"Huh. But the figure you fought was, you know, fightable, it wasn't completely undetectable like these other ones you found?"

"Yes. It might be that the figures we're seeing are a result of having killed that one, some... leftover residue that it left behind that we unknowingly absorbed and now can't process in any way but seeing and hearing things. As a very estimated guess that I don't trust to be accurate, mind."

"Sounds as likely as anything. I haven't heard of anything like this before, but with Bloodstone magic, who knows?"

"Precisely. And it was powerful enough to tear some kind of hole to the Mists, because it was how I got out of the Mists. I'd thought I'd walked into another echo, and then it all became real."

"Huh! I'd never heard of holes to the Mists happening like that except in old cautionary tales about experimentation with magic."

"Yes. Quite dangerous, but there had just been a very big magical explosion, so I suppose if it would happen anywhere, that'd be a reasonably likely location for it."

Kasmeer nods. "I... this is wildly beyond my area of expertise, so all I can help with is speculation," she says, shrugging a bit helplessly. "This seems like something that needs a specialist."

"Doesn't it just! Ugh. I'd better go find James, he'll likely have better connections to modern specialists than I do."

She nods again. "Especially when he's with the Order of Whispers. What I wouldn't give to know what that's like..."

"I know next to nothing about them, so it's just as well for me, really."

"Oh no one does, that's their thing, you know, being all secretive and everywhere and knowing lots of things they shouldn't by rights know."

Vetareh snorts, amused. "No wonder James joined, sounds like he'd have a blast from the ability to frustrate people alone."

"Oh, trust me, he used that ability."

"I'd expect nothing less." She sounds terribly fond. "Come along, let's find you your sigil while we're here, and then you can return me from whence I was stolen. And make James pay for it."

"Let's indeed!"

Sigils can be found in a shop that-a-way or bought off the Black Lion Traders' marketplace over here.

Sigils!

.... Vetareh is woefully out of touch with modern magic and what sigils would be good sigils! But she's very curious, happy to hold things, and understands a lot of the underlying theory, so she makes a pretty good soundboard for whatever Kasmeer might be thinking. Actually, on the whole, this probably makes her a much better shopping companion than any who would have any annoying opinions that might get in Kasmeer's way.

Well, having opinions or not having opinions both work in different ways, really. But here, she can nerd about the sigils and what they do and how they work with modern weaponry and modern magic.

Exciting stuff!

A sigil is eventually found. This complete, they can wrap up the shopping trip and go find James to pay for it, and also to get into solving that whole... alarming unprecedented magical thing that might kill them or drive them mad that they’ve got going on.

"Did you guys have plans today before I kidnapped you?" Kas asks on the way to the waypoint.

Her mouth twitches at the re-emergence of ‘kidnapped.’

“Not as such, no. We’d finished the only strong plan for the day, I was impatient about getting ‘Hello your majesty I am what I say I am, and my boyfriend is not my pawn in a mad bid for your kingdom’ out of the way. If I had to guess where he went, it’d be the Order of Whispers, though to be honest my plan was to have Taimi call him.”

"You called?" sounds a voice from somewhere in the back of Vetareh's dress.

"By the Six!" exclaims Kasmeer, nearly jumping out of her skin.

Vetareh jumps, too.

“What in the...?!” she says, immediately getting to finding the communication device in her clothes. “Ah, hi Taimi, this is... very convenient,” and kind of rude, but whatever, “but is this a... new communication device for me, or is it James’s?”

"New one, made just for you! I had an assistant deliver it to you earlier today."

"Deliver?" Kasmeer asks, raising an eyebrow and folding her arms in the direction of the communication device. "Seems like your assistant forgot to warn the recipient! Or, indeed, make their presence known at all!"