Hal-Neesa huffed and grumbled under her breath. "When the [i]apprentice[/i] is the only one making any degree of sense..."

Neesa quickly abandoned her thought as she paced around the outside of the projected map. "As I am [i]certain[/i] I have explained before, there is no means through which Vile could know that we are watching him. This device takes in light from outside Nirn, it sends nothing back to Vile's realm. There is nothing for him to detect. He is not hiding; if he has gathered this much power here, then you can be sure he is protecting it [i]personally[/i]."

"By my best guess, the Breton pup here is the closest to being right." Neesa began, tapping her pointer against the glowing light. "This is not soul energy precisely, but it could be sihpned from it. All of the intelligence you have been gathering suggests that Vile has been stealing your souls to gather power, yes? And he has to keep that power somewhere. There is more here than I think your souls alone could give him, but I would wager he has been pursuing other means of hoarding power as well, perhaps in other realms of Oblivion. It is hard to say what event I could best compare this to...but the scale of this power reminds me of when Nocturnal briefly claimed Crystal-Like-Law. Though, since the Altmer failed to protect that tower against Dagon, this is likely a different sort of situation entirely."

[hr]

With a nod, Meesei silently stepped over to her bags to collect their clothes. She placed down Lunise's dress gently onto the rock beside her, but decided to give her a few more minutes of thought to herself. Meesei would be lying if she claimed she was not at least somewhat nervous about this idea as well, though perhaps for not entirely the same reasons. For an organization she respected as much as the Psijics, she did worry about making the wrong sort of impression on them. And not to mention, if her plan worked out as she hoped, she would be meeting Lunise's mother as well. Regardless of being a Psijic, Meesei would want to make a good impression on the mother of the woman she loved, and it showed with the effort she put into her appearance alone. The dress she chose was one of the finest she had; something she had last wore when attending to business in the White-Gold Tower. It was primarily dyed in a deep violet, with fine, Imperial-styled embroidery. It almost looked like it could be one of Hal-Neesa's dresses. 

After a few minutes, Meesei walked up from behind Lunise, wrapped her arms around her waist, and rested her head on her shoulder. "I know this is not easy for you, but...I would not be making this offer if I did not really, truly believe it would be good for you. If and when you are ready, I just need you to think back to Artaeum, to your memories of seeing it from the docks. Think of [i]exactly[/i] where you want the portal to go. What you saw, what you felt, the...smell of the ocean breeze. This may be a more difficult portal than usual for me, so any detail you can remember may help me establish a connection."