"Boons do also fade if they aren't wanted, that doesn't come up very often at home but it does occasionally happen. It generally takes a few hours to a few weeks, depending on how unwelcome they are, and if it'd be sufficiently unwelcome I won't be able to grant one in the first place. I can't remove them myself, though, that's entirely up to the person with the boon. I would expect that they'll look like something - my kind of being can tell when humans have boons - but I couldn't guess what. I'd be willing to give one to Prudentia, if you'd like?"

"Sure, I'll take one, sounds like I can get rid of it if it turns out bad. I think Gallius would like me to understand body language better, although I'm tempted by better memory."

"Would you mind if I Insighted you, Kiraavi? Once you start doing slightly odd things someone is bound to, and I think we'd all rather know now if it's going to come out matching a malign spiritual force or something.

It'll just feel like I'm observing you closely, and I'll get some idea of what kind of being you are and anything that's interesting about your soul, should you have one."

"And it's not the sort of thing that might be dangerous to you, if I'm stranger than you're expecting? You all seem to be vaguely assuming I'm an Eternal, and I'm really not one."

"It could plausibly be dangerous to me, but part of being a Questor is taking that sort of risk.

If it is noticably dangerous we can then at least warn people, ensuring the consequences are on their own heads if they try it anyway."

"If you're sure you're all right with that. Give me a minute to finish some of what I'm doing, intuitively I suspect it'll be safer if I'm holding still as much as possible."

And, back to Prudentia: "Your choice of boon is up to you, and there's nothing stopping you from asking for the other one later if this goes well; I'm not stingy with them in general."

"Eh, give me the body language one then, it'll be more noticeable if it's something I'm not already good at."

"Sure. I'll be another minute, one of my other avatars was speaking to a child and she's not letting me end the conversation so easily. ...oh, there we go, her father got her. All right, I'm ready whenever you are."

Sextus pulls out a little vial of something violently purple from a hidden pocket, tips it into his mouth and swirls it around a bit before swallowing. His eyes take on a strange focus and he declares,

"Kala, sharpen my senses; remind me of your good judgement; let me see..."

Then he flinches, winces, and reflexively closes his eyes tightly, which seems to be quite alarming to his fellow Urizeni; the Sentinel moves to be ready to catch him in case he falls over, which is the closest physically any of them have come to each other.

"I'm fine, it's just - that is... I'm going to narrate aloud and expect one of you is less stupid than me..." he says with some effort.

Adolphus scrabbles to get his notebook and pencil ready to transcribe.

"Kiraavi does not match any of the forms of life previously witnessed, Eternal is closest but fundamentally incorrect. The rest of this is going to be unfortunately subjective. The radiance of his soul fills the entire claimed area and connects in a nonexistent direction - not as a regio portal, somehow further - to a great multitude of things impossibly distant. It is vast but has a shadow which could be cleared by a relevant anointing if anyone had a relevant anointing, the required spiritual force is incoherent to me, or... actions that reinforce its fundamental nature," he dictates a little breathlessly, but mostly with a clinical detachment.

Then his body calms a little, and he opens his eyes again.

"Also, I can't see. This is usually temporary but it is..." he sounds like he was building to express annoyance, but trails off, "it is what it is."

"Sorry about that." He manifests a small silver ear cuff with a fleck of blue jade embedded into it and hands it over. "If you wear this on your ear, I can guide you and describe what's going on around you. If you'd like, of course."

Sextus holds out his hand in the approximately correct direction and attaches the ear cuff. "Better than having to flail around," is what he says, although mostly this is something that he considers his responsibility as a Questor to try out, so other people don't have to be the first.

"Can we do the blessing now?" Sextus' plight does not seem to have discouraged Prudentia at all. "Uh, are you going to be able to Insight me with that? We could fetch Iulia..."

"I'm still up for it. I don't know if we should expect it to be dangerous to Insight someone with me nearby, though."

"I should probably step off the bridge while she does it, and have her pointed away from it - it does work mostly like sight, right, Sextus, that doesn't just turn out to be a metaphor the priests use to confuse everyone?"

"It does work mostly like sight, which is why it often has psychosomatic effects on sight," replies Sextus, a little wearily. "Adolphus, fetch Iulia for us, will you?"

Adolphus obediently scurries off to find Iulia, first heading to a specific library (the Spire has several) she might be hanging out in.

"Anyway, that Insight response is probably good overall, it's not very clearly associated with a malign spiritual presence, so people will be curious rather than immediately hostile."

Kiraavi nods, whispering in Sextus' ear that he's done so just like he reported that Adolphus had left. "Is that related to the fact that I'm friendly to humans, or something else?"

"Not especially; Irrah Harah is very friendly to some humans, Ossegrahn is very friendly to essentially all humans, but the former is associated with Anarchy and the latter with Apathy, although probably not actually on their souls, insofar as they even have them.

If you were showing up as strongly associated with one of the known malign spiritual presences - hatred, fear, despair, fate, apathy, anarchy, vengeance - people would immediately oppose you. As you're not, they'll likely investigate first."

"Huh. Those are fairly orthogonal to the types of things beings like me tend to be associated with - some of them wouldn't surprise me very much to see pop up, but usually we're less abstract than that, and more focused. It's convenient, at least."

"I suppose the Eternal equivalents would be much more like - Irrah Harah's main thing is protecting the underdog, it just comes with a heavy dose of persuading people to distrust all government. And Ossegrahn is really about healing and calm waters, it's just he really hates conflict.

So I'm afraid it's more likely that Prudentia has a relevant aura than that you do - yours is about normal for a powerful Eternal, apart from being entirely orthogonal to the Realms."

Adolphus comes back from the library with a blue-scaled lady in tow, having told her that Sextus wanted a second opinion on something weird.

"Hi!" she introduces herself. "I'm Iulia, where am I pointing? ...and why is there a bridge, I'm sure there didn't used to be a bridge. Well, there used to be one, but you know what I mean."

"Prudentia, but don't get our visitor or any of the bridge in view while you're doing it," replies Sextus.

"Oh, okay!"

"Uh, I don't think I've got the thing yet, unless it's very subtle?"