"I only know a couple of them well enough to do that. Do you mean right now -"

"No, I think I should probably get some supplies, rest, go tomorrow morning when I'm more prepared—emotionally and otherwise. Not a good idea to just implement the plan immediately after thinking of it."

"It might be a good idea to put the mortal world ends somewhere - remote - in case -"

"—yeah, good idea. And a trap of some kind, built to recognise you and me but do something to anyone else."

"If you can do that can you also make it note if we're acting on our own?"

"As in, if we're ordered?"

"Right."

"Is there anything nonmagical that can be used as a proxy for that?"

"I don't think so."

"Then I probably can't make something that detects that, I've never been able to make things that interact with magic directly."

"Thorn'd probably catch something like blinking in a pattern."

"If whatever was on this side was fast-acting enough a blinking pattern could suffice, maybe. Harder part would be not letting on that I have something like this on this side, memory spells are expensive and hard, last one consumed almost all of my mana and was very untargeted."

"He'll be more careful now."

"Yeah. I'm not sure if he can actually order me to not bind a spell, it's sort of a primitive mental action like thinking is, but if he can then I'm well and truly screwed.—unless I preemptively bind a spell to the action of lying still on the ground in some position or something."

"Do you want to experiment with that -"

"...probably, yeah. I'm not sure what—failure mode we're looking at, exactly, here, though. Like, Thorn figures out I'm there and writes 'Stop' in front of me?"

"Thorn has already collected another person who can do your telepathy thing," she suggests.

"—oh, yikes, yeah, he could do stuff if he captured a mage... I could probably design something to block that, but alright, suppose he finds a way to order me... Is my first priority to ensure he doesn't get his hands on the magic knowledge? ...I hate to suggest this but should you perhaps be somewhere hidden and undetectable near enough to telepath at me?"

"Possibly, yes. Somewhere you don't know where I am."

"Yeah, and with a gate you opened from the mortal side so that if everything goes wrong you can just slip away and close it. I'll make you an artefact that keeps the harmonics flat."

"Thank you."

"Guess I should make you one of these," he gestures at the earmuffs, "too, and then even if they detect you you'll be able to leave—and with you there this becomes much less dangerous, if all goes wrong and they do find me out you can rescind my orders and I fly away extremely fast—actually we should test whether straight-up telepathy works for orders or if it's just sound. Okay, so, I make the necessary artefacts and cast the spells, you open a gate here fly somewhere else I don't know where to open a gate to the same place, I go spy, that about it?"

"Should I go make another earmuff?"

"Yes, please, and I'll make harmonics-flattening artefacts out of something mundane."

"I would like to be able to wear it."