Despite the itch to use the new ideas I had thanks to the ritualistic creation of the Grandmother’s temporary body, I knew that this wasn’t the ti to experint. No matter how big an improvent I might be able to make on my scrying constructs, the events that I wanted to observe were happening right now. There was simply no ti, sothing I couldn’t change, no matter how much it annoyed .
So, instead of trying to improve upon my previous work, I simply used what I had and could use. Scrying Constructs, ford from Darkness, anchored by small pieces of conjured Ice, interwoven with Wind Magic. These had probably done more for than any combat magic, allowing to gather knowledge without risking myself or one of my allies. They had their limitations, as every piece of magic had, but their limits were easy to accommodate and work around. They might just be the magic I utilised most by now, simply because there was no ti at which gathering information was categorically the wrong approach. You could never know enough, as long as the need to gather information didn’t prevent you from acting upon incomplete information. As was the case here. No matter how much I wanted to improve my constructs, now was the ti to act, not experint.
Thus, a conspiracy of ravens took flight from Jademoon Tower, the different constructs largely controlled by the Spirit I had bound into the accessory I wore around my arm. By using the spirit, I could focus on directing the constructs rather than the chanics of their flight, allowing to spread my awareness across a much wider area. A part of wondered if the sensation of wide-scale awareness and observation was similar to the experience I imagined the Gods to have. Could they simply observe the world from up-high, only interacting indirectly or through their constructs?
It would be interesting to learn just how the awareness of the different gods worked. Could they only observe sothing in contact with a part of their domain? It would explain why it had taken Sunna until morning to smite , back on Mundus, when the Nidhögg and I were wrecking the elven forest. Or was their focus even more limited, their observation limited to things close to one of their worshippers, possibly in addition to limitations thanks to their domain? Once again, I had so many questions, but I wouldn’t get any answers until I learned them for myself.
Answers to other questions, naly those centred around the Blessed City, were a lot more available. Practically on the tip of my fingers, ready to be plucked out of the fog of ignorance. Exactly what I wanted to do now.
My scrying constructs easily covered the distance between Jademoon Tower and the Blessed City. Their flight allowed them to ignore obstacles that would hinder any groundbound explorer, and their nature ant they didn’t tire, didn’t get distracted; they only followed my directions.
And, in this case, that ant that they allowed to observe the Blessed City, and what I saw made stare in disbelief for a second or two. It was almost enough to disrupt my connection to the scrying constructs; only experience and habit kept in control. Without that, I would probably have lost control, possibly even disrupted the connection of the Bound Spirit, ultimately unravelling the constructs and causing their solid parts to fall from the sky.
From above, it looked as if the entire population of the Blessed City was concentrated in a single area. And, as large groups of people tend to be when in a very confined area, they were loud. My constructs were too high to make out anything useful, but I could easily hear the deafening noise, making it fairly obvious that this was one massive party.
A number of fires were burning, but trying to tell which had been prepared and set intentionally for warmth and which had started because soone had been careless was difficult. Hel, so of them might even have been set intentionally to cause destruction. Regardless, I could see two buildings burning, one that looked scorched, and a number of fires ranging from campfires to a massive bonfire, all with people standing around them, apparently celebrating. So people were dancing, so fighting, others appeared to be talking, and a few might be playing so form of ga or sothing like that. Lastly, quite a few looked to be fornicating, right there, out in the open and in the snow.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
That alone made wonder, weren’t male parts supposed to shrink when exposed to the cold? How would that work when fornicating in the snow? Wasn’t the male part supposed to be sufficiently large, making shrinkage problematic? Or maybe the people down there in the snow were so far gone, possibly in the grip of the drugs Lia and I had unleashed, that it just didn’t matter, that they weren’t acting with any thought?
It was hard to tell, and if I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. For once, my curiosity was tempered and stopped by the simple fact that I didn’t want to know the details, especially as finding them out would require to investigate far too many bodies and their intimate parts. The only parts I wanted to investigate were Sigmir’s, once I brought her back to life.
The realisation that bringing her back to life included building her body, including those parts, distracted briefly, causing one of my scrying constructs to drop in altitude a little too far. Realising that it would hit Sunna’s ward barrier any mont, I pulled back my mind. I even drew back the controlling spirit, letting the magic imbued fade away rapidly in an attempt to obfuscate my interest and presence.
A few monts later, I realised that the construct was already below the barrier’s height, aning the raven should have been disintegrated by the powerful ward, the Darkness it was primarily composed of, burned away by Sunna’s divine power.
But nothing of the sort happened, as if the barrier was completely gone. The construct simply faded away as the magic I usually held together unravelled, but that was simply because I had dismissed it.
Needing confirmation, I let another of the constructs descend. It, too, managed to drop below the ward’s height and, again, nothing happened to it. I could see through it as usual, and now, I could even make out individual voices from the noise I had heard from up high. Mostly from a group of people who were, for so reason, singing Christmas Carols, their combined, relatively harmonious voice strong enough to carry up into the air.
But theirs was only one of many groups down there, so I continued to investigate. Only to find that this was one big ss. The people were completely out of it, their inhibitions completely gone thanks to the binary drug Lia and I had deployed, causing them to live out their desires to the fullest. How that interacted with the missing ward, I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling that the ward, and its mind control function, had been a strong factor to keep cohesion in the Blessed City. Now that enforced cohesion was gone, leading to the complete and utter chaos I was observing below.
After observing the chaos for a few minutes, I decided that there was little sensible data I could gather. If I wanted to learn about the habits, mating or otherwise, of completely unrestrained humans, this would have been a pri opportunity. But those habits held little importance to ; there were other things I wanted to learn.
Naly, I wanted to know what had happened to Lorgar. I doubted that the alchemical concoction had been strong enough to subdue him, so he either had to be out and about, mixing it up in the ss below, or he was sowhere else, doing sothing.
Finding out what he was up to might just be the most important thing, if only because he was the nucleus around which the Blessed City had originally ford. He could very well be the reason why the chaos reford into so form of order, though I doubted it. The people below, the entire ss, had all taken up a life of its own. To reforge the old order would take a miracle beyond even the Gods. It could only work if a large group of utterly chaotic and out-of-control humans collectively found sense and reason. Even without the drugs running through their system, I would consider that impossible; with the drugs, it was even more difficult.
Still, I wanted to find out where the stupid pony was while his city burned down around him, his people gripped in a frenzy of debauchery and excess. Chuckling to myself, I thought of the downfall of Ro, one of the original ‘Blessed Cities’, and the stories around its downfall. There was the tale of Nero, who had allegedly played the fiddle while his city burned, and there were tales of Caligula, who had planned to elevate his favourite horse to Consul. Here, we had a burning city, led by a horse.
Who might be playing the fiddle right now.
User Comments
0 comments from readers