- Vanyel, who hasn't subjectively experienced all that much time passing but was starting to wonder what's going on, is now wondering why he doesn't feel more surprised. 

"Leareth asked for me? How is he - is he fighting Thanos now? I - guess that sounds like something he'd do. Um." 

He grits his teeth. He could really have used longer to make this decision, but it's not like it was ever in doubt. "I'm going back, then. Er, what about my Companion, Yfandes, where is she - if she's back in Velgarth I'm going to have a bad time -" 

He hadn't really questioned it, earlier. He couldn't find her with Mindspeech but it didn't feel like he had a broken Companion-bond, and he hadn't seen much reason to expect they would get to be together even in death. 

LEARETH IS FIGHTING THANOS. YFANDES IS STILL ALIVE, AND WITH HIM.

And Vanyel is alive again.

Meanwhile, Calanáro wakes up on a very soft bed in a very beautiful garden, naked, in a body that feels fresh-made, although he wasn't old or injured enough before to notice much of a difference.

He's not that confused. Obviously the time-travel experiment had gone badly, and Mandos had sent him back without bothering to lecture him, or even allow him to experience any subjective time in the Halls at all. That's unusual, but not really, given the circumstances.

He's talked to the Returned. He knows about Lórien. There's clothes under the bed, it's a six-day walk in that direction to the nearest place with a train station, and so on and so forth. Hopefully he can find a way to speed up the process of getting back to the rest of the group.

Except—there's a second bed in this clearing.

He leaps up, and runs toward her, and embraces her, and their infant son whom she's also holding. They stay that way for a long time.

"Calo—I—I looked for you—"

"I didn't die with everyone else. We're—working on a way to fight who did this, and there was an accident—I wasn't expecting he'd send you back too—"

"He told me I needed to give Fëanáro a physics lecture because he was too busy, and before I could ask what the literal fuck on at least three separate levels, I—was here."

"Oh yeah, context—Fëanáro's back now, that had nothing to do with Mandos and is a long addition to an already long story—we're working on time travel, to undo this, and I volunteered to be the first test subject. It—didn't work. As you see."

"I think I am beginning to understand the contents of the lecture I need to deliver.

"Did he—did he actually think that would work—literal children know we're bound to the fates of Arda and while the usual description isn't exactly—mathematically precise—I'd have thought that Fëanáro of all people could—extrapolate—"

Calanáro can't answer for Fëanor, but he didn't realize that, either. In hindsight, he probably should have.

"Do you think it would work for Men?"

"Oh of course, as far as I've been able to determine they don't even have immortal souls. Let's get back there before they kill anyone else, though."

They put on the robes that are folded neatly under their beds. Something has been provided for the baby, as well.

Vanyel wakes up in a luxurious bed, in a gorgeous forest clearing, feeling INCREDIBLE. He hadn't even realized how many aches and pains from old injuries he was carrying around until now that he's back in a real, physical, not-metaphorical-at-all body, and they're still gone. 

His mind doesn't hurt, and that's even stranger. The yawning void calling out over and over for Tylendel is - smoothed over, healed, made whole. Not exactly back to the way it was before, but...he's glad of that, he thinks. For better or worse, Tylendel changed him forever, including in ways that weren't to do with the magical soulbond at all. 

(He is not going to think about Stef right now and possibly ever.) 

He's still confused about half a dozen different things: how Leareth got to another world, what in all hells was going on with the shapeshifting-falsely-imprisoned person who - said something hinting that he was, if not exactly a god, somehow adjacent to being one? Also, how and why he ended up here, with a god who looks a bit like the Shadow-Lover but is offended to be called by that name - who seems to think that the gods of Velgarth enslaved humanity there on false premises - 

(Leareth, he muses with a dull trickle of amusement, would probably agree.) 

Not all of that confusion is urgent, he thinks. There's a war to fight. Leareth...asked for his help, asked for him by name... He's not sure what the emotion he feels about that is, but there definitely is one.

Vanyel gets up, stretches. Finds a robe under the bed and puts it on. Yfandes isn't here with him but he can feel her, off in the distance. 

He starts walking. 

Randi wakes up and feels...fine. 

- well, except for the fact that he WANTS SHAVRI WHERE IS SHE???? 

He's on his feet in under a second, which is incredible in itself, he hasn't felt this good since he was twenty-two. (Gods, he's barely even thirty now. He's spent years feeling old and weary and jaded and tired all the time...) 

He reaches into the lifebond, and only then realizes that it's there - still there? back? it's hard to know what the state of it was when he was dead, it was something in between everything else.

:Shavri! Shavri are you all right -:

Shavri is currently sprawled on the ground in...a forest? It's a spectacularly beautiful forest - there are so many colours, it sort of feels like she's fallen into a painting - and it's even more intensely peaceful and soothing than the Elf village by Fëanor's house.

She lies there for a very brief period and then the mindvoice reaches her - and at the same time the lifebond reaches her, and it's like - it's reality making sense again, it's the entire universe falling back into alignment with Randi's smile - 

- as he sprints toward her and scoops her into his arms and spins her around, :Shavri, gods, Shavri, Shavri - it's all right, I'm here -:  

:Randi... I love you, I love you so much -: 

:He sent me back! Because I said you needed me - I'm never letting go of you again, Shavri, never ever ever -: 

:He asked if I wanted to stop being lifebonded to you! Can you imagine?: 

...The lifebond means she can't hide her feelings from him, though. And everything else that's between them - over a decade of joys and sorrows and struggles and trying so so so hard day after day - demands honesty, because otherwise what's the point of all this, what's the point of saying that he's HERS and that NO ONE CAN TAKE HIM AWAY FROM HER - 

Her smile fades. Not all the way, she can't contain the bubbling delight and joy that she has her Randi, hershershers, forever and ever - 

:- I mean, I don't - agree, right. With whatever god - decided to meddle, to make us lifebonded - to make us Their pawns... But it doesn't matter now. Water under the bridge. You're mine. Never letting go of you: 

Randi holds her, rocking her gently. :I know. I understand: 

...She's not sure he does, actually. Shavri feels like she's always been more willing to stare into the darkness than Randi was. Especially in the last couple of years, because Randi swore an oath - because Randi has a Companion, and after witnessing what Yfandes did to Vanyel, she knows what that means.

And she doesn't. She refused it, when Taver tried to Choose her, tried to bind her forever to the future of Valdemar - it might've been the most important thing in the entire world and she said no, (and what does that say about her and her priorities, that she cared more about holding onto herself and who she is than saving the kingdom....) 

But, actually, none of her stupid pointless angst matters right now. 

:Randi. Randi, hey. We - we have to go. Half the people in the world - in the entire UNIVERSE - just died. And Leareth is trying to fix it, but he - he's really really not all right, and he needs our help: 

:- what. Leareth? Needs our help?: 

Somehow she hadn't even considered the fact that Randi would be completely in the dark about the past month's worth of events, even though on reflection it's obvious. 

:He contacted Valdemar almost immediately: At least, she thinks so - she wasn't exactly tracking things very well, by then. :Said it wasn't him. That he'd lost half his people too. He offered us - a lot of help. More people would've died in the aftermath, if he hadn't: 

:...And then a military commander from another world came and told us what happened. Asked if we wanted to help fight, since we - have magic, and apparently Earth doesn't. I guess she went and talked to Leareth afterward, because he showed up with a space-capsule later. Anyway. They asked for volunteers. I offered. They let me go: