"I want to know more about how Nirvana works. There's frustratingly little reliably written on the topic."

"Yeah. I don't know why not, I'd want to advertise."

"How'd the tourism situation in Aktun originally get set up?"

"My grandfather went himself to petition in person. He was gone for a month. There was reportedly a lot of fretting about the succession. But he found Abadar - or the rest of Abadar, if you like - broadly supportive and then there were some other stakeholders who could be persuaded and then it was just a matter of supplying the transit ourselves and convincing everyone to save up for it."

"Huh, that sounds pretty doable if you happen to run a country and be on good terms with a god and really hard under any other circumstances. Pity I meet neither criterion."

"Well, there are countries for the picking. The god side is more complicated. I guess you can try solving it from the other end."

"I will! Though I need to find something to get that next level, I don't know why I'm blocked on it, the whole mess with the pirates and the sea serpent should've done it and it didn't."

"Sometimes people cap out? You'd be capping out unreasonably early, though. - can fight you if you wanna."

"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."