An adventuring party recruited from Osirion teleports into Azir on the 8th of Desnus. Rahadoum's recruiting contact in Osirion wrote ahead to note they were expected. Couple of guys he's known a long time - a wizard, a ranger - and a new guy, sorcerer, probably to replace the cleric they usually travel with. They spend two days in Azir getting oriented and head out to the front. The ranger wears an unusually high quality amulet of Nondetection; the sorcerer wears a headband for intelligence, which is a bit unusual as sorcerers usually don't need it to cast, but some variants do; they are otherwise unremarkable. Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, no reading, which could mean neutral or 'hiding it'. They work quickly and effectively, manage resources reasonably well, get recommended to higher-ups for a closer look on that account.
Leareth sleeps most of that night, in blocks of two or three hours interspersed with waking up confused and upset, which is very odd and unusual for him given that he has a Ring of Sustenance.
Khemet stays with him. Tries to reassure him, when he wakes up upset. Casts Delay Pain when it looks likely to expire again.
Each successive time he wakes up, Leareth is a little more able to think and orient, and thus more easily reassured. By the time the sun is up, he wakes up nearly lucid. He asks, groggily, how long it's been, and if they know what happened with Nefreti and with the Tower.
"Went approximately according to plan except Nefreti left a little bit of Pelagirs for the locals to clean up, for incomprehensible Nefreti reasons. So the pact won't be broken immediately."
"Oh. Does that - Starwind and Moondance...? I suppose Aroden is probably doing something sensible about it. He went back?" Leareth doesn't remember him leaving but he's not here now.
"Yeah. I think he needed to reassure Valdemar, since some of their palace got blown up."
"I do not even remember that - I hardly remember any of yesterday, actually." He blinks, forces his eyes to focus on Khemet. "Did you stay all night."
"Mmm. Thank you for staying." Leareth smiles tiredly at him, reaches for his hand. "I love you."
He squeezes his hand. "I won't hold totally-lucid Leareth to that. I love you too."
Fair enough, he's not really feeling like himself right now, but Leareth is still pretty sure he means it.
He yawns and then tries to sit up. "Could I have something to eat?"
Leareth is able to eat with only a little bit of help, and asks some more fairly coherent questions about the rest of the operation, whether Aroden got all of the weapons and whether he also faced interference and whether the collaboration between Asmodeus and Iomedae plus Abadar went all right.
Khemet and Aroden only talked briefly about this but his understanding is that he faced interference, but it was easily enough addressed, and all of the superweapons were successfully moved.
That's good. It sounds like basically everything was successful, and the biggest complication was whatever is wrong with Leareth himself.
"- I think She was trying to frighten me into calling a Final Strike," he admits. "I only remember fragments of it, but - it was a hallucination, I think, I was being attacked, it seemed hopeless, and then Abadar was trying to call out to me and tell me that She was lying..."
"That ability of yours is very powerful and I kind of wish none of you had it. It seems like a disadvantage as often as an advantage and it's so messy. When we have native Gifted people I might have a law they have to have a compulsion put in against using it - not that that would've inconvenienced a god -
- I'm mad at Abadar, though I don't know if that's reasonable, it was dangerous and not in a way he can easily fix..."
"It is less exploitable in Velgarth, I think, because it is actually very difficult to place an involuntary compulsion on a mage with training. Or anyone with Mind-Gifts trained to shield. And nearly impossible to do so without alerting them and causing them to put up a fight, so forcing someone to Final Strike is - it almost never happens. But - your mind-affecting magic is stronger, when the archdevil in Cheliax tried to take control me, I could not have held it off by my own will." Sigh. "And, of course, people can and do Final Strike willingly but for very stupid reasons. Our world might be better if no one could do it."
"At least not impulsively." He squeezes his hand. "We should really work out a variant of Mind Blank that doesn't interfere with Mindspeech so that you can have it up all the time too."
"Aroden mentioned he had an idea for it, he is very good at intuiting his way to inventing variants of spells because of the godmemories, but he is also constantly very busy. I may ask him to make it a higher priority, though; I would also like it very much if I could Mindspeak with you."
Leareth looks up at Khemet. "...Have you been repeatedly casting Delay Pain? I assume at some point I am going to have to be in pain, you cannot just keep putting it off forever."
"I suppose I will probably cope with it more easily when I have any idea what is happening to me." He gives Khemet an unhappy look. "It is very frightening for me, being confused about my surroundings. But it was better, having you there."
"Not totally sure of what? That I would recover from it?" Leareth rubs his eyes. "I - do feel better now, I think - I am not sure I would notice if something were wrong with my head, because that is the part that notices things... Do I seem more like usual?"
"I would like to know if something is going to be wrong with my mind forever!"