It takes her longer than usual to stop trembling.

She wants to rush ahead. The thing she wants to do is possible to do now, she's pretty sure. But - but the backup plans aren't, and there'll be countermeasures, and she's not going to get this much latitude twice.

She works on her glasses of Detect Magic and doesn't do anything on the side except make them also really good at long distance vision. She starts trying to get the pearls of power to work. She starts trying to learn spell-duration extension. She writes up regular reports for Leareth on all of this except the long distance vision.

She asks Calib how things are expected to change after the invasion, if there is an invasion. What Valdemar is like. Whether they'll still be stuck on this base.

Calib always looks kind of sad and worried when she brings up the topic, and gets snugglier. "Well, either way the invasion wouldn't be for at least a decade. Leareth's been laying preparations for decades already and there's still some planned."

He sits up, expression growing more animated. "...Valdemar's pretty interesting, though. It was founded eight hundred years ago by some guy who fled the Eastern Empire, I think during an especially bad period - uh, from what I hear the Empire's still the place with the best material standards of living in the entire world, but it's very authoritarian, Leareth's theory is that the gods will let more technology slide if there are other factors that reduce people's freedom, and it got more corrupt after he gave up on running it himself. Anyway. So picture this: Baron Valdemar flees all the way to the edge of the Pelagirs with his whole landholding and entourage, and then founds his own little kingdom there, and - I guess he gets worried about it going corrupt too. So he prays to the gods. All of them, every single god whose name he knows. And - someone answered. None of the histories say which Power or how many, but - all of a sudden these magic intelligent white horses show up from nowhere. They're called Companions and they soulbond to the Kingdom's leadership, and supposedly they're incorruptible, right. I reckon what that really means is they're bound to serve the god that made them, but it seems to be a very hands-off relationship, you don't hear about overt miracles there like in Karse or Iftel. The first Companions started having Companion babies and now there's a couple hundred of them, and they Choose all the most promising and moral children - in practice I think it's just Gifted children, actually - from all over the Kingdom, and if you're Chosen you go to Haven, the capital, and train to be a Herald, that's what someone chosen by a Companion is called. They're a hereditary monarchy like most places but the monarch has to be a Herald, sometimes that means a cousin inherits instead of the last monarch's children."

"Huh. 

Why're we invading - there instead of some other place, if it basically works and it's lawful..."

"I don't know all of Leareth's reasons for choosing them. I...do know that it basically works but not great, it's - Leareth said it's too centralized, in a way, everyone Gifted works for the Crown and so there's no free market in how their time is allocated. They're stable but they're very poor compared to somewhere like the Eastern Empire or even Rethwellan, and they're not making especially effective use of their land area for, uh, maximum population size. I think their location's part of it too, they're accessible from, er, here, which was the best staging-area for Leareth's plan since it's not claimed by any gods, but the other places nearest here are the Pelagirs, which are under the Star-Eyed's control, and Iftel, which Vkandis has a bloody giant impassible shield around. But the god that claims territory in Valdemar seems - unusually hands-off, and Leareth's been able to operate there in the past with a lot less interference. And there's probably other reasons that I'm not cleared to know."

Shrug. "I don't like it. I don't think Leareth does either. It's definitely - well, he wouldn't be doing this if he were directly trying to fix things instead of, uh, getting ten million people for the god."

Shiver. Hug. 

She goes out flying with her new glasses and looks south and tries to fix in her mind the farthest point south that she can see. 

She can see a range of mountains! They're at least fifty miles away, and they're gorgeous, rearing up tall and snowcapped and gleaming in the weak winter sun.

And she probably can't go high enough to see past their peaks, but she'll try, going as far up as the spell permits, using Feather Fall to save herself on the ride down.

She cannot in fact get high enough to see past the peaks or get a good view of the other side, but if she casts Fly twice in a row and powers up as hard as she can, she can manage a peek over the lowest point between two mountain peaks. Though of course the angle means she can only see what's past the 'shadow' of the mountain range, which is probably five hundred miles away, and even through the glasses it's mostly lost in the haze of distance, a brief impression of green and brown and maybe the glint of a large lake or inland sea.

It's not enough for a Teleport but that's fine.

She plummets to the ground and catches herself with Feather Fall and lands, grinning. "I have got to make an item of Fly for you all," she says to the other people out travelling with her, and spends the rest of the time outdoors thinking about how to do it.

Later that day, in another part of the complex:

Nayoki goes to Leareth. :Carissa is planning something:

Leareth doesn't look up from his notes, but he does smile slightly. :I am aware:

:No, I mean, actually. I think she might be trying to escape to Valdemar:

:Yes, Calib told me she seemed especially curious about it. Though there are perfectly innocuous reasons for that too. It is a rather curious place:

:- Leareth, are you just - having fun toying with her? That seems cruel:

:No! But...well, she is very motivated and making excellent progress on her study of magic, right now, and...I think it is important to give her some breathing space. I am not going to intervene just based on this:

Nayoki sighs gustily and throws up both hands. :Suit yourself, then, it will serve you right if you get dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to go retrieve her from some escapade:

Leareth shakes his head and goes back to his work.

Carissa doesn't expect to have very much longer. 

The plan rather comes together all at once, since she wasn't allowed to think about it earlier. 

She sets two unseen servants to packing and cleaning, and some dancing lights to racing across the ceiling; they don't matter but they'll be distracting to mage sight.

She goes invisible. 

She goes to her wardrobe and takes a string of rope and pins it inside one of her longer dresses, and casts Magic Aura on it, and casts an Extended Rope Trick, and climbs it, and secrets herself away in the extradimensional space at the top. This is not leaving the secret base, she thinks to herself determinedly the whole time, because she knows there's an enchantment on her that makes that impossible to do.

But they'll notice the planar magic. They know she's been asking questions about Valdemar. 

She'll see what they do about that.

The magic itself doesn't set off any alarms; Carissa does magic in her room regularly.

The disappearance of the tracking-spell in her shield-amulet and also on the gown she's wearing from the wards DOES. It's very early in the morning and Leareth is not actually asleep but isn't yet up. He is thirty seconds later, though he strolls into the ward-observation station at a walk rather than a run.

The junior mage on night duty is looking half-panicked. "I'm extending the search-range - we should know in thirty seconds if she's in Valdemar -"

"Do not rush it. I doubt she is in Valdemar, anyway." He turns, unhurried, as another mage rushes into the room. "- Perfect. Albrat, there should be fresh hair from her hairbrush in storage room three. Top shelf, left, white box. I would like you to cast the search-spell for her." It'll take half a candlemark, it's a fiddly and difficult spell, but it ought to find her anywhere in the world, even if she's somehow spoofing his tracking spell. Which he doubts, but - well, he did semi-deliberately avoid learning too much about what she was planning.

(This is fun. Leareth is mostly not consciously aware of the fact that he's enjoying himself immensely, he's too busy thinking about the object level problem-solving, but he is nonetheless having a great time.)

     "On it," Albrat says, darting out.

Leareth turns again as someone else enters. "Review the ward-coverage, please, I want anything on the magic detected immediately before we lost her signature."

    "Yes, of course - it doesn't record it in a lot of detail though..."

"I know. Come to the room and tell me once you have a report." Leareth turns on his heels and strides down the hall.

Nayoki is already standing in the open doorway to Carissa's empty room. "I told you."

"Yes, yes, I know." Leareth steps past her. Looks around.

It's dark; she lights it with magic, usually, and those spells don't seem to be active at the moment.

She took her spellsilver and left almost everything else; the room is not very neat. There are in progress magic items. No spellbook, of course. 

She is watching interestedly from the Rope Trick. It's been five minutes. The use of magic shouldn't have triggered an alarm that quickly. So...something else. Maybe the room is under observation, but she's been invisible in it before. Probably he has some way to track her. The obvious one would be her invincibility amulet. If Golarion summons worked she'd give it to a summoned creature, see what that did, but the local style of summons is different...