Edge Cases

Vex didn't have all that much time to contemplate the behavior of the mana before he was accosted by what he assumed to be the owner of the tavern; a large, portly woman smiled brightly at him as she noticed him coming down the stairs, and immediately walked over to greet them, a smile on her face.

"You must be the new guests!" she said cheerfully. "I'm Anyati, owner of the Sleeping Bird. I heard about you from Gensen. I didn't think you'd be up so early, though! I hope we didn't wake you up? I might have to replace the sound enchantments, if that's the case..."

"Uh," Vex said, a little taken aback and wishing very desperately that he'd let Derivan take the lead. "I'm Vex. We didn't get woken up, don't worry. I just wake up early." And Derivan doesn't need to sleep, he thought but didn't say.

"You must be starving, then!" Anyati said, and she took Vex by the arm immediately, leading him over to a conveniently empty table that the lizardkin could almost swear wasn't there before — though he was frazzled enough that he couldn't really tell. "Sit, sit, I'll get you two some warm porridge."

"We don't need..." Vex started, but the woman was like a whirlwind; she'd no sooner sat them at the table than disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Vex staring awkwardly after her. He blinked once, then turned to Derivan, who was sitting politely in his seat and looking vaguely bemused. "Was this table always here?"

"I believe so," Derivan said, amusement briefly flickering into his voice. "Though this Anyati could tell me that it wasn't, and I imagine I would believe her. She does not leave much space to doubt."

"You got that right!" someone over at the next table yelled, and the whole table laughed along with her. Vex exchanged glances with Derivan, a little surprised that they'd been heard over the noise in the tavern at all. "That's our Anyati!"

Vex was honestly starting to feel a little overwhelmed.

Derivan seemed to recognize this, however, and took over for him. "If I may ask," the armor said curiously. "Where did you all come from? The inn was empty when we came earlier."

"What kind of a question is that?" the woman he'd asked responded, grinning at him. "You're the ones from out of town! Where are you from?"

Derivan seemed thrown off by the question. He blinked once, eye-lights flickering within his armor as he considered the question. "We are from the Guild," he settled on saying after an awkward pause. "Though we have spent most of our time housed at the outer Elyran branch town, between Elyra and Anderstahl."

"Y'all need to name your towns," the woman snorted, but she grinned at him, reaching out to shake his hand, then Vex's. "Good to meet you, though. I'm Henna. My friends here are Visyen and Noram."

She gestured to the two people seated at her table — one of them an orcish woman who greeted them with a half-wave-half-salute, and the other a young lizardkin that was not unlike Vex, though he had blue scales instead of green. He was taller, too, and seemed to be trying to sink into the wall.

"Noram's shy," Henna added with a conspiratorial whisper, winking at them both. Her lizardkin companion managed to muster up a half-hearted glare.

"I am not," he said. "I just... don't handle taverns well. You know that."

Indeed, Noram seemed more nervous than either of his two companions. His tail was stiff and coiled around the leg of his chair, and he'd pushed his chair back as far as possible so that his back was against the wall. Vex could sympathize, but...

"Are you alright?" he asked, just in case, and Noram's gaze darted to him before he relaxed by a fraction. He sighed and nodded.

"I'm fine. It's just... taverns are loud," Noram said, shaking his head slightly and looking into the air. He let out a frustrated sigh. "And you won't understand this, but the mana here is behaving strangely."

"He's been going on about that for weeks," Henna said with a laugh and a shake of her head. "Poor guy. He's the only mage around that thinks the mana's acting weird. We think he caught something on our last outing. We're adventurers too, you know, or we're going to be. Just need to sign up."

Visyen finished her drink with a burp, and grinned at them. The orc seemed to be some sort of mage class, too, though Vex was well aware that appearances could be deceiving. "There's no mana here," she said. "Dunno what's up with Noram. We think he got hit by some blueweed gas on our last dungeon expedition."

"I did not," Noram insisted, looking upset.

"Um," Vex said. He looked around at the rest of the people in the tavern — they were talking amongst themselves, and not really paying attention to the group in the corner, though they did get curious looks every now and then. He paused awkwardly, trying to figure out how to explain that he, too, could see how the mana was behaving.

And so could Derivan, for that matter.

"I do not think he is hallucinating," Derivan offered, seeing that Vex was getting a bit stuck on his words, and the lizardkin shot his friend a grateful look. "We see the mana here acting up, too."

"What?" Visyen frowned, then double checked; her eyes glowed blue for a moment as she channeled more power into her own version of [Mana Sight], and then she shook her head. "I don't see anything. Same skill variant, right? [Mana Sight]?"

"[Advanced Mana Sight]," Vex said.

"Intermediate," Derivan added, foregoing the full name. Visyen frowned, and glanced at Henna, who shrugged; Noram, meanwhile, looked absolutely vindicated.

"I told you I didn't just forget my cloth!" he said.

"Yeah, yeah," Visyen said, in a dismissive sort of way that made Vex frown just slightly. "But that doesn't explain the discrepancy here. I don't see a drop of mana in the air. And I've got the intermediate variant as well, so it can't be the skill. Are you sure you two didn't inhale some blueweed?"

"I do not—" Derivan began, and Vex — realizing what his friend was about to say — quickly interrupted.

"Neither of us have been near any kind of blueweed," he said. "And some of our skills that rely on ambient mana are acting up, so it's definitely real."

"Huh," Visyen said. Then she shrugged, calling for another mug of beer. "Whatever. Itt's none of my business."

"It's probably not that much of a problem, right?" Henna said, looking apologetic. Noram, meanwhile, was quite understandably looking increasingly upset.

"Something's wrong, I'm telling you," he insisted, and then he looked pleadingly at Vex and Derivan both. "They don't usually just dismiss me like this. You gotta reason with them. We need to look into it, or something."

"Noram," Henna said, a note of warning in her tone.

"He's right," Vex said suddenly, surprising both himself and the others at the table, judging by the startled looks they all cast him. Derivan seemed to smile at him, though, if the slight tilt of his head and the flickering in his eyes was any indication. Feeling emboldened, Vex continued, "I don't think we should be ignoring mana fluctuations like this. This is the kind of thing you only see when..."

Vex paused mid-sentence, suddenly struck, and Derivan glanced at him in askance. Vex narrowed his eyes, thinking.

"This is the kind of thing you only see during things like dungeon formations," he said, finishing the thought.

Derivan paused and stared at him. Noram's eyes went wide. Henna and Visyen both didn't react, save to look slightly confused.

It didn't make sense. There couldn't have been a dungeon formation going on — the system sent notifications when a dungeon was forming, and they only formed from mana nuclei to begin with. For a formation event to happen here would necessitate that the town be sitting on top of a nucleus without anyone being aware of it, and that was an absurd thought.

Maybe something similar, then? A similar process, though Vex couldn't think of anything else that led to this sort of behavior in the mana from all the literature he had read; there were some esoteric monsters that could cause similar fluctuations in ambient mana, but none on this scale. As far as he could tell, the strange behavior was present all throughout the town.

"We can't be in the middle of a dungeon formation," Noram argued, but he seemed like he was arguing to convince himself, and not because he believed what he was saying. "We're not on a Nucleus. That's not how dungeon formations work."

"I know that," Vex said. "But it doesn't have to be a dungeon formation. Just something similar."

"You guys are being ridiculous," Visyen snorted, rolling her eyes. Henna looked a little more apologetic.

"I think maybe my team should get some sleep," she said. "We had a pretty long night, you know."

"No, I want to talk about this. I need to talk about this," Noram said, and then he focused intense eyes on Vex. "You two can go sleep if you want. I need to figure this out."

Henna frowned at him, then sighed. "Can't force you to do anything, I guess," she said. "You coming, Vis?"

"Course," Visyen said, finishing her drink and slamming it down on the table. She grunted, looking over at Vex and Derivan. "I think figuring this out is gonna be a waste of your time," she said bluntly, then hesitated. "But it was nice to meet you. You guys seem pretty cool. Let us know if you find out something important, yeah?"

Noram's brows had furrowed a bit while she spoke, but he seemed to relax a bit when she said it was nice to meet them; he'd been expecting a fight, or something along those lines.

"She's... not usually so aggressive," Noram said apologetically, looking after his friend as she stormed up the stairs. Vex supposed, if he had to be fair, she wasn't really storming; maybe that was just the way she walked. Noram walked over to sit at their table, though he kept his distance from the two of them, still seeming a bit shy.

"She seems nice," Vex said, and he meant it. She didn't need to add on that last part; she'd done it only because she realized she was coming off too overbearing. Beside him, Derivan nodded, and Noram let out a relieved chuckle.

"She can be angry," Noram said. "But she usually means well. It's just, I've tried to talk to other people about this, and no one else wants to."

Vex exchanged glances with Derivan. "Think it's an infolock?"

"I do not know," Derivan said, then hesitated. "But... perhaps. The signs are similar."

"What's an infolock?" Noram asked, watching the both of them, and Vex quickly explained; when he was done, Noram's face was considerably paler.

"That's an existential crisis waiting to happen," he muttered. He frowned. "But then why am I excluded from it?"

"I don't know," Vex said.

"The rules are still unclear to us," Derivan added. "But it seems that you are excluded from the lock if you are involved in some way in its creation."

"I— but I didn't do anything!" Noram said. His eyes flicked left and right once, though, and Derivan seemed to catch on to the movement quickly; the armor leaned forward slightly, but when Noram flinched he moved back, evidently not wanting to intimidate the young lizardkin too much.

"You may not have realized it," Derivan said, his voice gentle. "Your friends mentioned your last dungeon expedition? When was that?"

"It was weeks ago," Noram said, but he looked stricken. "And this started happening after we came back... I didn't think anything I did was related, I swear."

"Did something happen in the dungeon?" Vex asked, worried. The timing — a few weeks ago — that was around the time they'd 'broken' the dungeon they were exploring. There were messages sent out too, about how fragments of that dungeon had been scattered into existing ones.

"No," Noram said quickly, and then sagged a little bit. "Yes. Maybe? I don't know. It was weird. I got separated from the others at one point, so if what you're saying about infolocks are true, it has to have happened then. But nothing weird happened. I just opened a door, and then I was back with the others."

"No system notifications?" Vex asked.

"None," Noram said, shaking his head.