It might not go anywhere, Seldan thinks, but they do maybe have the angle of asking the new clerics to pray to their respective gods about it, and maybe one of Them can try to explain to the Valdemargod it’s actually a bad thing to subject souls in Their keeping to unpleasant experiences even if said experiences are pretty epiphenomenal to future outcomes (and thus presumably invisible to Foresight, which would make some sense of why the Shadow-Lover is so dense about it.)

“If You do end up having a plan for a resurrection and can get a message to us cheaply, we can come back and help him be oriented,” Seldan says. 

Leareth can’t think of anything else he wants to ask about, if he’s neither going to remember it nor have any angle to act on it. He’ll just…wait to stop existing. 

No more Leareth.

“You may stay and rest here as long as you wish,” the Shadow-Lover says.

Does that actually cause time to pass in the real world? Because they might as well just wait out as much time as it takes before Blai is wanted for more spellcasting, if so, but if not then he has no particular agenda here.

It doesn’t seem to make very much additional time pass in the someone-is-almost-dead scenario? When Blai spoke to the Shadow-Lover solo, it all took at most a minute or two from Seldan's perspective. 

...Does Blai want hugs from the Shadow-Lover again? Seldan doesn't really because he's mad at the Shadow-Lover right now for being about as dense as a rock, but he could go back alone if Blai wanted some private Shadow-Lover cuddles. 

(Seldan also wants to snuggle his Herald but not while he's shaped like an old man, that makes it feel really weird.) 

Blai does not particularly feel the need for Shadow-Lover cuddles. Also he's not sure how to stop being here without Seldan helping or the Shadow-Lover shoving him back into his body. They can go.

Seldan does think he has the ability to step back to the material world from here - it feels like if he does this– 

Oof. Ooooooooooooooof. Whyyyyyyyyy did he forget about the part where they're slowly dying and this is spectacularly unpleasant. (No godheadache, and actually he doesn't feel the scattered half-out-of-body strangeness from before, the Shadow-Lover really does seem better at something here. But all the symptoms are back, and hitting him like a landslide after the intermission of not feeling terrible.) 

ooooough yeah this is bad this is why it would be cool if they coulda skipped a couple hours of it.

A little while later Shavri will want Blai's last Remove Sickness on Nayoki. That's everyone, now. She's saving his channels for last; in the interest of checking how many channels they, in fact, have, she's planning to have Van use up all of his first, at three-candlemark intervals. If they get to a point where she knows they only need two more channels to last until dawn, there's enough of an organized relief operation on the Valdemar-Iftel border now that they should be able to Gate Joshel there and productively soak up his remaining channels before dawn. Karis left to, presumably, clean up things with the Karsite priesthood, and Shavri is just going to trust that she'll find some way of using her channels before dawn and it's not Shavri's problem to handle those logistics. 

...Actually, none of this is going to be Shavri's problem for a little while, because at this point it doesn't seem like there are any real decisions to be made before dawn tomorrow. She's going to go get some sleep. Nearby, so they can grab her quickly if anyone starts deteriorating faster than expected and they can't figure out what's wrong. 

Joshel rotates through who he's supposed to be casting Virtue on every minute. Tap, tap, wait for his Companion to cue him again. It's mind-numbingly tedious. Eventually it ends up automatic enough that he can sort of review paperwork in snippets. 

Eventually it occurs to Seldan that he can, in fact, just...ask for the non-incapacitated contact person from Leareth's organization to come be in the room, at which point it would no longer feel completely impossible to pass on a report from their Shadow-Lover chat. 

They get Dara in too. 

Okay, so what did they learn? 

The Shadow-Lover's god has Leareth's soul, which took some fairly minimal intervention because Vkandis wanted it; the larger intervention needed to keep Leareth alive would have...tipped Vkandis off, or something, and then Vkandis might have tried something even more horribly creative, and in fact Seldan can sort of understand the argument for not waiting to see if, for example, He would have targeted Haven if Leareth was at some point there. 

