Aaaaaaahhhh????!!!!! 

Why is Blai making that face??? What did he see???? 

:Blai, what -: 

He wasn't previously reading Blai's mind but he's maybe going to try it now. 

(Nayoki is still - processing - and trying to figure out how to convey what she saw to Leareth without causing him to panic in a way that will really not help -) 

:There was... uh...: The most concrete thing he got was "there was an ?astral? bird" but that such a bird exists was so obviously not the point. He didn't even SEE Leareth, just Leareth's - clone repository? Something that's the practical equivalent of a clone repository? Is Leareth astral projecting at all times and somebody's going to cut his silver cord? No, that's clearly projecting too much Golarion-type magic onto the situation and Blai doesn't even know any non-fictional astral projection facts, but what words do you put to that which don't try to impose any interpretation on it -

What - but that can't possibly - Vanyel's mind is bouncing away from exactly what can't possibly - 

:Leareth.: 

:Please try not to Gate out without having given Vanyel the communications artifact. I think you are not in imminent danger and it will not help.: 

:The priest saw - someone, I suspect of the Tayledras from their projected form - identifying and damaging your immortality backup.: 

Maybe irreparably destroying it but that wasn't obvious from the fragments she managed to pick up of the vision and she is absolutely going to frame it with the most optimistic possible reading if that results in Leareth panicking slightly less right now. 

Leareth does not panic-Gate out. 

...He doesn't do anything else, either. It's taking every scrap of self-control he has just to hold himself perfectly still and not - what - what could he possibly do, Gating to safety won't even help - he can't think - 

Presumably he just read Blai's mind as well and - the thing Vanyel can't think about directly is what it was showing - 

:There was some kind of: don't say astral, that's a Golarion assumption, :magic birdlike thing, which found your - extraplanar - thing - possibly related to how you are immortal somehow - and was interfering with it?: Blai ventures, when he has words lined up that he thinks only minimally embed his own interpretations of the vision.

Leareth is not really processing new inputs right now and in any case that's approximately what Nayoki already relayed. He does not visibly react at all. 

That's bad.

(Vanyel realizes a moment later that he had that thought without a moment of hesitation, and - apparently he's already decided that Leareth is on their side. Or that he's on Leareth's side.) 

...His next, awful thought is: Jisa. 

Oh, and I had an idea about how to find Leareth's immortality setup in the Void, he remembers her saying. Casually, offhand, they barely dwelled on it at all. She did also say I don't think we should actually do that, it would scare him, but - they're all tense - Vanyel asked her to stay behind because he was worried it would be dangerous - how much of a godplot would it even take to nudge her into thinking something had gone terribly wrong - 

Jisa is apparently Chaotic and wouldn't quibble at doing it even if she had promised not to, and she didn't actually promise anything

Leareth is - really not okay, is he. Nayoki thinks she may have been underestimating how much strain he was already under before this new piece of information; she didn't have Mindhealing Sight range for most of the conversation and anyway his 'full caution' shields when he's out and about somewhere mostly block her. 

...She probably needs to step in and help organize Leareth handing off the artifacts and getting out of here, plus or minus negotiating for Vanyel and the priest to accompany them somewhere more secure - she told Leareth she wasn't that worried about imminent danger, but it would still be better not to hang around here for no reason and he's going to have an easier time calming down somewhere he feels safer - but she's not sure how tense Vanyel is, he's still too shielded for her to read, and the priest in particular is not going to have positive memories of her.

How tense - or, in particular, how worried about Leareth reacting to this information badly in a way that ends up harming him or Vanyel - does he seem right now? (Leareth obviously isn't going to do any kind of "you know too much, now I need to kill you" thing, but a generic evil mage might, and Nayoki isn't sure to what extent Blai is still thinking of Leareth as - that.) 

Obviously if someone's gone and murdered all your Clones or whatever the fuck that was you're going to be pretty alarmed and want to retreat to an emergency backup demiplane and make more Clones, Blai figures.

Oh good. 

...One more try at handling this without shoving her presence in the priest's face. :Leareth. Give Vanyel the artifacts, tell them you are grateful for the information or something, and Gate out.: Maybe he's stuck because she explicitly told him not to Gate out and he had delegated that decision to her. 

Leareth does not have to be able to think to execute on that. 

:- Thank you, that is - valuable information to have.: His mindvoice is only slightly disjointed. :Vanyel, I am putting the communication-spell artifacts and the instructions for it here.: There now they're on the floor of the cave. :- I know I said I would commit to staying reachable by Mindspeech but given this information I may prefer to go somewhere more secure that is not reachable. The communication spell will still work. ...You are welcome to also come but if you already have a secure base to return to I have no reason to specifically think you are not safe there.: 

...Wow, seeing Leareth seem noticeably stressed is upsetting. It feels like reality is breaking the rules. 

:Thank you for the offer but we have somewhere.: 

They should get back to Jisa. In case she is the one who's going to do - that - but hasn't yet. Maybe if they hadn't had the prophecy spell they would have stayed here talking about magic research to find Blai's world until the gods collapsed the entire cave on their heads and Leareth was trapped unconscious or something and Jisa panicked and did that and then Leareth died of dehydration two days later and wasn't immortal and - 

- he feels like he's forgetting something and he really really wants the wisdom spell but is now really the moment they're most going to need it for the entire day, it's not a good situation to be getting thinking done - 

Gate out. 

Well. That...is a thing that just happened. 

...After a moment Vanyel bends and picks up the items Leareth put on the floor and tucks them into a pocket before he has a chance to forget to do that. 

:...back to the sled, then?:

:Right. We should get back.: 

Vanyel is pretty sure there are thoughts he should be having but he's - not managing it. There were way too many things that happened in that conversation even before the - that - and he wasn't even in contact with Yfandes for the benefit of her basically-eidetic memory. He should have been taking notes. 

They can go back out to the sled. 

(Nayoki will wait until they're a mile off to creep out of the snowbank - she's still behind an illusion and it might not hold up at very short range but it's not hard to camouflage someone against endless deep snow, she shouldn't show up on Farseeing or scrying - and slip away into the forest on foot, she wants to get a little ways from the site where someone watching closely enough might have detected Leareth's Gates before she leaves herself.) 

The kyree are waiting for them. And have no idea about the contents of their conversation because it took place entirely in private Mindspeech. 

:So it went well then?: Aroon says cheerfully. 

Um. 

Vanyel will probably figure out a way to answer that question in a moment. 

:As well as can be expected, I think.: If there is some secret method for having meetings with evil archmages nonstressfully Blai does not know it.

:He read as Lawful to Blai's magic and he swore a lot of things under Truth Spell and I'm pretty sure he didn't try to put compulsions on us. He didn't exactly swear not to make an evil god but - I think his objections to that were reasonable, and I think he doesn't intend to create an evil god so - hopefully will take constructive criticism about it. We have a communications-artifact if we need to talk to him more urgently than letters.: