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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.
promise and leareth
the-final-accounting
Leareth is digging through another crate.
"- Her spirit avatars are called leshya'e Kal'enedral," he says suddenly. "Does that...?"
imeanforever
"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 -"
the-final-accounting
"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..."
imeanforever
"The leshya'e Kal'enedral could still attack me unless I had my orders well specified first."
the-final-accounting
"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?"
imeanforever
"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."
the-final-accounting
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!"
imeanforever
"I didn't either! Is there a way to - catch one person from one of the armies, and ask them -"
the-final-accounting
"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."
the-final-accounting
"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?"
imeanforever
"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 -"
the-final-accounting
"Hmm. What would the effect be of a general stop order, would that stop the armies as well or would they keep going -?"
imeanforever
"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."
the-final-accounting
"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."
imeanforever
"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.
the-final-accounting
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."
the-final-accounting
"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."
