“That makes sense! Should I Gate us to the surface now, then, or did we want to look at things in the room more?”

"I think I'm set," Mahdi says. "We are not taking any of his stuff for devil binding, and should maybe just destroy it."

Shiver. "I could probably destroy it, but I guess we can talk about that tonight." 

He can Gate them back up to their makeshift campsite. 

Delay Pain is still in effect, so it doesn't hurt.

And then they can cook dinner and Mahdi can read aloud about the other pharaohs.

Yfandes is so glad to see Vanyel! She nuzzles at his shoulder and blows into his hair and then cuddles up next to him while dinner is cooked and reading aloud is happening. :Chosen, you keep getting into fights when I'm not there! It's stressful: 

(She's fallen into the habit of including the others by default when she Mindspeaks, unless it's private; they all treat her like a person and so it seems rude not to talk to them.) 

"We'll take good care of him, promise."

"Ankana, the Radiant Pharaoh, was believed to have been a conjurer of significant power and beauty. It was the practice of Ankana to force her closest servants to swallow the eggs of fiendish insects procured from the Hells. When the eggs finally hatched, the fiendish vermin devoured the servitors from the inside. However, those who successfully demonstrated their loyalty and managed to curry Ankana's favor before the end of the incubation period received her blessing in the form of a spell to abort the hatching."

"Wow, the ancient pharaohs sucked even by the standards of pharaohs."

"Wow. Did she have a purpose for the, er, fiendish vermin, or was that just...for fun...?" 

"The book does not say that! We should probably expect her throne room to be protected by fiendish vermin, though, I would imagine."

"Are they also going to be hit harder by 'good-aligned' spells? Oh, right, you should maybe try to explain that again." 

" - right, we absolutely should. It's a way of altering magical energy to polarize it - did that translate - into alignment with one of the forces of the Outer Planes. Evil stuff's vulnerable to Good, Good stuff's vulnerable to Evil, Lawful stuff's vulnerable to Chaos, Chaos is vulnerable to Law. We should probably just cast all four kinds and let you watch, but I'll have to prepare them tomorrow. 

This matters less if you're just able to hit really really hard, because they're not immune to all other forms of damage, they're just significantly less affected."

"No, that didn't translate, sorry. You should show me tomorrow, I guess, and then after we're done exploring I can play around with it and see if I can do it to my spells as well." 

"Sounds good. Also I should store this stuff in Sothis before we keep exploring, the bag's almost full."

"Right. Er, do you have a way to get back there or should I Gate you? I guess you could prep Teleports in the morning for it but we might end up wanting that for something else, since things keep happening." 

"If you could Gate me that'd be convenient - or refill my Teleport slots, I don't know which is cheaper -"

"Probably refilling the teleports? Let me have a go and see how much power it takes." Even if it's more than a Gate, he might prefer it just because he hates Gating; he may start to hate it less if they can keep making it so it doesn't hurt, but a Gate all the way to Sothis is much longer range than what he's done so far, and he doesn't want the backlash to wake him up in the middle of the night. 

A fifth circle slot is both about five times as much power as a fourth circle slot (twenty times as much as the Color Spray spell they experimented with) and a lot more intricate work to actually restore it.

He finishes it, but then sighs. "I can do that but it's pretty annoying. Maybe we can teleport there and I'll Gate us back if that seems easier than refilling it again. The Delay Pain should still be working, right?" He's also not sure if it has a maximum limit for how much injury it can put off. 

"Yeah, it'll last you through the middle of the night. - which you should be careful with, incidentally, makes it easy to get injured and not notice -"

"Oh, right, that's a good thought." 

Yfandes nuzzles him. :I'll keep an eye on him. Anyway, I should probably stay back here since I'm two people worth of teleport. Good luck: 

And Mahdi can teleport them back to his house in Sothis, which is a thoroughly warded and elegantly appointed three-story house with a courtyard in the nice part of town. He summons an unseen servant to start unpacking the cargo bag. "We are going to avoid letting my parents know I'm here, because then I won't be able to escape for hours without being rude," he says to Vanyel as he does this.

"Oh, is this your parents' house?" Vanyel keeps his voice lowered. "It's, er, very nice." He's studying the wards, wondering if there's anything here he could copy for future spell-development.