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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 3024588" data-attributes="member: 3448">The guards quickly returned Lady Cecilia to her room and brought Lady Zenia in.  Before Lady Zenia entered, however, Kit focused her mind and reached out to sense thoughts.Lady Zenia appeared much more nervous as she entered.  Kit smiled; she could read the lady-in-waiting’s surface thoughts cleanly.  Lady Zenia dropped a perfect curtsy.  <<If he means to dismiss me from the palace, I’ll know soon enough…  I shouldn’t have thought he would need so many guards for that, though.>>“Lady Zenia,” Alistair began, a trifle cold.  “We wish to discuss some recent events with you.  Do you know anything about the death of Bishop Williams?”The sudden direct question flustered the lady-in-waiting.  After a moment, she stuttered out,  “His death, your grace?  I didn’t even know he was dead…”  Even without psionics, Alistair and Dame Brionna could tell that the news had frightened her.Kit sent a message to her friends.  <<She seemed honestly surprised and scared.  Her thought when she heard the question was “They killed him?”  But she also knows more… she pictured one of her Brightspan relatives when she thought that.  Not Sir Derrick, or I think the Duke, but there’s a definite resemblance.>>Kit focused her gaze on Lady Zenia.  “You may not have known she was dead, but I think you know who killed him.  How does his death connect to the Duke and Duchess of Brightspan?”Lady Zenia went from scared to terrified.  “It has come to me, even in my chambers, but the great danger is going south, and it's in the form of my cousin.”  At the end of that statement, her head snapped backwards with a sickening crunch and she collapsed to the ground.Kit switched her focus from reading Lady Zenia’s mind to sensing auras.  “There was something here… I can sense a fleeing psionic aura…”“Send for Lord Silverleaves’s Farsensor,” responded Alistair.  “We’ll need him to assist in this.”  No sooner had Kit reached out her mind towards the elven voller than the Farsensor appeared with a clap of displaced air.Dame Brionna, meanwhile, dove towards Lady Zenia’s body and began pouring Glor’diadel’s healing into the luckless lady-in-waiting.  “She’s still alive, but I’m not sure I can save her.  She’s still under attack-- something’s draining her life even as I try to restore her.”Kit’s eyes narrowed.  “Yes… There’s something lurking over her.  I can barely see its mind…”Alistair reached quickly into a pouch and then threw his small orichalcum token near Lady Zenia and Dame Brionna.  It clattered harmlessly onto the floor.  His best guess at a target was not nearly good enough.  Kit, however, reacted almost instantly, scooping the orichalcum up on a bounce and flinging it again in a single smooth motion.  Even with the vagueness of her sense of the mind, her aim was true and a great flash and boom revealed when the orichalcum hit its target.A great eight-foot tall rat-beast appeared, its claws still touching Lady Zenia’s neck.  The blast from the orichalcum had torn a large hole in the back of its torso, and it collapsed to the ground, dead.  Alistair reached down and picked up what was left of the orichalcum, less the half-ounce that had been consumed.“The life drain has stopped, your grace, but her neck’s still broken.  I’m not sure my skills can save her.”Alistair threw open the door to the hallway.  “We need a priest!  Now!”Moments later, Father Waters entered the room.  Father Waters was a middle-aged priest, with the hearty physique of a priest called on as often to deliver Glor’diadel’s judgment on the battlefield as his wisdom in a pulpit.  His vestments displayed the signs of the Order of the Misty Dawn, a militant order of priests in the Church.  He had a somewhat confused look on his face, no doubt from having been taken into custody by a group of palace guards and then being told to rush into the Archduke’s chambers in an emergency.Alistair gestured.  “She needs healing desperately, or else she’ll die.”Father Waters knelt by Lady Zenia’s form and muttered a short but powerful prayer.  “I have cast Heal upon her.  She will live…  But there is nothing I can do about the spinal injury.  She’ll need several months in skin under the care of a skilled redactor to cure that.”  His voice drifted off at the end of his statement as he stared at the rat-beast.  Kit sent Abigail to fetch Lady Constance Deepingwell; though demons were strictly speaking out of the diabolist’s area of expertise, she still would be the most useful person to examine the body.“Thank you, Father,” said Dame Brionna.  “Now, the only question is how that thing penetrated the palace wards.”“Simple,” replied the Farsensor.  “Your wards against magical teleportation are quite secure.  But there are no comparable defenses against psychoportation.  That creature was able to psychoport in the same way that I was.”“We need to fix that.  Are there ways to ensure that no future enemies can enter psionically?”The Farsensor’s eyes rolled back in his head for a moment.  “There.  I have erected a temporary barrier.  A full warding will be necessary for the future, and it will need to be regularly renewed, but none will enter against my will for the time being.”“Would you be able to teach me how to create the psionic wards?” Kit asked.“With some time, yes.  But there is another matter that we should discuss.  The attack was not coincidental.  That creature’s master was monitoring the young lady and had a means to target her.”“Do you know how?”“I believe so.  May I probe her mind to be certain?  Ordinarily I would not intrude to this degree, but it seems wise.”“Will it hurt her?”“No, your grace.  Especially while she is unconscious, I will be able to probe her mind without any permanent damage to her.”“Then do what you must.”The Farsensor placed his hand on Lady Zenia’s forehead.  After a moment, he looked at her abdomen, before shifting his focus back to her face.  “I am now certain.  She is pregnant, although not willingly.  The child allows its father entrance.”</blockquote>

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