"Uh."

"... So I think that was my dad," she says, in a clinical and detached tone. "W-who almost certainly would have. Thanked you for. You know what, I need a hug now please."

Yeah okay gloves off shoulders off in a practised motion and he can hug her with no spikes involved.

Glomp. She can cling to him and shake and attempt to put words together.

"Good. Good job? Thank you? It is a good thing he. Died that second time? He, he's back in the Underworld now and he has forever to be fine, and did you happen to also fight someone in Orr who set lots of things on fire, she would also have been very memorable and probably an absolute pain to fight."

He shakes his head into her hair. "No fire risen, not that I've encountered."

"See I shouldn't be happy about that, because that means that she might still be trapped in her own corpse, which is distinctly not better than, than what would have hopefully happened if you'd met her, but—this was a lot easier to handle when I did not have real actual proof that the people I loved were—I—did dad stick around as a ghost after you killed him the second time, say anything, or, I'm actually maybe having some kind of breakdown maybe just hold me."

He just holds her. "He was gone, I'm pretty sure, very shortly after I killed him, but he stuck around for a couple of minutes to thank us and give us some temporary boosts. I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for, I am very glad you killed the, the mockery of him that he got shackled to by an evil dragon. You did the absolute best thing you could have done and he thanked you for it, I, just." She squeezes him and whines. "I love him, I, I consoled myself in the Mists with the idea that he and my mother would be okay and, that. Turned out to be incorrect."

He nods and keeps hugging her, the world around them forgotten.

Serves the world right, for being so terrible.

But: they are on something of a deadline, vague and nebulous though it might be, and she doesn't really want to try and untangle her feelings with it hanging over her. Because she does not want to explode.

"Okay," she murmurs. "So I think at some point in the near future I'm going to go to Orr, and. Probably hunt down and kill my undead mother, and get myself some kind of emotional closure and get her some not being trapped in a horribly tortured existence closure. But exploding islands first, because the dragons are important and I'm already here. Sounds like a good plan?"

He nods. "Yeah. She might've already been, you know, the Pact has been progressively killing all of Orr's undead."

"I will be immeasurably happy if she was, but I think I might need to check."

He nods. "We can go to Orr after making sure the island won't explode. Or, I suppose, if something else calls for me, you could go on your own."

"Yeah. Though depending on the emergency I, um. If it would be extremely useful to have me along, my priority would be keeping the world safe? My mother is an exceedingly practical woman. She would be terribly annoyed with me if I ran off to save her when I could help deal with an Elder Dragon. Especially considering how long she would have been, ah. In the state of being undead."

"Sounds like your mother alright."

"You haven't even met her! Probably."

"I've met you."

She isn't quite up to laughing just yet, but she is up for giving a small amused snort and squeezing him a little in the hug.

"That you have, yes. For the record, if you get a choice between me and the world, go with the world."

"I've met you," he repeats.

"That you have," she agrees, amused. She pulls back so she can gently kiss him.

He kisses her back eagerly.

Then: "Shall we go, princess?"

She lingers a little longer in his embrace, because he's great and she appreciates him so much, then: "Yeah, let's. Thank you, darling."

"It's what I'm for," he says, bowing his head a little bit.

They slowly near the peak. Eventually a blue glow in the distance seems to indicate that the asura did, in fact, install a waypoint there.

She recovers herself in the interim, and puts her spells back where they were. She'll show James more ancient necromantic magic sometime in the future, when she's not so... sensitive.

"Oh, thank," she begins, then pauses. "... the clever asura who installed that waypoint."

He laughs. "Were you about to thank a god, princess?"