They relax. Slightly. 

Mahdi lies down and rolls over and appears to fall back asleep.  The bats vanish.

:Do you need anything?: he attempts to think at him.

The locals seem to be better at that than random un-Gifted Valdemarans. :No - I don't think so - I should go sleep in the stables though, in case it happens again, or Mahdi won't be able to do magic tomorrow: 

:Yeah, probably. Expect one or both of you can figure out a shield against it, but - in the morning.:

:I can normally shield! I just must not've checked it carefully last night: 

Vanyel trudges off to the stables with his blanket, feeling incredibly humiliated. He doesn't wake Yfandes, just curls up beside her. It takes him a long time to get back to sleep. 

At dawn Fazil goes over to the stables. Asks Yfandes for advice about whether to wake Vanyel so he can watch how clerics prepare spells or not.

:He'll be annoyed with me, er, but probably don't. It can wait a day, and he has a hard time if he hasn't slept enough: 

So he prays quietly for an hour in the village temple and then heads back over to buy breakfast off their hosts.

Vanyel wakes up, and immediately groans. :'Fandes, why didn't you wake me to see the magic preparation?:

:Because you need your sleep? It's fine. You can look at Mahdi's today, and go to bed early tonight to sleep better: 

:I'm going to be sleeping badly for the next while, I always do in new places, remember: 

He sighs and gets up and drags himself off to breakfast, with Yfandes' nudging, where he avoids everyone's eyes. 

They can't talk to him yet anyway; Mahdi waited to prepare his spells. 

He does so after breakfast. He opens his spellbook, which is the most intricate piece of magic Vanyel has seen here yet, and he builds the shimmery magical constructs on shimmery magic scaffolds; they're absurdly complex but he's fast, doing the low-level spells in just about a minute apiece. At first he seems to be doing this from his own reserves but as the spells get more complicated he taps nearby leylines, like a Velgarth mage might. When each spell is finished but for one last twist he flattens it back down into his spellbook and takes down the scaffolding that let him build it. 

There are thirty of them. The last three involve an astonishing level of visual complexity, knotwork inside knotwork. The spellbook diagram Mahdi is working from is even more incomprehensible. They take him about five minutes apiece; the whole thing is over in an hour. 

When he's done he offers Vanyel a hand with the translation spell draped on it. 

Vanyel takes it from him. "Thank you. That was fascinating." 

"For sure. Are we heading right back, then -"

"Think so. Can't even call this place a one-horse town since it in fact has no livestock at all, we fed it all to the dragon."

"Okay. I prepared three Teleports, because my standard one takes me and three other people and we are four other people plus Yfandes is going to count as two, it goes by mass. I'm thinking I'll take Vanyel and Yfandes first, come back and grab Fazil and Hagan, because if I manage to screw up at teleporting to Sothis somehow at least this results in the people who speak the language and have local money being stranded."

Sure, that makes sense. Vanyel doesn't exactly have any packing to do, so he's pretty much ready to go. 

And Mahdi Teleports them. It doesn't feel like a Gate; it doesn't feel like anything, really, there's a disorienting half second where you're nowhere and then you're - 

- in a wide open plaza apparently designed for this purpose, as another group of people appears a little distance away.  Around them are buildings, four or five stories tall, and the summer sun is blazing already even though it's still early morning, and in the distance looms an enormous black dome that has to be at least a thousand feet tall. 

"Be right back, hopefully," Mahdi says, and pops out again.

...He should really ask what can go wrong with a Teleport such that he appended 'hopefully', when Mahdi gets back. At least it's not a Gate and didn't hurt. 

He looks around a bit. Tries to get a closer glimpse at the dome with Farsight. 

The Dome is black and smooth and looks like the carapace of an enormous beetle and if his Farsight gets too close it gets - turned around and is now facing the other way.

And Mahdi's back. "Welcome to Sothis, Stormhaven of Osirion, our capital city. Hagan says he totally failed to mention that he wears a mask at all times in Sothis because - what's the story today -"

"I'm wanted for seducing all the Pharaoh's sons and leaving him without grandchildren."

"The story is never the same two days in a row."

"I - see... What's the big dome? Is it shielded or something? I was peeking with Farsight and got bounced off." Actually, he can check that himself with mage-sight. 

The Dome reflects magic.