"Have you ever heard of sparring getting somebody a level they were stuck on?"

"Not really, no."

"Might be fun anyway. We can make an evening of it after we get to the surface and pitch camp, I don't want to walk all the way back to Sothis before another sleep."

"Sounds great. I used to be able to beat Mahdi every time but then he got sick of it and practiced holding spells while taking damage obsessively for months and now I never beat him."

"Well, then you'll probably turn me into a pincushion. Do you have a cure prepped, or what, how do you do this, if you don't have a good method we might need to do it a little closer to a temple. Don't wanna dip into the potion stash."

"I have a merciful bow. And some cures prepped but that's for backup. It's not really a fair fight, right, everyone knows casters are more useful if they can get a spell off."

"We're excellent that way. All right, your merciful bow, my merciful spells, we'll see who out-mercies whom."

"Sounds like a plan."

Getting out of the caves is easier than getting in, since they don't have to guess which way to go. They make it to the aperture just at twilight but Belmarniss wants to camp closer to the ocean - "also if anybody decided to stalk us they'll assume we went toward Sothis."

"Is that likely, do you think -"

"Not very. But it could happen if somebody decided to use us as misdirection to steal something and their ruse worked, or if someone's just really curious and doesn't think they can resolve that by going to Sothis on a more convenient schedule."

"Fair enough." So they can head down to the coast.

"I love the ocean. First time I saw it I just hung out by the beach all day long even though it bounced stupid fireball rays at me."

"I do too. It's the - well, the total absence of people, mostly, but also the sense that there's a lot more going on than I've figured out, yet -"

"I just like that it's so big and the way the waves move."

"Ever flown high enough to see the world curve? It's easier with the carpet, don't have to worry about the spell running out and having to time a feather fall."

"I did, yeah. I got pretty aggressive feather fall practice in school."

"I guess that'll do it."

Beach camp beach camp beach camp. "Do you usually just go till someone calls a halt, or till someone can't get up, or what?"

"They're usually the same thing but it's over as soon as someone says so, or looks like they couldn't say so."

"Cool. Starting distance? Signal?"

"Obviously the starting distance should be three hundred feet."

"You want me to go easy on you, huh?"

"Oh, what's your suggestion?"

"Did ten paces when I did this as a kid - stand back to back, count ten, go at it with your favorite combat cantrip."