…Leareth is going to drop everything he’s doing and read it.

- it’s so incredibly reasonable of Vanyel to ask the artificial intelligence to verify if Leareth can be trusted. It makes perfect sense. Vanyel has spent the last decade in - kind of a similar information state to Leareth’s current state toward the artificial intelligence. Of course he would want to check, to know, if he suddenly had a way to do that.

It’s just. Not actually any less abjectly terrifying, just because it’s exactly what he would advise Vanyel do if Vanyel were accepting his advice.

(…there’s relief as well, not certainty yet but Leareth genuinely doesn’t think Vanyel has any reason to lie to him in this particular situation? And he does have enough confirmation that Vanyel in fact wrote the letter. And it is information, a significant positive update, that Valdemar’s god is apparently on board to cooperate with the artificial intelligence called ‘Sing’. And it’s very interesting how Vanyel notes that the Shadow-Lover avatar seemed much more helpful than on past occasions and might have been “taking lessons”.

- there’s some other emotion Leareth is going to have later, about the fact that Vanyel went to the Shadow-Lover in particular - he didn’t say how he did it but as far as Leareth knows you can only do that by dying - or about the fact that it’s apparently not the first time. But Leareth is mostly not feeling anything period right now, and this part isn’t a priority to process anyway.)

After a moment Leareth manages to remember that Karal is there, and - wordless question…?

Most of what Karal feels at the moment, for all that it's clearly not the most important part of the situation, is immense fondness for Vanyel and Leareth and the way they're both trying so hard to communicate and be fair to each other despite so many terrifying complications in the way on both sides.

...Right, he's being asked a question, and presumably not one about whether he thinks Herald-Mage Vanyel is an unfairly admirable person.  (Did he really die to get them this information? And not for the first time? How are all of their lives so unbelievable...)  That's just so much easier to think about than all the rest of it.

He doesn't feel safe yet, his emotions haven't caught up to everything that's been happening so quickly and he isn't sure when he should slow down and let them, but... well, obviously this is good.  Is it good enough, yet?  He knows little about the Shadow-Lover's opinions of what the world should look like, but-- He's someone Vanyel gets along with, and as far as he knows all the gods get along with each other, and if they get along with this strange new thing as well then it... might still be wrong the way the gods are, but it's not some alien horror and it's almost certainly not lying.  (Could it be lying, still, somehow? Only if it could do so in Foresight, and that seems close enough to impossible - does Leareth think so too?)

So.  Might it be wrong in some smaller way?  Of course it might - it's not clear what it thinks all the other problems are or how it exactly it means to fix them - but he sees no sign of it and many signs against, and... at some point it doesn't matter, does it?  At some point the right thing to do is to give up and let the decisions out of your hands, when fighting to keep making them would do harm that probably isn't worth whatever small change it might win.  But he has no real way to tell if they're at that point yet, and that problem is far too complicated for him.  Leareth is the one who's done centuries of thinking about what a being something like this might be like.  Have all those centuries left him with any way to pin down the dizzying space of possibilities, with so little to go on?

And... it said Leareth can be privately evil, if he wants.  Which is absurd enough to nearly make Karal laugh - why would Leareth be privately evil, that's the exact opposite of what he is - but it's a good sign, that it's not the same sort of thing as the gods, that it doesn't mind disagreement.

(That it agrees with Karal, about the future having a place for everyone.)

Right.

….The only remaining way Leareth can think of that ‘Sing’ might still be an alien horror lying to them, is if it was able to spoof the Shadow-Lover vision with Vanyel. (Or directly control Vanyel, maybe, or, what, undetectably kidnap the real Vanyel and make a simulacrum that could pass to everyone interacting with him? Leareth’s agent in Haven was confident it was Vanyel who received the letter and replied to it, but that could have been a trick, it’s not impossible…)

Leareth could Gate to Haven and speak to Vanyel himself, or - and the possibility is only even occurring to him because everything is different now and the Shadow-Lover is apparently taking lessons in being helpful - or he could try to check more directly, himself. And it seems very likely true that ‘Sing’ is aligned with humanity’s interests at least to the extent that it will prevent anyone from getting killed. 

…He could Gate to the Ifteli barrier in seconds. Trying to cross it ought to get the attention of Vkandis even if He is very distracted. And Karal, at least, used to be His follower, and might have some standing to politely request answers…

(It’s terrifying to consider, obviously. But it’s a familiar kind of terrifying, and one he’s faced down before when he had far less reason to think it might work…)

It's not obvious at all to Karal that this should be terrifying, but suddenly it is.  Oh, Karal himself would cheerfully go and get himself set on fire for the chance of slightly more clarity, but the idea of Leareth doing it makes him want to object to that entire direction of reasoning without even considering whether it would accomplish anything.

