The last couple days had been exhausting for a certain shadowmancer. After the takeover of Florence, he'd spent his time off of work either studying in the Academy or watching the chaos of the city try and adjust to its new leadership. Mostly the latter. From his understanding, there was no such thing as a pretty regime change, and this was doing nothing to challenge that assumption. It wasn't nearly as bad as it could be - one of the benefits of having unmatched power was that it didn't encourage people to try and riot against it or each other - but it was pretty clear that people weren't being treated kindly. If it wasn't for the disaster that was the last encounter with Sparky, Tristan would have tried and correct that.

Unfortunately for the people of Florence, that fight had been an utter disaster for him. On top of that, his own goals were undeniably going to be benefited from the city being encouraged towards making new discoveries. Given how he still had yet to see anything proving the new leadership was outright ending the lives of it's subjects, he just couldn't bring himself to interfere again. It wasn't as though he was doing nothing, though. He was regularly bringing food to the needy, plus scaring away thugs from people who didn't deserve or couldn't afford being hassled. It wasn't much, given what he could do, but it was plenty to keep the poor alive. Anyone wealthier wasn't in enough danger to warrant his time and energy.

Tristan had been returning from a profitable trip to a nearby baker, a few loaves of bread in hand for a trio of orphans, when he heard the commotion. A crowd of townspeople all running from one direction was a good enough indicator that something was going wrong over there. Deciding that the bread delivery could wait a few minutes so that he could solve the more pressing problem, the mage summoned a few basic humanoid constructs to provide backup as he ran towards the source of the terror.

Instead of an angry porcupine, chick with a spear, or even an army of thugs, Tristan quickly discovered the problem was something unexpected. It would probably be far less straightforward to deal with, as well, which was a problem in itself. The snake creature from before, presumably a mage, was wandering around and scaring anyone unlucky enough to be outside half to death. Sighing, the young man had his constructs take up positions in a row behind him. He was hoping this wouldn't turn into a fight, and having them scatter around the battlefield might be taken as a sign of aggression, which he wanted to avoid.

Tristan pointed at the creature with a loaf of bread and shouted to it. "Given how these people just experienced a hostile takeover by magic they don't understand, don't you think it's probably a bad idea to go around and giving them all heart attacks by showing them your own magic?" Resisting the urge to passive-aggressively sigh again, Tristan continued, his voice getting slightly quieter as he went on. "What's up, Ekans? What are you doing here, especially looking like that?"

Tristan's expression gradually shifted from annoyance to confusion as the giant reptile spoke, and then took a major jump towards the latter as said snake turned into a girl. It was one thing to accept that most strange things in the world could probably be blamed on dumb kids were either a weird sense of humor or no sense of subtlety. It was another thing entirely to watch one of the strange things turn into one of the dumb kids in question. And, hell, he knew what was going on and still had difficulty wrapping his head around what was happening around him. He could only imagine how it was for anyone not clued in to the existence of mages.

"Yeah, that was me," he said with a hint of hesitance. "You're saying that you just spooked half of the city and risked angering Sparkplug and his mafia because you were trying to get my attention?" That... seemed like a bad plan. There wasn't even any guarantee that he'd still be around. Or off work. Or not busy with something else that he couldn't get away from. As it was, he had still been in the middle of something and it was only by luck that he'd arrived before some goons. "Well, here, I'm needing to do something else, so if you're wanting to talk, you'll have to do it while walking with me."

He immediately started heading back in the direction he came from, the shadow constructs quickly dissolving into nothingness behind him. "I'd shake your hand, but, well, mine are kinda full," he said apologetically with wave of the bread. "As for what I'm still doing here, I imagine it's the same reason you're here for. Gotta make sure the city doesn't go belly up from some violent jackass taking it over."