“Fascinating,” I couldn’t help but mutter as I observed so strange figures through my scrying construct. With the long days Lia had to spend cooped up in whatever shelter we had prepared for the day, I had taken to use my avian constructs to explore the area around us in a wider range than exploring it on foot would allow . Using the constructs had the added benefit that I didn’t need to return to base; I rely had to dismiss the construct and wait a bit for my Astral Power to regenerate, sothing I could easily do while walking, thus allowing for more ti spent exploring.
Today, I noticed movent on a forested mountain slope and decided to investigate further by letting the construct fly over the slope in question. What I found was quite surprising. I had expected so animal, sothing along the lines of wolves, maybe a bear, cougar or a wolverine, all beasts we had seen in the area recently. However, what I found was sothing entirely different.
On second glance, from a lot closer than my earlier first glance, I thought it was so sort of ape. It had a humanoid body plan, making wonder if it was a human, but it was also completely clad in mud-brown fur, making that idea sowhat questionable. Plus, the thing didn’t walk upright but hunched over, its arms acting as a second pair of legs and giving it a weirdly loping gait. Thanks to its pelt, the thing blended into the forest incredibly well, especially as it had so twigs and branches trapped in the coarse fur, almost like one of those stealth suits I had seen in movies.
Content to keep watching the thing through my construct, I had the raven land on one of the higher branches, curious about what this thing might do and what it actually might be. The gait, now that I thought about it, vaguely reminded of so videos I had seen in the past of apes making their way through the forest. I think those had been gorillas, but given that we were sowhere in the vicinity of what once had been the border between the US and Canada, I doubted there were any gorillas in the area. Or any apes, other than humans, for that matter, the closest wild, non-human primates were living sowhere in xico and south of that.
Granted, the Change might have redistributed all kinds of animals, so who knew? By now, I was sowhat numb to the alterations to our world that the Change had wrought, and yet, the world managed to surprise occasionally. As was the case on this occasion, the surprise ca the mont I saw the strange ape’s face for the first ti. Or rather, the eyes were the surprise, well, the lack of eyes. The thing had the fairly familiar pits of fire I knew from the Shattered, and here, they were filled with a curious silvery-blue fire. A familiar colour, though not in this particular context, usually, a very similar silvery-blue sheen was produced when I worked with Ice Astral Power. Curious, how very curious.
Curious enough to make want to investigate closely, to see if this was a unique creature or if there were more of it. If there were, catching one of two could yield so interesting results, if only because the thing looked like a Shattered, but, by all indications, it was sothing else. Or rather, it had beco sothing else.
Watching through the scrying construct revealed very little. The thing was just moving around in the forest, maybe searching for sothing; it was sowhat hard to tell whether it was or if it was just moving about randomly. It didn’t appear to be hunting, its movent was too casual and idle for that, making it appear more like sobody out for a stroll than sobody moving with intent but I might just be projecting, it wasn’t like I had a ton of experience with these creatures.
“Mom, you want to take a nap now?” Luna interrupted my observations, making pull a bit of my attention back to my body. We usually tried to make sure at least one of us was awake at all tis, and by the looks of it, Luna was up now, giving the option to sleep. Not that her being awake really changed anything; Silva had been dozing next to the whole ti, keeping an ear out for trouble, and Lia had been awake the whole ti, trying to create a new alchemical potion. I believe her current project used so fruits, berries and herbs in an attempt to make the equivalent of a restorative potion.
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Not that she thought she’d be able to make sothing as exaggerated as those found in video gas, but sothing to speed up the natural healing by an order of magnitude would be pretty impressive. To have wounds close in hours instead of days or bones in days instead of weeks would be a great accomplishnt, though it would need so testing to ensure it didn’t suffer from the sa problems Luna’s magic occasionally struggled with. Naly, differentiating between healthy growth and unhealthy growth, the second could beco cancer far too quickly.
“No, thank you,” I replied, keeping most of my focus on my scrying construct and my eyes closed, “I found sothing interesting nearby and am keeping an eye on that. I don’t think I’ll sleep any ti soon unless that interesting thing turns out to be a lot less impressive than I think it is,” I explained.
“Could you show ? I’m a bit bored,” Luna admitted, and I could feel her sitting down on my lap, sothing that had been a lot easier when she was smaller. Now, she was almost as tall as , and even that was only thanks to the growth induced by my Draconic Heritage. Otherwise, she’d be towering above , making it even more awkward. Sure, every parent had to accept that their children grew up, but it usually took more than a few months for that to happen.
“Sure,” I readily accepted and opened my eyes while putting my arms around my daughter. Then, I conjured an orb of water, letting it hover above my hands and projected the images I could see through my scrying construct into the orb, allowing Luna to see what the scrying construct was observing. Usually, I used tricks like this to create a layer of separation between my mind and the construct but it worked to share what I was seeing, too.
While we were watching, I told Luna what I had observed so far. Thankfully, around that ti, the strange shattered finally found what it was looking for, naly, a shrub with quite a few berries it started to pick, one after the other. That action also demonstrated that the thing was sowhat intelligent, as it wove together so sticks and leaves to make a basket, allowing it to transport its harvest. The need to transport indicated that it wasn’t a solitary creature. If it was, it would have eaten its fill and remained nearby to harvest the bush further once it was hungry again. Or it might have enough intelligence to store its harvest sowhere, indicating a different sort of intelligence. So, to see what was going on, my crow continued to follow the thing while Luna and I kept watching as it hopefully moved back to its community or lair, whichever it had.
To my surprise, it didn’t move back down the mountains and into the forested valley below. Instead, it moved further up the mountains, heading into so fairly rough terrain, maybe even above the tree line, where shrubs, grass and rocks dominated the landscape. There, the pelt of the thing demonstrated its usefulness even more, making it incredibly difficult to spot unless one knew where to look. And even then, it could blend in with the environnt to the point that the eye easily lost track of it. A simple blink could be enough for it to vanish until its movent drew the eye back to it.
Quite impressive stealth, though it would be interesting to see just how well its stealth would stand up to direct observation. My scrying constructs were good but they couldn’t completely replicate my own attributes, to say nothing of the additional senses I had thanks to so of my traits.
“Oh, my,” Luna muttered once the thing reached its destination. There, hidden between the boulders, rocks and shrubs, was a small group of these altered Shattered. They were just moving about, displaying an obvious group dynamic and social behaviour. At the sa ti, they also demonstrated higher intelligence when they shared a few of the gathered berries before storing the rest between so rocks. A closer look revealed that they had stored quite a bit of food there, making their planning quite obvious. It also showed that they had so ability to hunt and even butcher at, as they had so disembowelled carcasses stored in their larder, though so distance away from the fruits. More investigation would be required, but I had already realised that when I saw the smaller version of these creatures run around their valley. Those had either been children when they Shattered, or these creatures had already produced offspring. It would be interesting to see which was true.
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