:I am not categorically immune to mindreading and can choose to permit it.: And she does, reluctantly. She is - fairly confident, at this point, that Leareth is what he presents himself as; otherwise he'd have dumped her somewhere she couldn't breathe and couldn't move. Regardless she's obviously going to heal him because she said she would. She does not spend cognition on whether she's going to betray people, except insofar as she's tracking which things they might in a confusing situation interpret as betrayal. 

She's actually considerably less stressed than she was before she looked at Leareth. Mostly if she's within Creation at all then she expects rescue from Aroden if she needs it badly enough, and while she'd much rather not spend His resources like that, it bounds how bad things can get. And she really would expect Aura Sight to track whether she's within creation, unless he found a way to fake it which is again much less likely if he's never seen anything like it before.

And a very anxious Mindspeaker on Leareth's staff, accompanied by two extremely on-edge Adept-strength mages, will unlock the stairwell door between the floors and head down to collect Iomedae from the Work Room. 

By the time she reaches him, Leareth has been entirely uncovered from debris; there's a pile of broken stone and frozen dirt and rapidly melting snow scraped up against one wall. Leareth is lying on his back on the floor, looking decidedly bruised and battered and with one arm obviously bent in a place arms should not normally bend - and he makes no attempt to sit up as she approaches - but he's breathing fairly evenly and not lying in a pool of blood or anything. 

:Iomedae: He's trying to look at her, but his black eyes aren't really focusing. 

(He doesn't try to read her mind himself. He got the report from his Thoughtsenser, and - he already knew enough, really, because he wasn't surprised by it, it didn't feel like an update.

He is, at this point, mostly terrified that the rest of the situation continues to be out of control. And that Vanyel is in Haven, a city built around a live Heartstone.) 

She takes his hand and does a Lay On Hands. She's - actually quite surprised that the earthquake managed to hurt him that badly, perhaps she was underestimating the local gods.

...Her Healing is a lot better than anything Leareth was expecting! It's instantaneous, apparently, and got everything - whereas even the best Healing would still have left him with ribs twinging for the next month - and unlike Velgarth Healing, where having a lot of injuries quick-Healed leaves you exhausted, hers seems to have completely fixed a level of fatigue that Leareth hadn't even realized he was feeling. 

(It does not do anything about the part where all of his clothing is uncomfortably soaked through with snow, and it definitely doesn't address the fact that he feels incredibly shaken, and is exerting quite a lot of effort not to start visibly shivering from a mix of cold and sheer terror.) 

He levers himself carefully into a sitting position, noting quietly that Iomedae looks completely unhurt, though of course maybe she healed herself first. :Thank you.: He does not immediately pull his hand away from hers.

:I can do the fear, too, if you'd like.: A separate magic, from her thoughts, one stemming from her own immunity from fear that she told him about. She doesn't do it to anyone who might be right to fear her, but - that's not the situation at this point, is it.

He's not afraid of her. Leareth...is actually faintly surprised by the extent to which he is definitely, categorically, not afraid of Iomedae. It doesn't feel like her healing him, like she had said she would, should have been fully conclusive proof of her intentions, but - it's a lot of things, adding up, fitting together more and more tightly into a picture that no longer has very much room in its unlit corners for 'Iomedae is plotting a betrayal', and it doesn't feel worth focusing on a small chance that this is still a trick, not when he has significantly bigger problems. 

 :You can do that? How does it work - does it affect one's thinking in other ways? Does it involve making oneself open to present or future influence from Aroden, assuming Aroden has any influence here at all - I am not sure I would object, to be clear, at this point, but I would prefer to know.: 

:It doesn't make you vulnerable to Aroden in any way, except that - unafraid people are stronger, and maybe more like Aroden and like me. I can stop doing it at any time, if you don't like it. I...don't actually have a very precise accounting of how it changes your thinking. I was sixteen when I last felt fear.: She's sending everything she's thinking; she doesn't like being mindread, but it's because she knows a lot of Shining Crusade military secrets, not because she habitually withholds relevant things that aren't military secrets.

