:I can imagine him - or Savil, honestly - panicking if you were marching in trying to shut down the Heartstone! It would take down half the wards on the entire Kingdom - I don't think the vrondi can tie in without a Heartstone, and all the more sophisticated wards are relying on it. If you - thought it was an emergency - and hadn't actually talked it through with the Senior Circle to convince them the war wasn't going to happen - assuming that even ends up being true, I don't think we're at the point yet where negotiations are guaranteed to work -: 

Vanyel rubs his eyes. :I can definitely imagine either of them, but especially Brightstar, trying to stop me if I was going in to kill the Heartstone without explaining myself. What I can't imagine a conversation about it breaking down to the point that I call a Final Strike on Haven instead!: 

:I mean. If he was about to make it do whatever happened in k'Treva?: 

Brightstar wouldn't do that. He wouldn't. 

...Blai is going to give him that skeptical look again if Vanyel says that out loud like it's an actual argument. 

:I - suppose it's possible I could end up thinking a Final Strike would kill him without actually destabilizing the Heartstone. They can soak up a lot, a normal Adept's Final Strike would be fine. I haven't - run the numbers - on whether the Haven Heartstone could take my Final Strike, and it's a bloody serious risk to take, but - maybe.: 

...He has the feeling he's forgetting something. Something to do with running numbers. It's not quite coming to him though. 

:We think k'Treva had protections on theirs, right? So one person couldn't set it off singlehandedly? Do we...?: 

:Unless Savil thought to set that up but didn't think to tell me about it, then, er, no. I don't think so.: 

:Who wants an Owl's?:

:I think Van should get it.: He has the best chance of figuring out how they can do something now to prevent their theory from happening. 

:What does it do, exactly?: 

:It makes you Wiser - quite a bit Wiser, by about as much as the difference between an average person and me - for about five minutes.:

Nod. :That does sound like it could be useful.: It also feels like a lot of pressure but he can cope. :All right.:

"Owl's Wisdom," and a tap to the back of Vanyel's hand.

It feels very odd, and not entirely in a comfortable way. Vanyel doesn't exactly feel cleverer, he doesn't think, and he's not exactly more awake or more focused, but there's more...something...

He should probably not waste it thinking about what it feels like. What are the important questions here? 

They're going to meet with Leareth. Have they taken the right precautions - "right" precautions depends against what, right - they're not not worried about Leareth betraying them but they're less worried, now, even though they don't actually have the confirmation from Blai's spell yet - 

Because of the first prophecy-spell vision, which showed Vanyel apparently being willing not just to go meet Leareth face to face, but to bring Jisa with him. And showed it going wrong, but not because of anything Leareth did. Unless Leareth arranged the gryphon attack. That doesn't make any sense, though, unless the gryphons weren't even Ifteli and Leareth actually has his own gryphons and never mentioned and now that he knows about Iftel he realized he could fake an attack from them - 

- no, that doesn't make sense, because they didn't know to warn Leareth until after the vision - unless the vision and future were already taking into account that they would know and everything they would do, but Blai didn't think it worked that way - 

Thinking about prophecy interweaving with their decisions is making his head hurt even with the spell on him, apparently. 

Focus. 

They're less worried that Leareth isn't negotiating in good faith because of the prophecy, but not just that. Now that they're almost certain he wasn't responsible for k'Treva (and with the spell in place, Vanyel is if anything more sure of that), he's more inclined to agree with his previous assessment of Leareth's character. Ruthless, willing to commit atrocities, but - not inclined to lie to Vanyel's face about it. And he sent Blai back. 

And then as soon as they started trying to negotiate in earnest, a lightning strike started a fire. That really couldn't have been Leareth, or at least he can't think how; you can send storms with mage-work from a distance, but not direct individual lightning bolts without a local magical signature, which would have pinged the Web. 

So...whatever is happening in Haven in the second vision, it's probably not Leareth's fault. 

Could it be Leareth's fault, setting aside the rest? He could have...put a compulsion on Vanyel? To Gate back to Haven and shut down their defenses so he could invade and if stopped from this, Final Strike to take out Valdemar's government? 

That doesn't make any sense with the first prophecy though, where he was about to swear a binding magical oath not to betray them! Is it because the oath got interrupted by gryphons. Did Leareth think that was Vanyel's fault. 

...are they about to do something different because of the first prophecy, that actually ends up making everything much worse and convincing Leareth they betrayed him?  

He should mention that as a possibility once the spell ends but it really feels like it's stretching. 

Earlier it felt like there was something he was forgetting - 

...the math would work...