Ilya is a terrible sender of telepathic messages, but he's a remarkable receiver, and he can tell something's wrong, just not if he should intervene or if it's just stressful. He tries so hard to listen in he picks up stray thoughts as faint background noise from people almost out of his maximum reach, and yet whatever the Headmistress is doing makes it impossible for him to get Dolemeck's thoughts out of him so he can figure out what to do. Worse, if it takes everything he has, one door away, to even know things are stressful, it means he has less than no chance of transmitting a damn thing, and given the blistering headache he's giving himself trying to listen in, even that won't last much more than a few minutes. His healing factor tries to keep up with the strain, but it's no good, and his estimate of 'a few minutes' suddenly dwindles to seconds.

And then, he can't even force his way into sensing anything. It never felt that way, even in the wilderness - there was always an animal, a bug, something to pick up on the radar.

Except in the ice. But he was unconscious then. He leans against the wall and slowly slides down to sit against it for the remainder of the session, repeating that to himself. I was unconscious in the ice. I was asleep. I was asleep. Nothing happened. I was asleep. He doesn't question why this is comforting to him.