She can pay for it!! This way instead of that way means faster and time is at a premium.

Also Yfandes is suffering. She's not sure if She is talking to an entity that cares about that.

Mostly She is talking to an entity that....has a hard time even - perceiving that as a relevant way that reality in all its myriad complexities can be parsed? It's - an intriguing concept, though? 

- anyway if She is willing to pay for it - in this resource that is useful for the nameless entity - then, sure, that....does seem like one way to narrow down the infinite tangle of Foresight-mess, and is one that will give Them an advantage over the other local gods since They have the most context, and - one that might give Them other local advantages - 

Yes, agreed.

Sure. Done.

(This entity does not actually have any levers to make it happen instantaneously, as mortals would count it, but threads can be tugged, in the tangled and now-even-messier web of Velgarth Foresight, and They are willing to tug just so hard - the resources expended are worth what Iomedae is willing to pay and it won't excessively blur the remaining visibility in the future-web...) 

(If Iomedae is skilled enough at interpreting Foresight then She can probably see that it will cut down the time required to about one day, local time.) 

...The nameless entity would like to know what's HAPPENING here? They are willing to trade (a different kind of) resource, for that answer. 

- she'd be delighted. So, she has this paladin, praying to Her for guidance, and that's most of her visibility here, the shape of the paladin, one of the many confused shapes humans settle on when they know what god they're reaching for but have only a human amount of capacity to reach them. And the paladin sees, from a human angle, this class of outcomes, and is motivated-to-avoid them, which is to say that if the paladin has more clarity on possible outcomes, those outcomes shrink in the field of the future. And the paladin sees, from a human angle, this class of outcomes, and is motivated-to-achieve-them. 

And from reading the paladin Iomedae can create- barely a shadow of a model of the people the paladin has thoughts and preferences over. Yfandes sees these outcomes and would be motivated to achieve that one. Tantras sees these outcomes and would be motivated to achieve that one. This level of speculation is cloudy, since She can see them only through the paladin's weak flawed human infrastructure for comprehending them, but some things can be reliably guessed even at that remove.

Confusing! 

The nameless entity in the shadows normally sees things like this - 

(and They can show her an abstracted version of the Foresight graph, which is inconveniently difficult to map out right now, but - as usual - They have invested in seeing further ahead than the other god-entities in this world - at the expense of being able to intervene in higher-cost but thus inevitably higher-variance ways) 

- the nameless entity has - something not entirely dis-analogous to what They were just shown, via the Web to which all the Companions are tied. But - not the same level-of-abstraction, on the details visible to Them - not the same ontology, in some deep sense - 

- but They would like to understand this thing better, if it can be conveyed. It seems as though understanding it might give Them an advantage, here.

Iomedae will trade. She mostly wants some interventions here, in Foresight, structured so Asmodeus won't see them.... 

This entity is willing to make trades. 

(More willing, in fact, than Vkandis, to whom the entire language of 'trade' was more unfamiliar. Though communication between them is still difficult on multiple levels.) 

Vanyel is not asleep. 

He spent a while pretending to be, in case that would make them LEAVE him ALONE, but - apparently that didn't work. 

Eventually he stirs. Tries to sit up. 

"- Leareth. Do you have any other questions?" 

"I am thinking. I may have more questions later." 

Can he ask someone else those questions? 

"I -" Vanyel says, stiffly, tightly, "- would like to be alone." 

This does not seem like a good idea at all. Leareth doesn't move, except for glancing over at Rovira. 

She's almost finished with the scry. "He is allowed to request different company if he wants," she says automatically. 

"...I understand," Leareth says to Vanyel. "Do you want to - go somewhere else? I could walk you to another room." 

That is not going to resolve his current conundrum at ALL. Vanyel shakes his head without speaking. 

This would probably be a very rude thing to say to anyone else, but Leareth feels like having known Vanyel - in the context where they actually interacted - for as long as he has, means that the normal standards of rudeness were left behind a long time ago. 

"...Vanyel. Do you want us to leave you alone because you wish to kill yourself." 

The official stance of the Church of Iomedae, which Leareth knows because it came up during paladin training, is that suicide is wrong because you are supposed to do as much good as possible in this life - but that volunteering for extremely dangerous or certainly doomed missions is fine, if you want to get the doing-as-much-good-as-possible over with very quickly.

Rovira does not say this. It doesn't seem like it would help.

(If Rovira had said this - or if Vanyel were reading her mind, which he isn't, because that's against Heraldic ethics and also he's way too tired to take any actions on purpose - then Vanyel would probably shout at her that he's done ENOUGH and he's survived MORE THAN HIS FAIR SHARE of extremely dangerous doomed missions and can't. he. just. be. done. This is already a quiet, familiar litany in the back of Vanyel's mind.) 

Leareth stays where he is, his hand still resting on Vanyel's shoulder. 

"- You don't need me," Vanyel says finally. "I - I did what I came here to do." 

"And we are all grateful that you brought us this information. But - Vanyel? I - we - still care about you." 

- apparently this was the wrong this to say, because Vanyel flings Leareth's hand away and surges up from the armchair. 

"Can you not. Just. Stop. I - I never asked you to care about me -" 

Leareth has no idea what to say to that! Maybe Rovira does? 

- she's a little worried about losing her Sending, honestly. "This seems like maybe a conversation to have in a few days' time? When it's clearer, uh, what went wrong exactly, and whether we can fix it with magic."