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.
Leareth is digging through another crate.
"- Her spirit avatars are called leshya'e Kal'enedral," he says suddenly. "Does that...?"
"Well, now I need something to tell them. Is there a way for them to talk to me, getting feedback out of them would help -"
"I am thinking. Previously I had no way to get answers from gods without Their cooperation, but I could not give Them orders either. Vkandis speaks through his Suncats sometimes, I think... And the Star-Eyed has leshya'e Kal'enedral, in the spirit world, I could take you there and maybe it would work if you order Her to send one..."
"The leshya'e Kal'enedral could still attack me unless I had my orders well specified first."
"That does seem like a concern here. ...Are there best practices or something for making orders well-specified enough to prevent sabotage by hostile vassals?"
"I learned from the best. But it's hard and them being a weird sort of entity can only make it harder and the process wants feedback."
Sigh. "I am not sure what to do. I - know a substantial amount about the gods, in general, but - this is not a problem I anticipated having!"
"I didn't either! Is there a way to - catch one person from one of the armies, and ask them -"
"Let me think." Leareth narrows his eyes. "I could scry the area outside the compound, and - attempt to aim a Gate that way, and capture a human soldier, they will probably be less dangerous and if I grab a mage by accident I can probably contain them... What do you wish to ask them, though, I am unsure a random soldier would know very much about what is happening."
"I could try to go for a priest of Vkandis, maybe, they have distinctive uniforms - they would be much more dangerous, though. At least until you could obtain their name. I...could read their mind to get it?"
"Maybe. Or cram a leaf off my dress down their throat. Would anything bad happen if I - they see by foresight, right, if I just plan to issue them both a general stop order unless their armies both surrender immediately -"
"Hmm. What would the effect be of a general stop order, would that stop the armies as well or would they keep going -?"
"They would presumably keep going, but I can't die, so they'd be stopped indefinitely till I found something else to do with them, and might not prefer that even if their armies could continue to act. Hopefully they'd see it coming and have them surrender."
"I very much hope They have no idea where I am, but I would notice a surrender, if I am scrying the area under attack– I should do that now, to find out if the armies are still there or coming after us here."
"Okay."
And she makes up her mind that if there isn't a clearly communicated and legitimate surrender in the next hour she will issue stop orders to both gods and go from there.
Leareth digs out a crystal focus and scries the previous site.
Nothing seems to be changing at first. Quite a lot of people - a variety of humans and other species in red-and-gold uniforms, that's the Ifteli army, and more humans in robes with long white hair who look Tayledras - are digging through the wreckage of what used to be his favourite secret base and library. Leareth is pretty ticked off about that.
He moves his scrying higher. "- Damn. The rest of them are headed this way. Or - searching a variety of directions, but they seem to be able to tell when they are drawing closer to us, perhaps that appears in Foresight. I think it will take them more than an hour at the rate they are moving, but not much more. No sign of any surrender yet."
"We can wait five or ten minutes and see? I am not sure how quickly They could actually arrange to communicate with the troops - probably They need to send new prophetic visions to the priests, I assume that is how They directed armies to do this in the first place."