This time, dying doesn't hurt. 

Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron, (involuntarily and unwillingly) called Demonsbane and Hero of Stony Tor by his allies - and the Butcher in White by his enemies - is, when it happens, sitting on a stool made of ice and snow, inside a hut of snow-blocks, talking to an immortal mage dressed in black, his destined enemy, his– in some ways his closest friend... 

“This is a very hard problem,” Leareth is saying. “I will gesture at a potential solution, and explain the details in time. We wish to build a being that is truly trying to accomplish the goals we have given it, but can also reason as though from an outside perspective – it should know that it is incomplete, that its builders were imperfect and may have made mistakes, and also that these creators still know more than it does of what ‘good’ means and may wish to correct it. It should wish to allow such corrections, because its true underlying goal is to come to understand what is meant by ‘good’. Even when it feels very confident that a certain action is correct, it should wish to run this by an outside force, and not be swayed by a prediction that this outside force will prevent it, nor try to deceive its makers by telling the most convincing version, even if its own internal reasoning says that this will best allow it to accomplish its current goals and values. Ultimately, it should hold something like philosophical uncertainty, and thus caution will emerge naturally, rather than being something we attempt to impose. Does this make sense to you in principle?” 

"- Herald Vanyel? ...Are you– Vanyel!" 

He feels himself coming apart. 

It is, in some ways, the exact reverse of what a Final Strike feels like from the inside. 

( - blue-white fire pressed up against the other side of a Gate - ) 

He feels the pattern-that-makes-up-a-Vanyel start to unravel, and there's no triumph in it, no victory, no defiantly offering up everything that he is to an unforgiving horizon. Just confusion, and a sort of cold distant resignation in the face of it. 

He's died before. It's hard to muster any fear. 

But frustration, yes. They were in the middle of a conversation. It feels very rude of reality to throw this at him for no reason - in this one case he's, actually, very damned sure it wasn't Leareth's doing -

Leareth watches Vanyel disintegrate into grey dust, along with the snow and sky, and - it feels like there should be time to react, like there should be something he can do, it seems to happen in slow motion and surely he can reach Vanyel in time, surely he can - what - something... 

But he can't; he has time to stand up, to take a step toward Vanyel, as the fabric of their dream-reality dissolves, and the last thing he sees is Vanyel's tired eyes looking into his.

Not angry. There's no blame aimed at Leareth. No pleading, either, no fear–

In that single endless moment when it's already too late for last words between them, let alone to do anything to stop this, he remembers one of their recent conversations. When Vanyel spoke of Urtho - 

He mentioned you. You were his best student. I’m not sure if he ever said this to your face, but he was proud of you. He said - he said that there was a spark in you. He feared some of your ideas, but he said, if you were to be lost to darkness, it wouldn’t be because you didn’t care, but because you cared too much. He saw that in you.

- and he opens his mouth to speak, but it's not like he ever prepared any final words for this particular scenario - 

The point at which Leareth wakes up screaming, is around the same point when the just-raised alarm makes it past all the other layers of his organization, and the frantic Mindtouch reaches him. 

Bard-trainee Stefen was, right before this, having a stupid nightmare. 

- too to turn back, too late for anything - only a single bottomless instant, offering up everything to a welcoming sky - fury and desperation and determination - one last fiery blaze and then nothing at all - 

And then it turns into...something else...the same awful unbearable wrongness except inside out and backward and somehow even WORSE, it's - broken, pointless, everything that ever mattered in the world falling apart for no reason at all - 

And then Stef wakes up in an inn in the northwest of Valdemar, to the sound of a startled shriek from the taproom below his crowded shared bedroom. Quickly followed by other yells of confused panic. 

Back in Haven, in the room that Stef shared with his roommate Medren for the past six years, a bed lies unmade and empty, as grey dust drifts down to the carpet.

With Stef on his Bardic Journeyman trip up north, and the rest of Haven thrown into chaos, no one will even see this scene for days.  

She wakes to the Death Bell tolling, and the agonizing soul-deep certainly that Vanyel is dead. 

The Death Bell doesn't stop ringing. Not for a long time. 

King Randale of Valdemar dies in his sleep, painlessly, never waking in time to know it's happening to him let alone to the rest of the kingdom which he's sacrificed so much for. 

And Shavri wakes up with a cry of shock-horror-confusion as half of her mind and heart and soul follow him into dust and ashes. 

She doesn't understand what's happening. She doesn't think she ever will again. It's not the sort of feeling that can ever be made sense of. 

But she tears herself free of the bedclothes anyway, because her lifebonded is gonegonegone and there's nothing to be found in clinging to the dust that used to be him, he's not there - and someone else might, still, be - 

Jisa is sleeping fitfully and she does half-wake, just barely in time to feel confused - to reach for a familiar/safe/beloved mind - but no time for words, only a fragmentary mindtouch, there and gone, and by the time Shavri reaches her daughter's bedroom there's nothing left. 

Rolan, the Groveborn Companion, a mind half in a blue place outside of time itself and only half bound to the body he wears in this life, sees it coming.

Not in time to act, if there were any action he could have taken, which there isn't. He sees the full inevitability of it, an instant before it happens - sees a dark wave smashing down on the tight-woven threads of silver that are his land his people his country and there is nothing, there was never going to be anything to do -

- except reach for his Chosen, because Rolan may be an immortal alien entity who was never human - who was built to love and lose over and over again and never break, to hold up the foundations of Valdemar century after century - but, in that awful second or two of realization before the storm hits, he is still humanlike enough to feel afraid. 

Dara snaps awake, aaaaaahwhatwhatwhat - 

Herald Tantras stirs sleepily in her arms. Starts to mumble something - her name, slurred with drowsiness. "Dara, wha...?" 

And then he looks at his own hand in confusion, silhouetted against the peaceful darkness of their bedroom, and lets out a soft confused whimper as it crumbles to dust, and then there's only silence. 

Dara's first thought is that it has to be a dream. 

Her second thought is that Rolan is panicking in the back of her mind and she's pretty sure he only does that for the literal end of the world. 

:Rolan, what–: 

:- I have no answers for you, Chosen: 

His mindvoice is empty and tired and full of aching, pleading, uncomprehending grief, as the Death Bell starts to ring and doesn't stop. 

Randi.

Dara doesn't even try for him with Mindspeech. She already knows the answer. The Death Bell is tolling it in her bones. 

:...Treven?: 

Herald-trainee Treven, heir to the throne of Valdemar, wakes for a fraction of a second, just long enough to feel the agony of a broken lifebond, but it doesn't last for long. 

And then Dara finds herself on her feet. Everything hurts, but that doesn't matter, right now, she has to - something - she has no idea what but she can't just pull the covers over her head and hide from it, no matter how badly she wants to.

:Keiran?: 

Just woken in terror and confusion!

:I don't - what's happening–:

:I don't know - Rolan doesn't know - Randi and Trev gone, and...: 

She can feel the others as well, now. Deaths falling like pebbles, but the pool they land in isn't still, now, there's no time for it to settle in between. 

The Companions are converging on Companions' Field now. Those of them still alive. Usually, when a Herald dies a natural death - or an unnatural death with some warning - their Companion has a little time for farewells. 

Some of the Companions are faring better than others, here. Herald-Mage Kilchas' Companion, Rohan, crumples to the gravel path in a white heap. Sandra's Shonsea makes it as far as the field, limping, lost in a haze of pain, and only then starts to fade. 

:- Was it Leareth?: she tries to ask. 

Even Rolan has no answer. 

Herald Joshel wakes in pain and confusion as his Kimbry, just seconds from reaching the others in the field, stops in confusion and then crumbles into nothing. 

He can't - it hurts - what's happening - he has to - 

A voice rings in his mind, cold steel and blue fire. 

:Hold on. You are not allowed to die. Valdemar needs you: 

Alone in the abandoned stables, a white form sprawls motionless in her stall -

- eventually, Yfandes' flanks heave, as she remembers how to breathe. 

Her centre is gone. She is...lost, falling, alone, she can't/shouldn't/mustn't be, anymore, but she - is... 

One more breath. 

On the edge of her awareness, there's something like a door. Metaphorically speaking. It's so close and it would be so easy to slip through and then she wouldn't be alone, anymore, and the pain would stop. 

One more breath, first. 

It's unendurable, and yet, here she is. 

Another breath. 

She doesn't know why. 'Why' isn't a concept that makes sense, anymore, it feels incoherent that anything will ever again happen for a reason, the foundations of the world are too deeply cracked for that - 

But she's still here. 

It's impossible to sleep through the Death Bell continuously ringing, and Lord Withen Ashkevron wakes with a jolt, disoriented, heart racing with the sudden rush of adrenaline. 

About three seconds later he's in the hallway in his nightshirt and bare feet, yelling, there has to be SOMEONE who knows what's going on - 

His wife is slower on the mark, and by the time she totters out to join him, yawning, the corridor is full of servants and other nobles emerging from their adjacent Palace suites. 

"Withen, dear, what's happening?" 

"...What is it?" 

There isn't going to be any way to say this without getting hysterics-at, is there. 

...It's incredibly hard to speak, for some inexplicable reason. 

"Vanyel." 

Withen swallows. 

"Dead." 

"What?" 

"He's - not - the only one - no one know what - people just, just vanishing - into dust..." 

Treesa lets out a quiet whimper, but doesn't immediately start shrieking or bawling, which is doing better than a few of the other noble ladies down the hall. 

"- Lissa," she gulps out, finally. 

"Oh." 

And he takes her arm, and they break into a run. Or the closes to a run that Treesa can manage in her floor-length nightdress, at least. 

It's not going to make a lot of difference either way. General Lissa Ashkevron was gone before her mother even rose from her bed. 

In the Healers' quarters, they're already checking rooms. 

Melody tries to Mindspeak Terrill, and fails, and fifteen seconds of effort confirms that she can't find his mind at all. 

Another name to check off the list. 

There's going to be a reckoning, later, a time for tears and anger and pointless denial of the situation. But not yet. There's an emergency to be dealt with, and Melody pushes all emotion aside for later. 

When this doesn't work, she puts a heavy redirect on herself, and then keeps going. 

Gemma follows Shavri to the House of Healing. 

She isn't sure what following Shavri is supposed to accomplish. She's not sure what anything is supposed to accomplish, here; she had a job, it was to keep the King alive and pain-free for another night, and she failed. 

Shavri reaches the House of Healing. 

She starts checking rooms. There are some Healers missing. Also some patients missing. These don't seem especially correlated with each other. 

In a flat empty mindvoice, she alerts everyone nearby which patients are still alive and currently being neglected, and once she reaches the end of the hall, she picks a room and sits down in it and opens her Healing-Sight and starts pushing her Gift at the old man with laboured breathing asleep on his cot.

In the distance she's aware, vaguely, that there are arguments in favour of this not, exactly, being the highest priority for Valdemar right now. Shavri doesn't care. 

Hundreds of miles away, a man wakes up screaming. 

Starwind was there, seconds ago. 

He's not there anymore. 

