:No!: Leareth's externally visible expression is still completely unreadable but his mindvoice is slightly upset. :I - no - I am not sure -  ...I am not very confident in - describing things accurately - right now and you should take that into account but I think I am afraid of being alone even though I am not sure that has ever happened before.: 

Oh. 

...That, again, also makes perfect sense if Vanyel imagines how he would feel in an analogous situation, and it's just that this continues to be not at all a natural way to think about Leareth! 

Vanyel is just going to pretend really, really hard that he's giving advice to - Randi, or Treven, or someone where he doesn't have twenty years' worth of accumulated belief that they're obviously invincible. 

:If I had just nearly died with no one there to help then I wouldn't want to be left alone either: he says. :I'm glad we figured that out, it makes sense that it's confusing if you don't normally feel that way and it's happening when you can't think as well as usual.:

Leareth is clearly so bothered about the part where he can't think as well as usual. Vanyel is pretty sure that when he's been this upset he just...says things, many of which are completely false, and the people who know him well don't need to be told to discount them as less reliable than usual. 

:You seem to be finding it stressful that you aren't sure you can trust your thoughts and feelings to be - about reality?: he says. :I - that makes sense, I don't like it either, but you might be the only person on the planet who doesn't get that sometimes when you're very upset? We're not going to - judge you, or decide that you're less trustworthy...: 

Yet again it takes what feels like an unreasonably long time and total amount of effort to poke at that until it comes clear.

:What if the magic does not agree?:

What if the - what - it takes Vanyel a few moments to even have a guess.

:Do you mean the spell for seeing your alignment? I - really don’t think that can possibly be how it works?:

Aziza is that right, please tell him it’s in fact not a thing for people to stop reading Lawful if they’re temporarily impaired by an illness and accidentally say some things that aren’t strictly speaking true - but definitely weren’t deliberate lies - because they weren’t thinking clearly??

:It makes sense that he’s tense about it, it - was really loadbearing earlier when we were trying to negotiate and de-escalate with Blai’s help - I think we’re solidly just allied with him now but he might not actually take that because he missed the last eleven days…:

:I wouldn't think that'd shift him if he's not really borderline, but if he does there is actually a spell for setting your alignment back to rights, if that helps him to know!:

:- I just asked Songbird Aziza - she’s another cleric of Shelyn who volunteered to come and help us - and she doesn’t think it could affect you reading Lawful unless you were already right on the edge, which seems unlikely? And if it did, there’s a spell that could put you back to reading Lawful again.: 

This succeeds wildly as a distraction, mostly because it's such a baffling and alarming claim! Leareth can't see how that could even work and if it did - he doesn't think you could do that with compulsions or even Mindhealing, not replicably at least - there's something off there, it doesn't fit with how Blai seemed to think that reading someone's alignment was a reliable source of true information about them, though maybe he was only that confident because he knew that Velgarth doesn't have access to the spell - 

:How does it work? Does it - can it only go back to something you were recently or is it - arbitrary other alignments -: 

Vanyel doesn't have the slightest idea how it works and it had not at all occurred to him to ask!

:Aziza, he wants to know how the spell works and whether it's - limited to rolling you back to something you just shifted away from recently or if it can aim for any alignment - he seems pretty alarmed about the idea, actually -: 

:- Atonement doesn't work on an unwilling subject at all! You can aim for any alignment, as long as you've got a caster of that alignment, but it won't go through if you don't really mean it. Also if you did whatever you're Atoning for on purpose instead of because you were enchanted or drunk or something, then you need the really expensive incense, but I think Leareth is currently more like enchanted or drunk or something:

:Right now? Yes, I think so.: 

Vanyel relays this to Leareth. It makes sense to him that it works that way, and seems compatible with alignment - meaning something real - on reflection also makes a lot of sense for Leareth to be alarmed that this makes alignment readings less informative, even apart from the fact where he was definitely wondering for a moment if it was some kind of absurdly thorough mind control. 

He's slightly distracted, though, because he's mulling on something, and while he waits for Leareth to process that he Mindspeaks Aziza again. 

:Even if his Law is fine after this, which I think it will be and he's just - feeling helpless about things - I wonder if he would want to do the spell to not read Evil? ...I guess we never got definite confirmation that he reads Evil, I think Blai ended up using a cheaper spell that only checks Law, but it would be so surprising and weird if he didn't - but I'm also very sure he's sincere about intending to stop it with all the evil plans, if he - if there are powerful Good actors he can cooperate with, and trying isn't just going to get him killed for being insufficiently paranoid, he's going to do that? ...I think I shouldn't pitch him on it now when he's this impaired because it's a complicated topic but it might make him less on edge if he can stop worrying that someone from Golarion will decide to betray him over how his alignment reads?:

:I don't think he has to worry about that in Osirion - it's legal to be an undead, in Osirion, so long as you behave yourself - but if he's going to gallivant all over the globe it might be prudent not to read Evil, yes:

Vanyel abruptly has a lot more questions about Osirion but now does not really seem like the time. 

It does look like Leareth is - more present - now that he's been reassured about the limitations on the Atonement spell. Vanyel is trying to think what else there even is. He's not incredibly up to speed either. 

:...We have reason to think that Vkandis isn't going to be able to do anything else at all anytime soon: he says. :He didn't do anything to interfere with Sarenrae clericing Karis, and - oh, Seldan and Blai were able to speak to the Shadow-Lover, without actually almost-dying - I mean, not more than all of us were slowly dying before we got help - it sounds like the Shadowgod has been talking to various Golarion gods and learning a few things about - communication. They're still pretty terrible at it but I think They're clearly trying. They didn't - try to stop it - because it would've been too expensive and because Vkandis might have tried something even more destructive - if He'd aimed for Haven...: Vanyel tries not to shudder. :But They did intervene to catch you, so we knew we could get you back if we made contact with Golarion. ...They also had a conversation with you, while you were dead.: 

To Aziza, :- I thiiink maybe I'd better leave out the part where supposedly the Shadow-Lover - that's an avatar of a local god - reported that Abadar liked Leareth's soul enough to offer to buy him from the Shadowgod. I kind of want to see his face later when someone tells him, but - right now it would just scare him, I think? ...I'm also not sure we should be confident that's really what happened, maybe the Shadow-Lover is just incredibly bad at communicating and it was something less bizarre than that.: 

:Wow, yeah, that's a bit weird! Trading in souls is Evil so I'd guess either that got garbled or Abadar's just, you know. Not Good:

It's slightly weird how she's acting like that's an everyone-knows fact even though surely it only comes up for gods? ...Well, the gods seem less terrible at communicating, maybe Blai's horrible ex-god got up to a lot of that and...bragged about it? 

He waits for Leareth's response. 

Leareth is, again, spending a while picking that apart to see if any of his inchoate confusion resolves into actual questions. 

:- I suppose it makes sense that I do not remember that: he sends finally. :Do you think they kept notes - I would like to know -?: 

Of course Leareth wants to know what he said in a conversation while he was dead and incredibly disoriented and missing most of his memories. He's probably going to put it in his records. 

:I doubt it, it was when we were all ill, but Seldan has a good memory. ...It sounds like the Shadowgod also had Nayoki's soul talk to yours, after she died? She won't remember either, obviously, we only know because one of the Abadaran clerics had a spell for speaking to souls. But...I do have a vague hope that They got what They wanted, which was - seeing you better, so They can cooperate rather than just - manipulate. I think it's good news that They were trying for that at all.: 

Leareth spends a while turning that over and, eventually, concurs that it would be good news. 

Is there anything else, that's a good idea to tell Leareth right now rather than a terrible idea? 

Well, there's the boring logistics, which Leareth only got the very briefest of reports on. :We sent Joshel to a city in Golarion - Sothis, it's in Osirion which is Abadaran, Abadar is the Lawful Neutral god of trade - with a box of diamonds that your organization had procured and a very broad authorization to negotiate. He got us fourteen clerics and five of them can cast Raise Dead, though there's a time limit and it's shorter for less powerful clerics, I think only three of the five will be able to get the people who died when you did. We're Gating them around to cast the Gentle Repose spell on as many people as we can get to – I think they'll do more after today, even if the sixth-circle clerics who came this time won't be able to do twelve days, because there are more powerful clerics than that who could. There's also someone back in Golarion who can do the Resurrection spell, which doesn't have a time limit, without a diamond at all? And sells it for the same price as a Raise Dead, so that's an option for less urgent cases once we have reliable Gate-transport.: 

That was a lot of things and Leareth can follow it, he's not literally too impaired on working memory to do that, he's just...not really able to reflect on it and pin down any questions while he's mostly focused on understanding and remembering it. 

He nods. 

:...I'm sure we haven't done everything perfectly right: Vanyel says. :In your absence, I mean. And - it'll help, a lot, to have you going over everything later. But - I think things are under control and they're not going to spiral out of control overnight. It's okay for you to - have some time off.: 

Somewhat to Leareth's surprise, that does actually feel reassuring, even without him having tried to pick through every piece of it. Apparently he...trusts Vanyel's judgement, that Vanyel wouldn't say that unless he believed it and that Vanyel wouldn't believe it unless it was a reasonable assessment of the situation from the information he has. 

Oh, good, he finally managed to say the right thing that was actually reassuring and not just stressful. 

...Also, he finally just thought of an idea that he really should have had right away. He's never been hugging friends with Leareth, and isn't sure if Leareth likes hugs in full generality, but...they were on 'sharing songs with each other' terms even well before the point that their relationship could be described as anything other than straightforwardly enemies.

And he's a Songbird now! 

:Would it help if I sing to you?: he asks Leareth. :I don't know if I can manage to play well too: he was embarrassingly out of practice lately even before the not-entirely-fixed problem with his hands, :but I'm happy to ask someone to get my lute and give it a try...: 

That...would be nice, Leareth thinks. There can't possibly be very many songs that will remind him of being trapped alone and dying in a records cache. 

:You could sing Demonsbane: he sends, because it's actually a very good song and because the words-producing part of his mind is running somewhat ahead of the part that would, for example, check not just 'does he know Vanyel knows the song' and not, also, 'does Vanyel hate it.'

But that's not fair, he isn't Demonsbane anymore ...Exactly, Vanyel tells himself. There's no reason for him to hate the song when it's about a different Vanyel from over a decade ago, and he's not Vanyel Demonsbane anymore, he's Songbird (Songbird-Herald? Herald-Songbird?) Vanyel. If it would bring Leareth a bit of comfort to hear a familiar song, of course he can sing it. 

:'Fandes, can you pass word for someone to bring my lute?: He's going to embarrass himself so badly trying to play right now but, you know what, if that brings Leareth some comfort then he doesn't mind it at all. 

:Of course, love.: A pause. :...You could ask Songbird Aziza if she likes to sing to, you know, given the givens... Leareth doesn’t know her, but you can’t stay all day, and if he sees you getting along, he might be willing to have her around for the afternoon.: