- in the middle of a lonely snow-covered field, with a string of leafless trees to guard it from the road, and no one else is in sight. 

No one except Kevin will be able to see it, but at the moment they land - or within a second or two of it, anyway - there's a sudden blaze of light from the horizon. It does not go on to coalesce into a mushroom cloud, though; it just fades, surprisingly rapidly. 

Another few seconds after that, the roar of sound reaches them. The ground shakes. 

And then, suddenly, everything is very quiet and very still. 

Are they out? Are they safe? Are they free? Are they--oh fuck, Annisa.

"Damn!"

She's an adult now, right? That means she's allowed to cry. Except she seems to have forgotten how.

"Guys? . . . This isn't the induction point."

Abigail puts a gentle hand on Annisa's shoulder. "Is it safe to take the shield down?" 

"I think so. It's a forest somewhere. I don't see any mals. But I don't know what made the ground shake."

Franklin untangles himself from the spell and opens his eyes. "Annisa--"

He wasn't good enough. They built their whole strategy around his ability to protect them and he wasn't good enough and now Annisa's dead and he will never get to be a person who succeeded at the one important thing and she'll never get to be anything.

Oh fuck, Annisa's dead. He's still too scared for anything to feel real, and the bizarre surroundings aren't helping him convince himself to change that.

This is what Abigail has always been good at: keeping her friends sane. She knows when they need encouragement, a shoulder to cry on, a long-hoarded snack token.

"We're not done yet," she says, because it's what they need to hear right now, because it's true. "No emotions until we're back in Boston."

She wants to be done, she wants to rest, she wants to stop being this she wants to be what her squadmates need and get as many as she can home safe. Her face solidifies back into its familiar mask. "Driving the tank's more mana than its worth. We should set out on foot, look for a road. Kevin, how much daylight does it look like we've got?"

She should pop the hatch and throw Annisa's body out. They might need to sleep in here tonight if they don't find civilization, and they don't need a corpse in here with them. Annisa would mock her for hesitating.

It appears to be either earlyish morning or late afternoon - hard to guess which, without knowing which direction is east versus west, but the pale wintry-sparkling-blue of the sky hints at morning. 

There are, in the distance, sudden hoofbeats. 

Kevin has the hatch open and relays this to the others.

Okay that's an actual good reason not to heave a body out the hatch right this second; there might be humans riding the horses and if they look like harmless teenagers it'll be easier to get directions. What cover story should they use, the tank doesn't look like it could be the remains of a plane crash--

"Let's get out and go meet them. We can say we're lost hikers and get out of explaining the tank if we're fast enough."

They have to do something and this is something; everyone piles out of the tank and starts jogging. They strongly resemble lost hikers: their clothes are practical but torn and none of them has showered in the last week. 

They're able to make it past the row of trees half-screening off the road before the horse reaches them. It's a beautiful white horse, though somewhat...sooty, and perhaps slightly scorched? 

The girl riding it looks to be about freshman-age. She's wearing heavy winter clothing, mostly leather and fur, all of it very much worse for wear, and a cloak that might once have been white but is definitely not white anymore. Her hair is pulled back into a matted, windswept braid. There's a cut on her forehead, dried blood down the side of her face, and a nasty bruise on her cheek, and she's clutching the reins and staring straight ahead with a stunned, wooden expression. 

The horse stops. 

The girl's dark eyes almost but not quite focus on the group of them. She blinks, squints a little, with the air of someone who is confused but mostly isn't processing what's in front of her. 

Open hands, relaxed posture, relieved smile, every line of her body is a lie, "Hello! Do you speak English? We are lost!"

What. 

:Chosen, I'm here. It's all right. Just - try to focus -: 

Nope. She cannot. She absolutely cannot handle one single more inexplicable mysterious problem right now. 

Jisa stares blankly at the cluster of young adults - practically still children, really, though they look at least a few years older than her. Stef's age, give or take.

She doesn't recognize the style of their clothing, which is also very inappropriate for the weather, and she didn't understand whatever the girl in the lead just said at all. It still takes her a long few seconds of blinking at them before she thinks to tap her ear apologetically. "Do you speak Valdemaran?" she tries, then thinks better of it and switches to Rethwellani, "- do you understand me now?" 

Double nope. Marcy looks at Franklin in case one of those was ancient Egyptian, but he's staring blankly. She tries again in variously broken and accented French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, modern Greek, ancient Greek, Latin, Igbo, Akkadian, and Sumerian.

Jisa's head hurts and she is TOO TIRED FOR THIS.

:Enara, did you–:

:Sorry, love, I didn't get any of that either. ...It's definitely multiple different languages, which is - something - even Van doesn't...:

She trails off. 

Doesn't, or didn't no she is not thinking about that right now. :I can try Mindspeaking them, I guess?: Seriously, what are they wearing? She's never even seen those fabrics. 

A push of quiet mental reassurance. :Let me, love, it's easier for us and I don't have a reaction-headache:

Enara turns and fixes her large blue eyes on the group, and addresses all of them. :I'm sorry to startle you this way, we apparently don't speak any of the same languages. I'm Enara and this is Jisa. Are you lost?: Pause, as she takes in their general disheveled appearance. :Are any of you injured?: 

Oh thank fuck they landed on a wizard, she can just explain everything. She tries to think her answer loudly as she says it and hopes the girl--what the fuck is a wizard girl that young doing without her parents?--can read her thoughts.

"We just graduated from the Scholomance. We're not injured but we didn't come out where we should have, we're from Boston."  Annisa is dead and Marcy feels like a dead pharaoh hiding behind a metal copy of her own face neither of those is an injury. "We're very lost. Where are we? Where are your adults?"

(Kevin grunts in pain and the other three all twitch to look at him, but it's just the vision potion wearing off and leaving him with a splitting headache like it always does.)

What in all hells. Is the 'Scholomance' something like White Winds? Where is 'Boston' and how did they end up here - if it had been a Gate surely she would have felt it - maybe not if it happened at the exact same moment as the....whatever it was...back at the Palace. 

(A Final Strike. Van's. It almost has to be that, except that if it were then she wouldn't be alive. The confusion has nowhere to go so it bounces around in her head, emptily.) 

...She will try not to be insulted about the 'too young to be without her parents' bit; she is young, though she's mostly used to not getting that reaction anymore, since she graduated from the Mindhealers' Collegium and got her Whites. 

:Questions later. We should get them out of the cold first. ....Is there any chance you can manage a Gate back to Healers'? It's an awfully long walk and they're not dressed for it: 

Right. Enara carried her this far - miles, it has to be - in just a handful of minutes, but even a Companion can't haul four additionally almost-fully-grown people. 

:Maybe:

:I think I can spare a bit of energy for you. There'll be painkillers there. ...Though we should maybe Gate to outside the Palace walls and walk from there, unless you can manage scrying first? I don't know how big the blast radius was: 

Ow. She was trying not to think about that either. 

:Right. Warn them? Tell them they'll have to be fast:

And thank the gods she can manage unscaffolded Gates, because there's nothing within sight to build a threshold on. She gets to work. The air starts to glow, wavering a bit as Jisa's concentration falters. 

:We're going to Gate all of you back to Haven: Enara explains gently to the lost, probably terrified youngsters. :We can all get inside in the warm, and then we'll figure out what happened and how to get you home: 

Could whatever happened back there, with the Heartstone, have knocked a Gate off-target, if it were timed exactly wrong for when the kids were headed home? Thousands of miles off-target is a stretch, and it almost has to be that distance, for neither of them to even recognize any of the others' languages or country names... 

She can do what? The telepathy isn't quite a language but she's getting an impression of a serious piece of transportation magic. Maybe she's a really young-looking nineteen and it's fine that she's out here alone with her--familiar? Either way, being warm and going home is good. She nods, and then says "Yes, thank you," because maybe wherever this is doesn't have nodding as a thing, and then feels like an idiot because they're reading her mind so obviously gestures are fine.

They can have a Gate to just outside the Palace gates, then. 

Jisa does not collapse in a heap, but this is mostly just because she’s in the saddle. She does sag noticeably. 

A very startled and frazzled-looking gate guard starts to call out a challenge to them, recognizes Jisa, does a double-take, and then spends five seconds obviously confused on how to address her before settling on 'Herald Jisa'. He seems to want to know what happened. 

Jisa can't help him there. She mumbles something or other and asks to be let past in what is hopefully not a horribly rude way. 

:I apologize for any brusqueness: Enara is telling the kids, while simultaneously reaching out to every Companion in range in hopes of getting an actual update. :We - just had, kind of are still having, something of an emergency here. But someone should be out to meet us shortly, I think: 

It's very weird having someone say they're in trouble and not having a short list of things the trouble could be. 

The telepathy seems to be happening when the horse is paying attention to them rather than the human. Kevin now has additional questions. He's not going to ask them of the person or pair of people who just did a massive working but he is going to initiate a whispered conference with his squad.

"The horse is telepathic and I thought portals like that took a dozen people chanting for an hour! Where are we?"

"I don't know. Somewhere with winter and white people and languages like nothing I've ever heard. Maybe Scandinavia somewhere."

"I expect we'll find out in a minute." Abigail turns to the horse who is apparently Enara and asks, "Can we help with your emergency?"  She's asking half to do right by the people who are helping them and half because Marcy needs to be kept moving and doing things until the minute they can all collapse into their parents' arms.

Oh fuck, their parents. Their parents and siblings saw graduation time come and go and not a single one of them come out. This year's freshmen are going to spend their entire first year thinking Abigail's year is all dead.

Oh no, Abigail just got sadder. "What's wrong?"

"Our parents think we're dead right now."

"We'll phone them." Marcy needs to call Anissa's parents and tell them how their daughter died. That she did everything right and got unlucky anyway. That she has allies who couldn't save her and can't avenge her but can and will grieve her. But not yet. Just a few more tasks to do first.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Boston squad, a telepathic conversation is going on back and forth across the Palace grounds. 

:Delian? What in all hells–: 

:Van is gone: 

This is in no way a surprise. Hearing the opposite would have been the shock of her life.

And yet. 

:?: Enara adds, wordlessly, helplessly.

