"Actually, can we stop at your room, first? There's something I want to show you that I can't out here."

He stops walking and looks at Taharqi, tilting his head. "Sure? Now I'm curious."

"Lead the way."

"He says, as if he didn't know exactly which room was mine." But sure, he walks a couple of doors down and uses his telekinesis spell to unlock the door and open it.

Arik looks up from his activities. "Oh, you are pretty," he marvels, slightly distractibly.

He blinks several times.

"Surprise! Meet my friend Arik."

He turns slowly to look at Taharqi. "I died today, you know. ...or I came back today."

"—wait, seriously, shit I didn't know, are you—"

"I'm fine, this is just to explain the level of mood whiplash I'm feeling right now." Although his trousers are very bad at hiding the fact that mood whiplash is far from the only thing he's feeling. He looks at Arik again. "Hello, Arik, wonderful to meet you, I'm Vallynn. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Arik's gaze refocuses a bit. "Your friend saving me from dying yesterday, actually. I don't know that I'd be in the mood if he'd failed. Would you like a mostly nonsexual hug?"

"...I'm really fine but if you want a hug I'm not saying no except fair warning I don't think I can make it nonsexual on my end."

Alright Taharqi will shut the door now because he has a feeling this is going to get even less suitable for general audiences than just a hunk doing "activities".

"I did say mostly."

Hug. With only incidental rubbing.

Vallynn likes to think he's very good at hugs. The robe makes it kind of awkward but otherwise it is very nice to be hugged by a huge stranger. And nice in a different way that he's naked.

"So what got you?" Arik asks, releasing him. "I don't know if that's polite to ask. For me it was some great bastard of a trickster-spirit with a hypnotic lantern and massive claws."

"I don't actually know what it was. Some kind of fish holding a trident and far too proficient with both lightning magic and its teeth."

"Oh, lightning, fun. - I mean, obviously not in this case, but. I've had a few very pleasant near-death experiences there."

"...I do have lightning spells of my own but I'm not sure I trust my control with them sufficiently well to thread the needle."

Taharqi walks behind Vallynn and pulls him away from Arik a little bit to start unclasping his robe. "But it would be fun."

"...do you have the kind of fine control where you would be able to hit me with something... half as strong as the strongest you could?"

"That much control comes built into the Skill. It's amounts less than the least amount of power than that that are difficult to control."

"A Skill? Where's the Vallynn who invented a whole telekinesis spell on his own as a teenager? Surely he can come up with a lightning one that isn't so strict."

"On the spot? Absolutely not."

"But you already have one."