Yfandes reaches them; Leareth jumps down while she's still five yards away and catches himself with a burst of magic and jogs up. "Vanyel, are you all right?" 

"I...think so? Bit shaken, but it doesn't actually hurt now." He grimaces. "I'm really tired? I don't know why, I wasn't doing much." 

"You were having trauma reactions, they're exhausting, I go through more coffee these days."

Vanyel sighs and turns to head back inside. "That doesn't actually get me much closer to being able to help you work on the spell, if I can handle a Gate a mile away but not half a mile away. Maybe we can work more on it later. And I guess I can talk through theory a bit." 

"There are a million Maiar in the black hole, it would still help with efficiency if it took a solid month of steady work on your tolerance to get you up to helping. I think it's still worth it in expectation even if it only might get you there, they aren't going anywhere."

"Right. That's true." Vanyel glances over at Leareth. "I guess you'll need my help more then, actually, it'll be really tedious otherwise." 

Leareth smiles slightly. "I have a great deal of practice with tedious work and do not expect it to trouble me, but yes, your help would be appreciated. At the very least by the Maiar, who I am sure would prefer to wait half as long for all of their number to be freed." 

"Yeah, and the Elves miss them too."

Leareth glances over at Cam, seems to consider saying something, but instead goes back to the booth where he was sitting before and takes out a sheaf of notes. 

Vanyel heads Bar-ward. "Oh - Leareth, have you been introduced to coffee yet? It's great." 

"Coffee is pretty great," agrees Cam. He makes himself a caramel mocchiato.

"Leareth, if 'tastes like dessert' works with your drink preferences, I'll get you the same one I'm having." Vanyel waits for acknowledgement and then asks Bar for two of the mochas. 

Bar is good at mochas.

Bar is also good at recommending pain medications, apparently; the ghost of maybe-a-headache-maybe-imagining-it is gone and Vanyel feels great. Even better once the first few sips of coffee are in him. He's almost tempted to try a regular Gate, just to see if he can manage it now without passing out, but the drug has probably worn off and he shouldn't take it again so soon and he's pretty sure Cam would yell at him anyway. Those were some extremely dubious looks he was getting earlier.  

"...I think this is the same beverage as chava," Leareth says when Vanyel delivers him the mocha. "Well, not exactly the same preparation, but similar. They have it in Seejay." Very slight smirk. "This one, however, is much better. Thank you, Bar."

You're too kind.

Leareth carries the beverage back over to his booth and sits. 

"We had better not have Vanyel assist with any of the actual tests," he says, "however, we are still at the stage of discussing theory. It would be useful to know more about the properties of Maiar. Cam, would there be books published on this topic?" 

"Probably some, yeah, I don't know how to find them but maybe Bar can. Bar, whaddaya got on Maiar - not like their biographies, them as a species -"

Bar gives him a selection and he totes it over.

Vanyel drifts over to have a look as well. 

Books for all who may desire books.

Vanyel joins Leareth at the booth and they can both read up on Maiar. (It's a really weird feeling, sitting across a table from Leareth of all people, with books and notes like they're doing some sort of trainee study project together.) 

Leareth will note down anything interesting that's known about Maiar, but he's particularly interested in things that hint at measurable magical properties. 

He is, unfortunately, mostly out of luck. Arda doesn't have anything that can directly perceive magic, the way Valdemaran Gift-senses can. He can get confirmation that Maiar are, basically, the area of space they control; there are some studies, like measurements of the of the radius controlled by a random sample of a thousand Maiar, but that doesn't directly tell him how they would interact with Valdemaran magic.

Also, he can at least predict that things are likely to get very confused once the areas of influence are all smushed into a single point. 

Eventually he can take his notes over to Cam. "We are definitely going to need to a spell that can anchor on a purely magical signature with no physical component. I can test that on magic from my world to develop the right technique, however, it is not guaranteed that Maiar will show up to my senses in the the expected way. So there is an argument to check that first before plowing in too much effort. What would you prefer?" 

"I can prep something to tell the Elves and we can see if we have any Maia options on Endorë. Maybe they'll perk up enough to let you prod them if it might, uh, help."

"Hopefully. It may be enough for me to glance at them, but probably their cooperation would be helpful." 

Cam starts working on something he can read to his personnel. He goes upstairs to run it by Alassëo. He comes back down. "I can be ready to open my door whenever you are."