"In that case I don't mind Gating us to the surface, it's really short range - I was just worried Delay Pain would've worn off, but if I didn't have it before anyway..." He seems sort of awed. "Anyway we've still got some day, I think. Don't actually know what time it is but we got here in the morning - I guess if I go up the stairs again I can Mindspeak Yfandes?" 

"That sounds good. We can get a bit more copying in, sleep outside, come back tomorrow?"

"Sure." 

Yfandes confirms that it's only midafternoon, and then Vanyel helps lower crates of records to the nice spacious room to work on copying them. 

He can help with skimming them for mentions of Ma'ar. 

Starwind and Moondance and Vanyel can all do that too, and with teamwork they're able to get through all the notebooks and catch a couple dozen mentions of Ma'ar in between the student years and the war year, which Karna then reads more thoroughly so she can bookmark where Mahdi ought to start and end the copying. It'll fit in less than forty notebooks but it's still quite a large number of pages to copy. 

He sadly cannot keep more than one of the cantrip up at the same time.

He won't finish it all today, then, but they've made solid progress and they still have tomorrow morning. 

"Should I Gate us back up?" Vanyel says once he notices himself yawning. 

"Sounds good."

Vanyel does so. 

(It doesn't hurt.) 

They start setting up camp for the night. 

Mahdi actually is going to show off a little bit and put up both an opaque, lit-on-the-inside bubble of force that maintains a comfortable internal temperature, and, inside it, a sturdy wood cottage with a door, two shuttered windows, eight beds, a table with eight chairs, and a fireplace.

Okay that's just ridiculous.

There are appropriate oohs and aahs from the Tayledras, though Moondance has otherwise been very quiet and subdued. 

Day four, midmorning. 

Leareth sets down his half of the two-way mirror and sighs, letting his head fall forward into his hands and keeping it there for a moment. Malduoni...isn't entirely convinced, he can tell, but in the end, he agrees that it's Leareth's decision. 

They have the interworld Gate. He and Nayoki, with the help of an entire team of scholars back in Velgarth and copious reference to his books and notes in his various libraries, finally cast a miniature demonstration Gate a few minutes ago, after which he immediately excused himself to go contact Malduoni and give him the news. 

(Malduoni is a little displeased that Vanyel and the others immediately went back to Velgarth for some sort of Herald coordination there, and still aren't under geas, but at least the travel between Velgarth and Golarion is very tightly restricted now, the communications almost as tightly, and no one in Cheliax should even know Velgarth exists much less know enough about the Heralds to try to scry them.) 

Leareth stands, puts away the mirror in a pocket of his tunic, and goes to the door to ring for a servant. 

"Is the pharaoh available?" 

The servants will go and check. (The servants are thinking that one is not really supposed to just ask if the pharaoh is available but also the pharaoh has put off almost all his meetings this week, citing the birth of his daughter though he's never taken a day off for that before, and will definitely be available.)

The pharaoh is available. He smiles at Leareth and gives him permission to sit.

(Leareth is still managing to remember to prostrate himself first but he's almost forgotten a couple of times now, he has kind of a lot on his mind.) 

"One. We successfully demonstrated a Gate to Velgarth this morning. It is a more challenging spell than the standard Gate technique, but we have three and a half days remaining to teach it to my other mages. I would like to send Nayoki and Narva back to Velgarth to hold those trainings."  

"Congratulations. I can arrange that; when will they want to leave?"

"After lunch today, I think. If you would prefer to reserve your spells, I can Gate them over, it will be tiring but Lesser Restoration seems to work on that at least initially." 

"If you can do that, it leaves open the option of fetching people from Valdemar should they be ready, though I don't expect they will be."

Leareth nods. "I do not mind doing it, I simply thought it fair to warn you." 

He pauses. Takes a slow breath, lets it out through his nose.  

"I wish to accept Abadar's offer. Given that I have decided, and the Gate research is complete, I might as well do so now in case it helps to have three days of practice. I - do not actually know how to tell Him, though." 

"I'm glad. Trust isn't - an easy thing. But I think it will serve you both. 

Why don't you look at a listing of spells, and also at the options for domains - you get spells and some special powers from your domains, you should definitely take Travel because it's the only way to get flight and teleportation, but you get one other and it's less obvious what's next best - did you know that Hubris is a domain, it doesn't have the best powers necessarily but it would privately entertain me which is definitely a very good reason...and we can get you a holy symbol, and then once you know exactly what you want you pray for it. You can pray for it without knowing exactly what you want but it's very difficult to consult reference books in the middle."

Leareth's lips twitch slightly at his comment about Hubris. "All right, I will look at spells then. Is there a special technique for praying? I have - not exactly ever done that." 

"I would imagine not. Uh, you hold your holy symbol, and you clear your head, and you think about - the things that you and your god both care about, the things you're aligned on, the space where something like this exists, the chance to work together - and then there's something there? Not very much of it, and it feels very mechanical, and you can request and get your spells from it. 

And if you ever want to actually talk to Him, when you get the thing that's very mechanical you reach past it, and try to find the rest."

Leareth nods. "That seems straightforward enough. What does the holy symbol do?"