"It's good to be back. I'm - sorry, that I wasn't there -" 

Keiran snorts. Vaguely waves a hand. "Don't be. You're looking well." 

"I'm feeling pretty amazing." 

"That's something." 

It's the second - or by some count, the fourth - wonderful and amazing thing to happen in the last ten minutes. Surely that should feel like something, but Dara's insides hold only aching numbness. 

"Well, have a seat - to start, we've got two dozen of Leareth's mages here in Valdemar, not in the Web but they've got vrondi-talismans and they're covering the basic mage-work we need..." 

After a few minutes of Dara's rundown, Shavri clears her throat, lifting a hand. 

"Sorry. I just, I should've said right away, I got distracted. Leareth - found some other people with their own kinds of Gifts. Different from ours. He joined their team. And they figured out how to go back in time." 

"They what." 

"They're going to try to take Thanos down. And...maybe, somehow, if they're smart enough - lucky enough - maybe they can go back and, and -" 

"And undo it," Keiran breathes. "Gods." 

Randi shakes his head. "And they've got Leareth on their side. Thanos won't have any idea what hit him." 

Back in the clear-ceilinged dome, Leareth stares at devastated worlds, one after another. At destruction and heartbreak and unbearable costs - and at hope, shimmering through a veil of tears. 

He made a VOW. 

He's never going to stop fighting until this is fixed. 

Tony remembers the last time he was here, and realizes something.

"Can you—can you see Thanos?" he asks Varda.

NO. SAURON, WITH THE POWER OF THE RING, HAS VEILED THEM BOTH FROM ME.

Disappointing but he supposes if she did know where he was she would have killed him by now.

"Alright then, let's head out," he says to everyone remaining.

ERU'S GRACE BE WITH YOU, AVENGERS.

I WISH YOU WELL.

They leave Taniquetil and fly eastward, through the mid-ocean portal, then turn around and head back to the Avengers headquarters.

"I'm going to check in with Cap, see if we have any more of a plan now," says Tony when they land. "Leareth, I'm sure you'll want to check in with your people; talk to Strange as well and find out how the magic experiments went. Elves, get all the time travel stuff set up where we had it before."

Leareth's mind is still mostly elsewhere, caught by the flickers glimpsed of hundreds, thousands, of worlds - 

"Of course. Vanyel, come with me?" 

He checks in with Nayoki via Mindspeech while they look for Strange. 

Everything has been going well! Leareth should get a report from Strange himself on the magic experiments, but he's studied examples of nearly every Velgarth Gift at this point. With the exception of Bardic, they didn't bring a Bard on this trip. 

:Fortunately, we can address that now! I have Vanyel with me: 

:What: 

:Mandos had him, and agreed to send him back. Valdemar's King as well. Things ought go better there, now: 

Yfandes stays back, listening in through Vanyel's senses. Earth architecture isn't very Companion-friendly. 

Strange finds the two of them soon after. Looks a bit sideways at Vanyel.

:Leareth. And, uh—I'm afraid I didn't catch your name. In fact I'm pretty sure you weren't here when they left. Did he pull you out of the past, or Mandos, or what?

:How'd the time travel go? Based on my original vision it seemed like you were at the point where there wasn't much left to do, so after the sixth day of you being gone we started to assume things had gone horribly wrong.:

:...They figured it out on the first day of work, and the initial trial - succeeded at the time travel part. It turns out that it is fatal for Elves, which made us more reluctant to test on humans, though it did prove to work fine for me. It also turned out that Mandos has all of Velgarth's dead as well as Earth's. This is Herald-Mage Vanyel, of Valdemar: 

Vanyel nods and smiles and tries not to look like someone who finds meeting new people incredibly draining. 

:Vanyel is - a long-time friend: Leareth feels that at this point, he can leave out the other...complications, there. :Also, an extremely powerful mage, and possessing eight other Velgarth Gifts as well: