Time starts passing much more quickly, or so it feels like.

She retires to the woods again, to moonlight-dance. This time, she checks around for any suspicious shapeshifters and will pick off imps until they get the message. Sleeping in her not-quite-a-demiplane, still.

Most of the next day she spends running all the way back and forth over Korvosa, along the roofs - there are so many problems in this city, it feels like bailing out an ocean liner with a bucket, but she burns out a few stirge nests and manages to shred another imp or two in her aggressive (and obvious) searching. She can't find Caroline, or whatever her name was. (Yes, yes, she knows it's Cinnabar. She's being petty in her own head.)

(She tries again, significantly more sneakily, by moonlight. Prowling along at a lower profile that doesn't have people gossiping about the giant werefox adventuress all day. She feels out for illusions-she-has-made again and again, and picks up a fair few guard patrols but nothing else. Probably Cinnabar detected and removed her tracking-tag.)

Sleep through the day, that day, since she spent half the night searching.

She decides to go for a run on a whim, that morning. Just to feel the wind in her fur and see the miles vanish. Along the beach, salt and sand. And then back again. It's not productive, but it's relaxing.

No new Adventures tm or messages have come in, and her items on order with the Abadarans still haven't arrived, so...

She checks in the spots she suspects her party members hang out, trying to find them to see what if anything is being done with the key - and it's not that she doesn't occasionally noodle at finding that serial killer, or more derros, or the assassin, but these casual probes turn up nothing. There's no shortages of stirges and imps to hunt if she feels like violence. She sniffs around that ironworkers' union a bit again, but it is in the same place it was two days ago. Watching and waiting. She finds her snap-stick and feeds it extra energy so it'll last a month or two.

Time to relax, she supposes? So. Yes. Relaxing. How do you do that, again?

She goes shopping through the markets for good food, things exotic to her own supplies. She talks cooking with vendors and restaurant owners (while dropping silver on their dishes, which can't hurt their willingness to chat). It's nice.

She noodles on the illusory arena for a while, steadily getting it into a properly workable state-

-And remembers her idea for self-powering illusions. It really feels like it shouldn't work. But she gets her power from the moon. And diamonds are supposed to be the ultimate magic stabilizer. She dredges out of her memory everything she can about the diamonds that go into wards, and the threads of magic spooling out from them. She takes out a scroll and a wand and stares at them for hours, muttering and squinting and taking notes.

It really does seem like it should just... Work? Maybe not on the first try. But she'll be very careful to recover the dust, nothing she's doing should destroy it, it's all more based on Tirran style channel-magic rather than local style whatever the heck it is.

She almost tries it right there in a tavern, and then remembers a conversation with the fat wizard that's rude, the Queen's wizard.

So. She goes and purchases a teeny tiny vial of diamond dust from the Abadarans. And then, outside the walls, in the woods-

Hmm, no, that didn't work, but what about this-

-Apparently not, but that was neat, it got sort of sticky, she couldn't touch the illusion for a while. Good thing she's working with such low power levels-

-But what if like this, suspended throughout the framework in tiny careful strands, and with a tiny channel that draws light from a meter around down into it, and-

-It's almost working. Sort of. The key part is there! Lunar light is being transformed into illusion-sustaining energy, the same flavor as hers! It's just not efficient enough-

It takes another three days of experimenting, interspersed with occasional trips to buy spiced cider or apple candy or fancy chicken dishes, but she has it!! She did it!! 100gp worth of diamond dust is an annoying cost, but she's too high on accomplishment to care right now! This illusion powers ITSELF, so long as it's sufficiently bathed in moonlight! She's tidied up the physics sim and added a bunch of quality of life features and nice SFX to the fighting game too, because why not.

(Her nice cloak of resistance and cap of the free thinker come in too. She disguises the +5 cloak as the +2 one she already had with an efficient long-term illusion, and the cap of the free thinker as a stylish but nonmagical garment. Which is also illusory-woven/tied to her hair.)