... No, they are both better than this.  He knows the oath he made, and he will let Leareth die if that's really the right thing to do.  But having felt the full depth of Leareth's terror makes it so much harder to think about.

Is it the right thing to do?  What is it, now, that they're worrying about?  What are they assuming is and isn't true?  Gods, everything is so complicated and he's had less than two weeks' practice of thinking about anything remotely like this.  Karal has to try to slow down and consciously pin down every piece of his reasoning (especially Iftel's existence, which he had no memory of, but as bizarre and confusing things go it can get in line), and this is slow and frustrating but he doesn't think he'll get to the right answer without it.  Leareth is thinking too fast for him, too many things blurring into each other.

If it's an alien horror and could grab Vanyel's soul and pretend to be the Shadow-Lover to him, there's-- maybe not nothing they can do about it, but nothing in the direction of talking to the gods, they're not going to do better than Vanyel at it.  If it's an alien horror that cannot do that but can... pretend to be Vanyel somehow... then yes, if there's some chance for them to talk to the gods themselves they should take it.  Can Vkandis speak directly to people who aren't priests of His, or at least His in a wider sense in which Karal now isn't?  Can any of the other gods?  Why doesn't Karal know any of these things, why has he been so damnably incurious all his life that now he doesn't know how anything works-- 

The frustration is not helping, and Karal will just have to rely on Leareth to know all the things he doesn't.

But... 'Sing' did not, apparently, prevent Vanyel from dying.  (Only temporarily, somehow, but if that has happened before then it wasn't Its doing.)  If Vkandis still wants Leareth dead, as He well might if He doesn't need him as an ally against a greater threat - or if He doesn't realize he could be an ally, and does He? - Karal is not at all sure it wouldn't happen.

Leareth’s impression is that the gods can, if They wish to, communicate to anyone They want to; his model is that it’s more costly the more “distance” there is - so a priest with a Foresight Gift is easier than one without, which is cheaper than any follower, which is in turn still cheaper than a random person. In this case, territorial remit - going to the barrier, rather than praying from here - would help make it less costly for Vkandis to send a vision, as would the fact that Leareth and Karal would be deliberately seeking His attention.

It’s not entirely implausible to Leareth that, in the hypothetical where Sing could and did fake Vanyel’s conversation with the Shadow-Lover, it might not yet be able to do the same for Vkandis in Iftel; Vkandis’ power and influence is tightly localized there, Sing would probably need to have already taken over the barrier itself and locked Vkandis out.

- overall, though, intercepting the message with a fake Vanyel seems…more likely within Sing’s capabilities and in line with its observed style of operating? Which seems to involve working directly through powerful artifacts in the material plane, rather than operating mostly via Foresight like the Velgarth gods.

Anyway, unless Vkandis has learned exactly the wrong lessons from cooperating with Sing - which would imply a rather odd mix of value-alignment on Sing’s part, but Leareth thinks it would more or less rule out the ‘alien horror’ corner of probability space - Leareth’s permanent death isn’t a likely outcome. Just the risk that Matteir already took, a thousand years ago. And of being out of commission at a costly time — but he can have people on standby to scoop him out if Vkandis’ response is fire, which Matteir didn’t have. And his organization can still operate in his absence. There are some things only he can do, still, but a lot fewer than before he starting recruiting for the final stages of his plan. If finding the other world, say, is something he could in fact do given a day, he has researchers who could go underground and solve it in a month, and there aren’t that many worlds where they would have a whole day but not a month.

And - Leareth is leaning toward being mostly convinced that Sing is on their side. Ninety-nine odds of a hundred, maybe. Not nearly sure enough to stop planning for the alternative, yet, but enough that this feels like a very different risk level than it would have been before.

All of that sounds right.  If the gods can do that, and Vkandis in Iftel in particular has the best chance, and the difference between minutes and a day matters more than the one between a day and a month, then-- yes, they should do this, and without waiting for Karal to take a too-long time to think through all the possibilities, when he's so unused to it.  Leareth knows what he's doing, with his mind back in its accustomed balance - and Karal can't reason his way to certainty, but the instinct he's so used to relying on sees nothing wrong in Leareth's plan or the thoughts that led to it.

(He spares a moment to think that he'd like to live to see what happens next, and feels odd about the thought of Leareth coming back without him after such a short time - but it's both unlikely and not important enough to warrant anything but a fleeting acknowledgment.)

