"The leyline map just went crazy, and it's where you were going! Are you there?"

"Yeah. I don't—"

"Okay, magic levels that high could be super hazardous! Like Xs for eyes hazardous!"

Wow, Taimi, extremely useful.

"But I may have a solution! Based on some of Zinn's old Rata Novan research, I've devised a way for you to counter certain types of magical threats."

...okay, that may be useful.

"Oh?"

"It's hard to explain like this. It's in your bag, too, I figured it might be useful. You can probably figure it out, though? Through use, I mean."

"...thanks, Taimi. We'll need to have a conversation about property ownership at some point."

"Oops! Lab fire! Gotta go!"

"...is she... always like that?"

"Uncomfortably often, yes." Okay, what did Taimi put in his bag, other than the two-way communicator?

Seems to be a special rune of some kind, for his armour.

...he really does not want to have to replace his existing runes, but maybe it can't be helped.

"By the Pale Tree, Commander," says the healer. "Your leg! Why didn't you open with that?" They start healing it, too.

"Communication was more important. My vision isn't great, either, while we're at it, though." He forcibly sets his bones back in place, which hurts like a bitch but will hurt a lot less than letting the spell do it for him.

"What are you planning to do?"

"Investigate, of course. Canach was supposed to meet me here, so I need to find him, too. Does the ship have portable waypoints?"

"Yes. I'll have someone get them set up." She starts trying to get up, then groans.

"You, General, are staying put. You're a lot worse off than the Commander."

"I can't send him out without backup—"

"You are not sending me anywhere. To the extent the Pact still exists and I am still in it, I outrank you, and if it doesn't and I'm not, you have no command over me anyway.

"Stay here, make sure everyone is alright. I'm used to flying solo, you don't need to worry."

"Burn my fur, you're impossible, Commander," she says, the tip of her tail twitching from side to side in amusement. "But yes, understood. Watch your back, and let me know what you find out."

"I will."

After James is properly healed, he puts his combat armour on—it has spikes and fire and is very menacing, has a cool psychological effect on his enemies—then applies Taimi's rune to it. Thankfully, it seems that rather than overriding one of his existing runes, it exists alongside them? And it doesn't have an effect on its own; it's almost like a spell insignia on his weapons, but he can tell that it's meant to be training wheels to help him learn how to use the magic Taimi developed.

He won't be able to do it unless he gets properly exposed to some magic, though, so, uh...

...what does the outside look like?

Once James is out of the airship's magical shielding, it hits him like a second blast wave. Magic. Bright, burning, inescapable, leaving a faint red haze over all. It crackles around him, unstable and raw and stinging against his skin, trying to tear at him just for existing in it. Without Taimi's rune, it might knock him entirely over without further shielding. With it, he can sort of move through it; it smooths his personal shielding into something that the unstable energy moves around, instead of slamming into. Even so, the air is so thick with it, it's like moving in a thick soup, with enough substance to metaphorically hold him aloft.

... Or not just metaphorically. There seems to be a problem with the ground being in... pieces. It's literally floating, held up by warring currents of too-much-magic with no place to go. What seemed at first like solid ground is really just a large chunk of flying earth, pinned together by some combination of chance and the magical airship that was in theory built for hostile conditions. Floating in the distance, a large coliseum is similarly intact in the air; it likely has, or perhaps had, similar shielding to help keep it together in the wake of the disaster. Everything else, though? Shards of earth, suspended and spinning almost gently in the bright, shifting hellscape that was once Maguuma Jungle.

If there's still a ground, it's not visible from up here.