She appears above a bit of frozen wasteland. She falls, conscious but without making a peep, to the ground, and breaks a few more bones.
She lies there.
She appears above a bit of frozen wasteland. She falls, conscious but without making a peep, to the ground, and breaks a few more bones.
She lies there.
She is not a mage and is not carrying anything besides the dress she's wearing. She looks at them but doesn't say anything.
When she doesn't seem about to attack them, two of the Healers approach, cautiously. They get a blanket over her and check her over with Healing-Sight to gauge her injuries and whether she can be moved safely.
She is EMPHATICALLY NOT A HUMAN. She's breathing through the wings as well as her nose, for one thing, and arguably is overall more plant than animal, though she has bones and blood where you'd expect those. She doesn't have a neck injury and doesn't seem to be getting worse and when they pick her up she weighs thirty pounds.
Some silent communications-spell questions and answers are exchanged while Aldrin holds the Gate. Then some Mindspeech.
One of the Healers is a strong Thoughtsenser, and very cautiously opens and tries to get a passive read on the woman's thoughts.
She is thinking:
She has no idea how these mortals got here. The blanket is kind of uncomfortable on her wings. Do they know what fairies are? Ugh why do people keep TOUCHING her stop TOUCHING her.
Huh.
"Can you understand me?" one of the Healers asks, rotating through a couple of different languages.
Yeah she's not deaf but she can't reply, sorry random mortal. Why are you repeating yourself. Why are you repeating yourself AGAIN.
Mindspeech is exchanged. This is so weird. She can understand them even though she demonstrably isn't from here? She can't answer though?
The mage checks with mage-sight whether she's under compulsions preventing speech.
Sigh. <You can bring her over. I am staying upstairs until we understand the situation better, though>
Since apparently she understands all the languages they just used, one of the Healers tells her in Valdemaran that they're taking her across a Gate to somewhere indoors and less cold, and will treat her injuries there.
Yeah, okay, she supposes that's probably better than just lying here until she's covered in a layer of ice for a few thousand years.
They take her through and it's much warmer inside. They lay her down on a padded cot. The blanket can come off so they can get a better look at her injuries (and because she apparently doesn't like it, though they don't say that out loud.)
"I am going to do some Healing," one of the Healers said. "I need to touch you for it, though. Can you - if you can communicate by blinking, can you blink twice now?"
All right. Yes-or-no questions, seems to work.
"Um, two blinks for yes and three blinks for no and I'll try to ask you some questions," the Healer says. (One blink seems too easy to get confused about.) Unfortunately most of their questions are not yes-or-no questions. "Is it okay if I touch you in order to Heal the broken bones?"
She has to consider that a while. If this mortal is bad enough at healing to need to touch targets she probably has to get her hands all over them and squeeze and poke and prod, which sounds SO UNPLEASANT, but still probably couldn't possibly take more than an hour on the outside if they can get a spell off at all? And letting the bones heal by themselves will sure be weeks. On the other hand they're showing no sign of knowing how to let her move around so fixing the bones won't actually be all that helpful and getting felt up by an incompetent sorcerer sounds so miserable. She blinks three times.
Okay then. The Healer sits back.
The woman...seems pretty harmless and disinclined to hurt them so far? And not to be here to assassinate Leareth specifically? On the other hand she is obviously not human at ALL and what is she doing here and if she's not under compulsions why can't she move. Also it's very possible for someone not to be here to assassinate Leareth specifically and still to be part of some Power's scheme to do so.
"Are you a nonhuman species?" the Healer asks.
The Healer, painstakingly, asks about several other species (unsurprisingly gets three-blink answers) and then starts asking if she's from Velgarth, or from this long list of individual countries.
Meanwhile Nayoki slips into the back of the room and looks at the small winged woman with Mindhealing Sight. In case she's not under a compulsion, but is under something else.
Wow. Does it look like a block or set-command or literally any kind of Mindhealing technique she's used before.