A Jaded Life

It would be so much easier to decide what to do back on Mundus. There, I always had the idea that it was just a game in the back of my mind, that nothing I did to the world at large would have any real consequences. Sigmir, and my companions to a lesser degree, had turned into something real, something that often made me wonder if the difference between a biologically born lifeform and a synthetical was truly important, though now I knew those questions had been pretty pointless. Either way, the world of Mundus itself hadn’t been truly real to me, until the astral fire swept across the world and Change’d it. But I couldn’t even pretend that the world around me wasn’t real and I didn’t have any intention to try, so anything I did could and would have wide-ranging consequences that I needed to consider.

If there was a budding town of Sunna-worshipping people out there, the smart, but ruthless, thing to do was to nip it in the bud, to conjure up a storm of Ice, or maybe one of Fire, and wipe it all out. Sure, I wasn’t as powerful now as I had been on Mundus, but I was getting there and even advancing on a much broader front. As I was now, I might be unable to conjure up a storm like the one I had conjured on Mundus to sweep Hatterion but I’d get fairly close, especially if I was willing to sacrifice a few dozen people again.

So, the real question was, how many people was I willing to kill? Not just in self-defence or to defend my family but preemptively, simply because they might become a danger in the future. The simple answer was obvious. If they were affiliated with anything I considered a threat, they were a valid target to be destroyed. Straight, simple but now, in a real world with real people on the line, I wasn’t quite so certain it was a path I wanted to travel down.

What would my mother think if I decided to murder anybody I considered troublesome, not for anything they had done but for something they might do in the future? Especially as I knew myself and had, looking back at my actions on Mundus, acquired a mindset of vigilance that bordered on paranoid, meaning I could see myself starting to consider everyone and everything not directly in my group to be troublesome and thus, if I followed that mindset, a valid target.

My efforts on Mundus, even if largely taken in ignorance of the real circumstances, had destroyed a world already, was I willing to make that two, simply because the people might become hostile at some point in the future? Because, considering things realistically, that was what the world would end up as, covered in Ice, with only the people of my group still around.

Was that the sort of world I wanted for my daughters? One where I’d likely be able to thrive and be content, even if I’d have to be creative when it came to getting food, but could my daughters be happy in a world of Ice? Lia wouldn’t be able to thrive, I had noticed that she enjoyed observing people and I knew that she either needed to rely on me for food or hunt humans and similar prey. Similarly, Luna enjoyed discussing magic with different people and guiding them on the Arcane Path gently pushing Lady Hecate onto them as a side-effect. To do that, she needed people and if I went all frozen Queen, there’d be nothing left.

So, ultimately, I needed to find a path where I’d only destroy those who attack me and mine, without risking traversing down the slippery slope of my paranoia and taking out people who might become enemies in the future. Because I would slide down that slope like a slick sheet of Ice, never looking back until I was safe. Safe and sound, with nobody around. Or maybe with a lot of bodies, because there would be, if I ever went down that route. Maybe not directly around me, but there would be bodies. Dead bodies.

Closing my eyes, I pushed away images of a world covered in Ice, with a few of the more visually pleasing specimen of humanity preserved in all their frozen glory for eternity and focused on possible paths I could take. Paths that wouldn’t take me down in this particular direction while also keeping myself and my companions safe.

Snorting to myself, I realised that I still needed more information. Was the society these people were from aggressive, was it focused on the Faith of Sunna or was Sunna simply one of many deities they worshipped and it was simply bad luck that I had stumbled across the symbol that started all of this? In addition, I should find out how many people were in their community and if their overall structure was secular or religious, not just what deities were worshipped there. Stars, I needed a complete list of things I didn’t know about them and needed to know, or I could sit here and bumble around forever.

For now, I needed to find that community, and get information and food, once I had those, I could make a relatively informed decision on how to proceed.

Finding the community should have been fairly simple. Silva could sniff out their tracks, allowing us to trace them back until we got to where they started at. Or so I thought, sadly, when we started down the valley, it didn’t take long for us to realise that these people were just a little smarter than I had hoped and had employed at least some measure of obfuscation. Or maybe it had been a coincidence that their path had taken them across a lot of rocky ground where they left little to no physical tracks or that they had travelled through a river for some time, making things even harder.

By the end of the night, I was fairly certain that we wouldn’t be able to follow their tracks backwards but that didn’t mean we couldn’t follow them. Which is what we started to do, move back towards their camp and keep an eye on them while they packed things up to head further into the mountains. Once they were gone, we remained behind, snug in a small cave I dug from the rocks around us, keeping Lia, Alex and myself out of the Sun.

Sadly, having to hide from the Sun meant actually following them was fairly difficult. We couldn’t move at the same time they did and if the obfuscation we had noticed while trying to backtrace their steps were actually deliberate, they might manage to shake us off, even if I doubted they would manage over the course of a single day. Silva was an excellent tracker and I had a few tricks that helped, though as demonstrated by our failure to find their origin, neither of us was perfect.

Luckily, while following them physically was a problem for Lia and me, I wasn’t limited to the physical, I had other methods to keep track of somebody. On Mundus, my scrying constructs had been incredibly useful and while I hadn’t used them much on Terra, I could get back into the habit, even if the lack of Lenore made it a little awkward. She had been the one to handle mobility and movement of the constructs, something her avian mind was a lot more adept at than my humanoid one.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t learn. I had learned to fly with my cloak eventually. Well, mostly, as things were now, I wasn’t truly flying, maybe calling it hovering with an attitude would be more appropriate. Either way, I could move within three dimensions without too much trouble, so I should be able to create a scrying construct and have it follow these people.

For that, the first step was, as so often, to conjure up my throne, allowing me to anchor myself a lot easier and thus freeing up mental resources to use on my magic. Once the throne was up and I was sitting comfortably, I wove the shadows in our cave into something solid, using the shape of a Raven in memory of my dear friend, before sending it into the sky, my physical eyes closed as my mind was soaring through the air.

From the air, it was fairly simple to find the people who had been camping here, despite the time I had needed to conjure my throne and prepare myself. They had simply followed the valley uphill, taking their time and moving in a practical and cautious way.

This might take some time, but maybe I would be able to get some additional information if I twisted things just right. And even if I didn’t get any information, this was excellent training for both my physical flying and for future scrying.