Can you come up with a better alternative quickly? She is likely to notice us with her lifeshaping senses as soon as her attention drifts, which may not be for a while but I would rather not rely on that.

I could heal your friend myself but only with longer to look at her - I can guess at wordings but they are all probably risking your friend's life if I guess wrong about how active the magic is -

I judge that it would be very uncharacteristic for the Wood mage to do anything to my friend that would cause my friend to die instantly at an unexpected interruption. She values my friend's life highly. We'd have time, I don't know how much but at least a few seconds, even if the Wood mage's active attention is sustaining something crucial. Can you work with that?

Few seconds doesn't let me do the healing myself but lets me tell the Wood mage to do it which will work if she won't use a simple wording to hold your friend hostage-scale-of-twenty-minutes.

There is some risk that she might but all things considered I think it's an acceptable one.

Promise takes a breath and waits for a moment when the Wood mage's hands are not actually inside any open wounds and cuts her spells - though not the prince's - and says, "Stop. Heal her."

...she is stopped. And then she is healing Ruava, everything going very neatly back into place, bone and muscle and skin -

She lies there limply, in perfect health, breathing but doing nothing else.

The leash, she says to Korva.

He gets out of the boat - explains to Promise, The Wood mage has my friend's mind partly disconnected from her body, and rather than have you command her to restore it I am going to do that myself -

He touches Ruava's shoulder and looks for any incompleteness in the healing - there is none - and he finds the intangible magical leash that is cutting off Ruava's ability to operate her body, and erases it with epru -

She gasps and opens her eyes, and smiles.

This is one unhappy Wood mage.

Yes, well, if all goes well she will soon not have that problem anymore.

He touches her arm, above the blood, and looks.

There is an intricate tangle of wards - he's right, trying to kill her from a distance would have been a nightmare - but the wards can't protect themselves, and so epru does away with them neatly, and a moment later Nirue crumbles into a small pile of dust.

Ruava sits up, wrapping herself in a blanket.

"Hi," she says to Promise. "Nice to meet you."

"...hi."

"I lead an exciting life."

Come out come out wherever you are, she adds over Korva's communication power.

"I heard I shouldn't introduce myself? Do people do something instead of names where you're from or is it only a problem at the interface?"

The danger from the Wood mage is over and I can be visible and audible again for now, he sends to Promise.

Right. She cancels his spells too. "We do nicknames. I'm Promise."

"I have been 'the prince' thus far for lack of better ideas."

"Shortly to be the Emperor, I assume," she says. "And let me guess, I was 'your friend'."

He nods.

"What the fuck happened to you? You look like misery incarnate."

"How long has it been?"

"...ah," she says, in dawning comprehension. "Yeah. Three years. That'll do it, huh?"

He nods again.

"All right, let me get dressed and then we can talk strategy."

She unwraps her blanket and goes to find her clothes, not particularly bothered about showing her skin to people who have seen under it.