"They are secretive about their abilities." 

"Huh! Another way they're like Companions, I guess..." Vanyel shifts his weight, then shrugs and makes a stool for himself out of snow. "Leareth, er, you can sit down if you want." 

"Actually, no, I cannot." 

"What? Why...not?" 

Leareth finds himself very unsure how Vanyel is going to react. Which is unusual. Normally his predictions about Vanyel are quite accurate. 

"This is jumping ahead, but I was taken prisoner by the invading force, after they crossed the barrier. A number of - unlucky coincidences - were involved. Vkandis has a great deal of power, so close to Iftel." 

"I - what - oh." 

Leareth did mention, offhand, at some point in their conversations, that Iftel was under Vkandis' influence. Or Vanyel thinks he did. It's bizarrely difficult to remember, and...why didn't he even think about that, in all their frantic strategy-meetings about the aid request? It would have been awkward to actually mention– not that awkward, really, he could have claimed he read it in an obscure book, everyone knows he reads ten times as much as most of the Heralds... 

"So the barrier is Vkandis too - that's why you -" Vanyel feels slow and stupid and five steps behind. "Er, right. The...earthquake? Was that related?" 

"Yes. It was unusually extreme, the gods tend to meddle in subtler ways; it must have been rather costly for Him. From which I infer that He wanted me taken captive very badly." 

Leareth's tone is calm, his expression unreadable, his black eyes like still pools... Leareth stands very still, but apparently that's because he's under a compulsion, or something, not to move? 

"Leareth, I - gods - are you, did they hurt you -?" 

"I have not been physically harmed, no."

Why does he care so much. Leareth is his destined enemy, who's he almost certainly going to have to try to murder, someday, and die in the process. And yet. 

"I believe I am currently on the Ifteli side of the barrier, not far from the site where your Web-alarm would have triggered. ...I am not requesting, nor expecting, a rescue attempt - we are enemies, after all - but I think Valdemar ought to know the danger. The invaders are - from another world, coming in through an interplanar rift of some kind. They have different magic, and are very well-resourced. Iftel is going to lose this war, perhaps soon. And - given what I know of the invaders' leadership, they are rather expansionist. Valdemar could be at risk next."

Leareth takes a deep breath. He's feeling kind of shaky. Maybe it's just from hunger, though that doesn't usually affect him in the dream.

"...I told them you have only a dozen mages," he goes on, with a note of apology in his voice. "It seemed not-unlikely the higher-ups knew this already, from other interrogations, and in any case they would have found out soon enough. I managed to avoid letting anything slip about your existence and unusual power, let alone about our ability to communicate. So you in particular ought not be a target, yet. I am not sure how long that situation will last. My captors initially assumed I was an ordinary mercenary captain, and I let them, but they eventually pieced together that I am - more important than that - and are now escalating the situation. If I do not manage to escape or be rescued in the next nine hours or so, I think they will transport me back to their world, and I must assume they have...other options for interrogation, there." 

Vanyel doesn't miss the very slight tremor in Leareth's voice. He's scared. Which is...an absolutely terrifying fact in itself. 

Focus. He can go through all the implications of this later. 

An interplanar rift - another world... It seems impossible. Absurd. But the situation was already bizarre, and this - does explain it. How Iftel, despite its impassible shield-wall, could have ended up in such a bad position, begging for help from its neighbours. 

"Right. Can you tell me what you think they do know, so far?" 

"Yes, of course. I shall also tell you everything I have learned of them, so far - their goals, and their capabilities..." 

Leareth does his best to go through it efficiently, in a sensible order. He'll have to talk fast, to cover everything before the dream ends. 

And Vanyel does his best to listen and commit everything to memory, for later debriefing with Yfandes. Who's going to have...a lot of feelings about this. Vanyel has plenty of his own feelings, which he's tamping down as hard as he can. He can deal with that later. 

By the time the sky starts to come apart, Leareth has managed to cover everything he knows - or, well, mostly his guesses and inferences - about Asmodeus and Hell and Cheliax; their philosophy, their goals, their resources and available magic. He's quickly summarized the main content of his interrogation, mostly information about Velgarth geopolitics and Velgarth mages' capabilities. 

"- One weakness is that their magic needs to be prepared in advance," he's saying. "It is apparently not tiring to cast at the time, but once they have used up all of their 'spells' for the day, they cannot do any more. It also requires concentration, which can be disrupted–" 

And it looks like they've just run out of time. 

Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it. There's no reason for Vanyel to want to, what, to comfort Leareth - but apparently he's going to regret it if he doesn't. 

Leareth comforted him, once, in the dream. On the Sovvan-night he spent in the ruined palace in Highjorune. Leareth had so little of the context, and Vanyel was trying so hard to hide his emotions, but apparently his destined enemy could still see that Vanyel was in pain. That he was alone and scared. 

Apparently now it's Vanyel's turn to notice that in Leareth's shuttered expression. 

Vanyel rises from his snow-stool and steps closer, until they're directly face to face. Takes Leareth's hand. 

