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?"

Vetareh swallows her shriek and forces calm.

The gods are gone. They have left. Resurrection does not work. Death is final, except in the cases where one's soul can be chained to their rotting corpse and twisted into a puppet by a monster. Dragons exist, and want to eat the world. Without Grenth, the Underworld might fall into chaos, and all the souls therein might be eaten by whatever happens to be hungry. It all seems like a cruel, cruel joke. She's out of the Mists, but now the whole world is broken.

This is not calm. This is distinctly not calm. This is cold unrelenting fury at the injustice of it all. Strangely enough, it's not as debilitating as one might expect. Sort of the opposite. The world is broken. There are no gods to fix it. Therefore; it's her job.

Or, well. Not just hers. Other people also exist in the world, and she's hardly going to get anywhere useful with her god complex if she cuts herself off from them. And James is absolutely right, and she knows it. There is a time-sensitive thing that needs doing, and she does not have time for this.

"... Yeah," she agrees. She sounds calm. She doesn't know where it's coming from. "Time-sensitive quest first, then I can explain my tragic backstory. I'm good to go."

Because clearly she's not flinching and leaving now just because she knows death is permanent. As fates go, death isn't the worst one. She'd know.

    "Yes..." says Canach. "Let's go find the minister." He leads the way, but James hangs back a bit to stay closer to Vetareh.

"Sorry about not mentioning it earlier," he murmurs. "It hadn't occurred to me—"

Oh, oh honey no, she doesn't think he did anything wrong.

"Hey, no," she murmurs back. Fuck it, discretion's in shambles and she's no longer concerned about keeping a lid on where she came from anymore. He's wearing spiked and flaming gauntlets, but she can still reach out to (briefly) hold his hand. "It sounds like they've been gone almost as long as I have. It'd just be—normal, to you. And it's not exactly easy to relay almost three hundred years of history, especially when it sounds like the history's been so busy. It's okay."

"History has admittedly been quite busy," he agrees. "The Flame Legion charr are no longer in power, that's important... I think you didn't have asura and norn around?"

"Nope, no idea what those are. Actually, I don't even know what the Flame Legion charr are or why it matters that they're not in power," she says, wryly. "If you haven't noticed I'm just kind of rolling with it."

"Flame Legion is the faction that destroyed Ascalon and that was in charge of the war, but I suppose maybe I should wait until after this to actually try a more thorough explanation," he says, mirroring her wryness.

"Little bit. Not strictly relevant that I know right this second, either. I doubt anything will shake me up quite as bad as the gods having abandoned us, and I think I handled that pretty well." Pause. "I'm an atheist now, by the way."

    "Welcome to the club," calls Canach from on ahead. Marjory elbows him, and James snickers.

"Eavesdropping much?"

Vetareh snickers, too.

"I'm not even sure if listening to us counts as eavesdropping. They're right there."

Rytlock snorts, then looks out at a magic storm forming out in the horizon. "The loose magic here has certainly turned this area into a war zone."

She considers commenting that it's not the most cheerful homecoming, but then decides that she doesn't want to potentially persuade people to ask her questions just yet, so she stays quiet and looks out at the magic storm. Welcome home, Vetareh. Here's your new world.

Aaaaand now she's back to being fully sad/angry at the brokenness of the world again. Hooray.