Yana looks around the stone and wooden buildings with a measure of hidden scorn. He had managed to enter the "Hold" of the humans, and had expected something more impressive. The buildings nearest the walls were clearly made far worse than the ones closest to the center of the place. Yet, looking around he wondered at the limitations of the mages he had seen on the walls. Even though his own limitations with magic were dropping with his practice, he knew that a few moments of his time would see the buildings around him improve by leaps and bounds. Something that he had done a little of since arriving a few days before. Since it was important that he gather some information before wandering off, and while he understood that his sister had a guide. He seriously doubted that they had planned out what they were doing.
"Good afternoon, Yana." A tanned man waves, passing with an armload of lumber. Yana waves back with a wide smile on his face, finding this greeting fascinating. It had only taken a short time to encourage the people around him to be friendly. All it had cost was a little mana to improve their homes, while pretending to fix things with his hands. Though, he reflects that it is likely because he used shadows to appear more like the humans he had seen when coming here. It also needed a touch of light mana to create a mixture of mana that he called Illusion. It made creating a spell to disguise him easy and smooth. With the spell script seeming to make itself with only intent needed to keep it running.
"Yo, Howard." Yana, waves to another man, walking up to him. Howard was an older man, who was an overseer of the lumberyards. Stocky and with a face similar to the trees that they cut down, but he was more than willing to talk to someone instead of doing his job. The other man nodded to him, and moved over to speak to him in the shade.
"How's it going Carpenter Yana?" He asks holding out his hand to shake, which Yana takes with enthusiasm. He honestly didn't understand why Pyra seemed to have such a problem dealing with these simple creatures. Though he had more time to deal with the more clever dungeon born creatures that also liked to talk, and while humans sometimes acted erratically, they had certain patterns they followed more often than not.
"Just planning on moving north soon." Yana replies to the man, putting on a wide smile, the spell script in his hand working to smooth out any slips in his behaviors. This one was a combination of air, light, fire, and even water making something that affected the mind and senses. Basically, if Yana made an odd comment the man wouldn't even notice and it would smoothed out in his memory. Also it made the man a bit more accepting of Yana giving more information than he should.
"Ah, heading towards Lolacal or aiming for Restibue?" He asks, a tilt to his head, "Going to be hard getting to either with all the rebels that have been sighted around the area." He added, his voice going low, letting Yana know that it wasn't supposed to be talked about.
"Well, I felt like Restibue will likely be my first goal, even though I know it's more east than Lolacal." He says, tapping his chin with a finger, and even though it was clean and unbroken the other man's mind slide off the oddity, "Though I was thinking about visiting Amalyn, since I have family in that area." Harold nodded his head, ignoring the oddity of having family so far northeast.
"Well if you are planning on heading to Restibue, keep off the road since I.. well you know.. bandits." He said with a wink, "But, I think there is a caravan heading that way in a couple days. I heard the Lady is trying to get some help from Amalyn actually." Yana looks at him in interest, and the older man smiles and winks again.
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"It's just rumors o'course..." Harold says, lowering his voice more, "But rumors has it that the keeps been having some issues with the dungeon to the south, and some weird magic that made most of the town glow a while back." Yana nods in reply, he had heard similar rumors, and knew exactly what issues the keep was having with his Mother.
"O'course," Yana mutters copying the manner of speech, since it always seemed to put people at ease, and it was fun, "Well then, I will wait around for a bit. Better to play it safe these days." Yana glances to the sky which had opened a bit in their direction over the last few days. Harold looks towards the sky with a nervous look on his face.
"Yeah that be causing a lot of people issues." He says with a wave of his hand, and his eye going unfocused. Yana had seen several people doing this around town, and knew that it was them using the System. Over the last couple days he had noticed the mana that condensed having less focus, and seeming to become unraveled even before it finished. Similar to what happened down in his Mother's dungeon when he first tried to access the screens after the orb came into being. Though down there the effect made the mana just ripple and hardly move, and after tinkering with combining various amounts of mana to create different types. He had a theory that the "System" was actually using some kind of advanced mana type to create the windows one saw. With the orb disrupting mana combinations in it's presence it would make sense that it would disrupt the "System" greatly. Though the rip in the sky seemed to do more to it than just the orb alone. In fact he would hazard that the orb would normally just store mana for a use, and the tear was something far different but related to the orb in some way.
"You alright?" Harold asks, looking at Yana with a worried expression. People had been acting strange around town recently, and Yana worries that the spell script was wearing off. Nodding his head, he waves the man's concerns away.
"Fine, fine, just thinking about what I should prepare and who I need to bother to get on that caravan." He says with another smile, and Harold seems to relax at his words.
'Course, you will be wanting to talk to Timothy over at the warehouse near the Keep. He should be able to give you both a price and a time..." He pauses for a second before continuing, "Make sure you say that Harold sent you. He will know and give ya a better deal." Yana, thanks the man before walking away towards the Keep. Generally, he avoided the area around there since he could see the magic wards and fields overlapping the place like a solid wall of mana. It didn't feel very nice either, and he often wondered if the flows of green-purple mana he saw around the place were intentional or not. Though he had a feeling that it was tied to the fact that they seemed to come out of the ground, and he had known that people were being found underground in cells. Entering a store he made his way through the customers, and towards the boy manning the counter. The boy starts but bows to him, and opens the short wooden gate to the back rooms.
Yana had used some mind magic when he got here to secure a workspace for himself, and the old man running this place thought he was a distant relative come to visit. Which gave Yana a great place to rest underground and perform his experiments. So when he walks out into the basement the orb pulses at his arrival, it's invisible pull drawing in various mana sticking to Yana's clothes and person. It turned out that some people used mana in a crude way to mark people of interest, and as a new arrival he kept getting marked by them. Though they didn't work and were destroyed in the presence of his orb. Patting it's surface Yana walked towards the set of stone steps leading deeper into the ground, and he saw the green-purple mana streaming up from the darkness. With a grin he decides he will attach himself to the caravan later. For now it was time to find out the secrets of that mana type, and what the humans had set up their base on.