"You do the turning into the shadow of death thing! It's very zippy! And you... roll around, and, and jump! I mostly don't jump. Or roll. Or turn into angry green death smoke and claw people or whatever it is that you do."

He starts laughing. "Yes, but mesmers teleport!"

"Yes, well, I am several hundred years behind the modern technomagical curve! We're lucky I'm able to contribute to combat in literally any way!" She huffs, crossing her arms. "It is a testament to my skill and talent that I am at all useful. Also a testament to the natural results of taking out the magical traditions of several nations. Of course the Krytans would obsessively specialize in illusions and flittering around the battlefield like nitwits, they were never very direct. Do you know what modern combat magic would be like if Orr didn't blow itself up, James?"

"I do not, and I am actually dreadfully curious to find out."

"Significantly less things would explode," she sniffs. "Because explosions can be dodged, and any firepower that hits something other than the target is a waste of magic. There would be a lot more really nasty hexes. Being countered by someone rolling around in the dirt is silly."

He laughs. "Well, how else?"

"What is it that you think I counter, darling? Now go on, see if you can catch any mysterious magical anomalies."

"Yes, my princess." Onwards to the source of his sound. He slows down to wait for more thunderclaps so he can better triangulate it...

Vetareh follows after him at a bit of a distance, obligingly staying silent so as not to get in his way.

Eventually he stops following the sounds and starts walking purposefully towards a bit of Absolutely Nothing, Right There. He starts waving his flasks in the air.

He is very fortunate that his girlfriend is assured of his sanity, because waving a bunch of badly enchanted flasks through the air would look totally crazy to someone that is not accustomed to how field research in Tyria sometimes goes. Also fortunately for him, his girlfriend is accustomed to that, too.

"Anything?" she asks, once all vials have been waved through that bit of Absolutely Nothing, Right There.

"I don't think so. It's also not attacking us, though, so it must be... different, somehow."

"Weird. In my experience, strange magical anomalies are almost always relentlessly murderous. And you don't see anything at all?"

"No, the flasks seem to be empty. Unless the essence is meant to be invisible? Can you detect anything in them?"

"... 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?"