When Vanyel is ready for the mad science tour, he shows him the monkeys. "They're monkeys," she feels it necessary to clarify. "I know they look very human at this point, because the whole point of them is that I'm going to move into one if I ever die, but they're not people, and I have forbidden the staff to name them. I could move into one now if I had to but I'd like to get one actually looking like me in particular first, and I want to stick more Gifts into them, I got Fetching out of some Changesquirrels but further work is needed." She shows him the mice, too. "Do you suppose Jisa'd like a winged mouse? What's her favorite color?" She shows him all her microbiology eggs. "That's a flu sample from the recent plague! I remembered to take one. Those there are other flus. The white eggs have more-alive microbes and the brown eggs have less-alive kinds - there's a cold one of the staff mages had a few months ago, there's food poisoning, there's the most common kind from healthy intestines - you could get your Sight this fine, you know, I don't do heavy Healing-Gift use apart from Sight for this work."
Well, at least it wasn't while she was drinking warm tea. (She's not getting it really hot, they don't really have time for leisurely sips.) She resumes batch two when it stops.
Dara gratefully accepts her lukewarm tea, free hand still fixed on the map. "Found some gryphons. Not that near here, spread out - think maybe they're looking for us but don't know exactly where they are–"
"Gulp your tea and huddle up," sighs Belrun, and up comes the magical cell wall, slurped from the ley line.
Neither of the other mages is capable of concert-work, which Belrun doesn't do anyway except via Amshalan, so they bring up their own sections of barrier over the people near them.
The floor shakes.
It heaves.
With the next quake, the ceiling ripples in a very uncomfortable way. Tiles start falling like hailstones, then one of the massive magic-preserved beams in place above them to support the dug-out structure starts to fall. Right on top of Belrun's barrier.
Belrun does not like having gods trying very hard to murder her at ALL. She doesn't want to check how strong her shield is; she Fetches the beam aside, a relatively small nudge to make it land between the shield-domes.
:Nice work!:
The next group over, guarded by the other new inexperienced mage and not in possession of a Fetcher with quick enough reflexes, fares less well. There are shrieks of pain, but it's now impossible to see what's happening through the powdered rock raining down from the ceiling, or hear much else over all the noise it's making.
:Can try: Pause. :It's really hard to Farsee too, all dusty and not much light, but I think they got the beam wedged somehow. Looks like some bad injuries but I think everyone's ali– Aaaaah!:
The ceiling is doing its best to fall to pieces above their heads.
The shocks go on for what feels like an impossibly long time but is probably under a minute. Amshalan, a couple of times, Mindspeech-shouts warnings to Belrun, for where she should reinforce her shield.
Said shield is taking a lot of battering. She can reinforce it repeatedly but it's hard to yank power from the ley-line fast enough.
:I'm here: Amshalan wraps her strength around Belrun. :I think you want to shape your Gifts into a really small 'scoop', and sort of like a funnel, and then it'll come in really fast and hard, if it's too much break off, I'll try to watch and cue you:
There are mutters, and everyone who has Mindspeech and is conscious is using that instead. The other new mage-Fetcher's cluster has a Healer who is technically conscious but has an extremely distracting broken collarbone; she thinks she can do some minimal self-Healing to make it less distracting and then help other people, but in the meantime that huddle of people has all the worst injuries.
A gentle aftershock makes a couple of pebbles rain down, but it seems like everything not well-stuck in place is already fallen down.
The other group had a beam land almost directly on top of several people before it wedged itself in place, at which point it actually offered some minimal shelter. There are broken bones - one woman's femur was almost crushed by the blow - and internal injuries, and one serious head injury.
Belrun will direct people to prop the beam up on a larger hunk of rock so it can continue to serve the shelter purpose better and gets to work on the head injury first because that's the hardest to catch up on if it gets out of control.
Well, he should... stop that? ...this sort of thing is where she wishes she had more clinical experience. Hopefully she can get everybody who is bleeding to cut it out and the one with the broken collarbone will have that sorted soon.