They're not going to have to wait that long, because Nayoki has managed to send some additional reinforcements to fetch them! (To a completely different northern base a hundred miles away from the one where she is with Leareth, it's stupid to bring Brightstar near Leareth again.) 

The mage holding the Gate has orders to let the Companion read his mind to confirm that Nayoki in fact sent them. 

...They seem legitimate. Through the Gate, then. 

Vanyel is starting to hit a point where it feels like thoughts aren't properly happening anymore. Crossing a Gate doesn't require thoughts, though.

He's bizarrely miserable about the prospect of keeping Brightstar prisoner but at least he'll be safe. 

Blai is not sure how to ride a horse bareback while there is also a helpless additional person slung across his back, so he walks beside Seldan through the gate.

The Gate goes down behind them. 

It's...over, then...? 

Vanyel probably still needs to...do things...but the doing things is not so much working. Yfandes is how he normally solves the adrenaline-comedown problem notthinkingaboutit. 

He stands there stupidly.

Vanyel seems to be having a bad time, probably related to Yfandes being dead.

That's not incredibly surprising but it's inconvenient, as it leaves Seldan (a very experienced Herald in some senses, but still quite short on local context) here, now out of Mindspeech range of Waymeet as well (it might or might not be less than three hundred miles but mountains are in the way now) and unable to cast comms-spells himself, and accompanied only by his (excellent!!! but inexperienced-with-Valdemaran-affairs) Herald. 

...They should get Brightstar down. Seldan will Mindspeak the mage who brought them here to ask where they can put him so he'll be comfortable, and make sure that Nayoki knows where they are. And find out if Leareth is all right and whether they need to go immediately do more healing. Leaving a set-commanded Brightstar alone with a nonfunctional Vanyel (well, not alone but Vanyel is the only person here who isn't a stranger) isn't ideal but - 

- oh, what they should do is they should get Jisa here. She can figure out if it's safe to have Brightstar under something less restrictive than a set-command against taking actions in full generality - maybe now that they're not horribly rushed and Brightstar is incapable of shielding against Mindhealing, she can just block his Gifts - and also Brightstar knows her. They should really try to talk to him but Seldan is not sure if he or Blai are particularly well placed for that. 

It's possible this isn't over, though surely at some point the Star-Eyed Goddess will run out of things to try. But plausibly they should still have Blai try to find a way to use the prophecy spell tonight. ("Tonight." It can't be that many more candlemarks until dawn, at this point.) 

- does Blai think he's forgetting any considerations? 

...three hundred miles of range is way less impressive if it's interrupted by mountains. Lots of three hundred mile stretches of land have mountains in them somewhere. Though it does still work for the idea of running comms across the Inner Sea.

He doesn't have to cast the prophecy on Leareth. He could cast it on Brightstar, if they think Brightstar is the principal agent of the Star-Eyed they have to worry about and further developments would go through him.

...That does seem like it could be very valuable to know. If the Star-Eyed has given up on Brightstar as no longer a useful agent for Her plans, then - Brightstar is making his own decisions from here, he's safe for Vanyel and Jisa to be near, and they can try to talk him around. If the Star-Eyed can still possess him - and maybe work around Gift-blocks, though if She could ignore a set-command you would really think She would have done it ten minutes minutes ago - then it's not incredibly clear what to do but talking to him probably won't work and it's possible Jisa shouldn't risk being near him at all. 

And if they also want a prophecy on Leareth to try to head off any other assassination attempts - the Star-Eyed might be done but Vkandis could still have ideas - then it's not like it's that long to wait for Blai to have tomorrow's spells. 

(Seldan is hoping that things will stop happening soon, at least for long enough that they can get a little sleep.) 

Sleep would be great, he usually doesn't start having flashbacks after only one all-nighter but it's kind of pushing it. What does Vanyel think of prophesying Brightstar?

It's at least worth trying to see if Vanyel can pull himself together to answer a direct question. 

