"I have a scroll."

"It's illegal to go over Aktun for adventuring-related calamities, danger can follow you there -"

"And yet, knowing that, I told you to go over Aktun. Prepare two plane shifts."

"Is that a cursed helm -"

"Dispel magic."

Hagan flicks his hand and a symbol like the one Fazil carries appears over his head. 

"I am descended from the pharaoh of Osirion. I have just received word that everyone else descended from him is dead, the target of a magical attack that did not reach the Deep Plane. Osirion has been without a ruler for four months. We have leave to travel over Aktun."

They both kneel. 

"Your majesty," says Mahdi, "that's a cursed helm. May I attempt to remove it."

"You'd need a Wish. Abadar did it. It's a helm of opposite alignment - because the pharaoh has to be a cleric of Abadar, right, and I was inadequate -"

- he nods. 

- Verita looks over to Korva to see if she's kneeling.

She is not. She's digging her fingernails into her arm through her sleeve pretty hard, but she's not kneeling.

Well in that case she's not going to kneel either.

" - should I close the - "

"Yes."

She closes the gate.

He paces. It takes Fazil half an hour to prepare the spells. He does not say anything. Mahdi remains on the floor, not looking at him.

She doesn't kneel. She doesn't pace. She doesn't ask questions because she's still kind of scared of the answers.

She tries following Korva's lead for a bit but it's boring.

She paces a while.

"What're we gonna do when we get back to Osirion?"

"Get my family back."

Serious nod.

(She relaxes a little bit. Not much. But that's a better plan of action than the alternative.)

He spent a decade of his life terrified that when his friends learned this about him they'd hate him. It's difficult to even piece together what it is he was afraid of. They're doing what he needs them to do. There'll be less stupid joking, but he only needed the stupid joking in the first place since he'd given up on attaching his self-esteem to his actual ability to accomplish things.

His wife, on the other hand, is having some kind of problem that she has at least had the good sense to not make his problem right now. Later, maybe. It's probably just that this interaction doesn't feature enough compliments. 

"Your majesty," he says eventually. 

"You can hold Verita's hand." And then Verita can hold Korva's and Korva can hold his and Mahdi can hold his other hand and Fazil's other hand and that's a nearly acceptable way to do this.

She's fine with this!

She can hold Verita's hand and Hagan's in the other, sure. She finds herself spending way too much effort trying to figure out what the optimal amount of handholding pressure is in this situation. 

Probably this doesn't matter and they should just get to Osirion and - fix this.