He nods. Then looks up at how much more it seems like they have to walk. "We might need to walk a couple of hours into the night, still, or we could stop, eat, and sleep before that."

She gives another thoughtful hum. "How likely is it that the caldera will have horrible monsters worse than the ones we fight climbing the volcano?"

"...somewhat?"

"Okay. We should definitely eat on the way, regardless; it doesn't take very much time. I'm less sure about what to do about sleep. I think you're probably more experienced with these kinds of trade offs than I am, darling. If you think we ought to sleep, I could put an illusion over some kind of sleeping nook to disguise us?"

"Oh, the illusion would be useful, yes. I usually just trap the area around and leave an undead minion outside keeping guard. Yes, I think sleep is probably the better idea."

She nods. "Then we can start looking for suitably defensible sleeping spots and rest before we reach the top. I trust your judgement."

"Thank you, my princess."

So they look.

Eventually, they find a nice little overhang against one of the volcano's rock faces. Vetareh can make it look like the rock goes straight down, with no overhang at all, and they can sleep in the hidden space therein.

"Though I'll need a bit of time to fiddle with it to make sure it won't disappear when I fall asleep," she explains, as she frowns thoughtfully at it. "So you have time for traps and careful minion placement."

"Yes, ma'am."

He summons four minions out of thin air to accompany his flesh golem: a shadow fiend, a blood fiend, a bone fiend, and an immobile flesh wurm. Then he grabs his staff and starts making various faintly glowing circular marks appear on the ground around them.

And Vetareh begins carefully weaving an illusion. The rock face itself isn't all that hard; she can copy parts from above and flip and reflect and stretch or squash them so they don't look quite so copied. She can even disguise his glowing runes, and give his minions little illusions to hide in. His mobile minions get space underneath the hidden overhang, or in extra space created against a nearby rockface; the wurm gets to be a rock. This isn't particularly difficult. Instead, the trouble is everything else. It needs to reflect light correctly instead of just copying the surroundings, so she also needs to weave an illusion behind her illusion to project the reflected light. Then, behind that, she needs to add an illusion that will prevent ordinary light coming from the other direction, so that the entire thing casts shadows correctly, and so they could have some kind of light source inside the sleeping nook without giving themselves away.

Then, she needs to tie the whole nest of magic off, so it's tidy and self contained and won't bleed off power in a way that would be notable to people with a magic sensitivity as keenly honed as Vetareh. Once that's done, she needs to gently remove the parts of her magical essence that are propping this whole illusion up and settle the weight of this magical web over something else, because she doesn't want this whole thing to collapse into nothingness the minute she falls asleep. Because of that, she needs to find suitable bits of rock that are magically resonant enough to hang an illusion off of without dissipating so much that the illusion fades, or bleed off notable amounts of power. It's a balancing act, and a tricky one, at that. If she gets it too wrong, removes magical support too hastily, misjudges the weaknesses and strengths of her creation, the whole thing could come tumbling down and dissipate into nothingness. She'd need to start over.

Fortunately, this doesn't come up.

"... There," she says, letting out a breath she'd been holding as she successfully removes the last of her supports without the whole thing falling to pieces. Breathing too hard wouldn't actually disrupt a magical illusion, but try telling that to one's psychology. "Done. That should hold while we sleep."

He's looking at her with a very fond expression right now.

She blinks confusedly at him. For once, she's not actually sure what she did that was so attractive, this time. It's not like she's a particularly notable illusionist; she knows (knew) mesmers that would have pulled that off in a quarter of the time.

"... What? Did I take so long that you got bored and started imagining me naked?"

"No, my princess, I just enjoy watching you be thorough and do a job that you find satisfying."

"Aw. Thank you, dear." She bestows him with a kiss, then spends a little while smiling goofily at him.

After a few seconds of that, she remembers herself, and gets to setting out a little place for them to sleep underneath the illusion. There isn't all that much space in there, so they'll have to cuddle. The horror.

Such horror.

But there's enough space for a small tent he has tucked in his mesmer bag, and they can prepare some travel rations.

They eat the bland but nutritionally balanced and filling meal, and then Vetareh can toe off her boots, take off her jacket, let down her hair, and settle into the small tent for snuggles. When James eventually stops being so covered in spikes and fire, anyway.

He will eventually stop being so covered in spikes and fire, and be in his underwear.

Then he will be snuggled!

"Am I overdressed?" she wonders, giggling a little.

"You can be dressed as much as you want to be. But yes."

"James honey, I'm basically made out of paper and spite. I'm keeping on as much magically protective clothing as is feasible while we're on these islands." She pecks him on the nose. "But you can certainly sleep in your underwear if you'd like."

"I can enter Reaper's Shroud if need be, the enchantments in my clothing were actually more useful for increasing my damage-dealing potency than protecting me, so that's fair."

"Mmhmm. I thought so." Then she gives a little yawn, tucks herself comfortably against him, and starts attempting to get some sleep.

He snuggles close to her and falls asleep almost immediately. This is probably a useful skill when you are the Commander.

Yeah, it definitely seems like it. He probably achieved it through a lot of practice sleeping in really terrible places. She'd be jealous, except it probably wasn't all that fun of a skill to cultivate.

She takes a bit longer to fall asleep. It's too hot on these islands, sleeping on a padded mat in a tent on the ground isn't particularly comfortable, prolonged silence is a little psychologically uncomfortable after the Mists, and while he feels safe, he's not quite passed the threshold into 'familiar,' yet. But she did a lot of walking and fighting today, she has ever slept on a padded mat in a tent on the ground before, and she can soothe her discomfort with silence with the even sound of his breathing and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. Eventually, they lull her to sleep.

They are undisturbed through the night.

James wakes up early but doesn't get up quite yet.