Well, Blai - and his goddess - also seem pretty excellent, but Joshel will look forward to meeting the Abadarans! And have someone let Lady Treesa know that her jewelry collection might be of great value to the Kingdom, she'll love that. There are probably other court ladies with jewelry collections but none of them are Vanyel's mother. 

He thanks Blai and goes back to his other work. 

Is his second channel wanted anywhere today? Or should he and Seldan just settle down in the stable and read more Acts till Blai thinks he could fit in some more catchup-sleep.

It doesn't sound like there's a pressing need for his second channel now and Blai should hold onto it in case there's some kind of emergency in the middle of the night. 

Seldan is going to make sure the specific details about diamond sizes are passed on to Leareth's mages, which seems like a more efficient way of getting the information to Leareth than relaying to Savil via Kellan and having her tell Vanyel (now that it's not an emergency he's been avoiding Mindspeaking Vanyel directly out of respect for the fact that a Companion who isn't Yfandes talking to him is probably an unpleasant reminder of his loss.) 

And then, yes, why don't they settle down in the stable and read more Acts until Blai gets tired again. Possibly at some point they should also discuss what spells it makes sense for him to get for tomorrow. 

Not another Nap Stack, presumably, since they got everybody high-priority through the one and it eats a pillow every time. At least one Gentle Repose, and maybe more? Do they want more prophecies?

Nap Stack indeed seems like a lower priority. At least one Gentle Repose seems good, it turns out Resurrection diamonds may not be that hard to come by but there's presumably also the cost of the spell requiring a more powerful cleric. The prophecy spell has seemed useful every single time it's come up so one of those seems pretty good. Spells that could help him defend himself or Seldan if more godplots happen here might be nice, though in fact Leareth's mages plus the Shadow-Lover god's intervention were sufficient that it went fine and was just STRESSFUL. 

...Depending what exactly Lesser Restoration helps with in terms of chronic problems, it might be worth trying on Kilchas or Sandra? Who are currently not robust enough to be able to help Savil and Vanyel with the Heartstone, but they're the main other experienced Herald-Mages and Leareth thinks it would be safer with four people than two. (His own people aren't keyed to the Heartstone, and can provide backup but not directly involve themselves in the process of shutting it down.) 

If he doesn't need his third circle slot for anything else he was going to try curing Sandra's blindness. Lesser Restoration isn't good with old age, are these old-age related problems?

Sandra's condition is unrelated to age - she's younger than Vanyel - the blindness isn't actually a problem for mage-work, but the same injury badly damaged her lungs and as a result she has very poor stamina and is quickly exhausted by intensive magic use. 

Kilchas is also not actually that old - around sixty, he's almost twenty years younger than Savil - but he has a bad heart, which is a vaguely old-age-related problem even if plenty of old people have perfectly good hearts. 

Blai would tentatively expect the Lesser Restoration to help Sandra's lungs and not Kilchas's heart, but if testing it is the best use of his second circle spells (it trades off against prophecies and Owl's) he can prep it twice.

Owl’s Wisdom also sounds like it’s been very useful -  depending on how long it lasts, actually, it might be worth timing it to cast on Vanyel just before Gating him back in to shut down the Heartstone, it’s a difficult working and any edge they can get will help. If Lesser Restoration probably won’t work on Kilchas then it seems worth preparing one for Sandra but not trading off against Owl’s Wisdom.

He didn't wind up casting his Owl's today, so he doesn't have to prep that, just not drop it. It'll last five, maybe six, minutes.

Oh neat. Does that mean he can get more total spells tomorrow because he saved some from today, or just that it costs his goddess a little less because She only has to replenish the new ones?

The second thing, plus it will take a little less than an hour.

Got it. 

...More Acts now? 

More Acts now.

More Acts!

(Also more snuggling, and more quietly appreciating how great his Herald is.) 

And eventually they can sleep. 

Blai wakes up with the dawn. He starts bending the wire sun back into place on his symbol while he prays. He proposes that Iomedae get in touch with the Velgarth gods, or pass on the opportunity to someone else; it seems high-value. He's not sure that all the resurrections he's been proposing are efficient uses of resources but they seem to him justifiable on the grounds that a) he certainly didn't promise to pay for them, just mentioned that it was possible to do and b) many of the losses were incurred in the course of dealing with events that may have been downstream of Blai's presence, even if he couldn't have strictly speaking prevented them.

He - can't hang another third circle spell, alas. Well, he wants a Remove Blindness, and a Lesser Restoration, and he'll keep the Owl's, and a Gentle Repose, and a Minor Prophecy. And an AIR BUBBLE. And an Endure Elements. And a Liberating Command. And a Summon Monster I. He is very much prepping for yesterday's emergency but it was quite the emergency.

Well, they did learn that river-related emergencies in particular are something Leareth's mages are less than perfectly prepared to protect Blai from! They got somewhat unlucky in the timing - if they'd been quicker they could have caught them in a force-net before they hit the water - but it didn't take very much bad luck. 

They should go have breakfast, and then try Healing Sandra, and - then maybe it makes sense to use the Minor Prophecy on either Vanyel or Savil, to find out if the Heartstone is going to be a disaster? Seldan isn't sure they have...much of a choice...about trying it, but they could decide to try evacuating a wider radius first. 

That sounds like a fine itinerary... if it's a disaster perhaps they should be trying to... parley with the Star-Eyed somehow?

Vanyel thought that wasn't a possibility - but also Seldan heard from Kellan that Vanyel has spoken to Her before, was apparently able to get Her attention via a Heartstone, and it doesn't sound like that went disastrously? Just unproductively? 

...Blai seemed better at communicating with the Shadow-Lover than Vanyel, maybe because of context his world has on how mortals can expect to communicate with gods, but Seldan does not particularly feel like risking Blai in case this time does go disastrously, and also the Heartstone method might not work for him at all since he's not Gifted. 

They could ask Brightstar?

Seldan's first thought is that there's no way that goes well! Wasn't Vanyel pretty sure that the prophecy with the Heartstone in Haven would have involved Brightstar exploding it on purpose???

...The situation is different now, though. It's not like there's a good reason for the Star-Eyed to want thousands of random civilian residents of Haven dead when this does very little to harm Leareth.

The Shadow-Lover's god only started intervening helpfully after Vanyel attempted more direct communication. Maybe the Star-Eyed really just can't see very well what She's doing, because Blai is a force coming in from outside.

You would think the Shadow-Lover god could talk to the Star-Eyed Goddess, but - maybe They've actually been content let Her keep futilely burning resources because it gives Them a relative advantage for Her to be weaker after all this is over. There was at least some implication of that in the conversation with Blai. 

Persuading Brightstar to help seems nontrivial, but - if Leareth can think of some kind of concession to offer the Star-Eyed, maybe communicating that would achieve something?

- this is a whole lot of speculation and probably they should just see what the prophecy shows and then decide what to do about it.  

The thing they need is a way to talk to Her; Blai's not seeing an incentive for Brightstar to decline to tell them how, if it's doable, and if it seems like it makes them more vulnerable they can just not do it. He has no idea how to approach Brightstar, because Brightstar is ninety percent operational constraint by volume, but if someone does, and it turns out She can accept prayers issued on alternate Waterdays if you're standing on your head, it's worth knowing.

Seldan kind of thinks that Brightstar will decline to cooperate with literally anything, regardless of the incentives, out of…”spite” isn’t quite right, and it’s probably enormously less thought out than Blai’s rationale for being uncooperative about being kidnapped, but - in the prophecy Blai cast on him it looked like he was not very willing to engage. But maybe there’s angle, or - there’s his sister, apparently, maybe she knows how one would go about conveying a message to their goddess…

Jisa? - no, the other sister.

Presumably since there were only two wands of Sending communication artifacts they are now used up, how are they talking to Leareth now?

Oh, Vanyel presumably has reusable talismans that he can put more mage-energy into himself when the stored power runs out, that's how they usually work; the absurdly expensive single-use ones were because Blai isn't a mage and can't use standard mage-artifacts.

The mage-guards with Blai also have someone on comms-spell duty. It's still not trivial, and Seldan suspects Vanyel is trying to avoid conveying anything that would be disastrous for Iftel to intercept (though apparently they couldn't intercept message content during the attack on the kyree caves, only observe that a message was being sent at all, that came up at some point), but they shouldn't consider the number of messages to Leareth particularly limited.