"Mhm. Just like I can be annoyed at. Ugh. The benefits of asuran biology." She huffs. "Okay, new topic, we can save other mechanics for later."

Grin. "Any suggestions?"

"None whatsoever! I picked the last topic anyway, clearly it's your turn now."

He laughs and opens his mouth—

—then stops. "Did you hear that?"

At this, all mirth drops away and she goes straight into business mode. She stops, and listens.

After a pause, she shakes her head.

"Sounded like a thunderclap. Not overcast, though." He starts slowly walking in a direction—

—and then there's the noise, which does in fact sound very much like a thunderclap. James doesn't react to it, though.

She jumps, slightly, upon hearing it.

"... I just heard it. Too loud for me to have missed before. Just now. Did you hear it?"

"—no, I didn't. From that direction?" he asks, pointing at roughly the same direction she heard the noise from.

"Yeah." She frowns. "I don't sense anything magical going on, but I'm hardly infallible..."

James starts walking towards the place the sound probably came from, northwest of where they currently are. It's not too big a detour—the volcano is still a ways north, so they're still walking in the same vague direction.

He conjures a flesh golem and draws his weapons.

Vetareh similarly draws her scepter; this is all of the preparation she needs.

The fact that they heard the sound at different times is... concerning. It implies that there's something going on with mental magic. As a mesmer with dominion over types of magic including mental magic, it's very bad that she didn't notice the effect occurring. It's probably not a hex, but she casts her hex breaker on herself just to see what happens. If there's no hex to shatter, then this will not hurt her; if there is a hex on her, she'd rather be mildly hurt than have her senses messed with.

There's no effect. There is, however, another sound, and James reacts to this one, too.

"Heard that one too. It's not some kind of hex, so I'm more than a little confused."

"...this noise actually reminds me of something. Remember that lightning humanoid I was fighting when we met?"

"Oh. Yes, this is very like that, isn't it. Strange."

He reaches behind his neck. "Taimi? Can you hear me?" Silence. "Still too much interference. Guess we'll just have to figure this out on our own. Do you think you can grab samples of incorporeal magical anomalies?"

"Uh. Maybe? It depends on what the incorporeal magical anomaly is made out of. I can do some different basic enchantments on some vials to cast a wide proverbial net. Proper equipment for the purposes of catching incorporeal magical anomalies would be leagues better, but crappy enchanted vials could work in a pinch. What with how we're away from waypoints and under a time crunch."

"Yeah. Do you want some preparation time?"

She shakes her head. "I'll enchant and walk at the same time. These won't be enchantments that are any good? No fancy materials to hold anything down, so the enchantments will fade to nothingness within the month at best. If we catch anything, we'll need to transfer the samples to something more permanent."

He nods. "Onwards, then."

Another sound he doesn't react to.

"Sound," she relays, not looking up from her bag as she retrieves the vials. "We should probably keep track of who hears what when, see if there's some kind of pattern to it."

"Good plan. Same direction still?"

"Yeah. Thataway," she adds, pointing with a vial. Okay, what minor enchantments would be good for maximizing her chances of potentially catching bits of some kind of unknown entity? Hmm...

"When I'm done enchanting this," she says as she begins enchanting, "I'm going to hand the vial to you so you can try to grab the sample while I enchant something else. There will be no trick to it, just waft the opening of the vial through the thing and see if it catches anything."

"Roger that."

He keeps walking and calling out whenever he hears thunderclaps. They sometimes coincide with Vetareh's, but most of the time they do not.

That's interesting, though she doesn't really have the brainspace to try and figure out what that means right now. Her attention is kind of spread a bit thin. She similarly calls out when she hears the thunderclaps, trailing along after him and trying industriously not to trip over stray rocks while enchanting and walking at the same time. For the most part, she succeeds. Soon enough, she offers James the very first enchanted vial of experimental maybe-it'll-catch-a-thing. It will be up to him to flail around like a crazy person with the vial.