:...We don't exactly know what happened. Van was en route to the Web-room with - with some sort of plan. Something went wrong. It - all happened so fast - Brightstar....: 

Enara can sense that Delian, too, is half in shock, dizzied and buffeted by how many things went wrong in so short a span of time. 

Tantras must be all right, though, or she would have heard about that first. And not from his Chosen. 

:Leareth? The others?: 

:....We lost Kilchas. Everyone else is alive. Lissa's hurt but she'll live. - Leareth is in bad shape. They brought him to Healers':

Everything feels so heavy and so cold. 

:We've got some lost mage-children here. Or something. They were - traveling home from school? Someplace none of us have ever heard of. Could be their Gate went off target. They don't seem injured but they're pretty confused and lost. I...figured Healers was as good a place to bring them as any: 

And Jisa will want to see Leareth. She hasn't said it, or even thought it explicitly, but that was the part she was most afraid of. 

She relays the highlights of this to her Chosen. 

:I– wait. Should we - I don't know if it's a good idea, to bring them near Leareth. He's really vulnerable right now, yeah? And - just, a Gate getting thrown off is...the sort of thing that could be Someone meddling, right?: 

:Chosen, love, they're not here to assassinate him! I'm reading them and I know you are too. They don't know he exists, or that he's here, or any of what just happened: 

:People don't have to know it, to be pawns: 

And then another white horse is riding toward them across the snow-blanketed grounds. The man riding it is definitely an adult; he looks something over forty. Less battered and exhausted than the girl, but - definitely tired, and stressed. 

He's a strong enough Mindspeaker not to bother relaying via Delian. :Welcome to Haven. I'm Herald Tantras. You can follow me: 

(Jisa, in response to one of the teenagers asking if they can help, just wordlessly shakes her head.)

They follow Herald Tantras. It's slowly starting to sink in for Kevin that whatever else is happening, they graduated. Annisa is dead but the rest of them are going to live, the worst absolutely has to be behind them, whatever insanity is going on cannot possibly be more dangerous than what they've already survived. It doesn't mean they're safe, and it doesn't mean they can trust these bizarrely powerful people, but--they did this one thing.

Four out of five. They've all imagined various scenarios, trying to come to grips with them all in advance. He's not sure whether he successfully came to grips with this one or if he's just too busy being confused by the talking horse and the portal and everyone's weird clothes. 

Tran is also pretty confused by the mage-students' clothes! They're taking this remarkably calmly, though.

...Maybe because according to their surface thoughts, their mage-school has some kind of horrifically dangerous graduation rite that they were half-expecting to kill them? Why? 

One thing at a time. :I'd like if you could tell me a little more about where you're from: he says, slipping down from Delian's saddle in order to walk beside them. He'll be less intimidating, that way. :What's near 'Boston'? Where is your school, relative to it?: 

"Boston is in the United States. The Scholomance is in the Void, so it's harder for mals to get in." How do they not know that? Some countries don't get nearly enough slots but she thought everyone knew about it. Maybe they call it a different name?

Their school is WHERE. 

The 'mals' concept in her thoughts - Pelagirs creatures, maybe? Is the 'United States' in the Pelagirs, somewhere deep enough that even the Tayledras haven't yet explored it? The concept of home, in her thoughts, is at least sort of vaguely akin to a Vale. Maybe. ...Could the Star-Eyed, or a different god, possibly have another band of followers, somewhere, and have granted this group a miraculous kind of magic to build schools in the bloody Void, instead of Heartstones? 

- this can be discussed later. Unfortunately, it does slightly increase his worries about Jisa's theory, that a Gate thrown off target could be a god's assassination scheme... 

:Thank you: he tells her, noncommittally, and they keep walking. 

"Can we borrow a phone as soon as possible, please? We need to call our parents and tell them we're alive." Mental image of an underground tunnel, full of adults waiting anxiously for their children to come back, hope shifting steadily to despair as five ten fifteen thirty minutes go by . . .

Oh no. These poor children. 

:We definitely want to help you get word back to your families about where you are! I - think we may use a different style of artifacts for communication, though, I - don't recognize the one you're thinking of. I don't know if we can target our standard communication-spell to someone who doesn't know it and who none of us have met: And the bigger problem there is how they have exactly zero mages in any condition to cast, right now. 

"I've met them, can I trade for it? What language is it in? Also what country is this, I know you said the city is Haven but I don't recognize it." This doesn't surprise her; if it's too remote to get any Scholomance slots at all she'll be lucky if she's heard of the country.

:Valdemar. Our neighbours are Rethwellan, Karse, Hardorn, and -: wince, :Iftel. If that helps at all. - Jisa, could you teach her the spell, do you think?: 

Why are there more things. :I guess I can try. I - could use something for my headache first: 

She should have learned more geography! She doesn't recognize any of those countries and a series of sidelong glances confirms that none of the others do either and they're all going to look like provincial Americans. "Thanks. We'll need help getting to the nearest airport" everywhere has airports, right? "but it can wait until everything is okay here."

"I have a spell that dulls pain? If it's magically caused pain I'd need to power it up until it makes your tactile and proprioceptive senses fuzzy but for a regular headache it should work fine."

What in all hells is an 'airport'. 

Tran desperately wants, more than anything else, for this to be someone else's problem. He wishes he could stash these kids somewhere safe with a babysitter and some food and warm beds, deal with it in the morning. He misses Dara, desperately. Dara would know how to actually be reassuring to lost children whose parents probably think they're dead. 

Dara isn't here, though, and Tran is trying not to think about the fact that she, too, has to be having the worst day of her entire life. Dara isn't here and there's nothing he can do for her, or Treven, or any of the others still trapped up in the ruins of a battlefield in the far north. And it's tempting to ignore this random complication but it might not be random, and so he...has to be the adult, here...has to figure out what's going on... 

Leareth would probably know where these kids are from. He's not in any shape to be consulted, right now. Maybe in a candlemark. 

:I don't think we have an airport here: he sends, dully. 

Something is wrong. This doesn't make any sense and so they've got to be missing some key piece, here... 

Jisa's head hurts too much to think about it. :Sure, I'll try your pain spell: she tells the girl, gratefully. :Once we're inside and sitting down. We're almost there: 

She gestures ahead at a low stone building. It looks...not quite medieval, exactly, but definitely nothing near modern American architecture. Nothing they've seen on the walk so far looks like anything in America. 

They're in the middle of fucking nowhere. Also, being in a place they've never seen before for the first time in four years is really weird. He's used to hallways classrooms bedrooms bathrooms library cafeteria gym maintenance rooms shafts and that's it, and now there's trees and buildings and a sky that goes on forever in a totally different way from the void and every time he looks up it feels like he's going to fall into it. His sight lines in all directions are longer than they've been in years and it's actually hard to make his eyes focus that far out, let alone sweep the whole sphere for mals at a reasonable frequency.

(There aren't any mals. There hasn't been a sign of them, at all, despite being fully out in the open and the lack of any obvious wards or shields or protective spells, and the wizard girl and adult maybe-wizard man aren't scanning the way you would expect if they were worried about ambient mals, either. They're...definitely vigilant for something, but not that.) 

They reach the House of Healing. 

Tran leads them inside while Jisa dismounts and spends a moment leaning heavily on Enara's neck. :Let's grab this room for now: 

It's...a vaguely infirmary-looking room, though again, very obviously low-tech. There are no electric lights, only the sunlight from the window and some unlit candles in wall sconces. There's a narrow bed and two chairs. Tran hauls over two more chairs from the room next door. 

Jisa makes it in after them, only swaying on her feet a little, and half-collapses to sit on the side of the bed. :Right. I'd take that pain spell now: 

And she watches with mage-sight, because she's curious and incredibly confused and - how powerful are these kids, anyway - she's way too tired to check their Gift-potential directly but she can maybe gauge it any amount from their casting... 

"Okay. Just tell me when the pain stops."

They can't reach the school power sink, of course, and couldn't reach the main enclave sink even if their power-sharers had been retuned for it, but they have what's in the sharers and their own reserves and it's a bargain price for shelter in this weirdly safe not-enclave that looks like a relic from the age when mals could be paid off with milk.

She starts reciting poetry in French, the same four lines repeatedly, and Jisa's nerves get quieter and quieter until the pain is gone and it feels like she's wrapped in soft insulating cotton and her limbs have that ill-defined feeling of not being anywhere in particular that comes in the moments before falling asleep.

Kevin is starting to wonder if they have in fact gone back in time. Mals used to be rarer and less focused on wizards, and phones and airports used to not exist, and buildings used to be stone. He doesn't know enough mundane history to know when the first of those things changed, though, and if he asks what year it is they'll think he's insane or freak out or both. Instead he whispers in Marcy's ear.

"It's supposed to be impossible but it would explain a lot," she whispers back, and passes it onto Franklin.

That's very unlikely but it would be a thing that sucked! Franklin starts thinking about the spell that inspired the story of Snow White's glass coffin, and whether he could pull off something similar to put them in stasis until they got back to their correct time.

That....isn't any kind of magic she recognizes. But it wouldn't be, would it, if they're from somewhere so far away that they've never heard of Valdemar.

:That's enough: she sends when the pain is gone. It's not an unpleasant feeling, overall - her thoughts seem unaffected by the about-to-fall-asleep physical sensation - but it's a good thing she's sitting down. :Right. I - should try to teach you the communication-spell, I guess, first. It may not work, if it's out of range, but seems worth a try: 

And she starts trying to convey the instructions. 

...It's not a spell. Or not in any way that Marcy is familiar with, anyway. It's not an incantation. Jisa seems to, instead, be trying to convey how she needs to hold certain concepts in mind, and then - directly feel and shape mana to build up the necessary structure? 

"Uh. Is this spell supposed to be done through an artifice or something?" 

:Hmm? - You can, probably. I bet–:

She breaks off before she can slip up and mention Leareth. 

:- we don't have one, though, sorry. Is it too much power for you or something?: 

'Power' comes across as a concept that is...basically very similar to 'mana', but not quite the same.

"I--don't know how to cast directly without words? I didn't think it was possible." She tries to do the things Jisa is describing, but it's like trying to fold water.

:Huh. I'm a bit worried our training is - somehow different enough that I won't be able to teach you this spell at all -: 

Wait. Stop. 

Something is wrong. The fragments of confusion are bouncing around un-anchored in her head, and she keeps trying to wrestle them into a shape she recognizes and can work with, but - 

- but they don't fit, actually, and it keeps not fitting, over and over, and at some point she needs to....just stop. 

:- Er, I'm beginning to wonder if - something a lot weirder than your Gate going off target is happening, here. I - how odd do things look to you, here?: 

"Really really odd, actually! Nobody's keeping a lookout for mals and there's less technology than I thought most people had and I didn't think one person could do a gate like that and I don't know what continent we're on and we're starting to wonder if we're even still in 2022." That's probably very rude if they're actually in a very poor country, or on a secret island with a magical tradition so strong they've exterminated the local mals and think the Scholomance is pathetic, but she did ask.

:It's 810 by the Valdemaran calendar: Tran offers, for lack of any other contribution to make here. :But Karse and Rethwellan use their own calendars. ...The Cataclysm was about 1800 years ago, if that helps?: 

Jisa is starting to really doubt that will help! She's still stuck on thinking of more useful questions though! 

810? No! What, now what, what is she supposed to do from here, she knew what she was supposed to do and this isn't it and she's so lost.

"Are you using the Christian calendar? What's the Cataclysm?"

"Can I see a map of the world and where we are on it?"

:If you don't know about the Cataclysm: Jisa sends dully, :then - there goes my top theory for where you're from and why we've never heard of it: 

(The concepts that come across with 'the Cataclysm' are of immense magical devastation - the aftermath of some kind of war, two powerful mages and– something Jisa's thoughts steer away from. Two craters hundreds of miles across. Twisted, magically-deformed creatures, wild and dangerous...) 

:Tran: she adds. :Get a map. Now: 

Sure, map, he can do that. Where's the closest map. ...Maybe he can just run all the way to the central wing with the Heralds' archives, running is easier than thinking. 

:Anyway, our calendar is based on when Valdemar was founded. I - don't know what 'Christian' refers to: 

"If we're in the past, I might be able to get us back to the present. I could make something that puts us in stasis but we'd need to arrange for someone to come and get us out at the right time."

"If we're in the past we should warn everyone about all the things that are going to happen first! The mals getting worse and world wars and stuff."

:I'm so sorry: Jisa closes her eyes. There are other questions to ask, confusions to resolve, but she can't find the words, yet. What would Treven say. Focus on that. :I - you just survived something awful and you - deserve to go home. I'm sorry. But...you're safe here, and I promise that we'll do whatever we can to help: 

"Thank you." Abigail is mostly worried about Marcy. She pushed herself harder than any of them, the whole past four years but especially in the leadup to graduation. 

"It doesn't have to be sustainable," Marcy had said, at the end of another day of nothing but work on the tank. "I just have to get us out and then I can sleep for a week and cry on mom and dad. I can do it as long as we need me to because after that I can stop." And Abigail had agreed, because she wanted to live.

And now they're all looking at a future like a map with no lines on it, where anything seems possible except, somehow, the idea that they could ever rest. It's just going to be more of--something--forever. Their future has been getting shorter and shorter their whole lives, everything leading up to the day when they could stop fighting for survival and start figuring out how to live, but she doesn't know what that means, here. She can't seem to make one thought follow another, anymore, it's just that same thought over and over.

"We're going to figure something out," says Kevin, then adds "Even if we can't get home," because lying to yourself is one thing and lying to a squadmate is another. "We'll find something good to do and do that."

Marcy is not going to sob into Kevin's shoulder because there's a stranger watching and that would be showing weakness.

"If you don't want help do you want us to wait somewhere until you've solved whatever the emergency is?"

This particular stranger has receptive Empathy, and these kids don't shield at all, Jisa would be hard-pressed not to feel it even if she were actively trying not to. 

Sympathy isn't going to help. She might be years younger than these not-mages from some far-distant place and maybe a far-distant time, but she's been a Mindhealer long enough to have a fine-tuned sense for that. 

She takes a deep breath, and forces her own expression back into a neutral mask. (She's so tired.) 

:...Maybe. I don't think you can help, and I'm...afraid we have an - actually pretty serious, er, Kingdom-level security situation here, so I - can't explain too much: Until they know for sure that Leareth is safe and these kids weren't somehow sent here from THE FUTURE to assassinate Leareth. :I don't think you'll be in any danger here and if something does happen we can Gate you out–:

Not to k'Treva, which would always have been the first sanctuary to flee to, at any time before the last month. Jisa is NOT going to break down sobbing either. It won't help anything. 

:- we can Gate you out somewhere else: she finishes, more hesitantly. :I hope. I'm - sorry everything is so complicated: 

"I know we look really fucked up right now, but we're not--we're adults. We can protect ourselves. We don't want to be a drain on your resources. We won't try to get involved in stuff you don't want us to, but--we want to deal fairly." He really wishes Marcy was able to explain things right now. She's the one who's actually good at saying the right thing; he's just good at saying the wrong thing when it's better than nothing.

Jisa wishes Treven were here. There's....something she's not quite catching onto here, some piece of cultural subtext that she's stepping on wrong, and Treven would be able to figure it out and navigate it as gracefully as though he'd been navigating it his whole life. 

Treven, however, is instead having the worst day of his life five hundred miles away, throwing his considerable powers of diplomacy at the aftermath of the goddamned disaster. She MISSES him and this doesn't matter at all. 

:I understand. We'll just - I'll explain as soon as I can. In the meantime we can get you...food? A bath, if you want that? - Oh, and Tran is here with the map, I - er, I'm going to let him take that, I - need to go see to something: 

What she needs to go see to is Leareth, currently five doors down behind shields impassible even to her. And Melody. She needs her teacher, right now. ...Really, she needs her mother, but Shavri is alive and unconscious and stable and Jisa can go cry at her bedside once it's a more reasonable time for crying-at-bedside type activities. First she needs advice, from someone conscious to provide it. 

:Here's the map you wanted: Tran unfolds it and and spreads it out on the bed. 

Everyone leans in and peers at the map. Even Marcy shuffles over; "look at the paper that appears near you" is a deeply carved reflex.

Mapmaking in the past was probably pretty bad, but there's a limit to how bad it can be and still be worth doing.

They're all thinking it, but Kevin says it first.

"That's not Earth." There's an image in his mind, fuzzy with time, of what he expects from a world map, and the continents don't match up at all.

What is he even supposed to do with that. 

:You - think you come from a different world entirely?: 

"Maybe. Do other worlds exist? We thought it was just Earth and the Void."

:....Well, we do know of many other planes that exist, it's not just the Void. But - worlds like the material world, no, I didn't know there could be others: Tran shakes his head, helplessly. :Not that it'd be the most surprising thing I've learned today. And - if that's the case, if there's another material plane somewhere and you just ended up - on the wrong side of the Void, or something - then maybe we can somehow figure out what went wrong, and get you home: 

"That would be good. What are the other other planes like?"

:Er, I'm not really the best person to ask on that: Jisa is, or - Van - but he's notthinkingaboutthat, :but - there are the four Elemental Planes: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. And the Abyssal Plane: 

He can do his best to describe them, keeping his mindvoice flat and neutral. 

And in the meantime, Jisa stops outside the door of a room down at the end of the hall. Hesitates. Reaches to open it. 

:We're BUSY: 

:Melody. It's me: 

:Oh: 

A long pause. 

:- Well, you can come in, then, if you want. Don't make noise: 

Jisa can tiptoe, then. 

:How is he? Is he conscious?:

:Dissociative-blocked, right now. He was very disoriented when he was first coming around, was fighting everything we tried to do, and I figured we needed to get him out of the cold and behind shields before worrying about anything else. ...Yes, I know, he'd be within his rights to be furious with me about it, but I figured he's not the sort of person who kills people in a fit of temper, and it was the right call: 

She's really missed Melody. Actually seeing her now, in the flesh, it's all Jisa can do not to fling herself onto her teacher's shoulder and burst into tears. 

:We have a situation: 

One of Melody's brows lifts. :No goddamned kidding: 

:No, I mean, something different. Might be unrelated. Some - young people just showed up, lost. From...somewhere that might be another world, or the future, or something even weirder than that: 

:It's....not the most urgent kind of emergency? They don't seem hostile. I'm being cagey with them just in case this is some sort of scheme by a god to get Leareth killed while he's vulnerable, but - that's starting to seem unlikely, and - besides, they seem amazed that Gates exist, I don't think they know much about our magic let alone Mindhealing. But - just to warn you: 

:Don't worry. I'm not leaving this room until Leareth is in a position to defend himself. ...Anyway, you up for sticking nearby while we prepare to take the block off? He might panic less if there's a familiar face: 

:I can answer any questions you have about our magic?: Tantras adds, once he's finished describing the known other planes to the kids. :It sounds different from yours: 

An entire new kind of magic. Maybe she can learn it. Focus on that. Find something good to do and do it, just like Kevin said.

"Do you have incantations, artificing, and alchemy? How do you build and store mana? Does it go from parent to child?"

Tran continues to really not be the best person for this! He can try, though. 

:It's inherited, yes, although not strictly - not all of a Gifted person's children will have potential, and not all kids with potential will get active Gifts. We have mage-artifacts. Alchemy is...mostly not considered a branch of mage-work, although one of our mages, Sandra, also studies it? We have techniques that don't require artifacts - that's most of them - but it's not usually the case that they have required spoken words. Mage-energy - comes from living things, I think? So mages and people with other Gifts have personal reserves, that refill at a certain rate - food and sleep help - and can also share this with others, this is what Healers usually do. Strong enough mages can pull from nodes, which are - places where ambient energy collects, like water in a pool: 

"You build mana by eating and sleeping? And there are pools of it just lying around? Do you have a way to keep mals off the pools or is that why you have to be strong enough to use them, because they're getting swarmed by mals all the time?"

:I...think our world mostly doesn't have the 'mals' problem? Not outside of the Pelagirs. I suppose some magical creatures over there are attracted to mage-energies, which is why it's incredibly dangerous and even Tayledras Adepts tend to die young: 

Like Heralds. Like nearly everyone he trained with. Tran is also going to notthinkaboutthatrightnow. 

Pools of mana lying around and no mals. It's like something a six-year-old would imagine. "Why would anyone live in the Pelagirs, then?"

:The Tayledras are bound by a pact with their Goddess. To cleanse the lands and set them right from the damage the Cataclysm caused. They get - some protection, in exchange: 

Anytime before today - before the last candlemark, even - Tran would have said this with a VERY different set of emotional overtones. Right now, though, the words are deeply infused with grief and bitterness and simmering anger and bone-deep, soul-deep exhaustion.

"Earth doesn't have goddesses so I don't really know how that works but okay." Some people believe in gods or goddesses but none of them agree with each other and they never actually do anything as obvious as binding people. Or, apparently, giving Herald Tantras a terrible day.

:.....Oh. Interesting. That - seems different from our world, probably. Our gods are - usually more subtle than they've been lately, but Queen Karis did get possessed by Vkandis and granted miraculous healing powers to win the war, and that was most of a decade ago: Which makes him feel incredibly old, and even more tired. :You're saying your world never has that kind of thing happen? Not just that you've never personally seen it?: 

"There's legends? But it's always some guy two thousand years ago or something. And people who believe any one legend don't believe the others, there isn't any one that everyone thinks is true."

:Huh. I'm....not sure what to think, then. I guess that's some extra evidence that we're from different worlds, maybe: 

"Yeah, I don't think the past had nodes or wordless magic or zero mals. And you probably didn't have, uh, the Roman empire or the Han dynasty or the Aztecs?" That's most of the world covered, he thinks.

The words aren't familiar but maybe they wouldn't be. Still, he can grab a solid chunk of the concepts as well, and... 

:No. I think not: Sigh. :Well, at - least our world seems a bit better than yours in some ways?: 

"It seems really nice so far! Sorry we dropped on you while you were having a bad day." He looks like he's just lost an ally, which is a bad day even by Kevin's standards. (Arguably worse than any day he's had before today, really.)

'Bad day' is such an understatement. Tran's had bad days before, hundreds of them. He's never before watched helplessly from a distance as his kingdom's armies and Heralds prepared for what was either a critical final fight for their country's survival, or the worst mistake of their history. 

It was the latter. Which...should be a relief, really, but behind all the exhaustion there's a dull endless pain behind Tran's breastbone. Vanyel. He didn't even get to say goodbye, and it feels like he's never going to understand how or why it happened, for all that he was scarcely a few minutes' walk away. Oh, and then there's the part where they just escalated from a war with an immortal bloodpath mage to a war with the gods, and any sane person would be terrified in his shoes. 

Tran isn't scared, not exactly. He's angry. 

And, of course, none of that is these poor children's fault, and clearly they're also having the kind of day for which 'bad day' is a remarkable understatement. 

He tries to smile. It's not very reassuring. "Hey, you didn't pick the timing either. ....All right. How about I get you paper and you can draw us a map of your world?" On the remote chance that Leareth does know something about all this, that might be useful later. 

"Yeah, that sounds good." None of them are going to be especially solid on coastlines but they have a general sense of where the continents go and can label some countries and most of the cities with enclaves.

The man in the bed is clearly conscious, and just as clearly not very much not alert or oriented to his surroundings. He also, in Jisa's not-especially-qualified opinion, looks like shit, pale and clammy, the skin around his eyes sunken and bruised-looking. The Healers have him bundled up thoroughly in fire-heated blankets, but his hand, when Jisa grasps it, still feels cool to the touch. 

"Gemma, if he's stable, I want you out of here," Melody says, quietly calm. "Jisa and I can defend ourselves if he comes out of it confused and thinks we're a threat. ....Jisa, shields." 

Jisa is having SOME SORT OF EMOTION about this situation. It's very hard to figure out what the emotion is, when she's exhausted and shaken and drained. She feels like a village the morning after a storm and flash floods, sodden and flattened. 

She shields them, wincing as her mage-channels protest this vehemently, and she holds Leareth's hand and makes sure her face is in his line of sight. Right now his eyes slide past her with no sign of recognition, but that's normal and to be expected for a complete dissociative-block. 

"I'm ready." 

It's an easy block to reverse; it takes Melody about ten seconds. Grab the swath of threads that she had previously pulled and twisted and flipped over, knotting Leareth's mind into a shape where all the pathways that usually route through the center of his tapestry are instead blocked, keeping them forcibly separate. (He's been fighting it, which isn't supposed to be possible, this kind of block theoretically shuts down all volitional actions, but clearly for Leareth, trying to orient to his surroundings is basically at the level of instinct and reflex.) 

There are sensations, sounds and lights and touch, but nothing coherent to experience them - 

- and then, suddenly, there is, again, and Leareth wrenches himself toward alertness, where is he -

Auuughhhhhh she wasn't quite done! Melody's head is slightly ringing now from how forcefully Leareth brought up shields and shoved her half-out of his mind, as soon as enough of him was back to do that. Ow. 

He doesn't recognize the room he's in and this is only partly because his vision is blurry.

Leareth tries to Gate out, which doesn't even slightly work, and hurts enough that his vision half dissolves into black whirlpools and it's a struggle just to stay conscious. 

- right, she shouldn't Mindtouch him, he's going to have unimaginable backlash right now. 

"Leareth. It's Jisa. Please don't do that. You're in Haven, you were hurt pretty badly, but you're safe - the Heartstone's down, we think -" 

Leareth blinks until his vision clears enough to confirm that, yes, the face swimming in front of him is Jisa's. He unshields his Thoughtsensing just enough to check - ow - that the flavor of her mind is right as well. 

Skim his jumbled recent memories. It...worked. He thinks. He doesn't remember finishing it, so presumably he lost consciousness, but he held it together for long enough. 

He closes his eyes. He's not safe, but - for right now, this will have to be good enough. 

"Leareth. Hey. Are you with us? Squeeze my hand if you're listening." 

It's odd and out-of-context to hear Jisa using that very Healer-like tone of voice, but - of course, her mother was a Healer, after all, it fits. 

Leareth wonders if Shavri survived the working. He's too tired to ask, right now. 

He squeezes Jisa's hand. 

"Good. I - Leareth, I know you feel awful right now, but I............need help. With something." Actually, what Jisa desperately wants is to burst into tears and hide in her mother's arms, but she can't do that, can she. 

Not at all surprising, given the givens. "Mmm," Leareth manages. 

"I - um - you're going to think I'm crazy, but I swear we have some young people who just showed up claiming to be - mages? From a horrible mage school? Except they....seem to maybe actually be from another world, and the spell for them to graduate from their horrible school got messed up. Their magic works totally differently from ours and they've never heard of the Cataclysm or anything else I mentioned. Er, and my Companion was reading their minds the whole time, they were telling the truth about everything and there's no sign they've ever heard of you or Valdemar. Only, the timing is sort of suspicious, right? Even if they don't know it, one of the gods could be setting them up to be pawns, to try to kill you? So we're - being careful - but these poor teenagers are scared and confused and their parents are going to think they got killed during their horrible mage-school's horrible graduation ritual..." 

Leareth is, with immense effort, kind of mostly following that? 

...None of it was a question, though? He waits for Jisa to say more words. 

"Er, what should I - do...?" 

Thinking is very hard. 

"....I would use compulsions. To - render them safe, in the short term, for questioning. I - suspect you will not approve of this, but - you do have Truth Spell...?" 

That is such an incredibly predictable answer for Leareth to give. Jisa almost giggles. She bites it back. 

"- Right. We can - ask them some generic questions about it under Truth Spell? And - I, just, they're good kids, I think? I don't think they want to hurt anyone. So if we - confirm their story, maybe I can just tell them that our gods are terrible and might try to use them, and - get them to promise not to...?" 

"- It seems risky. But - perhaps no other choice. Would prefer you - do it - in a different building at least..." 

"Er, right, of course." 

"And - reveal as little - as possible. Just on principle." 

"Er, yes, of course. I'm not going to tell them who you are or that you're in Haven, just generalities, does that seem safe?" 

Leareth gives her an incredibly tired look. "Nothing is ever safe." 

"...I guess. But we've got to do something." 

"Indeed." Leareth drags numb lips into a vague semblance of a smile. "And - there are upsides. Perhaps. If they - have magic of another world -" 

How did she completely fail to think of that. Jisa feels like an idiot. 

"Right. So - we don't know for sure if it's true, first step is questioning them under Truth Spell. If they pass that, then - we need to screen them for, er, safely around you. And warn them about the gods here. But - if that works out then they might know useful things? ....Also we need to find a way to get them home. Their parents think they're dead and it's awful." 

Hardly the most awful thing in the history of Velgarth, Leareth thinks, wearily. "Yes. I - use your judgement, I am...not at my best, currently." 

"I know. I'm really sorry! Er, if we do decide they're not a threat, one of them has a spell that treats pain? It works pretty well and it has side effects but doesn't make you foggy. I could ask them to cast it for you, too." 

Leareth is so incredibly not alert enough to make a judgement call on whether or not it's a good idea to have mysterious foreign mind-affecting magic used on him. "Ask me - again later?" 

"All right." Jisa squeezes Leareth's hand. "Try to get some rest. Melody's going to stay here." 

Leareth manages to lift an eyebrow. "Jisa. - Ask the Healers for a stimulant. You will need it. And...perhaps take the time to bathe, first? Your impression will matter." 

Leareth sounding like her mother is incredibly weird, and Jisa has no room for feelings about it right now. "Thank you." 

And she leaves. 

In a room down the hall, where a group of four teenagers are trying to draw a map, Herald Tantras suddenly goes still. 

"- We've got to go somewhere else," he says curtly, a few beats later. "You'll, er, be more comfortable in a guest room. Come with me?" 

That is SUSPICIOUS. That is what someone really clumsily trying to pull some shit would say. Suspicious glance at Kevin.

It totally is sketchy but also they're super outnumbered and don't know Tantras' capabilities and he doesn't know theirs so they should probably just roll with it and not let on that they're sketched out. And maybe he just got a startling telepathy and reacted oddly. Reassuring look back at Franklin. 

"Okay." He rolls up the map-in-progress.

Tran is very aware that he handled that ungracefully! It's just that he's starting to crash down from the adrenaline high, now, and it's catching up to him that he only grabbed four candlemarks of sleep last night and has been awake since long before dawn. 

He leads the kids to the guest wing of the palace, gets a servant's attention, demands to know which rooms are available. "Er, would you prefer to all be in the same room, or each have your own?" he asks the kids. 

"Together, please." She's already counting heads every ten minutes to reassure herself that there are still four of them. (She keeps trying to count to five.)

The Palace servant is very apologetic to Tran in the incomprehensible local language. 

Sigh. :I'm sorry, there aren't any rooms with four beds. We can do two rooms with two beds each that share a parlor in the middle?: 

"Is there a reason we can't move two of the beds into the other room? We'll put them back when you need them put back."

More murmured conversation. 

:It'll be a bit of a tight squeeze, the bedrooms aren't huge, but you're welcome to. This way: 

The guest bedrooms are, indeed, not huge, and it has stone walls and a stone floor only partly softened by rugs and tapestries, but it's still a good bit bigger than the Scholomance dorm rooms, and it has a window, with off-white muslin curtains, looking out on a snowdrifted garden and a path in the distance. The parlor has a sofa-like furniture object and an armchair and a low table and a bookshelf. The only furniture in the bedrooms, other than the two beds, is a washstand with a basin of water, plus the wall sconces for candles. 

No desk: weird. Window and no void: weird. Kinda large but not too large to sweep quickly. He remembers that this place is supposed to be mal-free before he squats to look under the sofa.

Abigail is in favor of the window; more context on what's where is good. "This is very nice, thank you!"

"You're welcome. Want a hand moving beds? I think we'll need to get the washstand out of the way in order to fit all four in here..." 

"Only if you want to; we'll be okay." She and Kevin go take one end of the nearest bed and Franklin and Marcy take the other; they've heaved around enough armor plates and suchlike, not to mention Kevin's bed, to have it down to a science. (Annisa should be next to her on the other side from Kevin. She heaves extra hard in the hope that nobody else will notice; they all notice anyway.)

....They're such good kids. Tran isn't currently mindreading them, but Delian is, and is also in rapport with Tran enough that his feelings of affection and approval are leaking loudly and clearly across.

The washstand and basin are small enough that he can carry them alone, so he does that and gets them out of the way. They're going to need to move one of the beds closer against the wall, to leave enough space in the middle for the two being carried across; Tran hovers by one end of it, waiting to help. (It's going to be pretty squishy. Hopefully these kids won't mind having to crawl over each others' beds to get out of the room.) 

It's going to be more than worth it to know the others are okay and that they're all close enough to look out for each other. 

As inconveniences go, it barely rates. (He misses his old room, though. It was tiny and needed to be warded every night but it was his, and he had his little desk-forge and the Void to give him spells and all the little useful gadgets he had made in four years of shop, now all sold for mana or passed on to underclassmen.)

This is what they're doing so she's doing it; evaluating individual moments for goodness or badness is not online right now.

They get the beds arranged in a reasonable layout without even having to disassemble and reassemble any of them to get them through the doors.

Tran hovers helpfully nearby during this process, occasionally offering a hand with lifting and moving. (He, too, is clearly experienced at this sort of work, and also clearly works out regularly; his shoulder muscles are visible through his shirt, and as a full-grown adult he's stronger than any of them.) 

"Do you need anything else to get set up here?" he asks, once the beds are in place. "I don't know, extra blankets - paper - a brazier for heating the room...?" 

"A heat source would be good, yeah." It's obvious why he wants one: they're all dressed for the temperate indoors with a side of crowded rooms and heavy exercise, and their clothes are well-worn and multiply patched.

"Right, of course." Tran frowns at them. "....Do you need to be set up with winter clothing? I'm afraid we probably can't get you anything on short notice that fits well, but cloaks at least -" 

:Tran: The mindvoice belongs to Herald Joshel, who sounds nearly as exhausted as Tran feels. :I'm supposed to come and Truth Spell some people who're claiming to be from another world......?: 

The overtones are slightly dubious, but mostly just deeply, incredibly exhausted. 

:Right. Sure. Any way you can come do it in their guest room - we're here -: he sends a mental sense-of-direction. :And grab some spare blankets and any spare winter clothes you can find, while you're at it? They're not especially well equipped: 

:...Er, all right: 

Tran turns back to the kids. 

:Sorry, got interrupted. I, um - my colleague needs to come over here and ask you some questions using our local truth magic: 

He doesn't ask if that's all right with them, even though it feels almost painful not to, because it doesn't, in fact, matter, and he doesn't want to lie to them either. 

It's a very natural request and he's already been very generous; they all know intellectually that adults can be as generous as they want but he's the first adult they've met in four years not counting themselves. 

"Okay. Is it the mind-altering kind?" Plenty of people with good affinities or lucky spell selections sell some form of arbitration or fact-finding, but some of them have things that aren't exactly truth spells: spells that make you say everything that pops into your head, spells that convince you that someone is totally safe and you can tell them anything, stuff like that. Fortunately most of the secrets they know are only potential problems if these people end up interacting with the people the secrets are about, and a lot of them are proprietary spells that these people probably can't even cast.

Tran is having some sort of emotion about the vague glimpses of adjacent surface thoughts that he's picking up just from trying to get the meaning of the kid's words. 

He will deal with those feelings LATER. (Along with the growing pile of other things that he needs to deal with later, whatever 'later' means....)

:There are two levels of Truth Spell that we can cast - Joshel and I are both powerful enough for either, and he didn't specify. First-level just tells us whether you're being honest or not - second level is a bit mind-affecting, but the only thing it can do is make you answer a direct question:

"Okay." If they can get Joshel to do them one at a time then if he asks 'And what are all the secrets you don't want to tell me' whoever's turn it isn't can stick their hand in the other one's mouth or whatever. Making sure it is just one of them at a time is really more of a Marcy job; he touches her shoulder. Come on, Marcy, do the diplomacy.

She can pull together an appropriate response and air-mail it the several miles from her brain to her mouth, sure. Set up a favourable frame, make them have to contradict you an uncomfortable amount . . .

"Will you need to question all of us or just one? Any of us can speak for all the others." Maybe she should volunteer to be the one questioned. If they ask her for her darkest secret she'll probably find herself saying that she thinks Annisa's body should stay in the tank forever, Annisa deserves to live but if she can't have that she should have a grand and beautiful tomb like the pharaohs did.

:...I'm not sure? I think we'll need to separately ask each of you at least, er, some of the questions: 

"I'll go first," she says dully. She doesn't care what they ask, she's too tired to care. . . . The rest of her squad is going to care. "What're the questions."

:It'll be easier to just explain once Joshel is here: Tran is way too tired to think about this. :Do you, er, need water or anything before that?: 

For some reason that's a really hard question! It does have a diplomatic answer though.

"We're fine, thank you."

Sure. He can pause awkwardly, in that case. 

Until Herald Joshel knocks on the door, and after Tran calls out to him, opens it. 

....He stops three steps into the room, and stares at the group of teenagers. (What are they wearing -?) 

(It started out as heavily embroidered cotton shirts and khaki cargo pants, but now it's layers of variously stained patches of whatever fabric was around at the time, plus a collection of mismatched metal jewelry. Also Marcy and Franklin both have Annisa's blood on their pant cuffs. Also they all reek of sweat and have totally failed to notice this.)

"Good morning."

- This is awkward and he shouldn't have expected anything else but he really, really wishes this entire month could have somehow been less complicated. Somehow. Surely this shouldn't have been complicated. 

Oh, right, apparently these are alien kids from another world, or something? Who don't speak Valdemaran, and so he needs to use Mindspeech with them even though they're not Gifted. 

And - also he's not supposed to trust them. Even though they look very tired and sad. 

He sits down, and casts a first-stage Truth Spell, and takes a deep breath and looks at the girl who seems to...apparently be the leader of the teenager team. 

:We've gathered that you didn't expect to end up here, is that right?: 

She looks back at him but her response comes on a delay, like she has to remember how to talk again every time. "Yes. We meant to go to Boston, on planet Earth."

Tran holds up a hand, indicating that the children should wait, and he and Joshel exchange a lengthy, unhappy Mindspeech look. 

And then Tran sighs, and turns back to Marcy. :Did you do anything unusual, that could have caused you to end up here instead?: 

"No, I don't think so." People have driven out of the graduation hall inside giant artifices before and been fine. It couldn't even have been confused about where to put them because they were all meant for the same place because Annisa was already dead by then.

She relays the question to the others but none of them can think of anything either, except that Kevin remembers that there was a moment of weird distortion in the air right before they hit the portal. "It couldn't've been us, though," he adds. "We didn't have anything that could look like that. Probably someone ran in front of us under an illusion or something."

:Has this ever happened before, with the Gate taking people to the wrong place?: 

"I've never heard of it happening? But it might have happened, to someone nobody happened to remember seeing them go through, and if they didn't come back everyone would have just assumed they died. But it can't be common, someone would have noticed."

Nod. 

Joshel frowns. :And you've, er, never heard of our local gods, is that right? Are any of these names familiar: Vkandis Sunlord, the Star-Eyed Goddess or Kal'enel, er, the Shadow Lover...?: 

Oh no, religion. She's too tired for this. "No. I don't believe in any gods--which doesn't mean I don't believe in gods here, I mean my world didn't have any. But some people there believe in Jesus and some believe in Allah and some people believe in Buddha and I never heard of anyone believing in any of yours." Hopefully that was both true and polite. If they demand she convert she'll--something. Something that doesn't involve lying.

:If a god of our world ordered you, or relayed orders via a servant or avatar, to do something that would harm Valdemar's interests, would you listen: 

That's so underspecified! The answer to that is her entire decision procedure and maybe if someone had asked her a year ago she could have provided a neatly organized writeup of her entire decision procedure but right now it is TOO HARD so they are getting a half-assed answer.

"I don't consider any of those entities sources of trustworthy orders. You have been kind to us and I want to repay you. I do not wish to harm anyone. I will act in each moment with honor and according to my best judgement." That was definitely a collection of sentences that related to the question.

That...was kind of helpful, but not because it was an answer to the question, which it wasn't. :I see. Would you be willing to give your sworn word, under the spell, that you won't harm anyone in Haven using your magic: 

Blink blink. "We will defend ourselves if attacked? We won't attack anyone." That first part might or might not actually be true of her right now, if someone tried to stab her or set her on fire or malefice her she might actually just stand there blinking like an idiot. Kevin would definitely attack anyone who attacked any of them, though. Kevin's not an idiot and has tons of self-preservation instinct and isn't scared of doing hard things. So would Franklin and Abigail. 

Tran flinches. He and Joshel exchange another deeply unhappy look. 

Deep breath. :If it - were a situation where it was ambiguous whether or not you were being attacked, but your life wasn't imminently in danger, can you commit to...waiting and confirming, and holding off on attacking unless and until you knew for sure?: 

This is so suspicious! What are they trying to pull! (Hopefully not malia.)

What would being ambiguously attacked even look like? If someone threw a spell at them but missed on purpose? If someone started trying to do something that might collapse the ceiling on them? In any case they're massively outnumbered and low on mana so the logical thing to do in even an unambiguous attack is shield and run away. "We can shield and run away instead of fighting back?"

:I....think that would help cut down the risk of something spiraling out of control until really stupid destructive things happen: 

There is a lot of....something....in the overtones. Not quite anger, it's too flat and cold and empty for that. 

Tran's eyes are haunted. And he does look angry, though it's - mostly - not directed at the kids. 

"You really sound like you're expecting something to happen that we'll interpret as being attacked and it's making us nervous. Can you promise you're not planning to attack us either? Or explain what's got you so worried?"

"We really don't want to hurt anyone. We're just scared."

It's actually kind of impossible not to feel sympathy for these poor children. 

He glances at Joshel, then back to the teenagers. :I know. And - so are we. Some...relevant background here...is that our entire kingdom almost just went to war, and the war would have been a terrible mistake. We were tricked into it, more or less, by - some of the local gods. Who were willing to kill a lot of people, including Their own worshippers, to - spook us into thinking that Valdemar was under threat from someone else. Someone who turns out not to be our enemy at all: 

"You have lying gods who kill people and start wars? That's--shit. No wonder you're being careful." That's a completely different kind of danger from mals and he has no idea how to deal with it!

"We will be on the alert for anyone trying to trick us into killing people. Is there, like, a way to recognize a god if you're looking carefully?"

Tran scowls. :Maybe? Most of Them seem to work with nudges and coincidences, so if something happens that seems implausibly unlucky - or lucky - that's suspicious. Though most of what happened today was a lot less subtle: 

"Okay. We'll be on the lookout. We don't know what's implausible here so we might have false positives but we'll get used to it." Unless we find a way to stop being here and go home. "Is there a library where we can go read things and learn about this place without taking up someone's time?"

:There is a library, but we were under the impression that we don't share any languages?: 

". . . Sorry, I'm used to the library having every language. I'll learn yours. It would help if you could say the rest of your questions out loud at the same time as the telepathy."

"We can do that." (Repeated in Mindspeech.) "We can probably arrange you a language tutor? Since that wouldn't have to be a Herald." 

He glances at Joshel. "We...need to go discuss some things. And then we - may have other questions, but it won't need to be under Truth Spell. Though, while we have the Truth Spell up, I do want to ask all of you, individually, to promise that you won't initiate any violence here, and will try your best to run away rather than harming people even in self-defense." 

She nods, then takes fifteen seconds to think of a wording, never mind the awkwardness of the pause.

"I promise not to initiate violence, to defend myself nonviolently where possible, and to use only the minimum of violence necessary to ensure my survival and the survival of my allies."

The others all repeat her, word for word.

....Sure, he'll take it. 

Tran repeats that they need to discuss some things, and then the kids are left alone. 

At which point they can all stop pretending to themselves that they don't need to collapse into bed.

Except Kevin, who is still too wired to sleep and offers to take first watch. Nobody disputes that they need someone doing that, here surrounded by creepy gods and who knows what else.

The Heralds have a meeting. 

Jisa does not want to be having a meeting right now! She even less wants to run off in half a candlemark for the last-minute Council meeting that's been scheduled, where she is going to have to do her very best to ram through a peace treaty with Leareth. Or something. And convince the Council that instead they are apparently at war with several gods now???

And possibly also with Karse. Karse has supposedly, during all the confusion up north, just evacuated most of their troops via Gate to some unknown location. In theory, Karis should be the authority on whether or not her country is going to war with its allied neighbor, but Jisa isn't putting much trust in that theory right now. 

She wants to cry on Melody's shoulder for the next DAY, but she can't do that, can she. 

And, on top of everything else, apparently she now needs to run this meeting, too, because Tran and Joshel are just sitting there looking vaguely stunned. 

"So? What did we learn?" 

"That they're kids? Scared and traumatized and a long way from home?" 

Tran sighs. Drags a hand over his face. "Other than that, not much? They weren't willing to promise unconditionally not to harm anyone in Haven, because they're very worried about self-defense. Presumably because they just survived a horrible death school and they're quite reasonably paranoid. And they're not stupid - they could tell we were talking around something. So I went ahead and told them - in general terms only - about our situation, and that we can't trust the gods here. They're...not sure what to be wary of, obviously, they don't know what's normal here so they're not going to have much idea if something is an implausible coincidence. ...They want to try to learn our language, so they can read up from our library instead of bothering us. I said we could maybe arrange language tutoring." 

Jisa feels like worrying about language tutoring now is maybe, just possibly, getting ahead of themselves. 

"But you don't think they're a threat to Leareth?" 

Tran looks helplessly over at Joshel. "I...don't know. Not under any normal circumstances, I think? They - seem like good kids. Just, I - after everything, I don't– I mean, we know how far the gods will go, for this." 

Jisa knows as well. She just nods. There aren't any words. 

"So, given that, I'm not sure what to...do." 

"Well, did the kids seem to be in a hurry for an answer?" 

"I mean, they were stressed? But I think mostly they want to know if they can go home, or get a message back. And we don't have an answer for them on that anyway." 

Sigh. "Then - I think I want to wait? Give Leareth a chance to rest, ask him for advice again when he's a bit more lucid. I'd really like Treven's input, too, but - I'm not sure this is a distraction he needs right now." 

Tran sighs, heavily. "I don't love us...not being on the same page. Been enough of that lately. But from what we're hearing on the relay, it does sound like they've got it bad enough already." 

"Right, so the plan is to - do the Council meeting, get a peace treaty with L-Leareth," Joshel even manages to say that out loud with a straight face and only stumble on the man's name a little, "and - we're telling the kids to wait and we'll get back to them?" He rubs his eyes. "I can go let them know, I guess. I should bring them some food and water and more warm clothes anyway." 

And, another few minutes after that, he arrives outside the guest room, knocks very gently, and then tries to nudge the outer door open so he can bring in the little hand-cart that he's loaded up with food and jugs of water and a bag of spare clothes. Have the teenagers taken any measures to lock the door to the hallway, with magic or otherwise? 

Kevin put up a tripwire ward but all that does is insert the knowledge that Something Is Entering The Room directly into his brain and he's perfectly capable of seeing that. Everyone else is asleep.

"Hello."

Joshel smiles at him. It's an incredibly tired smile but it's otherwise genuine. :Just came to let you know that, er, we've actually got a lot to sort out this afternoon, and I don't think we can make a decision on - things related to your team - until after that. But I brought food and water and spare clothes for all of you, and - er, well, it looks like you maybe need some rest anyway: 

Nod. "Thank you. We don't want to give you even more work. We can stay in here and sleep and think about how to pay you back for the food."

Joshel ducks his head, looking slightly embarrassed. :Don't worry about paying us, really. I - just use this bell to call if you need anything, all right? Chamber pots should be under the beds, or I guess they're probably sitting in the corner of the other bedroom for those beds. Extra candles plus flint-and-steel in the drawer under the washbasin table - extra blankets in the cabinet by the sofa - any other questions or things you need -?: 

Chamber pots. Really. Well, now he has an idea for something he can do to pay them back, and a reason to convince them to take it even if they really do want to give stuff to total strangers for free because they have lakes of free mana.

"I think we're good, thanks."

:Take care, then. Someone should get back to you by...sundown. Probably: 

And Joshel leaves. 

Jisa, somehow, gets through the endless stupid Council meeting. The peace treaty is APPROVED. It only takes one interlude of marching back to Leareth's shielded room at Healers', waking him - which earns her a death glare from Melody and which Jisa feels horrible about - and demanding that he swear an oath on the stars not to ever use the population of Valdemar to fuel a god. She doesn't use a Truth Spell for it. She doesn't need to; she knows Leareth. Inside and out. She's seen his mind. 

(Leareth gives her a very odd look when she asks, and looks like maybe he wants to say something else to her, but he's clearly too tired and in pain to manage more words than the bare minimum.) 

Jisa has, at this point, been awake for coming on thirty-six hours, with only a very brief, very cold nap in the middle, during their pause to rest on the trek to the pass to meet Leareth. The stimulant she took is wearing off and she's exhausted. 

She informs Tran that she is going to BED and he can take care of getting Leareth to sign the treaty and also of anything that comes up with the magical teenagers from another world. 

This is way too many things. Tran will leave the magical teenagers alone until and unless they actually call and ask for something. 

...He only realizes after Jisa has gone off to bed that he forgot to ask about passing updates down the relay. Oh well. It can probably wait. 

Outside the curtained window of the guest room, the sun occasionally peeks slightly through storm-grey clouds. The light dims, and dims further, as dusk approaches. Nobody has come to interrupt them yet. 

Kevin counts lines of woodgrain in the floor, for mana and to keep himself awake, until he can't stay awake anymore, and then wakes Franklin and passes out.

