"Yes, but they won't expect us to be here - can you do the comm spell -" she asks the first mage.

He's yawning too. "Sure, should be able to. Gimme a minute." 

:Have you felt anything from Leareth - I know you don't get much at this range...: 

:I think I'd notice if he were north yet, and he isn't. Other than that, uh: What is there -

Less than before, somehow, it's more muted. Still a vague sense of something-wrong, but it doesn't feel like he's scared or worried at all. 

:He's - I don't know, it's - he's not nervous or anything. It's about what I'd expect if there were some manageable delay and he were also getting a fair amount of stress feedback from me, maybe:

"Um, having trouble getting through to the first few people on the list," the mage says after a minute, sounding worried. "I'll keep trying for people." 

"Thank you."

Dara fidgets, looking very worried. 

Finally, several minutes later, the mage looks up. "Um. Good news and bad news? They did it, finished about half a candlemark ago. Haven should be safe now. Bad news. Umm..." He hesitates, biting his lip. 

"Spit it out."

"Really bad fires. Bad timing, too. Lot of the city burned down. Leareth's alive, but he's hurt badly. And - they're going to have a hard time sending anyone north to pick us up." 

"Okay. Uh, how feasible is it for you to Gate me south a long ways, out of gryphon search radius, with Amshalan, so we can gallop the rest of the way there, taking into account gryphons and such."

"- Can you give me a candlemark to nap? Can do after that, just - up all night, can't concentrate for it right now." 

"Yeah. I think the earthquake's over, we should probably all try to catch some sleep. And I'd want to pack, like, food."

"That's probably all in the kitchen which is, um, collapsed. We could maybe go dig in it?" 

"I can Fetch some out if the digging's too hard."

One of the cooks can describe to her where the food should be. Digging sounds maybe risky and also a lot of them are injured. 

She Fetches out some food that doesn't require cooking. They can all eat cheese and leftover bread and apples and Amshalan can have some oats and carrots and they can get some sleep.

After napping most of the morning, the mage thinks he can get her to the Gate-location he knows on Valdemar’s northern border, though it’s almost two hundred miles, extremely long range for a Master-potential Gift, and will leave him utterly exhausted. (Unlike Leareth, he lacks the skill of doing a blind Gate to somewhere in the middle.)

"...ugh. Not sure that's worth it, leaves the rest of you pretty stuck. Can you comm in to whoever it was you were able to reach and ask if they're - stable enough to not need me till they can open their own Gate up here?"

“Sure, can do.” The mage squints at nothing in particular while he casts the spell.

”...They don’t urgently need you for Healing capacity in general, but, er, Leareth’s in pretty bad shape apparently, they think he’d recover faster with you nearby. They’re going to see what they can do tracking down someone who’s both uninjured and has a Gate-location here in particular, but basically everyone has backlash - something to do with Heartstone containment, I guess the last stage of it was pretty violent.”

"Okay. So, at least they know where we're at. Will resting more help you with being on your feet after the Gate, if it comes to that?"

The mage shrugs. “Problem is mostly my Gift strength and reserves. I wish I could tap nodes at all, that would make it easier.”

"Probably Amshalan can't help you with - can you?" she asks, looking at Amshalan.