Leareth had been intending to avoid falling asleep, since he’s currently lying on Carissa’s bed.

He’s worn out, though, and dozes off despite his best efforts. 

Carissa does not need much sleep because she has a Ring of Sustenance, and spends a while delighting in her headband and using it to try to make sense of the shielding on her walls. 

She uses Prestidigitation to clean them both and their clothes and then spends a while pacing and debating whether to put her hair back to normal. On the one hand, she only did this because it makes her look frivolous and unprofessional and immature. On the other, she's not actually sure she believes Leareth that her appearance has nothing to do with anything, and he's been notably cuddlier since she did it. 

Well. One way to get more data on this is to fix her hair and then track his cuddliness. She's playing for the long run, here. 

Very responsible serious magical researcher Carissa will be here taking notes on Velgarth spell shielding when he wakes up.

This is in the middle of the night, because Leareth has a nightmare. Not the dream with Vanyel, though he was vaguely hoping for it. Just a mundane nightmare - of being trapped, underwater, unable to breathe - without any magic to escape or defend himself -

— and somehow in the dream he’s entirely certain that it was Urtho’s doing, and that Urtho is dead and all of his life’s work is lost, stupidly, pointlessly…

Leareth wakes with a gasp. He manages not to make a sound, otherwise, or throw around any magic, but he’s very disoriented - where is he…?

Carissa was very insistent about the room. She felt it mattered, a lot, whether Cheliax thought she merited ten seconds of thought or not, and the room would communicate that, and also it was incidentally a convenient way to see how many things she could get just by asking politely and showing off her magic from another world. It has a big comfortable bed, with solid wood bedposts that don't have cuffs attached because her read of the locals was that that'd be going a bit too far, even though Cheliax wouldn't think anything of it. It has high quality linens. It takes up a rather disproportionate amount of the room. The rest contains a fur rug and an armchair at an improvised armoire with a mirror and cosmetics and hair products, visibly too small and cluttered to be useful as a writing desk; Carissa is doing her notetaking sitting backwards in the armchair with an Unseen Servant holding her notes for her. 

Leareth…is actually totally unable to move, because it’s been more than an hour since Carissa last gave him any instructions for the geas.

This is not helping his mood at ALL.

If you were laying a Golarion enchantment to try to do that, its fundamental structure would be like so - no, you could in principle trim it down even more, if you assume symmetry, and aren't stabilizing against subsequent magical alteration -

She notices no signs Leareth is awake.

Leareth can't move. Can't Mindspeak. He feels trapped and helpless and - where is he - his eyes seem to be open, apparently that happened instinctively before he was alert enough for the stupid goddamned geas to treat his actions as volitional - 

Haven. 

Vanyel. 

Star-Eyed.

Aroden...? 

Leareth spends what subjectively feels like a VERY long time trying not to panic. 

....and then fails, and involuntarily projects trappedhelplessscaredscaredSCARED - 

- oh shit. 

She startles out of her chair and lands on the ground and without standing up casts Tongues, which takes several very stressful seconds. 

"You can take any actions," she says in a rush, and then kneels there holding very still because he seemed furious -

…He’s not furious. He’s scared, which is objectively a stupid way to feel now that he can remember where he is - 

Leareth takes a shuddering breath, and sits up. “- I am sorry, I - did not mean to fall asleep here.”

"...I think you needed it." What is he apologizing to her for. Is that the Good thing again? "I'm sorry I didn't notice it'd worn off." If he doesn't sound mad anymore she'll stand up. (Mad just makes more sense than scared, as a strong emotion from a powerful person.)

Leareth is reading her mind again; he extended all of his Othersenses the instant he was allowed to take actions on purpose. 

…Who does she expect him to be mad at. Her? That seems pointless. The entire world, for being the way it is? Not a new feeling, for him, and still just as useless. 

”I had better return to my room so as not to disturb you,” he says tightly, and stands up, and leaves without looking at her. 

Oh no that's so much worse than being mad at her. 

(Point towards the hair hypothesis...)

She stays kneeling there for a while, staring blankly at the bed and trying to figure out how she was supposed to handle that.

Leareth makes it back to the infirmary, which is dark and quiet; apparently all of his Healers are in bed. Reasonable of them.

He should be trying to sleep as well, but he’s finding himself also gnawing on how he probably handled that very ungracefully, and should have done something else instead, only he’s not sure what….

- sleep is not happening. Not even a little bit. 

Leareth doesn’t particularly expect it to work, given that he’s in Velgarth again, but he tries praying to Iomedae anyway. If he’s not going to be able to rest usefully anyway, the next highest priority is to get some more answers here.

There's the same falling-through-something as last time, but for much less long, because Iomedae is more oriented.

And then they are at the mountain pass, and She's walking closer, watching him intently. 

He should have thought for at least find seconds about what he wanted to say, before trying this again.

He didn’t, though, and now he’s here.

Focus.

“- I suppose you have established some presence in Velgarth now?” Leareth hears himself say, as though from a great distance. “What is the current status of your - plans with Aroden -?”

"I am going to see if Vkandis is capable of cooperating with us," She says, "and the timing will depend on that. I want Asmodeus out of Velgarth and out of Cheliax. I have communicated your capabilities and the status of your forces to Aroden, and he's making plans based on that. 

I told him you need a few days. I think that you do, though once I'm oriented I will be more certain."

Leareth doesn’t even disagree with that assessment, but…

”- Why do you think I need that? What are you seeing.”

" - a friend standing right in front of you would see you more clearly, emotionally, than I do. And I did not feel fear even when I was alive, and cannot use my memories to recognize or predict it. But I think you are accustomed to operating in a context where any unexpected weakness almost certainly meant destruction, and that is different from your present context, and this will require some adjustment."

“…Did you find that it helped your judgement?” Leareth says, dully, after a long hesitation. “Not feeling fear, I mean. I - spoke with Carissa, before, about— I think fear is important feedback? And that I would be - less competent, without it…?”

"There are goals it interferes with. I would not make a paladin of someone whose fear was trying to deliver to them a true warning they wished not to hear.  But I found it served my goals."

“…Do you think that my fear is delivering true warnings.”

"Not ones you'll otherwise fail to heed. The stakes are high. Asmodeus is intelligent and competent, and has recruited intelligent and competent people to His cause, and is willing to destroy a lot of value in order to force us to overextend ourselves in defeating Him. If you were unafraid, would you forget any of that?"

…Probably not? Leareth thinks he would be more sure of the answer here, if he were any less exhausted and off-balance, but he is…in fact, much less certain, right now, than he would prefer.

He doesn’t say anything.

(This seems - rude, or something - he feels like he’s wasting Her time and She has a huge number of important things to be doing - but.)