THE FIRST IS DEAD. THE REST LIVE, ALTHOUGH JOSHEL IS—NOT WHOLE.

SAVIL I CAN—SEE BETTER. SHE IS NO LONGER ON VELGARTH, BUT ON EARTH—THE ORIGINAL, APPOINTED WORLD OF MEN, WHERE MY SIGHT IS STRONGER—HELPING IN THE FIGHT AGAINST THANOS.

"She's what? How did she get to a different world? And - gods, right, Vanyel, did he make it - is he with her–" 

He hadn't asked at first because Vanyel wouldn't in a million years agree to be handed responsibility for ruling Valdemar, which was the most critical question after Shavri's status.

"...Where's Shavri. Is she in Velgarth or on Earth - I need to be where she is as soon as possible." 

Mandos is getting tired of explaining things, and is about to just reembody Randi and let someone else finish the explaining, but there's someone he probably ought to consult before Randi leaves his power.

He reaches out, finds Shavri (why in Eru's name is she in Valinor of all places? Oh wait she's at Fëanor's house, that makes more sense), touches her mind as gently as possible—

Do you want to be lifebonded?

"Aaaaack!" Shavri is on her way to see Yfandes in the stables. She nearly jumps out of her skin, trips, and lands sprawling. 

...Oh, she thinks dully, that was a question.

:I'm not lifebonded. He's dead: 

In her private thoughts, she's - inexplicably furious that whoever this is, probably some sort of local god, is asking the question at all. Why. What's the point? It's too late, too long down that path, fifteen years of the world and the gods' schemes grinding away at her and lately there's not much left. 

She wishes Randi had never been King. But she can't, and she hasn't ever, been able to wish that she had never met him and been lifebonded to him. Before the awful day when Darvi slipped on the stupid Palace steps and broke his stupid neck, everything had been sacred and precious and perfect. She remembers Randi holding their baby daughter for the first time - his daughter, she was always his, even if she was Vanyel's too - and she could cling to that golden memory for a thousand years.

She loves Randi. It feels like she lost him a long time ago, not all at once but slowly over years, to the awful crushing pressure of a kingdom and a duty he couldn't walk away from - and of course she loves that in him too - and she misses him and she wants the past fifteen years to NOT HAVE HAPPENED she wants to go back and live forever in that one beautiful evening in the Heralds' barn, dancing, drinking, singing, Randi with his arms around her - 

She's POINTLESSLY FURIOUS at whoever this god is, who apparently thinks it's any of his business who she's lifebonded to. 

He can't read her private thoughts in the same way that he can read those of the dead, but enough of that gets across to make the point to him.

I'm sorry, he says. I've just discovered the existence of the lifebonds created by the gods of your world, and I found the...involuntary aspect...concerning. I can dissolve them, and thought I ought to ask those currently bonded if they would like me to do so.

Randi is dead, but his soul is in my custody, and I am sending him back now.

He reembodies Randi. He doesn't do anything with Jisa and Treven. They're young, but their love seems genuine even without the extremely questionable divine intervention. He'll save any unilateral bond-breaking for after he's more thoroughly investigated whatever foreign gods are doing this.

Then he turns his attention back to Vanyel.

ANYWAY, A MAN NAMED LEARETH HAS ASKED FOR YOUR RETURN. HE THINKS YOU WOULD BE USEFUL AGAINST THANOS. I CANNOT COMPEL YOU TO RETURN, BUT IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO GO, I WILL SEND YOU BACK.

As an afterthought, he asks his brother to bring Shavri to his domain, so that she can be united with Randi sooner.

Shavri is still laying on the ground, but no longer in the middle of the path down to the stables at Fëanor's estate. Instead she's in the middle of an impossibly colorful forest.

Jisa is so furious at being left behind! 

"I can't believe it!" she snarls in the general direction of the stupid death god, though not directly at him because she's not that much of an idiot. "He's just going to leave us here!" 

Treven hugs her. As close to a hug as you can do when you're dead and your body is mostly metaphorical, anyway. 

"Jisa, we're kids. We can't fight, what's-his-name, Thanos. And - at least we're together, right?" 

- Vanyel, who hasn't subjectively experienced all that much time passing but was starting to wonder what's going on, is now wondering why he doesn't feel more surprised. 

"Leareth asked for me? How is he - is he fighting Thanos now? I - guess that sounds like something he'd do. Um." 

He grits his teeth. He could really have used longer to make this decision, but it's not like it was ever in doubt. "I'm going back, then. Er, what about my Companion, Yfandes, where is she - if she's back in Velgarth I'm going to have a bad time -" 

He hadn't really questioned it, earlier. He couldn't find her with Mindspeech but it didn't feel like he had a broken Companion-bond, and he hadn't seen much reason to expect they would get to be together even in death. 

LEARETH IS FIGHTING THANOS. YFANDES IS STILL ALIVE, AND WITH HIM.

And Vanyel is alive again.

Meanwhile, Calanáro wakes up on a very soft bed in a very beautiful garden, naked, in a body that feels fresh-made, although he wasn't old or injured enough before to notice much of a difference.

He's not that confused. Obviously the time-travel experiment had gone badly, and Mandos had sent him back without bothering to lecture him, or even allow him to experience any subjective time in the Halls at all. That's unusual, but not really, given the circumstances.

He's talked to the Returned. He knows about Lórien. There's clothes under the bed, it's a six-day walk in that direction to the nearest place with a train station, and so on and so forth. Hopefully he can find a way to speed up the process of getting back to the rest of the group.

Except—there's a second bed in this clearing.

He leaps up, and runs toward her, and embraces her, and their infant son whom she's also holding. They stay that way for a long time.

"Calo—I—I looked for you—"

"I didn't die with everyone else. We're—working on a way to fight who did this, and there was an accident—I wasn't expecting he'd send you back too—"

"He told me I needed to give Fëanáro a physics lecture because he was too busy, and before I could ask what the literal fuck on at least three separate levels, I—was here."

"Oh yeah, context—Fëanáro's back now, that had nothing to do with Mandos and is a long addition to an already long story—we're working on time travel, to undo this, and I volunteered to be the first test subject. It—didn't work. As you see."

"I think I am beginning to understand the contents of the lecture I need to deliver.

"Did he—did he actually think that would work—literal children know we're bound to the fates of Arda and while the usual description isn't exactly—mathematically precise—I'd have thought that Fëanáro of all people could—extrapolate—"

Calanáro can't answer for Fëanor, but he didn't realize that, either. In hindsight, he probably should have.

"Do you think it would work for Men?"

"Oh of course, as far as I've been able to determine they don't even have immortal souls. Let's get back there before they kill anyone else, though."

They put on the robes that are folded neatly under their beds. Something has been provided for the baby, as well.

Vanyel wakes up in a luxurious bed, in a gorgeous forest clearing, feeling INCREDIBLE. He hadn't even realized how many aches and pains from old injuries he was carrying around until now that he's back in a real, physical, not-metaphorical-at-all body, and they're still gone. 

His mind doesn't hurt, and that's even stranger. The yawning void calling out over and over for Tylendel is - smoothed over, healed, made whole. Not exactly back to the way it was before, but...he's glad of that, he thinks. For better or worse, Tylendel changed him forever, including in ways that weren't to do with the magical soulbond at all. 

(He is not going to think about Stef right now and possibly ever.) 

He's still confused about half a dozen different things: how Leareth got to another world, what in all hells was going on with the shapeshifting-falsely-imprisoned person who - said something hinting that he was, if not exactly a god, somehow adjacent to being one? Also, how and why he ended up here, with a god who looks a bit like the Shadow-Lover but is offended to be called by that name - who seems to think that the gods of Velgarth enslaved humanity there on false premises - 

(Leareth, he muses with a dull trickle of amusement, would probably agree.) 

Not all of that confusion is urgent, he thinks. There's a war to fight. Leareth...asked for his help, asked for him by name... He's not sure what the emotion he feels about that is, but there definitely is one.

Vanyel gets up, stretches. Finds a robe under the bed and puts it on. Yfandes isn't here with him but he can feel her, off in the distance. 

He starts walking. 

Randi wakes up and feels...fine. 

- well, except for the fact that he WANTS SHAVRI WHERE IS SHE???? 

He's on his feet in under a second, which is incredible in itself, he hasn't felt this good since he was twenty-two. (Gods, he's barely even thirty now. He's spent years feeling old and weary and jaded and tired all the time...) 

He reaches into the lifebond, and only then realizes that it's there - still there? back? it's hard to know what the state of it was when he was dead, it was something in between everything else.

:Shavri! Shavri are you all right -:

Shavri is currently sprawled on the ground in...a forest? It's a spectacularly beautiful forest - there are so many colours, it sort of feels like she's fallen into a painting - and it's even more intensely peaceful and soothing than the Elf village by Fëanor's house.

She lies there for a very brief period and then the mindvoice reaches her - and at the same time the lifebond reaches her, and it's like - it's reality making sense again, it's the entire universe falling back into alignment with Randi's smile - 

- as he sprints toward her and scoops her into his arms and spins her around, :Shavri, gods, Shavri, Shavri - it's all right, I'm here -: