"Yes. Tomorrow you should pick up the spell and try it yourself, actually; I'm curious if it's something you can detect with your Othersenses once you know what you're looking for. Did you have a productive conversation?"

"Yes. I did. It was probably worth the headache, even, though if I had known it would be this bad I would have scheduled it for after Nayoki's Gate." Aaaand now he feels very awkward, because Abadar had said He would tell Khemet about the mindreading but Leareth has no idea whether or not He has, yet, and it seems even more fraught to be the one to bring it up.

"He gave me a summary. Said He liked you. Said he can ignore all the spells He lets me cast, which is in hindsight unsurprising." He is as usual hard to read but definitely not annoyed. "The headache is pretty frustrating; I use Delay Pain to schedule it for the six hours when other people have to sleep and I don't. I tried the obvious thing of just going around with Delay Pain all the time - you constantly give yourself minor injuries from biting your tongue or not tossing in your sleep, but you can heal those - but over time it worked less well and if anyone ever dispels it you'd fall apart right there, so I don't recommend that."

Leareth nods. "I do not intend to do that, it sounds ill-advised. I am slightly worried that I will be in pain again at bedtime and it will keep me up all night - I do need a usual amount of sleep. I suppose I will find out." He grimaces slightly. "I cannot say you failed to warn me, but you were very - casual, about it, so I was expecting an ordinary level of backlash headache, and not 'literally worse than being stabbed.'" 

"I don't have much to calibrate against, I have never been stabbed. Or otherwise injured. Or ...done physical labor, or had a sunburn... worse than being stabbed? Really?"

"Well, I suppose it depends where one is stabbed. It is more painful - more disabling definitely - than a time I was stabbed in the gut but it missed hitting anything important. Perhaps being stabbed in the - lung, or something, would be worse, that has not happened to me in this body. It is probably not as bad as being set on fire by Vkandis." 

He looks thoughtful. "Unfortunately I don't think there's any way around it. He's trying. The formerly human gods are reportedly better at it, they can maintain an aspect that's humanlike and can talk to their followers."

"That makes sense. I could tell how hard He was trying. That is something I wished to - do better, with the god I was going to build. Anyway. I - liked him too." He still has a lot of yet-to-unpack emotions about the entire interaction; he'll mull on that before the war, of course, it seems important, but he's also slightly procrastinating on it. "I hoped to feel more oriented and - I am not sure I do, exactly, it is very different to be oriented to a god's thoughts and plans, but..."

He looks down. "I think there is a shape of trust here that does not require it."

"He wants to be trustworthy to us and in some ways He is really, really good at it."

"This is probably a very weird thing to say, and I am not sure it is exactly true, but - it feels as though He speaks my language better than most humans in Velgarth do." 

"That makes sense to me. We must all - seem very young to you. And being careful for thousands of years probably trains all of the god habits that are actually just - good for being correct about the world, which is at least a lot of them."

"Perhaps." 

It feels like he should have something else to say, but he isn't sure what. 

"I, ah, haven't mentioned the headaches to many people. Because the thing I am supposed to be is - the thing that the human ascended gods have by default, a part of them capable of understanding people. So it would be confusing, if it were hard for me to talk to the rest of Him."

"That makes sense - I had wondered if there were something like that." Leareth makes a slight face. "That - must only make a heavy burden even heavier." 

"This life isn't easy for anyone. And, well, there's very few of them I'd trade with. Though I look forward to retirement."

"Is 'retirement', in this case, just when you die and go to Axis." 

"Yes."

"...Your world is so different from mine." Leareth lifts his head, looks Khemet in the eye. "I - am glad, that you are the pharaoh now. You are someone I can work well with." A shape of person he knows how to cooperate with, even have calibrated and actually-quite-extensive trust in maybe, but he doesn't say that out loud. 

"I am glad I am the pharaoh now too. I would be so annoyed to have missed this." 

And he heads out.

Leareth takes notes for a while longer and then, when he seems to feel fine, risks practicing his new cantrips a bit, and then does in fact nap until someone knocks with supper, at which point he blearily eats it and decides he might as well go to bed properly, apparently god-backlash is tiring as well as painful and he might not get much sleep after the point when Delay Pain wears off. 

He in fact does not get much sleep after the point when Delay Pain wears off.

The second day in the Tower, they can finish copying all of the relevant passages and some additional ones Karna found in the meantime (she also obtained more paper).

There are a couple more hidden rooms behind secret doors or trapdoors, in the other hallways. Vanyel asks them, again, to not touch anything unless a Velgarth mage says it's non-magical. Mostly they don't touch anything. Vanyel draws out diagrams of magical constructs, working from his mage-sight, to potentially remake later (he's sure Leareth has the skills to do it.)

At the end of a long day, Vanyel Gates them back to the surface. "...Hmm, so we could camp another night or we could just head out. Er, Fazil can Plane Shift us home, right? Or do we have to get a message to the pharaoh asking for a lift - I could also Gate us back to Haven but I don't think they'd be ready to leave yet..." 

"I can take us back. Well, I can take myself and six other people back if one of them is Yfandes."

"Karna is staying here," Starwind points out. "If you have capacity to bring Moondance and I, we will come, otherwise we can Gate ourselves back to Haven and rejoin our Wingsister there."