"... Nnnno, and it might, we'd have to check with Taimi to know for sure, but I meant—do you see an anomaly in the spot where you waved the vials? Because I don't."

"—oh. Yes, it's right here. It's shorter than the one we found the other day, and not attacking me, but it's otherwise right here."

"All right. Would you mind writing a quick description of it? And then I'll go look at mine and write a description of it, and we'll compare. If we wanted to be really thorough I could enchant up my own set of shitty vials and try waving them at the thing, but... eh. Not worth the time investment, I think."

"I can do that." Presuming she has writing implements to lend him he will write up a description of the invisible anomaly.

She does! Paper and pen and a thing to write on, because she's a good little field researcher, with a glorious, glorious mesmer bag!

While he's writing, she goes off to peer at her own invisible anomaly, to write a matching description. Soon enough, they're both done and can move on.

"This is definitely too weird to solve in the middle of stopping the islands from exploding," she says, carefully clipping both descriptions together with the vials that probably don't have anything in them. All three go into the (glorious) mesmer bag. "Time to move on, darling?"

"Do let's, we have an entire volcano to climb."

"That we do! But this was an interesting detour. If confusing and strange."

Back to figuring out how to climb an entire volcano! Whee.

Turns out to the east of the volcano there's a fairly walkable, if pretty uneven, spiral path up the stone wall.

It also turns out that from that spot they can see, down farther east on the beach and the water near the shore, a myriad bizarre giant stone crustaceans.

Vetareh peers at these, confused.

"Those don't look like destroyers, but I don't know what they are instead. James?"

"—oh. Karka. They used to live in the depths of the Unending Ocean but they were driven out by the deep sea dragon. They... caused a lot of trouble in Southsun Cove a while ago, while Scarlet Briar was trying to awaken Mordremoth."

"Oh. Charming. All right. So, any in particular you'd like me to disrupt for when we inevitably get into some kind of confrontation with them?"

"I don't think they are smart enough to have particularly advanced magic, they mostly just throw goo at you and sometimes explode."

She makes a face.

"Great. Goo. Explosions and goo. My favorite. Ugh."

He laughs and plants a kiss on her cheek. "They are not my favourite, indeed."

"Thanks. No wonder you invested in such a nice bath. Well, no use complaining about it. Let's go."

"Onwards."

The volcano's big. This is going to be quite a trek, and they might need to stop to rest before reaching the lip.

Euuuughhhh.

"I really hope that someone was wise enough to put a waypoint up there," she mutters. "Maybe I should break out the fire resistance mantra. It'd probably help with this heat. That would make this climb slightly less unpleasant. Except for the part where I'd have to hum. Incessantly."

"I have water," he offers.

"I have some, thank you, I'm just—I'm actually still thinking about how I can be slightly less squishy, it's got me picking apart all of my known spells for what sorts of combinations I could make that would keep me not-dead. And going, 'Maybe I can solve my current problems with this spell!' ... Also bitching a little, admittedly, sorry about that."

"You are a delight even when you are, ah, 'bitching a little,' don't worry."

"Oh, good. I like being good company." She hums thoughtfully. "Do you have any ability to cause enemies to miss in their attacks? Like, by blinding them?"

"I have a few spells that do that, why?"

"I have a hex that would hit multiple enemies; it would make them all attack faster, but throw off their aim. And then I have several other hexes that would hurt them every time they attacked. But I would feel better about using these if there was some extra thing there to make it more likely that they'll miss, so I'm not helping the enemy hit you faster."

"Yes, I have some things that would work well with that."

"Okay," she nods. "Then I'll keep thinking in that vein until I feel like I've got something that won't get either of us killed. We'll see if I come up with anything usable."