Vex couldn't help but feel anxious. Something about this town — about Fendal — felt off to him. Where the presence of mana was usually a comfort, this time something about it felt... dangerous. Like it was a warning. He wriggled in his seat, slightly annoyed by the fact that the chair was tall enough that his feet didn't even touch the ground.

Derivan wasn't having any problems with his seat. The armor sat ramrod straight in his chair, paying polite attention to the old man that was apparently in charge of this place. Gensen, apparently. Vex watched Derivan for a moment, distracted, and then jumped when Sev spoke.

"You said in your request that there was an infestation," Sev said. "What kind of infestation?"

"Let's not speak of such things to start with," the old man said, though not unkindly. The exhaustion seemed to vanish off of him as he spoke. "You must be tired from your journey, surely. Perhaps I can get you a spot in one of our inns?"

Sev blinked. "That would be... nice? But I'd really rather you tell us what's going on first."

"If you insist," Gensen said.

Vex wasn't paying attention to what the old man said. He watched the mana instead — it was drifting through even in this building, and wasn't that strange? It didn't move the way it usually did, though; there was nothing freespirited about it.

It moved with intent.

The lizardkin wondered if there was someone controlling it with [Mana Manipulation], or a variant thereof. He'd never seen mana moving with such purpose before. It almost made him want to try to reach out with his own [Advanced Mana Manipulation], to see if he could touch on it — maybe do what Derivan had done before, and just ask the mana —

"Vex?" Sev said, and Vex blinked.

"What?" he said, and when he saw everyone was looking at him, he coughed awkwardly. "Um, sorry. I wasn't paying attention."

"Apparently there's a goblin camp nearby," Sev said. "They raid Fendal every so often and take the mana crystal stores sent by Elyra, among other things. Gensen wants us to help... clear the camp. You're the resident tracking expert, so I wanted an estimate of how long you think that might take."

Vex absolutely wasn't the tracking expert, but he was the 'rogue', and he frowned in thought. The story didn't add up. It didn't explain half the things they'd noticed felt off. And the others felt the same way, too, given the looks on their faces; Misa had her brows drawn together skeptically, and Sev seemed like he was doing his best to be diplomatic. Derivan's helmet allowed him to keep the best straight face out of the four of them, but Vex could practically sense his armored friend's concern radiating from him.

"Um," Vex said, mostly to stall for time. He wasn't exactly sure what Sev wanted from him. The cleric shook his head just slightly — delay, he interpreted the gesture as — and saw two of his fingers twitch just slightly. "We'll need some time to investigate, of course. Find out where their camp is, what kind of numbers we're looking at. I'd say we'll have a plan of attack in two days or so."

"Of course," Gensen said with a nod and a kind smile. "Shall I settle your lodgings, then?"

"Please," Sev said with a nod, and the old man hobbled off to talk to... someone. The entire town hall seemed empty, actually, which was another oddity; Gensen slipped into another room, but as far as Vex could tell, there weren't any other people in that room.

That didn't stop him from coming out with a set of keys. "There's a room waiting for you at the Sleeping Bird inn, a little ways south of here," Gensen said kindly. "It's the fifth door to the right on the second floor. It's quite a spacious room. I hope you enjoy your accommodations."

Vex opened his mouth to ask why in the world Gensen had keys to a room in an inn here, in the town hall. There were ways that could be done, of course, but teleportation spells weren't cheap at the best of times... maybe the town hall had replicas of all the inn keys?

...That made Vex feel kind of uncomfortable, somehow.

He stopped short just before actually asking the question when Sev gave him a warning glance, and diverted the movement into a yawn instead. He trickled some power into [Advanced Mana Sight] as he did so, eyeing the room Gensen had just emerged from — but besides the presence of ambient mana, it all seemed normal. No traces of magic, at any rate.

Vex followed Sev and the others somewhat mindlessly as they were escorted back out of the town hall, his gaze flicking over the details of the town. Besides the extraordinary cleanliness and the presence of mana, nothing struck him as particularly out of place. The townsfolk were going about their days, picking up whatever bread and produce they needed from the open stalls set up in the center of town; some of the more expensive-looking shops had their own dedicated buildings, and Vex counted at least one alchemy shop and one fancy-looking bakery among them.

It was all very... normal.

The mana did seem to gather more in some places than others — there was a florist selling a variety of beautiful, purple-blue flowers that the mana seemed to love. It twirled around that shopkeeper and his flowers, seemingly excited every time someone purchased something, or even just looked at the flowers. The sight comforted him, even; it was the most 'normal' behavior he'd seen from the ambient mana in Fendal.

And now that he was paying attention... the mana did seem to act differently around different people. Overall, the mood was gloomy. The way it moved was slow and sickly, especially near the guards. Near the children, however, it was especially lively; with everyone else it was difficult to establish a pattern —

Vex felt Derivan grab him by the shoulders and physically place him a foot to the side, right before he would have walked into a wooden lantern pole. He blinked several times, startled, then flushed. "Sorry."

"I imagine you were paying attention to something important," Derivan said with a chuckle. "We are here. Perhaps you can share your thoughts when we are inside?"

The inn that Gensen had mentioned — the Sleeping Bird — was a large, three-floor building, if rather plain on the outside, with pale-blue walls and round windows decorated with smaller versions of those purple-blue flowers. Its only unique feature otherwise was a sign that featured a rather crudely drawn bird sleeping in its nest. Sev pushed the door open, and Vex followed just behind Derivan, expecting to find a lively inn full of people.

The building was empty.

Sev blinked. "Uh... maybe that's why Gensen gave us the key instead of telling us to get it from the owner?" he said.

"Maybe the owner's out," Misa suggested, but she looked uncomfortable.

"You don't see anything strange in the mana, do you?" Sev asked Vex, and the lizardkin shook his head.

"I've been keeping an eye out," Vex said. "The ambient mana in this whole town acts a little weird, but this place isn't trapped or anything. Not that I can tell, anyway."

"This building's too big to not be staffed, though," Sev mused.

"Let's just get to our room," Misa said, looking a little bit disgruntled. "The empty inn lobby is kinda creeping me out."

"We could just stay in the caravan," Vex suggested.

"We'd have to explain that to Gensen," Sev said, making a bit of a face. He began to climb the stairs up to the second floor, and the others followed him. "And I think we have better odds of figuring out what's going on if we're staying here. It's pretty obvious the problem isn't a goblin camp, but I don't know why he'd hide it from us."

"Maybe he's compromised," Misa said.

"Perhaps," Derivan said. "I am not sure that he believed what he was saying, and what is particularly strange is that he did not seem frustrated by the raids he mentioned, only mildly concerned."

"Yeah, he didn't really act like there was any kind of emergency," Sev said with a frown. He approached and opened the door to their room — the fifth door to the right was at the end of the hallway, and led to a room that must have occupied half of the entire floor, and was almost certainly spatially expanded in some way. The accommodations were better than even what was provided by the Adventurer's Guild, considering it came with a small kitchen and sectioned-off rooms.

"I changed my mind. I don't want to stay in the caravan," Vex announced, and Misa snickered at him.

"This place is pretty nice," Sev admitted. "Must cost a pretty penny."

"S'long as we don't have to pay, I don't care." Misa threw herself back onto one of the couches, ignoring the way the whole thing rocked back with the force of her weight. She groaned with pleasure. "Fuck, I'm grateful to the Guildmaster and all, but it's really nice to have an actual seat."

"No kidding," Sev agreed, though he was much more polite about taking a seat in one of the unoccupied armchairs. Vex and Derivan occupied the last couch opposite to Misa, though Vex grumbled a little at the way he had to curl his tail around. Most seats just weren't really built to accommodate lizardkin.

It was a small gripe, though. Misa took barely a second to switch gears again, changing the subject and leaning forward, her expression serious. "But let's talk about this. Do we think Gensen's being controlled?"

"I don't think so," Vex said, then hesitated. "It's definitely a possibility, but it's too early to jump to that conclusion. At best we keep in mind that he might be compromised and keep investigating."

"I'm inclined to agree," Sev said. "I'm not sure I believe the story about the goblins at all, though. The people here don't act like they've been raided recently."

"If he is not compromised, he could be lying," Derivan suggested.

"Why would he lie, though?" Misa frowned. "Someone put in a request with the Guild and told us to get in contact with him. There has to be a reason for that."

"He's either pointing us in the right direction, or else he's a lead himself," Sev concluded. "Either way, I think it's prudent for us to investigate things besides the goblin raids."

"I can look into the raids," Misa said with a grunt. "Some of the guards are pretty good at tracking. I can summon 'em, ask them for advice. That kind of thing."

"Then I'll talk to the people and see if I can get them to talk about the raids that have supposedly been happening," Sev said.

"I want to look into what's going on with the mana here," Vex said. "I've never seen ambient mana be so active inside a town. Too many skills and spells being cast pretty much all the time — mana doesn't typically like that. Derivan, I'm thinking maybe if you try that new method of casting you've got here, we might see different results."

"New method of casting?" Misa asked curiously, and Vex nodded vigorously.

"I still haven't figured out how to do it yet! But he found a way to cast spells without relying on the system or on runic constructs," Vex said, his tail moving to wag almost without him being consciously aware of it. "I've been trying to learn how, but it's slow going on my part. You wanna show 'em, Deri?"

"I will try," Derivan said, though not without a faint hint of fond amusement in his tone. He reached out again, and Vex watched him with bright eyes, following the movement of the mana. The abundance of ambient mana made it easy to cast here, at least — Derivan's particular brand of spellcasting, he suspected, wouldn't work as well in normal cities, where whatever ambient mana there was was mostly dead and lifeless.

Just like before, Vex watched as the mana responded to Derivan, starting to form into the familiar shape of the basic barrier spell —

— and then the barrier flexed, and shattered.

There was a small silence.

"That has never happened before," Derivan said, sounding concerned. Vex couldn't help but echo that concern, too, because he was watching the mana move in the aftermath, and it was agitated.

Worried.

Angry.