(Leareth hadn't thought about it explicitly but the light visible to them while the artifact is in place doesn't seem like it can possibly be what's making the image, given how bodies are...opaque...to visible light. If he actually thinks about it... His best guess is that the visible light is to help the Healers - who aren't Healing-Gifted, he assumes, or they would be using it - be sure that the artifact is set up properly and working? A little like how you can make force-barriers that aren't visible at all but you may want them to be visible if non-mages will be interacting with them.) 

Lisa isn't totally sure what the question is, but - no, just suctioning him is clearly not enough to get his lungs back to normal, it mostly just compensates for the fact that he's impaired at coughing thanks to his injuries and general weakness, and also the having a tube in the way.

She doesn't want to spend a huge amount more time on this, with shift change coming up, but she can very quickly draw a sketch of a trachea and some branching bronchi and some cloud-shapes to be the actual lung tissue. She draws some droplet-shapes in the bronchi and then mimes suctioning and adds a thumbs-up, then adds some droplets in the lower cloud-shapes and makes a 'no' gesture - you can't get at what's wrong down there. 

(This is a simplification - his body will help try to clear fluids even in the lower airways, but a lot of the issue with pulmonary edema is the lung tissue itself being swollen with fluid, which gets in the way of gas exchange while not actually being removable by coughing or suctioning. It's as much as she feels up for drawing, though.) 

Nod!  All right, he thinks he gets this part, and there's more going on, but of course she should go do her more important work.  He might ask Marian later if she seems more up for it (and if she does come - she wasn't entirely sure before).

He'll spend a bit of time paying Empathy attention to Lisa at her more important work, there's probably something useful to be learned there - and then if she's out of the room and nothing else happens, he'll ask Leareth what he thinks about more mage-sight lessons.

Lisa moves around the room doing a final check of all the equipment and tubes and tidying as she goes. Her affect is unworried; she's clearly not expecting to find anything wrong, just wanting to make sure everything is in order and there are no surprises in her report to Marian. 

They can do more mage-sight practice, sure. Leareth wants to save most of his energy for the possible conversation with whoever it is who needs to talk to them - a local authority figure, maybe? if it's whoever Marian was vaguely worried about and felt protective of them - he's not sure how much attention their arrival here has attracted? The possibilities range from "no one has actually realized they're not one of the locals" to "the only reason they haven't been interrogated yet is that they can't talk." 

...now that Karal has managed to focus mage-sight on his own magic at least, does he think he can try extending it without actually doing any magic first? That might help avoid the narrow-focus problem, if that's what it is. 

Mm, can he?  He tries to remember the mindset and adjust it - right, not fighting, just centered-and-grounded and looking for attacks without doing anything yet...  Well, it feels like it should work but he still can't see anything... 

He tries a few more times, eventually thinks to do it and then extend a bit of magic to see if it's visible and it is, so what in the world is he doing wrong?  He really doesn't feel like his focus is that narrow.  Is it possible to just have a really tiny mage-sight range for some reason?

It would be very odd to have a naturally tiny mage-gift range coexisting with an Adept-strength Gift!!

(Leareth is, at this point, worried. Not very worried yet,  but - something here doesn’t fit.)

…He would wonder if they were doing something to disable his and Karal’s mage-sight, but they can see Karal’s own casting fine and Leareth has much less idea how one would disable it selectively within the same space. Shields - positing extra-skillful shields that themselves gave off no visible mage-energy signature - could block everything outside the room, but there are definitely artifacts in the room with them, closer to them than where Karal was pushing against the wall before…

Urtho could make artifacts so perfectly efficient they were invisible to a cursory mage-sight glance, but even he didn’t make everything like that, and it held only when the artifacts were inactive and not in use…

He tries to push against the furthest wall, or to cast some sort of barrier over there, just to make sure he does have the range, even if it'd be absurd for him not to.  (Assuming one's Sight range is the same as the active Gift range, but it seems like it'd be even more absurd for it to be different...)

If they were doing something to disable their mage-sight, or to hide things from them somehow, Empathy should show him the fear or hostility or secrecy or whatever it is - unless the people doing that aren't here and nobody here knows it's happening or isn't thinking about it...

No, this is all ridiculous, he's probably just doing it wrong in some confusing way.  (He's sorry about that, and a little frustrated.)  He should... relax and keep playing around with it without too much pressure and see if he'll accidentally hit on how to do it right, probably?

It does seem like it would be - out of line with how everything else about this place feels - for them to be blocking mage-sight. (It's not that absurd to imagine somewhere that had the capability at all routinely blocking Gifts as a safety measure - like how they use restraints as a safety measure - and not thinking of this as hostile, but they clearly aren't doing that.) 

Leareth feels like he's missing something, but - yes, for now he thinks the likeliest explanation is that Karal is doing something wrong. It's not as though it's uncommon for new mage-students to need a few days to get mage-sight down, and Karal's specific problem doesn't feel familiar but it's not like Leareth remembers any specifics about teaching. 

Then Karal will get in some quiet undirected mage-gift practice - just the equivalent of seeing how a weapon fits his hand and getting used to the way it moves, without trying to learn to do anything specific with it yet - and maybe once he's more used to it something will become obvious.  He'll even remember to take breaks for once.

They do have time.  It might be good have a clearer view of this world before the new person comes, but on the other hand maybe the new person will tell them something that explains what's going on.  And Marian wasn't worried in a way that implied them needing to defend themselves, he's pretty sure of that.

But it might be worth thinking more about that conversation (while he plays with the mage-gift some more without focusing all his attention on it, which seems like a good thing to try doing).  If people here know enough about them to want to interrogate them, well, Karal will answer their questions reasonably honestly - it seems like the right reaction and he'd be no good at anything else in any case.  What if they don't know?  It seems more likely, with the way everyone's treating them, and Karal isn't sure whether trying to explain everything immediately is a good idea. 

...He's also not sure explaining everything is even possible, if he's still limited to drawings, and has no idea what the people in this strange world will conclude from a half-understood explanation.  That might be the most important problem to avoid, now that he thinks about it.

That makes sense. 

(...Leareth is frustrated in the background. This is something where it feels important to be able to think through it clearly, and it's particularly noticeable that he can't.) 

Marian already got a bunch of explanation, right - Leareth isn't sure how much she seemed to understand it, he was still very out of it at that point -? 

She did, but Karal doesn't think she understood how far away they're from.  He tries to think through why he doesn't think so...  She wasn't surprised - or, she was, but about the violence and not the Gate, and more in a confused-about-details way than a worldshaking one.  Which could mean that the Gate just wasn't that surprising or unusual, but in that case it would've felt more like she recognized it, and he really doesn't think she did.  He thinks she has no idea where they're from and just hasn't been thinking much about it, because she's... it's hard to describe coherently... someone like Karal, in a sense - she cared about the information that was relevant to her work here and now much more than she cared about confusing large-scale realizations.

He would... feel safe talking to her about it, he thinks.  It doesn't feel like that would immediately have unpredictable consequences out of his control - she felt very on his side, he doesn't think she'd tell people if he acted worried about it.  But he might be wrong, and he'd still have to be able to explain it and make her believe him. 

All right then... (Normally he'd wait for Leareth to do more of his own thinking, but it's obviously difficult for Leareth to do that, and he's missing a lot of the amorphous background understanding Karal has just from being awake so much more.  So Karal will come up with a plan and let Leareth react to it, since that's easier for him.)  If the new person already knows a lot about them or at least knows there's something deeply strange that needs investigating, he'll answer their questions honestly (but still avoid talking about Leareth or anything related to him).  If the new person is as confused as Marian and Lisa seem to be, he'll... mostly try to find out more about what they think and what they expect to happen, and make decisions based on that, but he's inclined not to tell them about Velgarth and let them stay confused.  He might try telling Marian, later, if it seems important to talk to someone from here who has all the information.  (Or even if it doesn't - it feels more like lying, to hide all this from Marian and not just from a stranger, and he doesn't like it.)

It makes sense that Marian isn't considering it her job to figure out the bigger picture. She's a Healer, Gifted or not, and she was kept pretty busy by a patient having complicated problems. That part makes perfect sense to Leareth. 

(Whether they can trust Marian is - something Leareth is inclined to leave up to Karal’s judgment? He mostly wasn’t awake for it, and it’s...not something he feels like he has the skill to assess, at least not right now when he’s just come back in a new body without much context. His inclination is to default to not trusting her, but he knows that isn't necessarily right.  

- though he doesn't think Karal should feel like he owes Marian full honesty, just because she cared for them? He doesn't think Marian would expect that from them, or - feel lied to - if they didn't want to provide it?)

...Anyway. 

One possible scenario here - and maybe the most difficult to navigate - is that they do want to question Karal in depth, but - because they're confused and have generic concerns about violence, not because they have any inkling of what actually happened? 

(This seems like a low-violence place, judging by how - Leareth vaguely recalls? - Marian didn't think that restraining them would be perceived as hostile?)

(It's true that he doesn't really owe her that - but she's done more for him than she owes to her work as a Healer, too.  He would like to, that's all, but he'll only do it if he still thinks he can trust her after today's complicated conversation with the other person and if it seems like it makes sense on a practical level.)

If that's what they're doing, he'll explain to the best of his ability that the violence happened somewhere else and he's very confused about where he is and how he got here but doesn't expect the violence to be their problem.  He knows the story doesn't really make sense, but... there's only so much useful information they can expect from a man who doesn't speak the language and was almost dead when he arrived, and they'll probably just think he's confused about what really happened, which seems well enough to him.  If they're like he would expect city guards to be, they'll shrug and leave it alone, because what else can they do, really.  If they're more like the Healers here, who throw enormous amounts of resources into every strange thing that happens but still don't necessarily have the ability to understand it, they'll... have a very confusing investigation, and maybe more questions for him later, but...  There will be time to deal with that.  And Marian didn't think anything very bad would happen to him. 

... Marian might be wrong, or something else might go badly, or they might take the gaps in his story more seriously than he expects them to.  But if they want to question him in depth, they cannot possibly do all of it this morning - if things are going in a difficult direction, he can talk to Marian afterward, tell her however much seems wise to tell her, and ask her advice.  That's the best he can do, he thinks, without knowing almost anything about what's going to happen.

Leareth thinks that makes sense. 

(It's obvious he would prefer to reason through and prepare for a lot more contingencies; his usual mode of operating leans heavily on planning ahead and it's stressful not to have that. But they really know so little about what to expect in this place, he's not sure how far he could get even if he had the ability to think. He's just going to - try not to be too miserable about how disoriented they are, because it won't help.)

Also they're not going to get any more time to plan right now, because the day shift nurses are starting to trickle in, and Marian is going to head straight to her patient's room and check on him before the nursing station huddle. 

How does he look? 

His vital signs aren't terrible! His heart rate is sitting at about 110, almost the lowest she's seen it, and his blood pressure is currently 103/66. He's on a higher percentage oxygen on the ventilator than when she left, still at 70%, but his sats are at 99%.

(Karal would not prefer to explicitly reason through more contingencies - this is about as much as he can do without it feeling more frustrating than useful.  And he feels... not oriented in the sense of knowing what will happen, of course, but... secure, as if at some point in the last day his subconscious mind decided that this place is all right and he will have no trouble finding a way through it.)

He also looks surprised!  And happy to see her, an instant later, but it was surprise first - because he had been idly holding on to mage-sight throughout their mental conversation, without trying to do anything specific with it, and Marian glows faintly even when nothing else in the room does.  That's... how people are supposed to look, he recalls vaguely from seeing Leareth do it, but... ??

