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Adept Kiyamvir Ma'ar is pretty good at not dying.
There are a lot of opportunities to die, in war, especially when one is a hands-on commander, which he doesn't have a lot of choice about at this point. Predain's mages are in many ways better prepared for combat than Tantara's people, in terms of staying calm and handling themselves, but in terms of magical skill and control, they have far less training, and of course there are just a lot fewer of them. Which means that there are a lot of things Ma'ar has to do himself, in the line of fire.
He's pretty good at winning fights quickly and ruthlessly, and very good at shielding. (He wishes his life called for a different skill, but given that he's tried over and over to offer peace talks to Urtho, and hasn't once received an answer, his only remaining option is to win the war.)
Sometimes it's not enough. In those cases, Ma'ar's remaining advantage is that he is absurdly and incredibly talented with combat Gates.
The overpowered levinbolt, concert-cast by half a dozen of Urtho's best Adepts, hits a weak point of his shields, already strained from the last barrage of attacks, and he still manages to block most of it, but the remaining mage-lightning that gets through is still enough to knock him flat. He can smell his own burned flesh, and - there's something very wrong, he's so dizzy and his vision is darkening and it feels like there's an enormous weight crushing his chest, he can't seem to draw in a breath -
- he raises a horizontal unscaffolded Gate under himself. It takes two entire seconds, which is slow for him, and consciousness is already fading, his reserves of mage-energy vanishing into smoke, as the search-spell spools out and out. He's aiming for the Healers' Collegium in the capital of Predain, which ought to be within his range, and they've treated his grievous injuries more than once.
Something is wrong with the Gate, but his ears are filled with buzzing, he can no longer feel his limbs, and he doesn't have time to try again. He completes the spell.
Ma'ar lands hard on a cold tiled floor, in the ER hallway of Renown Hospital in Reno, Nevada. The last thing he sees is the blur of fluorescent lights above his head, and then his vision fades to black.
The ER staff will find a man in his late thirties or early forties, sprawled unconscious on the hallway floor, with superficial but extensive burns over much of his body, his vaguely medieval-looking clothing scorched and smoking. He's not breathing and they can't find a pulse.
