[b]Cair![/b]

"Cair! Good Stars, are you alright?"
"Ah, shit! Rurik, how did you get here?"
"Portal. Cair, the legions of the damned are inside the gates! We need to do something!"
"Hi Cair."
"Hi Tsane - look, Rurik, how did you even know -"
"Magic. The legions of the damned, Cair!"
"- okay, fine - hi Injimo -"
"Hi Cair."
"- but look, you probably don't need to be here. I'm still not convinced this is a problem yet."
"The legions of the damned, Cair! They are inside the gates!"
"Rurik, you haven't really spent much time here, have you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Look, this place is the collection of the Hero of Ages. And she doesn't just collect items. She collects enemies, monsters, things whose place in the world she destroyed."
"Mmm?"
"That means that this place is perpetually full of dangerous creatures."
"Right. But that is different from having the legion of the damned inside the gates, surely?"
"Well, not really - like, the Hero's Shadow hangs out here, did you know?"
"Good Stars! Tsane, can you fight the Hero's Shadow?"
"Well, I can resist the temptation to get weirdly horny about fighting it for about twenty minutes, tops."
"Well... that will have to do. Thank you for letting us know, Cair, we'll deal with that right after we stop the legion of the damned -"
"Rurik! I'm saying it because it's kind of normal here! Like, I was just speaking to the Architect Knight the other day -"
"The Architect Knight! Good Stars! Thank you for letting us know, Cair - Injimo, can you fight the Architect Knight?"
"Yeah."
"Oh thank goodness, I thought for a moment there you were going to say the same thing as Tsane."
"I mean, I'm always weirdly horny when I fight. I just don't let it interfere with the job."
"That's the spirit! So come on, Cair - don't you have an alchemy lab or something? Can't you whip up some weed killer?"
"Rurik - look, shouldn't we just wait for Heron to handle it?"
"What?"
"If the, uh, the -"
"Legion of the damned."
"Rootwalkers."
"Oh, is that what they're called?"
"Yeah, - they're a fascinating blend of Nature/Shadow mana, actually. It's a melding technique called hedging, which in this case is a neat pun, and -"
"Look, if the Rootwalkers are here then they're not somewhere else. So why not let them be here? There's nothing here for them."
"That one is holding the Sword of Invincibility."
"Yeah but they're using it as a shovel. It's fine."
"- allows ordinarily contradictory magical forces to feed off their opposition. Some advanced pyromancers develop an incidental mastery of ice just because concentrating heat in one place means drawing that heat away from -"
"They are destroying the Stacks!"
"Rurik, I've been living here for a long while, and I honestly couldn't say that this place is any worse than when they started."
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that, actually. You are a Handmaiden, aren't you? You believe this level of cleaning is acceptable?"
"W-what!?"
"We work for the Hero of Ages. This place should reflect her stature. And it's positively filthy."
"Rurik, she has an entire cursed desert in here! Do you expect me to [i]dust [/i]it?"
"Well, why not get a rake and start drawing sand circles? It might take a little while but it'd improve the effect enormously."
"That'd take a hundred years!"
"Well, that's why we are imbued with reproductive organs, is it not?"
"Oh, wow, grandad. And you take issue with [i]my [/i]monsterfucking?"
"Not at all. I just wish it would result in some great-grandchildren already."
"Grandpa!"
"You're not getting any younger, Tsane."
"I don't need to be here for this conversation. I'm going to start killing Rootwalkers now."
"Very good! See Cair, Injimo has the right attitude with regards to the legion of the damned being inside the gates. You could learn a thing or two."
"Injimo wait - ah she's gone, fuck."
"Speaking of, Cair, why don't [i]you [/i]settle down with my granddaughter?"
"I'm going to the alchemy lab now."
"Oh, excellent. Tsane, go with her, it'll be like a wizard date!"
">:("
"o灬o"

*

[b]Kalentia![/b]

"Woah woah woah hey now nonconcordance dissonance megastalling medical emergency," said Kalentia, shoving directly past the woman to head for Fallen Far.

After a moment she realized she'd just shoved aside the hottest woman she'd ever seen who was in the process of telling her that they were going to get married and then do [i]extremely married things [/i]to her. Because there was an injured patient nearby and she needed to attend to that before she could process anything else.

In that moment Kalentia realized that she was an excellent white mage - and that being an excellent white mage fucking sucked.