“If he’s not here to issue new orders, probably.”
It’s the wizard’s voice. What’s he doing with whoever these people are?
Mina’s currently staring at you. You do a quick gesture as though you’re waving a wand; it’s hard to talk for yourself because the people outside are still going.
“Do we really know he can’t still give orders, though?” the grebling asks. “Plenty of spells for staying in touch with someone at a distance.”
“Yes, but not that long of a distance,” says the wizard. “And those spells are mostly simple communication. This puppeteering is more advanced than that, you could manage maybe twenty meters if you were completely focused.”
“Hold on. Could you send from one puppet to another, though?” says a second grebling voice. “Like having one puppet hold the strings of another one.”
“A sort of relay system?” the wizard replies. “That might work, but the victims doing the relaying would have to stay perfectly still to avoid messing with the range. It would be hard to do that without it being noticed. In fact, our biggest worry is that the poor soul in there is mindlessly doing something and can’t stop it, because there’s no one to tell them otherwise.
You suddenly repeat a lot of grebling muttering. Quite a bit of it. You decide to cut the spell because very little of it is useful.
“Sorry,” you tell Mina. “I was trying to get a grasp of what’s going on.”
“Well, it sounds like someone’s coming in. Thing is, is it someone we need to worry about?” she asks.
“Probably not, I recognize the voice. I’m not clear on what he’s doing with this group, though, and there’s so much chatter right now it’s hard to get any real details.”
“Yeah? Well, I heard something a little funny in all that noise you were making just now. Maybe you didn’t catch it.”
“I wasn’t paying much attention, just trying to end the spell,” you admit. “What did you hear?”
Abluni