Episode 12: Metamagic in Theory and Practice
[scene 1- the grounds]
[we hear the by-now-familiar “whoosh” of a teleporter.]
MARINA: Dean Ventrassi, may I present, General Veld, cryo 7/ pyro 4, Doctor Ungala, bio 4/necro 4, and Reverend Hillary, sono 8/ flora 3. All dual-natured and trained extensively in metamagic techniques.
DEAN: Excellent. It’s an honor. I’m so glad you were all able to take time out of your no-doubt busy schedules to come help us with our little.. problem.
VELD: Getting those wards re-established is a critical matter of national security.
UNGALA: Not to mention a fascinating intellectual challenge.
HILLARY: Well, perhaps for you it's merely an intellectual exercise. Some of us ascribe a higher significance to such duties.
UNGALA: Oh, spare us the spiritual mumbo-jumbo your holiness.
VELD: If Kalan were to find out that someone was able to disable these wards so easily-
UNGALA: It was hardly easy, whoever it was had to summon an extra-dimensional being-
VELD: It was a weakness, and we’re lucky that whoever discovered it didn’t exploit it further.
HILLARY: A student died.
UNGALA: Only one though. Veld’s right, it's a miracle there weren’t more casualties.
HILLARY: I thought miracles were my domain. With the rest of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo? Fact is, God gave us our magic to protect these children. But abominations like that creature weren’t part of his divine plan.
VELD: The creature was a strategic oversight. One that won’t work twice.
UNGALA: Enough bickering. Let’s get to it shall we?
DEAN: Did you want to see your accommodations first? I heard it might take you a few days-
UNGALA: By all means have someone take our things to our rooms, but I’d prefer to get to work as soon as possible.
DEAN: Very well. Right this way.
[Electromancy theme plays]
CREDITS: Electromancy, episode 12- Metamagic in Theory and Practice. Be advised- there is a loud tone 25 minutes into this episodes. It lasts for 2 seconds and you may want to skip over it if you are sensitive to loud noises.
[scene 2- the library]
[we hear the portal sound again, accompanied by tense music]
BRUCE: What do you mean, vanished? Slow down!
DEVON: I don’t know, they were already gone by the time we got here-
ELLIE: Do we know for sure that they even went through? Like, going through random portals definitely seems like something Brynn would do, but like, Jenna’s usually a little more cautious, and Mr. Graves is a librarian, they’re like, super boring and don’t do things!
PEM: I don’t think they went in intentionally, it looked like it pulled them in, but I don’t know- I only saw it through the glass-
MARINA: Quiet! Someone please explain what’s going on. Just one of you please.
PEM: It looks like Jenna, Brynn, and Cyrus got sucked into some kind of portal.
VELD: What kind of portal?
BRUCE: C’mon. How would any of us know that?
MARINA: You really are terrible at your job, Mr. McCray, aren’t you? First the creature, now two students and a teacher abducted? Right under your nose?
DEAN: Investigator. This is still my school, please let me handle this. Let’s not cast blame. The important thing is to sort out the facts. Bruce, permission to read your mind?
BRUCE: Eh… Alright. Granted.
[during this next line we hear overlapping, echoing voices]
DEAN: Okay, hold on. Hold on. I’m getting a lot of thoughts, and images- just give me a moment to organize them.
[silence]
VELD: If there are portals abducting students, we need to raise the wards now. They could have come from Northern Wentonia or Kalan, or from the rebels on the coasts-
UNGALA: We raise those wards now, we lose any hope of determining the nature of the portal. There could be residual magical energies we can examine-
HILLARY: I agree with Dr. Ungala. There’s a ritual we can use - I don’t have the scroll handy, but-
MARINA: I do. Forensic magic scrolls are necessary in my line of work. I’ll retrieve it.
DEAN: Students, you can return to your rooms. I have what I need from you.
PEM: I was the only one who saw it happen. Shouldn’t I stick around? I could be useful in the investigation.
DEAN: Pem, I can see exactly why you really want to stick around. Forensic magic is exciting, and you’re a great admirer of Dr. Ungala. Psychomancer, remember?
PEM: Okay, fine. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be useful.
DEAN: I appreciate the offer, but we can take it from here.
UNGALA: Let them stay.
DEAN: Sorry?
UNGALA: You’re Pem? From Volar? I know Volari don’t use surnames. But are you the Pem who read my book and has been writing me those letters?
PEM: Oh, yes! I figured your secretary was just throwing them away.
UNGALA: Uh, believe it or not, as a theoretical thaumaturgist, I don’t get a ton of fan mail. Dean Ventrassi? I recommend letting them stay. They have a… far better grasp of the fundamentals than a typical 14-year-old.
VELD: There may be security concerns-
UNGALA: We’ll send them away if it comes to that..
MARINA: I recommend against it.
HILLARY: I defer to the good doctor here.
DEAN: Veld?
VELD: We can send them away if we need to discuss anything sensitive, I suppose. No harm in another set of eyes.
DEAN: Alright, Mx. Pem, you may stay. Mr. Lancook, Ms. Francis - please leave us be.
[scene 3- a hallway]
[footsteps. silence for a bit]
ELLIE: *Telepathically* What even, this is- oh no. oh no. uh…. nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. People don’t just… vanish. Do they? Why is life so weird now, this never would have happened before Jenna showed up, but like, I guess she’s gone now and there’s now way to get her back and ohhhhh no, is this my fault? If I hadn’t gone with Lucas, she never would have been out past curfew and she wouldn’t have had detention and she wouldn’t have been sucked into whatever dimension she ended up in, oh no, I’m the worst friend ever!
DEVON: Uh, Ellie? Are you okay?
ELLIE: Decidedly not. Are you okay?
DEVON: Uh, no. Uh, do you want to come with me, get like a cup of tea? Talk through this?
ELLIE: Uh… I mean, don’t take this the wrong way but, like, we’re not really even friends-
DEVON: I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a lot of friends in this dimension right now.
ELLIE: Fair enough.
[scene 4 - the cafeteria]
[tea pouring sound.]
DEVON: Feeling any better?
ELLIE: No? This is just, like, a lot. I mean, weird stuff happens here , you’d think I’d be used to it by now, but it's starting to get, like, scary weird.
DEVON: Yeah. I get that. I will say this though- Brynn and Jenna are pretty tough. If anyone can make it back from… wherever it is they ended up, I’d root for them.
ELLIE: But, like, where did they end up? Is there even, like, air there?
DEVON: I don’t know. But I know someone who might know.
ELLIE: What do you mean?
DEVON: Can I trust you, Ellie? Like, really trust you?
ELLIE: Uh, yes? I don’t know, when you put it that way it makes me nervous.
DEVON: Ok, look. You know Brynn and Professor Summner are kind of, like, weirdly close?
ELLIE: Uh, know, I didn’t know that. What do you mean close?
DEVON: Not in a creepy way, I mean, not creepy like that- but every other teacher hates Brynn, like really hates her, but for whatever reason she’s Professor Summner’s favorite.
ELLIE: Oh. That makes, like a weird kind of sense? I mean, they’re both pretty anti-establishment.
DEVON: Right! Exactly. But I think Professor Summner might be *whispers* like really anti-establishment.
ELLIE: What do you mean?
DEVON: I think he might be some kind of spy.
ELLIE: A spy for who?
DEVON: I don’t know! The Coalition. Or Northern Wentonia. Maybe Kalan, or one of the other nations on the Northern Continent. Pretty much everyone who isn’t Oswer hates us. Not to mention some people who technically are. So… take your pick.
ELLIE: That’s, like, a really serious accusation. What makes you think that? And what does that have to do with the portal?
DEVON: I can’t tell you what makes me think it, but you have to trust me when I say it’s good evidence. And as for the portal, who would want to capture two really powerful young mages? Maybe whoever Professor Summner is working for? Maybe he’s been slowly indoctrinating Brynn and he just saw an opportunity to get her back to their base, with a super-powerful lightning mage thrown in for good measure!
ELLIE: Wow, Devon. This is a lot. Do we tell the Dean?
DEVON: I don’t want to do that without more evidence. I think we should confront him ourselves.
ELLIE: Uh, Devon, we’re a 2 and a 4. I don’t know how you think this confrontation is going to go, but, like, a more powerful mage might be good to have along?
DEVON: I don’t love where you’re going with this….
[scene 5- the library again]
[We hear some resonant tones of the forensic spell.]
UNGALA: That should about do it.
PEM: Wow.
BRUCE: Why is it such a mess? I’ve used this spell, or one like it, plenty of times, but I’ve never seen this much lingering magical energy.
UNGALA: I would guess it’s the wards. Every spell someone has tried to cast for the last 200 years that fizzled out lodged in there - like if you fired a bunch of arrows at a thick wooden wall. Suddenly the wall vanishes and the arrows all fall to the ground.
HILLARY: That’s a terrible metaphor. A metaphor should connect the phenomenon to something familiar, not just another theoretical situation you just made up in your head.
UNGALA: The point is, the wards captured all this magic and now it's interfering with the forensic spell.
VELD: And there’s no way at all to tell which of these spell echoes is the portal?
MARINA: No one said that. Pem, show us exactly where the portal was? Physically?
PEM: Uh, it was about here.
UNGALA: How large was it?
PEM: Two meters? In diameter. Roughly circular.
BRUCE: What about color?
PEM: White? Maybe a hint of blue? Err… a little green as well, not much, just flecks.
MARINA: Color doesn’t tell us anything, Mr. McCray. The visual manifestations of a spell are highly variable.
HILLARY: They do change from person to person, but there’s certain consistent elements. Whitish-bluish-green doesn’t tell us much though. [beat] If we limit the spell echoes we’re examining to this area- I’m getting photomancy, lots of photomancy - and umbramancy as well- could it have been an illusion?
PEM: Uh, Brynn was actually casting a bunch of illusions a few minutes before the portal opened. You’re probably just seeing those.
MARINA: Chronomancy as well.
BRUCE: Cyrus is a chronomancer. We might be just seeing his attempts to circumvent the problem.
MARINA: I doubt that very much. Mr. Graves is a one- his own powers would barely register.
UNGALA: Hmm. I concur, this was a powerful chronomancy. I think a strong hypothesis would be that we’re dealing with a time portal.
VELD: Well, can we re-open it? We lost two powerful mages to that thing, we’ll need them in a few years for the war effort! Not to mention that poor librarian.
HILLARY: We’d need a chronomancer to even attempt to re-open it. They’re extremely rare- are there even any practicing right now?
UNGALA: It doesn’t matter. Because we don’t know when it sent them to, and the forensic spell won’t tell us that.
BRUCE: Ugh. So, what, we’ve hit a dead end?
PEM: Have we?
MARINA: Do you have an idea, Pem?
PEM: Well, first off, do we have any reason to assume they went to the past rather than the future?
UNGALA: No way to know for certain.
PEM: Well, this might not work, but, if they went to the past, they probably made at least a bit of a splash, right? A level 12, err, 11 lightning mage, a master illusionist, and a super-rare chronomancer, suddenly appearing out of nowhere, strange clothes, strange customs, you know maybe even strange language if it's long enough ago for linguistic drift to have occurred- someone would have written about it, right? Or told stories? Can’t we just scour the history books and see if we can narrow down where they ended up that way?
HILLARY: That… might work. I’ll look in the church archives. They have sources not replicated anywhere else.
BRUCE: I’ll talk to the history teachers at the school and see if they know anything.
VELD: I’ll consult some scholars of military history.
INVESTIGATOR: Alright, well, we have one of the best libraries of magic history in the world right here, even if it is a bit of a mess. Let’s see what we can find, people.
VELD: And quickly! Every minute the wards stay down is another chance for someone to launch another attack against us.
[scene 6 - outside the workshop]
ELLIE: What about Diala? She’s a 9, you know her from Pazik, and I feel like maybe I kinda bonded with her when we were fighting the monster-
DEVON: I don’t know her that well!
ELLIE: You don’t know me that well either.
DEVON: As much as I hate to say it, I just think he’s our best choice. He cares about Jenna, well, at least he cares about the Electromancers being the top dogs around here-
ELLIE: Hmm-hmm. And this has nothing to do with any crush-like feelings?
DEVON: You really think I’d take that into account? At a time like this? [beat] We’re here, let’s do this.
[door opening sound] [wood shop noises]
LUCAS: Hey. You’re back. What happened, you grab the wrong bookshelves or something?
ELLIE: Uh, a lot has happened, Lucas. And we need your help with something.
LUCAS: What’s up?
DEVON: Let’s, uh, go some place private, okay?
LUCAS: Look man, I’m flattered, but-
ELLIE: To talk! About the important stuff happening. Just that. I’m still here.
LUCAS: Okay, okay. Got it. Step inside. There’s no one but me and these automata.
[scene 7- the library]
PEM: Any reason we’re not bringing Professor Summner in on this?
UNGALA: Who’s that?
PEM: A history teacher who also knows a lot of thaumaturgy.
MARINA: A man with a lot of unanswered questions about his role in last night’s events. I’d prefer not to tell him anything until I’ve had a chance to investigate that involvement. Which unfortunately will have to wait until the current crisis is resolved.
