…Maybe the other one could talk to the new entity’s mortal-facing mouthpieces before doing any more things? And the new entity can make sure it won’t cause anything terrible to happen, and also make sure Vkandis and the other gods can still see what’s going on? The new entity seems to be willing to spend a lot of resources in both of those directions.

Other than that, no. 

(Vkandis is not exactly feeling grateful - maybe gratitude isn’t a godemotion - but there’s something like satisfaction.)

And Karal is abruptly back in his - their - body. Where Leareth is still standing in front of the barrier, putting most of his concentration into holding perfectly still, not managing to entirely suppress the panic but at least keeping it internal. 

It's a very good thing that Leareth is doing all the work of holding still, because if Karal was in control of their body right now he'd simply collapse.  His control of his mind doesn't feel much better - it's, well, it's like spending... however long that was, he has no idea... mentally staring at the sun, and now being unable to see anything else properly.  On top of some other problems he couldn't properly describe even if his thoughts were doing what he wanted.

But he can feel Leareth's presence again, and he got the answers he hoped for, and all of the space his mind still has for thoughts is filled with shining exhausted relief. 

The wall comes down and it actually takes Leareth a moment to orient enough to the situation that he thinks to reach for Karal’s thoughts -

- oh -

That’s - good news, then, he wants to know more but not here and now -

Karal seems maybe not entirely okay, but that’s not very surprising if Vkandis spoke with him directly, and Leareth can figure out if anything needs doing from somewhere else.

He has a Gate-threshold up within a fraction of a second, and even manages to think ahead enough to put the other end in his main secure research base and not, say, a random remote records cache where no one would be able to find him.

And then they’re through, and…maybe he needs to sit down before doing anything else, actually, his pulse is racing fast enough that his chest hurts. 

He does try to reach out to Karal, though. Do you need anything right now? 

He clings a little, mentally, wanting Leareth's thoughts reaching toward him even if there's nothing specific he wants them for.

No, just... rest, I think?...  His thoughts are fuzzy enough that it's clear he doesn't really have much of an idea - and how could he, anyway? 

Are you all right?  What-- happened--?  Formless worry, an oddly distant memory of when he looked for Leareth and couldn't see him...

Vkandis did not try to harm me. Leareth opens the memory to Karal, standing in front of the barrier, a sudden wall blocking off half his mind — well, blocking off Karal, but at this point that does kind of feel like not having access to half of his thoughts. It was stressful and unpleasant but nothing bad happened to him.

I think it is normal for speaking to gods to be exhausting and impairing. You can rest now. Though Leareth is going to poke a bit at Karal’s recent memories, trying not to be too obtrusive about it but he does want to check what Vkandis actually said -

— oh. That’s - actually even more reassuring than if Vkandis had jumped straight to glowing praise of the artificial intelligence. It makes sense for the gods of Velgarth to be initially annoyed and suspicious about an entity with goals that match Leareth’s and the power to impose its values unilaterally on the world. 

- a spike of aaaaaah at the part where Vkandis asked Sing to make Leareth stop “doing things”; Leareth had barely started to get on top of the physical panic-reaction, and it suddenly feels hard to breathe again. Maybe it’s easier not to try to wrestle that down, and just let it run its course…

…he’s suddenly exhausted, differently from Karal’s exhaustion but not really less. 

Also a knot of his staff are suddenly there around them. One of the Healers is checking to make sure Leareth isn’t injured, and someone has asked him a question at least twice that Leareth did not actually manage to process. 

Presumably they want to know what happened and what he and Karal learned. It’s got to be informative that he’s back and not even slightly on fire, but it doesn’t entirely narrow it down yet - the faces around him aren’t relieved, yet -

Leareth pulls his thoughts back into some semblance of focus. :Sing is - not an enemy, definitely. Almost certainly an ally. We can - it is going to be all right. We can stand down on preparations for the worst-case scenarios. - tell Nayoki that we can share all of our records with it, in case it helps it work faster…:

Actually Nayoki is going to Gate back to the base the moment she hears that Leareth and Karal are back from the Ifteli border. It sounds like at least one of them did just speak directly to a god, which is well-known to not be very good for people, and also Leareth doesn’t sound entirely okay and she’s worried. Someone ELSE can give a flying thing records, now that it’s no longer the same kind of high-stakes…

(Nayoki had already been more or less convinced, and vaguely wishing Leareth were less paranoid about running every possible check — not because she particularly anticipated he would get set on fire at the Ifteli border, just, she kind of has a grudge against Vkandis and resents asking Him for favors, and also did Leareth really need to subject himself to another thing that would be terrifying and awful for him…)

Gate. Mindhealing-Sight. 

- it sure looks like Karal was probably the one to speak to a god, she’s going to focus on him at least briefly. How does his mind look? 

It looks... scattered, like all the parts of it don't quite know how to interact with anything that isn't a god's blinding presence, including with each other.  And exhausted, like he poured so much effort into the conversation and isn't even aware of this, and thus is additionally confused about why everything is so hard all of a sudden.  But not like anyone (or Anyone) tried to do him deliberate damage or change anything about him.  Everything's just... a touch burnt at the edges, a little dried out, and the change in structure made it pull away from its usual shape a little, pull away from all the normal things a mind needs contact with.  But it all looks reversible with some time and rest.

(And... he's safe and can rest now, and everything - everything - will be fine.  He isn't really worried that things still hurt.)

Good. Nayoki sends Karal a brief push of wordless gratitude and reassurance, then turns her Sight on Leareth.

Leareth - is also exhausted, though differently. The aftershocks of enormous stress are still rippling through the structure of his mind, and he’s - doing a lot less to stabilize and dampen it than he usually would. The surfaces of his mind are - turned inward, the crust of his mind soft and almost soggy; he’s not trying to orient at all to his surroundings, except for a few instinctive vigilance-patterns that he probably couldn’t set down even if he were actively trying.

It makes for a strange contrast with the fact that, on an emotional level, he clearly doesn’t feel entirely safe. Whatever he’s feeling is a lot more complicated than that.

There’s…a deeper lack of stability than just his decision to relax into the stress-reaction comedown. It’s as though there was something deeper in his mind that could only bear weight while under tension, and it’s - not, anymore. 

His surface thoughts are unshielded at least to Nayoki, and almost as scattered as Karal’s. He’s deeply relieved, and happy on at least some level, but - not in a way that gives him an anchor to hold onto. 

He’s wordlessly glad that Nayoki is there, and that the maybe-dangerous mission he sent her on turned out not to be dangerous after all.

…Nayoki sits down beside Leareth. She reaches over and takes his hand - more because she wants that right now than because she expects Leareth to benefit, but not zero for that reason.

It’s been just under two candlemarks since the first report of a flying thing reached Leareth. Not nearly kind enough for anyone, Nayoki included, to adjust to everything being completely different. She kind of has no idea if weird complicated feelings are going to sneak up on her later? Not that she’s tempted to go looking for them, that sounds tedious and anyway Leareth is clearly having enough complicated mixed feelings to go around. 

:Nothing is an emergency now: she sends, when it doesn’t seem like Leareth is going to be first to say anything. :- Do you know what you need right now?:

…Leareth had not been asking himself that question yet, no. It feels hard to answer and he’s very tired right now.

Nayoki squeezes his hand. :A nap would be good for Karal, I think.: And thus probably good for Leareth too, who definitely needs more of an emotional anchor than he has right now.

She thinks it would help Leareth if she asked one of the flying things if Sing thought he had been making the right choices, in horrible circumstances that won’t ever hold again, but not a mistake. She has a feeling Leareth wouldn’t appreciate it right now, though, even if either way the answer would be good for him to know. (She thinks she knows which way the answer would fall, but she’s not actually sure.) 

That might not be the worst idea even if it’s very hard to imagine sleeping right now.

:Karal?: Leareth nudges gently.

Mm?  He really is having trouble keeping track of what's happening around him - he appreciates Nayoki being there, the touch and the emotional support, but the practical details of the conversation are escaping him.  He can tell that Leareth isn't all right, but at least Leareth is there, and they're in a safe place surrounded by people who care about them, and right now Karal doesn't feel like he can aim for anything more complicated than that.

Sleep?  Yes, that sounds good.

He could... try to do the standing up and going somewhere?  It might do his unmoored thoughts good to try having a body again, complicated as the concept sounds right now.

That sounds good. Leareth does not think that he's particularly benefiting from being in charge of the body right now. 

(Karal will notice as soon as he takes over that Leareth has accidentally been holding their body incredibly tense - normally he's good at avoiding that even when under stress, being tense gives you headaches and it's not like it helps with anything - and was also definitely still halfway having a panic attack.) 

Nayoki will offer Karal a hand again and walk them to the room Leareth has been sleeping in lately. They're in a part of the base they don't frequent as often, since Leareth mostly wasn't Gating all over in the weeks immediately after his death and coming back in a new body, and it seems like Karal would probably prefer not to have to navigate right now. 

Karal is definitely too-- tired, but not just that, if he had to do something he would, it's just that he doesn't have to-- to continue halfway having a panic attack, or to keep up nearly as much physical tension.  He leans on Nayoki a little, when he first stands up, and definitely appreciates the navigation.  His eyes skip over the walls oddly as he walks and tries to give himself time to get used to seeing normal physical things.  It is helping, though - by the time they've made a couple of turns he feels much more grounded, if not any less exhausted.

He sits down on the bed.  Yes, he could definitely sleep, if not quite yet.  He wants a bit longer to - not really share any important thoughts, he doesn't think Leareth is any more up to having proper thoughts right now than he is, but just to reassure himself the Leareth is there and alive and nothing terrible has happened to him.  It... doesn't seem like anything terrible has happened to him, does it?  He's panicked and miserable, but they've both been that plenty of times in their short shared life and it wasn't awful, afterward.  It'll last longer this time, no doubt, but they have the time they were afraid they wouldn't, even if he's still too... sun-stricken, he supposes... to appreciate that fact properly.

Gods are... really strange.

(Nayoki will let them be to rest, though she stays in easy Empathy range in case either of them ends up wanting to get her attention.) 

It doesn't seem like anything newly terrible has happened to Leareth, no. He's exhausted and definitely in some distress and still scared on an instinctive level, and - it does seem like there's some kind of damage there, there are parts of his mind that he's stepping around, but it doesn't feel new? It feels more as though it's been there for a very long time, and it's just that Leareth's mind was always structured such that it wasn't exposed where either of them could see it. 

In his surface thoughts, though, there's a waft of tired amusement. Oh? Gods are strange, but I am curious what you were noticing in particular. 

Oh.  Yes, that... makes sense, doesn't it.  If Karal had needed to live this life for longer than a few weeks, let alone for multiple lifetimes, he's sure he'd have no less old damage it never made sense to fix because it was just going to keep happening.

He didn't... understand? almost anything?  I'm sure I didn't either, from His viewpoint, but...

I expected Him to be someone I could recognize, and I couldn't, really. 

More quietly, stretching his mind to-- have normal mental reactions to everything that happened, instead of pushing all of himself into an attempt at clarity aimed at an alien entity, with no extraneous thoughts that didn't aid the communication.  (Oh, that's why it was so exhausting and strange.)

I wonder, if someone else did better, or... if our entire religion was made up.  It's made of human concepts, and the god very much wasn't.

And, with a little tired amusement of his own: I don't think I would've been able to talk to Him at all, if you hadn't taught me to be someone who could.

Almost certainly others have spent more time on, specifically, trying to understand what a god wanted of them. And of course most godcommunication is initiated from the other side, and is more directly about nudging the world toward a particular aim.

Still. I think religions are more about the people who practice them than the god.

Not that the particular god has no impact – the church of Vkandis does have a rather different emphasis from, say, Anathei, and Atet's following varies in another direction. And of course sometimes the precepts of a given faith are very heavily based on instructions from the god, like with the Tayledras and their mission to fix the Cataclysm damage tainting the Pelagirs.

(A brief flicker of curiosity - can Sing trivially fix that as well? Probably, though Leareth doesn’t know how, and doesn’t need to push his tired brain to speculate on it right now.)

If anything, Leareth is surprised and impressed by how  much the whole interaction with Vkandis seemed like communication, or at least an attempt at it; it sounds like Vkandis was actually trying to convey somewhat complicated information accurately to a very different kind of entity, rather than just trying to steer Karal via whatever series of visions would have the desired impact on his future actions.

Ah, maybe that's why it was so strange. The communication was more useful - surprisingly useful, Leareth is right - but a confusing vision would've felt more in line with what he expected from gods, really. 

A new change, almost certainly.  It felt new - like Vkandis didn't quite know how to do some of it, or why, but He was trying anyway, because... Sing asked? 

How bizarre this new world is.

Well, at least they know which world they're in, now.  And can sleep before they start dealing with it. 

And at least Leareth wasn't too distressed to give one of his mini-lectures on whatever topic Karal is curious about.  It's familiar and relaxing, the slow filling in of all the gaps in Karal's knowledge compared to his thousands of years of it.  He sends Leareth a sleepy feeling of appreciation, and doesn't take long to be out.

His dreams are full of fear, a dizzying and mostly nonsensical mix of all the awful things that could have happened but didn't - death by fire and strange artifacts and betrayal, sudden or slow or futilely delayed, and an overlay of a god-touch in all of them, his mind's interpretation of the lingering pain.  But none of it wakes him up.