Oh.  He finally feels like he understands something of the difficulty.  I'm not helping, am I.  I'm sorry.  He tries to make himself quieter - he was assuming that communicating more emotions would help, because that's what he'd want, but Leareth clearly doesn't.

I'll try to get out of your way until you're more sure of yourself.  But tell me if I can do anything.  He relaxes, the way he would on a long shift of guard duty, standing still and unobtrusive for candlemarks at a time and not letting himself think about anything too distracting.  It does make a difference to the way his body feels to inhabit.

...Leareth wouldn't have asked for that. But it does, in fact, make it easier. He sends a quiet waft of appreciation, and keeps checking quadrants with the search-spell. 

...It's about fifteen minutes later that he finds something, and another five minutes before he's sure that he recognizes it as his own work. It's going to be an awkward ten-minute walk through the undergrowth, though he can light there way with a discreet mage-light and snap branches out of the way with bursts of force. (He doesn't want to risk Gating; it doesn't seem like anyone is coming to investigate the first Gate, but two Gates in short succession might stand out more, and he would rather not mark the exact destination with a loud magical signature.) 

This way. He's going to take control of the body to do the walking part, unless Karal seems to disprefer that.  

Karal likes walking, and more generally is a very physical person who would almost always prefer doing the moving himself, all other things being equal - but he thinks it's probably important for Leareth to get used to his body, and for him to get used to not controlling it (sometimes rather than ever, hopefully, but that can be figured out later), so he'll encourage that to happen and do his best to relax into the experience.  It's odd, but not bad, really, and at least the sensations are still there.

Leareth appreciates it. (He's not what he would describe as a very physical person, and isn't in general that attached to doing the moving himself - if anything, it's occurring to him that dividing it up could be efficient - but he's also still very on edge, here out in the open without any magical artifacts for protection, and it helps a little to feel more in control.) 

The underground cache is well concealed. There's a trapdoor buried under a hinge of sod, and Leareth actually has to separate quite a lot of tangled long grass and undergrowth in order to lift it enough to slip through. It's probably had twenty years or more to grow over; he thinks that for routine maintenance he might usually Gate directly in, behind the shields where it's not detectable from the outside. Karal's body isn't keyed to the wards, yet, and this lets him lower himself into a narrow antechamber-tunnel and disable them properly, the slow way, before he enters the cache proper. 

It's a surprisingly spacious underground room, dry and clean and lined with warded bricks. There are crates stacked against every wall, nearly to the ceiling. To mage-sight, which Leareth has fully open, the entire place is glowing brightly, the walls and crates sheathed in complex, multilayered shields and wards. 

Leareth is going to key himself to the wards and re-enable everything, and then....sit down on the floor for a moment, actually, or maybe longer than a moment, because he's very tired, and now that he's approximately safe it's much harder to ignore. 

That's... Even the amount of normal physical supplies looks impressive, but almost all of it is magic, the walls and the crates and likely much of whatever's in the crates as well, in incomprehensible quantity. Karal hasn't been able to see magic before, but he's still pretty sure that he's never seen a tenth - a hundredth, maybe a thousandth - as much of it. He watches it all, stunned.

On one hand, it's riches beyond imagining. And on the other hand, it's tragic, that when Leareth finally feels safe, he's sitting alone on a storage room floor.

...Ah, he was trying not to have emotions, wasn't he. It was much easier when they were doing something, but he can keep trying. Leareth clearly does need time to find his balance. (Karal appreciates that Leareth has been letting him see that, and see a lot more of all his thoughts. It makes their odd coexistence feel much better, and it makes it easier to try to give him what he needs. Which Karal keeps trying to do, without even having consciously made that decision.)

Leareth isn't going to spend very long sitting on the floor doing nothing, because this place may be relatively safe but, if they move quickly, they can get to somewhere both safer and actually comfortable to sleep. Also, right now there are presumably people in the north who are very stressed about his death and waiting anxiously for contact, and he doesn't know how long it's been; he can't even remember what season it was when he died. 

(Also - and this is a relatively small proportion of his motivation, but it's there - he unavoidably has Karal with him, which does incline him to put somewhat more effort into getting to his destination sooner. He can make a more definitive decision on...the long-term plan here...once he's spoken with people whose judgement he trusts - he doesn't remember their names but they definitely exist - and, besides, it just feels polite to Karal, who has spent recent years in a war zone, to try to get better conditions than a bedroll on the floor and nonperishable rations.) 

Leareth methodically tracks down the ciphered inventory notes, finds the right crate, and loads himself up with shield-talismans, which immensely helps his mood. It takes somewhat longer, and opening several crates, to find some maps of the north and an artifact meant to, when activated, broadcast a magical signature telling them to pick him up. He digs out proper warm-weather gear and a weather-barrier artifact, as well - the maps aren't enough to Gate directly to a facility even with the artifact, and there might be a bit of a wait. 

Does Karal have any questions for before they Gate to the northern tundra and, probably, stand around for half a candlemark waiting for Leareth's people to scry him and send someone to collect him? 

Looking at text that Leareth can obviously read but Karal himself cannot decipher anything from is a bizarre experience - it doesn't actually give him a headache, but it feels like it should.  He doesn't complain, since obviously this is a necessary step in figuring out what they're doing, but he tries to focus on the (equally incomprehensible but much more interesting) mage-sight view without getting in Leareth's way by attempting to move his eyes.  He can see some differences between the various talismans, and he can see in Leareth's thoughts what they do, so he should be able to figure out something about how the two things correspond... Not very much, but it keeps him occupied while Leareth does all the necessary travel preparation. 

I don't need to delay you.  If Leareth has people he trusts, however that works when he doesn't know who they are, then he should be with them.  It sounds like they won't expect Karal, but Leareth seems to have a plan for dealing with that, and not one in which Karal should be doing anything until decisions have been made about him.  (He has somewhat complicated feelings about that last part, but not ones there's any point in drawing out until he knows more.  He's calm enough in the meantime, beyond a vague hope that nothing will be too sudden.)

(Leareth also has somewhat complicated feelings about...all of this...but it's not useful to dwell on now, so he doesn't.) 

He does take the time to dig out some of the nonperishable emergency rations; he doesn't keep a lot of food in the caches, but among the items he does stock are thin slabs of ground and dried fruit. They're slightly difficult to eat, but if they end up waiting a while after Gating nearly 800 miles, he's going to want something sweet to eat.

Again, Leareth spends a while setting up the Gate-spell, eking out as much efficiency as he can. It's still a very long way - Karal has likely never heard of someone Gating that distance - and it feels, again, uncomfortably like rapidly losing blood. 

Leareth steps through into dark windy tundra, and...doesn't immediately collapse, but it takes some willpower to stay on his - their - feet. It's cold; not below freezing, in summer, but uncomfortable even through the heavy coat he just donned. He activates the call-for-help beacon artifact, activates the weather-barrier talisman, and then focuses on staying on his feet. (The ground is wet and soggy, almost swampy, and he doesn't particularly want to sit down in the mud.) 

Karal has never been in a tundra before, dark and windy or otherwise.  He can't exactly say he likes it, but it's interesting, and a bit of a challenging environment, in their current state. 

Want me to do the standing?  Unless I shouldn't do anything until you explain me to people.

And regardless of who's doing that, they can probably do some talking, now that it's not delaying anything.  Anything else I definitely shouldn't do?  And - I'm curious what to expect, how many people and what sort of place and what they're going to do first, but I don't know if you know the answers, with your memories missing.  That has to be so incredibly strange.  He hopes Leareth will be able to get to know them all properly again, rather than feeling like something important was lost forever.

You can do the standing. Leareth is curious if this will actually make it particularly less unpleasant. 

I think I normally remember more about my associates. It's just that this time, one, his memories seem unusually jumbled, and two, a bafflingly high percentage of them are taken up by– ...is now really the time to get into it, it's occurring to Leareth that Karal will probably have complicated feelings about it, given the war - well, it's as good a time as any, they're waiting anyway, and he really should convey this before they sleep tonight - 

- Leareth makes his thoughts as open to Karal as he can. A high percentage of his memories are taken up by a relationship with someone who isn't anything as straightforward as an ally. Though even missing a lot of the context, Leareth has a feeling that however it started, at this point it's lot more complicated than 'destined enemy'. They've only ever spoken in a lucid Foresight dream, which is itself a baffling intervention by some god or gods. Leareth wouldn't be at all surprised if the dream happens tonight. 

Also, that person is Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron. 

He takes the body and does in fact manage to make it feel better somehow.  He might just have better balance than Leareth, but most of it is that he enjoys the physical challenge of staying up despite the exhaustion and cold and terrain - manages to relax into it, find all the tiny body shifts that make it easier, as if it was a skill game he was practicing on himself and his surroundings, not something he was resenting and fighting against.  There's an odd effect where if you stop tensing up and shivering, you feel less cold even if your body is objectively speaking generating less heat.

And then this turns out to have been a very good idea, because he has something to do when the understanding hits.  He can anchor himself to his body and movements, the need not to collapse or stagger, and weather the first shock that way.

After that... He doesn't even know what he thinks, besides a blank grief and distress at needing to confront it - and now, when there's already so much he's trying not to think about.  When he tries to push through the emotions to some kind of conclusion, all the clarity he can manage in the first few seconds is that he doesn't hate the man in white, not really, he just doesn't want to ever have to think about him or about what he did to-- to so many people... And apparently he cannot have that.

He makes the mental motion of leaving his reactions open - not that he thinks it makes a difference, Leareth can presumably see everything anyway, but just to make it clear that he wants him to see, and can't really manage words yet.

...Yeah. Leareth would have preferred not to bring it up this soon - and, to be clear, doesn't need or expect any particular reaction from Karal, or for Karal to be ready to think about it at all - he just doesn't think it would have been...better...to have the Foresight dream sprung on Karal without warning, if it happens tonight. He's not even sure if Karal will be pulled into the dream as well, he just doesn't want to rule it out. 

There's a lot he could say about Vanyel. It...might help, later. He's not going to talk - or think - about it right now; for one, even if this is the most intact region of his memories, he's still missing a lot. 

(He's bothered about that, a lot more than he's bothered about not remembering the names of anyone in his organization. It feels much more like losing something he isn't sure he can ever get back. Leareth doesn't hide that line of thought from Karal entirely, but it's very, very quiet.) 

The air is slowly growing warmer, as the weather-barrier effect kicks in. 

Karal appreciates Leareth very much.  It helps, to have the quiet presence in his head, to have someone see and understand while keeping enough emotional distance to have calm sensible opinions about everything.  The dream can be another thing he is not going to think about right now, since he has no idea if it'll happen or what it'll be like, but he thinks he'll be... somewhat... less upset by then.  (He nearly says that if he's too upset Leareth can just have his dream conversation and ignore him - then considers what it'd feel like to be curled up in the back of his head, horrified and helpless and ignored, and doesn't say it.)

And, well, maybe he won't live long enough to worry about it.

He would probably just stand here and weep, except that Leareth's people are supposed to scry them, and he's known Leareth long enough that he can imagine how incredibly concerned they'd be to see him crying.  So he'll try to focus on his body, the view of the dark tundra, the way the magic is quickly warming the night air.  There are going to be things to do soon enough, and he will do them, and he will do his best not to make anyone's life more difficult than it must be already.

... Ah, no, there's one more thing, he realizes once he's calmed himself enough to be able to think around at least the edges of it.  Does he know how you come back after you die?  Or even that you do at all?

Not all the details, but - that I am immortal, and that it involves living under different names and faces, yes. Already more than almost anyone outside the core of Leareth's organization knows; it was - relevant early on to what Leareth wanted to convey to him. And Leareth is sure he's put together some of the implications. ...He's not actually sure how the dream will work with having died and come back, whether he'll still appear with his old face or not, but if not, it's perhaps a little less complicated that at least he doesn't look thirteen. 

...He won't necessarily know that Leareth sharing a body with someone else is even a possibility, though. That part is likely to come as a surprise. 

Karal has no idea how magical dreams work, and will refrain from worrying about it. 

That could be worse.  I won't mind-- well, no, I'll mind being there at all, but if I have to be, I won't mind explaining myself.  (By which he means that if he has to sit there and listen to Leareth, whom he likes and appreciates, call himself a monster to the Butcher in White, he might scream.  Yes, he realizes everything is much more complicated than this, but nonetheless.)

Leareth doesn't follow why– ...Leareth is on an emotional level nonplussed by that reaction, but it does make sense. He prefers not to hide the new situation from Vanyel even if the dream setup makes it feasible at all (by having him appear with his old face) and it does seem better for Karal to, well, introduce himself. 

(Vanyel will have emotions about it. Which he will try very very hard to conceal, because that's the way he approaches their conversations, and which Leareth will notice anyway, because they've been doing this for a very long time. Vanyel will probably be perceptive enough to pick up on some of Leareth's complicated feelings about the situation; he's practiced at reading Leareth, possibly moreso than some of Leareth's own allies, who have...less of an intensely strong incentive to try to develop that skill. Again, this line of thought isn't hidden from Karal, but is held in the background and very quiet.) 

All that emotion-hiding sounds incredibly complicated, and hopefully having someone there refuse to do the same will make things better rather than worse.  (He's not sure if it will, and cannot at all predict what his own emotional state will be when it first happens, but... if it's been going on for this long, it'll presumably continue, and they'll find some sort of equilibrium over time.)

... But he's getting very much ahead of himself again, since he might not be there at all, for at least two separate reasons.  Still, at least he's successfully distracted himself, and now he can stand around calmly enough, waiting for someone to find them.  Probably best not to start any more difficult conversations right this moment.

Leareth is pretty sure that concealing emotions isn't something he was doing specifically on purpose for the conversations with Vanyel, it's just - how he is as a person. Maybe Karal doesn't think that's any less complicated. 

...It's going to be a difficult conversation for Leareth, reuniting with his people. He hasn't been let himself be daunted by it, because it won't help, and probably it would be a lot less daunting if he could have it after rather than before a full night's sleep - but it is what it is. 

He's a bit on edge. Being scried won't feel like anything, so his first warning will be a Gate-signature – and a Gate-signature here is almost certainly his organization responding to the beacon, and not...someone else...but he's not sure of that. 

He waits.

It's been nine days. 

There are teams monitoring detection-wards all across the north. (They're also watching a few backup areas in safer countries like Rethwellan, that Leareth might remember exist and might be able to reach faster if he comes back without a strong enough mage-gift to Gate.) When one of the teams picks up on the beacon, Nayoki is notified within about ten seconds. 

She doesn't need to authorize the scry, but of course the result of it isn't definitive. It's confusing and mildly suspicious, actually, since it seems to be an adult man. But definitely carrying an artifact that only Leareth should have been able to find, and confirmed on the scry to be wearing half a dozen others that look like his work. There are a couple of explanations - maybe Leareth's new incarnation is just older than expected for someone with a new mage-gift - maybe it's not a new mage-gift and they just...never cast a fire spell before this...? - or maybe Leareth is for some reason unable to travel, and recruited someone else to send in his stead. 

She does need to authorize a Gate, and decide where to put the other end and whether she should be there. ...She decides, reluctantly, against. They'll collect hopefully-Leareth and bring him to a secure location, and she can Gate over once it's been more thoroughly confirmed that it's him, or if not, that it's safe and her presence is necessary. 

The Gate-signature appears. 

Leareth instinctively flings power into their shields, even though they're already wearing shield-talismans. He isn't currently controlling their body, and so doesn't have an opportunity to startle visibly. ...Possibly he should be controlling the body for this, but he's not going to forcibly seize it back from Karal. 

(His thoughts make it clear that he's relieved, and also - in a different way - even more tense than before.) 

Karal wonders if maybe they should have slept in the storage room after all, but Leareth made that call and presumably he knew what he was doing. 

He knew they were expecting a Gate, and has already seen three of them cast, so the sight doesn't cause him much of a reaction.  He's a little tense, in a soldier's way, but only nods.

And yes, Leareth should have the body, it'll be much less confusing for everyone that way.  (Although they should also at some point practice Leareth seizing control and Karal not resisting it, because he doubts he'll have the time to ask politely every time, and there will be circumstances in which a fraction of a second's delay or confusion will matter.)  He'd like to meet some of these people, but Leareth should definitely be the one to speak to them first, and even if they could theoretically split the voice from the rest of the body, having physical reactions at odds with what they're saying could be suspicious.  He'll wait, calmly enough, with more curiosity than trepidation for the moment.

The other end of the Gate seems to open to an underground room. Mage-sight is blurry across the threshold, but it seems like there's a lot more there for mage-senses to see than the uninteresting stone visible to the naked eye. 

Someone steps across, also glowing with layered shields. He reaches out with Mindspeech. :Identify yourself.: 

Leareth has not really had a chance to dwell on the fact that Karal's body lacks Mindspeech even in potential - it's not like it can be changed - but he had it in his previous body and doesn't now, and it's frustrating. 

He answers out loud, rather than attempt to figure out how to answer in thought without taking off the shield-talisman and baring all of his thoughts. "Leareth." And he does have some of his verification codes, in cipher on one of the maps. He reads them out. 

(He has absolutely no idea who the person he's speaking to is, or whether he knew them before as more than a casual acquaintance.) 

The man doesn't introduce himself, which sort of argues against him being one of Leareth's close associates. 

Leareth is, however, ushered across the Gate into a shielded Work Room, and asked if he needs food or rest or Healing before they do a more thorough debrief. 

(Leareth haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaates feeling this disoriented. He's pretty sure everything is happening exactly according to plan so far, but he still hates it. He...has a vague expectation that there's someone he expects to come do the debrief - someone who he didn't expect to come out immediately, before they had checked that he is, in fact, himself...but he doesn't remember any details and that bothers him.)

He's uninjured. He...probably could use something sweetened to drink, it was a long-range Gate. (And he forgot to actually eat the snack he brought; the thing about intensive magic use is that it temporarily suppresses appetite, and the leathery dried fruit slab sounds effortful and unappealing to consume.) He would like to proceed to the debrief promptly, though, and rest afterward.