you. See we could easily convince your diplomat friends to use a sorcery ritual to free your captives. Did you know that you can cast through floors? The tricky part was showing them that you are a metamancer, which you helped doing by cutting off a spell that you thought was mine but was cast by one of them."

"—what—"

There's a ring in his pocket. There's an earring. There are some of his tattoos. A toering. He can't—access any of them—he looks for the magic there, surely he can see it if he looks—

—he blocks a bolt aimed for his head—

—but it's followed by a punch and another knockout bolt.

"Wow you were right this feels amazing."

A door opens and a familiar woman wearing long, dark robes decorated in glowing patterns walks out. "...this is such a mess."

"Could've gone a lot worse."

Is anyone going to mind if Felix takes away the removable batteries? Because he does that, they can deal with the tattoos later.

Yeah no objections. phe Bez—Baleo, the diplomat who met them in the north, not the High Consul—is appalled by all of this and can't think of a way to separate him from his tattoos and that would be blasphemous anyway except is it not blasphemous to perform metamancy on them in the first place? And if the High Consul wakes up he will surely drain the mana from the tattoos which they cannot allow, he will surely undo the sorcery ritual eventually and have access to magic again...

Felix might be able to drain lifeforce from the tattoos, if they count as lifeforce batteries instead of being part of his own lifeforce. He can't do anything about stored mana. He doesn't know how stronger wards interact with metamancy. He is no longer the resident sorcery expert.

Yes he should try that. They're in a bit of a pickle, here, they don't have procedure for this situation.

How long can they keep him asleep? There is really no procedure in case someone high level is compromised?

Felix tries poking at the tattoos to get their lifeforce back.

Indefinitely, and there is no procedure for handling metamancers that are not obvious, usually they'll do something public and they can justify a swift execution but here​ it's just their word.

The tattoo: contains lifeforce.

Felix absorbs the lifeforce. Well, who would judge the trial? What exactly would happen if Jintes claimed he was innocent? And what are the legal consequences of him getting away with it?

There isn't usually a trial for this, that's the point! Also if he wakes he'll just use the mana in his tattoos to escape and that would be horrible.

Maybe some magical way of tricking him to confess the truth? Maybe they could try a sorcery ward anyway...

Unlike him, they don't have infinite mana with which to cast mental spells, so no simple way of doing it. But if they let him prove it then that means they'll be giving him a chance to escape.

...they should probably just execute him.