Vetareh giggles, amused. "It works like I'm a necromancer with some of the... most important parts missing? I can't pick up life essence from things dying near me, for example, and I doubt even if I devoted all my time and effort to it that I could match a proper necromancer. It's more of a pale imitation necromancer. Hm, describing how magic feels is tricky, I'd say it's like... cold, brittle ice, or maybe bone, to mesmer's... fuzzy and shifting mist and swirling possibility space. Combine them, yes and no, I can have spells from each pool, and cast them both normally, and sometimes the spells dovetail together nicely, but they don't... mesh together into one spell, the differences are too stark. It'd be worse than trying to combine water and oil, and I can't even.... shake the jar. Proverbially."

"How about the, you know, divine magic that's letting the things in there coexist, do you feel that part?"

"When I picked it, yes, I did, and it was at a shrine to Grenth, but now... no. The hard part was getting the necromancer in there, now that it's in it's quite stable and there's no divine anything involved at all. My father was ascended and could switch secondary professions, it's a pity I don't have him available to relate how that feels like."

"Switch! I thought that was just rumours and stories, there were so few people who said they could do it..."

"It required ascension, and the list of people that successfully pulled that off was rather short. My father never wanted to get into the details of how he'd done it. I'm not surprised you'd think it was all rumor, for most of the rest of us we were stuck with our choice for the remainder of our lives, like our primary profession."

"I am very jealous of the Commander, right now."

"Just for having found me?"

"Found, kept," she says, waving a hand vaguely.

She snorts. "I suppose. Though I'm not very kept, am I, considering I ran off with you to go shopping, hm?"

"I consider this a kidnapping, really. But you're being quite cooperative," she says, grinning.

Vetareh laughs. "And what would you have done if I wasn't cooperative?"

"I would be very ashamed of my skills if that happened."

"Fair enough!"

She giggles.

They can go find some cool sigils to buy, then, can't they?

Yep! Vetareh is very interested in modern magic, this is a great chance to see some.

Speaking of magic: she can hear a noise. A strange, staticky noise... that she might recognise from the Fire Islands...

She frowns. That's... odd. In a concerning way.

"Kasmeer, do you detect any strange magical anything happening nearby, in... that-ish direction?" She points towards the strange staticky noise.

She blinks, opens her mouth, closes it, frowns, then says, "No, but there's a strange magical thing happening in you."

Vetareh sighs. "Damn. Yes, there is, isn't there. And if it's happening in me it'll be happening in James, too."

"The Commander?"

"Mhm. He was sensing strange things too, earlier, though now I suppose we know why our perceptions weren't synchronized."

"I see. Is it just—a noise, or...?"

"No, there was also a figure, made of unstable magic. I'd tried to get samples of it when we first saw it. I suppose I should have guessed why none of it would go in any of the jars when I saw it then, but it was honestly the least of our problems at the time."

"What did it look like?"

"Humanoid figure, made out of unstable magic. It looked very like a figure James and I fought when I first came out of the Mists, in the aftermath of the bloodstone explosion."