At dusk, Jisa is woken from the sleep of the dead by a Mindtouch. 

:What: she snaps, which she feels is great restraint on her part. She could have just hit them mentally instead. It's awfully tempting. 

It's Joshel. :Word on the relay. We...might have a worse problem than we thought: 

Aughhhhhhhhfine. She's awake. 

Jisa struggles into a sitting position, trying to ignore the sudden throb behind her eyes. :What problem: 

:Still waiting for back and forth on the relay, but...I think the children who arrived here might not be the only ones lost from their world. Seems like another cohort landed up north. Right in the midst of all the confusion and emergency, so it's - not surprising they didn't notice all the parts that didn't make sense and realize they were lost from another world: 

:Oh. Damn it: 

:I don't know for sure. It could be a coincidence, and their lot really were just some students from a reclusive mage-school whose Gate home went off target. But - it's awfully suspicious, right?: 

:Yes: Jisa slides her bare feet over the side of the bed, wincing as the cold air brushes her bare skin. :...Joshel. What aren't you saying: 

:They're, er... Our biggest problem is that they're not with Dara anymore. Or anywhere the Heralds up there can find: 

:Oh. Goddamnit! I - do we think they wandered off and got in trouble? Could they have tried to get themselves home?: 

:I don't know. Maybe. But - what we do know is that Iftel evacuated several thousand troops by Gate. And Dara can't confirm whether she saw the children more recently. Things were chaotic: 

Aaaaaaaaaaah. 

Focus. 

:Right. We...should talk to the team here. They'll be able to help us confirm if they know the other teenagers, right?: 

 :- Oh, right, they would. I'd just been thinking we could describe what Dara and Marius observed of their magic, up there. But yes, as soon as we hear back, we should go talk to them: 

It ends up taking several back-and-forths to confirm; each message needs to be passed via three Heralds with Mindspeech, all of them exhausted. In the end, it's well after full dark when Jisa knocks on the door to the guest room, Tran and Joshel at her back. 

It is now Marcy's watch. She feels a little more capable of applying intelligence to problems but also on some level unshakeably convinced that this is in some undefinable sense not real and she's about to wake up in her room at the Scholomance or a hospital in Boston or something. She has been telling herself firmly that this is not going to stop happening and even if it does she still has responsibilities in the meantime.

She answers the door. "Good evening?"

Jisa's eyes are puffy from having just woken up and her hair is tangled. She somehow looks even more tired than before. 

:You and the others up for talking now? We - got some news, and we want to confirm it with you, but....short version is, you might not be the only team from your school whose graduation gate ended up off target: 

"Woah. Uh, who?" If it's literally everyone their parents will collectively panic. If it's everyone except one group that could start a war whether that group did it or not.

:Er, we're...not totally sure. We have descriptions, though: Jisa tries to peer past Marcy into the room. :Are the others awake to talk as well?: 

"I can wake them up if you want, we're taking turns. Do you know how many people?"

:Four. Two girls, two boys. Though apparently it was a little ambiguous for one of them whether he was part of the team or had just somehow ended up with them anyway: 

"Okay. There were something like eleven or twelve hundred people trying to get out and--half of them probably died trying--so it's not going to be more than six hundred total even if they're scattered all over the planet."

:Half of them! That’s…the normal success rate - survival rate…? Gods. I - your parents must be so devastated right now - I’m so sorry…:

Focus. Not the time for condolences. 

:All right. I’m sure all of you are exhausted, so - I won’t wake the others unless you don’t recognize the descriptions but think they might. Joshel? You have the notes?:

:Yes. One moment: 

He squints at scrawls on a piece of paper; it’s clear from the handwriting that his hand was shaking when he made the notes. 

:Four young adults of about eighteen: he reads off, half rote. :One of the young men had a sword? Or sword-like artifact at least. One of the young women claimed to be able to heal people by singing to them. The other had a pack with magical drinks and bandages that could do healing. Does that ring any bells?:

"Singer and a healer on the same team, that'd be . . . Shannon and Rebecca or Jacqueline and Chu Hua, or some other team I don't know--did they say if the singer had darker skin than me and eyes more like yours, or skin and eyes more like mine?"

:Er, sorry, Dara wasn't sure on the descriptions, it was all very hectic. She... Descriptions are: first boy, dressed fairly nicely, light-colored hair, sword or sword-like artifact and a bracelet that the Groveborn thinks was also a magical artifact, of very foreign nature. One of the girls had darker skin - nobody remembers if she was the singer or not, though. The other girl had lighter skin and dark brown hair, about Jisa's coloring. The second boy had a bracelet that matched the darker-skinned girl's, and about my coloring: 

The bracelets are presumably power-sharers, but that doesn't narrow it down enough. "And I assume you didn't get any of their names or you'd've started with that . . . it could be Raleigh and Shannon and Rebecca but then who would the fourth kid be . . . Did any of them say the name of a city or a country?"

:One second: Joshel consults the paper. :....Yeah, they did mention some places right at the start when Marius was trying to figure out where they'd come from and whether they were a threat. He - unfortunately didn't remember all of it because a lot of other things happened right away. There were...three different cities? All of them were in a place called 'America'. One of the cities was New Something but he doesn't remember what the second placename was: 

"Okay, that narrows it down some and is consistent with Shannon and Raleigh and Rebecca and some other random person who didn't have a--wait a second, blond boy with no group and a bracelet and a 'sword-like artifact' and 'New Something' is probably Orion Lake." She wouldn't be all that surprised if it turned out this whole accident was down to some crazy thing Orion Lake was doing, but she'd be surprised enough that she's not going to accuse him of having fucked up out loud.

Tran is hurriedly taking notes. :Right. Shannon, Raleigh, Rebecca. They're a team? Who's Orion Lake and, er, is there a particular reason to think he might end up tagging along with some other team rather than with his own?: 

"Yes, those three are a team. Orion Lake--is weird. He's insanely good at killing mals, it's his affinity--does this planet even have affinities? Anyway he's a totally unstoppable once-in-a-generation outlier and he loves it so he didn't join an alliance, he was just going to go in with his swordwhip and kill as many mals and save as many people as he could and then get out at the last minute. I don't know if he ended up getting out at the same time as us for some reason or if this means the gate was like that for the whole time and there's a thousand more of us out there or what."

:Hmm. Could you give us a more detailed description of his sword-artifact? We can pass that back up north, see if the people who saw it agree that it looked like that:

She describes its appearance in various configurations and how it unfolds and extends to switch between them. "It's pretty much uniquely identifying; I don't think anyone else goes in for that design." Unfortunately she doesn't remember what Sacramento's power-sharers look like.

:Thank you. We'll pass that on and try to get confirmation. ....Er, do you have any other identifying information for - Joshel, Tran, what were their names again -?: 

:Shannon, Raleigh, Rebecca. Er, if there are other identifying traits you can give us, for them, we can see if that jogs Dara or Marius or Rolan's memory: 

She knows a few more facts about Shannon and Raleigh, fewer about Rebecca and Orion. Mostly what languages they speak and what healing spells Shannon can do.

None of this is especially helpful for comparing against information already on his paper, and Joshel somehow doubts it'll be useful to Dara or Marius or Rolan either, but he can pass it along. 

When he contacts the relay up the line, he also gets a response on the earlier query. 

:Rolan didn't see the sword artifact switch configurations but otherwise it matches. He says the boy carrying it seemed to be doing guard duty for the other three? He came across as very brave and maybe kind of reckless, he'd run toward a commotion rather than away. When the others were all jumping in to do healing for casualties, and the boy was standing watch, Rolan did ask if he was good in combat and wanted to help guard one of the Heralds going in to try to accept a surrender from Iftel. The boy said he was good at fighting mals, not people. Does that all sound like Orion?: 

"Yeah, that's him all right. What's the situation with Iftel, currently?"

:They were supposed to be allied with us. We...um, we were sort of calling in all our allies, because we thought an enemy up north had attacked and we were about to get invaded - or, we weren't sure yet but we didn't want to be caught unprepared. And then things - escalated - there were a lot of conveniently coincidental messages getting lost or garbled, so Haven didn't know we were negotiating with him, and long story short they ended up attacking the place where we were meeting him to negotiate. And then Iftel ignored the order to stand down. And then they chucked a superweapon at the pass and nearly killed all of us. ...They've surrendered to our King now but it was pretty dicey for a while: 

:For context, Iftel belongs to Vkandis Sunlord. It's behind a miraculous magical barrier that He made and we didn't even know until the last couple of years that they had an entire secret army in there: 

Marcy is used to being attacked by monsters in the shower. She's used to checking all her food for poison before she eats it. She's used to being woken in the dead of night by things crawling under her door to suck the life out of her. She has never been scared of being killed by her allies.

"That's--fuck. And Vkandis made them do it?" 

Shrug. :Or convinced them it was a good idea, at least. We don't know if it was Foresight or what. I mean, it - gods, it's hard to blame their leadership? If Vkandis had been protecting my country from all harm for thousands of years, I'd probably trust Him too! Anyway, it wasn't just Vkandis. The magical weapon they used came from Urtho's Tower. Or what's left of it. It was mostly destroyed in the Cataclysm. And that's the territory of the Star-Eyed Goddess, and - She's the one who got my half-brother to try to destabilize the Heartstone in Haven. To kill Leareth. It would've killed tens of thousands of other people, too: 

And instead, it only killed her father, and her brother. And poor Kilchas. Jisa spent five minutes standing by the bier where they laid out his body, even though it was time she didn't have to spare. 

Tran raises his eyebrows a little. :Are we just telling them everything now?: he asks Jisa, along a private Mindspeech link. 

Jisa is so, so far past caring about secrecy here. From where she's standing, it feels like secrets and failures to communicate all the context are what nearly destroyed everything. 

"I understand why you asked us to swear not to harm you, now. There aren't--back home there aren't any mals smart enough to trick people other than, like, mimicking someone's voice from the other side of a door. Who is Leareth and why did a goddess try to kill him?"

