"Sounds like your mother alright."

"You haven't even met her! Probably."

"I've met you."

She isn't quite up to laughing just yet, but she is up for giving a small amused snort and squeezing him a little in the hug.

"That you have, yes. For the record, if you get a choice between me and the world, go with the world."

"I've met you," he repeats.

"That you have," she agrees, amused. She pulls back so she can gently kiss him.

He kisses her back eagerly.

Then: "Shall we go, princess?"

She lingers a little longer in his embrace, because he's great and she appreciates him so much, then: "Yeah, let's. Thank you, darling."

"It's what I'm for," he says, bowing his head a little bit.

They slowly near the peak. Eventually a blue glow in the distance seems to indicate that the asura did, in fact, install a waypoint there.

She recovers herself in the interim, and puts her spells back where they were. She'll show James more ancient necromantic magic sometime in the future, when she's not so... sensitive.

"Oh, thank," she begins, then pauses. "... the clever asura who installed that waypoint."

He laughs. "Were you about to thank a god, princess?"

"Yes. Listen, after growing up in a highly religious country, it is very hard to suddenly switch to not thanking or swearing by gods. I might need to figure out alternatives so I don't slip."

"I am afraid I can't help, I still find myself swearing by Grenth sometimes."

"Maybe I should ask Canach. He's an atheist, and presumably swears."

"His swearing is mostly plant-based."

"Really?" she says, delighted and charmed. "That's adorable. Also useless to my purposes, but adorable."

He laughs. "I think he would not love being called 'adorable'."

And here's the waypoint. It brightens when they approach, registering their presence.

"I will avoid saying it in his presence, then, and keep my opinion to myself in mixed company. Still. Adorable."

She smiles at the waypoint, then says, "We should see if we can find the asura that placed it, they might have seen the device and save us time."

"Yeah, that's a good idea."

The path continues just a little bit further before ending in the lip of the volcano. However, once they reach it, they're staring down a steep descent down into the belly of the volcano, which is mostly solidified. There is a lake of lava and some magma rivers feeding into it to the southwest, but most of the rest of the space is dominated by one of Destroyers, asuran equipment, or nothing.

A huge golem, three times as tall and four times as wide as James, is standing at one spot next to a cliff that leads to the lava lake. "That seems like as good a place to find them as any."

"That it does," she agrees with a nod. Though, she wonders why the waypoint isn't directly in the camp. Maybe something to do with security risks? Or being unable to move the waypoint after placing it, and then moving the camp after for... some reason? She's not sure. There is probably some kind of sensible explanation, though, she doesn't get the impression that the asura do things randomly.

Well, either way, off they go. The destroyers in their way are a little boring by this point; she is well and truly used to their brand of magic by now, and countering them is downright dull. Backfire on the meteor caster, interrupts for the little exploding ones, wastrels' hexes on them while she prevents them from doing anything that might disrupt the delicate hexes, shattering the delicate hexes with her spell when it looks like they're about to cast anyway, mass slow hex for everything else after James has grouped them all up, blah blah. Boring. Not boring enough for her to get comfortable, but boring enough that she starts looking for ways to pay the proper amount of attention instead of letting her mind wander. She starts paying closer attention to the hostile magic surrounding her enemies; maybe she can start picking apart how some modern necromancy works from James. That seems like a worthwhile use of her time.

Then she might notice, while James is trashing a group of Destroyers, that immediately after she applies hexes on some of them James casts a spell that replicates those hexes to all nearby foes.

That is—

Well the implications of that are—

Why didn't he tell her he could do that, she could have caused so much mayhem—

Vetareh blinks from the sheer weight of the potential possibilities, and is so surprised that she almost misses an interrupt for the little explodey ones. Maybe she should wait until after the destroyers are thoroughly trashed before she reacts to this information. Yes, that seems wise.

James notices her pause and looks at her to see whether she's being attacked by something he missed, but when she resumes her hexes he gets back to destroying the Destroyers.

Oh, good. Then they can finish up destroying this batch, and then she can react to what she just learned.

"James," she says, almost indignantly, "you didn't mention that you could transfer hexes! Have you been doing this the entire time?"

"—hm? Do you mean epidemic? Yes, it's pretty good for groups of foes, yeah."