"Pleasure to meet you, wish it were under better circumstances," says Vetareh, with a polite curtsy. "Would you like any help moving on, or would you prefer to stay here?"

    "I'll stay. If you guys die, I'll have some company, and I'll warn adventures off otherwise."

"Very kind of you."

Vetareh's mouth twitches, but she doesn't comment. "Thank you, Captain Grumby, we appreciate it."

    "No problem!" he replies cheerfully.

"So let's go hunt for some old creepy armour, shall we?"

"We shall!"

She doubts she can prevent the Jade Armours and Jade Scouts from reforming with an interrupt, and it'd be kind of a waste to try and fail and be stuck with a spell that she can't use for half of the battle. Just because an interrupt doesn't do anything doesn't mean it doesn't get used. That's not how it works. If a spell is cast, it's cast, even if it's useless. So for the first enemy she'll watch how the awakening process works to see if it's the sort of thing she even can interrupt, just in case, but.... Yeah, not worth the risk when she doesn't know what other dangerous things they might do.

James is in charge of going closer to them to wake them up, though. Sorry, darling, but she's made of paper. Best if she stays away from it and plays saboteur while he does all of that 'getting injured' business.

James is fine with this. He has a tanky minion and can use the life force he's collected to create an energy coat that absorbs damage or rapidly heal himself. He cautiously approaches one of the triangular piles of jade, sceptre in one hand and dagger in the other.

Then it wakes.

The creature it forms looks rather intimidating—taller than James himself is, even without taking the fact that it's floating into account. Six eyes light up, like a mursaat's, and immediately fixate on him. The creature then forms a sword from jade pieces and slashes at the necromancer, who dodges to the side while mentally commanding his minion to tackle the creature.

"Looks like I've got my work cut out for me."

"Remember! No dying!" calls his girlfriend from the back, dumping her hexes on the construct and watching it for any spells that might actually harm her boyfriend. She saved her interrupts and everything, might as well see if she can use them.

"Yes, princess!" he calls back, summoning giant grasping skeleton hands and locust swarms from the heavens.

And then at one point the jade construct hits him with something which sends him flying—

—freezes him in the air—

—he screams—

She snarls and checks her first instinct to shatter the hex on him to check that whatever it is even is a hex—

—no, that feels all wrong for a hex, it's like it's ripping at the foundation of his being, that's significantly harder to get off of him than a hex nibbling at him from the outside. Fuck. If she tried the hex breaker it just wouldn't do anything at all. There isn't actually anything she can do to save her boyfriend from agony. She cannot, actually, even heal him at all. That's just not the kind of magic she can do.

She can drag him out of range while his flesh golem distracts it, though. Does she need to drag him out of range while his flesh golem distracts it? Because she can totally do that.

Before she reaches him to drag he finishes falling onto the hard ground and stops screaming.

Then he immediately rolls back onto his feet and snarls at the creature.

Oh, good. She breathes a little sigh of relief. Okay, now to figure out how to prevent that from ever happening again, because that is her boyfriend, thank you, and fuck you if you think you're allowed to do that to him.

It didn't look like a spell, though, which makes preventing it from happening again... tricky. Spells take time to cast and are easier to interrupt. From what she could see it was attached to the creature's physical attack, and it was only when it connected with James that it actually did the agony thing. So she's helping by getting it to miss more with her many layered hexes. But 'miss more often' is not 'miss always,' and so sometimes it'll connect and do that to her boyfriend. This is clearly not a perfect solution, so she's not accepting it.

Just in case, she watches for when it next manages to connect with James to try seeing if she can interrupt whatever the heck is going on there.

Despite that first hit, James takes a while to be hit again. Probably learnt some caution from that first one. Once he's almost hit again but his flesh golem tackles the jade construct and interrupts it.

But he does get unlucky after a few more minutes.

She watches like a hawk, and attempts an interrupt at the moment construct meets boyfriend. With the spell most likely to actually manage it.

Her timing is made perfect by the crystal clear lens of rage, but unfortunately: nope. Her interrupt doesn't actually interrupt anything in particular.

Rrrrrgggg.

James isn't hit any more times before he manages to deal enough damage to the construct to disrupt its magic, causing it to crumble into an inert pile of rock.

He stops and leans forward, resting his hands on his thighs and panting, but he looks up and pulls his mask off to grin at Vetareh.

She smiles back a little in relief, but immediately begins fussing over him. Any unhealed injuries? Did that awful agony thing do anything permanently damaging that she can see? No signs of horrible trauma from the awful agony thing? Does he need a hug??

"I'm fine," he laughs. "It wasn't even a flesh wound."

"The fact that it wasn't a flesh wound proves nothing!" she insists, "There are all sorts of ways to injure you without actually inflicting anything physically! I'm just being thorough." Then she has an iota of self awareness and controls her urges to mother him.

"You're my boyfriend, of course I don't like when magic rock monsters inflict magical agony on you. That's clearly my job."

"I'm fine," he repeats, fondly. "And you helped, it missed a lot of those blows there. Now come on, let's go look for those pieces of armour."

"Yes, yes, I can look for things while bickering, thank you very much." She begins looking accordingly. "Of course I helped! I would be a damn poor mesmer if I didn't help at all and just stood in the back wringing my hands!! I just don't like letting things like that get any hits in with that sort of thing. Maybe I could counter its bullshit ancient magic with my own blackout bullshit? .... Nnnno, then I really would just be stuck wringing my hands, since we can't predict when it'll hit you, and I'd need to just constantly poke it to prevent it from doing anything at all. Ugh. Diversion? But then you'd need to get hit with it once and that's just unacceptable..."

She's terribly charming.

They don't find any armour pieces in the area. They'll probably have to expand their search to somewhere that will activate another jade construct.

Vetareh hisses through her teeth, annoyed. "Right. Diversion, then. You're probably going to get hit no matter what I do, so if it's going to happen I might as well just capitalize on it relentlessly and stop it from happening in the future." She crosses her arms and swaps out a couple spells accordingly. No interrupts because they were useless against this sort of enemy, and no hex breaker because it's mostly not useful here. She can bring other spells that might have a chance at screwing up that thing. "For the record, I'd just like to say that I'm very annoyed at the Mursaat. For making this thing that I can't easily counter. Jerks."

"It isn't that bad," he tries to reassure her.

"Would you rather I didn't get all grouchily protective when something successfully hurts you?" she asks, archly.

He shrugs a little bit and his mask conceals his smile but his voice betrays it. "It's very endearing, princess. I should just warn you that I do this kind of thing for a living."

She smiles back. "I know. You'll get hurt a lot, have gotten hurt a lot, and you've faced tougher things than these in worse circumstances. You could and would absolutely wipe the floor with these stupid piles of rock with or without me here. You'd just have a tougher time of it. It's not that I don't think you're fine when you say you're fine, or that I'm somehow supposed to protect you from any and all harm, I just..." she trails off, thoughtfully.

"Really, it's more a matter of professional pride than anything else. I like winning so thoroughly that the enemy doesn't manage to accomplish anything at all. It's annoying when I can't do that, and I'm going to be annoyed about it until I figure out how to pull it off, and... it's got a little to do with you, because you're my boyfriend and I'm running around having adventures with you and want to be the best adventuring partner you've ever had, but. Honestly it's mostly a me thing?"