Sigh. "Politics."

Onwards!

The next fun thing in this house of delights turns out to be another Bloodstone crystal, this one thin and taller than James, and as soon as they spot it the crystal connects to everyone there with a red lightning stream. Vetareh feels no pain, but on the other hand she does start feeling rather fatigued...

"No," she informs the bloodstone crystal, crossly. Crystal: meet her hex, backfire, it would like to have a word with you.

The flow of the lightning stream reverses itself for a second and then the crystal explodes into dust, and the lightning stops.

    Canach nods curtly at her. "Good job," he says.

(And James has a mask so Vetareh doesn't see the expression he's wearing as he looks at her.)

She definitely can't! It is again fortunate that he's covered in spikes and fire, but this time for reasons she's not aware of.

"Yep. Honestly, what kind of shoddy magical work is this?" she mutters, stalking forward. Hex, hex, hex, one explosion after another. Bye crystals, you will not be missed.

"To be fair, I needed to learn fairly ancient magic to be able to counter these, myself," James comments lightly.

    "Yes, that is impressive," Marjory adds. "Countering the magic of these Bloodstones returns whatever magical properties it absorbed. I know a certain big-eared asura who'd love to be here to study this..."

        "I heard that!" comes a slightly distorted young voice from somewhere on James's back.

And James freezes.

Vetareh also freezes. She turns to slooooowly look at James.

"Well," she observes. "... So much for discretion?"

    Canach... looks at James.

"Taimi..." James starts. "How much... have you heard...?"

        "Oh, don't worry about it, pooh-bah, I'm not listening all the time, I have better things to do with my time than spy on you," says the voice coming out of the probable communications device attached to the neck of James's armour. "By the way, nice to meet you, princess!"

            "Princess?" asks Marjory, who looks like her face is doing its utmost not to turn into a smirk, while Rytlock starts laughing.

She closes her eyes and wonders if she could invent an invisibility spell on the spot. Probably not. "... Lovely to meet you too, Taimi. Please don't call me that, I'm not actually a princess."

    "Sure. Anyway, I should get back to something actually interesting. Bye!"

        "Is she always...?" Canach starts.

"Yes. How about we get back to what we're actually here to do?" asks James.

            "Why don't you two lead the way, Commander?" asks Rytlock.

So Rytlock is clearly a sadist, and she was a fool to not immediately be racist towards him based on his species. A fool.

Still, she doesn't want to stretch out this agony any further, so: yes, let's lead the way with James. While everybody no doubt giggles behind them. Yep.

"This is your fault," she informs James, matter of factly, but without any real heat.

"I admit to that," he nods, and onwards they go.

The next room contains two more Bloodstone crystals, but these don't react to their presences; instead, they seem to be feeding forcefields around two Bloodstone elementals.

"Mmm," she hums, peering at this. "This is a bit better. The shields look passable. But putting these after the draining crystals just makes it obvious how to break them, so I don't think it's into the realm of 'good.'"

She considers. "We're in a rush, so I'll try the quick method for dealing with ancient magical artifacts."

That is, hitting it. She picks a bloodstone crystal, and dumps the wastrels' hexes onto it. It's not like the crystal is going to be casting anything. Hopefully the hostile magic will cause the crystal to turn unstable to start draining magic, but if it doesn't, they have a spare.

Hitting the crystal does cause it to turn unstable, and it does start draining Vetareh.

"Good. Now, point in the right direction..."

She can cast backfire without some of its teeth. Just a little instability, not enough to blow up the crystal, just enough to disrupt its aim, so it goes for the closest target instead of her.

That works; the drainage hits the closest elemental's shield and both shield and crystal explode.

Elemental is not happy with this. Elemental charges. James summons a Flesh Golem to intercept it in its path—it's shorter than the elemental but bulky and made of muscles and spite, so it does its job.

Blink. Oh. Yes. She's not in echoes in the Mists anymore, people can actually attack her in response to her meddling. That is important to not forget.

"Ah. Right. Thank you James. Shield's down, you can all kill it dead now."

She'll assist with this endeavor, in fact!

The elemental... is fairly more durable than the White Mantle were. And mostly a physical attacker.

Ugh. Physical attackers. Why. Who would do that, when magic exists? ... Probably people that are annoyed with people like her, really. That's fair enough, actually.

She's just going to chain wastrels' hexes. And stay far away from it. She is squishy and delicate and looks better when she's not a smear on the floor.

The other four are nowhere near as squishy and delicate, and James's minions (he has now summoned a shadow one like the one from earlier, too) do a very good job of keeping the elemental busy.

Oh good. Then it'll eventually go down. Luckily for her, she is secure in her worth to the group, because she already took out its shield. She doesn't have to be good at everything.

And soon enough the elemental... explodes, sending James careening out at the wall.

She flinches. That. That wasn't enough to kill him, right, he's fine...?

Whoops how did she get over here next to him so fast, it's a mystery for the ages.

"James, darling, make some kind of affirmative sound if you have continued succeeding at not dying."

He grunts in what sounds like an affirmative sound!

    "The Commander's taken worse," says Rytlock.

        "Like that time with the puppets," suggests Canach.

            "Or in Tarir," remembers Marjory.

    "Or the paneer incident," Rytlock grunts.

            "Rrrr," shudders Marjory. "Let's not talk about the paneer incident."

"Oh, good. Then I'll consider this practice for all those other times he'll no doubt make me very concerned for his safety." She addresses James again, and her voice softens a little. "Do you need help, or do you just want to walk it off...?"