"Apparently so!"

"And conjuration," she admits. "And probably a number of other things we haven't figured out, yet."

"With the slight flaw that you have to torture people to get to the really good stuff. And one of these days I'll figure out how to make my foundation spell self-sustaining and that won't be a problem anymore."

Nod.

"Oh, that reminds me, what's the weekly quota of torture required?"

"Mm - it's not very easy to describe. If I abandoned finesse and entertainment and just set somebody very aggressively on fire once a week until the spell settled down, it'd take a few hours or so."

"... Hellfire hurts more than ordinary fire," she observes. "And I've been engulfed in that often enough."

"I'm not sure how that compares. Especially because - if I burned you to ash, how fast would you come back?"

"It'd take a lot of effort to burn me to ash, the closer I get to being obliterated the more my body resists obliteration. If I did get completely burned to ash with ordinary fire, it'd take, mm. Six hours or so to regain corporeality, a day or two to full recover without magical aid of any kind. But when I'm conscious again I can focus on healing myself, which speeds up the process. Nine, ten hours total, if my magical aura doesn't take a hit out of nowhere and I were free to focus on healing, I'd estimate?"

"Yeah. With the kind of immortality I'm working with, it's a few seconds at most. The worse the damage, the faster you heal. So 'a few hours on fire' is - different, when it's that much fire and you're healing that fast."

She nods.

"Makes sense. And maybe it wouldn't match up the same way, I can't say I've been the kind of immortal you work with and then set on fire for hours, so I can't accurately compare. Hellfire's not the worst I've been through, just the obvious example of comparison. I'm not brushing off the experience, but I have had a while to gain a high pain tolerance."

"Hm."

Slight smile.

"Anyway. Onwards with the tour?"

"Sure."

Onwards!

Onwards!

The castle is so pretty.

It is!

Soon they reach a hall full of guest rooms. Serik wanders down it, looking thoughtfully at doors, and then opens one. "Yeah, see what you think of this one," he says, gesturing invitingly.

Well, in she goes, of course.

What's inside?

A really big bed.

Goodness!

"Yeah, that'll do," she asserts. "I like your decorating skills, by the way, this is all very nice."

"Thank you! Interior decoration is one of my favourite hobbies."

"It suits you. I enjoy gardening in my spare time, personally."

"I have gardens too but they get less personal attention. I have absolutely no use for all these guest rooms - well, until now - I just really enjoy making them look pretty."

Snort.

"I suppose offering your services to others is out of the question, otherwise I'd say you should go build houses for people and decorate their rooms."

"I really, really doubt I would get any takers."

She nods.

"I suppose that means I am your first client!" She looks at the room. "I'll take it. There, that was easy."

He giggles.