From the ground-floor of the ekele below: 

:Dada? What - where is Papa - why...?:

Starwind was the Speaker for the Vale. 

:We need - elders, to gather - help -: 

:I will wake Featherfire: 

Moondance is already aware that she, too, might be gone. He's a Healing-Adept, and he felt the weight of deaths around him. Thought not the how, or who or where - the gulf where Starwind used to be is too vast for that. 

But Brightstar's twin sister is still there in her hammock, the moonlight falling across her face. 

:Featherfire. Wake up: 

She jolts awake, and reaches as her brother opens his mind to her, and she sees it - 

:- Mother: 

They can't find her mind. 

When they reach Snowstar's ekele, there's nothing and no one there. 

Moondance, Healing-Adept of k'Treva and formerly lifebonded to Starwind, Speaker for the Vale, gathers his people. What's left of them. 

They do a headcount. They're missing almost exactly half. 

(Everything hurts. It doesn't matter, not yet, and he's not intending to have to bear it for long.) 

:Who would take responsibility for k'Treva: he asks the huddled group, because for SOME REASON he seems to be the only one capable of thinking that far ahead, despite the yawning sucking screaming void where his lifebonded used to be. 

Silence. 

:Brightstar?: 

His son takes a deep breath. 

:No. I am going to Valdemar, for my father: 

:And so am I: 

:Fine: 

Moondance looks around. Then closes his eyes and his Thoughtsensing, and points at random. 

When he opens his eyes– 

:Riverstorm. You are the leader now: 

His mindvoice brooks no argument, and there isn't one. 

After a long silence, 

:Brightstar, Featherfire. Are you going now: 

In private Mindspeech,

:- Come with us, dada?: 

:No: 

Brightstar knows what Moondance is going to do. He's been trying not to think about it. 

It hurts too much to say goodbye. 

:- I have not been there before - can you, Gate...?: 

Gate. 

:Dada, I–: 

There aren't any words for this, are there. 

Featherfire crosses the Gate. 

Brightstar lingers a moment longer on the threshold. 

:We will find out who did this: he promises, his mindvoice like brittle glass. :And we will make them pay: 

He steps across the Gate into Haven. 

Moondance unweaves the Gate, and walks away from the central courtyard without a word, and as soon as he reaches a quiet-ish courtyard he sits down - 

- looks at the stars - 

He remembers a conversation, a year-and-some ago, in Haven. Speaking to his Wingbrother, of a man who named himself Leareth - a word that means only darkness now, but once, in the language of his ancestors, it also meant the night sky. 

Full of stars.

I don’t know if we should be fighting him, Vanyel says. 

It would be simpler if we knew him to be a monster, Moondance remembers answering. And yet, though we live in a world of greys, not all paths are equal, and sometimes a choice can be clear. I am quite certain that your Leareth must be stopped.

And then, later:

It is the greatest hubris, to think that one knows better than the gods. 

And Vanyel's answer, piercing, unforgettable. Is it? Because I’ve never exactly felt the gods were on my side. 

The stars blur and fragment. 

Moondance closes his eyes against the pointless tears, and uses Healing to stop his own heart. 

Northeast of Valdemar, a magical barrier that has stood for millennia vanishes into nothing. 

South, a woman wakes in panic and throws herself out of her bed and sprints down the hall to the nursery.

And then crumples to the floor in front of an empty crib, sobbing. 

:You felt it too: 

The mindvoice is almost unrecognizable - barely holding together in words, ragged and mostly formed of pain and an awful negative space where something used to be.

Queen Karis is not really processing the question. 

That's understandable. Sola knows, though. What the sudden lack of a foundation under her has to mean. 

She doesn't understand.

After a long time, :Karis. Karis. Focus. We need to send a message to Haven: 

:I cannot -:

Except, she can. Karis fled Karse on foot, spent months in the wilderness, knowing her entire family was dead. She knows what she's capable of, now. 

:I will go myself. Find - someone - for the Gate: 

The meeting-room feels far too empty. 

Dara counts off her people. Keiran and Joshel, present.

Katha, present, though still trying to control her sobs. Her baby was numbered among the body count - well, the dead count. There aren't any bodies to be buried. 

Shallan, alive. Siri, alive. 

Savil, alive. Not weeping, which is impressive. She is, at this point, the only Herald-Mage left in the entire kingdom. 

Marius, dead. 

Tantras, she isn't thinking about right now. 

Keiran was pregnant up until a handful of minutes ago. 

She isn't pregnant anymore. 

It would make a lot of sense for her to have emotions about this, but her emotions seem to be on vacation right now. 

They'd better get her a Healer at some point but right now the Healers are dealing with their own casualties. If that's the right word. 

"Word from the west," Joshel says, heavily into the silence. "Happened in Lineas-Baires too. Half of - everyone in the city. ...Tashir's gone." 

"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?: 

:Still here. It - we stopped losing people. It was over in five minutes: 

Less, maybe. It's hard to know, because so many of their people died alone in locked rooms, only checked later. 

:Do we have numbers: 

:Nine thousand seven hundred and twenty-three confirmed dead. ...But I think the total is more. It - in every larger base, it was almost exactly half. The distribution you would expect if it were...a coin-flip. For each person: 

Why. 

How. 

It doesn't make sense and he doesn't understand. And Leareth hates being confused. 

:Valdemar?: 

:Limited intelligence on them. We are - very short on personnel. It sounds as though it happened to them as well:  

Unsurprisingly. Leareth saw Vanyel crumble to nothing in front of his eyes. 

:Did you find -: 

:Nothing. The wards detected nothing at all - except that the shield-wall in Iftel is down. I think that is...the result of something upstream, though: 

It takes Nayoki a few seconds to parse that, and then her heart double-thumps in her chest.

:You think - the coin-flip hit the gods as well?: 

:I am not sure I think anything yet: 

Leareth's mindvoice is more tired than Nayoki has ever heard it, and she doesn't think it's just because of the gruelling magic he's spent a candlemark doing. 

:...Do you have orders for us: 

:Finish surveying our casualties and get final numbers. Obtain more intelligence on the situation in Valdemar - find out if this happened in Rethwellan and Hardorn and Karse as well:

Leareth is silent for a moment. He's tired, and in pain, and doesn't even have guesses about what happened or who was responsible. Which means that, for all he knows, it could happen again at any moment and there's nothing he would be able to do. 

:Also, I would like painkillers. I am going to draft a message to the Heralds and I need to concentrate: 

The Heralds in Haven are not, themselves, concentrating very well. Scattered reports are coming in from the surviving Mindspeech relays, being discussed in panicky bursts interspersed with painful silences. 

Shavri gets the patient stable. Does some Healing on the woman next door as well. 

It's not enough to drown out the echoing void where the other half of her should be. 

Eventually, though, she can't help having thoughts as well. 

She's so angry. Pointlessly, stupidly. 

Well, who cares about stupid, now. What does she have left to lose. 

She leaves the House of Healing at a brisk walk. Nobody stops her. The grounds are deserted. The halls of the core Palace building are too empty; there are huddles of people here and there, servants, nobles, all of them alike now. Confused, scared, grieving. 

Shavri lets it wash over her. It doesn't hurt, not in comparison to the rest. 

She reaches the Web-room unopposed. 

The quartz ball of the Web-focus - the physical manifestation of the Heartstone in Haven - feels warm to her touch. Alive. It hums faintly, in a way that isn't quite sound. 

Shavri rests her hands on it and closes her eyes. She isn't afraid. There's no room for fear anymore. 

:You owe me an explanation: she tells it. 

And suddenly she's - somewhere else. Standing on a path of moonbeams, dusty purple nebulas hanging in the infinite blackness all around her, golden mist swirling around her ankles. 

And a woman, small and clad head to toe in black robes. Kneeling, as though in prayer, or supplication. Or despair. 

Shavri can't muster much curiosity.

"Where is this." 

The woman doesn't answer, but she does rise, lifting the hood of her black cloak to show her face. She looks almost Tayledras but not quite. 

Her eyes aren't human. They hold every star in the night sky. 

"I would explain if I could, child," she says. 

"You're the Star-Eyed Goddess," Shavri says, without expression. "I wasn't expecting to get you." 

"I do not think that anyone has expected any of the things happening now." 

Shavri has no idea how to interact with that sentence being said by a Goddess. 

"So I take it that, uh, it - wasn't you?" 

A cold starry stare rests on her. 

“This is neither within my power, nor my motives.”

“I mean, not sure how I was supposed to know that.”

“The cost to this world is vast. What happened - was not seen, it came from outside…”

It would normally be uncanny, hearing a literal goddess sound - hesitant, confused, overwhelmed - but Shavri is not, currently, having emotions.

”So it wasn’t Leareth.”

Silence.

“You’re just not going to be helpful, are you.” Sigh. “Can you let me out no– oh, right, I should ask. Iftel wall went down. Is Vkandis...?" 

The Goddess bows her head, and Her silence answers Shavri's question more loudly than any words could. 

Shavri has a weird urge to say 'my condolences' or something equally stupid. She doesn't, though. Among many, many other reasons, it's not like she owes this Goddess anything. 

She would be so tired, if she were capable of emotions right now. 

"Can you let me out now." 

"As you wish." 

And she's alone in the Web-room again, shivering, her head pounding. 

Randi's absence doesn't hurt any less. But there's clearly work that needs to be done. Miles to go, before she can finally rest... 

Shavri picks herself up, moving jerkily, and heads for the Heralds' meeting-room. 

The Heralds are arguing over a just-arrived letter, which Shavri learns - in a very fragmented manner - was dropped off by some sort of creepy bird with Mindspeech. It's waiting for their answer on the windowsill. 

Keiran hunches over her stomach. "I mean, obviously he'd say it wasn't him, right, no matter what - it's not information–"

"It destroyed our Sunlord. I do not care who this man claims to be, he cannot have that power." 

"Wasn't his whole entire plan that he wanted to murder ten million people and make a god to fight the other gods?" 

"He never told Van it'd kill the others," Dara mutters, but mostly under her breath. 

"It wasn't Leareth." 

Heads turn. 

"Shavri! Are you–" 

"Don't you dare." It's the closest thing to a snarl that Savil has ever heard from Shavri's lips. "Don't ask. Ever." 

She stands rigidly for a moment, glaring at everyone, and then moves to pull up her own chair at the table. 

"Wasn't Leareth," she says tonelessly. "Talked to the Goddess. Through the Heartstone. She said it was - from outside." 

"Outside what?" 

Shavri's expression clearly says that she thinks this is a stupid question. "Outside the world, I guess? They - didn't see it coming. It took out Vkandis. She...didn't know. What or how or anything." 

"You spoke to our Goddess." 

Brightstar isn't being very subtle about the envy in his voice at all. 

"I bet She'd talk to you too if you had a go. Don't think there's more to learn that way though. What's our plan." 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Why is everyone LOOKING AT HER. Oh right they don't have a monarch right now. She is literally in charge of this kingdom right now. 

Well. 

Half of it. The half that's left. 

"...Leareth sent a letter," Dara says faintly, after a long pause. "Swearing it wasn't him. He - lost half his people as well. He, er, wants our census-numbers, if we can get them, for...I guess to help come up with theories of what caused this? He doesn't know any more than we do, though. No detectable magic at the time." 

Odd, how in a way it's easier to think when you've already lost everything that matters. 

"We're going to have a lot of chaos," Shavri says flatly. "People will starve - there'll be littles who lost their parents... Can he offer any help. We should ask for it. Tell him he owes it to us, if he wants us - to make nice with him, to work together here. Which he must. Given everything." 

Everyone is staring at Shavri. 

No, wait, they're back to staring at her again now, goddamnit. (Or, more accurately, damn whoever and whatever did this to them, because it clearly wasn't any god Valdemar knows.) 

"He says he wants peace." 

"And so do we, right? Can't see we've got much choice." 

"I do not trust him." 

Dara wishes, desperately, that this job were on LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE.

To add insult to injury, Rolan isn't even being helpful. The loss of somewhat over half the Companion herd - they're overrepresented, since approximately no Companions survived their Heralds' deaths even if they weren't themselves turned to dust - is hitting him hard. 

"We don't need to trust him, and we shouldn't. Just, I agree we'd better ask if he can spare some aid. That, we do need." 

One fortunate thing in this whole disaster, is that the mysterious scourge of death that fell across all of Velgarth - Leareth is pretty sure of that point, now, though he hasn't personally checked the other continent - is that it didn't do anything to the crops already in the fields, or livestock, or the vast stores of grain and other preserved foodstuffs that Leareth has stored in various caches up north. He thought it prudent to store enough to feed his entire force for a year, if necessary. 

Now he has half as many mouths to feed. 

Of course, he also has half the number of Gate-capable mages. And the dice fell especially badly for Valdemar's Herald-Mages; they are absolutely not capable of distributing food aid to their own kingdom, let alone others. 

Leareth's own foreign operations are in shambles. But he built a lot of redundancy into his various spy-networks. He can, albeit at considerable cost, get communications through, and dispatch agents to approach the various governments in the region and open talks. 

Leareth has the resources, in coin and in a dozen more nebulous kinds of capital; he can pay that cost. It doesn't, right now, feel as though it's worth saving anything at all for the future. It's hard to imagine a better time to burn everything he has as fuel to keep a few more people alive through the next winter. 

Messages go back and forth, carried by Leareth's creepy semi-sentient bird creatures. 

Sure, they'll accept aid in the form of excess army rations. And mages, if Leareth is offering, though they need long-range Mindspeakers even more. And Farseers if possible, to help the Heralds triage which towns are in the most desperate straits. Sure, if he has spies with Gate-locations in Haven he's welcome to send them supplies and personnel that way. What other choice can Dara possibly make.

Leareth personally and a few of his people can Gate from a map, too. He has several dozen mages who've mastered Gating from Farsight or scrying images. Rethwellan and Hardorn and Karse all need help as well but he can divide things up as well as possible.

Per Leareth's agents, the government of Valdemar actually seems to be holding together pretty well, relative to Hardorn or Rethwellan, both of which are now in the middle of active succession crises. (Rethwellan lost its elderly king and the sword that chooses the monarch went missing in the chaos; Hardorn didn't lose King Festil but did lose several members of his Council, who were apparently loadbearing in holding together Festil's not-exactly-popular kingship.)

That's good to know. 

(It would be flattering, if Dara had any emotions to spare for that. Melody keeps trying to get her to TALK about her FEELINGS and Dara is pretty sure that if she tries to do that she won't stop crying for a week, and given that she's the de facto Queen right now and holding onto law and order by her fingernails, she would rather just not.) 

- oh, sure, they'll take thousands of un-Gifted soldiers as peacekeepers and medics and extra hands in the fields, if that's on offer. Wait, what, no, they don't need the safeguard of voluntary compulsions not to rape or pillage or otherwise harm civilians, that's pretty messed up as a concept actually. 

- if Leareth has lots of magical artifacts on hand then...sure, they'd love to receive a crateful of talismans that do mage-lights or heat-spells or weather-barriers and a dozen other useful spells, and hand those out to villages in need. Wow. Dara didn't know you could do that. ...Let alone that they can be re-powered by distance casting, that's insanely useful. 

News trickles in from the wider world. 

The Eastern Empire fell apart in the first day. It's now a mess of several dozen petty warlords grabbing territories and squabbling with each other. Compulsioned child soldiers are involved. Lots of starving people, lots of open murder and local gang fighting in the streets, but they're...not very safe to try to interact with, right now. 

The Shin'a'in got off surprisingly lightly, luck of the draw. They've left the Plains and are helping keep the peace in Jkatha. 

Karse is doing okay. Well, as okay as any country can be, when it's lost half its entire population. Karis isn't sure if there's a single family, anywhere in the kingdom, that isn't grieving the pointless death of someone precious to them. 

Karse is holding together because Karis is MAKING IT, by sheer force of will. 

Her god is gone. That shouldn't be the kind of thing that can happen. Her daughter is gone and that feels just as against-the-laws-of-reality. She's lost too much to ever be whole again, but it's not like that ever mattered. 

She works from dawn until late in the night, every day, and she shouts at people in meetings whenever it seems like this might help, and by the time she lies down at night her throat is raw and her entire body hurts from the tension she can't seem to set aside. 

Most nights she needs valerian to sleep. 

Nothing is ever going to be all right. Not ever again. 

...It's distantly fascinating, Savil muses sometimes, how losing everything can heal some other wounds, or at least make them irrelevant. She joins her brother in his private study almost every night, now, or he comes to her quarters, and they drink wine until the world goes soft and blurred and it's not exactly that it hurts less but it's easier to look at and sometimes they cry together. 

She's even, in some weird sideways fashion, friends with Lady Treesa now? 

Lady Treesa is coping! Her two eldest children are DEAD and the Court is in SHAMBLES and she is coping the only way she knows how, which is by keeping the Court social scene alive entirely by her own efforts. 

She hosts PARTIES, where people can sip drinks with flowers floating in them. She redecorates their suite. She has flower bouquets sent to all her (surviving) friends. She writes party invitations on pink stationary and draws flowers in the margins. 

She drinks wine with her husband and sister-in-law, and fills the silence with chatter about how lord such-and-such is sleeping with his chambermaid after his wife crumbled to dust, isn't it such a SCANDAL. 

She makes a new gown for Dara, who's working so hard and deserves a party to celebrate how she's basically queen now and it's not a real celebratory party unless you have a new gown that has flowers embroidered everywhere. 

Bard Breda is coping. She encourages her bereaved students to write songs about it. The best songs, the ones remembered for centuries, are always born of pain. 

Herald Keiran is coping. 

She's pregnant again, according to Gemma - who is VERY DISAPPROVING about this, it took two days and two six-person Healing Melds to get her womb back in working order and it's not really a great time to push things. 

Keiran honestly has no idea who the father is. Leareth sent a dozen men from his military force to help with logistics, and she slept with six of them in the course of three days. (And with one of them three women, which she's never done before, but when it feels like the end of the world has come and gone and left you still standing, none of the ordinary rules apply.) 

Joshel is coping. Sort of. He would really rather not, but someone has to manage the treasury. 

Stef is halfway back down the North Trade Road to Haven when he gets confirmation that Herald-Mage Vanyel is dead. It's not a surprise. He already knew. 

(It doesn't stop him from dreaming about Vanyel most nights, and waking inexplicably in tears.)  

He was rushing at first, but Randi's gone as well. So is Jisa. So is Medren. There's hardly anything left for him in Haven. He might as well take his time, and hear people's stories, because - because someone has to remember, right.

He hears garbled rumours about a man in the north named Leareth, and he puts together some pieces, but it's not like that matters anymore. 

Brightstar does weather-magic, and holds his sister when she wakes up sobbing in the night, and bides his time. Someday. Someday they'll know who did this, and he'll be waiting. 

Shavri, most nights, finds herself in the stables with Yfandes.

They don't talk, usually. Yfandes mostly doesn't talk to anyone these days. 

It takes her a while to pin down why, every time she notices that, oh, right there is a high place to jump from, a quiet voice in her whispers not yet. 

It's because her pain is all that's left of them - of Randi, of Vanyel, of Jisa, of so many others - and so it feels like blasphemy, to want to stop hurting. 

Every time Yfandes wakes up, the first motion in her mind is reaching for her Chosen, and the first thought to form after the pain is why.

Why is she still here.

Why is anything still here. 

It stops feeling like a coherent question, after a while. Might as well ask why two plus two equals four.

It starts to feel like a tautology, she's still here because she's still here and that's all there is to it. 

Melody is coping. Mostly by helping other people cope. When she's seeing patients, she can abstract away her own personhood, be nothing but a vessel, and that's...easier is the wrong word but it's something. 

Sometimes she locks herself in one of the Heralds' meeting-rooms, there are lots of them going unused these days. And they're shielded against sound. She can scream until her voice gives out without bothering anyone. 

Leareth.......isn't coping, if he's honest with himself about it.

He's taking sane actions about the situation. It's not complicated, doing that, it doesn't call for more than a fraction of his full reasoning ability, and he can do it. 

Leareth has grieved for many things, over centuries and millennia. It's a critical component of taking the world as it is, in all its tragedy, and making a plan from that which might work. He would have said, before, that he's skilled at grieving. Practiced. 

He doesn't know how to grieve for this. 

When he asks his mind why not, mostly he gets wordless incoherent gibbering horror, and the closest thing to words he can extract is that it's against the rules. Reality was lawful, before, events happened with causes, and this violates everything he thought he understood. The gods Themselves didn't see it coming. 

It shouldn't be allowed, for some alien hand to reach into their universe from the outside, flip a coin for each and every life, and snuff out the ones whose coins landed wrong. 

Leareth tries over and over to remind himself that 'allowed' is the wrong concept to apply here, and it doesn't work at all.

If he understood - if he knew who or how or why - then it feels like maybe he could move on to the real grief. Maybe he could feel anger at the pointless stupid WASTE of it. More than ten million lives, and nothing at all gained from their deaths.

But, right now, that line of thought is only empty words, and the only emotion he can summon is a child's frustrated incomprehension, at reality breaking its own rules and not even telling him why. 

And pain. Not grief, yet, it's too raw and unformed for that, but there's no shortage of pain here. If pain were a power source, he could make a god right here and now. 

Leareth can't tell if his complete inability to process the event is affecting his ability to make reasonable decisions. If it was, it's not clear what he could do about it anyway, it's not like he isn't trying to do the processing here.

As best as he can tell, though, he's - fine, most of the time? His ability to do math isn't at all impaired; he checked that first. He can run meetings and afterward his people have no concerns or qualms about his sanity; he checked that too. 

The only time where he's really definitely not fine is when he tries to sleep. In the short run he can intensely abuse various workarounds, including the fact that both Healers and Mindhealers can force people to sleep, and if he alternates that with various different drugs, this seems likely to minimize the risk of messing up his sanity even more. 

It's AGAINST THE RULES and NOT ALLOWED and Leareth is, on a deep emotional level, suddenly unsure that causality is real, and this means that all of his emotions are useless for strategic planning purposes, because mostly they want him to give up and stop trying. 

Three weeks after the event, a woman glowing with golden light drops from the sky and lands in the middle of Haven.

Of all the (much reduced) Palace population, Lady Treesa happens to be among the first to notice the woman! She's currently hosting a ladies' needlepoint salon in the Palace gardens. 

Startled, she leaps up. "I - hello? Welcome? You're, er, welcome to join us - would you like tea and biscuits...?" 

Okay, these people are, or look, human. That's...not what she expected, but convergent evolution is a thing and she's seen a lot stranger.

"Hi. I don't speak your language," she says in English. "I'm a visitor from another world—uh, every star in the sky is another sun, really really far away, and some of them have other worlds around them—and I have information on the recent attack that killed half of your population." Then she repeats the message in Kree and Asgardian and six other galactic-standard languages. She doesn't expect them to understand any of them, but she needs to get them to talk long enough for her translator earpiece to pick up their language.

Lady Treesa bobs her head and smiles to be polite even though she doesn’t understand any of that at all! 

“I’m going to go fetch a Herald!” she offers brightly as soon as the strange woman seems to be done. "Reesa, Talli, why don't you get this nice lady some biscuits and tea?" 

She hitches up her skirts and bustles off. 

They offer the nice lady tea and biscuits! 

And, within five minutes, Lady Treesa is back with a very young woman - a teenager, really, she looks about nineteen.

Except for her eyes, which are older than any human being's eyes ought to be. 

She frowns, and then - 

:Can you understand me?: 

Well, this planet just went up several spots on her priority list.

Yes. Do many of your people have this...ability? To speak without words? Do you have other forms of magic as well?

I need to speak to whoever is in charge. Does the ruler of this country live here? It looked like the capital, from space. I have information that may help you to contextualize the recent attack.

She accepts the tea and biscuits but nibbles cautiously at them. These people look human, but who knows if their biology is remotely compatible.

The tea doesn't taste exactly like Earth tea, and the biscuits have odd spices, but other than that it all seems as expected! 

:We've got, er, thirty-nine Heralds with Mindspeech range of a mile or more?: Dara answers, half on rote. :And, you mean capital of Valdemar? Ruler is - me. I guess: 

She sounds very, very tired about this. 

:Um, if you're here with information, though, you probably want Leareth? He's not ruling a country or anything but he, er, knows the most things:

This person is not old enough to be ruling a country but she's definitely seen people ruling in the aftermath of the Snap who seemed less prepared. And more happy about it, which is probably worse.

I intend to carry this message to all political entities and other factions on this planet who might be tempted to interpret recent events as the wrath of their gods or some other excuse for violence against their enemies. It is not.

Uh...I don't know what your scientific knowledge is like, but I saw a decent-looking observatory coming in so I'm going to assume that you know that planets go around suns and such. Well, every star in the sky is a sun, and many of them have their own planets around them, a small fraction with their own life, and a small fraction of those with intelligent species. But the universe is big. There are millions of inhabited worlds known to us—a few thousand with the tech level necessary to participate in the galactic community. We do not generally initiate contact with worlds as early in their development as yours, but I think that these circumstances warrant it.

The being who did this is named Thanos, and he does not even know that your world in particular exists. He...believes that life is doomed to destroy itself by multiplying until it consumes all available resources. He believes that this could only be prevented by the murder of one-half of all sentient beings, at random. He has acquired a set of extremely powerful magical artifacts, more powerful than anything your world has ever encountered, and used them to do this, on every world, everywhere. You are not alone in your suffering, and there are people with special abilities like mine working tirelessly to defeat him and undo his work.

(She doesn't mention the part where the entire solar system in which he was believed to be hiding was destroyed by a supernova that shouldn't have happened, and the Infinity Stones were nowhere to be found in the rubble.)

Normally I would end the speech there. However, because you seem to be magic-users of some kind, I will make the offer. There is a group of such specially powered people assembled on another world. If you would like to send some of your own to join the fight, I can transport you to them.

If there is anything you think I need to know about other political factions here, please tell me now. I will be verifying anything negative you tell me and will not be taking a side in any local conflict, so do not attempt to recruit me to do so. Also, tell me more about this 'Leareth'.

Dara's mind halfheartedly follows half a dozen thoughts and trails off, as the woman speaks. 

She wonders about the observatory. Leareth's, she's sort of assuming, less because she has any particular reason to believe that and more because her prior, at this point, is that any impressive project that she's never heard of was probably him. For all she knows, he was even the scholar who originally discovered that planets go around suns - though, honestly, it could have been Urtho. 

(Thinking of Urtho reminds her of the Tower, and thus of Vanyel, and she flinches away from the pointless stab of loss.) 

She thinks 'Thanos' is a stupid-sounding name and his plan sounds even stupider. 

Leareth would want to know about his absurdly powerful artifacts, though, she's pretty sure of that. 

Oh, right, she's probably supposed to answer or something. Being ruler of a country is terrible. 

:...Um, we know it wasn't the gods. Someone, er, talked to one of Them and we confirmed that. They have Foresight and didn't see it coming. Said it came from the outside: 

Which fits if it was someone from another world. Dara would normally be a lot more skeptical of that claim, she thinks distantly, but - it explains an awful lot, really. 

:And Leareth is -: 

Dara is suddenly wishing that she'd spent more time coming up with a short but accurate summary of Leareth as a person. Though maybe that's stupid too, it's not like she saw this coming. 

Whatever. 

:Leareth is an immortal mage, he's about two thousand years old and before this was, er, fighting the gods. He was going to conquer our kingdom as part of his plan to make a new nicer god that would fix everything: She will maybe leave out the part about all the murder, it's not like that's relevant anymore. :He had a prophetic dream with - one of our people: (another stab of grief), :who died when, um, when the thing happened. Anyway. We were expecting to end up at war with Leareth, but after the - thing happened - he opened communications and offered help instead. Which is the only reason things aren't a lot worse. He's - very smart - and very good at magic - I bet he'd want to help you: 

Well, this young queen or whatever she is clearly wants nothing to do with this and probably won't start any wars. Leareth sounds much more concerning on that front, but the queen's impression nonetheless seems positive, and she will let that color her own.

Also, this world has gods that people actually talk to. That wasn't the sort of gods she was concerned about, though.

Very well. I am sure you have things to attend to. I will go see Leareth. Use this if you need my help—if, for example, you are attacked. She hands her a black device whose screen displays a gold star on a red and blue background.

She takes off and flies north, landing in the middle of what she assumes must be Leareth's camp, near where she saw the observatory.

(Leareth has people in Haven, who Dara alerted as soon as Lady Treesa came to grab her, and they have communication-spell artifacts, and so Leareth's organization receives word of the woman from another world before she even departs from Haven.) 

Leareth's encampment in the north is mostly underground or shielded by illusion-spells or very unobtrusive, but the area near the observatory, which itself is nestled between two peaks of a range of icecapped mountains, has the densest concentration of aboveground structures - as well as a much larger total volume of underground rooms, dug into the mountain itself. 

It's very cold, even now in early summer. A cluster of people emerge from one of the buildings and look at her. 

Leareth isn't onsite, but as soon as he gets word of where the stranger landed, he prepares to head over. 

Hello, she thinks as loudly as she can, if that makes a difference. I am a visitor from another world with information on the attack that killed half your population. I would like to speak to Leareth, whom I believe is your leader?

The strongest Thoughtsenser on site is mindreading her in an attempt to get more information (from the shelter of a building, out of site) and so this comes across very clearly. 

One of the people, a woman in her fifties, steps forward. :Welcome. He's on his way from another site right now– oh, never mind, he's here, he's just coming up from the basement:

The Gate-threshold is underground; it's a lot easier to shield, that way. 

Leareth heads up, but pauses before leaving the underground section, reaching out to the Thoughtsenser reading the stranger for a report on anything she's thinking and not saying. 

She thinks someone who's planning to fight gods is probably a good ally to have at the moment but is a little leery about the whole "invading Valdemar" thing. This looks like, and based on the Valdemaran queen's description definitely is, a terrorist organization. Also, being the only immortal on a planet is rarely an indicator of being a good person.

She's fought with worse. She's fought for worse, though she didn't remember who she was while she was doing it.

About a minute later, a man and a woman people emerge from the building together, shrugging on warm cloaks against the wind. 

The woman is tall and very dark-skinned, but with a frizz of startlingly white hair, and crystal-blue eyes. She moves like someone trained in martial arts. 

She's also watching the man out of the corner of her eye, with something like concern. 

Judging by the way everyone's eyes turn towards him, the man is the one in charge. 

He gives off an impressively intense vibe of being - vigilant, careful, in control. Dangerous.

Aside from that, though, he looks incredibly tired, much moreso than the young maybe-queen-or-something of Valdemar did. His expression is completely neutral, revealing nothing, but his eyes aren't quite focusing, and he moves like someone who isn't, entirely, in the same physical space as everyone else around him.

:You wished to speak with me: he says, and his mindvoice conveys most of the same things except five times as much. He doesn't sound curious. He sounds like someone who's forgotten what curiosity means. 

Okay, he's very stressed out. That's, maybe, not the healthiest response to a completely out-of-context danger that's orders of magnitude more powerful than oneself, but it's one indicative of a potential superhero.

Yes. The current ruler of Valdemar recommended that I see you. She thought you might be willing to help me. I am fighting the one who did this to you.

His name is Thanos. He did it in order to...because he believed that life would destroy itself if its growth were left unchecked. He used a set of extremely powerful magical artifacts. We call them the Infinity Stones. The full set, if you possess the strength of will to wield them, grants one effective omnipotence. Any task you can conceive of can be done with the snap of your fingers. And Thanos' wish...was to wipe out half of all sentient beings in the universe. Not only this world—there are millions, with trillions of lives. You are not alone in this fight.

Starting from 'I am fighting the one who did this to you', he's suddenly intently and entirely focused on her. Which is a lot of - something - a degree of presence that most normal people would find utterly terrifying. 

He listens. Calculation flashes behind his eyes. Horror and anger, quickly controlled. His eyes narrow at 'effective omnipotence', then widen at 'trillions of lives'. 

And then on the last sentence, his breath puffs out slightly, his expression goes flat and empty, and he's suddenly - not there, whatever his eyes are seeing it isn't her. 

He's been trying for weeks to make sense of this, and what she's saying is critical and there should be hope in it, but instead - 

- for weeks he's been having nightmares of the Cataclysm. Scenes he doesn't, actually, remember, or that he never saw at all in life. A tower going up like a candle under a mage's fireball. 

A silver-haired man with the sharp curiosity gone from his blue eyes, alone in the last seconds of his life, choosing to burn his legacy and everything he ever built because in his eyes his pupil had betrayed him.

In his nightmares, it's all the same thing, somehow, the mysterious snuffing-out of millions of lives across an entire world, and Urtho is there and he doesn't need to say it, for Leareth - for Ma'ar - to know that it was his fault - 

Nayoki has spent weeks watching Leareth hold everything together around her, and then, at night, trying to help him eke out a few candlemarks of sleep in the least stupid ways she can think of, and she's scared, for everyone and everything and the future of humanity but mostly for him. 

He has a talisman against Thoughtsensing, of course, but not against her other Sight, and she flinches at the motion rippling through his mind. Reaches for his arm. 

:Leareth: 

He wishes Vanyel were here. 

Vanyel would be - better at this. Wouldn't be drowning in his own wounded pride, that he didn't see a danger coming from ANOTHER WORLD, one of millions - 

- trillions of lives and half of them gone and surely he should be able to feel that, he can do math, but he doesn't feel anything right now. 

:Leareth. Focus: 

Leareth drags himself back from a sky on fire. Tries to look at the woman. 

:Of course I will help you. ...What was he thinking, he could have done anything he wanted and the best plan he could think of was this...: 

No one has any idea what Thanos was thinking.

Okay. I am—occupied, trying to keep uncontacted worlds like yours from tearing themselves apart in the chaos. But there is a group of individuals with...various special abilities, gathered on another world, who are focused on fighting him directly. I can transport you and a small group of your people to them.

There is an enormous backlog of emotions trying to claw its way loose from somewhere emotions shouldn't even BE, and Leareth does not have time for that right now. 

:I understand. Our world is - doing well enough, I think, on that front. There is considerable chaos but, I think, mostly not in ways that you could mitigate by - sharing the information you just did with others. My organization can convey the news to other governments, if that simplifies your work, we are already in communication with...most of the governments that still exist:

A pause.

:I wish to coordinate with Valdemar on - whether any of their people will volunteer. How long may I take before it will delay or inconvenience you. ...Also, what is the maximum headcount you can transport: 

I have already spent too long here. However, you can contact me at any time and I will be here within hours. Just press the button on this. She hands him another pager.

I can transport three, maybe four, unaided. A much larger number, if you have or can build an airtight structure capable of holding them. I will need to fly them through space, and my own shields against the vacuum have a limited range.

Also, I realized I've forgotten to introduce myself. Captain Carol Danvers, United States Air Force (with all the mental connotations of what the US and its Air Force are and do), though most now call me Captain Marvel, after my mentor.

He accepts the pager from her. :Thank you. I - am honoured to meet you, Captain Marvel: 

It sounds like he means it, though the overtones behind the genuine gratitude are...complicated. 

:We will have more than four, I think. How much force does this airtight structure need to withstand?: 

Atmospheric pressure is approximately 100,000 Newtons per square meter, where a person under standard gravity weighs approximately 700 Newtons and a meter is—about this big. She uses her arms to illustrate. The pressure in space is zero, so the vessel will need to withstand that much pressure from the inside to remain habitable.

Nod. He seems to follow this without difficulty. :Does it also need to withstand strong acceleration or do you have a way of cancelling those forces: 

That should not be an issue. My flight uses a—method of motion which is not bound by the normal laws of physics. Otherwise my speed would be far too limited to travel easily between worlds.

:Fascinating. And very convenient for your mission, I imagine: 

Leareth bows his head briefly. :Thank you. You can go - we shall contact you once we are ready: 

Goodbye, Leareth. And good luck.

She flies off.

They go inside. 

Leareth heads straight for one of the private rooms and sits down and closes his eyes. 

:Nayoki, please arrange to have the best artificers in the organization here within a candlemark: 

:Of course: 

She is going to delegate the HELL out of that task, to the nearest Mindspeaker in range. 

:...Leareth. Are you sure you are - ready for this -?: 

:I do not see why that is relevant: 

She gives him the Look that means he's being dense.

:It is relevant if you might suddenly have a breakdown in the middle of an emergency because you are refusing to address any of your emotions about this: 

Leareth sighs. 

:I do not foresee that happening. Do you?: 

:Maybe! I have no idea what might happen when you are– when you are in this state: 

Leareth's only response to this is a slightly raised eyebrow. 

:Also you are NOT SLEEPING. Which I feel is objectively very concerning: 

He sighs again. :I am sure that this world with highly advanced technology where we are apparently going has better solutions to that problem than we do: 

Nayoki groans out loud. :Leareth: 

He doesn't answer for a long time. 

:- Fine. I admit that I - could certainly be coping better. I think the same could be said for everyone still alive on this planet. And, apparently, on millions of others. I really do not think the correct strategy here is to delay any longer: 

Nayoki closes her eyes. Lets out her breath, heavily. 

:I know. Just - you can delegate, all right? And then...just try, to take some time for yourself, before we go. For my sake, at least: 

:I really think there is a great deal of preparation that I cannot delegate! ...I suppose if I do have an inconveniently timed emotional breakdown, you are allowed to say 'I told you so':

Nayoki is not going to reward that with an answer. 

At least she can tell herself she tried. 

Two candlemarks later, and five hundred miles away -

"I'm going. That's final."

Dara makes an exasperated sound and puts her head down on the tabletop. 

Savil rolls her eyes at the ceiling. 

"Look. You have thirty mages from Leareth's goddamned army. All of whom are better trained than me, AND decades younger. You do not need me. At all." 

"Fine. Damn it. Savil, I know you might prefer to go off on a suicidal revenge mission, but I want you back in one piece, all right? I outrank you and that's an order."

"That's a really stupid order, you know." 

Snort. "We both know you're just jealous that you can't get vengeance with us." 

"Savil!" 

"Dara, we all want revenge. No point pretending. I'll do my best on your behalf, all right?" 

Dara starts to answer, but for some reason the words get stuck and what comes out instead is a giggle which is half a sob, and then she can't stop laughing at - what - at how STUPID all this is, everything she's been saying in this conversation, she's not even twenty who is she to pretend that she knows what she's doing... 

:You win, I guess: she sends, since she's too busy laughcrying to talk out loud. :Just promise you'll get drunk with me before you leave. Oh, and if you could give me a head's up who else I'm going to be having this fight with?: 

Oh for the sake of all the gods, now SHE has the stupidcryinggiggles too.

:- Don't let Lady Treesa invite herself. She's going to try to insist we need someone to bring us tea and biscuits if we're going to go save the worl– guess I can't say that, can I. All the worlds. The universe? Gods, that sounds even more pretentious: 

Snort. :I think sending her off with you is the best idea I've heard all week. She can go thematically decorate SOMEONE ELSE'S meeting-rooms in different-coloured streamers every day. It'll be good for her: 

:I hate you: 

:What? We've got word from above that apparently Leareth is really sad and stressed, can you think of anything better for that than flinging Lady Treesa at him? She'll be all over it, too, she knows he and Van were friends: 

....Savil starts to form a snappy comeback about how oh are we all rounding it off to 'friends' now, but...actually, nevermind, that hurts way too much to face and suddenly it's not funny anymore. 

She pushes back her chair. Clears her throat, which is misbehaving for some reason. "I'd better, er, start getting ready." 

Melody has been having her own version of this fight with Gemma, the current unwilling dean of Healers' and her lifelong best friend. 

:- All right, look. I'm not– this isn't me stealing some Herald's unhealthy drive to be a self-sacrificing hero. I just - I can't - I need to not be in Haven, all right? It's too much, I just - if I have to talk to one more person who's grieving someone I used to sit with at lunch sometimes then I might explode. I need to be somewhere else. Which isn't here. This is me being selfish, right now, and I'm telling you that I need this: 

Brightstar doesn't even ask. He just starts packing his (very few) possessions. 

:Are you sure you want to come with me?: he asks his sister. :They asked for mages: 

:Apparently the world that lady came from does not even have Mindspeech! I can talk to animals. It might be useful: She punches him lightly in the arm. :And someone needs to darn your robes when you rip them like the big oaf you are: 

Shavri goes to Dara's office. Late at night, so she won't run into anyone in the hallway. 

"Yfandes and I are going." 

She's so tired. 

"Sure. No one's about to stop you." 

"- Huh. Really? I - thought I'd have to argue with you. Didn't you have a fight with Savil about it." 

Sigh. Dara lays her hands flat on the desktop. Mostly so Shavri won't see that she's shaking. Probably it's just because she drank too much chava again. 

"I care about you and I want you to be all right and I - I don't like the idea of sending you on a suicide mission that - that's almost certainly not even going to work, right, if he could murder trillions of people by snapping his fingers... But it's not my call to make. And you've, you've more than paid any debts you owed to Valdemar, I - you - I don't have the right to ask anything of you." 

Oh no she's going to have to stop there because it'll just be embarrassing if she starts crying. 

Shavri blinks away her own betraying tears. 

"Thank you. I - Dara - I, just..."

She swallows. "Take care of Valdemar for us." 

"I will. I'll try." She gulps a little. "Can you - try to keep an eye out for Leareth? Seems like someone in his organization thought it was worth passing along to us that he's sad." 

"Aren't we all." 

"...I think it might - actually be harder, for him? In some ways? I mean, he's...used to being powerful, right. He's used to - having spies all over the entire world, knowing everything that happens, having fingers in everyone else's pies, and then this - just came out of nowhere..." 

"I did wonder. He must've been terrified, and he's - probably not used to that. Not like we are." 

"Mmm." 

Dara closes her eyes, briefly, because she's having some sort of stupid emotion again. It's such a stupid emotion, it doesn't even deserve a name. 

"Well. Good luck and godspeed and get some delicious vengeance for me, all right?" 

That earns her a tired smile. "I'll wrap some up in wax-paper and bring it home for you while it's still warm." 

"Aww. As long as it's not literally Thanos' head on a platter. He's too gross to eat." 

"Take care, Dara." 

She leaves. 

Perfect. It's late enough that probably no one else will bother her, so Dara can lock the door and then cry into her wine because she is so incredibly not enough of a grownup for this. 

Leareth works on their plans. Reviews the list of personnel to include. He helps his artificers and mages on the design for their airtight space travel capsule. Unfortunately he forgot to ask how long they would need to be able to breathe for inside it, but fortunately he has some old treatises from when he was an alchemy scholar 650 years ago, and it's not that much extra work to include some specific raw materials and then teach a dozen of his mages how to cast the spell that breaks down said materials and releases the breathable substance in air.

Air-of-life, Herald-Mage Sandra of Valdemar called it, when they separately made a similar discovery recently, but Herald-Mage Sandra is not available for this mission. 

In his free time, which exists, Leareth attempts some processing. He really does try. It's - still unclear how to do that, though? He's very, very, very angry, but he's also very sure he won't lose his temper and stupidly attack Thanos singlehanded if the opportunity arises. 

He wants Vanyel back. He wants to yell at reality that it made a stupid mistake, there - that, sure, whatever, Thanos had declared that half of all people had to die, but it should have picked someone else. Killing Vanyel was just inefficient and dumb and a bad plan. 

Leareth is aware that going on angry tirades at reality is never a helpful strategy, and he still can't seem to stop doing it. 

He is...sort of...sleeping better? He can usually fall asleep, at least, with only the sort of mild sedatives that are reasonably safe to use long-term. He's not sleeping through the night, but who is, right now? 

