Adaye's head lifts and something more like her usual fire comes into her eyes. "He said I'd been keeping my research into the..."
She trails off, looks to Risine, who cocks an eyebrow. "I'm your Advocate, Adaye. You know I have no love for the Headmaster, and I'm sworn by code to keep anything you tell me confidential. And that's a code I do not fuck around with," she says plainly.
Adaye breathes a sigh, relaxing visibly, and nods. "Into the power core secret from him, against our earlier agreement," she continues, adding to Risine, "I can explain later." Turning back to Asra, she goes on. "Which is nonsense. I'd told him everything I found. I've been squeezing everything out of my head I can, and all I can think is that he just doesn't want me looking into it any further. But then why let me look into it at all? He knows I can't resist a puzzle like this. He knows everything about me. He's been my mentor, for Kin's sake, ever since I was a Novice, even though he's not much of a mechanist himself."
Risine leans a shoulder against the wall, arms crossed. "You said he asked you to take over the study, Scholar Beauchaud?" she asks, and receiving confirmation of that, she adds, "It's possible he wants someone who's not a mechanist to dig into this 'power core' further. I have no idea what this device might be or do, but that sounds uncomfortably sinister to me."
Adaye nods. "From what I've been able to tell, it's very powerful magic. The workmanship is exquisite. Better than anything I've seen in my twenty years at the School. There's a curiously organic element to it, as though mixing mechanics and living matter, in a way that I'd not have thought possible. You saw the vines, Asra. There's something almost alive about the thing. I..."
Her expression flattens. "The elves. No one else has the capability to coax living tissue to do this sort of thing." But then she gives her head a sharp shake. "But their best mages abhor mechanism. Doing something like this would be anathema to them."
She bends her head, grasping her forehead in one hand. "There's something I'm missing. Something you're going to have to explore, Asra."
Asra's eyes flit between Risine and Adaye as the latter talks, and is occasionally reassured by the former. She, too, visibly relaxes as Risine promises that her oath as an Advocate was paramount to her, and that nothing said in this room would be known outside of it.
Letting out a long, contemplative sigh, she stares at the nothing in front of her as she puts some pieces together in her head. Much as Adaye said, there are some pieces missing, but she had some idea on how to find them.
"I'm familiar with an elf, though I'm not sure this is within her field of study. Garnyn might also be a valuable asset, given who his college's headmaster is. Regardless, I have some leads I can follow to attempt to finish this puzzle. And I think you may be right, Risine. Though it may be more that I am a Scholar, and less that I am not a mechanist. Perhaps it makes him more comfortable having someone looking into this that he can control more easily. Given the precarious state of my citizenship in this city, and that its possible that I might not have much more of a home to return to, the Headmaster likely gains a feeling of security with having me on a leash." She shrugs, not sure of her own reasoning, but feeling that its important to raise that line of thought.
Risine pushes herself away from the wall and paces the length of the room, which frankly only takes a few steps. "You said something about screens that show the world outside, Scholar? Tell us more about that. Do you think that might bear specifically on the question at hand, Adaye? Do you know anything of this?"
Adaye's head lifts, and she rubs her hands over her face before answering. "I invented them, on the Headmaster's request and using his insight. He's a remarkable theorist, but he's terrible at testing his theories. They do indeed show images of distant locales. We -- well, I -- made them just months before the Wards were put up. We sent small groups of Scholars to several locations around the world to install the farvision transmitters, as we called them. One in Hara," she says, glancing at Asra, then back to Risine. "One for some reason in the middle of nowhere on the plains in Valerma. We only made two. They were incredibly challenging to make."
This last part is unexpected. Asra distinctly recalls that there were at least three places shown on the receivers in Rothenend's office.
She looks at Adaye with some confusion, shaking her had to dispute that fact.
"No... no there were three locations," she informed her.
"One which was clearly Hara, a prairie I would stake anything on being Valerma, and then a harbor of some kind." She didn't think it necessary to state anything further about those locations aloud.
"There isn't any way that he could have replicated the devices, once you'd created them, right?"
But there was. There most definitely was. Rothenend was very clear in stating that what she was seeing was not of this reality, and thus, it was possible that he had contract more Adaye's, or other Rothenend's had done so, and they were all somehow tuning in to these farvision transmitters to get this information.
This investigation was difficult enough when only dealing with one reality. Once again she found herself cursing whatever unforgiving god had saw fit to sidle her with knowledge that there were more.
Asra starts, a thought returning to her as she turns her attention back to those present.
"I almost forgot. I was given a warning about the Headmaster. Or... about some symbol he was wearing," she tells them both, weaving her fingers in a short sequence to produce the image of the sigil in the air before them.
"About this. The guard outside was wearing it as well, on his lapel. Its... familiar. I think its from the academy in Hara, but I can't put my finger on it. I was hoping one of you might know what it is."
