"Do you know why?"

Shrug. "The monsters don't talk. They're just dangerous."

"Can you hurt them?

"With fire," she says. "Not much, some."

"How do they start?"

She shrugs. "People say things but they don't know."

"How do they..." she gestures vaguely. "Move, things?"

"They– reach and pull," she says, miming putting her arms through something and then pulling backwards. She shrugs and says, "It's weird."

"Monsters are weird. Magic is weird."

She doesn't seem to have much more to say, but she's comfortable surveying the countryside until the sun goes down.

Before that happens, though, after a few minutes, there's a small noise in the distance. It sounds like the noise someone might make were they to run along, quite quietly, quite quickly, and then fall over and hit the ground, then scramble to get up again.

It comes from somewhere– near the orchard. It also causes Ev to look that way, slightly worriedly.

Airta's gaze follows Ev's. She seems surprised.

She checks whether she could safely get down the exterior of the wall.

Her power won't return any safe paths, no, though she could possibly get down the exterior of the wall if she happens to have a really good landing.

She could go back down the stairs in the wall and through the gate, if she can convince them to open it for her, but other than that it'd appear they just need to leave the person to get here on their own.

And once the person is up, suddenly the area they were previously in goes up in flames, illuminating them in a glow.

He keeps running, the area around him seeming slightly hazy.

Can she see what he's running from?

The haze is stronger behind him than in front of him, though that could just be the fire.

Yes, it's to some degree plausible that the fleeing man set the air behind himself on fire for no reason instead of because it's a magical monster known to be vulnerable to fire.

Airta looks at Ev. "Is here safe?" she asks.

She nods. "They can't climb well," (she mimes it) "– walls are good."

The man seems to be doing okay getting away from hazes, though they don't seem to retain a humanoid form and keep trying to wrap themselves around him, which causes him to glow slightly blue where they're in contact.

It's good that he's having success in his fleeing.

She watches from the battlement. There's not much else to be done, really.

There's really not. And it doesn't take him particularly long, and it's overall not that bad. He does, however, when he's about halfway there, trip again, but he gets back up quite quickly.

Then he's at the gate, and they open it for him quite swiftly, and he's inside, and they won't be able to see what happens next from where they are.

Well, presumably they close the gate again.

Is there anything else to be gained from staying atop the wall?

Well, if she wants to see an actual shadow, she'll probably be able to see one shortly, but if she's more curious about that man who just fled the creatures, she might want to go down and talk to him.

It's finally getting to be the night side of sunset, though, so some shadows might already be visible.

She'll look for shadows, then. That was the reason they came up here, after all.

… After a bit, she'll be able to see one creeping out of the forest, moving in a weirdly fluid way with no obvious limbs but instead just extensions of the amorphous blob itself. It's extremely dark in appearance, nearly black, and not actually all that large, being about half a human's height and vaguely spherical.

Then it moves slowly, staying in the darker areas of the landscape, and comes into contact with one of the blurs, resulting in a brief period of contact where bits of the shadow wisp towards it, and then the blur seems to dissipate.

All in all, it's ominous and creepy.

This world's weird, frightening monsters are very unimpressive.

"What did the shadow do?"

She shrugs apologetically. "It looked like magic?"

These people know wholly unsatisfactory amounts about their weird, frightening monsters. Oh well.

She definitely wants to go back down now.