Observers will notice the adventurer Weiss grinning smugly and practically bouncing on her feet, carrying a shiny engraved rock the size of two fists, walking towards the castle, having remembered her original promise to gift the results.

Ileosa is already in a good mood to see her as well. The Pharasmin messenger has arrived, and the bishop's scry has revealed that her city's most infamous serial killer is lying low at an old fishery guarded by a gang of urchins. To a soft heart like Weiss', that will mean urgency in getting there and lots of unrelated loose ends to tangle herself up in.

The reception process is much the same, though Weiss isn't left waiting very long at each step. Her reputation has spread among the palace guards by now as an ally of the queen's, and the queen herself is impatient to play with her new gift even if she has slipped her mourning face back on to receive her. 

"You may enter."

Perfunctory curtsey, too excited and rushing through it.

"I'll get out of your hair quick enough- I just promised a gift when I actually figured it out, and I'm a bit smug about it. Behold."

She sets down the rock and activates it. The bones of the fighting rink are still there, if polished.

"When this moon symbol goes to half or waning, let it sit under moonlight. It will go back to full and allow to activate it again. I did end up needing diamond dust, though."

"You mean to say that my messenger did not find you, and you have come here by coincidence?"

Let's make her feel guilty. In Ileosa's experience, Good people seem to almost seek guilt out like moths drawn to flame. 

"I had thought you came because of the matter of the necromancer! Bishop d'Bear has landed a Scry and recognized the vision's location; your party awaits in the next chamber to discuss their plans for the assault on his Midland lair."

"-Oh! No, I didn't. Lucky I was coming here anyway, I guess. Bloody necromancers. I want to hear what everyone thinks of it later though!"

Oh yes, it doesn't hurt that Ileosa loves the sight of those perky ears drooping like a beaten dog. 

"Linger a little, it is likely not urgent on the scale of minutes." And should it proves otherwise, yet more guilt for her. "You conveyed the rudiments to me when inspiration first struck you, but a brief demonstration would not go amiss."

There we go, tear her between guilt and obligation on one side, pride in her creation and social convention on the other. Which way will the little fox rip?

Making the whole world her Urgent problem has, she has long recognized, been unhealthy.

"...If you're sure! The basic idea is that you can select these fighters and watch 'em go. Or. You can also hold these-" Basically Nintendo style controllers- "And use the sticks and buttons to control your fighter directly. Want to have a try?"

Mwahaha. Prepare for the seductive allure of Fantasy Skin 3D Smash Bros. Or maybe Mortal Kombat.

She will start by selecting a couple of the fighters to duel for her pleasure. Preferably both women, preferably both intense and armored. How detailed is this illusion, and how far will the figures go in their violence to each other?

How about an intensely staring pale-skin girl with two bone harpoons and a vicious-looking giant hook on a rope, and a twitchy darker furred gnoll woman with nearly red fur, fangs, claws, and blood on tattered garments.

The SFX are pretty good. Slightly more tuned for dramatic impact and showy fights- Freeze frames on big blows, subtle, flashy motions and leaps- But there's blood and damaged limbs.

They go to incapacitation. The pale girl wins, and twirls her hook smugly after the other falls to the ground.

The odd freezing effect takes some getting used to. The first time she looks around the arena for a hidden third challenger making their entrance with a Time Stop, but after a few instances she can recognize it as a convention of the medium like a long dying soliloquoy on stage or the drilling of a statue's eyes to show the pupils. 

The blood and brutality is very appealing. Were she inclined to show it, she would fan herself, but such bloodthirst would not endear herself to Weiss despite her being the artist of it. Come to think of it, that is an odd contradiction with her apparent nature, being so averse to any death that doesn't serve her conception of Good. Why would she lavish so much attention on this gladiatorial spectacle? 

Perhaps she would divert the queen from holding matches with live fighters. Perhaps she has appetites of her own, suppressed by her foolish scruples, that she only allows herself to indulge in through illusory fantasy. 

Ileosa cycles through each of the options for the contestants, examining them in turn as though deciding on the next match, while in fact paying close attention to Weiss. Are there any of the gladiators that she seems to have put a special effort into, or that she might identify with herself? 

Weiss perks up a bit when she looks at another tirran-kitsune, all in white colors with bored red eyes and mussed up hair.

She has the look of a caster about her. Robes, scrolls, hand gestures.

Looks more like someone who interests her than an aspirational target to become. An old flame? It's rather tempting to adopt a bored expression and repeat one or two of those gestures, perhaps put on a white outfit of her own, to see how Weiss would react to that on their next encounter.

"This is truly a queenly gift. I can think of no comparison for it outside the legends of old Azlant." Another reason to keep Weiss occupied in her service, so that it will remain one-of-a-kind. "It deserves a longer examination than we have time for in this audience, but no doubt Togomor and Sabina will have their own praise for your craft when they see you next."

She makes a gesture of gracious dismissal.

Once Weiss is gone, she can't wait to retire to her chambers and try out controlling a fighter directly. A queen can't be seen to struggle with anything, which is why she's going to familiarize herself and practice with it in private. Then she can show it to Sabina and crush her in this martial game.

To the meeting room to plan out a necromancer-hunt come morning, then?

Just an hour or so earlier...

Tamamo usually doesn't bother her over things, let alone so incessantly. But she's been trying not to laugh as she pointed Sinnah to this out of the way spot near Weiss's haunt for a week. So. 

Either her favorite crytid-hunt companion has gotten herself into some embarrassing trouble, or something very interesting is happening here.

...Ah, a rift, closed for nearly a week. That'd do it.

Sinnah is, perhaps, one of the only people who could reopen one of these. At least, so long as any real trace remains. It's a few days of delicate work building up the natural mana flows in the local are to the same crescendo that opened it in the first place. A dozen large-scale spell circles in half a dozen locations, which she flits between with the latest version of her fly spell.

(She's not worried about going home. Weiss is here somewhere, and she has the Long Road Home, one of Tamamo's special rituals. And if it comes to it Sinnah knows how to get to the same place, if more... Laboriously.)

She's going to be relatively low on energy by the time she finishes but that's fine. It's only really interesting as an academic exercise in proving she can do it, at first. How annoying it would be, if Tamamo is merely pranking her.

But then the portal opens and she drops down into the city after Weiss, wearing her full exploring kit, including a number of shields, wards, contingency-spells, wands, and a whole lot of scrolls.

...Oh-ho-ho. She's never gotten the chance to go to an Otherworld, merely to interview Otherworlders. She feels her annoyance evaporate away to interest and even excitement, not that it shows overmuch on her face. This was well worth the trip. 

She activates a weak divination looking for the largest concentration of magic in the strange city, and flies towards it.

The largest concentration of magic in Korvosa? It could only ever be the Acadamae. 

Almost a town unto itself, it is filled with apprentices, students, faculty, and imps. There is a hall covered in sixteen separate binding circles, one where the upper two floors are enclosed by invisible and almost unbreakable Walls of Force, one with chambers filled by scrying pools and lined with mirrors and with doors of ever-changing harrow cards and capped by a dome of ever-shifting images that is perhaps the largest crystal ball in the world, one drenched in enough illusions to fool every sense, one that looks as though a thousand different transmuters have taken it upon themselves to leave their own mark on and with flocks of songbirds roosting in the rafters, and one that reeks of necromantic magic.

The gates are sealed, the walls are high, but neither are any obstacle to the Sinnah of Sinnah's Fly.

(Why are the doors of the Acadamae still closed, long after the initial unrest of the king's death has passed? The headmaster Toff Ornelos may have little concern for the deaths his students might suffer or inflict should the street fighting flare up again, but he is not the true head of the Ornelos family. The Immortal Lord Volshyenek, though abandoned by his allies, retains enough contacts compelled to leave reports for him accessible by Greater Scrying. With advance warning of a significant infernal contract relating to the city of Korvosa and knowing the ways of Hell, he intends to do nothing that might provoke any scrutiny of his hidden refuge.)