So for some reason people aren't eager to press the button labelled "Obviously a bad idea". While not particularly surprising, I better throw my vote behind something I actually approve of.
[X] By Van Hal's side.
Whatever happens.
I am really not a fan of running out into battle right now. It is essentially the third worst idea right now (out of five, so that doesn't say much), only surpassed by the "practically suicide" of running back into battle and "actually suicide" of trying to use Dhar.
We can all agree that time is of the essence here, right? No matter how things turn out, the faster we can get healing to Van Hal, the better. And by extension, we can also agree that any combat is to be avoided, right? Not only would even a small skirmish cost us valuable time, but Mathilde's currently badly wounded and probably only one or two poor rolls away from ending up like her boss.
So we'd need to find Kashmir swiftly and sneakily. Which is not inherently a problem, doing that's basically the centerpoint of our build. At our peak, this would be easy. But we're far from our peak right now. Not only are we badly injured (enough to inflict a -10 debuff through an adrenaline rush), but we're also quite haunted mentally. And a frazzled mind is not one that should cast spells. We've been repeatedly reminded that there's no such thing as a risk-free spell, and this is probably the riskiest situation to cast spells in (again, not counting leading in the actual Dhar).
Not to mention that even if we manage to find KAshmir without suffering meaningful losses, we still run the very real risk of Van Hal dying while we're out searching. Meaning that we essentially left him to die alone for nothing. And that's not a layer of guilt that Mathilde needs.
We've hired the mages. We've sent the couriers. We've done all that we could, solet's not break our back trying to surpass our limits.
Just listen for the guy yelling "SIGMAR!!!!!" the loudest
Might be hard to hear over the screams of both the dying and the dead.