A building over, Leareth is also stepping outside, pausing by the wall to bid goodnight to another young student – he can check with her tomorrow morning what her final decision is, he understands she needs time to consider his proposal – and he instinctively scans the area for threats. Nothing in particular except, huh, student up ahead with native shields and they're really good ones–

This is the point at which the wall of the building he's standing six inches from explodes violently outward. 

–Leareth gets out half of a shout of warning and flings up a barrier in front of native-shields-girl and bubbles the other student in another shield and then slams hard into the cobbles a fraction of a second before most of the building collapses on him.

The emergency shield-talisman that he's wearing catches most of it, which is why he isn't dead, but it's not really specced against either a violent surprise explosion or most of the weight of two storeys of bricks, and it shatters before all the rubble can finish raining down. 

A hail of shattered bricks bounces off an invisible wall a foot away from Belrun's head. Then the invisible wall vanishes, but at that point it's just dust and pebbles that patter down on her. 

Rather a lot of the street is currently on fire. 

whatthefuck oh it's the mage students being idiots okay triage. She's fine for some reason. That guy over there is not fine. People in the building aren't fine but she can't see them well from here and also it's on fire. "HELP," she hollers, "SOMETHING EXPLODED, HELP, HELP, SOMETHING EXPLODED, FIRE, HELP -" She keeps repeating that on autopilot while she starts getting rubble off of people, scrabbling around on hands and knees to grab it and shift it aside, leaning on Fetching for the big stuff. How's this guy's neck doing - okay his neck is fine, so she doesn't have to be excruciatingly careful to get her arms under him and supplement with Fetching, not like he has a cracked vertebra that has to be held totally still. Everyone in the on-fire building is going to have to wait because she can't do anything about the fire, and anyway, they ought to be rushed to the infirmary by people who can in fact run; this one will tolerate a sedate walk. She carries him in and gets him a bed and shoos sluggish infirmary staff towards the site of the emergency.

The young student from the earlier conversation, who is also mysteriously fine, backs up a few paces and stares around in horror and confusion and then starts looking to see if she can do anything to help with the fire, whatever. 

What–

Leareth isn't unconscious for very long, maybe five minutes. His head hurts a lot but a quick check confirms he can use mage-sight, at least for half a second before it's too painful, which puts an upper bound on how seriously injured he can be. Lots of other parts also hurt but he can breathe all right, good. His shields are not working anymore. Less good but not much he can do about it yet. He seems to be indoors and on a bed and he can't remember how he got here. Not reassuring but he'll deal with it from here. 

Someone's there? He makes a noise. It doesn't quite qualify as talking. 

"Hey there, you woke up. Something exploded, some people were being idiots," says the Healer currently squinting at a bruise on his side. "You're gonna be fine, full recovery most likely within a couple days, just sit tight. I might need to get you out of your clothes here, okay, but we keep cold water around for that and we can save 'em -" She looks up for a reaction to the clothes thing, sometimes people prefer to be undressed only under protest.

"Thas'fine," he mumbles. Coughs, tries to summon a little more alertness. Oh, it's the young woman with the good shields, not that he's about to use any kind of Sight to check right now. She looks sort of familiar but he doesn't think she's someone he's met before. 

"Here goes," she says, and Fetches them all into the laundry basket rather than jostle him around, he's got some nasty bumps. "I'm Healer Belrun, and I apologize if my bedside manner's rusty but a lot of people were caught in the explosion so I'm just gonna stick by you for now instead of assuming you'd be seen promptly by someone who normally deals with patients. Might even be swamped enough they give me a second one but probably not."

"Noted. Thank you." Leareth frowns. "...Did you see another student? I was standing near her - is she all right...?" He remembers shielding both of them but not whether he managed to keep said shields up long enough to make a difference to the one standing way closer to the explosion. 

"Short hair, beaky nose? She looked all right, walking wounded if that - friend of yours?"

"I was meeting with her." He falls silent, thinking. Convenient, is the next thought he manages. "...What caused the explosion, do you know?" 

"It was the mage research building, I don't know precisely what they get up to but there's a few who get lazy about their precautions. Can you roll over a quarter turn that way and I'll bandage this up -"

Leareth does so. Grunts in pain. It's a relief he isn't badly hurt, but 'not badly hurt' can still add up to 'moving is ill-advised for the next while'. At least he didn't have any other urgent priorities tonight. 

She works steadily, keeping up distracting chatter so he doesn't concentrate on feeling like he has been hit by that ton of bricks that hit him. She has a light accent in her Rethwellani while she talks about how it was Flatbread Night and she might be able to send a trainee for some and does he want chicken or beans, and what was he talking to his friend about, and should anyone be notified about his status and location, and what is his name?

Leareth keeps his answers mostly short and boring. He doesn't need to trouble a trainee for dinner right now while he assumes they're all busy but beans would be fine once they have a chance - he was meeting with the student about a collaboration, doesn't give details - no need to notify anyone, he was visiting town alone. He is definitely not giving her his real name so he introduces himself as Arvad, somewhat at random but it's a name he goes under with some frequency so he's not going to forget what he told her. 

It is a little chaotic in the building - most people were hit much worse by the explosion - so after Belrun has stepped out to see if anybody needs her urgently (they don't; she can't join melds) she goes and gets flatbread herself and brings it back, since the trainees are already running around fetching water and bandages and scrubbing bedpans and whatnot and her patient can be let alone long enough for her to get them both something to eat. She presents him with a flatbread full of beans, having eaten hers on the way. "Eat that whole thing, I don't know how often you wind up next to explosions but you're doing practically all the work on putting yourself back together here and that work is fueled with dinner, you'll wake up at midnight ravenous if you don't put away something now." And she resumes knitting together things that must be knitted together and smoothing away stray blood released by bruises.

"I try not to make a habit of standing near explosions." (This is not actually an answer to the question; Leareth has in fact had things explode at him a lot, including on occasions where he was hurt much worse, or killed – if this was an attempt on him it was a rather halfhearted one.)

He munches through the flatbread, which is a good excuse not to talk much while he re-orients. He's in less pain now but increasingly tired, which is also as expected given how Healing works. 

"Commendable of you. You didn't get hit as badly as I'd have expected, you were so close to the building," she remarks, brushing his hair away from a scratch on his head.

"I am an Adept-class mage and I was shielded." 

"That'll do it." She yawns. "I'll be back in the morning but I'm going to knock off soon, okay? You'll be all right. Night shift is good people, if you need anything, but if I were you I'd sleep for ten candlemarks straight."

He's yawning as well. "Thank you." Seriously though does he know her from somewhere, she is - very weirdly familiar. Surprisingly interesting even though she's done nothing but make small talk to distract him. "Goodnight."

The infirmary should be pretty safe but he sets some passive wards around his room anyway and then falls asleep. 

She's back in the morning, with breakfast in case the concept of breakfast was lost in the shuffle; there are so seldom medical emergencies affecting a dozen people on campus that it's not a bad guess. "Morning, Arvad, how're you feeling?"

Mumblewhat oh right. "Better, thank you." She's...pretty? waitwhat why is that a salient thing to think about, weird. 

"I got you some eggs," she says.

"Those had better be from the cafeteria," calls a passing other Healer bustling down the hall.

"Yes, Dallar, they're from the cafeteria!" she replies. "Sorry, running joke that I should not feed people eggs, I use them for research stuff."

"Oh? I have not heard of that in Healing research before."