"Yep! Do you want to be a smaller horse for the evening?"

:You know, that does sound more convenient. Sure. Sorry, Van: 

"What? I don't mind." 

So Mahdi casts his spell and shrinks her by about half and then it's much more convenient to navigate the palace. 

"We were thinking of splitting up at this point. You guys go to Rahadoum, and once Van and Yfandes are ready the three of us go to Valdemar. I can try to cure the King and maybe that'll make them somewhat less mad at us."

"Do you think you can? Our Healers can't." 

"I don't know and am less than thrilled to try when they are already suspicious of and angry at us, but we have a lot of healing magic that you don't."

"I don't see why they should be mad at you. ...Though I guess that doesn't mean they won't be." 

Yfandes is prancing up and down the hall. :This is great!: 

(He giggles at Yfandes.) "Uh, I think dying Kings are often quite mad at people who claim they could help and then can't, regardless of how objectively reasonable this is. I can Plane Shift out if he's making me nervous, though, so I'm not too worried."

"–Oh, I'm not worried about that. Randi is one of the most reasonable people I know, and - I don't think Valdemar is like that in general. Though maybe that's hard for someone from elsewhere to believe." 

"A little bit - and, like, places often don't seem arbitrary to people who grew up navigating them. I will try, if you think it's a good idea. Just - nervously."

:I think you should try. We can try to set the right expectations upfront - that you don't know this will work but we think it's safe to try just on the chance it does?: 

"Sounds good. And maybe we can plan to leave day after tomorrow, unless they communicate through the archon that they want us sooner, so I have time to fully catch you up on all the plans made while you were, uh, distracted?"

"That's probably sensible." Vanyel avoids his eyes. "I'm, er, really sorry about - that." 

"It really did not seem like either of you did it on purpose! But maybe don't try to immediately throw yourself into anything high-stakes, yeah? - also pay close attention to whether your Ring of Sustenance is working normally, I think you gave it a crappy week of calibration data."

"I don't know what working normally would be like. Will it help if I try really hard to eat and sleep the correct amount this next week?" 

"If it's working normally you should feel fully rested after just two hours of sleep, and like you ate well even if you didn't! But it might be better to try to eat normally, at least, in case it's still getting itself sorted."

:I can make sure he does that: Yfandes nudges him. Since she's miniature, she butts him in the hip rather than the shoulder. 

And they can get dinner and catch Yfandes and Vanyel up on why they're in the palace of the pharaoh of Osirion and what results have come of the magic experiments so far and how the god negotiations are supposedly going and what the plan is in Rahadoum. 

It's a good thing Yfandes is shrunk, since she's being very clingy and won't go further than an arm's length from Vanyel. She participates in the conversation, though. :Reckon you'll be gone the full month?: 

"I am not sure."

"Seems pretty likely to me that it escalates well before that point, if there's a guy behind the operation in Rahadoum who has - done the things we suspect he might have. He'll want to know what's up and we'd probably be pretty outmatched."

:Er, what do you suspect him of having done?: 

We are trying not to say it out loud here because of my brother listening but the cleric of Nethys implied that there is a Leareth in this world and we think he's running things in Rahadoum and we also think he was the god whose death caused a massive catastrophe a century ago.