"I did not in fact kill Deskari and I dislike assuming the enemy's plan has already failed. Also, wanting me to cooperate with you doesn't explain the wound. We must also consider the possibility of someone other than Areelu being behind this, possibly several actors working together to create an unusual combination of goals."

"Jon told me earlier that there was a way to - restore memories as information but avoid anything that would change my motivations or, um, personality or sense of self. I want to exclude any possibility that the spell changes me in ways that, let's say, reading words off a page would not. Regarding payment, I still don't have a good grasp of how much you owe me in terms of purchasing power or the cost of non-ordinary things I might need to buy. How big a portion of the money you owe me would cover this?"

"If I'm going all out on making money directly with my spells... at one fourth of that a day...  A scroll of limited wish would be about 15 days?  The basic grade of headband augmenting a mental trait, like the wisdom headband you have now would be 20 days?  Same for a belt augmenting a physical attribute, 20 days.  80 days for the next step up in headband or belt.  180 days for the strongest type of headband or belt.  5 days for the weakest grade of a cloak of resistance, 20 days for the next grade up like the one you are wearing now, 125 days for the strongest type.  1 day at that rate you could live comfortably for a year or scrape by as a peasant for 5 years.  Commissioning a custom item of constant Mindblank since you are particularly concerned about dominates and mindreading... a median estimate would be 600 day worth, maybe you could find a specialist or someone that already has an item design and get something as low as a quarter of that, 150.  Or maybe it's harder than I'm guessing and you'd pay 4 times that amount.  Also I think the effect would be partially redundant with the cloak of resistance for resisting mind control, although it is a uniquely absolute defense against divinations like mind reading.  For other cost comparisons... a Wish to get you to another planet such as returning to your home planet... might be as low as 125 days, but the market for wish diamonds can vary a lot, I'm not sure of the latest prices and there is some small variance on minimum diamond size by optimization of the spell, which is also kind of risky... Anyway with fluctuations in the market it might easily be as high as 5 times that, 625 days at that rate of earning?  For getting raised from the dead from an intact body, 25 days, for getting raised from a single scrap of your body, 50 days."

She is trying to cover for her discomfort with money with a large number of examples and mental math.  Also it is pleasantly distracting from the thought that they are all game pieces in some elaborate game of Areelu Vorlesh's!

"That was a lot, was that too many examples?  Or was there a particular example price I didn't give?  Also, I'm kind of guessestimating, the last time I focused hard on raising money I could only use my control weather once a day, and that is a big earner but can fluctuate a lot based on needs and now I can use it several times a day, but the next bids down from the top will be a lot lower. And, uh, I think the Abadarans would recommend I calculate my average earnings out in advance and pay you based on that as opposed to literally a fourth of selling all my spells each day or selling a fourth of my spells each day?  Especially because I normally tend to give away so many of my spells."

Her discomfort with money is really showing from the way she talks about it!

"And I'm familiar with the three standard variants of wordings for a limited wish to restore a mind, and another 4 reliable but more obscure wordings.  We can talk about which you prefer?"

Aaaagh! These people are really not used to talking to anyone without an eidetic memory and possibly twice as much working memory capacity as a normal human. And she did not answer Tanya's one specific question!

...no use blaming underlings in the presence of a manager who makes the same mistake. Terendelev probably learned it from him in the first place.

She does catch that one day's earnings are enough to live comfortably for a year. Which means she has enough money to retire on!!! She doesn't need to take loans for basic expenses, she can start all her future ventures by selling shares! She just has to get rid of this cursed wound and the doubly-cursed orb and then she will finally be free. 

...wait, no, 'live comfortably' probably doesn't include extraordinary security expenses. She can't exactly prove to Areelu or anyone else who comes calling five years from now that she has no working orbs left, even if the type-97 in fact breaks down or she sells it. And the more she exerts herself to defeat her enemies, the more powerful and therefore more threatening and tempting she will look to everyone else. This is the same trap the Empire was caught in! Tanya has no intention of going down the way the Empire seemed destined to, but it does mean she can't proceed directly to a life as an investor and philanthropist. Time to spend some of that money, then, she earned it in just one non-strenuous day's work and didn't even have the chance to look for the best-paying and least-risky opportunities. If she has to keep living a risky life for now, she will presumably have more chances to earn money.

"I would need it written down to properly process. I can do it later from the orb recording. Three hundred sixty-five days to a year, a quarter is ninety-one, fifteen days out of that is acceptable. I would like you to pay for that; I would need longer to consider whether to promise I'll share everything but maybe I'll have time if we can't or don't have to do this right away... Can we proceed to the secure area yet?" Are they still here because there are security checks to be made or a deal with Lastwall to be negotiated, or is it simply because Terendelev can't fit through the door?

“Oh sorry, I think they’re done with the security checks, but I won’t fit in the secure area as a dragon and I’m out of polymorphs.”

She addresses the inquisitor.

“Are you done with your checks?  And I would like to buy a limited wish from Lastwall’s stocks of scrolls… it could be quite urgent, although I can’t guarantee it will be useful…”

The inquisitor answers her “If you’re vouching for her and just checked her over with an Analyze Dweomer then we’re done.  I… I can request that scroll against your account.”

They are burning through a lot of scrolls, but Terendelev has been a close ally of Iomedae’s church for centuries and freely casts spells well past what they give her in return and has an account and line of credit with them just in case she wants something really expensive.

“I’ve got a runner going to get someone that has volunteered in advance for the sort of things like Paladin’s Sacrifice, but they aren’t at this site and that will be maybe up to half an hour before they’re back, and another quarter hour if they have the slot open to fill it.”

”Would you like a telepathic bond so… (Von Degurechaff was it?) can go inside while you stay out here?  Uh, it will be a quarter hour if I borrow one from a strike’s team support caster, faster if I cast off a scroll.  How urgent do you think this is?”

Terendelev has enough credibility he’s willing to authorize the cost of a 5th circle scroll.

“I think we can wait a quarter hour.”

Areelu hasn’t been known to strike outside the Worldwound, and this would be a risky location if she hasn’t studied it before, even outside a secured area.

(To Tanya).  “We’re under a Mage’s Private Sanctum even outside here so I think we can afford to wait, we need to be together for the casting of telepathic bond.”

Tanya’s wound isn’t waiting!  It’s trickling blood again! It isn’t growing in size like before, but the pull is back, with kind of a throbbing sensation now.

Well, shit. She points this out.

"The healing didn't take. Can you - figure out with your style of magic how it's going to progress? The pulling sensation is stronger again but feels a bit different, it might be timed to my heartbeat..."

"Why would someone do this," she thinks out loud (in a whisper). "Presumably they want us to do or not to do something as a result but I don't know what and it's - not something they could have communicated by leaving a note in my pack, 'to cure the wound you must do X'? Or by making the triggered spell pass a message. They're risking us doing the wrong thing from their perspective, does that mean their preferred outcome will happen without us doing anything? Except that we will burn a lot of resources on healing me until we run out. Or is there something else we'll predictably try, like the memory restoration, and that will trigger something?"

“Well, one guess I have is that it’s connected to the Worldwound, and will keep opening up so long as you are too far away from it?  If Areelu is behind all of this, and her greatest powers are, as Jon speculated, linked to the Worldwound, it guarantees you can’t travel too far away beyond her reach without dying.  I might be jumping too far ahead in theorizing.”

She tries not to fixate on Areelu.

“I did see a connection to your secondary orb.  Maybe it kills you if you activate that orb?  And activating after a teleport was a side effect of the intended result?  Or maybe it deactivates if that orb is activated and the intent is to force you to activate it?  I… what exactly was the mind control (you say was already there) for?”

This is probably an uncomfortable topic for Tanya but it seems decision relevant.

The alternate Earth’s magic seemed too physics-based to have proper mind control.  What exactly did Terendelev see?  He doesn’t want to jump too far ahead guessing ‘dark tapestry fuckery’ (maybe it pushed their magic’s development in that direction or provided a copyable example) but it’s one potential guess.

Tanya does not, in fact, have the usual reason not to tell them about Being X and her first life, because they will probably believe her. (And if they don't, it might actually be valid evidence that her memories are fake?) The problem is, she doesn't know how it will make them react. Maybe they'll recognize Being X as a member of their faction and stop working with her or turn her over to him. Maybe they'll recognize him as an enemy and think she's a security risk for drawing his attention to them or introducing an avenue of mind control. Maybe they'll just agree with him and demand she start worshipping him! People are fundamentally irrational where gods are concerned, and that makes them unpredictable even when they're not literal aliens.

She would love to tell them, if she knew they'd react well, but she can't know that without telling them! ...or can she?

She'd never take a risk like this just to share the information, not even the useful parts about her first Earth, but it could be required for her survival. The cursed orb (she really likes that name) was already revealed, and for all she knows they can deduce the rest just by studying it with their spells... that decides it.

"Jon? Would you agree to do the thing where you - permanently forget this, if after I tell you you don't like it or I don't like your reaction? If I don't ask you to forget it, then I will also tell Terendelev." Tanya does not in fact know whether Terendelev also practices routine self-editing but it's better not to assume. "I realize this is a lot to ask for, about information you don't have, and the fact that I'm asking for it is itself indicative, but I really don't know how you or anyone here would react. It is not as far as I know directly relevant to your or Terendelev's interests, except inasfar as it affects me since we're working together, and s far as I know there is no danger to or from me if I don't use the orb, but I do not in fact know a lot about your interests."

"Also, to be clear, if my choice was between dying and using that orb risking being mind-controlled - possibly not by the original threat I know about but by some novel actor - I would have probably preferred dying until I was told Pharasma would send me to a torture afterlife." 

Being X, if you're listening, bullying me into praying under threat of eternal torture DOES NOT COUNT AS WORSHIP and you are a miserable failure for imagining that it does. Also, FUCK YOU.

“My hearing is very keen so I will hum to myself just to make sure I don’t hear anything.”

“I am willing to commit to forgetting it unless by mutual agreement we decide that me remembering it is acceptable.  If you have multiple repeated requests of this nature I may have additional stipulations to prevent an adversarial strategy of repeatedly presenting and reframing different subsets of information, but for one request I more than willing to accommodate.  Remember with my variant of message subvocalizing is sufficient, you didn’t even need a full whisper.”

"I was thinking we could go into a separate room, in case that improves security against outside spying?" Also, forcing Terendelev to hum feels impolite and it'd be even worse to ask her to put her... claws in her ears - that is not relevant. Focus. She can't take her time with this wound.

The wound is actually staying at a trickle, it’s growing much slower this time.

“There are several exotic costly strategies a committed foe could try that the security precautions inside will stop… I expect they will have us pass through a permanent anti-magic field, which would temporarily suppress any polymorph effects (which a committed foe may use to slip in an gnat sized-spy), and temporarily suppress your tongues and comprehend languages.  You should probably stop using your orb and deactivate to be safe as well when passing through the field.  Is that acceptable to you?”

He has another idea.

“It might suppress your curse, we should check that as we pass through the antimagic field as well.  The downside being that you could no longer talk to most people… my truespeech would continue to work if I remained outside the field.  If it does suppress your curse, Lastwall also has antimagic cells at this site you could remain in.”

Hopefully there isn't a hidden polymorph effect on Tanya and she's not about to revert to an alien body - that is pointless worrying.

"Yes. Even as a short term solution to my wound getting worse it would buy us time. Acting under time pressure is the worst. ...would the enemy would have foreseen this being available?"

Tanya will power down the orb. It's only for a few minutes and she has to do it when she sleeps anyway, so rationally she's not significantly putting herself in danger if she stops using it for just a few minutes, it only feels that way.

“We would like to go the secure area now but we will need to return for the telepathic bond with Terendelev.  Also, if the antimagic field helps with the curse, we might want to redirect to one of the cells that has it.  And note Tanya is relying on tongues and comprehend languages so she will not be able communicate with anyone that does not themselves have translation magic while inside.”

He follows after as the inquisitor leads them.

“Permanent antimagic fields are a known defensive measure, but expensive.  Mendev’s capital has a few, Lastwall has more but not many to spare.  So it is not impossible to anticipate, but if an adversary was expecting you to stay in Kenabres you wouldn’t have access to one.”

They come to a checkpoint with clear marking as the floor.

“The wound might remain open but cease getting worse.  Take a few moments to try to note if this is the case.”

As she passes the threshold, Tanya's magic sense - weak and short-range without the orb, not really useful, but still the thing that lets her sense and connect to her orb - disappears. She startles, even though she was prepared for it, because the sensation is so unfamiliar! Logically, it's no more inherently unpleasant than wearing a blindfold, but her instincts are screaming that her orb is broken, that thing she's holding in her hand has been replaced with a counterfeit, she's defenseless, is this what life on Earth 1 felt like -

She takes a step back. 

...

The world is still there. It's still real. It's an anti-magic spell, a clever device, nothing more. Tanya is a soldier rational man and as such her greatest possession is her mind and her mind is safest in the antimagic zone where it cannot be taken over.

She steps back in.

...the wound doesn't vanish or immediately stop bleeding. It's hard to say if it's still getting worse? Not within a few seconds, anyway.

"I can't tell if it's still getting worse. Should we have the conversation here or is further on more secure? ...are the whispers still working?" She repeats that out loud.

“My message spell will not work through an antimagic field.  Can you notice the directional tug?”

The tug isn’t there, just the minor ordinary pain, like an especially annoying paper cut.

"No, it's gone. Good, we have at least a fallback option. I should stay here for longer later to make sure the wound is at least starting to heal. Let's go to where we can talk."

"...should I leave the other orb here? It needs to be guarded very well, but deactivating anything magical it's doing seems like a good idea."

“They might need to use this checkpoint for other purposes, but good thinking.”

He addresses the inquisitor.

“Can we stop by one of the antimagic cells to drop off the potentially cursed magic item?”

“That’s not the standard use, and I should have a box for it arriving any minute, but…”

He mentally reviews procedures to make sure he isn’t violating anything.

“We need to go back this way.”

He leads them back part of the way they came, then down some stairs to an underground hallway.  He nods to a guard on duty and briefly explains that they have an unusual magical item that needs a antimagic and guarding.  He signs some forms, then fills out another form in more detail (nonstandard cell usage requires extra documentation), then finally leads Tanya to a room in the hallway.  It’s a furnished but spartan prison cell.

“It will require my authorization to retrieve the item again, but I recognize it is your property you are asking us to hold so you have my word I will allow you to retrieve it.  (That was the most expedient way of fitting with procedure.)”

He’ll let Tanya herself put the item in the cell, he doesn’t want to touch it without equipment and a briefing on what it does.