In addition to the stupid Cataclysm nightmares, he keeps dreaming about Vanyel. In the pass, just like the Foresight dream, and then his mind replays over and over and over the moment that he watched Vanyel dissolve in front of him. He doesn't know what the POINT is of reliving this several hundred times is, but whatever, maybe the part of his mind that produces dreams knows something here that he doesn't. 

Nayoki isn't not worried, but Leareth does seem to be keeping it together, maybe a little better than before? Not worse, at least. 

The preparations take a week. 

In the end, they have thirty-two Gifted volunteers, counting both Leareth's people and Valdemar's.

(Valdemar requested two spots for Companions despite only one Herald being on the list, which is odd, but Nayoki was handling that and didn't see the point in flagging it for Leareth's attention.) 

The capsule has forty spots. Well, thirty-eight, the Companions need double. Leareth intends to ask Captain Marvel about the wisdom of bringing noncombatant support staff - well, un-Gifted, technically several of the volunteers aren't per se combat experienced. Though Leareth is personally familiar with the various ways that both Healing and Mindhealing can be used offensively... 

There is discussion on where to stage. 

Dara feels that 'being cautious about trusting Leareth' is really stupid, given all the many many givens, and obviously Leareth should just come to Haven with his people if that's simplest. 

Sure. The capsule is fairly transportable; it needs a big Gate, but not infeasibly big. 

They relocate to Haven. Leareth sits inside the capsule; he is not especially interested in talking to the Heralds right now. 

He uses the pager, and calls Captain Marvel, and waits. 

And the Valdemaran half of the team trickles in. 

"Leareth." Savil slips in and takes a random seat in the capsule. The seats are arranged in descending concentric circles, tightly packed but comfortable. "Nice interior. Your design?" 

"Mostly I delegated it." Leareth isn't in the mood for chitchat, and doesn't lift his eyes from the notes he's reviewing. "Herald-Mage Savil, right? My condolences on your losses." He says it tonelessly, and goes back to reading. 

Savil can take hints. Or, well, Kellan can, and lately there's been a LOT of FEELINGS happening in Savil's vicinity and so she's cheating nearly all the time at reading body language via letting her Companion watch through her eyes. 

:- So, what do you think?: she asks him. 

     :Of Leareth?: 

Impatient wordless mental noise.

     :He seems tense: 

:Yes, I can see THAT. I meant, should I be, er, worried or something. Dara seemed to be: 

     :Dara can't mother-hen him from a different star system: 

:Heh. Guess that's why she tried to delegate it to every single other person on this mission: 

     Kellan's flank swells and settles. :Chosen, no offence, but you're - not exactly the best person for that: 

Savil bites back a chuckle. :No kidding: 

Shavri trails in a few minutes later, carrying two laden travel-packs. 

"Leareth." 

He lifts his eyes to hers. "Healer Shavri. I am sorry for your loss." 

Shavri lets the travel-bags slide to the floor, landing with a thump. "For at least one case, it was both our losses. Vanyel would've wanted to be here." 

- she's not even looking at his face and she can still tell that the words hit a lot harder than she was intending. Expecting. Something. 

"I'm sorry," she says at her shoes, and she's not sure if it's her own condolences for his grief or an apology for bringing it up. 

'Are you all right' isn't just a stupid question these days, it's downright rude. Shavri keeps it to herself, and starts stuffing her bags - mostly full of everything she thought she might want if she's about to be the only Gifted Healer around - into one of the cargo areas. 

:Shavri. Could you help me with the door -: 

And the mysterious second Companion, which Leareth wasn't even warned about, joins them. 

Yfandes isn't a Mindhealer. She's not even trying to read Leareth with Thoughtsensing and it wouldn't work if she was. 

She is, nonetheless, a Companion of Valdemar - an unusually broken instance of said class, but still. Companions...have a particular sense for minds. Not one that they talk about, much, or are even very consciously aware of. 

Yfandes sees him. Not very clearly, not undistorted; it's like a fragmented reflection in a broken mirror which is also underwater for some reason; but there's one mind that she once knew in all its messy intricate glorious detail. In Leareth, there are reflections of Vanyel, and the part of her where a bond was once rooted recognizes, and remembers. 

She sees a loss too broad to encompass, too deep to swallow - a pain that can't ever, quite, be seen clearly enough to transmute into grief. A loadbearing foundation ripped away, and no choice but to build over it anyway...

She feels the desperate tension inherent in a goal both impossible and essential - she sees a shape tied to the world, not by duty, never by duty, just by...being what it is. A pattern that can't and won't walk away, no matter the cost. The same path chosen at the crossroads, however many times it has to. 

She smells the rage that has nowhere to go. Anger wants to break something, but no amount of vengeance will bring back the dead. 

She tastes despair. A familiar flavour of it. A child's mute uncomprehending helplessness in the face of an unknown, uncaring, unpredictable world – and it doesn't stop, no amount of power and knowledge eases it, but it doesn't, really, get in the way either. It's just there. 

And, of course, the weariness. Vanyel was weary. It never stopped him, and it won't stop Leareth, and Yfandes sees and recognizes and remembers and knows...

Being seen hurts. 

Everything hurts, though, and Leareth is too busy reading to notice immediately that this particular hurting is new and different. 

Finally he looks up, and freezes. 

:...Yfandes?: 

:Leareth. I'm - so, so sorry -: 

:I ought be the one saying that to you, surely: 

:Horseshit. We can both be sorry: 

Yfandes wriggles into one of the Companion-spots. Settles herself down. 

Saying that he's surprised she survived is inane and he won't subject her to that.

Leareth tries to go back to reading, but his eyes are doing the thing where they won't focus properly and the writing won't come clear. 

:I watched him die: 

- what, he didn't mean to say that at ALL, or he doesn't think he did, it just - happened...

:You what– oh. In the Foresight dream? ....Gods. What a nightmare: 

:Indeed. Often the literal content of my actual nightmares, now: 

That was ALSO an inane thing to say. 

It gets him a bark of bitter mental laughter, at least. :Can't blame you. I - at least he, he wasn't alone - did he know, do you think, did he - feel it happening...: 

Leareth considers this for a moment. 

:I think so, yes: 

He thinks about it some more, which is painful, but he owes Vanyel's Companion that much and more. 

:...I do not think he was afraid. Or in pain. He seemed -: what was the final expression in Vanyel's face, :- he seemed annoyed:

:How sensible. I bet if you'd dissolved into dust, you'd have been irritated about it too: 

Why is he suddenly about to cry. Leareth wasn't expecting that at all. It's very confusing. 

Yfandes can tell when someone needs a minute to themselves. She can especially tell when Leareth does, apparently, because his mind - the angles she can see of it - does some of the same motions that Vanyel's used to do when he was overwhelmed.  

She falls silent. 

He closes his eyes and holds his head in his hands and waits for the world to go away for Captain Marvel to arrive. 

It takes her several hours. She's in the middle of deescalating a succession dispute that's about to turn into a coup by a newly formed order of religious fanatics on a world even lower-tech than Velgarth, but a pager-call from Leareth is at least arguably higher priority.

She lands in Haven and goes aboard, looking for Leareth.

This is more than adequate, she says, when she finds him. Actually quite impressive, for your apparent tech level. If you are ready to depart please give the signal to get everyone aboard.

It would have been a much harder engineering challenge if he had to worry about weight, which he didn’t given her physics-defying transport plan. The capsule is sturdy and rather overbuilt.

:Our visible tech level should not be taken as indicative of what I can do. We have magic, and also I have been trying to advance our technology for centuries and our gods kept sabotaging my plans and assassinating me: 

Leareth doesn’t sound especially worked-up about this, just matter-of-fact and tired. 

:Also, where are we going? We have some volunteers for un-Gifted support roles, if our destination is appropriate for that:

She makes a mental note to look into these "gods" when this is over. There's several worlds with extremely questionable policies on interference in primitive cultures, but she doesn't know of any that go so far as to artificially restrict their subjects' technological development.

We're going to Earth, she says. My home-world. Not the highest-tech place in the galaxy—not even a part of the galactic community, as far as the average citizen is concerned—but it produces an unusual number of...people with various special abilities. There's a group of such people called the Avengers who are mostly from Earth and have their headquarters there. That's who I'm taking you to.

However, their tech level is much higher than yours, ignoring magic or special abilities, and the population is...three to four billion, post-Thanos. I don't know how their governments are functioning, probably not well, but I doubt that your support personnel would be worthwhile.

:Noted: Leareth glances around the interior of the capsule. :We have almost everyone: 

Nayoki is currently talking to Dara. Nearby, though. Leareth reaches out with a Mindtouch. :Departure imminent, please come in and do the headcount: 

He turns back to Captain Marvel. :How long a journey ought we be expecting? We have supplies and magic for reprocessing the air to keep it breathable for up to ten days. I assume it will not take that long but it seemed a good contingency to have: 

(Leareth has spent about twenty hours in the last week on devising a spell for a 'reverse fire' - splitting the not-itself-breathable waste product of humans breathing air into the breathable component and black carbon. It was not, per se, a GOOD use of his time, but it was interesting and consumed his full attention and he had a lot of hours in the middle of the night when he was failing to sleep anyway.) 

Several hours. Most of that will be spent leaving your solar system and entering Earth's—there's no hard limit on my speed, but traveling faster than lightspeed within a billion kilometers of a star can be disastrous.

I don't think that will be long enough to use up all your available oxygen, but this ship is pretty tightly packed. I definitely recommend using any available method of CO₂ scrubbing you have.

It takes him a moment to parse that and map over her understanding of the concepts to his own, and then he actually smiles, at least for half a second. :I invented a magical technique for it, since I expected it would come up: 

Nayoki reaches the capsule. Does a very quick headcount against the paper list she's carrying. :We have everyone: 

Then after Captain Marvel is outside the capsule, Leareth will seal it up! 

:I assume you are not easily damaged, but the heat-shedding area is here: He shows her a mental schematic. It was easiest to make the capsule perfectly insulated, mostly via magic laid on the metal itself, and then separately build in reverse-weather-barrier type cooling spells to radiate excess heat, since vacuum won't let them do it any other way. 

They've accumulated a fairly large audience of curious Heralds and other locals! 

Lady Treesa is disappointed at not being invited after all, but will console herself by throwing rose petals in a vaguely celebratory way! 

She is not, in fact, going to be damaged by a radiator. Separately, she hopes the capsule is able to handle re-entry, although she can let them down slowly enough for that not to be an issue if she needs to.

She lifts the capsule over her head without any apparent effort and lifts off into space. She carries them at sublight speed to the point where the star's gravity well is no longer a hazard, then flies in a matter of seconds to the edge of Sol system and repeats the procedure in reverse.

She sets them down on the landing pad at the Avengers headquarters north of New York City.

The Avengers have gathered outside to watch the landing. A man in a blue uniform approaches her.

"Uh, hello. Who are you?"

"Captain Carol Danvers, US Air Force. You may not have heard of me because I've been protecting planets you haven't heard of either since the 90s."

