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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."
"Should think about - next steps. Politics - where to go, do we stay here now. Check on north, did the gryphons leave." He reaches for her hand, clumsily because his own hand is still bandaged. "Can you - figure out who to talk to...?"
"Can you tell me who here knows the comm spell?" She tucks her hand under his.
"A number of people - not sure if any of them are uninjured..." He starts giving her a list of names.
She guesses how far down the list the mage up north must have gone before he found one who was able to talk, and starts knocking on shields.
:–Yes, what is it?:
:Can you get in touch with the mage who was left up north and ask for an update?:
:Oh, right, yes of course. Just a minute:
Leareth is still blinking dazedly at the ceiling, well, the tent-canvas above them.
A couple of minutes later, and then gradually over the next candlemark, an update on the north trickles in.
Leareth's forces up north were attacked in a number of places, not just the underground bunker where Belrun had been, though that did attract a significant gryphon-cavalry attack. Other, more obviously visible military stations had ground troops Gated in on top of them. They eventually dissuaded the gryphon and other military attacks, though not without a significant number of casualties, since there were almost no mages of any strength left in the north, so the attack fell entirely on un-Gifted soldiers. The invasion did manage to damage the underground facility where Belrun and Dara were originally, though mostly by throwing a lot of mage-attacks at the ground, they don't seem to have known its exact location.
The monkeys are confirmed by Farsight to be alive (conveniently, the Farsight shielding is down), though probably kind of traumatized, given the several candlemarks worth of loud explosions heard from above and part of their ceiling collapsing. They're running low on food and water, and also the facility is no longer accessible from the surface without Gating in, the concealed tunnel entrance having been obliterated. Hopefully someone will be recovered enough to Gate in before they start getting dehydrated, which is a much more urgent problem than starvation.
There were no deaths at the backup point hit by the earthquake, though a lot of people are miserable and scared, and they're also going to be running out of food soonish.
There are at least enough Mindspeakers left up north to keep the various locations in communications with each other.
Belrun reports a summary of this to Leareth. Asks Amshalan if there are any Herald-Mages who might be able to Gate it from the requisite distance.
To get to the monkeys and feed them? The only Herald-Mages who have been to that facility are Vanyel (allergic to Gates), Sandra (not strong enough to manage the distance) and Savil. Savil thinks she can Gate there, but she'll need a head's up about which bits of it are intact, if she tries to Gate to a doorway which is collapsed or something then the Gate-spell won't recognize it.
They can get that information, and assemble a care package to be Gated up to the monkey-having facility, and the mage up there can take some of the supplies to the other sites, that'll require less of Savil in particular.
The north is all right for supplies in general, several of the military postings have storage buildings or underground areas that weren't hit, they can move them around overland now that the gryphons are gone. They could use more Healers but figure none of those are available right now.
Not especially, no. Though if anybody thinks they can use brand new Healing-trainees she can supply a few of those once Leareth is in a less distracting condition.
Sure, they've got enough Healers right now to really quickly train some new students in basic techniques or at least pull them into melds - does Valdemar have spare trainees or something?
No, she can just stick Gifts into people. It has been tried on several people and they are all fine so far. She wasn't a mage last week but is now!
Wow! Yes, please, they'll take trainees. ...And can she make some more people mages, too, if people can be obtained and Gated down? New mages won't be able to Gate right away but they will be able to help with rebuilding, as well as heat and shelter from the elements for all the military forces now camped on the open tundra after their barracks were destroyed.
If they have people available to train them to do that, sure. Each one does take her a while.
Well, however many Healers can be enGifted before nightfall, they have someone who can do a Gate for it then.
She gets Leareth's ribs all patched up so he can, if he holds still, not be in very much pain even after the drugs wear off, and she will enGift some of the previously-unGifted Healers' assistants brought to her.
Leareth spends most of the afternoon napping on and off, until the drugs wear off again near sunset and he wakes up properly. He carefully doesn't move.
:Belrun?: he reaches out. :Status update?: