She stalls for a round and just smiles at them. The Celestial realms are generally Summer-y. Autumn reminds her of Axis and Abadar and Law, which aren't Celestial, at least, not necessarily so. If there's any realm that Elias would be close to, it would definitely be Winter, but Winter sounds Evil. From both her observations and what she's heard, it seems that lineage has effects on people's behavior, in the sense that people of some lineage are more likely to express some set of traits compared to base humans.

Finally, she speaks.

"I...think it's Winter, yes. Do you happen to have other questions for us? If not, I think we'll eat and sleep soon. Ah, where should we place the plates and such after we're done? Or would you like to eat with us here?" She hopes not, but it's not like she wants to refuse the people that just fed her.

He perks up when he hears the description of Winter. That definitely describes him, although he also relates to Summer, in a way.

"I think so too," he says.

"The word for winter-touched is 'draughir'," explains Bron, "most people are pretty okay with draughir, they might expect you to eat last if food is short. Changelings too, reputation for being a bit flighty maybe, but no-one has a real problem with them."

"I think Tyfa is dying to ask you about your magic items," replies Carywn cheerfully, "but I'm sure she can restrain her curiosity and let you sleep. You can leave the plates outside the tent when you're done, we'll send someone by later to clear them up."

"I'm sorry, they just look really well made," apologises Tyfa. "I've been thinking about apprenticing to an artisan, if I can find one that'll take me."

They wait a moment longer to see if there's more conversation, but seem amenable to backing off and heading out now.

Eh? "Why are draughir expected to eat last if food is short?" That came out of nowhere. What did Bron mean by that?

She chuckles at Carwyn, then looks to Tyfa. "They're nothing special. They're enchanted to the first level – the base enchantment. The base enchantment prevents my arms and armor from rusting or degrading – you don't need to maintain it. My equipment will last much longer than me. It's also more difficult to destroy or damage. Aside from that, it's also easier to use, for weapons, or to move around in, for armor. The armor also protects you better." Despite the benefits she just rattled off, the tone of her voice implies that it's something quotidian and boring to her, like regularly issued equipment.

She's not going to mention the shrinking weapon enchantment unless they call attention to it.

"Oh, draughir here can go without food for longer than other humans, and eat things that would make anyone else sick; I don't know if that's always how they work or just the kind we have around the Empire," explains Bron.

"Oh, right, it's like mithril stuff?" replies Tyfa. "I guess most actual military gets mithril stuff, it's just not something I'd seen before."

"No, not mithril. We rarely work with mithril – this is just regular steel with spellsilver in it, for the enchantment. But maybe your mithril is different from what we call mithril? We come from...someplace very far, see."

She involuntarily yawns again.

"Ah, sorry. I do think it's time for us to eat and sleep now. Thank you very much for the food, once again."

"Have a good evening; there should be some people over by the road on watch if you need anything in the night," Carwyn replies, and the three of them head back off to the buildings, chattering excitedly about what kind of magical accident might give a draughir metal hair.

She waves them off and begins actually eating her food. It tastes really good. She would have asked for more, but they've already gone. And besides, it would seem a little greedy. The two of them put the plates and such outside the tent.

The area seems safe enough, but thinking places are safe enough are how you get killed. They decide to sleep for six hours each, with Elias sleeping first. Felicia casts Lesser Restoration on herself so she doesn't fall asleep. She can request more Lesser Restorations tomorrow if they still feel tired.

They go and do that. When they wake up, it's already past sunrise. The two of them think about what spells to prepare, and begin to pray.

This is going to wipe out my intervention budget, but have a bunch of cleric circles! Actually does it even count if it's outside Pharasma's Creation? Who cares, it's not like I'm going to be telling the other gods about this.

It's not strictly necessary for me to intervene in this situation, but Damian is intervening, so I might as well. Have an antipaladin circle!

She screams.

The feeling of suddenly being invested with an additional two whole cleric circles isn't painful, indeed, it's not even uncomfortable, but it is very surprising. The sudden rush of magical energy entering her is very similar to a powerful spell being cast on her.

She screams for two whole rounds before she has the wherewithal to clamp her hands over her mouth and control herself. It's only now that she realizes it was Damian granting her more circles. It takes her an extra ten rounds to calm herself and realize that she's fifth-circle now. Fifth-circle. Scrying, Hallow, Atonement, Commune, Raise Dead. Raise Dead. 

Elias feels the same sensation, but he has the Splendor to grunt softly rather than scream. He checks Felicia to ensure she's okay, and then lets her recover from what just happened.

She confirms that she received two circles from Damian, just as he received a circle from Conrad. Antipaladin circles take longer to develop, though. After feeling and checking how many spells they'd be able to prepare, they cross-check with the spells-per-day-per-level chart that the Bronze Orchard worked hard to develop. It seems that they've been given the same number of levels. That takes another minute. 

The screaming does attract some attention, tents not being soundproof by default; a couple of concerned citizens converge on the tent, ask each other fairly quietly about whether it's worth interrupting them now the screaming has stopped, and eventually one of them settles on saying rather louder, "Is everything okay in there?".

"We're fine!" he says back. He notices that Felicia was right – his aura does feel different now. Fortunately, Felicia isn't subject to it, but it seems...harder to control. More constant. And he doesn't just have the aura of Fear or Cowardice anymore – he also has an additional aura of Despair now. Better make sure he doesn't get too close to anyone.

"Is Allegra awake? We would like to speak to her." So long as it's before noon, they can still pray for spells. It would probably be best to talk to the Good person who's been helping them before continuing. Even with Felicia's fifth-circle spells, he doesn't think they'd be able to get back on their own. Neither of them brought planar tuning forks. And he honestly kinda doesn't trust Felicia with Plane Shifting anymore and would rather try the portals at Anvil.

"We'll go fetch her," calls the voice from outside the tent.

A few minutes later, Allegra arrives from the area with buildings. "Good morning!" she calls, politely but pitched to carry into the tent easily.

Felicia comes out of the tent, and stands up. Despite the new magic powers that she's just received, she looks dead tired.

"Hello. Hi. Um. It would be good if we could speak privately again. I apologize for screaming earlier. My god – our gods – have decided to invest more of their power into us. It seems that they're close enough to do that, as well as grant spells. I'll need to pray to receive my spells for the day, but I wanted to talk more with you about plans before I pray. Unlike wizards of our world, we can't change the spells we request for after we've received them – we'd have to wait for the next day."

"Right. My house is probably best, or I can try to get some people to hold a perimeter so we can talk here? Should I get someone to bring you breakfast too, they have learned to knock?"

"Yes, your house is probably best." She nods.

When she feels like they're out of hearing range of everyone, she whispers. She regrets not preparing Message.

"I'm sorry for disturbing everyone. What happened was that my god, Damian, decided to promote me from a third-circle cleric to a fifth-circle one." Which makes her on a par with the highest-circle cleric of Damian. It wouldn't make her the High Priest though, that's decided by the intelligent spiked chain He enchanted before He ascended – it's not based purely on circles. Neither the Damianite nor Conradian churches have any clerics beyond fifth, and of those, they only have one of each. It's extremely surprising for her to have suddenly received that much power all at once, especially given the state of their church. It's not as if she's exactly grown in His service or advanced in her understanding of Him, you know: the classic ways clerics are awarded circles.

And besides, she doesn't think she's done enough adventuring to develop the latent channeling capacity necessary to cast fifth-circle spells yet – based on their research, clerics do develop channeling capacity similar to wizards. It's just that, if their god doesn't deign to give them higher-circle spells, they won't. They believe that clerics which develop this latent channeling capacity are easier for gods to invest in, however, based on data they've collected on their clerics. It's not a lot of data though – their church has only existed for two and a half decades – so she doesn't put much stock into the theory. It does, however, make sense on the surface.

"Fifth-circle clerics can cast Plane Shift, which would have been enough for me to return to my home plane. Sadly, I don't have a tuning fork for it. The spell requires them: magical rods which are attuned to a particular plane, which act as foci for Plane Shift to target the correct plane. Do you think we would be able to find such things in Anvil? As a fifth-circle cleric, I have access to a range of more powerful and versatile spells now."

She stops herself. Assuming she was able to return home just like that (which is very much not a guarantee!), it would be a waste of her time here. She has fifth-circle spells now. And Allegra just talked about how this world doesn't have revivification. Yes, their churches generally don't do the proselytization thing that other churches like Sarenrae's does, but this could still be a way to potentially acquire this world's magic items, spells, rituals, and other goodies before returning. Just being able to get Timeless Hammer Rhythm or the other 'acquire knowledge from someone's mind' spell would be a huge boon. She could make lots of money by raising the dead. 

The next words tumble out of her mouth before she can think better of them. "If you have diamonds, I can revive people who have died recently – that's a fifth-circle spell."

Allegra carefully takes them through the wide back street again, and asks one of the would-be passers-by to go ahead of them and clear the path to her house when they have to turn into the maze of buildings; this seems to have been a wise course of action as he does herd a few people out of the way, including one small child who she definitely did not want to end up in Elias' aura.

They're mostly not clearly out of earshot until she's thanked him and shut the door behind them.

"House isn't perfectly soundproof, but it's better than anywhere else," she apologises.

"We don't actually have access to any planes that sound like the one you're from, so I doubt anyone's hiding a tuning fork for it, I'm afraid; it's also not something we do as a matter of course, some regio portals have keys but they're all unique to that particular portal. The Sentinel Gate might deliver a conjunction; if it doesn't, then I'd be looking at getting the attention of Day eternals - Kimus is likely your best bet for being able to at least see where you came from and if there's any way to bridge from here to there.

It sounds like your - gods - can reach you here, in some respect, so that makes it more likely that there's a path somewhere - but from what you've described, it might be through a place that, uh, isn't normally compatible with keeping your soul in your body.

Diamonds? I mean, the League quite like them for rings and I think for etching tools or something? I don't have any and I'd expect there to be very few in Navarr, and only incidentally in Anvil; from here I'd probably go to Temeschwar to talk about diamonds... I guess it makes some kind of sense that you could pull a soul back out of the Labyrinth and stick it back in a body before it's got chance to go very far, you can talk to them with basic magic for about ten minutes and a dangerous ritual for longer than that... I wonder how it works with orcs, I've always wondered a bit about Whispers through the Black Gate on an orc, it feels like it should have a tighter time limit or distract them or something. Although if they do make it, they talk back a lot more, so."

Allegra notices she is rambling and stops rambling for a moment. "You'd be very popular if you can reseat the souls of terminal people at Anvil, sorties through the Gate are dangerous and a lot of people come back beyond help, or their bodies are dragged back by their friends. Although the latter will definitely get you some priests asking you some extremely awkward questions."

The two of them follow.

"Planar Adaption is a spell that protects people from the hazards of otherworldly planes, but I'm uncertain whether it would help to visit the planes of the Eternals. Or 'realms', rather. The spell protects against toxins, extreme temperatures, lack of breathable air, and intense energies. However, it only lasts for several hours at a time.

My revivification spell will only work if the person died no more that...nine days ago, but I can extend the time limit by casting Gentle Repose on it, which is second-circle. Gentle Repose preserves the body as well as halts the progression of the soul in the afterlife, thus extending the time I have to cast Raise Dead on it.

I suppose my main question is whether raising the dead would be...heretical. Is it likely to bring me and Elias into danger? I can fight better now – my new spells can be used for combat – but I'd rather not do that. I'm mostly looking into it as a way to make money: I'm likely to need lots of help in order to be able to get home, and if I am able to get home, I'd want to bring back things for my coworkers to study, such as your world's magic. There is...also the saddening but very real prospect of the two of us being stuck here, being able to contact our god but not being able to return, in which case I would want to establish a church of Damian here. Elias would likely feel the same, but with Conrad."

Please please please can they not be stuck. Please. But...if they are stuck, well, he'll survive. He will survive and overcome. He supposes that would make for some nice parallelism: back at home, the High Priests of Conrad and Damian were a cleric and an antipaladin respectively. Here, it will be the reverse. Well, the High Priest of Conrad is actually a mystic theurge, but provided that Felicia is able to learn this world's arcane magic, then it would make her one too.

"That it's a god giving you the power is the most heretical bit, followed by the fact that Elias is trailing around a Fear aura that he doesn't want everyone to try their best to remove. Technically that's idolatry and blasphemy rather than heresy, but the trouble you'll get into for them is pretty much the same.

After that, Gentle Repose sounds like it would give some people conniptions - there's actually an entire neighbouring country, Axos, which does something similar with all their dead, because they believe the Labyrinth essentially eats people - we have had Axou visitors who haven't been particularly hounded for their beliefs, but also they haven't actually done it to Imperial citizens right in front of people.

If you want to make a lot of money... I'm assuming you don't want to split up, but Felicia is really a lot easier to pass off in more heavily populated and policed areas, the Fear aura really is going to attract unwanted attention more than anything.

I'm kind of wondering if we should actually just go north and make contact with the Thule. They are absolutely dreadful people, you understand, they're a kind of magical dictatorship setup where their people work all their lives for the 'dragons', who are just orcs but orcs that can stay alive indefinitely by hopping between bodies, and then work all death for them as well as undead minions, but they have a lot of powerful magic and won't give the first shit about a Fear aura or whether you worship a god or anything like that, as long as you're useful to them.

And the Empire is currently allied with them, so I won't be in any particular trouble for dealing with them.

They don't have a Sentinel Gate or a Hall of Worlds though, and those might well be your best options; if you actually don't mind splitting up, I think your best plan is probably... we travel to Temeschwar, Felicia makes some enquiries about diamonds and we pass off some of the lesser spells as Eternal boons or advanced physick or what have you in order to afford them, Elias takes the north route to negotiate with the Thule. Then Felicia comes south with me to Anvil, where we pass off the raising of the dead as a new form of physick that uses diamonds to revive previously hopeless cases... can you do it without it being obvious you're calling on a god?"

Sigh. What she says sounds eminently reasonable.

"I would really not want to split up, but it seems that it's the best course of action. I have Sending now, which permits instant communication over long distances. Actually, I should try praying for it today, to see if it works in contacting my church. It works between planes, but interplanar spells are always iffy. If we're too far, it might not work at all. I can try preparing two of them per day so that I can attempt contact with my church, but also communicate with Elias. Sending lets you transmit a twenty-five word message to someone instantly and receive a single reply back with the same limitations, after which the spell ends.

Alternatively, I can cast Scrying, which allows you to observe someone and potentially communicate with them, but that's a fifth-circle slot, unlike Sending's fourth.

I have more profitable spells now that I'm a higher-circle, such as Discern Lies and Break Enchantment, but I do think Raise Dead will be the real money-maker." She did not imagine she'd be acting like an Abadaran cleric now. It makes sense, though. Many of their cleric training materials were derived from Abadaran seminary textbooks they bought. That's what's so great about them: they don't ask questions, just give you a price.

"How long will travel take? Are we traveling by Teleport? And as for passing it off, yes, I can do that. It requires chanting, but the chanting is just syllables – not human language. I would need to have my divine focus with me while casting it, but it's not an obviously religious item." She shows off something like a silver medallion with an engraving of flowers. 

"Although I'm not sure about calling it advanced physick – it implies it's something I can teach. I can teach the verbal and somatic components of the spell, but it's entirely useless if you don't have a god giving you the spell in the first place. Unlike arcane magic, divine magic cannot be taught."