Despite that first hit, James takes a while to be hit again. Probably learnt some caution from that first one. Once he's almost hit again but his flesh golem tackles the jade construct and interrupts it.

But he does get unlucky after a few more minutes.

She watches like a hawk, and attempts an interrupt at the moment construct meets boyfriend. With the spell most likely to actually manage it.

Her timing is made perfect by the crystal clear lens of rage, but unfortunately: nope. Her interrupt doesn't actually interrupt anything in particular.

Rrrrrgggg.

James isn't hit any more times before he manages to deal enough damage to the construct to disrupt its magic, causing it to crumble into an inert pile of rock.

He stops and leans forward, resting his hands on his thighs and panting, but he looks up and pulls his mask off to grin at Vetareh.

She smiles back a little in relief, but immediately begins fussing over him. Any unhealed injuries? Did that awful agony thing do anything permanently damaging that she can see? No signs of horrible trauma from the awful agony thing? Does he need a hug??

"I'm fine," he laughs. "It wasn't even a flesh wound."

"The fact that it wasn't a flesh wound proves nothing!" she insists, "There are all sorts of ways to injure you without actually inflicting anything physically! I'm just being thorough." Then she has an iota of self awareness and controls her urges to mother him.

"You're my boyfriend, of course I don't like when magic rock monsters inflict magical agony on you. That's clearly my job."

"I'm fine," he repeats, fondly. "And you helped, it missed a lot of those blows there. Now come on, let's go look for those pieces of armour."

"Yes, yes, I can look for things while bickering, thank you very much." She begins looking accordingly. "Of course I helped! I would be a damn poor mesmer if I didn't help at all and just stood in the back wringing my hands!! I just don't like letting things like that get any hits in with that sort of thing. Maybe I could counter its bullshit ancient magic with my own blackout bullshit? .... Nnnno, then I really would just be stuck wringing my hands, since we can't predict when it'll hit you, and I'd need to just constantly poke it to prevent it from doing anything at all. Ugh. Diversion? But then you'd need to get hit with it once and that's just unacceptable..."

She's terribly charming.

They don't find any armour pieces in the area. They'll probably have to expand their search to somewhere that will activate another jade construct.

Vetareh hisses through her teeth, annoyed. "Right. Diversion, then. You're probably going to get hit no matter what I do, so if it's going to happen I might as well just capitalize on it relentlessly and stop it from happening in the future." She crosses her arms and swaps out a couple spells accordingly. No interrupts because they were useless against this sort of enemy, and no hex breaker because it's mostly not useful here. She can bring other spells that might have a chance at screwing up that thing. "For the record, I'd just like to say that I'm very annoyed at the Mursaat. For making this thing that I can't easily counter. Jerks."

"It isn't that bad," he tries to reassure her.

"Would you rather I didn't get all grouchily protective when something successfully hurts you?" she asks, archly.

He shrugs a little bit and his mask conceals his smile but his voice betrays it. "It's very endearing, princess. I should just warn you that I do this kind of thing for a living."

She smiles back. "I know. You'll get hurt a lot, have gotten hurt a lot, and you've faced tougher things than these in worse circumstances. You could and would absolutely wipe the floor with these stupid piles of rock with or without me here. You'd just have a tougher time of it. It's not that I don't think you're fine when you say you're fine, or that I'm somehow supposed to protect you from any and all harm, I just..." she trails off, thoughtfully.

"Really, it's more a matter of professional pride than anything else. I like winning so thoroughly that the enemy doesn't manage to accomplish anything at all. It's annoying when I can't do that, and I'm going to be annoyed about it until I figure out how to pull it off, and... it's got a little to do with you, because you're my boyfriend and I'm running around having adventures with you and want to be the best adventuring partner you've ever had, but. Honestly it's mostly a me thing?"

He laughs and has to fully remove his mask and spiky gloves to hug her.

She giggles, hugging him back.

"I'm a little confused as to why that was worthy of a hug but I'm not complaining! You even took off your spikes for it, aw."

"It's because you're a delight," he says, without missing a beat.

"Awww," she repeats, squeezing him a little in the hug. "Well, okay, carry on."

Spikes are back on and they can go find some more jade constructs.

They can!

(.... But first she gets telling samples of the previous jade construct, because she's a professional.)

"These are possibly the freshest samples you can find of mursaat magic," James tells her as they sneak around towards their next target. "I believe they have not been active in centuries."

"Precisely! And won't that be useful for our charming new mursaat who claims to be a friend?"

"Do we want to be useful to him?"

"I meant more in the way of being useful to us in either countering him or figuring out if he's a fraud more than being useful to him, love. I doubt he'd find either of those very useful at all."

"Oh, well, that's a more useful use!"