"Pretty good? Pretty good. It is pretty good, he says!" She barks a little laugh, then rubs her eyes. "James, love. Darling. Sweetheart. I know several very nasty single target hexes that I have not been using, because back in Orr, hexes were not transferable."

"Oh. How nasty?"

"I have one that vampirically steals life force that transfers to me and heals me every time someone hexed hits with an attack. And one that does damage every time someone misses. And one that does damage every time someone tries to attack. And an interrupt hex that interrupts someone when it's put on and when it ends, darling!"

"Those sound pretty nasty," he agrees.

"They are! You see why I am reacting like this! It is a big deal! So if you'll give me a bit, I'm going to swap a good portion of my spells out, take the nasty single target hexes, and then when we get to the next batch of destroyers I'm going to mark a target for epidemic and you can transfer the hexes to everything. And we will cause mayhem and chaos together. Okay?"

"Sounds good. There's a radius limit, though, of about... twenty metres?"

"That's fine," she agrees. "I can hit the main group around you with the nasty hexes, you spread them, and then I pick off and disrupt the stragglers on the edges with my various disrupting abilities." She carefully begins swapping out her spells; she can capitalize on her earlier idea for being less squishy big time with this information.

Well, he's happy that helped.

Onwards to the huge golem.

To the huge golem! They don't encounter any further destroyers on the way, which is something of a disappointment, because gosh she's excited to try out her new set of skills.

There is an asura next to the golem fussing with a data console embedded on the rock. She doesn't notice their approach and jumps when James says "Excuse me?"

    "Oh, do you want to kill me? Well, that'll be unexpected anyway, I'm expecting to die of lava wurm or island explosion, honestly."

Vetareh raises her eyebrows.

"No. We're actually trying to prevent that second one. Have you seen an ancient dwarven device lying around? About this big," she gestures, "and probably infuriatingly impossible to activate?"

    "Yes! Yes I have! Quickk has it up there," she says, pointing west and up to the lip of the volcano. "Or, well, has what's left of it. It was hit by a volcanic bomb expelled from the caldera and the pieces are all over the place but I can't leave my post, the lava wurm can wake up at any moment and we need to be ready."

"Lava wurm."

    "Yes, yes. So, can you help? With either problem?"

"Yes, of course." She looks at James. "Device first? A fight with a lava wurm might cause damage to the environment that would further damage the pieces of the device, if it's already in scattered pieces that we'll have to track down."

"Agreed. We'll find the pieces then hand them over to Quickk."

    "Thank you! And I'll fret, in the meantime."

"If the lava wurm does wake up we will be nearby to help," says Vetareh, and then: well, time to look around for some pieces of a magical device.

And there are sure to be many Destroyers to try to stop them.

Excellent.

Her first two hexes are actually mass hexes, and don't actually require James's help to spread. Visions of regret is an elite spell that damages someone every time they use magic, and does twice the damage if it's the only mesmer hex on the target. With a bunch of other mesmer hexes, it's useful, but not precisely great. But she is not only a mesmer, and if the hex doesn't have any other mesmer hex magic getting in its way, it's... well, arguably the best elite spell she has. Her second mass hex is called reckless haste; it would be the one that causes enemies to attack faster at a cost of accuracy. Generally, the ratio of hits that actually land while an enemy is under the hex is less than what would have landed without. It's not bad by itself, as counterproductive as it might seem at first glance. However, combined with a hex named price of failure that punishes an enemy for every time they miss with an attack, and, well. This is a recipe for chaos and mayhem, now isn't it. The only problem was that price of failure can only be aimed at one target at a time. Except, as pointed out, James can spread hexes to multiple foes.

Her last set of spells were inexpensive, energy wise; backfire was the most magically expensive of the lot, and wasn't used often enough to make much of a dent in her energy reserves. These set of spells... not so much. Reckless haste and price of failure take about as much as the complicated backfire, each, and visions of regret isn't all that much better. And she just did one, after the other, after the other, and is starting to feel just a little bit spent. She ignores the faint weightlessness feeling from being pretty empty of magic reserves, and waits just long enough for them to refill enough to cast a fourth, thankfully much more economic hex. Parasitic bond is not a very fancy necromancer hex, but it is rather useful to her purposes of not dying. Or, it will be, later. Right now it's just sort of innocently nibbling at the edges of its target's life.

All major hexes cast, she hisses a breath through her teeth and casts an illusion. Not an expensive and fancy battle spell illusion that would hold up under pressure; this one will get dispelled in a couple seconds by all of the flying magic. Still, the flash of violet light around this one unlucky destroyer is enough to alert James to the fact that she would like him to please make a plague of her hexes.

Her wish is his command. Five other Destroyers are now covered in hexes and, assuming the hexes last more than a couple dozen seconds, one of the new targets is the source of a new epidemic, which means the original target of the hexes has them twice.

Price of failure is the only one to last that long, but Vetareh doesn't much mind the other three ending. Two are the mass hexes that double up when spread regardless, and as for parasitic bond, well. She doesn't particularly mind that one ending. The almost harmless nibbling it was doing? At the end of the hex, the collected lifeforce swirls back to the caster, healing her. Each separate casting by itself would heal her by a small but respectable amount; spread out among the many targets and diminished in duration by the epidemic, and she has quite a lot of healing power returning to her. This is an excellent solution to the problem of being too vulnerable.

She manages to regain the necessary energy to recast her mass hexes and parasitic bond for his second round of epidemic with the use of an energy stealing interrupt spell. She spots one of the little explodey ones about to go off just as James begins to cast his latest round of epidemic on something else, and she slides her second interrupt onto the target of his spell. This one is a new one; an interrupting hex called web of disruption. While her target is not the one she really wants to interrupt, that doesn't much matter; it's a hex. So as James spreads it with his epidemic, the little explodey one gets interrupted anyway. Along with four other destroyers around him. And again, ten seconds later, when the hex ends on its own, or when Vetareh shatters it with her hex breaker at an opportune moment. This mesmer hex lessens the damage done by visions of regret, of course, but such is life.

To say the destroyers have a hard time of it would be putting it lightly.

It's a very short hard time, and they're dead now.

Vetareh looks very smug.

"So that'll take some getting used to, but I think that works very well."

"I agree."

She beams at him. "I'll want to learn epidemic in the future, but for now, let's go keep the islands from exploding, hmm?"

"Do let's."

It'll be a few hours before they find all the scattered machine pieces. The sun gets higher and to its midpoint in the sky, and then a bit past that.

No lava wurms come bursting out of the ground to murder them, though, so it's not all bad. Though, now that she's thought about that, maybe one will show up just to prove her wrong.

"Let's get these back to the device and see about repairing it while we eat?" she says. "It's not like we know the exact number of missing pieces, yet."