"Any what?"

"—I can see and manipulate magic in other people and things. Don't tell anyone."

"...okay," she says. "And you want to see me with my mara out so you can - get a better look?"

"...yeah kinda."

"I see the logic. But what would you be hoping to find out?"

"...whether it's gonna eat me. Or what the actual risk involved is. I mean, no offence, but what I see right now is a huge, ominous, powerful, evil thing in you and—yeah."

"That is exactly what I told you was there," she points out.

"I mean, yes, but it's one thing to be told it and a whole 'nother to see it and—it's terrifying. And fascinating. But mostly the former."

"...all right," she says.

And she closes her eyes, and—something breaks, or opens, or unfolds. There is no longer a solid barrier separating the ominous presence from her mind and the world beyond. The thing between it and the world is her mind - and it's holding perfectly steady, never for a moment allowing the malevolent force to gain any ground.

When she opens her eyes, there is a faint sickly-green spark dancing in the depths of each pupil.

...creepy. Extremely creepy. She's not going to poke it even though she really wants to and will just keep looking at it from various angles and places.

She watches Kaede curiously, holding the mara contained with seemingly effortless ease. It seethes beneath her thoughts like wind-whipped black mist. It is vast and powerful and hungry, eager to conquer and consume, to torture and destroy, a mindless rage that will never rest until everything it can reach is trapped in its eternal nightmare.

The way she has it contained is... like a scale tipped all the way to one side. There is certainly a difference between this and possession, but it's not the kind of difference that comes with a clear bright line. One could imagine them fighting for control, shoving that balance back and forth, neither fully ascendant over the other. At the moment, though, she is firmly in control.

And how is she keeping this control, exactly...?

It's hard to tell; a lot of the details seem to be happening on a mental level not directly perceptible to metamagical senses. Raiel and the mara are sharing space in the arena of Raiel's mind, and fighting a battle for control of it which Raiel is very definitively winning; if she wants specifics she may have to ask.

...okay.

"That is absolutely terrifying but I think I'm okay with it now."

"Okay. May I take you into a dream, then?"

"Yeah."

The mara - ripples, and there is a dizzy feeling that the world is turning sideways, or possibly inside-out; then they're sitting in exactly the same place they just were, except that something about it feels slightly off, a lingering hint of unreality. But what Kaede will probably find more striking is the way that Raiel and her mara are now omnipresent and something like omnipotent, her mind and the mara's magic twining through everything, forming the foundation of the world.

"You can always tell when you're in a constructed dream or the nightmare realm, but it can take some time to pick up the skill," she says. "You might have less trouble with it than most people, though."

"—you're everywhere."

"Well, it's my dream."

"The mara's here, too, also everywhere—"

Can she see anything else?

This place is not physical. It does a good job of pretending to be, but at its heart it is made of thought and magic, not air and stone. Nothing is quite real here. It's - well, a dream.

"Yes; I couldn't create this dream or bring you here without a mara to do the magic for me," she says.

"This is amazing."

Can she... change it? Poke it, pull on it, do anything to it?

"What are you doing—?"

Touching the fabric of the dream means touching something with a mara woven through it. The sensation is not pleasant. Like ice water and static electricity and a distant unsettling chorus of whispers.

She metaphorically winces away. "Touching it."

"It has a mara in it," she points out.