The Valdemargod is in communication with the Golarion gods that picked some clerics here, and maybe other Golarion gods. It came up that Abadar specifically really likes the look of Leareth's soul and was interested in paying to have him put in Axis, the Lawful Neutral afterlife; resurrecting Leareth on another planet was maybe also in the cards? But Abadar wasn't going to do it for free and the Valdemargod is kind of miserly about paying for things. 

The Shadow-Lover asked them to talk to Leareth's soul, which is apparently a thing. Leareth's soul was - very disoriented - and they came away not fully sure if he would be capable of consenting to a resurrection if it felt at all like "being scooped up by a god". The Shadow-Lover had the following "information" for Leareth, as verbatim as Seldan can recall it. 

Leareth is having a pretty bad time to the extent he's having any experiences while in the Valdemargod's possession, and they don't have very many angles to do anything about this but it might help to ask the clerics to pray to their gods about it. 

(Does Blai remember any other key pieces that Seldan is forgetting?) 

Seldan remembered his former name in there at one point, it was Seldasen, but that's not really important to pass on to third parties as far as Blai knows.

Yeah, and Seldan isn't currently feeling at all up for reading his old treatises. 

- oh, it also came up that Vkandis is broke now, which seems to have been a plus for the Valdemargod and also means that Karis can expect not to encounter any opposition from Vkandis directly if she wants to go do things in Iftel – plenty could go wrong anyway, it's still a difficult problem on a purely human-social-political level, but it at least implies that Vkandis won't be sending visions to the surviving priesthood asking them to murder Karis or whatever? 

It...didn't come up what the Star-Eyed Goddess is up to, Seldan doesn't think? Does Blai remember anything about that? Maybe She was just already pretty broke and the Valdemargod was mostly worried about Vkandis-opposition? 

Blai doesn't remember that coming up, no.

Seldan is wishing he'd thought to ask now, the Shadow-Lover seems confused enough about everything that She might not have thought to warn them, but - overall it seemed like She was trying to be helpful, just really quite incompetently. So it's some evidence, that She didn't warn them. 

Overall it seems like the Valdemargod is in favor of interworld contact and just not at all in a hurry to make it happen. They might also be actively in favor of Leareth being alive and taking actions in Velgarth? But did not technically say it explicitly, Seldan doesn't think. 

...That's all Seldan has for now from the Shadow-Lover conversation. Though come to think of it he had another mental note to ask about diamonds and whether they have anything in motion to supply those. They can't use them for resurrections directly but Blai had a different idea that might work. Or might just waste diamonds, they're not sure, but he figured he would toss the question to them, they know better than he does whether they can afford to potentially waste diamonds on a plan that only might work. 

They will take that into consideration. 

Okay good that's Seldan's part covered, he's going back to sleep now. 

Mood.

---

Karis obtains a Gate to Sunhame from one of Leareth's mages. The report she got from Dara amounted to "we think the Heartstone probably won't explode, and Vkandis is almost definitely out of godresources to smite you over leaving Him for another god."

It’s the shortest route to where she wants to go. Karis…doesn’t think she’s being reckless on purpose, that would be stupid, and she had better not waste her new goddess’ generosity by being stupid. But she finds that she doesn’t have a lot of patience for being cautious and tiptoeing around the situation. She wants to be in Iftel before dawn tomorrow, and it would be wronging her people in Karse to forge off into the north without even trying to stabilize what she’s leaving behind. So: Sunhame.

She left for Valdemar less than two weeks ago. It feels like years. Sunhame feels like a child’s rose-tinted memory.

Karis arranges a meeting. Every glimpse of the Sun-in-Glory hurts, but she has the dignity not to let it show.

It's more an abstract background awareness than anything, that the thing she's trying to do here is very, very hard, and maybe in most worlds she fails. Sarenrae trusted her with it, but Sarenrae can't carry her through. 

But...it doesn't feel like she's among enemies, here, surrounded by the iconography of Vkandis emblazoned in gold. It feels like she's among frightened children; it feels like she's a frightened child herself, left alone in the dark with her brothers and sisters, trying to be brave. 

There were rumors, of course. Karis confirms that the worst is true: the barrier around Iftel is down, and there are forest fires where it used to be, and it seems likely that the Sunlord - fought a battle, of some kind, and lost - and He gave her no direction, either before or after. 

(Sola is with Arven right now, still in Haven. Karis had a painful conversation with the Suncat, and came away with the impression that Vkandis had given her no direction either, but...she didn't, quite, trust that it would go better to have Sola with her for this, even if it would have helped her credibility.) 

When she explains that she was chosen to serve another world's sun god, she leaves open the interpretation that it could have been a result of Vkandis calling for aid. She doesn't actually know that it wasn't, and...in that moment, it doesn't feel like a lie to leave out that she rejected Vkandis in anger first. She can't find any anger in herself now, only a deep and bottomless sadness. 

The sun god of another world gave her a miracle of healing, she explains, one that she can carry with her and wield at will where it will go the furthest. And where it will go the furthest, right now, is Iftel. 

Karis departs from Sunhame fully aware that there's still plenty of opportunity for seeds she planted there to burn instead. The priesthood has never been without fracture-lines, and a coup like the one twelve years ago could happen again, and it would be less likely if she stayed long enough to clear up the succession, but - she has channels that will be wasted if she hasn't found people to save before dawn. 

She - and a dozen priests of Vkandis - will be at the Iftel border by midnight. 

Vanyel sleeps, mostly. 

Every so often one of the other Healers, not Shavri, pokes him awake to drink more tea (aughhhhhh) and channel, which fortunately doesn't seem to take much mental effort, just the bird made of paper twists in his hand. 

He already used his second channel in the late morning – almost noon, really, the dawn-to-dusk interval at this time of year is only eight candlemarks or so. By the time the third is due, it's midafternoon, and he...doesn't feel like he's run dry? He might have more than three, he tells the Healer at his side, though he's not going to entirely believe it until it's time for the next one and he tries and it works. 

The fourth channel is due after sunset. It works. The days are still short and the nights are long, they're well under halfway from this morning's dawn to the next one, but it's clearly better than anyone hoped for. 

The...fifth??? channel???...is due in the late evening. There's still a lot of night to go, but they're steadily nibbling away the hours, and everyone is still alive. Blai and Seldan are even gaining ground, at least on brightness of life-force; Vanyel's channels aren't strong enough to "fill" either one, but the leakage is slow enough that the gain isn't entirely lost before the next channel is due. 

Vanyel feels like he still has one more in him??????? 

(He also still has his other mysterious spell, but he doesn't have the faintest idea what it does and isn't going to risk using it. He's been casting Guidance on himself occasionally during moments of half-lucidity, because it does seem to help him snap out of the stupid doomdespair spirals.) 

The senior Healer on duty considers waking Shavri to consult her, and decides against. At this rate, Vanyel's SIXTH channel will fall around midnight, and from there they should, actually, be able to get through until morning with the two channels Blai has. Having Joshel on hand for casting Virtue helped buy them some breathing room to give more of the Healers breaks, but they don't need him. So - he should be free to go, now, if the King can use his spells better elsewhere. 

Joshel will get to CAST HIS FLOATING DISK SPELL to transport a ton of relief supplies across a Gate!!! He’s so excited!!! …He didn’t end up having any opportunity to think about payment for spells, what with all the re-casting Virtue over and over all day, but hopefully Abadar will forgive him just this one time. 

In the early hours of the morning, Shavri is back on duty, and gently nudges Blai awake. :We’re ready for your first channel now.:

Her patients are not doing great. Stef and Nayoki are both losing badly-needed fluids to intermittent diarrhea, and unsurprisingly miserable about it. But it seems like everyone will still be alive at dawn.

Blai blinks at her and nods and checks the room out of reflex - it's not like the room has gotten any bigger but if somebody were for instance completely behind someone else that would be an issue and they'd need to fling an arm over - anyway - channel.