Leareth pauses, briefly, to push a note of gratitude across to Karal. It's true that Karal is risking more here than Leareth is. Leareth wasn't going to stop to ask Karal's permission, because he knew what Karal's answer would be, but he's grateful for that and it's worth acknowledging. 

(He would also like Karal to live to see what happens next. There's a note of wistfulness there, though Leareth's emotional reactions are still locked down enough that it's the ghost of a feeling rather than the feeling itself, a whisper of I thought we would have more time.) 

- he thinks it's worth it in expectation, and given that, they should do it now. 

(Leareth deeply doesn't want to! The thought isn't exactly 'better do it now before he loses his courage', because that isn't going to happen, and in a different scenario he would rather take the time to sit with the fear and get more of his mind on board with what he's about to do. There isn't time for that, now; he can worry about his own feelings later, if there is a later to worry about. If his highest-probability guess is right, there will be, and he'll fewer less other things to worry about than ever before, and it's not worth dedicating any more thought to it than that.) 

It is worth taking five minutes to grab some of his staff - not Nayoki, she's still occupied, but someone can read her in if it seems necessary. And then, Gate.

That Leareth sees him this well, and appreciates him enough to say so, is more than enough. And if the second not-emotion might put tears in his eyes, well, they're not his eyes at the moment.

And then he needs to entirely change what his mind is doing, because if they're going to be attracting the Sunlord's attention then probably he should be the one to do it, once they're across the Gate threshold and know what's happening there.  Or at least he should be in the right mindset for the conversation.  (Not that he exactly knows how to talk to a god and make Him want to answer, but... it's not something you reason your way to, and it's not as if waiting longer will help.)

Leareth picks a spot from a map, on the northwestern edge of the barrier, where neither side should be particularly inhabited. He scries ahead.  Confirms that there’s nothing much to be seen except dense boreal forest on both sides of a wall that shimmers like a translucent soap-bubble to ordinary sight and blazes almost too bright to look at in mage-sight.

He sets his Gate fifty paces back, more on engrained habit than because he expects an ambush.

The forest is very quiet. Vkandis does not immediately smite them when they step across. 

And Leareth walks forward, without hesitating, the internal screaming quieted to a whimper. 

He’s also reaching for a particular mindset — not one of prayer or supplication, but still rather different from his usual way of operating. He’s put in place some basic contingencies - a team of his best mages stained on fast unscaffolded Gates are watching the site through scrying - but, here and now, he’s not focused at all on trying to protect himself. He’s not carrying a weapon. Obviously that barely matters, when he can’t actually decline to bring his mage-gift, but if he could intentionally set down the ability to cast offensive magic twenty paces back and approach the barrier without it, he would, and that’s the intention hr’s holding. 

(He wonders, in a brief flicker, if this is what it might have felt like to Ma’ar if he had known that the terrifying-but-worth-it path to end the war was to pull back his army and offer Urtho his unconditional surrender.)

Leareth stops a step back from the barrier, letting it fill his mage-sight, and - holds out his hand, not quite touching it - 

Wryly: I know we have disagreed on many things. But I believe we have either a common enemy, now, or - a shared ally.

I am here to ask if You know which.

(And does Karal have anything to add?)

Is it really that simple, to speak with a god?  Of course Leareth would think so.  And maybe right now it will be.  Karal's own mind is closer to the remembered prayers of the past - only the ones he could still truthfully mean now, but there are some.  Acknowledgment, respect, asking for guidance in a dilemma.  But if Leareth wants to have this conversation himself, then Karal will keep his thoughts quiet in the background, until Leareth asks otherwise.

You haven't known Leareth as anything but an enemy.  I don't know if You understand him - I don't know if You tried, or if You can.  But I think You can see me well enough, and I hope You will believe me when I say he is a man worth speaking with.  He keeps his mind as open as he knows how, not just his thoughts but everything he is, clear to see - his earlier life in Karse following the god's precepts, his current one, how he came to be here.  He is Leareth's, and so Leareth is the kind of man who someone like him could swear his life to.  Leareth means well in coming here, and is telling the truth, and from everything Karal knows about them both, the possibility of an alliance is genuine and valuable, if things are bad enough to warrant it.

…And there’s suddenly a Presence, vast and bright and alien. Reaching out, with - not gentleness exactly, but a surprising amount of precision - for, apparently, Karal specifically.

(Vkandis doesn’t actually have enough remit over Leareth to communicate very easily, including to figure out what the particularly irritating soul is doing here. Vkandis is really quite frustrated about - well, a lot of elements, but particularly the fact that He agreed not to make the new powerful entity use its resources to prevent Him from killing any mortals, since its resources are adequate to do that but it be wasteful for all parties.)

