They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
"Well, if they're hiding disguised reds, good for them, but I have the impression it might be a lot of work to contradict every television show and every book and every neighbor and every custom that doesn't have the force of law and if they've already spent the resources they'd need to do that - good for them but that doesn't mean they'd be able to get a little mage brought up how I think they need."
She focuses on artifacting. It looks like sculpting glass and turning it colors in her hands without having to heat it. She does not mind being filmed doing this.
It's a slow process.
She concludes she's going to need more elementals. Penumbra goes and checks on the ones they dropped back on their homeworld. They have found another school collection and a hunter's collection that seem usefully stealable.
"They'll probably have tighter security but we didn't use all the layers of subdual last time. They might be keeping the place brightly lit though. Do you have anything for that?"
Also makes it harder to see for everyone who isn't a Shadow - and costlier for the Shadows - but Maurabel has enough Glass to manage vision boost without help and it's her who needs to lay hands on the amulets. "They might be stored farther apart than they were at the school, that was honestly pretty dumb of the school."
"It means it takes longer to get everyone back again after we're out, since Penumbra can only do one at a time between worlds."
"True. I wish we had a way to communicate that wasn't physically going there but even Penumbra can't scry it."
"That'd be useful, yeah. Is shadow-walking harder with distance, our base of operations could be on a different planet in that universe -"
"It's harder to find where you're going if you have to sort of fumble around for it but if you know for sure it's not, no. I don't know of any livable planets there though."
"Depending how many operations we're going to conduct it might be worth sending people equipped to do survey, next time, and having them identify some."
"None are suited for permanent residence, there are some that are within tolerances for a team who takes their supplies with them and only plans to stay a month. A couple Airs would need to go with but it wouldn't be impossible."
"It was hard for the Shadows to get to the moon when they couldn't see it in the sky, it was far enough away that even with a description they had to pan around looking for a landing spot a while."
"Yes, but just one. I don't think any Shadows have moved there - they don't die of not breathing but they don't like it at all, and wouldn't be able to fly."