"Good working with you."

"Is that my cue to go in a different direction or something, I thought I was coming back to Sothis."

"Oh, sorry, you're entirely welcome to. I just imagined maybe there is a faster Underdark-tunnel way to get there or something, and marching through the desert sucks, and you've earned your share, they're out and all alive."

"There might well be a tunnel but I don't know of one, since it's not like the Underdark has a consistent tunnel pattern throughout, and the one that these guys could tell me about got sealed! And if I go a level down and ask for directions they might, you know, kill me."

"They seem very eager to do that. Well, welcome to marching through the desert. Sometimes there are sandworms."

"Exciting. Are they good eating or just good target practice?"

"They are regrettably not edible at all."

"Oh well." Tromp tromp.

It is hot and dry and windy. Fazil can supply them with practically arbitrary water, and Hagan and Fazil can cast Endure Elements on some of the worst-off people, but it kind of sucks.

"I really think having a huge fireball suspended in the sky half of every day is more trouble than it's worth," Belmarniss comments.

"You know, when you say it like that it's hard to argue."

"I like colors. Colors are great. You can get colors off reasonable amounts of light, this is just excessive."

"Maybe someday it can be on the list of things you take up with the creators."

"Pretty far down the list."

"On optimistic days I imagine all new Good gods get a book that reads 'welcome aboard, here is our grand plan to fix everything and here is why it has to take thousands of years'."

"See, that would be a pretty encouraging discovery."

"It'd have to be a very impressive book."

"Oh yeah."