TOO SLOW! 

The cords of mage-force are more than sturdy enough to hold up against its tired flailing, and Savil yanks them tight, pinning the monster's endless muscular coils into a squirming bundle that hangs in the water. 

:Got it! - are you all right?: 

:I'm still up. A channel will have me good as new.:

Wow, he's tough. Savil is suitably impressed. Her shields could probably have taken that many hits, but only if she had been focusing most of her energy on that and not the force-net. 

:Good. - Worried it'll break free if I stop focusing on the force-net so I can kill it. Do you have a good angle to hit it a few more times?: 

:I can't swim well but if you can pull it closer to me I can coup de grace it.:

:I can get you closer: She starts shoving him through the water in little bursts of force; it requires a lot less of her concentration than shaping another force-net to pull him, and he's clearly sturdy enough to handle it. :Is that a spell or something, or do you just think you can take it down now that it can't dodge you?: 

:It would be a rare monster that wasn't pretty easy to kill once it was helpless!: Here it is. Bash bash bash.

It has an extremely tough skull! It's not immune to a cold iron mace to the face, though, and eventually it stops struggling and hangs limp in the water.  

At which point Savil cuts off the mental connection to the force-net – the magic will erode away fast in the moving water, but it should last a few minutes if it's not under strain – and she doesn't need more than ten seconds to get herself close enough, carefully aim a force-dagger, and nearly sever the monster's head from its neck. 

:There.: She pulls Van into the link. :You can pull him out now.: And maybe she'll grab onto Blai's ankle and hitch a ride. She could swim to the surface, but she is in fact pretty tired and cold by this point, and the air in the bubble she's holding around her own head is getting stale. 

Vanyel can pull them out. He wants to fish out the dead monster too, in a minute - they might be able to learn something from its body about who sent it - but that can wait until the people are safe. 

Blai hauls himself out onto the ice once he surfaces and offers Savil a hand up the rest of the way.

The ice creaks in protest. Savil grabs onto Blai's hand and slithers herself on hands and knees to the actual riverbank, then flops over onto her back in a snowdrift and tries to catch her breath. A moment later her clothes start gently steaming. 

:How's Arven?: she sends to Vanyel, still including Blai in the link. 

Arven is lying on Vanyel's cloak, her small body wrapped in a second cloak in Guard-blue, and surrounded by Healers; not much of her is visible except for a shock of wet black hair. 

Vanyel is on hands and knees, eyes closed and one hand pinching the bridge of his nose; the reaction-headache from pushing his Fetching past its limits, which Yfandes was able to cushion him from for the last several minutes – an ability he hadn't known she had – is now making its appearance in force.  

Mindspeech hurts a lot. :Alive: Vanyel manages. :Banged up, nothing critical. Not sure if Healing fixes drowning?: 

:We should get everyone else who's injured within range, if we have time for that.: 

:I can heal the child individually first if there's not time to gather a channel's worth. It does work on drowning.:

:If it's less expensive to heal her individually you should definitely do that.: The Healers don't seem panicked but they do seem worried, and it would be awful if Arven died because they hesitated too long to expend Select Blai's Healing magic.

(Of course, it would also be awful if people end up dying because they didn't hesitate long enough, but - Arven's death would in fact cost Valdemar more than the deaths of some of Karis' personal Guard, who signed up for that line of duty.) 

She'll tell the Healers to make space for Blai. And separately relay orders to the nearest three Heralds that they can Heal anyone with injuries if they're brought here in the next couple of minutes. 

:I can do both.: He finds the kid and burns a Forbid Action on a Cure Light Wounds, a kid isn't going to need a Cure Moderate.

Arven wakes up unhurt but still soaked to the skin in cold river water, the last thing she remembers is being dragged underwater by a terrifying monster with huge teeth, and she predictably starts shrieking in terror. 

Oh noooooo poor Arven. At any other moment Vanyel would be right there comforting her, but right now he doesn't really feel capable of moving. 

Oh gods everyone is going to think he scared her somehow

(Arven probably would be scared of a man she doesn't recognize wearing armor and holding a mace, but her eyes are squeezed shut and Savil is pretty sure she's not paying enough attention to have noticed.) 

They should get the poor girl inside, ideally to wherever her mother is. Savil doesn't think she can manage a Gate right now, even short-range, but surely someone can... 

Karis is in the House of Healing, though it's been determined that she isn't particularly injured, just shaken. Katri is right here and isn't tired and is entirely capable of raising a Gate on the nearest door-shaped object! 

(There are some decorative archways with winter-themed wreathes and holly on them, and someone can uproot one from fifty yards downstream and run it over rather than move Arven there.) 

...Katri is pretty freaked out about the last several minutes and also self-conscious because, like, fifty people are watching her, and she can Gate - and doing it across the Palace grounds won't even exhaust her too badly - but she's really slow at it if it's not on the permanent Gate-terminus or another threshold she uses regularly, which means she can be self-conscious about how everyone is watching her be incompetent at magic for an entire twenty seconds. 

Whoa, is that a fucking Gate.

No one else is acting like this is a particularly big deal! Arven is gently scooped up and carried through. Katri follows before taking it down; a lot of Karis' mages were injured in the attempted rescue, and it seems good for them to have as many guards as possible in case this was only part one of an assassination plot. 

Injured people are being carried over to within thirty feet of Blai. (The ones who are still alive. It's too late for several of the Guards.)

Vanyel is aware that he should be trying to think about...something...but his head hurts and he's going to just. Keep sitting here for the moment. He has no idea if Blai's channel-Healing will fix backlash but he vaguely hopes it might at least help a little.