"'M fine. Walk it off," he mumbles, then groans as he resumes an upright position.

    "Shall we, then, Commander?" Canach asks, and this time he... fails to sound completely neutral. Looks like someone else was also worried.

"We shall."

"Right. I'll go piss off the other elemental now. Someone please keep it from squishing me in its anger."

Other elemental: welcome to the world of not having a shield anymore!

The fight goes much like the previous one did, except this time James is smart enough to dodge the elemental explosion at the end.

Good! That's good! He should not be near elemental explosions! She expects he'll do it anyway, because that seems to be the sort of person that he is, but she is going to take her victories where she can get them. Little victories.

Onwards!

    The next door is closed, and they can hear muffled voices on the other side. "Work faster! These Bloodstones won't collect themselves!"

James tiptoes over to the door (which is lacking in traps) with a finger raised to his (concealed) lips.

She edges a little closer, but not quite as far to the door, then purses her lips and tries to get a feel for the magic on the other side. Luckily for her, she has had so very much practice feeling bloodstone related things lately.

'Large bloodstone crystal on the other side. No large power source indicative of person/thing that absorbed the bloodstone's power,' she writes, where everyone (except, she supposes, Rytlock, unless his whatever-he-has is good enough at detail work to catch illusionary letters) can see it. She looks at Canach. He's the one that's supposed to be doing the 'rescuing' of the minister, after all, this seems like it's his show.

No further noises seem to be forthcoming.

    "Sounds like we have some fun ahead of us," growls Rytlock.

        "I will take the lead, Rytlock," says Canach. "I was given specific orders on how this was supposed to be executed, and cannot afford for you to blindly smite."

    "If that's a blindfold crack..."

        "Commander, care to take the door?" Canach says in lieu of responding.

"With pleasure," says James, opening the door with a kick.

        Canach is the first to rush in. "Minister Caudecus, it seems that you have..." He pauses and looks around. The room contains a Bloodstone crystal in the centre, surrounded by White Mantle. No one's obviously ministerly. "Oh. He's not here. Feel free to smite."

    "With pleasure."

James opening the door with a kick: kind of hot. Not that this observation shows in her face, or anything, her sense of professionalism isn't inclined to let her sink into eating the eye candy. ... Proverbial eye candy, since he's still covered in spikes and fire.

She surveys the room and—for the love of Dwayna they're still not grouped up—

"If we're smiting, can we get them to clump up in a large convenient group so I can hex them all?"

"With pleasure," says James before he grunts and sends a gauntlet made of shadow in the direction of the White Mantle farthest away from the group, and then the gauntlet is pulled towards them and every other White Mantle in the room is dragged with them. "Clumpy enough for you?"

"Yes, thank you," she says, flashing him a quick smile. Everyone in that group: enjoy your new hex that slows down all spellcasting and speeds up all spellcasting of anyone targeting you.

Now, is there someone that looks like a good mesmer torment target?

There's a fair share of elementalists and mesmers on the team.

    One of the White Mantle—this one's wearing finer robes, probably a lieutenant or something—gets up with a roar and swings her enormous hammer overhead to hit the ground with it, causing the ground to literally crack and shake. "Do you actually think we'd let you take him from us?"

"He's not yours to keep," says Canach from where he's getting up.

    "These fools must be taught their place!"

Whoops, down goes Vetareh, that's annoying.

"Already know," she grumbles mostly to herself, as she drags herself back to her feet, "above you, but thanks for checking."

Right, let's take this anger out on—uh, not the mesmer, the mesmer has several copies, and she cannot actually tell which mesmer is the real mesmer—the elementalist. She would like to dump her trio of mean choice hexes on them while she tries to figure out how she can tell which member of the clone brigade is actually real. Damn, she hates fighting without enough knowledge of the magic at play, this is so annoying, she's going to have so much studying to do.

That's okay, James seems to have the mesmers well in hand, what with the green shadowy shroud he's enveloped in and the way he's swinging his staff around like a scythe and swirling through the battlefield like the very shadow of death.

She appreciates James very much, and would probably appreciate him more if she were less busy. However: she is kind of busy. She interrupts a spell from someone else that looks large scale and nasty, recasts her stolen speed hex just before it dissipates over its subjects, and also does her best to persuade that one elementalist to curl up in a ball and cry about the bad woman and her hexes. This is much more her element than dealing with large physical combatants—keeping track of a bunch of things at once, flickering her attention around to whomever seems like they need it the most, and very quietly causing a lot of trouble.

The Important Lady roars as the White Mantle are taken down and jumps towards the Bloodstone crystal. "Magic from Bloodstones empowers me! What do you have? Nothing!" she cries before hitting it with her hammer and getting encased in a shield similar to the jade constructs from earlier.

Vetareh rolls her eyes, and then about five seconds later, the Important Lady no longer has magic from bloodstones empowering her. It's almost like it was a bad idea to put shielded elementals in front, in a place where Vetareh could safely figure out how to dismantle the shield. Instead of not doing that.

    "No! Kill that mesmer!"

(Which is a jolly good moment for a flesh golem to tackle her.)

(But that doesn't stop lots of White Mantle from suddenly noticing she exists. Watch one mesmer behind her now—oh wait no it's three—no, four—no, two, the other two exploded—)

It's so nice to have her hard work appreciated, except also ow.

She growls, then picks a mesmer to put a hex on, but hexes are too slow. She needs speed, so she casts her spell to viciously twist the hex to shatter it—that was a clone, but at least she knows which one is real now—and then the real mesmer can eat several interrupts, in a row, because fuck them.

Canach uses that moment to knock said mesmer out.

But there goes the lady with the shield again. And more White Mantle going after Vetareh.

Except, of course, now James uses some countermagic of sorts—on the Bloodstone crystal, creating a connection of thick red mist between himself and it. He positions himself so that this red mist is touching the White Mantle's shield until it implodes—and then the shield is on James himself.

    "KILL THEM! KILL THEM BOTH!" shrieks the dazed White Mantle.

James is so great, and she's going to tell him so when they are not in the middle of... this thing.

"I'm just going to hide behind you now," she informs Canach seriously.

She takes the opportunity to steal someone else's magical energy to heal herself, because ow, and then goes right back to what she'd been doing before. Priority towards the ones that are trying to kill her, because she'd like to not be dead, thanks. Also, somewhere in that, her stolen speed hex ran out, that can be reapplied.

And in due time the opposition is reduced to only that one unfairly durable lady, who's finished by a blow of Canach's sword. "Well, that was that, then," he sighs. "You have a peculiar fighting style," he directs at Vetareh. "I hope you usually have people around to hide behind."

She lets out a relieved breath of air. "Yeah. It's wonderful for screwing the other guys up, except for how it kind of sucks. But the idea is to win, not to live, since once the fight's over you can just resurrect me."

Everyone stops and stares at her.

"...resurrection hasn't worked in over two centuries," says Marjory. "Not since the gods left."

    Canach turns to James and gives him another look that apparently is very communicative, to James.

"Wait, what."

"How about," James starts, "we continue on our time-sensitive quest and answer everyone's questions after Caudecus is well on his way to a Krytan prison sorry I mean palace?"