"The sword cuts through pretty much anything when I hit it hard enough, the armour lets me pull off heroic feats like smashing something apart with the sword more times a day, and the circlet lets me get the wind back into two soldiers at once; that's the other thing I can do, pick people up and get them ready for the front line again just with a good shake and a few choice words."

"Alright, I'm gonna need to take a look at that to figure out how to best support it but I've absolutely got some stuff that'll help.  Will it help if I could project your magic to a more distant target?"

"It's not really magic, dearie, it's just they're too scared of me to stay on the ground! But yes, I'd love to throw my voice a bit, right now I've got to be basically touching them and that's not always a thing you can do in a fight."

"Right, I'll bust out the narrativium amplifiers.  ...That's not a real literal thing, but I think I know the direction I'm going with this now.  Hm, hm hm, and - this and those, and these, and - yeah, you could probably use the boots properly - I wonder if liao would -- oh, Evantia, remind me to hook you up with a liao dispenser -- anyway, not doing that in combat - and let's see, we'll want this to be maximally aesthetic for resonance reasons, so - colors, styles, tell me what you want here.  ...Ooh, I bet I could get your raise into a proper mass effect instead of just doubled -"

"Casca's Doom colours are red and white, stylised earthquake with the jagged-y lines like on my surcoat here?"

Evantia spares Myra a mildly incredulous glance, and then goes back to quietly talking to Caryn about what she knows of the capabilities of the flier, with regards to flying it over the Vallorn, and reassuring her that yes, as far as she knows, Myra is always like this, but she'll politely interrupt if they're not done in a couple of minutes.

"Stylized earthquake, red and white; got it.  Here, see if this - feels like anything, would you?"  Runes, that if Myra has correctly identified the 'reservoir' of heroic stuff, will - mostly just wibble it, but there's an element to push a little power in, to be sure - appear, with a circle/handprint.  "Also I'm thinking that since you mentioned earthquakes extra-stompy boots would be a great idea; any opinions on that?"

"I just feel like I need to check, what does 'extra stompy' mean here? Like, make everyone nearby fall over, jump over trees, run real fast?

I've always been told I can only have one talisman bound at a time, too, so isn't that in competition with the amplifier thingy?"

"Soulbound items are neat, my girlfriend has a knife that's always there when she needs it, but most of my gear's properties are inherent to the object, not the person wielding it.  I don't think there will be problems.

"Also as far as the boots go 'jump high, run fast, and don't take fall damage' is a package I already have that I was thinking of adding 'kick stronger and/or force-wave stomp' magic to."

Evantia makes a pointed "Ahem" noise in Myra's direction, and then raises her voice somewhat; it seems that being around the mantle has mostly had it recover from her earlier adventures in shouting, although this is nowhere near as loud.

"Do you think we could discuss this in the air? Caryn is pretty sure that time is of the essence for those further into the Vallorn as well, although most of them are protected from that particular ailment through some kind of... onion soup... provided by Rhianos."

"Oh, that would be nice! But yes, the merrow is right, we should make haste; equipment has never made up for being late to the fight..."

"Right, let's get moving.

"...Onion soup?  Huh.  Surprisingly correspondent for a death ward sort of meal."

To the bat-plane!

"This thing wasn't exactly supposed to be for insertions into literally hostile territory but I build all my stuff like I expect someone will try to kill me while I'm using it, so we can make do."

Bilhah pulls over one of the other Thorns as they head out to the plane. "Lewys, you went in with them a way, you can show us to the first couple of camps and we can probably pick up the trail from there? If we can fit another one in..."

"Looking sprightly, Bilhah," Lewys comments, gruffly. "If you're going in, why not just head straight for the walls? The expedition's trying to do that too, so you'll likely overfly them doing it."

"...is it? I confess I don't see the correspondence, myself. Rhianos is know for being somewhat - eccentric."

"...Wait, so the Eternal went in there with them, am I hearing that right?  I'll just track for the big honking magic signature!  Not that we couldn't fit another hand."

"Hah, chance'd be a fine thing. Nah, heralds just dropped off the big soup tureen and told everyone to have at it."

"As far as we're aware, the Eternals are incapable of venturing into our world, in a similar way to our inability to enter the Realms safely."

"...Hmm.  Depends on the scale of the working, but I could probably - oh, fuckit, I'll just search exhaustively, quicker than precision by now.  Gonna go stand on the Trod; may as well borrow power from the enemy direct.  Be back in a minute or so."  She zooms off, clearly utilizing the speed-boosting features of her armor.

Pinhole snapshots are promptly fed to a high-speed camera as she runs a grid search that's fed through a neural network to identify points of interest; she also, despite firewalling herself from the Vallorn's space very intensely, captures readings of the magic effects in her search area - if there's sufficiently powerful Summer magic in the middle of all this Spring, that will also allow her to find the adventurers.

With Bilhah and Lewys clearly with her, and nobody having stopped her or chased her out of the Broch, the motley assemblage of armed people let her at the Trod this time, although they watch her warily - and then one of the magic users that tagged along in her wake as she swept back out of the Broch starts incanting to Detect Magic...

The result they get is for the wards outside, rather than the devices set up within the secured circle, which is just - "If anything magical or made of atoms tries to pass through this circle either way, make it damn well not."

That is suspicious, but nobody seems to be interested in stopping this madwoman from destroying everything and everyone else keeps saying things like, "but she's going to help with the Vallorn", and are not amenable to slightly unhinged ranting about how That's What They All Say, so eventually the naga wizard retreats back inside the walls muttering that he told them ssssso.

Meanwhile - bingo! Those sure are some traces of Summer magic. Quite a lot of traces of Summer magic, kind of scattered in a straggling advance pattern over a fair bit of terrain.

Oops - that speck of Summer magic just winked out. It seems like they might be in trouble out there.

"Fuck, they're in a fight right now - go go go I'll teardown this and catch up -"

Once they're all in the plane, Myra diverts power from the inertaic compensators and they blast off.  Weaponry deploys - machineguns, loaded with bullets just waiting to set things on Very Fire, as well as flights of capture-missiles for danger-close situations.  Myra also pulls armor and personal weapons for everyone, and with the example of her mantle to draw upon, as well as lots of experience with metamagic in general, she manages to produce a decent amplifier-projector and recharge mechanism for Bilhah in the short time they have!

"We're going to airdrop, the boots will handle falling safely, Bilhah here's your booster, should track intent but if it doesn't, gesture -"

Absent specific instructions not to, Lewys is also going to dive in the plane, just behind Bilhah and Evantia.

The expedition is, on reviewing those snapshots, in fact quite clearly in several different fights:

A hopelessly disorganised mob who are turning over some kind of armed encampment for loot, containing the corpse of a truly gargantuan twisted tree horror along with a bunch of dead Briars, are being occasionally picked off by remaining Briars using the fact that they clearly don't all know each other against them.

A variety of small units that appear to mostly be led by magic users of various stripes - the highest concentration of Urizeni are here - are getting mildly ambushed by ettercaps in an area with deep, sticky miasma and lots of dripping sap; they seem to mostly be holding their own but the ettercaps have a habit of grabbing someone and making off into the jungle, which seems unlikely to go well for those people in particular.

The main logistics train appears to have been left in a remarkably peaceful area of weirwood trees; a small detachment of Highborn in red and white tabards, some with a horse, some with a stylised earthquake, has been ambushed by giant centipedes making their way between this and what looks to be the ruined walls; they would be doing better if they weren't focused on preserving a bunch of carefully wrapped items they appear to value more highly than their lives.

The 'front line', such as it is, is strung out along the ruined walls; they appear to be fighting the jungle itself here, including possessed animals and bloated giant insects, but also the great thorned vines that still bind the walls. This is an ongoing pitched battle over a few miles of terrain.

"Bloody hell," she says, strafing the giant centipedes - "Bilhah we'll drop you with your people but when that's settled I'll need someone doing command coordination, Evantia your loadout's good for the miasma zone but also take this it makes things slippery instead of sticky -" A spray gun of some yellow fluid - "Lewys where should you go - and I'll go fuck up the mob over there -"