If Clarke is impressed by Pal’s answer, she’s working awfully hard to hide it, but Pal remains unperturbed. “That, a little bit of bloodshed, a lifetime of training, and every atom of thanergy I can drag out of this poor excuse for a forest.” He huffs, still irritated by the complete lack of decent workmanship on display in their surroundings. “A few years ago I did a special topics tutorial with a bitch of an exam. They locked us in a sterile room, handed us a femur bone, and asked us to discover the name of the deceased person’s grandmother. Which required a summoning, of course. In a sterile room. Assholes.”

Pal steers himself back to the point before he can get too far off track. “In any case, that was easy compared to all this.” He makes a sweeping gesture. “I can’t even be sure that bringing in an outside force would corrupt the Captain’s illusion. It should, but that assumes his capabilities, however advanced, play by rules I recognize.”