As soon as that happens he falls asleep without quite meaning to allow that to happen.

...That's probably fine? Sleep is good for sick people?

Seldan Mindspeaks Shavri, who's over at the other side of the room right now, and then he goes on staying awake and watching. In case maybe it's not fine. 

This would normally be fine and good, and in fact Shavri would love for Blai to skip experiencing most of the next...how long has it been...it's coming on four candlemarks since Joshel left and at that point Jisa very firmly told her "six to eight candlemarks to get the Gate-routing" and that Joshel was aware he ABSOLUTELY needed to be READY with clerics hired to come through a surprise Gate directly into the House of Healing. Two to four candlemarks. 

...It's not that fine. When he's asleep, he isn't breathing fast enough to make up for the fact that his lungs are doing a really terrible job of being lungs right now, and normally it is just straightforwardly good for patients to be calm and relaxed and not stressed out but apparently all the anxiety was genuinely doing something to keep his heart moving enough blood around. 

She feels like the worst person in the world but she goes over and shakes him awake. :Seldan, keep him awake, if he's breathing slower than -: she sends a sort of mental tap tap tap which is quite a lot faster than normal breathing, :- that's a problem right now and you need to yell at him in Mindspeech to breathe faster than that. I'm sorry. I don't have better ideas right now. Two to four candlemarks to wait.: 

Seldan can do that.

:Blai?: 

wut

:Breathe. Like this.: He has memorized Shavri's suggested speed and can think it at Blai like a drummer directing a marching band. 

but he's tired and what if he drops his prestidigitation, he can't get it back without eight hours solid

yes sir.

Two to four candlemarks of this. Seldan is perhaps understanding slightly better now why Joshel was so grumpy about being ordered to sit here for an entire day and cast Virtue constantly on people and that was only twice a minute and not every two seconds, and Joshel was not himself slowly dying of progressive damage. 

(Also he's really, really scared, and he has to keep it behind shields because it won't help Blai to have to interact with it and he certainly can't complain to Shavri, but he - why didn't he think to be afraid of Blai dying first, all of the times he was scared about anything it was that he would die and leave Blai dealing with that and he - it's almost impossible to imagine - and he probably just involuntarily dies but what if he doesn't then he has to hang so they can save a diamond on Raising him too but they might not have a Raise Dead available immediately he doesn't know if Joshel knew to ask for that aaaaaaaaaaa) 

Shavri has run out of emotional capacity to feel bad. They can limp along for a few more candlemarks like this and then it will be over. 

breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe. breathe.

On....the very dubious bright side...Blai is eventually literally too drowsy to be forming any particular horrible-thought-experiment-seminary interpretations of what's happening and so Seldan does not have to ignore finding that upsetting. 

On the even more dubious bright side, being TERRIFIED THAT HIS HERALD WILL DIE is almost as good as a stimulant when it comes to not accidentally falling asleep. 

...At some point he's getting. Even less response than that. He tries yelling louder in Mindspeech but there's a limit there and he's actually getting awfully low on Gift-use reserves even though Companions are supposed to have approximately unlimited Mindspeech stamina and he's literally just Mindspeaking his Herald who he's in direct physical contact with but it's starting to feel like...a long way. But it's much more of a problem that it's not even working. 

:Shavri get over here right now: 

What. 

Oh that's not ideal. 

Shavri spares a moment to at least have the thought that this is a particularly mean thing to do to someone from Cheliax, though no particular emotion one might describe as "feeling bad about it" accompanies the thought, she is flat out of emotions.

She stopped bothering to put anyone on painblocking a while back, when he got sleepy again - she grabs and twists the flesh and muscle at the top of Blai's shoulder by the base of his neck, digging her thumb and finger in, pinching as hard as she can. It's pretty astonishingly painful and normally wakes people the fuck up.

Does he wake up. 

...page... sixteen...? it's not page sixteen and it's going to keep happening till he guesses right -

(His eyes flutter open but it's not really helping with Project Fucking Breathe.)

It's helping at all relative to him being more-or-less unconscious but this is not a very good plan. 

Shavri...has gone past worried to something like furious. With the Shadowgod, mostly. She asked for a miracle and she got this, a dribble of hope and a gradual reframing of her expectations until she found herself here, more-or-less torturing her patient in the distant hope it will get her two. more. candlemarks. 

It would serve the Shadowgod right if she decided she was done, now, it wasn't a good enough miracle, They should have tried harder and given her more to work with, but she can't do that to Seldan. 

:You are not allowed to go to sleep right now! Breathe! Faster than that!: she snarls at Blai, and she's not angry with him but he's not going to be able to tell the difference and there's got to be something wrong with her because the only reaction she has to that is to note that maybe it'll be motivating. 

Seldan is genuinely extremely tempted to kick Shavri in the head right now but if he does that then everyone might die. (And he doesn't think he can actually move his legs, anyway.) 

it is very merciful of her not to have broken all of his joints yet. breathe. breathe. breathe.

:Jisa what’s the timeline: 

Jisa jumps. She’s…never heard her mother’s mindvoice with that particular tone before.

:They got an approximate routing but it’s - not possible to cast. Brightstar must have been doing something - intuitive - that wasn’t how he described it. They’re checking nearby paths for the shortest one.:

That’s not a timeline that’s a pile of excuses. :How. Long.:

:…They think in ninety minutes they’ll have something workable at all.:

Ninety minutes. Maybe doable. Of course, what are the chances that the time comes and she gets more excuses and “we need another candlemark” that turns into another and another and this is all pointless anyway. She could say that ninety minutes is the longest she’ll aim for and after that she gives up, but - she told herself that yesterday and it didn’t stick.

:Mother, what - is there a problem -:

What a stupid question. :Yes. I’m handling it. Worry about your side of things.:

She takes over the Healing-link. The junior trainer is starting to have trouble maintaining it. She keeps yelling at Blai to breathe and hurting him when he tries to drift off.

I take it back 

I didn’t want this miracle 

but she doesn’t, actually, stop.

breathe. ...........breathe.

Okay this isn't working new plan.

She stops trying to keep Blai awake. It’s a losing battle. She can, to some extent, keep him breathing at all with nonstop, fiddly, direct Healing nudges. Not adequately, really, but maybe enough that he won’t fucking die in the next…seventy? minutes…and any other damage to his body can be fixed. 

…There’s not actually a reason you can't pile literally every single air-of-life talisman that anyone can find in the entire House of Healing directly in front of your patient's face. That will help. She should have thought of it sooner. She feels like an idiot.

The problem is that she now needs to hold a link perfectly, with no interruption for even a second, for over a candlemark, while multitasking on a fiddly task that she’s not sure anyone but her can handle under these conditions on the fly. That’s hard at the best of times - she’ll lose it for a moment if she sneezes - and it’s practically impossible when a patient’s heartbeat is starting to falter. 

Maybe if she’d had any sleep in the last thirty candlemarks— not the time for what-ifs.

Vanyel hasn’t been able to pray for new spells for the last two dawns, but he should still have his orisons. He’s not capable of using them right now but - he could, she thinks, compensate just barely enough for the weakness and clumsiness if he wasn’t also falling asleep midsentence.

She orders one of the trainees to go make him drink as much stimulant-laced tea as he can manage. It’s a bad idea, she has now OBSERVED DIRECTLY that if you give it to people in this condition they’ll crash really hard when it starts to wear off, but that’s a future problem. It’ll hold for a candlemark.