What. 

...Right, at this point it's starting to actually seem more likely that Karal is using mage-sight entirely correctly and it's just that...nothing here...is actually made using magic??? Which is definitely a surprising and confusing possibility but not impossible? The other possibility is that whatever tradition of magic they have here is either more advanced than Velgarth's or just somehow better suited for the hidden-magical-signature style of artifact. Leareth isn't sure how to judge which of those possibilities is more likely. 

Not magic in what sense?? 

... Karal will push the question aside and wave at Marian, who he's very happy to see, and who might be here to tell them something more immediately relevant than what the artifacts are doing.  He's definitely not going to do any confused magical poking-around while she's in the room (what if something happened?), although after a moment he decides to keep his mage-sight extended in case she interacts with any of the artifacts in an informative manner.

He's projecting affection and welcome, and feeling-fine, and having-many-questions-later-once-she's-settled-down.  (And has enough intuitive control of his Empathy not to send the unrelated baffled-magic-curiosity along with those.)

Non-magical artifice exists! Like wheels, or clockwork, or the printing press - which he thinks Karse doesn't actually have, right, it might be only the Eastern Empire. The artifacts here definitely aren't made with clockwork but - in principle (and if the gods objected to it less) he thinks one could get a lot further with non-magical artifice than anyone in Velgarth has, if it were worth investing in, and it would be a lot more worth investing in if mage-gift didn't exist? 

- there are huge implications if it's true. Leareth doesn't feel clearheaded enough right now to follow them, but - it does imply something about what the gods of this world care about, if They chose not to interfere with this. Non-magical artifice is - in a way inherently more destabilizing than something that requires mage-gift (and can only be made, and often only wielded, by a small subset of the population.) 

And of course maybe he's wrong and they are magical and just don't leak any of that magic to be visible to mage-sight. Also they should focus on the conversation with Marian now. But he's making a mental note that - this would change a lot of things. 

He seemed surprised to see her. Did he interpret her trying to express that she would probably be back but might not be as actually meaning that she wouldn't be back but wanted to let him down gently? 

She is in fact very glad to see him, and especially glad to see him alert and not looking at all miserable. It definitely looks like events of some kind happened last night - he's on more oxygen, and seems to be propped up in bed in a position she associates with patients who are feeling short of breath, and there's been some rearrangement of IV pumps - but in terms of how he looks, he's actually giving her much less of a vague doomy feeling than he was when she left last night. 

It's not a good time to get into whatever his questions are - she still has to head over for the huddle in about three minutes and then take report from Lisa - but she'll smile warmly at him and then have a peek at his clipboard of drawings to see what he's been communicating about with Lisa lately. 

(Karse does have wheels, but those seem... not... anything like this??  It does not have the printing press or clockwork, or at least anything resembling the vague glimpses of those things Karal can get from Leareth's thoughts, but it's enough for Karal to get some idea what he means and how incredible it would be.)

The top of his clipboard has a sketch of the anatomical details of lungs, which is consistent with the other clues about recent events, and a bit of writing in his strange alphabet visible on a sliver on a page under that.  He takes a few deliberately deep breaths and looks satisfied, as if to demonstrate how normally everything's working.  (Relatively speaking.)

His breathing seems to be doing worse than it was at the end of her shift, but his attitude about it makes it seem like he feels better than he did before, which implies that things must have gotten pretty bad last night, oh no. At least it looks like it's fairly under control now? Also there's so much more pee in his catheter bag measuring thingy, nice. 

Marian smiles reassuringly and pats his arm, then makes a walking gesture with her fingers and points out of the room, makes some talking-hand gestures back and forth, and finger-mimes walking back. 

He did feel like things were much worse and are better now!  He hopes they stay that way.

He nods cheerfully, and gets ready to pay attention to her emotions once she's off talking about (he thinks) him.  Maybe he can at least pick out whether the things she ends up worried about are more about the past or the future.  And whether she'll get protective again about the new person.