"The Worldwound is closed now - a party of archmages has been very busy - but for about a century it was a portal to the Abyss, so we fought a lot of demons, though in terms of time expenditure it was more about logistics and weatherproofing because it's in a very cold region and my country took the northern border."

"Are you all right over there, should I be thinking about putting together a reconstruction team?"

"In the short term things are worse because a full complement of demons in the usual quantity is still present on our side of the portal, and at the same time a lot of support was withdrawn by forces that had something to fear from an open portal but not from a quantity of demons hundreds of miles away. But the number of demons will only drop from here, even if they do some damage on their way out, so it depends on what else you'd be doing with the resources you'd put into such a team."

"That sounds like paladin work, and that's not my strong suit in terms of contacts. I can ask the Pelorians, though, next time I do a supply run, they should be able to figure it out."

They've reached Zelena; Raafi's first attempt at asking her how it's going gets a stream of technobabble identifiable even through the language barrier, but his second attempt gets a much more reasonable response. After a couple of follow up questions: "Well, there's good news and bad news. She does think she can get you home, but it's going to be a research project to do it."

"Oh. How long?"

He passes the question along.

"There's a chance you'll make it to your convention but it's a fairly slim one; more likely at least half a year."

"Then I would like some of my payment in the form of a Sending as soon as I can think who would be the best person to trouble with this information."

"Of course. I have plenty of charges in the wand, I'll make sure to keep one for you."

"Probably Commandant Terzić... but it certainly doesn't have to happen today or even this week."

"I don't see a reason to wait; as someone lost far from home it's my responsibility to help whether you can pay for it or not."

"The thing is that I have only ever exchanged letters with him, he's not involved in the convention himself, and he's probably terribly busy. It would be better than bothering an archmage but if I can think of the name of an Abadaran that would be ideal since I can pay them for the inconvenience after the fact, only I'm drawing an absolute blank."

"Ah. Well, there's no rush, either, unless you think you're going to want to head off somewhere without me. I expect to be here for at least the next week, maybe two, and I don't have plans after that, so I can accompany you somewhere if you'd like."

Zelena speaks up at this point, and it very much seems like Raafi chides her for whatever she says.

"Zelena wants to invite you to her tower, after this, so she can get a closer magical look at you."

"That sounds fine?"

Raafi pauses for a moment, considering the situation. "I should probably come with you, Zelena doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to houseguests - nothing too concerning, she's just absent-minded enough for it to be a problem. I'll just need to let the Pelorians know where I'm disappearing to."

"- as you say," says Blai, who has resisted quite a lot of pressure to pursue status and attention from important people in his time and doesn't know what to do with it.

"We can take a break first, if you need some time to get your head together. Or instead. I know this kind of thing is a lot, all at once."

what no that the opposite of helps. "Is there anything useful I should be doing here and now? I have my channels for the day still open."

"Channels are a new one on me."

"You can't channel energy? Thirty-foot burst, at my circle it's usually a little better than a Cure Moderate Wounds, for everybody in the area."

"We have cure spells but not like that, all of ours have limited subjects. Zelena -" and he lapses into the local language for a few sentences. "All right, let's go tell the Pelorians the good news. How many of them can you do a day, by the way?" He's already moving before he finishes the sentence.

"Only two unless you want to lend me a Splendor headband, which might make sense if no one else can do it."

"I loaned my last one to one of the teams trying to make sure everyone made it out safe downstairs, but I can probably pick up another in the next supply run. Is there anything else like that, that you might need?"

"The rest of my abilities run on Wisdom so far as I know. Unless I am going to need to hit demons with my mace."

"If you want to hit demons with your mace I'm sure I can figure something out but I wouldn't expect it to come up here. Anything else you have that we might not, though? The spells seem equivalent so far, substituting healing for other spells, turning undead, probably you've got a couple idiosyncratic abilities depending on how you relate to your god or that you've picked up?"

"Turn undead? Turn them into what? But yes, I have domain powers, one is" actually much less useful than the one it replaced, but "a one-round thing where it takes the guesswork out of the same sorts of things Guidance works on. It cooperates with Guidance, too, and the other one is - sort of itself like Guidance but cooperates with it."