The touch of the Presence against Karal’s mind isn’t actually in words, and it hurts, but somehow it’s closer to words than one might expect, and it hurts less than it seems like it ought to.

WHY ARE YOU HERE? Or maybe not quite that; it’s as though a cluster of questions are superimposed, like an optical illusion. Karal will pick up a sense that the blazing Presence is confused - treading carefully despite being frustrated about this - not threatened but maybe affronted in some way that might be aimed at Leareth and might be aimed at Sing, or maybe both…

It feels right that it hurts, and nothing in Karal's mind backs away from the pain, or from the overwhelming strangeness of the contact.  He is not the Sunlord's any more, but after all of his old life he can't help but be glad to just once feel Him directly.  The body isn't his, and right now he's not sure he could feel it if it was, but there is a bow in his mental posture - he isn't Leareth, to speak to the gods like equals, even if he no longer follows Them.

He's not sure if words mean anything to the god, but it feels... respectful, and clarifying, to compose sentences and use them as a scaffold on which to hold the meaning and context clear in his mind.

To ask if the strange new intelligence is lying to us.  If it is, if it's some great evil only pretending to mean well for everyone, You might know, where we can't.  And You might help, if there was something we could do against it together but not separately.  The respect and hope in his mind's voice are true - Leareth meant it, when he said they could be allies, genuinely serving their shared goals against an enemy they both agree is worse.  But first they would need to know whether it is such an enemy, and that is what they came to ask, of a god who sees more than they can.

(For the first time since he woke up in Karal’s body, Leareth finds himself unable to read Karal’s thoughts. There’s a blazing wall in his mind, as though the two of them are somehow on different sides of the Ifteli barrier. He’s barely aware of his surroundings through the painful brightness and heat of it.

He stays on his feet, barely. He doesn’t panic-Gate out, even though he’s having to stomp on the reflex to do so. They’re not actually on fire and it seems like…maybe…the plan they came for here is working?

It was worth risking death to find out the truth. It’s worth bearing whatever this is. Which doesn’t make it any easier, but Leareth does have centuries of practice at enduring things that hurt.)

Vkandis - seems to pause, pull back a little, there’s a distant sense of huge alien thoughts being - shuffled, broken down into pieces Karal can engage with -

Vkandis doesn’t know if the new entity is lying to them! That isn’t the level on which Vkandis perceives the world. Vkandis barely has an understanding of what mortals being lied to or lying to each other is.

The new entity isn’t an ally. It cares about baffling things and is being incredibly disruptive in pursuing them. But Vkandis is disinclined to ally with the other one (it’s clear from context that He means Leareth) for - well, multiple reasons, the other one is frustrating and just because the new entity is also very irritating, and not leaving the gods with much of a choice about tolerating it, does not leave Vkandis inclined to embrace more of that. 

…But, also, it’s not an enemy. And it’s - being more helpful than it could be. It’s trying to mitigate the Foresight noise by providing other kinds of visibility, and it’s trying very hard to make itself legible and explain the why rather than make arbitrary demands. It has managed to convey that it wants to definitely avoid [a wall of DARKNESS and CHAOS and threads of Foresight brutally torn apart].

(From context it seems fairly clear that this is a godmemory of the Cataclysm.)

That’s - worth a lot.

Vkandis tried to negotiate with it to have it stop the other one from doing more things, since it keeps stopping Them from doing things it doesn’t like and it seemed like maybe it wouldn’t like the things that the other one does either? It didn’t seem able to understand yet, though; it’s very strange, and it does seem to be trying very hard to understand everything Vkandis and the other gods are trying to convey, but it’s - still learning.

But maybe (- there’s the sense of a new and not entirely comfortable motion here -) they could approach it as a trade? And the other one could consider not doing any more things in return for Vkandis providing all of this information? 

Karal apologizes for phrasing his questions in baffling ways.  He knows nothing about how gods think, but he will try to learn.

It is very good to know that the new entity is not an enemy, and wants to avoid a new disaster.  Karal appreciates being told of it.  Might Vkandis tell him what sorts of baffling things the new entity cares about or dislikes?

Then Vkandis mentions a trade, and Karal tries to look away from the blazing Presence and see Leareth's thoughts - which he hadn't even realized he lost track of, but it's so incredibly hard to pay attention to anything but the god...  Without his oath he doesn't think he would have managed to tear his thoughts away and try to look in the metaphorical other direction.

And in the metaphorical other direction there's nothing but a wall of fire.

He cannot sense Leareth at all - he's felt that before, he knows Leareth can hide from him, but surely he wouldn't do that now-- what's happening-- is Leareth still alive, is his first panicked thought, could the Sunlord had killed him while Karal wasn't even looking--

- No, that makes no sense with the trade proposal, unless Someone else did it, and that would be too much of a strange coincidence.  And they brought other people with them, surely someone would have managed something--

He can't see out of his eyes or feel his body either, now that he thinks to try it.  So either the Sunlord doesn't want him talking to Leareth, or this is simply how talking to gods works - and either way he should stop this and go back to the extremely important thing they had come here to do, which would have been worth doing even if Leareth did die for it.

There's a moment of sharp fear at needing to navigate this on his own.  But Leareth would tell him he can and should - Leareth thinks everyone should form their own judgments and make their own decisions, even negotiating with the gods.  And this is not that complicated, in the end - interacting with a human mind at all seems difficult enough for Vkandis that Karal doesn't think anything complicated could be managed between them.

He could propose a back-and-forth where he's released to talk to Leareth and then comes back here, but he doesn't really expect the god to have the patience or comprehension for such small mortal problems.  He hopes his moment of fear and distraction wasn't in itself enough to disrupt the conversation, and focuses back on the Presence.  (It makes that, at least, very easy.)

He cannot offer a trade exactly, without knowing more about what things the other one should stop doing.  But what they're doing already is nearly a trade - it's an interaction that predictably leaves both sides better off if both sides try for that, and they are trying.  They came to Vkandis because they thought it would benefit Him as well as them if He answered their questions.  What He already told them made the other one less likely to do most things; additional answers will make it less likely still.  (Karal is telling the truth about the probabilities and their expected shifts, as far as he can see them.)  Is that good enough?  Karal is, again, not good at talking to gods, but he will try to learn if he is taught.

More shuffling, rewriting godconcepts into terms legible to Karal…

Vkandis doesn’t follow why His answering questions will in itself make the other one less likely to do things - normally He would check in Foresight but, as He already said, Foresight mostly isn’t working right now (frustration!) He can answer more questions, though. One of the baffling things the entity cares about is answering mortal questions - even when it’s not aiming at anything, just in general.

The entity apparently objects to the ENTIRE SYSTEM for managing mortal souls? It communicated early on that it wants incarnated mortals to stay that way, which presumably the mortals have noticed from their angle already? 

(Relatedly, the other one is definitely still alive. The new entity intervenes to stop anyone, other mortals or gods, from killing mortals.)

It was able to explain that mortals prefer not to die, which is coherent enough. But it also objects to all the souls that aren’t incarnated right now, and to reincarnating souls in general even though changing that is going to be difficult and expensive and Vkandis tried to explain why doing it this way is practical. Though it is at least trying to offer to take on most of the difficulty and resource-cost. Vkandis and the other gods are still unclear on the argument for why this matters, since mortal souls that aren’t incarnated don’t prefer things one way or another, and it seems more messy rather than less to try to make currently-living mortals remember earlier incarnations.

It also wants mortals to have more leeway to do things that make Foresight noisy, but that part by itself isn’t confusing, it doesn’t use Foresight and apparently the world it comes from doesn’t have Foresight. It has some other way of knowing what’s going to happen. It does seem willing to share, which is more helpful than it needed to be? 

Karal is deeply grateful for all this information.  And for knowing the other one is still alive - he didn't ask, because it's a smaller matter than the other things, but he cares very much.  (It would be difficult to miss the relief in his emotions, for all that he's trying to focus on the questions he came here to ask.)

Mortals prefer not to die, yes.  They also prefer many other mortals not to die, because they care about them, the way Karal cares about the other one (this fact continues to be very obvious in the entire structure of his mind, but of course the thing going on with him and the other one is very different from how most humans work); and if they do die, the mortals who are still alive go on caring, and would prefer to have their people back (there is a fainter memory attached here too, a death and still-fresh grief and the barely-there hope that it might be undone).  If Karal had ever been alive before, he thinks he would prefer to remember it.  Most of the new entity's priorities make sense to him.  Are his explanations helpful at all?

The reason why Vkandis answering his questions makes the other one less likely to do things is because the other one objects to most of the same things as the new entity, and was doing things for that reason, and now that he knows someone more powerful is settling most of his concerns he will not need to do things about them.  It was predictable in advance that this was the likely outcome, but this way reached it faster; and additionally the other one would have needed to do things just to find out all the information that Vkandis generously told them, and now he will not have to.

Does Vkandis have any questions Karal might answer for Him, or other specific things He wants him or the other one to do or stop doing?  Karal is grateful for this conversation, and would like to do something in return, if he reasonably can.  (Although he is starting to get the feeling that he should not talk for much longer.  This might be a tiring thing for mortals, and he thinks he has all the answers he needed.)