"The transmutation example was neither serious nor, hopefully, accurate," she says wryly. "And yeah, but maybe Lazarus woke something up. Let's scout around the edges a bit before going closer? Maybe there's an obvious hole or something."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"I try to have those occasionally!"

And then: scouting. Any strangeness going on? Any obvious holes in the sleepy defenses?

The defences aren't super thorough at this level of activation so that's easy to find. And through once such opening, James quietly points at a lone figure standing—a human ghost.

Vetareh raises her eyebrows. Well. It stands to reason, in a place with so much death, that some of them would slip out of their bloodstone captivity and then decide to stick around in an effort to have the whole thing torn down, or to warn people away from the same horrible fate. Ideally, it's what she'd do.

"Well," she murmurs, "I think we should go say hello, how about you, darling?"

Mask off. "Sounds like a good idea. In the worst case we have to fight a ghost."

"Actually worst case he's a sentry ghost that'll set off every defense in this place and then try to fight us, but I don't think that's all that likely."

"Probably not!"

"I expect that if the mursaat wanted a sentry, they'd have better options than a ghost. Like a ghost tied to a suit of armor, or several ghosts unethically stitched together into some abomination, or something. Besides, the two of us would make terrible subjects for blood sacrifice. I'm a magic disrupting mesmer and you're a lifeforce sucking necromancer. We're the worst people to put as batteries in a complicated magical system. So, come on, let's go say hello!"

She hooks her arm through his and heads over, smiling.

James grins at her and then puts his mask back on.

    The ghost notices their approach and turns to face them, raising a hand in greeting. "Ahoy there, friends!" he calls, his voice made out of a somewhat cacophonous superposition of the voices he had when he was alive. "Watch your step up ahead—that fortress is fit with defenses that'll tear you to shreds."

"Thank you," says Vetareh, sincerely. "It's appreciated, but we need to sneak past the defenses to turn on a machine that'll prevent the destruction of these islands. Do you know how we can get past them, or turn them off?"

    He shakes his head sadly. "The defenses only allow mursaat to enter. Anybody who doesn't look the part is cut down where they stand."

"...look the part. Could I disguise myself as a mursaat to fool the defenses?"

    The ghost looks stunned. "What? That'll never work. ...wait, could that work? ...that might actually work." He pauses to ponder this. "I saw some mursaat armor around... The place's very well defended, but if you can get it, it'd make a serviceable disguise."

"Oh, that's a good idea. Both of them, I mean. Salvaging actual mursaat armor would help immensely. I doubt my illusions on their own would hold up to any real scrutiny, but I could certainly add little touches and fill in awkward gaps to make the whole thing look better."

    "Well, if you're set on this, worst-case I'll have some company." He turns around and points. "See those triangular jade things over there? Those are Jade Armours and Jade Scouts." He turns back to the two. "They're not moving right now but if you get close enough they'll attack. Nasty, the whole lot. Look around in places where they're concentrating, you'll find armour pieces soon enough. Most are old and rusty but some are fine—good magic."

"Thank you very much for your help. What's your name, friend?"

    "Grumby, used to be Captain."

"I'm James Orland—"

    "Ah, the famous Commander!"

"—and she's Vetareh."

"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.