"You certainly have a... colorful vocabulary, don't you?" Cyprus mused. He'd never heard expressions quite like hers, and wondered whether they were her unique sayings, or if he'd simply been out of touch with how people talked for too long. It wasn't that suprising if he was; slang moved on at a pace he just couldn't cope with. What was a decade to an immortal being? Even these past 30 years, which had felt like an eternity, had still moved considerably faster than they would have for a mortal, as time kept passing him by. Part of that was because he felt himself slipping closer and closer to oblivion, to the point where he'd lose even the shadow of himself for long periods of time, only to wake up and find that another month had passed. But not anymore. With Shanna as his new champion, he felt more invigorated than he had in years. And even more so when she presented her flawless body to him. Regaining a corporeal form would be worth it just to have her.<br/><br/>"As you may have noticed, nothing the Sorcerer Kings have ever done has been timely<em>or</em>benevolent. They're misusing the powers, and it's going to ruin the world. You can already see it." It was good that she was starting to believe him, as he was out of tools to convince her. At least she wasn't digging too hard into his own abilities, or she might come to realize how powerless he was.<br/><br/>Shanna stretched out in the bath, and her feet went right through where Cyprus's midsection would have been if he'd still had a body, and he couldn't feel it at all. Not even a vague awareness. Though with her knees slightly parted, he was able to follow her supple thighs up and between her legs to get another glimpse of heaven. If he had his way that thong would never go back on, consequences be damned.<br/><br/>"Don't misinterpret my words," he warned sternly, tapping the water with an incorporeal touch. A minute splash appeared at the edge of the tub in time with his speech, a tiny but unmistakable sign of his presence in the bath. "No more controlling the weather. Control is what caused this whole mess. We need to give it back over to the natural order of things." Well, almost. Before that he'd need to give the land some preparatory dousing, to soak the parched dirt properly. Otherwise the entire country would flood the first time a real storm came through, as the top layer of soil got saturated and the lower layers stayed untouched. "You will have some control over water, and some control over lightning. Enough to make you quite powerful, but you won't be summoning any storms of your own. I'm not here to trade off one Sorcerer-King for another."<br/><br/>Her question caught him by surprise. He didn't have an eyebrow to raise but the incredulity was clear in his tone. "Isn't it obvious? We're going to find the man who stole the power from me, and take it back. By force if necessary, and it<em>will</em>be necessary. But a capable fighter like you should have no trouble with that. It won't be easy, but if it was, I wouldn't need you, now would I?"