They’re having a bad night!!! Stef was already feverish and delirious and that was before he vomited while too weak to move and got some of it down his lungs and now he’s having a lot of trouble breathing and Vanyel has been in a state of near-panic for the past candlemark because what if Stef got worse suddenly and they didn’t have time to rush Blai back here for his last channel and then Vanyel couldn’t even cast Stabilize even though he has it right there because his hands don’t work!!! 

(The Healers aren’t very worried. They didn’t even wake Shavri. It would be very bad if it were twelve hours until Blai could get a Remove Disease, but it’s not even three. Stef will be fine, this time.) 

But what if he’s not fine!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaah!!! 

(The very, very thin silver lining is that being reminded that Stef could die and that would be the worst thing in the world has, temporarily, cured Vanyel of suicidal thoughts, and he’s not going to have any difficulty with motivating himself to pray at dawn.)

Blai channels on request. He can do Stabilize too, if that is called for.

…If Blai is there and can STAY AWAKE AND BE READY then it’s safe for Vanyel to sleep? Maybe?? It takes him a while to convince himself of this and then he falls asleep instantly, curled up around Stef.

Seldan is certainly still full up on sleep. Chess solitaire until dawn? 

Absolutely.

Shavri gets close to a full night's sleep; she went to bed lateish, but there are still a lot of candlemarks between dusk and dawn. 

She's in ten minutes early, not that there are any real decisions to be made. Keep the same orisons, four Remove Sicknesses, four Lesser Restorations, two Remove Diseases. Stef will need one cast on him as soon as Blai is done praying. The other one is backup for whoever's worst off by tonight; currently Shavri is putting even odds between Vanyel and Stef needing one twice.

Which isn't sustainable, of course, and once they start losing people - more specifically, once they lose Stef and then Van, or Van and then Stef, one of them will be first to go and which one depends on exactly how she misjudges allocating Remove Disease - the rest will go down like dominoes unless they pull Joshel back to Haven, and...is that worth it, if it costs a hundred lives on the border whose only distinction is not being her patients, personally, and people she knows and cares about...

At least Blai and Seldan are looking an awful lot perkier, and so is Gemma. That's one gamble she judged right. 

Seldan is awake enough for some slightly more coherent prayers, and to turn over the situation in his mind and try to think of anything they could be missing. ...He has no idea, really, he's not a mage-researcher. It's up to Brightstar and Jisa and Leareth's mages, now, he hopes they - 

- oh, actually, he can try to go to the blue place a bit later - not during prayer to Iomedae, for that he's staying right here for Blai - and shout some prayers to the Valdemargod to please nudge for every single element where chance matters to go as fortunately as possible. It might help. It might not. He doesn't know. 

please please please Shelyn he will be such a good cleric forever and ever he just needs Stef to not die

<3

By the time everyone is done praying, Shavri has a plan. She doesn't love it, but it's what she's got. 

She'll wait until after the Remove Sickness on Stef to explain. And apologize. 

:Blai, Seldan, we're going to have to skip the Lesser Restorations for both of you today. Van and Stef need two each. You should be able to wait without losing too much ground, with the Nap Stack last night you look a lot better. Stef needs Endurance and Strength, Van needs Endurance and - Dexterity? Whatever the one is that will give him a better chance of casting his spells. ....And I'm going to have to steal Seldan's Remove Sickness, Stef is really badly dehydrated after last night and he won't make it a full day and night with just one. ...Blai, if you feel able to wait on yours, it would be even better if Stef can get three long ones, and I don't know which split is the right call yet but I can judge later in the day how much it's setting you back not having it.: 

:I'm sorry. I just - I really think we might be able to get everyone through this, but we don't have many cards and we'll have to play them just right...: 

:Understood:

Then they'll do that. 

Stef is much better after a Remove Disease, two Lesser Restorations, a channel, and an hour during which he can drink tea. This mostly means that he's in a ferociously foul mood about everything. 

Cranky patients are reassuring! Shavri is reassured!

Vanyel can cast spells again! He's going to abuse Guidance so hard and maybe also cast Stabilize five hundred times today despite the fact that it's absolutely unnecessary and not doing anything, just to be really really sure that if he needs to cast it in the middle of the night he can. 

Awww. It's good for his morale and that's important, right now. 

---

Leareth's mage-researchers, several dozen of them working frantically together, have managed to piece together a talisman that does a better job of replicating Protection from Energy and can be layered with every single other talisman they have. 

If they had unlimited mage-energy to power all that, they could make Brightstar practically indestructible. They don't, actually, need to do that. They have a Gate-terminus – strictly speaking not actually a Gate, it's more based off a variant of the White Winds Adept-spell channel, but the effect is similar – and it shuts itself down after five seconds if Brightstar fails to get it earlier, and they have channels. 

Brightstar is showing up every three candlemarks on the dot with a fascinating collection of injuries one can sustain when opening ill-advised Gate-like structures directly into other planes in order to drop search-anchor artifacts for Leareth's mages to track. Two days of this and they should have enough numbers to attempt to use the formulas from some of Leareth's dug-up research notes and create a simplified model of the planar relationships. Which will itself take two days, and then - some number more days, to actually derive a routing... 

...At least five days. Maybe more than that. 

Shavri doesn't think they're going to make it. But maybe they get lucky. Maybe Someone is looking out for them. 

She doesn't know who to pray to, but. If you're out there, and you're - trying to help - I'm going to keep this going as long as I can. 

...How's Blai looking on managing to drink some of his broth, spread out over the morning, without the benefit of a Remove Sickness? 

........can they maybe make the broth really really gingery so he can instruct his gut that it's Helping.

They can do that. 

The awakeness wears off by midafternoon, at least for Seldan, and thinking at all is like wading for glue again.

(He made six separate trips to the blue place to yell at the Valdemargod for thirty seconds at a time. It felt better than a single long stint not in rapport. He’s stacked the deck as much as he can, now, he thinks, and it’s just. Waiting.

The Shadow-Lover didn’t try to talk to him again. He hopes, vaguely, that She ended up figuring out something better for talking to Leareth. Or at least decided She had learned enough.)

Brightstar shows up for five of Vanyel’s six channels before, presumably, stopping for the night to actually rest. Channels don’t fix backlash.

Van and Stef are both feverish by nightfall. Which is still early. They’re not even halfway to the next dawn.

…Stef should get Blai’s last long Remove Sickness, he’s had two today. Blai can have the ten-minute one, if that’s long enough to help much.