Vallynn wakes up, turns over, and coughs up a lot of water into the bucket the Kafra healer's got prepared for him. Then he coughs some more for good measure and makes a very displeased noise at the back of his throat. 

"Aaargh."

"Welcome back," says the healer.

"Thank you," he tries to say, except what comes out is a hoarse whisper so he tries clearing his throat and coughing some more and then actually says it.

"Your belongings are over there," she says, pointing at a pedestal above which said belongings are indeed floating in stasis. "I'll give you some privacy, now. The lounge is out that door and past the hallway; your party member is waiting for you there." Her speech is flat and clipped, as if she's saying something she's said hundreds of times by rote. She stands up, bows, and walks out of the room.

God, dying was more unpleasant than he thought it'd be. He kind of exhausted the last of his strength killing Astrid and couldn't manage the strength to kill himself so instead he just grabbed his staff and clutched it close to his body to make sure it'd be teleported with him when he died and waited for what felt like forever. He thinks he started hallucinating or dreaming something as he did, a vaguely adventurous thing in which he and his plucky party members were chatting right after a tough fight in which they defeated something epic.

He can't recall their faces or names, but that's usually the case for all of his dreams, so he doesn't know why this time it's bothering him.

He's been working on a simple drying spell which does an elemental conversion from water to air, but it's not safe for people yet as he doesn't have enough fine control to only target the water on his skin as opposed to all of the water in his body so he uses a towel instead. Then he goes to explore the stasis pedestal because that's cool.

The enchantment is meant to keep his belongings as stable as it possibly can. Lots of people don't like having their stuff touched by others, but most importantly adventurers could have all kinds of strange materials and reagents on them which could cause problems if mishandled. The room itself is also very thoroughly shielded in case anything explodes, but that's for the safety of others in the building. 

It's reasonably simple to interact with. He can pull anything from above the pedestal and once it's out of range it leaves stasis. If he wants something a bit more sophisticated than that, like to fetch a specific item from a pocket, there's a little interface that lets him slowly relax the stasis only enough to be able to move things around a little bit. Anything more complex than that will need help from an employee, though.

He wonders how they managed to get him out of those trousers but the answer is obvious as soon as he thinks it: precisely targeted teleportation. 

The Kafra Corps is so cool. 

Anyway, he doesn't have anything dangerous amongst his stuff so he just grabs his stuff and then uses his in-progress drying spell on it all. If he still had any potions that'd be a bad idea but he went through all of them while running for his life—well, swimming for his life. He's also got a laundry spell in progress but that one's even harder, he doesn't have a straightforward way of identifying when stuff is "dirty" and the best he's been able to come up with was trying to embed a perfect map of his clothes into the spell and telling it to get rid of anything not in that map but that sounds absurdly complex and impossible to generalise and he's sure there's some smarter way to do it.

Astrid is indeed waiting for him in the lounge when he emerges into it and she looks incredibly relieved to see him. "Vallynn!"

He makes a beeline for her. "Hey there. You look upset, did someone die?"

"That fucking hurt you prick."

Oh wow déjà vu. "You were stuck in your head."

"You could've asked! ...more, I mean! Or argued! Or something!"

"I really couldn't have. I was about to die and if I did who knows what you'd have done, and if I woke up here and you took forever to show up what was I meant to do, was I gonna have to go looking for you—"

"For someone who was about to die you die took your sweet fucking time—"

"I didn't have the strength to kill myself after you so I had to just wait it out."

"Oh so you were talking big game about it when it was me who was meant to kill herself but when it's you you chicken out?"

"I mean I literally didn't have the physical strength to do it."

"—oh."

"I don't know if I'd have had the psychological strength either, mind, but I didn't really have the strength to try. Feel like my leftover mana was most of what had been keeping me up."

Her face crumples and she hides it in her hands as she slumps in her seat. "I can't do this."

He takes a seat next to her and puts an arm around her shoulder.

"I can't do this. I, I've been putting it off, I've been making jokes about how you're the one with a plan and you're crazy prepared but it's me, I'm the one who doesn't have a plan and hasn't prepared at all. Fuck, I was doing so well, I thought I could do it, I did a few bounties and I was collecting the reagents Yndra asked me for and, and I really thought I could but I can't," she sobs. "It hurt so much and it wasn't even as bad as yours and you were just, just talking about how it was a learning experience and you'd do better next time and all I could think about was how much it hurt and how much I didn't want to die, and I know I wouldn't have died for real this time but someday I will and I don't want to. I don't want to."

"Let's go back to the Guild," he says, gently. "Get you something to eat, some comfortable clothes, a hot chocolate."

"What's a hot chocolate?"