The boat is vaporized instantaneously around her, and the water boils instantaneously around the boat, and there's nothing but fire as far as the eye can see. There is no reasonable way anyone could have survived that.

Oh, well, she dodged it, so that's fine.

(Need's shield, an astounding impossible wall of protection, sufficient against a hundred Fireballs, shattered at once, Urtho's talismans flaired and burned out, Protection from Energy spent itself down in an instant - whatever mitigated the explosion after that was some greater stranger thing -)

- however, all her exposed skin is now being boiled off, which is slightly less fine. She reflexively tries to Lay On Hands. There's nothing there. She puts Resist Energy (fire) up though she's not actually sure that scalding steam is Fire -

- and she cries out to Aroden, as she hasn't done since she was very young, as she does not in fact usually do even when dying. Don't let me be lost here, she pleads of him as her nerves one by one cease reporting boiling-steam-related-sensation -

- and of course the implicit conditional is 'unless grabbing me is so expensive it wouldn't in fact be worth it', but she is in fact not quite inhuman enough to, in that instant, mean it.

Oh. 

Ma'ar raises a departure Gate-threshold within less than a second, and – holds it stable without finishing the search. It's draining and distracting but not quite distracting enough to make him lose the scrying-spell entirely, and - he wouldn't be surprised if Iomedae could survive that (....he would be surprised but - not very - he's not looking directly at that thought right now) but he couldn't. 

So, however desperately impatient he feels right now, he needs to wait long enough to be sure that he can survive - and, more relevantly, remain functional enough to actually mount a rescue - if he Gates into the aftermath. 

There's a lot of ocean, and a lot of wind. The waters will cool, the steam will clear. It probably doesn't even take that long. Things are already visibly improving on the scry when the distant thunder of a massive explosion becomes audible in Predain.

Ma'ar has very very good shields and a lot of additional talismans and is not even going to wait that long before he Gates himself in - 

- to five hundred yards above the ocean, because he isn't an idiot (and has been here before and can pull off a Gate to this level of precision) and he can definitely survive a hundred-yard fall onto water with all his shields up but landing at the center of the heat will take a higher toll. 

From the moment he's through the Gate, he's flinging his Thoughtsensing out to its full range, which isn't spectacular but should be at least five miles, and he should be able to detect even the faint signature of unconscious minds at one or two miles - if they're unshielded, but presumably Iomedae or Need's shields would have gone down well before either of them lost consciousness (and if either of them is conscious then either they'll get out on their own or they'll be reaching for him actively)... 

Can he find either of them? 

Sure! Well underwater. 

The Gate is down within a fraction of a second and Ma'ar is falling toward the water. At which point he can figure out how to get below the water to Iomedae. 

...He should maybe have figured out better heat-absorption shields before attempting this plan, because despite having waited until it looked less hot on a scry, this really hurts a lot - he's pretty sure he waited long enough that it's not going to kill him...

...probably...

assuming he can get to Healers after this...

- actually he's just going to Gate to below the point where he can sense Iomedae's mind, partly for strategic reasons and partly - mostly - because maybe it will be cold down there and that sounds, uh, better. Than this. 

Gate. Down. 

- can he still find Iomedae's mind? Is she above him like he aimed for? 

It is indeed cold, this deep underwater. Iomedae is up and to the - left? Need is - apparently right next to her.

Ma'ar is a decent swimmer, and can move himself through the water by flinging repeated small fireballs to create tiny steam-explosions and shove him in the direction he wants to go. This is less comfortable than a short-range Gate but costs him less total energy, and he should have enough either way to get home but he doesn't, actually, know what sort of situation he's going to be Gating back into. 

:Iomedae?: he tries. After a moment, :- Magic sword?: (He can't remember if she introduced herself, and if so by what name.) 

Need does not answer. 

Iomedae super does not answer. Other people at -35HP are dead.

It's all right. He can still sense her mind, so she's alive. He can get her out. 

...The question is to where. It's not obvious. He needs to bring her somewhere with Healers, and Predain may or may not be safe– really he shouldn't bring her to the capital of either Predain or Tantara, both would be obvious next targets, but he can't exactly summon Healers on demand to arbitrary locations and he also can't recall all of his own side's deployments perfectly– 

- he's reached her, or rather run into her headfirst, so fine he's Gating them to - this particular major mining town in the southwest of Predain, it's well away from the front and under normal circumstances should have a lot of Healers and even under war circumstances it might have one Healer on-site. And it's not near the front or near the capital, it's as random a choice as he can manage so hopefully   if he's lucky  neither of those are strategies but maybe Vkandis' servants won't already be there -

(he should have made contingency-plans for this - except why would have done that -)

- is Need still in Iomedae's hand or does he need to grab her separately before he raises his hopefully-not-doomed Gate?

Need is absolutely still in Iomedae's unconscious grasp. Possibly Iomedae instinctively sleeps with a sword in her hand or perhaps her flesh has been welded to Need - looks like it's the second one -

Sloppy underwater unscaffolded Gates aren't very precise anyway and Ma'ar is going to cast a wide threshold, even though it'll tire him out even further. 

- and they tumble through, along with quite a lot of very cold water, into the town square of a mining outpost. 

:This is Adept Kiyamvir Ma'ar: he Broadsends to everyone within range, which is not a very large range considering his current level of exhaustion and the extent to which all of the skin on his body feels scalded. :Require a Healer now - maximum-priority order...: 

He is not himself a Healer but he has basic field-Healing training because it would be stupid not to. He's not sure how useful it will be, here - does Iomedae look like she's still breathing - 

Somehow....yes? Her lungs are completely full of water, but her chest is still moving like maybe this time it'll work.

Moving is really hard right now, apparently, but Ma'ar manages to sit up, and he rolls Iomedae onto her side and thumps her between the shoulder blades (normally he would be more tempted to do this gently but he isn't at all, right now) and he yells again in Mindspeech. :- get Healers in now by Gate - my orders - if there's no one on site -: 

...and Iomedae is ridiculous, so he's going to keep poking her mind over and over, :- Iomedae breathe it's Ma'ar wake up just breathe -: 

(He's very exhausted but it's all right, he can manage not to collapse for a little while longer.)

She will cooperatively vomit a lot of water (and - blood? scalded flesh?) onto the ground but she's absolutely still deeply unconscious. 

That seems concerning! Ma'ar is not a Healer and really has no idea how concerning he should find that!

...he's going to switch to Mindspeaking Need repeatedly, since maybe swords are less physically damaged by the explosion that just hit both of them. 

Need is not currently answering Mindspeech queries. (She relies quite heavily on her bearer's mental capacity for any kind of reasoning or strategic planning; right now she's instinctively Healing Iomedae, but not doing anything else.) 

There are a couple of very junior Healers on-site and they're now running up to the...large puddle of water in the town square?? where Adept Ma'ar (looking terrible) is sitting half-slumped-over the body of a woman who - kind of looks like she was boiled in a cooking pot or something??

But she's somehow not actually dead, so they'll try to get an energy-link up and then check her with Healing-Sight, so they can send an actually-informed report when requesting more Healers. 

(Separately, there is a junior mage on-site sending a very panicked report to a different division, because he's been told to remain on high alert but very little else and this makes no sense and seems like something he ought to report on those grounds alone.) 

She appears to have been boiled alive in steam, with severe burns over every inch of her body and also inside her throat and her lungs. There really isn't much skin left and what there is is fused to her armor or her sword. After that, it seems, she drowned. Her lungs are full of water and not coping with it well especially since they'd been scalded first. Her heart is beating at about half a normal speed but very steadily; her brain doesn't seem to yet be suffering from a lack of oxygen though that's not going to last more than another minute, and the sword at her side is feeding her Healing-energy, though it obviously has far, far too much to do. 

That's extremely horrifying. Wow.

(The sword is confusing but it's not a note of confusion that has anywhere to go, and it's not killing her so it's not a priority for them.) 

They are not actually sure what to do about this degree of damage, aside from feeding her a lot of additional Healing-energy. and trying to nudge the pathways that will make her lungs react to all the water by coughing (which is also not great for her body, given all the massive tissue damage, but if she's survived this so far it's probably not worse than her not being able to breathe effectively...)

They will very firmly second Ma'ar's order that they need as many Healers as possible here right now. 

Ma'ar is not about to ask for any Healing attention given that Iomedae is obviously much closer to dying, even though he is in quite a lot of pain and it's distracting. 

- he should try to reach Urtho with the communication-spell, probably. Tell him that the weapon went off, and he has Iomedae here, and he needs help. 

<Urtho?>

Urtho would have been way more surprised - and alarmed - to hear this message at nearly any other time. 

However, it's approximately dawn in Tantara, and so he has a very good idea of why. And so hearing anything at all from Ma'ar is...good news. Probably?? Probably. 

<What>