My new rune posed an interesting question to me, a question I hadn’t anticipated. Previously, I had mostly worked from a standpoint of normal physics, but the “Diamond Dust”-Rune challenged that, making me question just how accurate my previous assumptions were. The posed question was about the phase-state, what was a solid, what was a liquid, even, to a point, what was a gas. Normally, there were transitions that could only be accomplished by energy-transfer but with the created Diamond Dust, I started to wonder. The behaviour changed in ways that I didn’t quite understand, at times acting like a fluid, at times acting like an elastic solid, at times acting like a rigidly granular solid, it was mind boggling.

For three days, since learning the rune in the Astral River I had tried to understand the substance I could create using it, playing around with it and transforming it, but the only thing I had managed was getting a headache and more questions.

On the other hand, I had managed to repair my Staff, using the night after full moon to gain as much of a boost from my class-ability as I could and carefully repairing the various cracks and pits, making sure that the structure was still solid while the runes I had carved in remained viable.

But that was only a side-project that had to be taken care of.

Mainly, we moved, especially when we realised that the Centaurs had a larger reach than I had anticipated and that they were patrolling it aggressively. None of us knew if they were actually looking for us or if they merely tried to claim territory, but we noticed quite a few patrols moving through the countryside west of us.

One evening, I remembered that I had asked Adra to talk to the centaurs we had taken prisoner before I had used them to fuel my blood magic, back then, I had mainly done so out of the idea that it was the thing to do, when you make prisoners, you interrogate them and forgot about it afterwards, never asking Adra what she actually had found out. And after the questionable use of my blood magic, she had never brought it up on her own. But now that we might need the information she had gained, I decided to bring it up.

“Adra, do you remember, back when we captured those centaurs, you asked them questions, right? Did you ask about their plans, about their organisation and things like that?” I asked, curious what Adra remembered.

She blinked for a moment, slightly confused at the question hitting her from the left field, right after dinner.

“Yes, I remember.” she began, before closing her eyes to aid her recollection. “And yes, I asked quite a few questions. Not that they told me all that much, mostly telling me their names and personal details. I’m not sure why, but one of them told me about his wife and that they had a child on the way.” she continued, her brows furrowing.

“The idea is that people have a apprehension to harm those they empathise with. By telling you about themselves, about their families, they want you to realise, ‘Oh, the being in front of me is just like me, we have something in common.’ which might make you hesitant to see them as enemies that need to be dealt with. For example, I doubt that there was a single Centaur in that camp that has the ability to speak with animals or knows the wolven language.” I explained when Adra fell silent in contemplation.

“Seeing them as just animals helps to hunt them, just as anyone of us would at least be hesitant to eat a centaur, right?” I continued my thought, piecing together a few things from scant evidence. Not that I could prove my hypothesis, but if felt right. Most conquerors in the history of Earth had employed the idea that the people they conquered were some sort of lesser creatures and on Mundus, with the wolves of the northern wind outwardly more similar to regular animals, it was very likely to be done as well.

“Anyway, I apologise for interrupting you, Adra.” I shook my head, ending my mental tangent.

“It’s alright.” Adra waved me off, before continuing her recollection.

“They told me they were part of the Altin Urda but I’m not really sure what that it, most likely their tribe or clan. Otherwise, they didn’t say anything, they didn’t even make threats that their people would get revenge, only spoke about themselves.” she explained, shaking her head as she tried to understand them. Apparently, they hadn’t even pleaded for their live, simply tried to make her emphasise with them. Maybe it had reminded her of her own time as captive in Tegi, something she didn’t talk about, at least not with me.

“So, we lack any kind of useful information.” I concluded with a frown.

“But at the same time, I doubt that they have good information on us, the only clues that might give away that we were involved with the trouble here are the direction we are coming from and the trinkets we got from the wolves. Those might give away our identity, if that ‘Altin Urda’ actually knows who they fought against. Hopefully, we get an idea about their operation when we reach the road, we might even want to backtrack a little, to check if there is some sort of checkpoint.” I mused, mostly to myself.

“What do you mean, checkpoint?” Sigmir asked, sounding curious.

“That’s how I would try to control an area. Set up checkpoints at the entry-points and patrol the rest, if you don’t have some sort of pass from the entry-point, you are an enemy. At the end of the day, I doubt that they would want to choke off all trade, that would be just silly.” I explained, trying to remember how border-crossings worked on Earth.

“Mhm, makes sense. Trying to actually control every stretch of land would be next to impossible, unless you have some serious magical power, and even then, it’d be difficult, simply because of the sheer distances involved.” Adra agreed after a thinking about it for a moment.

“For now, I think I’ll try to see what is going on around us.” I decided, looking up into the sky, happy that a couple of clouds were obscuring the moon and giving me ample shadows to work my magic with. As I considered that, I realised that, depending how the magical definition of shadow was, we were obscured from the major light-source anyway, the moon merely reflecting the sun’s light. Maybe the fact that Mundus was between me and the sun would allow me to treat everything as “Shadow”, at least during the night.

“That could work.” Lenore agreed, having picked up my thoughts. “Let’s try it?” she asked, making me grin.

“Sure. I appreciate your help.” I agreed, waving my hand to create a comfortable seat for me. Creating the icy armchair I had used a few times was quite easy by now, even if I had improved it a bit by using the strange qualities of Diamond Dust for the upholstery. Or maybe calling it snow-pillow would be better. I could hear Lenore groan at the bad puns but nobody had asked her to listen to my thoughts.

As we had done a few times before, we split the workload. I was responsible for the magic, creating a scrying window and a vessel to move it, while Lenore did the actual moving and scouting, simply because she was quite good at moving in three-dimensional space, even if she normally used her wings.

Feeling whimsical, I changed the vessel a little, normally, I used a simple, shadow-black ball of magic, nothing more than a small cloud but today, I wanted something different. It took a little more effort but I was quite able to change it from that cloud-shape into the shape of a raven, black as the night, with a pair of silvery, slightly luminous eyes.

To test the idea that during the night, everything was in the shadows, I created the raven in the shadow of a nearby tree, allowing me to get a good look, before Lenore took over and it took off. There was no sound as it did, with it being merely a creation of magic and darkness, but it looked quite impressive and moved at high speed, quite a bit faster than Lenore. But more important, if the magical construct crashed into something in the darkness, it was just an amalgamation of magic, not a living being I cared about, like Lenore.

I kept the spell going for twenty, maybe thirty, minutes before Lenore gave me a mental signal that she was done.

“I found the road and didn’t see any enemies between us and it. If we keep our pace, we’ll make it there some time tomorrow, maybe around noon.” she reported. “There were no patrols visible between our current location and the road, but there are fires a little further west.” she warned. I told the others what we had found, before we started to get ready for the night.