"It's going to be all right," he says, which is a stupid thing to say but now it's out there, hanging between them. "We'll - I don't know what we can do, but we'll figure something out." 

- and then the dream ends, and Vanyel is alone in his tangled covers, staring at the ceiling and a thin bar of moonlight shining through his curtains.

He lies there for over a minute, frozen, stuck, pinned by the enormity of everything he just learned. Or everything he just heard from Leareth - he can't afford to take it at face value, of course - except why would the man lie about that - 

Eventually he shakes himself loose of it and sits up. His hands are trembling as he casts a mage-light and reaches for the paper he keeps by his bed. 

:Yfandes?: 

He doesn't know what he's going to say to her, either, but he can't do this alone. 

And Leareth wakes with a start. Finds himself still lying on the floor of the stupid Rope Trick demiplane, heart racing, breathing hard. His mouth is still parched and his head aches viciously, from lack of sleep as much as anything; he can't have been asleep more than a candlemark. 

For some reason, even though the dream represents a lot of progress, he feels a lot more scared and shaky and trapped and helpless than he did before. 

Orient. 

This time, at least, he does manage to fling out his Othersenses on an instinctive-enough level to push Thoughtsensing past Carissa's baseline shields. 

She's trying the casting-in-pain exercise, again, mostly because it's something to do with herself. She's at eight minutes and still holding the cantrip - Prestidigitation, this time, she's using it to clean her clothes - and she's thoroughly absorbed by the pain and her various efforts to set it aside and focus on casting. Hell hurts more, she reminds herself, and it doesn't end.

Eight minutes and ten seconds, now.

At least she's distracted enough not to have noticed he's awake. Leareth lies still, forcing his breathing to slow and his muscles to relax. 

He's scared. 

If his people don't manage to rescue him - he has no real hopes that Vanyel will even attempt it - but if he's not rescued within the next, gods, eight hours or less by now - then they're going to take him to Cheliax. And - probably hurt him. 

He's mostly not afraid of the pain. Carissa isn't even wrong, that practicing casting while in pain is an important skill. It's one Leareth has a lot of, and right now he's using it to concentrate despite the headache.

(He's almost relieved that something is likely to happen within eight hours; it puts a cap on how long he'll need to keep going without food or water. Almost relieved.) 

But it's - evidence, right, more evidence of what Cheliax is like, what Asmodeus is like and how He runs Hell. More evidence of why it would be disastrous if Iftel, inevitably followed by Valdemar and its neighbours, fell into Asmodeus' hands as well. 

If he falls asleep again he's going to lose Thoughtsensing. This is such a frustrating constraint to be under, but Leareth forces himself to stay awake. He can't even pinch himself because that's a volitional action, but he can - lean into the fear, a little, enough to keep some adrenaline going. 

And he watches Carissa's thoughts. 

She makes ten minutes.

Ha. She knew she could. A stupid decision, not to learn years ago, but not one that'll cost her too much, hopefully.

The burn somehow hurts more once she's stopped. 

Leareth eventually decides that they're going to be here a while, and it's the best opportunity he's going to have for - 

- for what? It's not like he has a plan. 'Wait to maybe be rescued' isn't a plan. A plan is something where his own actions matter. 

He - mostly can't take any actions, right now. 

What options does he have? He...can talk. That's about it. He has a window of seven or eight hours when he can talk to Carissa, and hopefully read her thoughts without her knowing it. 

...He had even less than that in the dream with Vanyel. And, quite possibly, a larger gulf to cross - and it's not clear what that will end up accomplishing, but at the very least it got to the point where he could tell Vanyel honestly about his last day, and maybe hope for actions to be taken about it. 

Of course, he had a decade, not just a few hours... 

- also apparently he can't talk. The time horizon on the geas must have passed. Opening his eyes is allowed, though, and apparently taking a deep breath is, too, and it inevitably makes him cough and maybe that will get Carissa's attention. 

Prisoner's awake.

She only has one more Tongues today. She contemplates whether there's a reason to save it for anything. It seems like...not really?

Leareth waits for her to make a decision on that. He really wants to be able to ask permission to roll over; the floor of the Rope Trick space isn't exactly soft, and he has bruises from earlier. It would probably be good for his physical condition to ask about standing up and walking around, too, but at this point he's feeling a bit dizzy and lightheaded even horizontal. Mages don't cope well with long periods without any food; Leareth usually brings some with him, but in this case everything he brought is still in the collapsed remains of his safe-room and records cache. Even if he hasn't been doing any casting per se, he's been using his Othersenses pretty hard. Being half-suffocated can't have helped. 

Carissa took off his talisman against magical attacks, too, which makes him feel panicky. He tries to ignore it. 

She spends ten minutes thinking about it, because there's no hurry. She might want it if she's trying to visit Iftel villages for food? Probably that's not worth doing today, if no rescue comes tonight she'll have to do it tomorrow but he won't starve today.

He looks in pretty bad shape. That decides her; if he needs medical attention she ought to know. 

She casts Tongues. "You can talk."