"In principle I can do that six times a day. - on days when I've prepared it that many times, which do not include today."

"Well, if you ever need me to fight six dragons in a row..." Vanyel shakes his head. "Your magic keeps astonishing me. Anyway. I can shield our bubble, so it's less likely to pop, and hold off magical attacks if they try any for some reason. ...And if the second Plane Shift fails then I can attempt a Gate. I have no goddamned idea if Gating from an Elemental Plane to here would work, and I'd be unconscious after because I'm bad at Gates, but I could try." 

"I prepared Delay Pain today if you wanted to see if that lets you do Gates without being impaired until later? Delay Pain is exactly what it sounds like, you still get all the pain associated with the injury once the spell runs out, but it might make a difference to have your head clear at the time."

"All right. If I just try a Gate and don't go through, I shouldn't hurt myself too badly and I'll be fine tomorrow." 

Tap.

There's a vaguely doorway-adjacent thing showing in one of the poking-up ruins, so Vanyel does a Gate from that to a random doorway in an alley he remembers back in Sothis. 

It does not hurt. He takes it down before anyone runs to investigate. 

"If you can refill my Teleport we could pick up a scroll of Plane Shift in Sothis, have a bit more backup against all dying."

"Not all dying. But yeah, let's pick up a scroll, I have a plan to rescue you but it'll be a real hassle."

"Sure, I can do that." 

:Ooh: Yfandes asks Hagan privately, :what's your plan?: 

- uh, it's actually kind of a secret sorry shit is she reading his mind he should've asked how the telepathy works

:Oh, sorry: A bit sheepish. 

(She is not reading his mind, she can straightforwardly create a Mindspeech link between them, and so doesn't know to reassure him on the latter point.) 

No it's okay. I'll tell you if they don't come back but I'd rather not until then. It'll work, though.

:All right. Thank you: 

Vanyel finishes re-powering the Teleport. "There you go." It's noticeably at least ten times more effortful than the last one he demonstrated, but fortunately he's un-tired, the Gate backlash is currently blocked, and there's a node nearby-ish. 

"Amazing," he says, shaking his head. "Okay, back to Sothis I guess."

"We all going? I think Yfandes at least doesn't actually need to come." 

"I could go alone and join you all in the morning, saves Hagan and Fazil some climbing into a cargo bag."

"Don't look quite so happy to get away from us, I'll have hurt feelings."

Mahdi kisses him. "You are my favorite people and I'll miss you terribly and I'm absolutely not just buttering you up so you'll save us if we die on the Elemental Plane of Water."

"Oh, I'm only going to do that because of how impressive it's gonna be to accomplish that with a snake and some arrows."

"See you in the morning!" 

Vanyel can put up some shields around them just to minimize the risk of being disturbed. Are there horrible spiders in this region? 

"Probably. There's not much that's a challenge for us, though, even before we include that you can do hemispheres of force for minutes at a time."

"If you're up for it Van I want to see if any of my magic arrows can shoot out from inside your shields. I guess this is also relevant to whether I could shoot you but I swear I am super not gonna do that and anyway it might let you figure out how to tweak them to hedge me out."

"Oh, I can do one-sided shields for that! Although I guess it's worth seeing if your arrows can get through the usual one too, just a minute." Hemisphere of force!