Lazarus? Why is he here?

She supposes it doesn't matter, he's helping, so she's really not going to question it when it's four people and a newly hatched dragon against quite a lot of destroyers. But she'll be watching if he tries anything.

First order of business: hide behind James's minions. Second order of business: stolen speed hex for the biggest group of destroyers available. Third order of business: what ritual is the exalted doing, and is it something she could probably help with?

Exalted seems to be doing some kind of barrier ritual of some sort.

"Vetareh! Thank Grenth," says James, without turning to look at her. He has his hands quite full.

"Honestly he didn't really have anything to do with my good timing," she says conversationally, interrupting a little explodey crab before it can explode. "Hey glowy guy, would it help if I got some of the magical mess out of your way for your ritual?"

Exalted does not look her way, but does sound a lot less condescending than its counterpart upstairs. "Yes, please. This enchantment... it's gotten rusty."

"Can do."

This is definitely more her speed than dealing with waves of destroyers. A backfire missing some of its teeth for this giant knot of magic over there, an interrupt before this confused tangle can get in the way of the exalted's fancy bit of magic there, and walking up and stabbing a bit of the scenery that's anchoring a rather problematic bit of magic that is definitely not falling into line for the ritual fast enough.

The enchantment is old, it's true, but it's just as old as she is. And she will find herself facing some familiar patterns, there. It seems like this place has borrowed more than just some of its architectural style from her Orr.

Wow, she really is in her element here, isn't she.

When she runs out of things that need disruption, she gets to helping with the ritual itself. If she didn't have a good feel for what was going on, she'd expect to be doing more harm than good, but since this is Orrian, well. She has a pretty good idea of what magic needs to go where. She'll leave all of the complicated and tricky stuff to the exalted, but she can get to shoving the ambient magic in the confluence of ley-lines into place, making the distance to reach for the proverbial threads for this enchantment he's weaving shorter and less tangled.

There's a tremor. They might not have a lot of time left before something big and bad shows up.

Rrrrrrr this is not going fast enough, two people are not enough. Fortunately, they have a bit more than two people. James is most necessary for defending against waves of destroyers, the dragon that is maybe fifteen minutes old is perhaps not up to following instructions just yet, so that just leaves...

"Lazarus!" she calls, gritting her teeth and shoving the magic into place for the exalted's ritual, "Fly up there," she points up to the spiral thing above them, "stand on the spiral thing, and flare your absurdly big bloodstone magic aura when I say!"

He pauses and looks at her. It almost seems like he might object, but he nods instead and follows her instructions.

Oh good, because she doesn't have a better idea for pulling off this crazy idea if he didn't follow directions.

She shoves another bit of magic into place, waits a couple seconds until everything looks settled in and the exalted has a good handle on things, then:

"Okay, now!"

Boom.

It's big. And red-purple-black. And very, very magical.

Yeah, good for it, she doesn't care. But it's a lot of tasty looking magic that tangles up ambient ley magic in its absurdly large bullshit, which is what she needs for the next bit. The timing here is rather tricky, but if she just waits until right.... now...

"Stop!" she calls, to Lazarus, and then she waits half a heartbeat until his aura is good and put away and then—Interrupt.

She can slice through the majority of the tangled threads of magic, bundled together in a messy ball above them, letting the frayed remnants fall below, right into place to help fill in the missing gaps in the ritual, and with no pesky ideas of their own about what sort of thing they should be.

There is, of course, a moderate explosion, but that's honestly just to be expected when working with this kind of powerful magic.

And then a magical barrier abruptly springs into existence. One aspect of it immediately surrounds the chamber, and the bigger aspect surrounds the entire city, cutting off all unauthorised persons from accessing it.

And from there it's a piece of cake to cut all the Destroyers down. The baby dragon trills happily and spits jets of blue-purple magic at the mindless creatures with wild abandon.

...he has the hottest girlfriend.

The hottest girlfriend has absolutely no idea that James is looking at her like that, because wow adrenaline is such a thing.

She grins wickedly and huffs with satisfaction. Yes it worked, haha she's brilliant!!!

"Thank you," she says to Lazarus, because she knows what manners are, actually.

"Sorry about the, ah, explosion you were just in the middle of, though I... suppose you ate a good portion of it, so. You're... welcome?"

.... Okay so. Look, it. It was brilliant, but also it had some downsides that she didn't think about at the time. Oops.

The mursaat slowly descends back to the platform. "Thank you," he says. "That ended much more swiftly than I'd expected."

And in barges Marjory, looking much more ruffled than fits her normal appearance, followed by Caithe. "Sorry, we got held up outside—I saw Vetareh, but was too busy to call out to her. I see she found you. What... happened?"

    "The barrier has been restored," says the exalted. "The scion of Glint is safe," it continues, gesturing at the dragon whelp.

"Not until that mursaat is out of here," counters James, looking directly at Lazarus.

Yeah, Vetareh thinks she's just going to sit down. She's very tired and did a lot of running, and jumping, and thinking, and then some very tiring and very complicated and crazy magic. So: sitting down. Okay? Okay.

"James, if he wanted the dragon dead he could have just done it then," she points out. She looks at the little dragon. "No offense."

Rrrraaaaar.

    "He is still a mursaat," says the exalted. "The tales the Forgotten passed on about these creatures... it bears not thinking if he has any plans like those."

"The mursaat I was in the tales of the Forgotten is dead," Lazarus declares in imperious tones. "I have been reborn, and rising from the void brings with it... a new perspective."

Vetareh does not actually have the energy to repress her skeptical face. She saw the fortress made of tortured souls, buddy.

Hey there little dragon, do you want scritches?

Ooooh scritches are new. The dragon think it approves of them, if the small purring sounds it's making are any indication.