"Ah. Yes." Disappointed sigh. This valley needs to be better.

Shrug. "Sorry."

"You didn't make the spell," she points out. "Though I guess I could say, 'how dare you almost be murdered by it,' if you like."

He snickers.

"How dare I drive Artelindaion almost to ruin and provoke someone into finishing the job just to get rid of me," he suggests.

"I guess. But honestly I think you might have suffered enough for that. Blaming you now for the weird stuff the spell's doing just seems excessive."

"I'm hardly about to argue," he says, smiling wryly.

"I am really dismayed at the spell, though. Come on, spell. Do better."

Snort. "Do better at what?"

"At not being terrible to people."

"It did its job, which was to make me stop being Emperor of Artelindaion. And kill my best friend. It started going wrong at the point where it didn't kill me too."

Wince.

"I - can agree that it did its job, but. I don't think you deserve two thousand years of imprisonment and isolation."

"Well. Maybe not," he says with a mountainous shrug. "I just don't know if it makes sense to tell the spell to do better at that, any more than it makes sense to tell water to do better at burning."

Snort.

"I suppose. But I'm still annoyed with it." She stops herself from asking why he thinks the spell brought her here, again, because he said he'd tell her tomorrow.

"... So is there any other neat stuff here, like the viewing pool?"

"The viewing pool is the only thing like the viewing pool. There's a lot of architecture. Gardens, if you like gardens."

"I like gardens," she says, softly.

"The valley is very good at gardens."

"Lucky me," says Navethae, a little wryly.

"Not very," he says.

"I'm attempting to be positive! It works for my brother, it might work for me."

"Good luck with that," he says dryly.

"Thank you, eternal ray of sunshine."

He laughs.

She smiles, pleased.

Giggly twelve-foot-tall fanged monstrosity!

Yep, that sure is a thing that is happening in front of her!

"Not expecting me to call you that?"