"And the north?" 

"Still no word. Reckon we lost the relay." 

"- Leareth?" 

"I don't see how. Even for him." 

Savil twitches. 

"Gate," she says, after a moment. "...On the permanent terminus. It's...Karis..." 

"Arven?" 

Savil just shakes her head, not speaking, not meeting anyone's eyes. 

"Can someone figure out who's left on the Council." 

"My brother. Should I call a meeting." 

"Please. And - Healers'? Bardic?" 

Herald Siri rises. "I'll go check on Bardic." 

Shallan heads to Healers'.

Aber, dean of Healers', is among the disappeared. Gemma, after the requisite amount of back-and-forth sniping, will reluctantly stand in his place. 

Dellar is gone as well. 

Bard Breda has been running frantically around the Bardic dorms, trying to check rooms, but she allows herself to be dragged away for a middle-of-the-night emergency meeting. It's not like there's anything she can do about the beds they find empty. 

Brightstar finds the collection of minds and heads straight for it, not letting any of the doors get in his way. 

Dara nearly jumps out of her skin when the meeting-room door bangs open again. 

"...What?" She blinks at the unfamiliar young man. Or, no, not exactly unfamiliar. "Oh. Brightstar." 

"Vanyel. Is he..." 

Brightstar is fairly sure that he already knows the answer. 

Dara is a coward. She can't seem to open her mouth to speak. 

"I'm sorry, ke'chara." 

"Why are you sorry." Brighstar's silver eyes blaze. "Do you know who did this." 

The Heralds look around at each other. 

Her chest aches. There's no solid ground left to stand on. 

"Well, I don't see the point in secrecy now," Dara says, quietly. "Brightstar, Vanyel was - destined to fight an immortal mage in the north. Leareth. But I don't think this was Leareth." A pause. "K'Treva, did you - how many...?" 

"Half." 

Featherfire knows a lot less Valdemaran than her brother. She hovers behind him in silence. 

"Us too." 

All Dara wants is for this to not be happening. 

"Well, have a seat," she hears herself say, finally, as though from a great distance. "We're...going to sort this out. It's going to be all right." 

Which is a lie. It's not going to be all right. How could it be. 

But she pushes out the words anyway, and maybe by the time she's finished with that, she'll have thought of the next step forward. 

It's been a a candlemark since the event. 

Leareth rises from trance, belatedly and unpleasantly returning to awareness of his body, including the exhaustion weighting his limbs and the molten pain in his head. 

:- Nayoki?: