...Ciara's face, always ever so impassive, slowly starts contorting under the strain of hiding her grimace as Alicia delivers an impromptu lecture on operational security.

She hopes that this is some sort of literary reference - 'a Peabody' sounds like a character more than a person - but she can't rule out the possibility of worse reasons to plan for these things.

She certainly has some.

"Would you mind being slightly more specific about the sort of subornment this 'Peabody' character represents, if they exist?  Just...if your mind jumped to them, I expect you had a reason, and I'd like to know what that reason might be.  Was there any such person in your vision?"

"Wha -- oh, no!  No, no, they're from a book.  They were a clerk of a council of wizards, that used their position to, effectively, dose those wizards with mind-control poison through the ink they wrote with, which he was giving plenty of opportunities to take by increasing the bureaucracy of the organization.  I think you'd have to be really creative and sneaky to pull that off to the sort of depth he managed with the sorts of magic we have, though.  Not just hit on a neat trick.  The sort of mind control stuff that exists here is much more obvious."

"...I mean, I do think it's theoretically possible, but, like, in the same sense that the moon could suddenly jump to the opposite side of the planet.  It'd take me a while to figure it out and I already know it's possible."

"Don't figure it out, please."  She's a bit terrified of the possibility of this sort of thing, if she's honest.

"...Yeah.  Yeah, I don't want to know how to do that.  Brrr.  That's just.  Horrible."

"It would be pretty inefficient, anyway.  I think you'd have to route through, like, three separate principle infusions to get the necessary subtlety - or be so overwhelmingly good at Void-casting that you have the option of just asserting that this guy is your guy now and there is nobody on this planet or in this whole entire galaxy that is that good at Void.  ...Excuse me while I try to not think about pink elephants.  I do not want to eat those words.  But really, no, it can't be reasonably done and if someone is being that un-reasonable about their espionage...

"...Hmm.  On second thought, I am somewhat concerned about subornment of critical assets by thaumaturgical means; you'd only need to master a couple skillsets to get someone to copy their notes for you without their ever knowing they've been affected.  And alchemy.  You'd need to get it into the medium, or possibly the pens - no, if you have the pens - or, no, if they're sneaking enchantments onto the pens then we've already thoroughly lost at counterespionage.  ...We do have countermeasures in place, but we should probably encourage more Light or Spirit casters - anyone who can recognize subtle magics by feel instead of with divinations - and counterconcept research; we have a glut of Order and little else bar the farmers.  Who're terrifying, but also mostly sedentary.  Insular, too, which is a bit of a double-edged sword when you start thinking about cults.  And we should probably think about cults.  They're surely thinking about us, after all."

"...Anyway.  That's getting into our long-term goals.  We can let the long-term planning wait until we have a secure meeting with the people we can trust.  We should.  I don't want to make stupid plans, and the more trustworthy eyes, the less mistakes we'll have in the end.  ...Right now, we're after - things that need doing before we unleash the butterflies and get caught up in absurd I know you know I know nonsense."

Surprisingly, that's a local saying too.

"...We should invite Aunt Ophelia over for tea, or something.  It's not an inherently suspicious action.  And I have things I want to talk to her about.  Probably going to dump my notes on her, actually, she knows how to handle the nominally forbidden magics better than most and, while I don't think I'm ever going to have as much a facility with the Light as I did before this moment - having your entire foundation of the universe upturned does things to one's conviction, after all - I do still want my research to mean something.  And she knows who can actually be trusted with magical secrets."

Not her, not with these.  Not anymore.  And she wants nothing to do with the combination of chaos with purpose, anyway.  She's much more an ordered possibilities kind of gal.

"To be explicit, I mean to disinclude myself from the list of people who should be trusted to work that whole branch of combination magic.  Not that I don't want to keep up with the research, but I know things will go horribly wrong if I try to cast it.  I don't...

"I don't have the necessary center, anymore.

"Aunt Ophelia - if there's one thing I can say with utmost certainty, it's that she absolutely does and will.  I know she works in the shadows, works with the shadows, but...

"That's a kind of misdirection in and of itself, and she has the sort of spine necessary to hold up the world should it be called for.

"If there's anyone I'd trust with this technique, to wield conviction even through utmost chaos...It's her.

"And it will be a wonderful surprise for the enemy when they try to take her out and fail even worse than they originally would have."

Her grin is sharp.

"Yes?"

Jethelia is listening with shock and amazement, trying to figure out what her daughter is thinking about now, and how her dream changed her.

Because it has clearly changed Alicia, far more firmly than Jethelia had thought.

She's not entirely sure the change in Alicia will be better in the end - either for Alicia herself, or for the kingdom; she still seems far too wild and chaotic for comfort despite her hatred for the demon cults.  But maybe it's just that she's not understanding her yet?  Maybe?.  She's definitely thinking more, at least.

"So you have a plan already?" she says aloud.  "Something much larger and firmer than any of your plans before.  I'm glad you're suddenly paying so much more attention to the kingdom, and I'm glad at least you're not wanting to try any of that combination magic yourself.  But... do take time and be careful, still."

Ambrose nods at that last point.  "Yes, do be careful.  I'll trust Ophelia to know what she's doing against demon cults, but whatever you saw in your dreams - I'm not sure yet that you'd know what you're doing well enough.

"I know someone tried a while back - around the time you were born - to try to organize people to recognize and magics by feel and report about them.  I think it didn't work for some reason?  Though I can't remember why.  If you've got a new idea, it might be worth trying again - maybe it'd make a good thesis project for you at the Royal Academy, if nothing else?"

He's been shaking his head in horror at the concept of Peabodies, but he can't really reject it.  It is, after all, possible... 

"...Yes, obviously, we move only in due time.  But we still must move.  Our kingdom needs us.

"...As far as whether I have a plan -

"I have tools, and goals, and uses of the tools I have in mind as methods to accomplish those goals.  That's both like a plan and also completely disjoint from the definition thereof."

And then, the comment from her father, which just...

It's probably not wrong, but neither is it really helpful.

"The problem is the Academy's culture in and of itself, and the influence of the Phoenix Kingdom on how most people think about Light-wielders outside the control of the Unifying Church.  Most Light-wielders don't burn the heretic!  Even our own Sunset Order has problems with that reputation.  So we don't have a real native tradition of Light-wielders, there will never be enough spiritual casters, and the nature-casters are insular so it's not like they'll come to us.

"Meanwhile, the Academy is all about arcane might.

"The thing is, culture can be shaped."

"That's good.  Do talk with people about it before you try to use those... strings.  Levers."

She likes those words better than "tools"; they're more appealing images.

(Well, the first part of it is good.  She frowns at Alicia's rant about the Academy, though she's not going to say it's wrong.)

"...People aren't tools."

She sniffs disapprovingly.  "I would not want anyone to describe people that way.  Especially not the people in her own kingdom."

Alicia just...shakes her head for a moment, honestly somewhat confused at where this discussion has gotten to.

"I'm glad we agree about that.  Are we also agreed that we should get Aunt Ophelia involved before we continue plotting, then?"

"Yes, but I don't want to wait to start putting some spies on the cultists."

He pauses and frowns.  The "Peabody" idea has been nagging at him, and that exchange about people as tools (which he'd never have heard from Alicia yesterday) just accentuated it.

"And is there... something that brought that 'peabody' idea to mind?  Did you see it in your dream?"

She shudders.  "No, not except for a thirdhand account, and I'm rather glad I didn't."

"Good.  I was afraid someone was planning something like that, even if it's too Orderly for demon cultists."

Queen Jethelia shivers.

"...If there's one thing I am very glad of, it is that the magic of our world doesn't really do subtle.

"...Most of the time, at least; a sufficiently competent shapeshifting infiltrator could exist.  Ugh, now I have to worry about that.  Probably you want existential countermeasures...  Checking that the right soul is in the right body, and stuff like that.  Also secure passphrases.  If we don't already have those, but knowing Aunt Ophelia, we absolutely do.  But even so, that's...

"It's nothing, compared to - as another completely fictional example - 

"Nice Guy, an unrepentant serial killer who just was, axiomatically, perceived as someone who was Supposed To Be There, or -

"- mm.  I'm not going to even talk about that one."  'Mama' Mathers, a viral cognitohazard, able to perceive and manipulate any sense that had ever perceived her.

"And boy am I glad that I've never seen the Berryman-Langford Death Parrot, even as rendered by people that could never have achieved such a feat of self-destructive creation."  She shudders, delicately.  "I don't like the idea of Things That Make Your Brain Explode By Looking At Them.

"It's just.

"There are things that are dangerous to think about too loudly," - Note to self: There is no Antimemetics Division - "and...  I think I've had rather too many of them dumped into my head, as part of the consequences of having had this vision in the way that I have had it.  There's too many... tangentially related things that were nonetheless connected enough to what I saw that I thereby came to know of them.  I know how to keep myself safe enough to not immediately explode," mostly through high-stakes Extreme Dissociation™, if she's being honest with herself, "but...I'm going to need to spend time working with Aunt Ophelia to get myself in order, I think.  She knows the right skills to handle this sort of problem."

"If you ever need to talk about any of this - not just for the kingdom, but for yourself - just let me know.

"But if not... I do have another meeting, and now I suddenly have some more meetings too."

"...Thank you. I - I'll do that, Father.  ...I hope your meetings go as well as they possibly can.  I'll be in my chambers, if I'm needed; I think I need some time to myself after everything that's happened today, but - you would know whether the needs of the kingdom overrule mine."

...She needs to go have a good cry and work up some spell formulae.  In no particular order.

...Ciara will see her charge safely returned to her rooms, by their Majesties' leave.

Meanwhile, in a solemn and foreboding keep that serves as a locus of secure intelligence services for the Kingdom of Villarosa...

...The Potentiometer, one of Azerosa's greatest advantages in the field of intelligence and strategic planning, is finally starting to settle down from its state of flux, and - hm.  Agent Steel and the Duchess's official presence?  This is quite an event.

She shall have to make herself ready, then, and delegate activating contingencies for BROKEN RELIQUARY in her absence.  The balance of futures showing a consequential raid on the Royal Archives has risen to unconscionable levels in the wake of whatever just happened, and she needs to know more about it.  ...At least the pesky 3% chance of world annihilation they couldn't properly track seems to be decreased.  Small mercies.

...Even the best operations can be blindsided by false assumptions, and she's quite concerned that she missed something in her threat model.  So when the King calls for his contact with the Villarosan Intelligence Service...