"Captain Steve Rogers, US Army. You may not have heard of me because I was frozen in the Arctic ice cap in the 90s.

"What's that thing? Not any spaceship I've ever seen, though I'm no expert."

"Captain America? You're alive?

"This ship was built by the roughly-medieval-tech magic users who are inside. I found them on a routine peacekeeping mission and they wanted to help, so I had them build a vessel so I could carry them here."

Okay. Magic users and women who can carry ships unaided through space. His strangeness reflex is so thoroughly broken that he simply notes the information disinterestedly.

"Alright. If they're magic users with low tech Strange should probably interface. Doctor—"

"Alright."

When the door opens he goes aboard.

:I am Dr. Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme: he broadcasts. :On behalf of the Avengers, welcome to Earth.:

There are about thirty people packed into the capsule like sardines. They all have the familiar tired haunted eyes of people who’ve watched their lives - their loved ones - crumble in front of them. A few are glaring around curiously, but most regard Doctor Strange with the flat looks of people whose strangeness reflexes are just as broken as Captain America’s.

Shavri isn’t even looking; she has her eyes closed, cheek propped on her fist.

She is, however, reading every single mind in her range because why the hell not.

Leareth stands up. His expression and body language are controlled, neutral, giving nothing away.

His own Othersenses are mainly attentive to any signs of local magic. Nayoki can do the mindreading.

:My name is Leareth: he answers, with a tight nod. :We were very glad to hear of your efforts, and will do anything and everything we can to help: 

For some reason, in addition to the humans, there are two - horses???? - in the capsule? They’re snowy white, with blue eyes that are more forward-facing than seems right, and watching Strange with eerie humanlike alertness and intelligence.

Strange is thinking that it's kinda weird there are human Masters of the Mystic Arts on a planet he'd never heard of. He's also a little unsure of the "collect every possible ally from everywhere" strategy. At this point new people are just as likely to get in his way as anything. He doesn't begrudge them their desire to fight, though.

To Leareth's magic-sensing he will show up as...maybe a mage? Definitely something similar, but not exactly the same.

:Let's get your people off this ship, and then we can compare situations and resources. Also, what's with the horses? We have slightly faster methods of transport here.:

Most of the Avengers are feeling a familiar deep grief mixed with powerful determination. It's a familiar set of feelings to anyone who's been around Leareth recently. Most of them didn't have close loved ones besides each other, but they grieve for the entire world.

There are also some people inside the building who are...not human. Magical, somehow, but not Gifted in the familiar sense.

Nayoki is - wow - mostly what she feels right now is gratitude. It’s going to be so good for Leareth, to be around people who are…on his level, like him, can understand why when Captain Marvel arrived, a week later he had solved half a dozen novel technical problems just to get them here, now…

Shavri doesn’t have much room for emotions at all. She doesn’t trust these people yet. She thinks this ‘Doctor Strange’ seems confident in himself to the degree of arrogance and is probably a bit of a jerk. She knows the type; she can work with that. She wonders vaguely what this world’s medical knowledge is like.

Leareth would be curious about the nonhuman not-mages, but instead he’s busy riding out a wash of overwhelming emotional distress because, stupidly, he had the thought that Vanyel would have wanted so badly to be here…

:Of course: He gestures for the others to start existing the capsule.

:We’re people actually: Yfandes throws in as she ambles past Strange. :We volunteered as well:

Okay, intelligent horses probably rank under intelligent raccoons on the weirdness index.

He leads them all to the largest conference room for the briefing. Everything in the facility is metal and glass and a style of architecture that probably feels both incredibly cool and disconcertingly alien to Velgarth people.

:Thirty-three days ago, this guy came to Earth,: he says, projecting an illusion of Thanos. :Name of Thanos. Obsessed with 'balancing' the universe, which apparently means murdering half the population. Was looking for these—: he adds the Infinity Stones. :Infinity Stones. No one knows where they came from, they've been around since the beginning of time. Make you basically God, if you get all six and they don't kill you. Anyway, I had one, before Thanos took it.: (He leaves out the part about giving it to him voluntarily, that's a little high-context.) :The Time Stone. I used it to look into the future. There wasn't any way to stop him then and there, but we could undo it. This—isn't the one good future I saw, but it's not any of the bad ones either.

:So he got all of the Stones. Snapped his fingers, half of everyone died. Including me. I ended up in the afterlife and the god of death, who was kind of pissed off by all of this—his wife got Snapped, among other problems—sent me back to finish Thanos off. I woke up in a paradise populated by other gods and this semi-magical immortal species called elves, who are featured in a popular fantasy novel here that none of us knew was actually true. We discovered the existence of another set of super-powerful magic shiny rocks—: he adds the Silmarils to the illusion—:and we collected them. Brought back the elf who made them from the dead, and eventually his sons as well. Tried to use one to kill Thanos, but it failed, so one of the goddesses took matters into her own hands and supernova'd his entire solar system. He escaped with the help of an evil minor god who snuck out of god prison when we rescued the guy who made the other shiny rocks. We don't currently know where either of them are.

:The original plan involved traveling back in time to retrieve alternate versions of the Infinity Stones, so we're currently working on that, alongside various tasks in making sure this whole damned world doesn't fall apart. If you give me a brief summary of your magic I'll see how you can fit into our various efforts.:

Well, that explains the supernova. Good to know whoever did it is at least plausibly friendly.

She has galactic peacekeeping to get back to. She says a quick goodbye to Leareth and the Avengers, and is on her way.

Leareth is having so many thoughts.

Each thread he tries to start, keeps getting disrupted midstream by an ENTIRELY NEW set of thoughts. 

No one knows where they came from, they've been around since the beginning of time.

Someone has been failing SO INCREDIBLY HARD at being curious - which would be understandable, if their only opportunity had arrived after the Snap, but one, he's fairly sure that isn't the case, and two, that would be an indictment in itself - 

Make you basically God, if you get all six and they don't kill you.

What. 

(There are half a dozen layers of emotional reaction that Leareth COULD have, here, if there were space for it, which there isn't -)

Anyway, I had one, before Thanos took it.

What.

He leaves out the part about giving it to him voluntarily, that's a little high-context.

(Leareth sees this thought, of course, and leaves it aside for the moment. More importantly, so does Nayoki, who - understands "high context" and reads as much as she can and then moves on.)

The Time Stone. I used it to look into the future. There wasn't any way to stop him then and there, but we could undo it. 

That's...understandable? Good strategy, given their constraints. Also. WHAT.

So he got all of the Stones. Snapped his fingers, half of everyone died.

....Vanyel, dissolving into dust no he has to NOT think about that right now, there's work to do - 

Including me.

What. What. WHAT.

I ended up in the afterlife and the god of death, who was kind of pissed off by all of this—his wife got Snapped, among other problems—sent me back to finish Thanos off.

Leareth....is so confused about what the locals even mean by 'gods'. 

I woke up in a paradise populated by other gods and this semi-magical immortal species called elves, who are featured in a popular fantasy novel here that none of us knew was actually true.

....He has officially given up at making sense of anything, anymore. 

Leareth can, operating almost entirely on automatic, give a summary of what mage-gift and all the other Gifts represented here can do. It doesn't take much thought. His mind is mostly elsewhere. 

The moment Leareth mentions Thoughtsensing, he throws up a shield to block unauthorized access to the inside of his head, leaving open only deliberate communication. And then he does the same thing to the rest of the team's, with alerts if anyone tries to breach them.

:I realize that you have probably been reading our minds. I understand this, given the unfamiliarity of the situation, but you will find yourself unable to continue. If you have questions, please ask.

:Your 'mage-gift' appears similar to my own abilities, although its internal workings may be different. We should conduct experiments to determine if I can learn your spells and vice versa.: He demonstrates a portal and a shield. :However, your world's mind-manipulation magic is more powerful than anything we have. It might be useful for incapacitating Thanos before he can use the Infinity Stones, which render him invincible but do require deliberate effort to use.

:Our current hope for time travel involves a technology which allows a person to be shrunk to a scale where the structure of space-time is no longer smooth. However, the creator of this technology is dead and we are dependent on a very limited supply of a necessary resource. If your magic could replicate this shrinking effect, that would also be extremely useful.:

Then, as an afterthought—:If you have Mindhealers to spare, there are a lot of civilians on this planet who need help processing what's going on. No more than those on your own world, of course, and more than you can hope to help, but we would nonetheless appreciate it.:

Shavri is startled by the sudden shields! She backs off immediately, though, and shows very little reaction. 

Leareth is unsurprised by Doctor Strange's reaction to the Thoughtsensing revelation; he just nods in quiet acknowledgement. He's already prodded Nayoki to back off. By this point, she knows what she needs to. 

He nods, again, at the proposal of conducting experiments. His eyelids flicker at the mention of their world's mind-manipulating magic being unprecedented -  

- and he goes completely still, for a few seconds, when the shrinking technology is mentioned. 

Well. The stranger seems to be done with his speech and Leareth doesn't seem to be answering so Melody might as well go ahead. 

:I'm, er, a Mindhealer. I assume your world has never heard of the Gift for it and the thing you mean is - different in some way - but I wouldn't mind helping people process what happened. As long as it's people here and not back in Velgarth: 

:One moment: Leareth interrupts, lifting a hand. 

His mind is spinning, trying to follow half a dozen trails at once, all equally useless because he's still lacking almost all of what he would need to make sense of this. 

The ability to shrink someone. How? 

A scale where spacetime is...no longer smooth? What. 

A mechanism for time travel - a limited resource... 

(It's not like it takes a lot of insight, here, to notice how desperately curious Urtho would be, if he were here, if he were still alive - if he hadn't died two thousand years ago in a desperate final effort to stop his former student - 

- Vanyel, speaking against a backdrop of ice and snow. You were his best student - because you cared too much -)

Leareth is not going to think about EITHER OF THEM right now. 

:- Until this moment, I would have placed very low odds that time travel were possible, or - this shrinking you mention... I cannot help directly. But our mage-gift comes with a sense for magic, and I would be happy to examine the 'resource' you use for this, and see if I can help: 

:Leareth explained your world's various Gifts to me,: he tells Melody. :I wouldn't know where you should begin, but your Gift would definitely be helpful.:

Then to Leareth—:I'm sure time travel is possible. Certainly with the Time Stone, but we don't have that. I saw the shrinking thing work in one of the futures I visited. The limited resource is called Pym Particles, they power the shrinking tech. I have no idea how they work—I'm not a physicist, but I'm pretty sure they don't work on my magic, anyway. The researchers are in the lab, which is down the hall that way—: he gestures. :I realize a lot of this is very confusing for you, given your world's limited knowledge, but they'll do their best to bring you up to speed.:

:I am following just fine so far, actually: 

Leareth is not deliberately being snappy but it's slipping through a bit anyway. 

:I will go talk to the researchers. ...Oh, speaking of our world's mind-Gifts. Nayoki, my second-in-command, is a Mindhealer as Melody is, but - substantially more experienced at using the Gift in combat. It is rather flexible that way. You two ought speak: 

And he turns and heads off in the direction that Strange pointed. 

....At some point later - much later, probably, once it has a chance of being funny again - Nayoki is going to slap him for dumping this on her. 

She nods to Doctor Strange. 

If Leareth is following this just fine he's doing much better than Strange is. (He lets his shield falter as he thinks this, in such a way that Leareth, if he's still paying attention, might think he didn't actually intend that thought to be heard. He really didn't mean to be condescending—it's just the reality of the situation that Leareth and his people are missing a lot of context here and failing to acknowledge that is going to cause a problem.)

:Could you—incapacitate someone nonviolently in such a way that they couldn't take any action to deflect it?: he asks Nayoki. :This may prove to be critical to our eventual fight with Thanos.:

When Leareth reaches the lab he'll find it occupied by two men and three of the nonhumans with foreign magic that he sensed earlier. One of the nonhumans appears to have a non-organic body.

One of the men, who's wearing tight-fitting red-and-gold armor from the neck down, greets him in a language he can't understand, though he can read just enough of his thoughts to get the meaning of the words.

"Hey. So you're the new wizard. I'm Tony Stark." He holds out his hand to shake.

Leareth tenses slightly - he's been generally on edge, and thus especially isn't in the mood to touch strangers who he's just met - but he follows Tony's lead and shakes his hand. 

:To clarify, I do not actually speak your language. Yet. If you deliberately think words at me then I will pick them up: 

He would normally be so curious about the nonhumans and their alien magic, but curiosity is very tiring right now. 

Tony recognizes Leareth's discomfort with the handshake, and makes it a short one.

"I know. I'm saying things aloud while thinking them at you to help you learn English," he says-and-broadcasts. "It worked really well for the elves. Don't let them know you speak a new language, though, they're easily distracted enough as is.

"By the way, I didn't catch your name—I can't just call you 'wizard' now that there's more than one of you—"

It's too late; the elf with the non-organic body hears "new language" and his attention is immediately caught. He turns toward Leareth, and Leareth notices—he doesn't know why he didn't notice this before—that the elf has three extremely powerful magical artifacts apparently—embedded in his chest?

"I promise not to annoy you with questions about your language if you'll speak it aloud while thinking things at me like I'm doing now, instead of just saying everything over osanwë," he says-and-thinks the same way Tony did. (The last word carries a mental connotation of basically-but-not-quite-Mindspeech.)

"I'm Curufinwë Fëanáro, by the way; Fëanor for short," he adds. He doesn't bother attempting a handshake. "This is my son Curufinwë Atarinkë, and Calanáro Imbírtan, who isn't related but probably wishes he was." He gestures to the other two elves as he introduces them.

The other elves look briefly at Leareth as their names are mentioned, then go back to their work.

Having to learn an entire new language, on top of everything else, sounds so exhausting. Leareth tries not to look too visibly weary at the suggestion. Maybe he can throw Nayoki at the problem, she's faster at picking up languages since she can cheat with Mindhealing. 

"I can do that," he says out loud in Valdemaran, while echoing it in Mindspeech. "My name is Leareth." He's not going to bother unpacking the difference between Velgarth mage-gifts and whatever it is that Strange does. "Doctor Strange said that you could explain where your research is at right now, with the - shrinking, and time travel, and the limited supply of particles that allow this?"

Being socially graceful is going to take more energy than he has right now. "Fëanor, I cannot help noticing your powerful magical artifacts - what are they?" Vague gesture at the elf's (artificial?) chest. 

"Okay. Quantum Physics 101 for Wizards." He starts typing on his computer terminal as he speaks, bringing up visual aids on the holo-display. "Space and time are different dimensions of the same fundamental thing, which can bend—for example, this normally happens if you travel really really fast, although not in a way that's useful to us. However, at a very small scale, twenty-something orders of magnitude smaller than an atom, the structure of space-time is...naturally twisted, in a way that we could potentially navigate."

He holds up a tube of some kind of red fluid. "These are Pym particles. They can...somehow change the scale of matter, potentially down to the scales where we could use the natural twisting in spacetime to travel into the past. The problem is that we don't have nearly enough of them, and their inventor is dead, and we don't really know how they work."

(The Pym particles aren't magical, except in the very basic sense that magic involves manipulating the universe at a more fundamental level than ordinary physics, and they're...something very fundamental that should not be existing in isolation, but they definitely weren't made by any Velgarth Gift.)

"There's another aspect of this problem, as well. The geometry of space at this scale is...extremely complicated, and navigating it without getting lost is a very difficult mathematical problem. The computers are doing most of the number-crunching, but they can't produce creative solutions—you might be better at math than physics, it requires a lot less context."

"These are the Silmarils. They capture the Light of Valinor, which is—an energy field that our gods created to slow the negative effects of time—we're immortal, see, and living in a world where everything else dies quickly is unpleasant. The actual light, as in radiation, is actually a side effect. However, it turns out that the principles the Valar used to make the energy field were quite general, and so the Silmarils are...quite a bit more versatile than is usually believed.

"Also, since I see you staring—no, this isn't my original body. I was resurrected by an unconventional method, and Earth didn't have the technology to produce a new organic body, although this is superior in most ways anyway.

"I've been operating on the assumption that Pym particles are something...in the same class as what the Silmarils capture. The stabilization medium is certainly similar to silma, although fluid and inferior in durability—the red color is just a dye added for presumably aesthetic reasons."

Leareth's head hurts. He can't tell whether this is because the concepts are genuinely hard or just because he's running on three weeks' worth of chronic sleep deprivation. 

"- I suspect I could work on the mathematical side of the routing problem, sure." It would be easiest to just do this, find a concrete problem he can absorb himself in and not think about any of the larger context, but that would be stupid. "The Pym particles - do not show up as directly magical to my Othersenses, at least not in a way that points at how I could make them, they are simply...odd, they ought not be stable and storable like this... The Silmarils do appear as very magically powerful. I might learn something from examining them more closely. Did the inventor leave any documentation on his research–"

Wait. Pause. He wasn't being nearly confused enough about the middle there -

"- Fëanor, you were resurrected? Was that - only possible because of your species' pre-existing immortality, or could it be done again - for example, to contact the inventor of the Pym particles...?" 

"Pym destroyed most of his notes after his invention killed his wife."

"If they're anything like the Silmarils, their design may not be the sort of thing that can be documented, anyway. But I will allow you to examine a Silmaril, under my supervision. They can be—extremely dangerous if tampered with badly.

"Normally the souls of mortals pass beyond the world and cease to exist within it; if they are preserved in some other place we do not know where or how. However, my understanding is that Mandos, who keeps the Halls of the Dead that are within the world, is holding Thanos' victims specifically here, and is willing to resurrect anyone who can contribute to the fight. I'm not sure how we'd contact him, though."

Tony shows Leareth the basics of how to use the computer and loads up the spacetime geometry simulation for him to experiment with.

Leareth picks up the computer usage skills and the geometry simulation a lot faster than he's picking up English. Earth's current understanding and theory on physics is a lot more advanced than what he had managed in Velgarth, even over millennia; he doesn't think any of it contradicts his own understanding, it's mostly that certain confusing physical phenomena were only discovered once Earth's technology had advanced to a certain point. And Velgarth, for the obvious reasons, never made it that far. 

The math behind it is complex and elegant and beautiful – and there's no particular loss or anger associated with it, unlike literally everything else right now.

Even studying the Silmarils under Fëanor's supervision is painful, because he keeps imagining how awed and curious Vanyel would be. Leareth manages half an hour of this and then delegates that entire side of things to Nayoki and Savil. 

He very responsibly stops working at a reasonable time, puts thorough shields on whatever room they offer him to stay in, and tries to sleep. This is not especially successful, and well before Earth's dawn, he's back in the lab on the geometry-simulating software, staring at visualizations of the structure of spacetime at scales twenty orders of magnitude smaller than an atom. By the time the sun rises he has a pounding tension headache, but he's made a lot of progress on making sense of it, and he's trying and mostly succeeding at not having any other thoughts. 

Later that day, Fëanor makes a breakthrough, of a sort.

"I believe I have a working theory on the nature of Pym particles," he says. "However, to test it, I need equipment more advanced than what we have here. The particle collider in my laboratory in Valinor should be sufficient, but returning there will cost us significant time—subjective time passes ten times more slowly in Valinor compared with the rest of the universe," he adds, for Leareth's benefit.

(Also, he doesn't want to go there, specifically—the particle collider, being much too big to fit in the palace, is at his estate in the foothills of Aulë's country—Nerdanel's estate, now, and he's not sure whether it would be worse or better, at this particular moment, if she were among Thanos' victims.)

Fëanor was also working in what most humans would consider the middle of the night, which Leareth noticed in a distant-background sort of way and found vaguely reassuring. Leareth is wondering now if Elves just need a lot less sleep, though, because at this point he is definitely not operating at his best. 

Probably he should ask at some point if they have good painkillers here. Later. 

"The time-slowing effect seems worth avoiding! What are the capabilities that you need - I am wondering if our magic could help quickly build a sufficiently advanced setup more quickly. We were able to design and build the space capsule we travelled in with a week's lead time, and my people are more up to speed on Earth's tech now." 

"My particle collider is significantly larger than this entire compound and actually depends on some of Valinor's peculiar physics for more efficient energy generation. Even with magic I think we would spend more time building a new one here than we would waste performing the remaining experiments in Valinor."

He doesn't need to sleep much, but he knows something of human sleep patterns by now, and he knows that Leareth's are unusual, and not in a good way. "You would also—feel better there, I think," he adds. "I've never desired that particular effect, nor indeed slept long enough to notice it, but—'lands there are to west of West, where night is quiet and sleep is rest,' as the song goes."

Leareth gives him a briefly-very-suspicious look when he says the last thing. "All right. I expect it makes sense to leave most of my people here, then, where they can continue working with the other Avengers and getting up to speed on various things here."

After a brief pause, "- I would bring Shavri and Yfandes, I think, if that is acceptable. I am not sure either of them would be useful for the research aspect, but - they would benefit from the effect you describe." 

"Our ship should be more than large enough to hold our research team plus three others. It is not designed for...horse-shaped people, but it isn't a long voyage. I'm ready to leave immediately, if your friends are.

"Also, we should consider leaving someone here to continue running the geometry simulations without the time-slowing effect—I don't actually know if it affects computers—"

"It doesn't. I can communicate with Earth's internet without correcting for it at all. We should definitely be running the simulations there, our computers are much faster."

"Alright, then we'll all go. Unless there's someone who would prefer to stay here."

Both Tony and Bruce want to go.

Leareth wants Nayoki to stay behind and, in his absence, be in charge of the rest of his people and point of contact with the Avengers. 

Nayoki isn't especially fond of this plan! 

:Leareth, I am worried about you and I would prefer you not be alone on another planet: 

:I will be in the company of many other scientists: Leareth points out, very reasonably in his opinion. 

:You know what I mean!: 

:Also Shavri and Yfandes are coming. ...Apparently Valinor is a good place for rest. The Elf scientist thought I would - feel better there, is what he said: