Aw. That's cute. She's glad they're having fun. And they're probably also learning a lot.

Okay, so, she'd said she'd work to be less squishy, but she doesn't really have any obvious routes to doing that very quickly. Not by getting new magic, anyway. The fastest would be 'Go get some weapons, test them out and see what happens,' and that involves familiarizing herself with a whole new way of using magic. Creating a spell for it is the most obvious option—she did that for her own personalized shatter hex—but that'll take a while, and she doesn't see any clear routes to making herself safe very quickly that way. Her problem is that learning new spells and magic takes time, of which she doesn't really have.

So. How can she use the spells she has available to her currently to be less squishy? She's certainly got a lot of them, there's probably something she can figure out.

A span of time later, she... definitely has something. It's definitely something. Probably a monstrosity against nature that would horribly offend mesmers everywhere, herself included. There is no subtlety to this, this. Whatever this is. She has tossed out all ability to counter enemy casters in favor of A: not dying, and B: killing the other guys first. That's it. That's what this does. No hex removal, no backfire, only one hex. No illusions or subtlety or grace, just. Bash everyone that dares to oppose her with the biggest stick she has. She feels slightly unclean. On the bright side, she expects the boys will be very surprised.

"Do you mind if I try a round?" she asks, after her monstrosity has settled in properly. "I have a... thing I'd like to test out."

(The boys seem to be just finishing up bashing a...

....

...that sure looks like a giant monkey made of blocks.

And it looks to not be exactly an easy fight that's going on there.)

Taimi looks at her. "Oh, sure! Just wait for this one wave to finish."

"Sure, thank you," says Vetareh, slightly distracted by the giant monkey. That. What? What? ... Nevermind, doesn't matter. It's a simulation, they could make whatever they want.

Eventually they finish kicking the monkey's arse and Taimi says, "Hey guys, Vetareh wants to have a go."

"I'll let her play with Rytlock."

Rytlock snorts.

Vetareh snorts too, then: yep, onto the little tile. She will not be needing her scepter, and it wouldn't help at all anyway with what she's doing, so she leaves it where it is.

And then she finds herself in the cubic room. The walls are not transparent like they were from outside the hologram, and she can't see the lab anymore; just the inside of the room.

Rytlock eyes her lack of weapon and gives her another charr facial expression. "Think you can keep up? This isn't a walk in the park with the Commander."

"I have turned myself from a delicate rapier into a battering ram," she informs him, with utmost gravity. Then she shrugs and smiles wryly. "So, I guess we'll see."

Right, this needs a bit of setup. She casts an enchantment on herself called symbolic celerity; it is a mostly useless enchantment, except for how it makes signets more potent the faster they're drawn. This is about to be very relevant. Then, she takes a deep breath, and her stance changes and she channels magic into something called a mantra. Magic can hang onto a number of things, including a tune. With a simple and repetitive tune, the magic can be led through a cycle instead of dissipating early without something to hang onto. Usually it's better to just hang magic on an object, but there are benefits to magic swirling around her in a cycle, instead. It can do more complicated things, or be set up to pull resources from something normal enchantments don't know to watch for, and do something complicated with them. The one she begins humming is called the mantra of signets.

Her form wavers slightly, pulsing with each note change in her repetitive, simple tune. The notes become echoey, unearthly, and a little haunting, with magic hanging onto them and tugging at the sound.

She stands and patiently waits for their enemies to arrive, looking rather like some kind of ghost.

...that's creepy.

"So, how are we doing?" Rytlock asks.

"You still don't have the high score. That belongs to Cami, one of the Fire Islands raiding party leaders. She's super tough, though, sooo..."

"Another Asura in here? I thought you were keeping all this a secret."

"I had to let Cami in on it," Taimi says. "A) she's cool, don't worry. B) someone had to watch our backs while Moto and I got this thing up and running. And C) incoming!"

And that's when a very large crab made of lava shows up.

Vetareh feels sort of contractually obligated to stomp Cami's high score into the ground. It's only right and proper, after all, since she's twisted the definition of 'mesmer' until it could be argued that while she's doing this, she only very nominally counts as one. She feels she should get bragging rights, at the very least.

Spell casters are many things, but one of them is 'a vessel into which magic goes.' They collect and store magical energy from their surroundings, which they can then push out onto the world later to do magic. Most combat magic's done by directly releasing and manipulating magical energy, the limits and abilities of the magic energy type depending on the magical profession of the caster. Spells are patterns that one pushes out into the world, built from differently flavored building blocks.

So what happens if instead of personally gathering and releasing magical energy, a caster were to make a battery outside of themselves? If they were to make, say, an empty void in the shape of a spell, into which magic is directed, that can then be pushed forth onto the world? Why, then you'd get magic that is just magic, with no additional flavoring from the being that held it. Magic in its purest, rawest form. This is what happens when one uses a signet. The drawn symbol is the battery, the shape of the symbol tied to the impression of a spell, and then the whole thing gets shoved at whatever the intended target is. Additional nuance can be added with ordinary magic the caster releases, the unleashed power from the signet gently steered or twisted in just the right way to pull the magic just a little bit in the direction of the profession's strengths.

That is what she is going to be doing today. With an enchantment that strengthens the power of signets by how quickly they're drawn, humming a mantra that shields and heals her every time it can catch the spare energy from a drawn signet. She stands in the center of a swirling hurricane of magical power surrounded by a void of it, sucking in nearby energy and releasing it. Despite the power that implies, she is astonishingly fragile. Instead of physically fragile, she's magically fragile, her entire protections reliant on a hummed tune that could be interrupted, and her entire offensive capabilities reliant on a simple enchantment that someone else could dispel or shatter.

This is either going to go really great, or really badly, and there is approximately no in between.

With her index finger, she draws her first signet, appropriately named the signet of sorrow, and a wave of nearly-raw magical energy slams into the crab.

And the crab stumbles and leaks some lava. Rytlock makes a sound of approval and jumps directly towards the crab to start hitting it with a sword. Meanwhile, several crablings emerge from the corner.

Aha, and there are the large numbers of enemies she was really hoping for.

She conscientiously steps closer to the large crab, so that the crablings will cluster around it and her. It doesn't really matter if it hits her right now; she's got some impressive protections, and she's going to be healing herself, just as long as she keeps on humming. She draws out her second signet; this one is significantly more potent than the last. This is an elite signet, called the keystone signet. It doesn't do damage directly. Instead, it collects an impressive amount of power around her, which then floats around where they can get tacked on to other signets she draws. The power isn't aimed well enough to strike a single target, but for targets around whatever she's aiming at? Well. They might just have a bad time.

More signets follow; signet of weariness to exhaust the enemies before they've even attacked. Her singular hex wastrel's demise, followed by unnatural signet that explodes when pointed at a target that's been hexed or enchanted. When they finally get to attacking her, signet of clumsiness, which takes advantage of a mesmer's ability to meddle with weight to knock her attackers down. Then signet of sorrows again, and then the keystone signet again, to power up and refresh all of her other signets for use, so they're ready now—

She really wasn't kidding when she said she'd turned herself into a battering ram. These crablings are having a very bad time. Signet. Signet. Signet. Some of their attacks make it past the mantra's defenses, the minor injuries occasionally causing the echoing tune to waver, but not enough to actually make her stop. Her injuries heal with every symbol she draws, and she has had more than enough time to grow enough stubbornness to not let something like 'getting attacked' wreck her concentration.

...well then.

The wave contains enough crablings to keep her busy, and that plus what damage she's causing to the huge crab plus Rytlock, well... the big one gets desperate enough to summon a slightly less big one to give them trouble.

That fight is... kinda distracting, he has to admit. Vetareh fighting is a thing of beauty.

Trying not to get too focused on it, he asks Taimi, "So, you already have people on the Fire Islands?"

"I have some more, let's say 'trusted associates' there setting up a gate scouting. But Phlunt really organized the whole operation. Primordus's movement was something I purposely let slip," she explains. "It's good because it keeps him out of my ears for a little while, and it also makes him feel like a big shot."

"Only sixteen years old and you're puppet-mastering one of your superiors..." says James, shaking his head. "Admirable and a little unsettling, Taimi."

"I'll soon RULE YOU ALL!" she declares, cackling like a mad scientist. "Sorry. Did I say that out loud?"

She shouldn't be listening to silly comm chatter because she's a bit busy, but despite herself Vetareh giggles. Funny things are more distracting than getting attacked.

Her mantra wavers, because she's too busy giggling to hum.

"—shit," she hisses, as one of the crablings hits significantly harder than it'd just been hitting her, "fuck, damn it, ow—"

She pauses briefly in her signet drawing to recast her mantra, humming a bit more forcefully this time. The injuries sustained will heal if she just draws more signets, but that was certainly a wake up call. Vetareh is distinctly not unassailable, she just happens to resemble it to the casual viewer. If her concentration slips, there is a long way to fall.

Yeah, Rytlock notices. He covers for her before she recovers her mantra then resumes wrestling the big guy.

Eventually they're done, though.

"That was the last wave. Good job! You've generated a ton of data for me to sift through. This room could probably run any simulation I can dream up! As soon as I get Moto in here again to debug it... Come on out!"

Vetareh lets the mantra die with a huff of released breath. Eugh. That was fun, but kind of nervewracking. She does not think she wants to make a habit of using this strategy.

"Thanks," she says sincerely, to Rytlock. "So, think that was proportional to a walk in the park with the Commander?"