"Mmm." Vanyel still seems kind of stunned. "It is a bad plan, and - I think a lot of people would say nothing could make it worth it, but I get why Leareth thought otherwise. And...not sure that's wrong. If the future would be bad enough otherwise." Sigh. "I really, really hope you find a better way to blow up the moon, though. Is that something I can help with." 

"Perhaps." And Leareth goes on to explain the Heartstone, and how he hopes they might, in the process of shutting down the Star-Eyed's access to it, nab its power for their own purposes. Maybe. If they had Vanyel's help, and even then it's touchy. 

"...Wow." Vanyel looks kind of awed. "You don't think small." 

"Also when Rolan tried talking to the Shadowgod two things relating to you came up - one, apparently you yourself already talk to the Shadowgod's avatar sometimes, and two, there was a bit of a vision of you being in my lab, which I might not have thought to do by default but I should probably have you over and explain everything in it just in case that helps somehow."

"Oh. Right. I have talked to the Shadow-Lover multiple times. I, um, don't talk about it much, I guess because it sounds weird and unbelievable and it's embarrassing - I might've mentioned it to Savil at some point and she flat-out didn't believe me? Or that might've been a different god interaction..." 

"You have also had a different god interaction?"

"I. Um. Might've. Decided to yell at the Star-Eyed once. It was really dumb." 

"- What?" 

"...she deserves it but also what."

Vanyel's face is incredibly sheepish. "I, er, had I helped the Tayledras move a Heartstone - it was weird, felt like it recognized me. Then I had a weird dream where I talked to Ty- to my dead lifebonded's spirit," he still has trouble saying his name, "and it was really him, it felt like being lifebonded again, and it hurt so much when I woke up. Somehow I was convinced it was Her fault, and also that I could yell at Her by Mindtouching the Heartstone, so I stormed off to it in the middle of the night and - yelled at Her. And She showed me...a whole lot of alternate pasts and why they were all worse, although pretty obviously She wanted me to fight Leareth, so - worse for that goal. Then She made me forget them, except I kept having horrible flashbacks, and was maybe slightly going insane about it, and Melody made me go, um, more politely yell at her to get the memories back, so I did." 

"This would have been relevant to know." 

"Sorry! I, just, my life has so much weirdness in it, sometimes I forget parts." 

"Is there anything else that might be relevant?"

"Um. Hmm. Not that I can think of? The Shadow-Lover has talked to me four times and he always gives me a choice to go back, er, because I'm important or something." He makes a face about it. 

"Huh. What do you usually talk about?"

"Honestly, I would usually just whine a lot about how much I hated my life and then he would hug me. I did do some useful thinking there, though - I always find I can think better, and of course it gets me a bunch of time, he always lets me stay as long as I want and it barely takes up any real time." 

"Interesting. Uh, you don't have any way to get in touch apart from dying?"

"No. I think the Shadow-Lover is...sort of only for that one purpose?" 

"Well, that's... annoying, but maybe just in case you almost die again within a relevant time frame we should have you memorize a list of questions and topics."

:Please do not give him more incentive to almost die, he already does it too much: Yfandes sends, including all of them, though with warmth in her mindvoice to indicate that she's teasing. Mostly. 

"Hey," Vanyel says, but without heat. 

:I wasn't saying he should pencil it into his schedule, but if it's happened this many times it would just be embarrassing not to have a plan for it happening again!:

"We should definitely make a list and I'll memorize it and review it every so often. Yfandes can remind me. Even if she has to mock me about it at the same time." 

"Well, supposedly there's some serious filtration matching up Companions to their humans so if she's a teasing sort you probably like it deep down." She starts on a draft of a list. "Does Shadowgod want a different less specialized avatar constructed for them or can they possibly even just do that themself if it knows how to make avatars and has foresight and we can plan really aggressively such that we'd be able to pull it off within some time range if we had to to demonstrate what needs to be different about this one. I guess I'd like to know if Shadowgod's behind the lifebond and also Amshalan's Call but that's not terrifically important, we can prune it off the list if it gets long..." Pen-tap pen-tap.

If the Shadowgod does want an avatar constructed for Them, Leareth has some more technical questions about exact specifications for it to add to the list, though again they won't want it to get too long.