"I maybe have tragically low standards after spending an unknowable amount of time alone in a very boring landscape with nothing meaningful to do!" she admits, with a snort. "But it's still. It's sweet. Thank you."

"You're welcome," he says primly.

She leans up and kisses him, then beams at him.

"Okay, back to work, before we get more distracted."

"Not that there's much to be distracted from, with all this nothing ahead of us."

"That's true. Uh. If you don't mind my being useless and vulnerable for a little while, I could show you ancient necromancer spells?"

"That sounds interesting!"

"Okay. Do you want me to show you something related to blood magic, necromantic hexes, or my two spells related to dead things?"

"Let's go with the two spells," he laughs.

She giggles. "Okay. But I'll need two corpses, so uh. Next time we find something to kill on the way up this damn volcano?"

He gestures at the flesh golem and it dies.

Vetareh cackles, then carefully swaps out two of her spells for her two death magic spells. She'll drop one of the wastrel's hexes and her hex breaker; they're not super useful here anyway.

"So," she says, after her spells have settled again, "I want to be clear, that I kind of really suck at death magic, and this first spell was learned on principle of 'I am a necromancer, I should know how to make a minion.' So here it is."

She casts the spell animate bone horror. A twisted and wretched monstrosity bursts from the flesh golem's corpse. It is... small. And not very powerful. Or sturdy. Or well balanced. It is, to put it lightly, not a very good minion. Already, it's starting to fall apart. It wobbles precariously, then dutifully shambles over to its master, who looks at it with a mixture of guilt and pity.

"Oh, honey. I'm sorry about your wretched existence," she tells the mindless and obedient minion.

He blinks at its existence. "Is it just... leaking life force?"

"Yeah. A better necromancer than I could keep it from leaking it quite so quickly, but the modern magical standard in ancient times did not involve minions that didn't eventually and inevitably die after all of their life force leaked out."

"...huh. So from what I got there you used the life force lingering in my golem's body to fuel this one, but it leaks, and it's not connected to your life force? That's an interesting way to do it. Does that mean you can have dozens of minions around at the same time?"

"It is not connected to my life force in any way. Though, if I were to die, the little guy would attempt to go on a murderous rampage. My dad could have about a dozen running around at once? From how long it takes you to resummon your minions from nowhere, he could make them faster than you can, but needed corpses to do it, so uh. Tradeoffs."

"It sounds like they could be combined, anyway. Nowadays I just passively absorb dead things' life forces, it's not even a conscious thought anymore, but I could stop doing that and try to reanimate a corpse."

She nods. Her sad and twisted little minion finishes falling apart and finally expires. "I can cast it again on a newly dead golem, if you'd like to see if you can learn it and then work your way up to better minions? That was not the only minion type ancient times had to offer, it's just the uh. Only one I can make."

"I think running up a volcano is probably not the best time to try to rederive ancient minion summoning. I'm curious about your other spell, though." And he summons another flesh golem out of thin air.

Giggle. "Fair enough."

She waits for the flesh golem to die, then quirks a smile and says, "Hey, James. I actually can teleport."

Then she casts the spell consume corpse, and she turns into a black shroud and disappears. A dark form bursts from the flesh golem's corpse, then regains its colors to reveal his girlfriend, who looks unhappily at the results of bursting from a corpse on her shoes.

"Useful. But gross," she asserts, carefully stepping out of the blackened and twisted corpse goop.

"Ohkay I just had some flashbacks here, don't mind me."

"Uh? Shit, darling, I'm sorry. Should I have explained a bit better what I was going to do before I went and did it...?"

"No, no, it's fine," he laughs. "There was just this terrible minion master in Orr, once, when we were first going through Orr to kill Zhaitan. He loved using this spell, he was such a pain to kill."

She pauses.

She considers how many minion masters regularly used that exact spell that she learned from her father.

"... Did he, perchance," she says delicately, feeling a little bit sick, "summon, uh. About a dozen minions. That he then made explode?"

"Uh, yeah. Common tactic in Orr?"

"Did he have an, an aura of doom thing going on, and regularly summon two minions from one corpse? Have all of the minions swarm one unlucky person who he then made explode? About, uh." She winces, then holds her hand to about her father's height. "About yea tall?"