"Mmhmmm. And then when we are done doing important things I am going to tackle you." Pause. "... With your permission," she adds, because that's important.

"As the princess wills it," he says with a distinct smirk in his voice.

"A very bad man," she affirms. Then she takes another deep breath, and wrestles the conversation in a different direction so as not to potentially distract him.

"So! Plant people are a thing now?"

"—right, you wouldn't have met sylvari. There was a very large tree in the Maguuma Jungle, and it started sprouting them as fully-formed adults a bit over twenty-five years ago. Caithe was one of the twelve firstborn. Canach is a secondborn."

"Ah. Okay. And do you and Caithe have some kind of history? At first I thought you didn't get along with her, but then you returned and were... closer to fine than before."

"Some kind of history, yes." He looks at the distance between them and the floating coliseum. "It's a bit of a long story and needs quite some context, but she did something that—at the time—looked a lot like betraying me and her other friends. It turned out fine in the end, and she just shed some light on why she did it and apologised. The whole story involves the reason why I'm called Commander and a good deal of things that have happened between the sinking of Orr and today."

"Ah. All right. I get the impression I'm going to be playing catch up for a while. Any big things about the world I should know about?"

"There are enormous eldritch dragons attacking the world and eating its magic and if they are not stopped the world will end. My friends and I killed two of them. There are four still alive."

She blinks one long, slow blink.

"Good job," she says, because that is the most important thing, followed by: "and can I help with the third?"

"You most definitely can, although we do not currently have plans to deal with them." Pause. "And it occurs to me that you might want to know... One of the dragons, Zhaitan, the first one we killed, he... he was asleep under Orr, and when he rose he lifted Orr back up. It is now an island. And he was the undead dragon, so he rose many Orrians as undead."

Vetareh—twitches a bit, and growls.

"Thank you," she murmurs, "for saving me the trouble of hunting him down and killing him."

"You're welcome," he murmurs. "The undead are not yet all gone, but there are people working on it."

Nod. "Thank you," she repeats. "Sorry, I'm not—one of those people that gets fussy about what happens to my corpse after I leave it, I just. My father was a necromancer, and so I'm opinionated about how the dead are for the defense of the living. Not as some giant monster's playthings."

"...Zhaitan also used the souls of the dead in their animated corpses."

She inhales with a hiss through her teeth.

"He's dead, his main lieutenants are dead, we're working on cleansing Orr again..."

"Right," she agrees, carefully taking slow, measured breaths. "He's dead, you killed him, his lieutenants are dead, everyone he trapped in their own rotting corpse is either free or on their way to being free. He is dead, and he's not coming back, and if he does so help me I will rip him to pieces with my bare fucking hands—" She sucks in another breath, and closes her eyes. No, calm. "Dead. He's dead. Very dead."

"I'm sorry, this was not the best way for me to—tell you—"

"I don't think there could be a best way. I don't think this is that kind of thing. I think it's just, just bound to be awful no matter how you could have approached it. You don't have anything to be sorry for. I'd rather know than not." Lean. Carefully measured breaths. "The important thing is that the bastard is dead."

"Extremely dead. We—did not know they could be killed, before."

"I realize the others are probably just as bad in new and exciting ways, but I am glad you found out with him. I'm glad he was first." Deep breath. She's calming down a little now. "He's very extremely dead. Thank you, on my own behalf and on, on whatever ability I have to thank you on Orr's behalf."

He nods. "Heads up." Aaand updraft.

She leans into him and lets herself make a little sigh. Yes, that's very soothing, gliding is so great.

"So," she says, attempting to change topics a little so that she can get some distance from her anger, "if he was one of the dragons, I am definitely available for further dragonslaying. I don't—I don't want monsters like that to exist in the world." Lean. "I figure after the Mists I get to have a long and aggressively happy life, it's not my problem if they just so happen to be stupid enough to try to get in the way of that."

"We are of a mind, then," he says, grinning under his mask. "I, too, would rather have a very long and happy life."

"Good." She smiles prettily up at him. "You're..." She's not sure how to put her feelings into words without it coming out wrong. It's much easier just to say something witty and irreverent, she has a lot of practice with that. Not with feelings. "... I'm glad you were the person I landed on straight out of the Mists. I like you."