:Vanyel, Blai is considering casting the prophecy spell on Brightstar. What do you think?: 

 Someone is asking him a question? Argh that's not fair there have been enough things Vanyel rubs his eyes with both hands and tries to focus enough to actually process what the question was. 

...The first thing that occurs to him once he tries to think is that obviously they need to question Brightstar, to find out some of the details of the attack and its planning - was Brightstar the ringleader, how did they know where Leareth was, does Iftel on its own have any way to find Leareth north of the mountains, does anyone else know where Leareth's immortality setup is in the Void - and this feels like an immediate punishment for his attempt at thinking, because having to interrogate Brightstar sounds agonizing. 

It...does...seem like it would be very good to know if the thing Blai sees is "Brightstar escaping" or "Brightstar being directly possessed by the Star-Eyed Goddess" in case there are measures they can take to reduce that risk (at the very least it probably reduces the risk of possession if they keep him unconscious, and never mind that this is a horrifyingly upsetting thought.) And if it doesn't, if it shows Brightstar not escaped and talking to them, then that would imply it's safe to keep him under less restrictive mind control to let him talk. 

Putting all of that into proper words sounds too hard so he just shoves it at Seldan. 

Seldan does not have to share all of the current contents of Vanyel's head with Blai as well, just that Vanyel agrees it seems reasonable. 

"Minor Prophecy."

Brightstar is in a bare-walled shielded room, sitting huddled with his back against the wall, knees hugged to his chest. He's clearly been crying.

The door of the room opens and a girl comes in. She's about the same age, someone Blai hasn't seen before. She's small and thin, her hair dyed in an odd streaky brown-and-green camouflage pattern, but her features resemble Brightstar's. Her eyes are puffy and reddened as well, with dark circles under them. 

Brightstar lifts his head and does not otherwise really react. 

     "I came as soon as I could," she's saying. "I - I would have come sooner - Brightstar, I wish..." 

Brightstar shakes his head, helplessly, and says something too unclear to understand. 

    The girl goes to him. Puts her arms around him. After what seems like a long time of just holding him in silence, "...Father says the other world has magic. That - could bring them back." 

Brightstar shakes his head and does not seem particularly able to process this. 

     The girl doesn't say anything else. 

Well, that's pleasantly low-key. He doesn't know who the girl is but perhaps a member of the horse conspiracy Companion will recognize her from Seldan's thoughts once they return to Haven. Vanyel doesn't really look like he was listening.

Yeah Seldan has no idea either. Looks like a relative - in particular, she looks Tayledras - but he wasn't aware of Brightstar having relatives who weren't in k'Treva at the time that the thing happened. Vanyel indeed doesn't seem to be listening and, given that this is apparently the most exciting thing to happen to Brightstar in the next few days, it's not going to be a disaster to wait on figuring it out either until they're back in contact with Haven or Vanyel is in better shape. 

Right. Order of operations from here: convey to nearby Leareth-organization-staff that Brightstar is probably not going to present a danger tonight, he's already doing that. Get Jisa over here, which again he will need to delegate since he hasn't got the faintest idea where Jisa is relative to them and neither he nor Blai can Gate. Ask about having someone mindread him to find out relevant information like whether he told anyone else how to destroy Leareth's immortality; maybe Jisa can do that, Vanyel does not seem super up for it. Find out if Leareth needs more Healing. Get communications with Haven back up, though he's inclined to delegate that entirely and have Leareth send someone to Waymeet who can ask for a Gate the rest of the way, probably that won't be a disaster given that everyone not willing to listen to the Heralds' orders seems to have left Waymeet to go carry out an unsanctioned attack on the kyree caves. Leareth's people can probably also do something about making sure all the set-commanded gryphons don't freeze to death out there, assuming their own people haven't already tried to evacuate them. 

...Most of those things don't need Blai. Find out if Leareth needs Healing, then Blai can get some sleep until dawn, get spells, probably cast another prophecy on Leareth to check if there are going to be more disasters? 

Someone should collect kyree bodies, not urgently unless there's a risk of scavengers or fire but it should be flagged as a to-do. The kyree were nothing but helpful and some of them are probably dead and someone might want to save up to get them back.

