"Vanyel explained the lifebond thing briefly because he wanted to resurrect his dead - lifebond partner? I don't know if there's a word for it.

If a Herald and a Companion have a breakup what happens."

"That happens very rarely, and my knowledge of it is indirect, but - from what I have heard, a repudiation is very bad for the Herald and usually they do not survive. I think Vanyel would know if he had been repudiated. Are you worried he was?" 

Probably Vanyel doesn't want him to answer that, though the questions give away enough. "Don't survive? What do they die of?"

"I think that they usually kill themselves. Then again, that is almost universally true of people who lose lifebonded partners, and it seems Vanyel survived that." (Leareth hadn't actually known for sure, before now, that there was a lifebond involved there; Vanyel never spoke of it to confirm it, unsurprisingly.) 

Sigh. He tosses a small pack into the pocket dimension. "That has food. I'm aware this is a terrible place to keep anyone long term, we're working on alternatives. I expect to be back later today or tomorrow once we've sorted those out. For what it's worth he wasn't planning to kill you even if you turned out to have been lying about everything."

Leareth catches the pack. "Honestly that sounds incorrect on his part, though I know he hates killing anybody. And - I do not expect you to believe me, but I swear I did not intend this or predict it would happen - I did not at all wish to cause Vanyel harm." 

"It'd be sort of odd if you went through the last decade or whatever never lying to him about anything and then decided to start now," he says. "I'm going to close the door. There's a sort of table, behind the portal, if you want something solid to hold on to. You can move by throwing things in the opposite direction from the one you want to move in, for reasons I don't have time to explain right now."

"I know how momentum works in free-fall, at least in theory." Leareth catches the pack. 

(He doesn't want the stranger to close the door on him - he's terrified of being locked in a room which he literally has no way out of, what if they decide it's easiest to leave him here until he starves - what if being trapped in an anti-magic field means his immortality thing doesn't work, he knows that he can't make the leap to the Void to check - what if they intend to come back and get him, but something happens... Calm, breathe, he can freak out more after the man leaves if he wants to.) 

He closes the door. Locks it, with magic, not anything complicated but enough that he couldn't just shove it open from the other side. 

Dimension Door's back up.

Panicking won't help so he isn't going to - won't help - calm–

Leareth doesn't want to throw the pack, which has food in it, but he doesn't actually have a lot of options here; it's not cold in the room but it's slightly cooler than he would prefer for being shirtless, if he removes his trousers as well then he's going to be actually cold and also nearly naked.

Floating and still drifting slowly in a random direction, he opens the pack to see if there's anything inside he doesn't mind parting with. 

The pack has bread and jerky and a little jar of jam and a napkin and four canteens of water.

Ugh. None of those are things he really wants to part with; he could drink all the water in one of the canteens, but one, he isn't that thirsty yet and wants to save it in case they leave him here for days, and two, he'd like to keep the first empty one in case he has to piss. (If they leave him here longer than overnight, he's just going to find out what happens if you piss in zero gravity.) 

It would be really nice to have something to hold onto, but it's not worth giving up any of his supplies for. Leareth re-closes the pack, wraps his arms around it, closes his eyes and floats/falls and lets himself panic just a little bit. And waits. 

Vanyel still isn't really moving. Hagan and Fazil talk quietly and neither of them have any idea what to do and eventually they set up a tent, in case it helps for him to lie down or something.

Vanyel is mostly not trying to track anything around him, but he vaguely notices the tent happening, and doesn't need a lot of coaxing to relocate into it and lie down with a blanket. 

He feels very slightly less awful with walls around him, even if they're canvas, and he mumbles out thanks. 

They'll just - hang out here worriedly talking through their options. Their options suck. They can't leave a prisoner who - runs a country or something in another world? This whole thing might be incidentally an act of war? - to die in their pocket dimension. They probably should not send him back to work on his plan to slaughter ten million people for magical power he can use to ascend to godhood. Handing him over to the local authorities puts this in hands that they have no particular confidence in. And Vanyel is - totally incapacitated, apparently, and it's not clear it'll get better in the amount of time they can reasonably hold Leareth -

Mahdi comes back.

He explains what Leareth said about Companions.

"She wouldn't - kill him - over - over what, even, he didn't do anything..."

Vanyel is aware that they're talking and it's probably about him; he's mostly letting the words wash over him, though he notes the part about Leareth - that's time pressure, it's a reason he needs to pull himself together before the others have to make a unilateral decision about whether to murder his enemy-mentor-??friend. 

When Mahdi gets back, and talks about Companions, he works harder on paying attention to the moment. Eventually manages to roll over to face the others; he's inexplicably exhausted, sitting up is way too hard. 

"She was - upset - that I sympathized with his plan," he forces out. "Not the cost, but...the goal... Not sure. I don't - think - that she repudiated me." He's pretty sure their bond is still there, just blocked. "What did she say to you." 

"Couldn't talk. Needed to leave. Convinced her to go somewhere safer than the middle of the desert."

"Oh." It's hard to breathe through the ache in his chest. "Think she - needed space - to think. To decide. Hasn't repudiated me. Yet." He manages, with great effort, to prop himself up on one elbow. "I - do you need help planning - I can try to - be functional." 

"We need to figure out what to do with Leareth. We can't leave him in there for more than a day."

"He said under Truth Spell. That he wants to cooperate. And - didn't think that would change - unless I betrayed him. I believe him. Just confirmed he was - always telling the truth - all the times he gave me his word on something." Vanyel takes a shuddering breath. "We should see - if Yfandes comes back, I guess. Before tomorrow. Or if - something else happens. But, if not. Probably we should get him out of there? And talk to him." 

"Is he going to be in the mood to talk after we kidnapped him and locked him in a pocket dimension."

"He'd understand us doing it; if our places were reversed, he'd endorse being very cautious, and he's - consistent." And, maybe because he's so unusually miserable, it's somehow easier for Vanyel to imagine how Leareth must be feeling right now. To remember that the man probably does experience emotions other than 'perfect patience and calm'; that he was even kind of visibly scared, before.

"...Er, maybe we should get him out sooner than that. Even if Yfandes is still gone. He must be terrified right now, and - he won't hold it against us, I don't think, but he still doesn't deserve it if it's not absolutely necessary." He grimaces. "Should we talk about what the cleric of Nethys meant, first? It was so cryptic, but if her god really does see all the worlds, maybe it's useful. ...I didn't take notes on it." 

"I did," Mahdi says. "We got 'Men kept resisting death at the end of the time the gods had planned for them in this world! So they thought, make it worse by measures, and then by the time death comes the men will have forgotten all their reasons to resist it. That's why old age makes you forgetful, too. You think little of them, for this trick, but it is others you are affronted for; you will not die of old age.'

and 'It is a fact of the universe, from its smallest parts; the more clearly you see where it is going, the less you can see of where it is right now. But there are many who can see the things in front of them, and those who can see things far away, in space or in time, we are few. You will have to tell me your quest; I know I will accept it but I do not know what it is.'

and 'The same story tells itself again and again across worlds. Sunlight glinting on the clouds, and it looks like death, from the wrong angle - a god descends from the heavens, to die saving us - young men who believe themselves immortal, because they are, because they were - but eveything else was not, everything else was lost, a price they did not know they might need to pay, and time erodes even the mountains. A boy, a forest, an ascendant. I will help you. I will want magical artifacts of your world, in payment. That I may study them. The ones you are wearing, and the ones he is wearing; that is the agreement I will offer you.'

and 'He is very clever, and he will not speak to me, here, he has turned his back on all the servants of all the gods.' and 'He is asleep, but won't be for very much longer!', not that that was cryptic, and 'Gates do not cause you pain, Vanyel. The expectation is what causes you pain.', and 'Our own, I loved, when I was a child. This one does not know love. He would love your brother, But for the burdens they both have taken up and cannot put down' - Hagan, who is your brother, it might be important."