...that might just be too adorable for words. It's a good thing he's too busy conducting the glider for it to really be weird if he doesn't use words.

Eventually they reach the lip of the crater, and eventually they're far above the lip of the crater. The line of magic ends some fifty metres up in the air, and James angles his glider towards the west. "I can take it from here, officer! Thank you for your help," he calls.

    "Yes, Commander!" the woman says, and she starts gliding southwest.

And now there is a pretty view to look at! While she's being held by a dashing necromancer as they fly through the sky! Today is a good day. She happily leans into James and admires the view.

"So I get the impression that I should not be calling you 'James' in front of people if we don't want people assuming things of us," she observes.

"—I suppose most people do call me by my titles, huh? I leave that choice up to you, princess."

"Do you. All right." Leaaaan. "You know it's sort of convenient that you're covered in spikes and fire. Or maybe inconvenient. I haven't decided."

"When you decide which you can explain to me your reasons."

"James. I have been in the Mists for a very long time." She raises her eyebrows meaningfully and looks at him.

"And I'm sure all you want now is some time to get your bearings and get used to being in the real physical world again, is it not?" he asks a touch too innocently.

"You are very lucky that you are covered in spikes and fire," she informs him, sweetly. "Because I do not want to distract you while you're rushing to avert a disaster and help your friend. But I have been very tempted."

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I definitely wouldn't want to tempt you. Perhaps I should stop."

—Nope, not doing the first thing that she wants to do in response to that. That would be dangerous. Nope, nope, nope.

She takes a deep breath, because she is an adult, and she is better than her base impulses.

"You're a bad man," she says, instead. "A very bad man who is so very lucky that he is covered in spikes and fire, and really high up in the air. So lucky. But I can promise to be very good and not distract you while we're doing important things. How about that?"

"Sounds altogether like a very sound plan."

"Mmhmmm. And then when we are done doing important things I am going to tackle you." Pause. "... With your permission," she adds, because that's important.

"As the princess wills it," he says with a distinct smirk in his voice.

"A very bad man," she affirms. Then she takes another deep breath, and wrestles the conversation in a different direction so as not to potentially distract him.

"So! Plant people are a thing now?"

"—right, you wouldn't have met sylvari. There was a very large tree in the Maguuma Jungle, and it started sprouting them as fully-formed adults a bit over twenty-five years ago. Caithe was one of the twelve firstborn. Canach is a secondborn."

"Ah. Okay. And do you and Caithe have some kind of history? At first I thought you didn't get along with her, but then you returned and were... closer to fine than before."

"Some kind of history, yes." He looks at the distance between them and the floating coliseum. "It's a bit of a long story and needs quite some context, but she did something that—at the time—looked a lot like betraying me and her other friends. It turned out fine in the end, and she just shed some light on why she did it and apologised. The whole story involves the reason why I'm called Commander and a good deal of things that have happened between the sinking of Orr and today."

"Ah. All right. I get the impression I'm going to be playing catch up for a while. Any big things about the world I should know about?"

"There are enormous eldritch dragons attacking the world and eating its magic and if they are not stopped the world will end. My friends and I killed two of them. There are four still alive."

She blinks one long, slow blink.

"Good job," she says, because that is the most important thing, followed by: "and can I help with the third?"

"You most definitely can, although we do not currently have plans to deal with them." Pause. "And it occurs to me that you might want to know... One of the dragons, Zhaitan, the first one we killed, he... he was asleep under Orr, and when he rose he lifted Orr back up. It is now an island. And he was the undead dragon, so he rose many Orrians as undead."

Vetareh—twitches a bit, and growls.

"Thank you," she murmurs, "for saving me the trouble of hunting him down and killing him."

"You're welcome," he murmurs. "The undead are not yet all gone, but there are people working on it."

Nod. "Thank you," she repeats. "Sorry, I'm not—one of those people that gets fussy about what happens to my corpse after I leave it, I just. My father was a necromancer, and so I'm opinionated about how the dead are for the defense of the living. Not as some giant monster's playthings."

"...Zhaitan also used the souls of the dead in their animated corpses."