:....I wanted to talk to him a bit more before, er, telling you everything about him. But on reflection it'd have helped if we'd told you more about the situation earlier, so you'd understand why we're so nervous. Leareth - is a very powerful mage who was working on a plan to - make the world better, but that meant opposing some of the gods. So they keep trying to kill him. Leareth...is also very very ruthless, he's not a nice person, but he's - he actually does just want to fix all our stupid problems. I've read his mind, I know. ...Gods, he'd want to fix your world's stupid problems even more: 

"That makes sense. I--it's good that someone has an idea for how to do something about the god problem. I can see why he'd have to be very cautious."

Jisa nods. And then lets her head stay hanging forward, because she's still so, so tired. 

Joshel is the next one to interrupt. :Heard back on the relay. All the descriptions match. Do - you have any way of contacting them? Because right now we don't have the faintest idea where they are, and if Karse or Iftel has them, then...that means Vkandis has them. And that they'll only end up hearing that side of the story: 

"I--it's possible? I've never tried to do anything more than a mile away . . ." She should be excited about the research project. In junior year she would have been excited about the research project. Being tired has never been a reason not to do the thing in front of her. "I could try casting runestones to find out what direction they're in? I'd need 24 small rocks and some way to write on them, charcoal or a pencil or something." There are divination spells that don't need materials, but for something that's pushing the edges of what a spell is supposed to be for she'll do best with runestones. They've always worked better for her than anything else; she doesn't know if it's because dropping them makes it sort of in-affinity or because she expects them to work or what.

:We can get you small stones, sure, and charcoal. Is it important what type of stone?:

"No, just small enough to hold several in my hands at once."

:Should they all be the same size and shape?: 

"Not especially, just bigger than a pebble and smaller than my fist. I could go to wherever your rocks are and find some if that's easier? I'd just want to wake Abigail first."

Shrug. :Everything's covered with snow. I'll just send Joshel to have a look around for you: 

Clearly she needs to get better at modeling this whole thing where items are just lying around in places rather than being in a designated room for that kind of item or a designated location for stuff belonging to a person. "Thank you. Sorry for the trouble. If I tell you which direction and roughly how far away will that be enough for you to find them?"

:For the stones– oh, sorry, you mean for the other students. It would certainly be enough to narrow things down. Might not be enough to actually go retrieve them. Which we're going to have a lot of trouble doing anyway because none of our Gate-capable mages are in very good shape, right now: 

"I don't really have anything for long distance travel either but I could give someone some mana if that's the problem. If they're all injured that's harder." 

:Sandra's injured, but Leareth and I just have awful backlash. Er, do wizards get backlash - where if you use too much magic, you get exhausted and have a headache and doing more magic hurts?: 

"No, we just run out of mana. A lot of spells and potions that make you stronger or more alert or whatever have a nasty comedown though."

Jisa nods. :Your painkiller spell did help with my headache. Though I think I'd still better not Gate. Er, how long will the rune stones thing take you to cast, once you have the stones for it?: 

"Like ten minutes? Maybe more if they're really far away."

:Er, what's the furthest you've ever done? Is there a range limit on the spell?: 

"I learned it in the Scholomance, and there isn't any distance more than a mile in the Scholomance and also the dimensions aren't super fixed because of all the void, so it was long enough for everything I needed but that's not saying much. The book I got it out of only talked about finding stuff in the same town but it wasn't clear if that was a range limit or the author just didn't care about anything farther away."

:I....suspect they're almost definitely further than a mile away. Probably hundreds of miles. The battlefield up north is five hundred miles from here, and the capital of Karse - if they actually were evacuated there - is about that far as well. Er, is the energy-cost going to be higher for longer distances? We might be able to give you extra mage-energy for it: 

Somehow. She's certainly not in any shape for that right now. But. One thing at a time. If that's the next bottleneck then she'll damned well figure it out. 

"It will probably cost more for longer distances but I can get mana from one of the others if you're out. Wait, didn't you say you had big pools of it? Is your pool out?" Enclaves don't, as a rule, get so low mana that one divination is a hard decision, but a war would do it if anything could.

:Er, no, but - I don't know that you'll be able to pull directly from a node, since you don't have the same training and probably don't even have the same kind of mage-gift? And so probably we need to either teach you how or channel it over to you or do something else, and that sounds....really hard to do while I still have backlash. Sorry: 

And then a Mindtouch taps at Jisa's shields, politely but with urgency. :Jisa. Are you busy. We have a situation and I need you: 

....What. 

She is too tired for this. 

:I - what -?: 

:....I think actually I maybe need all the alien wizard teenagers too?: 

.....Okay. Seriously. What.

:Why?: 

:Leareth just woke up. Said he has to talk to them, and you. ....Said he only wants to explain it once, so I'm stuck here in suspense until you get yourself over here: 

All.....right?? 

Jisa takes a deep breath. :Er, sorry, I - can you wake the others after all? I - apparently Leareth urgently wants to talk to all of you for some reason: 

"Yeah, okay." Leareth is the one with some kind of plan for dealing with the terrifying liar gods, so if he wants to talk to them they should do it. She wakes up the others, by calling their names rather than touching them because being touched in your sleep means something got close enough to touch you.

Mrghlblargh he just got to sleep like an hour ago. Fucking whatever.

"Sorry, we all need to go talk to someone named Leareth who's trying to solve the thing where gods trick people into starting wars."

"That is a good plan and I'm fully awake now." Oddly timed wakeups pretty much come in 'fire off one spell and pass out again' and 'guess the rest of tonight is a write-off'.

Everyone else is too, so, "Alright, where are we going?"

:Er, this way, follow me: 

Everything hurts. Jisa misses Papa and she misses Vanyel and she wishes so badly that she could be a child, again, and hide in the circle of her mama's arms while the grownups fixed everything. She hasn't wished for that in a long time. Maybe not ever. 

She doesn't have a choice, though. And so it doesn't matter if she can't do this. She's going to do it anyway. 

She leads Boston back down the hall, and out of the guest wing, and across a snowy path, to the House of Healing, and then to Leareth's room. 

Marcy fills the others in on her new batch of context as they go.

This Leareth dude sounds pretty neat.

A red-haired woman in rumpled green robes is standing just outside the room. She's visibly unarmed, and also very middle-aged and very clearly out of shape, but nonetheless, the way she's standing - and the look in her eyes - convey very clearly that she is on guard duty, and vigilant to any possible threat, and extremely ready to respond to the slightest hint of danger with force. 

:Oh, good, there you are: 

(This is clearly directed to Jisa, though she's including everyone in the Mindspeech link.) 

And then, to the Boston team, :- You must be the wizard death school graduates from another world? Leareth wants to talk to you, apparently, but - I wanted to fill you in on some things first. He's an immortal two thousand year old mage and the gods keep trying to kill him - and just almost succeeded at that - so he's got a lot of combat reflexes and he's pretty on edge right now. Please try not to startle him, all right? No sudden moves, definitely don't touch him. I'm not going to light the candles in there because he has a headache, sorry about that, try not to trip because if someone falls over that'll definitely startle him: 

Two thousand years old, wow. Other than that, very relatable.

"We know how to deal with that. Thank you for the warning."

Abigail contemplates casting something for night vision but decides to save the mana; it's a short spell and she can change her mind in a hurry if there's trouble.

Melody nods, takes a deep breath, and opens the door halfway, gesturing for them to follow her into the darkened room. 

Oh, this is probably them. 

Leareth tries to wriggle a bit more upright against the pillows, and then...runs headlong into the inconvenient fact that, if these are indeed Annisa's allies from Boston, he doesn't share a language with them and using Mindspeech right now is incredibly ill-advised. 

"Boston?" he asks out loud, because he's pretty sure those phonemes at least were conveyed accurately in the dream.

He coughs. Clears his throat. "...Melody. Can you relay." 

"Yes. Of course."

Melody glances back at the kids. :Leareth would like me to translate what he's saying into Mindspeech, for all of you. He's a Mindspeaker too but he has very severe backlash right now and he's resting his Gifts: 

She really needs to get on picking up the local language. 

"Very understandable. It's good to meet you both," she says, in the soft even voice one uses when attempting to interrupt a senior in the library.

(Tran follows Jisa into the room, and then stands quietly against one wall.) 

Leareth clears his throat again. 

"I - have a message - to convey. First. From...." 

Pause. 

"....Oh. I think I failed to explain. Vanyel–" 

And then he breaks off, because he's having some sort of emotion about this - or, possibly, half a dozen different emotions all at the same time - and right now he doesn't have the energy or will to gently nudge the feelings aside and fold them away to deal with later, and so his throat is tightening and it's suddenly hard to breathe. 

(Also he's very nauseated again, but this probably has less to do with emotions and more to do with the fact that he has a spectacular case of backlash and he just a) moved, and b) had to listen to sounds.) 

Melody leans in expectantly, waiting. 

"Vanyel -?" she prompts him again, after five seconds have passed in silence. "I - hmm, are you - wanting to explain what you and Van actually did, with the Heartstone?" 

"...Yes. That. I, we - had a plan. Not - my first choice. Or his. Backup option." 

Melody is, on one level, very tempted to kick everyone out of the room because clearly Leareth is in no shape to have this conversation, and trying to do it anyway isn't especially good for him. (She can tell; she's watching his mind with Mindhealing Sight.) 

But, on the other hand, it's genuinely important? She knows that, both because of how urgently he asked, and because she....can already guess, partly, where this is going. 

"The backup option was having Van use his Final Strike to power the first stage of making a baby god," she says quietly. "Right?" 

- what, how - ? 

It doesn't actually matter, how or why Melody was able to piece it together. She was Vanyel's ally and if she wanted to kill Leareth she would have done it candlemarks ago and, taking those two facts combined, it's enough that Leareth has already decided to tentatively trust her. 

"Yes." 

"I'm sorry I didn't–" 

"You could have said something!" Tran snarls at Leareth, at the same time. "I - we were talking just a few candlemarks ago - you, if you knew, why didn't you–" 

"I - Melody - why...?" 

- and, apparently, instead of saying any more words, Jisa is going to collapse against Melody's shoulder and burst into tears.

(At this point, she's a long way past even feeling embarrassed about this.)