SNAP.
FRIDAY plays some video clips of the Battle of New York on the conference room's main screen.
Vanyel is immediately very distracted by the concept of recordings of moving pictures! (Everyone else has seen them before and at least somewhat gotten used to it.)
Leareth watches for a minute, until he's pretty sure he's seen everything that's useful to him.
He turns to Thor. :Would you mind if we tested some non-destructive, easily reversible Velgarth magic on you? It seems important to check if Velgarth Mindhealing or Compulsions would work on Asgardians:
:Pretty sure Thoughtsensing does: Vanyel volunteers. :I met Loki, in Mandos' realm. He was being kept prisoner in Sauron's place, but I could tell something was off:
"It might not function the same when dead, though, so we'd better test it. Go ahead, I guess, just warn me of exactly what you're going to do first."
"I'm going to drop the shield I have on you to let them do the test," Strange tells Thor, and then does so.
:I am going to attempt a compulsion, which is mage-work, and then a Mindhealing set-command: Nayoki tells Thor. :Both will be very simple; they should prevent you from walking or moving your feet, but have no other effects. I will leave each one for ten seconds so that you can test it and attempt to break it, and then undo it - or, if you ask us to, I will undo it sooner. Ready?:
Thor is unable to move his feet for ten seconds!
"Huh. That's weird," he says.
Also, now that Nayoki is looking, she notices another small mind in what appears to be empty space near Thor. Definitely not a human, too simple even to be an animal, and oddly, artificially regular, but something with its own limited intelligence, nonetheless.
She'll ask him about it after.
:Now I will test the Mindhealing set-command:
This one has the same effect, but it's a lot faster, and it - feels like something, in his head, in addition to the pure physical effects. Like a wall being dropped into place, and for a fraction of a second the world is soft around the corners and then it snaps back.
Thor looks significantly more disconcerted by this one than the last one, but it also works.
"Of course, while Loki has the Mind Stone, this magic will probably be useless on him, at least if he notices it, and he'll probably be able to lay compulsions on you that your magic can't break."
:Leareth is very good at compulsions. I expect he could manage one subtle enough that Loki would not notice:
:And the rest of our plan should involve not being noticed. Could you give us a timeline of when he would have the Mind Stone, versus not?:
"He shouldn't have it when we arrive, and he'll be arrested shortly after that if all goes according to plan. However, we're going to be disrupting the plan, so there's a chance he might get it back."
Nod. :Then we will plan some contingencies for that. One of our people being mind-controlled could be very, very dangerous. Assuming we manage to disrupt things before he has the Stone, though, we should be able to neutralize him with Velgarth magic. And locate him even if he is shapeshifted:
:Do your people have technology-based armour, or shielding, or anything else that could supplement our magical protections?:
"Only what I'm wearing—oh, it's cloaked, I forgot." Thor looks like he's wearing normal Earth clothes, but as soon as he says that, it changes into his armor. He also appears to pull a huge battle-axe out of thin air; it seems to be the source of the strange mind that Nayoki saw earlier. "Unfortunately Asgard was recently destroyed, so we don't exactly have spares."
:Fascinating. I may wish to study it later, but there is not time now. Nayoki?:
:One moment:
She turns back to Thor. Gestures at the enormous battle-axe. :What - is that? It has a mind-presence. One I can sense:
"This is Stormbreaker. You can sense it? I know it has some sort of intelligence, it can obey my thoughts"—it flies a foot out of his hand and then returns in a physically implausible manner—"but I don't have magic mind-reading powers so I wasn't aware it was visible to them. Want to try to talk to it? That would be...interesting."
:It would be! I will try:
Nayoki takes a step closer, and focuses all her Othersenses on the battle-axe.
:Can you hear me: