Meanwhile, the aircraft's fabber is spitting out drones to take the offensive as fast as it can empty its workspace, repulsors skipping combat drones right into the Vallorn's forces even as they accelerate downwards on screaming thrusters -

- and her mantle is already spreading across the field, because there will be no more dying today.

"That 'mob' looks like it's just done fighting the Heirs of Terunael, if you want to threaten them into being a bit less daft about cleanup, you might want a friendly Navarr face on hand," suggests Lewys.

Evantia plays with some of her armour's sensory loadout. "Does this armour also have the safe-fall mode? If so, I'll hop out and start playing hide and seek with the ettercaps." Her chosen weapon is essentially a somewhat oversized machete, primary speciality 'efficient plant clearance', secondary speciality 'if you can cut through a tree with a single swing, then most creatures are not going to be stronger than a tree'.

"Looks like the Cantiarchi archivists are being a bad influence," comments Bilhah, "pick me up whenever you're ready." And she hops straight out of the vessel and lands greatsword-down on a giant centipede, her cheerful whoop of triumph swiftly followed by a very loud stern instruction to couple of the bleeding young soldiers on the front line, to stop bleeding immediately and pull themselves together.

What's that, no dying? The Vallorn-spawn are so good at not dying, nobody's dying unless the Imperials are deliberately making sure of it or, in that case over there in one of the healing stations just behind the front line, turning them into piles of mushrooms with a ritual, to stop them turning into Vallorn-spawn instead.

Evantia's armor has that, yes.  There she goes!

Lewys gets a more sedate descent; he's got a pack of droids to go track down those Heirs of Terunael people, some tools for Mending things, and an IFF designator, point-and-click.

Bilhah's got her new gear and it's already working, good, good.

Excuse me.  She said no dying, yes.  She means no zombie possession.

The plane continues to run fire support, even as she swings down upon a tendril of that same absolute blackness, falling in a shroud of warped space to fall faster, and  r i p s  the Vallorn out of those wounds, embracing it and gathering it to herself where it can do no harm; a smaller vehicle - what an Earthling might recognize as some sort of unholy motorcycle-hovercraft fusion, but can only be judged as some absurd Autumnal horse - except there are no horses here - catching up with her as she finishes interrupting the healers that are pretty definitively doing harm.  "I'll see to this.  You lot can see to preventive medicine."

Even if it's their normal best option, she's here now, and in the best and grandest tradition of Esme Weatherwax, she is not having with this.

"This is preventative medicine," one of the Navarr ritualists objects, "nobody wants to be Vallornspawn. Now, are you going to get out of our way, or are we going to have to have a problem?"

"If you aren't going to take offense to the idea that I have solutions to that that are not turning people into mushrooms, then I expect we'll do just fine."

Those people that're coming to right now are definitely not Vallornspawn, alright.

"But as far as my comment on preventive medicine, I meant 'happening unto the enemy before the enemy can happen unto you'.  ...Which is probably a stupid thought, you lot don't even have fireball, let alone a combat-viable version, but if that spell can be turned on enemies, especially those that were never sapient, then I can spend my efforts on saving allies, of various degrees of Vallorn-infestation, instead of having this argument."

She might have to go positively cleanroom on it, but she thinks she's got a lead on de-Vallornifying trapped souls, even if she has to build them bodies from scratch.  (She's kind of expecting that.  But it's not like she hasn't built artificial bodies before.  She's only done some prosthetics for herself but she's pretty confident that working inwards from mind/machine interface tech she has down pat, and spirit anchoring that's known locally effective, with a little bioculturing for the necessary fleeeesh, will get her where she needs to be.)

(...She really needs to figure out if she's a Spark or not - in the Europan mode, not, like, a Planeswalker, she's totally a Planeswalker even without the Planeswalkerness, really, so why go fuck with that bullshit, that just risks Nicol fucking Bolas and Phyrexia and all the Other fucking bullshit dogpiling her - anyway, this seems like it's way too sketchy, but right now she just cares about it working.)

"Look, we're a Spring coven. Using Spring magic offensively is what got us into this mess. There are plenty of Thorns out doing the combat work; we're here to make sure their souls go to the Labyrinth rather than wander the Vallorn for however long it takes."

On noticing the dying people waiting for their ritual looking like they are trying to move and get back up, everyone else in the vicinity's first reaction is to stick whatever weapon they have to hand - all of them have at least knives, because apparently their ritual magic involves a lot of self-bloodletting, and there are a few with rods and staves - into the presumed-Vallornspawn, to stop them rising up and attacking, regardless of what the weird betentacled probably-Herald is spouting off about...

"Yes, which is why I promptly called myself out for my stupid -- hey!  I just fixed that, don't go breaking it!  Rude!  I know you don't trust me further than you can throw me but I'm not going to take stupid risks like the sort where you need to be ready to kill an infected patient, in a battlefield setting!  They are fine!  There's no Vallornshit in them, I tore it out root and branch and then double-checked to be sure!  And if they somehow turn out to be zombies anyway I will fix it myself."

The tentacles can be surprisingly firm, no matter how delicately polite they are while they're stopping attacks with the tips of their tendrils.

And the absolutely blazing fireball (that is nonetheless not actually incinerating anyone) that flares for a moment around a central rime of frost - frozen air, even - as she declaims she'll handle it ought to adequately demonstrate her ability to do that without even particularly noticing, even as it bleeds off her stress at people trying to kill people, even for plausibly good reasons, into focus on intricate magic.

...She'll throw that at a Vallornspawn that looks like it's being particularly annoying; may as well use what she's got.

Meanwhile, how's the rest of the battle going?  Or, well, the battles, plural?

A few of the mages try it on with spell-charged staves and rods; the ones with spells designed to paralyse bounce harmlessly off the tentacles, but the ones with spells designed to drive things back with force are very persistent magic which will knock whatever they hit and whatever that's attached to back, gradually at about walking pace to a twenty foot perimeter, as long as it's capable of movement at all. This might not do all that much to tentacles of void, but it's at least a bit annoying.

Bilhah has rallied the small Highborn expeditionary force and killed the shit out of the giant centipedes, and is heading back to the main battle encampment, safely tucked away in a grove of much more pleasant-seeming magic trees (or - no, these are almost anti-magic trees, apparently weirwood trees are essentially so good at being trees they refuse to let magic affect them) than the twisted forest that wants to kill everyone.

Evantia is gleefully murdering Ettercaps and cutting victims out of their webbing sacs; it looks like she might get overwhelmed at some point, they seem to be regrouping to encircle her in particular. The Urizeni researchers are very happy that someone has taken the pressure off them and are gleefully collecting samples.

Lewys is... in an argument with some Highborn with hoods up dressed in a stark black and white colour scheme, and some flashy looking Landsknecht-style Leaguish mercenaries, about whether they are wasting time organising a trial for the captured Heirs and should just kill them and take their stuff, or whether due process is a vital foundation-stone of the Empire, and indeed who gets their stuff after they inevitably get executed...

The front lines are going much better now Myra's fire support is in place, especially as nobody is dropping out for healing or having to be dragged back out mostly-dead. They've found a nice gap in the walls and are hacking down a truly gigantic infested hydra that has set up in the breach; the thorny plant tendrils are still regrowing vigorously, there's something in there which is still powering them...

Neat spell!  Unfortunately, if they're all trying to push different ways - and they probably didn't coordinate that - they definitely aren't going to get anywhere.  Vector summation, baby.

Giant infested hydra, meet "INCOMING MAGIC EFFECT", "temperatures that are perilously close to absolute zero" and "rapid thermal expansion as the rest of the heat that move ate catches up".  Are the people she medic'd at reliably indicating not being zombies yet?  The magic vines have to go, and it looks like she's going to be the one that has to go get them.  She'll get some proper medevac running to the weirwood camp, force stretchers and whatnot, if necessary - she's marking the people who almost got captured down as psychological casualties for the moment.

"Evantia, mind your extension, you're going to get mobbed at this rate -" She'll dispatch a couple drones to watch her back, ping Bilhah's tacmap.

"Nobody's getting executed unless they are a clear and present danger that cannot be disarmed another way, so say my laws; I believe we've conclusively proven that's not necessary based on how you're sitting around discussing how to kill them and take their stuff," her voice cuts in from a speaker on Lewys's loaner-gear.

They are pretty smart and their next attempt is co-ordinated; basically trying to corral Myra and her tentacular defences away from the ritual area.

The nearly-dead people (and some who are pretty sure they were actually dead, but not for more than a few minutes) who were healed are extremely confused; some are protesting that they feel fine, but the Navarr assigned to Turns The Circle duty are very suspicious that this is just a new Vallorn trick, possibly enabled by whatever this bizarre herald creature just did. There are also a bunch of corpses which are now clean of Vallorn, but are still just as dead, on account of having been dead for a while before they even got here.

However, there are a lot of healers in the back line of the main fight (increasing numbers, in fact, as it becomes clear their services are not required on the front line), not all of them Navarri, and not all the Navarr are as suspicious of Myra's help as the Spring vates; the healers are mostly very happy to collect better medevac supplies and start moving out bewildered people who are healed but don't want to go back to the fight right now for whatever reason. They are having some arguments with the Spring vates, but the vates are much more reluctant to come to blows with their own healers than they are with Myra.

Exploding giant infested hydra down, the forces jubilantly surge into the ruined city; some are still fighting the considerable concentration of other lesser vallornspawn and thorny vines that are absolutely everywhere inside, but some are taking out notebooks and starting to make maps, or taking out sacks and starting to stuff whatever isn't still firmly attached to foundations into them.

There is - some kind of bubble in there - a frozen moment of time that is in the centre of all this...

"Oh fuck NOBODY TOUCH ANYTHING ESPECIALLY THAT, TEMPORAL ANOMALY ---"

The vates can have her out of their space, something more critical just came up and it's figuring out what the hell is going on there!

That is a temporal anomaly! Specifically, it is two people - in opulent mage robes, a deep emerald green with many swirling embroidered patterns - who are trapped in the very moment that the Vallorn was formed. They appear to be reliving, over and over again, an argument over the targetting of the ritual that they are casting. About where it should stop. One of them argues that only 'they' should be safe and the rest of the world be 'cleansed'. The other argues that the targetting is too vague, too dangerous, they should at least set some limitation on it...

Oh fucking hell.

Well.  At least it's remotely plausible to unknot the loop, but the social consequences of - this -

She has time.  Hours, probably, if she just lets the fabber on her plane handle the parts of the giant wodge of machinery she's going to need.  (And thank the gods she raided Aperture a while ago or she'd be even more fucked.)

On the other hand, what're the potential magical consequences of the ritual no longer lashing back and forth in a time loop?

It's pretty hard to operate this close to it, actually. Everything sent actually inside the city limits is going a bit haywire - even her mantle isn't getting right through to the centre, and people are starting to fall back with injuries, although as soon as they're outside the walls they're fine again.

Not all of them are making it out, though...

And, uh, yeah. Possible consequences range from 'the entire continent just resets to the time that the loop started', and the very best cases still seem to include 'all the Vallorn goes into an intensely destructive mode which is actually more vulnerable to intervention but lashes out wildly at everything nearby with the last of its power'.

Well she is not letting anyone get anywhere near the anomaly in the first place so hopefully it's only her drones!

"Fucking hell.  ALRIGHT EVERYBODY LISTEN UP!  The city center is GOING TO KILL YOU if you go inside!  I don't CARE what shiny thing you're looking at, IT IS WORTH NOTHING TO YOU IF YOU ARE SMEARED ACROSS THE TIMESTREAM FROM NOW UNTIL THE SUN EXPLODES!  AND THAT COULD HAPPEN!  SO IF YOU FIND A HOLE IN MY CONTAINMENT BARRIER: DON'T FUCKING ENTER IT!  YOU WILL MOST LIKELY DIE SCREAMING!

SEPARATELY!  I need ritualists and anyone with ritual design experience to meet me at the gates, please, we are going to kill the Vallorn but the question is how cleanly we can do it!"

The huge fight that was going on is now doing several different things:

The largest group are wandering around the perimeter of the city, occasionally fighting a resurgent vallorn plant or creature, and taking what notes / rubbings / bits of miscellaneous stonework and pottery they can find.

A significant minority fancy themselves Extremely Sneaky Adventurers and are trying various means to compromise the containment barrier and slip through; telling them they would most likely die screaming appears to have mostly just encouraged them, most of the people who are here had kind of assumed that was a likely outcome of this adventure already. There are at least two rituals in progress which appear to be aimed at the barrier in some fashion; one seems to just be information gathering, the other is designed to channel the forces of decay and death into a structure to damage or destroy it.

Another set are urgently discussing how to take down the strange herald figure who has show up and denied them the Heart of Terunael, apparently oblivious to the fact that Myra can hear everything they're saying via nearby drones. Their currently leading strategy is ritually empowering a couple of people with a higher powered version of the spells that push people back and pin them in place, deploying those, and then applying the 'everyone rush from every side and enough damage will take it down' strategy.

A number of people are indeed gathering at the gates; the major factions there are 'people who want to berate Myra for her actions and persuade her to go away', 'people with some ritual lore who want to be involved in the casting', 'people who at least believe they have actual ritual design skill and want to tackle the interesting problem', and 'people who have no relevant expertise whatsoever but want to be in the place that it's happening'. There are really too many of them to have a sensible conversation, certainly over a hundred even disregarding the more polite onlookers who aren't causing much of a problem, and the people who want to berate and/or persuade Myra keep shouting over the people trying to organise anything remotely useful.

...Of course they are.

"Alright everyone, one at a time."

The air just.  Stops.  Not in the sense of not allowing breath, but in the sense that sounds that are not Myra speaking, aren't.

"And to the plotters over there, don't think I can't hear you.  I'm not stupid; that won't work.  Not the plan where you idiots," giant holographic arrow of light points at them, "try to kill me, or, and I will at least give this one points for effort and ingenuity, the decay ritual that you think will take the barrier down. 

"I put that barrier up because I don't want your untimely deaths on my conscience."

"The one thing I want everyone to know right now, is that if you fuck with The Heart Of Terunael, if indeed that's what this is, is that, as things stand, at best you send the Vallorn into a death frenzy - and if you want to know a worst case scenario, 'time-shearing the entire fucking planet to death' is on the list of possibilities, and not even the worst.  I've got more than enough experience with this shit to tell you that you don't want to know what could go wrong when you mess with the linear flow of time.  Or, perhaps you do, if you're as terminally curious as, exempli gratia, me - but experiencing those consequences yourself is not something to wish upon anyone."

"Are we all agreed on not blowing up the planet?  Or must I take steps?"

The giant holographic arrow actually causes a considerably larger quantity of consternation, confusion and general what-the-fuck amongst the assembled than any previously revealed capability of Myra's; apparently that is considerably more unprecedented than anything else she's pulled out quite so obviously?

The decay ritual stops in its tracks; enough of the ritualists decide to give up and not waste the mana to take the ritual down. The investigation ritual continues, with a lot of frantic gesturing replacing the verbal components.

A lot of people are just looking confused and worried, or have given up and joined the treasure hunters around the accessible parts of the city walls.

A subset of the conspirators break out some kind of abbreviated battle sign language and start attempting to encircle her and encourage people to join in a last ditch rush attack; they are attracting a considerable following.

A number of the gate assembly are taking out notebooks and starting to frantically scribble in them in lieu of being able to speak what they want to say; some have got distracted and are pointing at the big arrow and frantically scribbling theories at each other.

A sizable minority of other people who are still engaged with the situation look furious and are either shaking various weapons in her direction in a futile show of defiance or starting to write (or in a few case, sign - there does appear to be a full established sign language, although clearly only a few people know it) messages to each other along the lines of 'who is this?' and 'what do we do now?'.

Most of the gate assembly are nodding, or making hurry-up gestures; some of them have finished writing very short messages in very large letters and are trying to get her attention with things like 'VATES' triple underlined and 'not again' and 'who are you?'.

"Alright, you all clearly have a lot you want to say to me, but we're going to do this with more coordination.  And as for you lot -"

Some of the most vehement violence-supporters are introduced to The Wonders Of Containment Foam.

"I'll be nice."

"I am Administrator Myra Northwind, from a place further away than you'd think possible.  I was born a human much like you, and believe I've stayed that way.  I'm hoping we can productively solve the whole vallorn problem - because that is what's in the offing, if we can coordinate well enough to get it done.  Let's get started properly, shall we?"

She lets off the air scrambling, and takes down the arrow - though she's pulling drones in closer and preparing to deflect hostile magic.

(The ritualists casting Identify can stay; it's not going to burst their brains or anything, it's just a really big force effect.)

The ritualists are not merely casting Identify - they are casting Shadowed Glass of Sung, a ritual which answers the question "Is there a specific secret, mystery, or enigma associated with this location?"

Nobody has magically learnt the art of coordinating a large meeting made of a considerable number of disparate factions, and there are still a considerable number of people shouting at once, although now a number of them are shouting at each other and attempting to take charge of the situation rather than shouting at Myra directly.

The people who were inclined to choose violence don't appear to become less inclined to choose violence because their ringleaders were taken out; their main problem is that the crowd of ritualists and self-appointed diplomats are not actually interested in parting and letting them through in enough force to be a problem, the drones are quite up to the task of deflecting the few that slip through, and they haven't quite got to the point of cutting down their own people to get to her. They are definitely adding to the 'everyone shouting at each other' problem, though.