Melody takes a half-step back. She isn't the only one looking confused. "Bella, um, who is this person?" 

"Backup. It's a long story."

"Right. Er, you mean Mindspeech or actual Mindhealing? I can hit ten miles on the former on a good day, latter is– honestly I've never tried more than fifty feet because why would I, but I'm pretty strong."

Leareth nods briskly. :You have experience with melds? I can give you a node-energy link that you ought be able to use easily. I want you to set-command everybody in the air that you can reach, to land and stop moving now: 

"Um. What."

:This is a much more efficient use of limited node-energy than direct mage-attacks, and incidentally it will cause fewer avoidable deaths. I do not think these soldiers deserve to die, necessarily, for being pawns of a god:

"Yes, thank you. Melody, I don't know if you have a protocol around this but my world does," Bella says, speaking quickly as she can through the newness of the language, "if you want to borrow that - they're not patients, they're an invasion force, and we can reverse everything when it's calmer."

"Ummmm sure all right." Melody closes her eyes. "Be aware I've literally never done this before and I'm going to try really hard not to hit anyone in this room by accident but, er, I don't normally have to worry about aim." 

Melody focuses, and then Bella will notice all – almost all, but she gets at least forty – of the gryphon-minds circling above peel off to various sides and land. 

"Ow," Melody says, bringing both hands to her head. "Ow ow ow Kernos' balls this is the worst reaction-headache I've ever had in my life."

"I can get that for you for now if I'm not going to have to knock a bunch of them unconscious -?"

"There are - five? Six?" Gemma offers. "Hey, I'm a Thoughtsenser too. If we knock the gryphons unconscious I do want to note that they're going to fall out of the sky, but I don't see what else to do." 

"I can get it more precise than that, it's even more efficient, but it's slower and more invasive. I guess less invasive than a crash is injurious." She grabs a griffin-mind and orders it down, then another.

"Think we've got ground troops approaching," Gemma says. "...Why are they coming at us? Bella, did they see you flying and decide to chase you or something?" 

"Maybe. I wasn't invisible. I could try leading them off." Down, gryphons, down down stay down.

"You will not! Do you want to get yourself killed?"

:Bella?: Savil interjects again. :Bella, what exactly is going on over there? I've got Kilchas with me, we're gathering all the Heralds and Guard we can with combat experience, we were about to head your way but the gryphons are just...landing? And not doing anything?: 

It's complicated but I got backup and he helped Melody make most of them land and I have enough left in me to do the rest of them. We can fix them later. Focus on the infantry.

:Who's your backup? They've got a lot more mages than us and Van is out of commission, but someone's shielding the hell out of Healers'. Have you even noticed that they've been throwing mage-attacks at the front door?: 

Backup is also a mage. The more I talk the less time I can spend keeping Van and Melody out of pain.

:Noted. We'll coordinate out here, try to get them off you: Savil drops the link. 

Bella takes this opportunity to catch her breath and peek out the window.

There's a sort of shimmering barrier in the way, but she can see clearly enough; there are a terrifying number of soldiers. About two-thirds of them human, but there's a giant wolf-like creature, and colourful lizards as tall as Elves, and some kind of great cat with uncomfortably humanlike eyes. Which is apparently a mage, because it keeps spitting fireballs at the wall. 

"Suggestions?" she asks Leareth.

"They are going to have a difficult time breaking through the shield, but there is only one of me and I will eventually tire," Leareth admits. "I can attack at the same time but it will risk compromising the shield. Based on what I know of the forces that the Heralds and Guard have here, they will be outnumbered." 

He pauses for a moment. 

"...They are here for you," he says finally. "If you were to very visibly no longer be here, they - might more readily back down from attacking Healers. This is not something that most militaries consider acceptable even in a full-scale war, and as far as I know Iftel is not at war with Valdemar at all." 

"I don't have a teleport that works on me. My friend does but while in retrospect I should have insisted on learning it it's not fast to transfer interplane. - I guess you could gate me out? Sorry Vanyel -"

"I would be inclined to take both of you – would it harm Vanyel very badly...?"