UNGALA: His expertise sounds useful.
VELD: Irrelevant if he’s not trustworthy. Anyone found anything yet?
UNGALA: This is needle-in-haystack stuff. How did your chat with the military historians go?
VELD: Assuming the normal range for chronomancy, say, 50 years - no battle with unexpected lightning mages or illusionists that anyone has heard of.
PEM: Couldn’t it be longer though?
UNGALA: Even the most powerful chronomancers have never gone back much beyond-
PEM: You said in “Metamagic in Theory and Practice” that the interactions of spells inside a metamagic matrix were unpredictable in the long term. You also noted examples of spells losing efficacy as they remained trapped in the matrix-
UNGALA: Yes, losing efficacy. Not strengthening it.
PEM: Let me finish! You also cited examples of new spells being able to pull the thaumaturgical energy from the trapped spells as the matrix was destabilizing! Professor Graves is a chronomancer! If he tried to use his magic to fight the creature just as the wards were coming down, it could have sucked all the ambient energy from every spell cast over the last two hundred years and created a super-powerful time portal!
UNGALA: Nothing like that has ever happened before.
PEM: Have wards ever collapsed after this long before? And you said yourself how rare chronomancers are-
MARINA: Dr. Ungala, is what this child proposes possible?
UNGALA: Theoretically. It fits what we know about metamagic matrices, it’s just-
VELD: How far back in time should we be looking?
UNGALA: I have absolutely no idea. A lot farther than 50 years.
[scene 8 - inside the workshop]
LUCAS: This better be important. I finally finished my detention and I got stuff to do.
ELLIE: Jenna and Brynn fell through some kind of magical portal. No one knows exactly where they went- the teachers are trying to figure it out-
LUCAS: Wow, that’s intense. I- not sure what you want me to do about it?
DEVON: I - Ellie, you sure he won’t go to the Dean if we tell him?
ELLIE: I still don’t know why it would be so bad if he did.
DEVON: We don’t know the whole story!
LUCAS: What are you talking about? Listen, I’m no narc. I’m not gonna run to a teacher with whatever illegal thing you’ve cooked up. But I can’t promise nobody’s gonna read my mind either. We’re all on the Dean’s list after last night.
DEVON: We think Professor Summner might have something to do with the portal, and we want to confront him.
ELLIE: But we need, like, some muscle. In case he’s like, really bad secretly and doesn’t even care about hurting kids.
LUCAS: I respect that you came to me for muscle. But threatening a teacher is serious stuff. Plus Summner’s a sonomancer. Command voice affects anyone who can hear it, I don’t think it takes him any extra power whether it's one of us or three. If he is a bad guy, he’ll just order us back to our dorms and make us forget everything. My being stronger won’t matter.
DEVON: I hadn’t considered that.
ELLIE: Umm… Earplugs?
LUCAS: Maybe, sure. But they’d have to be perfect sound-blockers, and I’ve never heard of any earplugs like that.
ELLIE: Or, what if we brought a deaf person with us? He’d be pretty much immune to the sonomancy, and if I translated what he said into sign language he’d at least be able to tell us afterwards if we had memory magic used on us.
DEVON: You know a deaf mage who would help us?
ELLIE: Of course I do! My brother. Justin. Plus he can teleport us out of there if things get hairy.
[scene 9 - the library]
UNGALA: It would be here.
MARINA: What?
UNGALA: If Pem’s theory is correct, then the spell was just chronomancy, not spatiomancy. So whenever they ended up, the where would have to have been pretty close to here. Maybe not this exact spot but within a few miles at most. We should focus our energies on events that happened near the Institute, or at least the area around the capitol.
VELD: The battle of Imbira valley.
UNGALA: Hmmm?
VELD: 400 years ago, the battle of Imbira valley. I remember something about an umbramancer! It was a bit of a mystery. Wouldn’t be in the official records- most people would consider it more of myth, or at least an exaggeration.
HILLARY: Can you please get to whatever point you’re meandering around?
VELD: After Oswer defeated the coalition, all the mages on the opposing side were taken into custody. But there was an umbramancer present at the battle, because she was able to escape and free a bunch of soldiers- mundanes- from the coalition side. But her name was never recorded, and one of the prisoners referred to her as “this kid who just showed up.” Or something like that. Translated, obviously.
MARINA: We need all the texts we can find on the battle of Imbira Valley. There could be more clues about their whereabouts.
UNGALA: It doesn’t matter. The portal is gone. We can’t reopen it. And no chronomancer alive is going to be able to send us back 400 years. We can’t recreate the circumstances that created the portal.
PEM: What if we had a mana battery?
MARINA: Mr. McCray drained the school’s emergency battery so he could have a joyride as a Wooly mammoth.
PEM: There have to be others!
UNGALA: Mana batteries aren’t easy things to construct. Their usage is tightly controlled by the magecorps.
PEM: Yeah, none of the books on metamagic here have any information about how new ones are built. It’s something I’ve wondered about-
VELD: State secret. Not something we want getting out.
UNGALA: I am not sure it would be worth expending one to retrieve three mages. Assuming one would even get the job done.
PEM: So there’s nothing we can do?
UNGALA: Nothing I can think of.
PEM: Can we still look for those texts? I mean, it can’t hurt, right?
MARINA: It can’t hurt. I’m not ready to write them off just yet. Everyone call back your sources, have them get ready to teleport any relevant documents directly here. Especially anything written during the time of that battle or by survivors from the coalition side of the battle. There has to be an angle we haven’t explored yet.
[scene 10 - the schoolyard]
ELLIE: Ok, one sec.
[silence]
LUCAS: You gonna translate any of that for us?
ELLIE: You both already know what I’m telling him, plus this way no one will overhear us unless they understand Tolskvar sign language. I’ll translate his responses.
DEVON: Doesn’t he know Imperial standard sign language?
ELLIE: Uh, yeah, but I don’t! Not well anyway. Anyway, way more people know that one. We both learned Tolskvar when we were little and it’s a lot less likely anyone who can see us will know it.
[more silence]
LUCAS: What’s he saying?
ELLIE: He’s says “I’m in. But you all know I’m not cleared to teleport other people, right? I maybe forgot to mention that part.”
DEVON: Do you trust him to teleport you?
ELLIE: Definitely not. Sorry Justin.
LUCAS: Then I guess I don’t either.
ELLIE: Okay, if Professor Sumner tries to brainwash us, you’ll just teleport himself away and go tell the Dean or another teacher.
DEVON: That seems better.
JUSTIN: *telepathically* Get out of my head.
DEVON: *telepathically* What? How can you-
JUSTIN: *telepathically* Look, it’s a great trick they like to use here so they don’t have to learn how to actually talk to me. Really sucks cause it's not the same as, you know, because with talking you can control what you say? I’ve gotten really good at knowing what it feels like, and I don’t like it, okay?
DEVON: *telepathically* Look, I’m sorry, okay. I will stop but, just, please don’t tell your sister I can read minds?
JUSTIN: *telepathically* Why shouldn’t I tell my sis?
DEVON: *tp* Please? It’s something only a few people know and I want to keep it that way.
JUSTIN: *tp* You should stop reading people’s minds without permission then!
DEVON: *tp* Most people can’t- okay, noted.
ELLIE: Devon, are you okay? You don’t look great.
DEVON: I’m fine. Let’s, *deep breath* Let’s do this.
[scene 11- the library]
[we hear teleportation noises]
UNGALA: What are those papers?
VELD: And can we please not have stuff teleported directly here? Might as well advertise that the wards are down.
INVESTIGATOR: Looks like someone’s thesis. Not sure what we’re supposed to be looking for here.
BRUCE: I had that sent up. From the University at Kalos. One of the history teachers remembered her roommate talking about it. He was obsessed with these carvings some archaeologists found in a foundation stone in the ruins of the town of Pazia, in Imbira.
UNGALA: Is there a picture?
BRUCE: Uh, yeah. Here, see.
PEM: That’s Ardovan.
INVESTIGATOR: There’s a translation. It means, roughly, “Open it from both ends”. Then just the letters-
UNGALA: J, B and C.
PEM: Jenna, Brynn and Cyrus. What are those symbols?
HILLARY: They’re numbers. Using an old numeral system from pre-imperial Cular. [beat] What, I can know stuff too. I do have a Masters degree.
BRUCE: Cyrus is from Cular.
UNGALA: Then those are probably a date and a time. General Veld, any progress on finding us a chronomancer?
[scene 12 - Leonard’s office]
[a door creaks open.] [tense music]
LEONARD: Well, well. What can I do for… the four of you?
DEVON: Dr. Summner- we know you’re behind the creature.
LEONARD: Devon, what are you talking about?
DEVON: We know the reason you knew how to banish the creature is that you summoned it, and if you don’t want us to go to the Dean with that information, you’ll tell us where Brynn and Jenna are right now.
LEONARD: Brynn and Jenna are missing?
LUCAS: Don’t play dumb with us Dr. Summner. Where’d you send them?
LEONARD: I didn’t send them anywhere! And I didn’t summon the creature either, but- just tell me what happened, we’ll worry about that later.
DEVON: How did you know what the creature was and how to banish it?
LEONARD: Please tell me what happened to Jenna and Brynn, I may be able to help track them down.
DEVON: Answer my question first.
LEONARD: *starts chanting* Veticar mutika -
[electricity noise] [ Leonard screams]
LUCAS: I don’t think so.
LEONARD: That… really…stung.
ELLIE: Dr. Summner, we know you know something about the creature. If you don’t want us telling the Dean-
LEONARD: Tell him what, exactly? I don’t think you know anything. At least not anything you can prove. Now I’m sure the Dean and his investigator from the magecorps have plenty of questions for me after last night, in fact I’ve been wondering why they haven’t visited me already. If Brynn and Jenna were abducted somehow, I understand why that would put my interrogation on the backburner. Now I need to go see if I can be of any assistance to them. Kindly, get out of my way. Zap me again and you’ll have more than a few hours detention.
[beat]
LEONARD: I won't ask again, Mr. Burns.
LUCAS: And I’m not going anywhere until you tell Devon here what he wants to know.
[we hear a loud tone, followed by Lucas, Ellie, and Devon collapsing]
LEONARD: Didn’t want to have to do it that way. This is going to raise a lot of really awkward questions- wait. Why didn’t that work on you?
[teleportation whoosh.]
LEONARD: Damn. Damn, Damn damn. This is not good. This is not good at all. Uh- well, best deal with these three first. [he chants, the same chanting he used to mess with Cyrus’s memory in episode 6.]
[Gossip Grooving plays]
CREDITS: Electromancy is written, produced and directed by Nathan Comstock with script editing by Phoenix Bunke. This episode was sound designed by Nathan Comstock with contributions by Austin Cruzen and music by Thomas Dwyer. Caroline Minks was our sensitivity reader It starred Deja Scott as the magecorps investigator, Karim Kronfli as Dean Ventrassi, Leylan Collis as Dr. Ungala, Luke Alfonso as General Veld, Mike Cueller as Reverend Hillary, Joe Kearney as Bruce, Tuesday Orion Ibert as Devon, Austin Hendricks as Ellie, Aubrey Poppleton as Lucas, Tim Knight as Justin, Zachary Robb as Dr. Sumner, Nicole Tuttle-Robb as Alandra and Emily Buza as… Alandra’s boss? She has a name. You’ll learn it soon enough. Those two are in the part you haven’t heard yet, but you’re about to hear it, after these credits are over. Thanks for joining us again for season 2, and thanks to everyone who contributed to our crowdfunding campaign to make this show happen. This episode, we’d like to offer a special thanks to Carl Danielson. You rock, Carl! If you like Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, check out Carl’s podcast Battle Space Nine, where he compares the two. You can find out more about our podcast at www.electromancypod.com. We’ll be back with another episode in 2 weeks. And stick around after the tag for a trailer for another show you’ll love.
[scene 13 - a mysterious location]
SYLVIA: Alandra. Thank the gods. Any news?
ALANDRA: Dr. Sumner still hasn’t made contact, if that’s what you’re asking. But I have reason to believe he might have been successful. Our operative at magecorps R & D says Dr. Ungala was summoned to the institute - she’s a metamage, one of only a handful powerful enough to maintain the institute's wards.
SYLVIA: So they’d call her in if the wards had gone down-
ALANDRA: Which they would have, if the creature worked the way that I theorized it would.
SYLVIA: It’s flimsy evidence.
ALANDRA: Until Dr. Sumner makes contact, it’s the best we’ve got. You know how tightly they lock that place down.
SYLVIA: Oh I know. Believe me I know.
ALANDRA: You okay boss?
SYLVIA: I’m fine. It’s just - Oswer’s secrecy about that place has always been mainly annoying. But now that she’s there-
ALANDRA: Hey, hey hey. It’s going to be fine. We always knew there was a 50/50 chance it was going to end up this way. That’s why we had a plan B, right? And plan B is in play, right?
SYLVIA: Yes. Morris assured me it is… in play.
ALANDRA: Then let’s just focus on one thing at a time, shall we?
