For a moment, Lia and I were just sitting there drenched in the water from the exploded Water Mirror Spell, neither of us quite knowing what to think, do or say. The explosion had been incredibly violent, making me rather glad that I hadn’t tried to use a more direct method to scry, like projecting my mind or traversing the Astral River to get a better look. If I had, and whatever had destroyed my spellwork had hit me, I would be in serious trouble. Or maybe I’d be just dead if the spell had been a psychic equivalent to the Mind Magic attacks I occasionally used, it could easily damage my mind, the spiritual substance, or even feed back into my brain and fry that. I had done so myself, so I knew just how dangerous Mind Magic could be.

“What have you seen before the mirror exploded?” I asked Lia, my eyes already closed to focus on the image I had seen only so very briefly.

“Dunno, there were some weird shapes, those glowy things. They kinda looked like an Umbrella, didn’t they?” Lia asked, sounding rather musing, as if she was trying to make sense of the surreal scene we had observed.

“Yeah, I think those were mushrooms of some kind but I’m not sure. The glow might have been magical activity, or something entirely different. But did you see that one tree? I think it was moving around, not being tethered to the ground,” I told her, focusing on the parts of the weird image that might give me deeper insight into the Withered.

There had been the expected parts, the damaged city, the ruined buildings, even the Withered Husks, Hunters and the odd Withered Skulker had been expected. But what I hadn’t expected were giant, strange-looking mushrooms with glowing caps, mushrooms the size of a small tree, if I judged their size against one of the Withered Husks next to them. Neither had I expected a tree that was purposely moving, similar to the moving trees I had observed on Mundus, before Adra had drained that one big tree.

Bringing that image back to the forefront of my mind, I realised that what I had briefly seen was part of a park. Not a huge one, at least if I recalled things from before the change correctly, but a nicely sized one, one where people could just relax around a small lake. A bit of greenery in the middle of the city, with some fitness equipment, a playground, the usual things people wanted to have in a park. Only now, that park seemed to be the centre of Racoon City, it had even spawned umbrella-shaped mushrooms. A part of me was amused at the irony, had been since I started calling the area infected by weird pseudo-Undead Racoon City, only now, with those mushrooms, I started to wonder if there was some higher power laughing at me, or at humanity. Maybe even at all sapient life, there were some strangely coincidental names on Mundus, too, things that I had thought were easter eggs by the developers, but how did that work without developers? I doubted that the Gods themselves had been so bored to purposely arrange things on Mundus for Travellers to run into, certainly not for mere jokes. Though maybe they did, there were Gods of Mischief after all, so I couldn’t confidently say that no God would ever make some effort for a prank.

“Gah,” I let out a grumble of annoyance, this was one of those things that might never make sense. It might just be part of reality, or it might be some sort of mixture, partially spawned by my own mind and its constant search for patterns, as if I was seeing shapes in the cloud, only not with clouds but with names and connections.

“Mother, are you alright?” Lia asked, looking at me with concern at my outburst.

“Yes, just annoyed that the world sometimes makes no sense. Or rather, that it makes sense in ways it really shouldn’t,” I shook my head, briefly focusing on my magic to get rid of the water we had been soaked in.

“What do you think? Should we continue fighting the Withered as we have, trying to get into that park we have just seen or should we try something else? The EXP we get here are good, but I’m worried that the Withered profit from the constant fighting themselves. They might have a hivemind developed enough to spread the knowledge, the experience of fighting us, to others who have yet to face us. They might use us, just as we use them,” I looked at Lia, seeking her opinion. I simply wasn’t sure, there was not enough information for me to make an informed decision and making decisions based on my gut feeling was always difficult for me. In the spur of the moment, sure, I could act on instinct but in a situation that I could think about? I would always second-guess myself, changing my opinion countless times until I either got more information or was forced into action by outside circumstances.

“We are getting stronger, of that I’m certain. Why don’t we just keep doing that and if we ever realise that we can’t fight the Withered any longer, we leave? It’s not like they would swallow the world, would they? If they are bound to that park, we certainly are not bound to this area, even if it’s the one we know. We can just go somewhere else if the worst thing happens,” Lia suggested and I nodded, considering her opinion.

She was right, in a way, we could always leave. I doubted that the Withered were some sort of global phenomenon and if they tried to spread, I was confident that there were ways to defeat them, if I gained enough power. Overwhelming personal power, maybe a Nexus to tap into, with those two things there were few things I wasn’t willing to challenge. Gaining control over a Nexus was something I wanted to do anyway, but sadly, it was a goal for future me. Currently, the Astral River was still too roiled up, too muddled, for me to find where the Nexuses were, maybe they had yet to fully form, so I couldn’t even try to travel there. Obviously, the same went for everyone else, without established Nexuses, gaining control over them was impossible.

“We’d have to prepare some contingencies,” I began, already trying to figure out how to make sure we’d always have a way out, “If we keep fighting the Withered, they’ll most likely manage to trap us at some point. It’s unrealistic to think we’ll always manage to come out ahead, they’ve got to wise up at some point,” I explained, getting a nod in response. Thinking that their tactics and patterns would remain static was fine in an actual video game but in reality, it would see us dead.

“And we should warn the people at Apple Gate Farm. Sure, we told them about the Withered when we visited last week but they should know what we discovered now,” I added. Hopefully, the people at Apple Gate Farm would continue to see me as an ally, even if I brought them even more bad news. Shooting the messenger was foolish but sadly, people could be fools.

“Say, do you think you could simply conjure up that mirror again?” Lia asked, gesturing to the area where the Water Mirror had exploded. “It would give us another glance, maybe we’d be able to see more. Or maybe you could get us another angle, so we see something else.”

“I should be able to, yes. At least once I’ve regained my Astral Power, that spell takes quite a bit out of me,” I nodded, “We’ll have to see how quickly they can destroy it, the previous time makes me think it was almost reflexively. I’ll have to figure out how far that reflex extends if it was a reflex and not a deliberate action taken after they noticed the initial attempt.”

Thinking about it, Lia was right. There was, at least at the moment, nothing that could stop me from simply trying to get another angle, I had briefly seen the area so I might be able to cast the spell without having to use the area I had been in as an initial focus point. If I managed that, the Withered might fail to immediately notice me, it might give me those precious few seconds. I doubted I would be able to see a lot, but compared to the brief glimpse we had now, it would help, at least I hoped it would. Alternatively, I might be able to establish a focal point above the area, still using the rain as a medium. It was falling but there was always water in the air, similar to how I had used the rain just now. It was an interesting idea and one that had quite a bit of potential. Even a spell that wasn’t really my own had so much to be discovered about it, I could only sigh at the sheer complexity and magnificence of magic. Hopefully, I’d never master it all. How boring would my life be, if there was nothing new to discover? Could that even be called living, or would I merely survive?

Taking a few minutes to regain my Astral Power and, much more important, put my mind back into a relaxed, balanced state, I used the Water Mirror spell again. More information was always useful when it came to making decisions about an enemy. And right now, I could gain that information without endangering myself.