Leareth meets her eyes. :- I am not afraid of you. I - endorse being very worried about the overall situation, it is a very bad situation, but I believe we are not currently in danger, here, it is - other people who are in danger, and future options I risk losing, and I expect being acutely afraid is not actually helpful for reasoning about what to do. So I would not mind.: 

And, switching to private Mindspeech, :- you do not need to continue allow mindreading, if it bothers you. You have already successfully reassured me as to your intentions. My staff will be less nervous if you allow it, this has involved - a number of sudden and stressful changes in policy - and they are going to be very worried about my safety, but I do not anticipate anything specifically going wrong if my people are stressed.: 

He's going to strip off his cloak and shake kind of a lot of snow out of it and dry it with magic. And peer at Iomedae. :We should go somewhere warmer. You were on foot for a long time, in bad weather - would you benefit from something hot to drink?: Everything she's wearing is absurdly magical, and he doubts she wants to be parted from it, but he's not sure if that means it would have kept her dry. 

And she smiles levelly at him, and he is unafraid.

:It's been a fairly physically unpleasant few days and I wouldn't decline something warm, though I don't actually require sustenance.:

It's the first time in years - possibly the first time in this lifetime - that Leareth can remember feeling completely unafraid. (Being calm and in control and not ongoingly distressed or impaired by a frightening situation isn't the same.) 

...There are a lot of other emotions, there, that he abruptly has more space in his head to be aware of, and also does not really want to be dwelling on right now, it's not the time. But he's intensely worried about Vanyel - not even just, or even mostly, his safety, more - everything else about the last few days, and the last few years, and - how hard it must have hit him, that Iomedae's world has afterlives, and that she might bring them here but...too late for the point in his life when it would have mattered most. 

(For Leareth, the point when it would have mattered most was thousands of years ago. This...does not actually make it less painful to think about.) 

- not the time. He has a huge number of unanswered questions, presumably so does Iomedae, and there might be some very time-sensitive decisions here. 

They can go down the hall to an actual conference room, where Leareth lights the fireplace with a burst of magic because, thanks to Iomedae's healing, his reserves aren't even drained. (He could directly heat the room with magic, but a crackling fireplace is soothing, and he sort of feels like Iomedae could use that right now. He could certainly use it right now.) 

Having a lot of people in the room is distracting. They can have one Adept hovering, and everyone else can guard the door, from the other side of it. Leareth is not exactly ill-equipped to defend himself, after all. 

He'll boil water for tea with magic, and set it on the table to steep for a few minutes, and sit. 

:I am guessing you have a large number of questions, and - likely still want further assurances from me. I am not sure what would be the fastest way to convince you that, if you are offering your help - if there is even a chance you would consider offering your help - then that is worth abandoning all of my current plans to explore further.

- if you have any magic from Aroden that would let you read my mind, I would be willing to consider that. Vanyel has certainly already conveyed to you my most significant secrets.: 

She sits down by the fire. 

:Of course I'll help: she says as if it's completely obvious. : - with afterlives and preventing a war with Valdemar and fighting any of the gods who need fighting and making the world rich and free, that is, if you want my assistance beyond that you will probably have to purchase it from me.:

Leareth stares at her. It - takes kind of a long time, almost five seconds, for him to manage to put together an answer. 

:I - if you are telling the truth about Aroden - actually continuing to care about human values - and you are right about that - then I would eagerly accept your help and His, and - those are nearly all of my important goals. ...Preventing a war with Valdemar is the urgent one, and - probably cannot wait until I have verified Aroden's intentions to my satisfaction. I am not sure what the end goal was of - the hostile action aimed at us, it seems rather predictable that it would not harm you - I am concerned that perhaps the gods plan to nudge Valdemar into assuming that I was responsible for the earthquake and that Gating you out was not done with your consent.: 

:I should probably have done a Telepathic Bond with Kilchas before I went. i thought it'd be worth saving to do with you once we'd met face to face. - if in the same room as a person, I can give us this kind of telepathic speech, for a few hours, at a distance I would previously have characterized as 'arbitrary' and which is greater than encountered on the same planet. 

In the absence of that - probably I should go back shortly and reassure them. Before that, I need a summary of what the gods might try if they want me dead.:

:- I am not actually sure of your capabilities, or exactly how difficult you are to kill. To be fair, the gods may not be either, if your life history is entirely in another world then I expect you are not at this point very clear in Foresight. I know you survived the Heartstone explosion - I am not clear if you did so purely by being nearly impossible to kill, or via the protection of your armor and other artifacts, or because you can fly, or because you have some access to short-range Foresight and knew to get out of the way...?: 

:A combination of all of those. I am very well equipped by my world's standards, because I'm fighting a war at home and it's very expensive when I keep dying in it. I am a paladin and those are hard to kill. And I am a legendary hero; legendary heroes are very hard to kill, in every respect you can think of, for some combination of every ordinary reason you could think of and some things that seem beyond reason. I am a little like a god in that things around me tend to go my way, by my will. At home, if the gods wanted me dead - and they don't, I've been patiently negotiating my ascension so that there's more power in favor than opposed - they would send the Mantis God, who can claw apart the planes themselves, and there's not actually that much I'll be able to do if that happens. But if they're constrained to working through mortals - 

- I am not yet ready to give you details of how to kill me. It can be done, especially if I can't escape by magical transport, but I doubt anyone could quickly amass the resources to do it, or hide that's what they were amassing, unless there are portable Heartstone like things that are more powerful.:

:...There are not, at least that I am aware of, unless you count Adept Final Strikes, which can be stacked. - If I were trying to kill you, knowing only what I know now, I - would try to immobilize you with a powerful mage-barrier, probably, and steal your artifacts with Fetching, and then target massed Final Strikes on you. My guess is that it would take at least twenty, perhaps as many as fifty, assuming you could be pinned down in one place long enough at all. I am not more than fifty percent sure it would work and the cost - and collateral damage, if you were in a populated area - would of course be enormous. I - do not know any of the gods to have the resources to arrange such an attempt on short notice, and it would be an even larger departure from Their usual style than the Heartstone explosion was. 

- Do I have your consent to scry you from a distance, so that I can try to pull you out if it looks like you are trapped?: 

:Sure. Though also now that detecting Law and Evil worked on you, I'm - much less worried about dying. We are probably in Creation, or those spells wouldn't have worked, and that means Aroden will claim my soul, should I die, and can have my Church at home resurrect me. Which leaves you with some problems, but - 

- but you're an archmage. Maybe you can find a way to find Golarion, now that you know it exists.:

He stares at her.

:...Somehow I had - not made the connection that if your world has afterlives that reliably catch souls, and gods who - care - then it is not surprising you also have the option of resurrecting the dead: he manages, faintly. :I - is there any chance you think it would it work here, with local souls? ...There are people I would want to get back, if it were possible.: 

:Not if the souls have been recycled. For souls that haven't, yet - yes, if we have Aroden's backing, and some of his priests who have the power. Maybe without that, but definitely with it.:

Leareth closes his eyes for a moment. 

:I want Aroden to try to speak with our local gods. Ideally once I am more sure of him, but - even if you are wrong about his values, I think that a significant part of our difficulty with the gods comes from the inability to communicate, and - it sounds as though Aroden is better at that.: 

He lets out his breath. :In the near term, I suppose I am less worried if you think Aroden will be able to retrieve your soul. And knowing that your world exists and some of its planar properties might by itself be enough to find it. I am more confident I could do it in less than several years if I could keep one of your artifacts for reference and design a search-spell for that kind of magic.: 

She tosses him the Ring of Feather Fall. :It slows me when falling. I would only need it if someone tries to assassinate me by dropping me from a Gate high in the sky and I don't have any uses of my flight ability remaining, and I will simply try to reserve a use of my flight ability. Or dodge such Gates.:

...He is looking perhaps mildly awed, less at the ring itself - though it's fascinating magic to examine - and more at the fact that she just handed it to him. 

:That seems remarkably useful.: He turns it over in his hand. :I think if someone drops you from a Gate high enough that the fall would actually injure you, that ought mean I have enough time to try to grab you through a second Gate.: 

He doesn't, really, want to send her back to Valdemar. But it currently looks like the best - maybe only - option to avoid a war. 

:I could return you to exactly where you left, Kilchas is likely still observing it. I am not delighted about the additional delay, or using up more of your flight power on traveling twenty miles back to Waymeet, but I am definitely not going to risk a Gate directly into Valdemaran territory without coordinating it with Kilchas, given that he may well already be assuming my offer to meet with you was a trap. I suppose if I come with you, I would be within range to ask him from there?:  

:I am out of flight. I don't mind walking back into Valdemar, I suppose. It feels - like an opening for something further to go wrong - but you are better equipped to evaluate that chance:

Leareth looks very unhappy at that. :...I am confused, I thought you did not have any way to replenish Aroden's magic here, am I missing a piece? Anyway, I agree. Raising another Gate into Valdemaran territory also feels like an opening for something to go wrong, though. I suppose you will at least be within Kilchas' Mindspeech range for the duration of the journey, and he could perhaps ride out to meet you.: