:I don't really recognize the concept you're thinking when you talk about 'saves' so plausibly that's not a thing for our magic? It's possible to shield better and that would make you a lot harder to compulsion, but - probably not impossible, you really don't need to get a lot of power through for a compulsion to work. I think it is possible to directly fight someone trying to put a compulsion on you - by unweaving the magic before it's stable, I mean, not just by Final Striking first - but only if you're also a mage and it would depend on having faster reaction times than them. I am not going to be faster than Leareth.: 

:Neither am I, mages all look very quick to me. Saves are a phenomenon where people throw off spells; most Golarion magic can be resisted like that.:

Nod. :If even people with no magic can throw off spells sometimes, then - no, we don't have that. I suppose it's not impossible the difference is with people in your world, not how the magic works, and you would be able to throw off compulsions from someone worse at them?: Shrug. :It doesn't seem completely useless to have the protective spell, but it sounds like you can't use the stronger shorter-lasting version and also cast the spell to detect his alignment at the same time?: 

:Right. I could have with Aura Sight but I thought since we didn't need as many Endure Elements I might as well go for Detect Law instead, I'm sorry.:

Why is Blai apologizing to Vanyel for trying to optimize his spell selection, that sounds super reasonable.

:Huh, so that only detects yes or no on Lawful and won't actually tell us if he's Evil? I mean. It seems almost certainly he is. But I - wasn't expecting to read Good.: And maybe the system actually cares a lot less about mass murder than he assumed it would. 

:Right. I can check for Evil another day.:

:I guess whether he's Lawful is the main part we care about.: 

The kyree have breakfast for them if they want - including grain cooked into porridge, this time, they presumably don't farm so Vanyel has to assume they stole it - and then maybe they can go, to make sure they have plenty of time to reach the other caves? 

If nobody tells Blai that the grain was stolen he will not skip breakfast in protest!

He's ready to go whenever Vanyel is. Endure Elements, Endure Elements.

(It's an offhand thought, and awkward to bring up since the kyree are being very generous in hosting them; it won't occur to Vanyel to mention it to anyone.) 

They have a couple of candlemarks and it's not as far as the earlier trip, so it can be a leisurely sled ride. Vanyel is barely motion sick at all. 

This does mean he has lots of mental space left to FRET, but he's not going to make this Blai's problem. 

(Yfandes stays back. The deep snow is harder for Companions to navigate, and he doesn't actually need her there for this.) 

Blai is also fretting and not making this anyone else's problem! As per usual.

They reach the other caves! 

They're properly at the base of the Ice Wall Mountains now, and the sky is clear enough today to offer a beautiful view of snowy peaks. There's a gorgeous frozen waterfall – the kyree probably picked it as an easy-to-identify landmark. The entrance to the cave in question is a triangular opening between two enormous granite boulders, that would probably be doorlike to serve as a Gate-threshold. 

No one else seems to be there yet, but they are still a little early. 

Also Leareth could totally be here already and just behind an illusion. The illusion he laid to conceal the pass was indistinguishable from reality - not just sight, but for walking on too - for everyone except the kyree. 

(The kyree shaman is still cloaking them from magical searches, but not trying to hide their presence from nearby eyes.) 

Time to wait in a cave and WORRY. Vanyel has enough butterflies in his stomach that he kind of regrets breakfast. What if there's an earthquake and the cave collapses on them. What if Leareth betrays them after all. What if he freezes up and says something unbearably awkward. 

...Leareth isn't in fact here yet, but Nayoki is behind the best illusion he and his specialist mages can pull off, and additionally buried in a snowbank; she doesn't need her eyes to scope out what's going on. 

Vanyel is actually shielded enough that she would be hard-pressed to get through at all and definitely couldn't without alerting him - she can see him with Mindhealing Sight and that's it - but Blai isn't any more shielded than he was previously. 

Blai's put Detect Magic up, first of all, is she more than three feet deep?

She's not more than three feet deep! She has to be able to breathe and stuff.

She is nearly a hundred yards away, though – the illusion hiding her is the 'silent' kind, with its magical signature entirely turned in upon itself, and it shouldn't leak anything to mage-sight, but just in case she didn't want to be too close to anywhere Vanyel might be examining up close. She's had longer to train her Mindhealing Sight range than Jisa has, and her Thoughtsensing range is measured in dozens of miles. 

Detect Magic is limited to sixty feet! Blai is looking curiously at the cloaking effect the kyree have up. He is at present unclear on the exact nature of the alliance these people have with the kyree, who seem lovely but are being very helpful for no obvious recompense, and he is concerned that this may come due. Also he sort of volunteered to be an ongoing ?diplomat? of some kind with Leareth if relevant things could be established and he has no idea what conditions he will be kept in or whether this was a stupid thing to offer to do even if he didn't strictly speaking commit to it just express a vague amenability. Should he have offered to Aura Sight the kyree, the humans and Companions were all weirdly excited about it. What if this sled falls apart and he is flung into a tree and breaks his neck. What if Leareth has been Lawful SO FAR but has no emotional attachment to staying that way and decides to just use being currently Lawful to get cooperation and then betray it and he becomes a CHAOTIC evil god, those are also incredibly bad! Though admittedly he doesn't know them to currently control any countries and evil gods controlling countries is salient to him right now, Urgathoa was backing Tar-Baphon and that was also really bad! And even if he didn't flip all the way to Chaotic, Neutral Evil gods aren't good either!

The kyree may or may not know she's here - Nayoki can't get through on their minds either - but apparently if they do they're not making a fuss about her deciding to arrive early as well. 

The priest so worried that Leareth's god is going to turn out evil!!! ...Or possibly is thinking about an entirely different mechanism specific to his world, Leareth is not by default intending to template a god on himself and indeed thinks that's a much worse idea than doing it from scratch. Nayoki is nonetheless faintly offended on Leareth's behalf. Do they not trust him to have checked his math. 

He does not seem inclined to pre-emptively betray them to prevent Leareth from accidentally creating/becoming an evil god. In fact, his thoughts are a bizarre degree of - operating in good faith - given how worried he seems to be about the evil god thing, or about the possibility that Leareth will react to learning about his world by abruptly deciding to be a totally different kind of person who doesn't care about keeping to his word, which really seems like the opposite of how it makes sense to react if you've just learned that it's possible for people to directly perceive whether you're inclined to keep your word.

...There's something there that reminds her a little of Leareth himself, actually. 

She relays via Mindspeech to someone ten miles away that this currently looks unlikely to be a trap. 

It's still a risk. 

But Leareth has had quite a lot of time to think, and - this seems like the best, and possibly the only acceptable, way forward. 

He Gates in to just outside the cave, rather than risk scaring Vanyel by Gating on top of him; he does an unscaffolded horizontal Gate so he can drop through it and have it down in under a second, in case there are gryphons who were somehow able to intercept a message or track Vanyel here.   

You can do that?????? 

(There are no gryphons.) 

Huh. Maybe all their transit magic is gate-based?? Like, this ninth circle spell could have been a Dimension Door. He should not startle anybody by casting anything; he goes on concentrating on Detect Magic, which made the gate look really interesting. (He's got a Guidance he cast during the sled ride and it's still available if he needs it.) :Should I cast Detect Law now?: he asks.

(The Gate does look interesting! It's definitely doing some kind of extraplanar interaction.) 

Leareth walks into the cave - the point of doing this under shelter was not to be visible if anyone is paying attention to energy-shifts in the local ley lines and Farsight-scanning the area for movement - and stops well short of them. 

:You can go ahead.: He also has mage-sight active, and is curious. 

"Detect Law."

Leareth is definitely Lawful! 

:Lawful,: Blai confirms.