Blai can sit up a bit waiting to hear if he's supposed to Gate somewhere and do Cures.

Some of the kyree are definitely dead, he'll pass that along as well; most of them will be buried under rubble, if they were in the caves when they collapsed, and they'll be nontrivial to find but it does make scavengers less of a problem. The Bard apparently has some amount of influence with the King and will absolutely want his friends brought back if it's at all possible, so maybe Valdemar can end up putting some resources toward that. 

(Someone of them weren't dead yet and hopefully Leareth's people can find them and dig them out in time, but Seldan is pretty unconflicted on the fact that it wasn't worth them sticking around on the battlefield for that.) 

If Blai had another channel he might disagree with that but he has three convertible spells left so the return on his hanging around would not be amazing.

Word back from Nayoki within three minutes of Seldan asking someone to comms-spell her: Leareth isn't in great shape. They've got their own Healers there, whose report is that he has superficial burns but most of what's wrong with him is basically heatstroke, which maybe the channel couldn't help with while he was still mostly buried in very hot debris. He'll be okay in a day or two either way, but if it's not especially costly for Blai to help, his spells are definitely a lot faster than Velgarth Healing. 

He might actually need an Endure Elements more than another Cure, if he has heatstroke. Blai can prep some at dawn. If they want to gate him over for a quick Cure he can do that, he's unsure how that trades off against various security and logistics constraints. If they don't -

Sleep now?

It does not seem like enough of an emergency to justify Gating Blai over. (Especially when they still haven't determined to their satisfaction that Brightstar isn't somehow goddess-boobytrapped. The report that reached Nayoki on Blai's prophecy vision is somewhat reassuring but she's not inclined to put all her faith on that.) Blai should get some sleep. 

Seldan will not fit into any of the actual sleeping quarters at this site, which in any case would require navigating stairs to get to, but someone can lead them to a room that does not contain Brightstar and can, shortly, contain a mattress for Blai and some straw for Seldan. 

It's kinda weird that Endure Elements would work retroactively, in the sense that presumably Leareth is now in a normal-temperature room and it's just that it takes people a while to recover from heatstroke. Neat, though. 

Seldan is glad that Leareth's people understand his desire to stay right next to Blai at all times, and can ease himself down on the straw next to the mattress, at an angle such that Blai can use him as a pillow if he so wishes. 

Blai doesn't have a lot of experience with heatstroke. It helps with some of the not-just-injury effects of being way too cold.

Seldan being a pillow sounds like a good plan to him.

Zzzzz.

Today has been a pretty good day, all things considered! Seldan managed to free his Herald from being arrested by the other Heralds, convinced him to accept the bond, and helped him heroically rescue Vanyel's archmage nemesis-slash-friend from an assassination attempt. 

Also: he has the BEST Herald! He's pretty sure everyone thinks this because that's what the Companion-bond does, but he's still right.

He stays awake for a bit longer gloating about it, nuzzling Blai's hair without waking him, and gleefully harassing people all over the base in Mindspeech about various logistics. Groveborn-level Mindspeech is GREAT even if he apparently can't trivially get across mountains. 

(...He's going to check if that was in fact the issue, actually, by politely asking someone in another room to get a map and drop their shields enough that he can look through their eyes. - aha! His inability to reach Waymeet is in fact fully explained by the fact that they're at an incredibly remote spot, probably because Nayoki wanted them hundreds of miles away from Leareth just in case, and they're probably three hundred and fifty miles from Waymeet. He gets the person to point out important locations relative to them, like where the battle at the kyree caves happened and where Leareth is now, and memorizes the map to show Blai later so both of them can be better oriented.) 

...He should probably also try to get a little sleep. Seldan is pretty sure he remembers picking up from Blai that being a cleric means he'll automatically be woken once the spell-window starts at dawn, but just in case he'll ask someone to wake him five minutes ahead of local dawn so he can poke Blai if he's too deeply asleep to notice or something.