A Jaded Life

We continued to talk about the local religious fanatics for a little longer, with me describing in more detail what I had observed. Eventually, that part of the conversation wound down, and I remembered that I hadn't been the only one who had gone out to explore.

"Now, Lia, would you tell me what you found when scouting?" I asked, bringing up this new topic. "I've mostly used my wings and stepped through the shadows to save time, but I believe you went around on foot, so you'll have a much better idea what is happening on the ground, so to speak."

I noticed a moment of hesitation in Lia's demeanour, as if she wanted to say something but immediately reconsidered.

"It's odd," she began, her voice a little hesitant, "The forest was quiet, even for wintertime. Or maybe it was simply bad timing, but I didn't come across any animals, nothing alive. Maybe the locals have hunted too much, driving the game away, maybe they killed everything, I'm not sure, I didn't spend enough time checking things." She paused again, bringing her rambling voice back under control. "The city, too. There were no Shattered around, nor did I come across any of the Undead in the streets. The only Undead I saw were in a graveyard, and in the process of getting dispatched already," she explained, getting quieter near the end, only to fall abruptly quiet.

"Are you okay?" I couldn't help but ask, feeling concern for my daughter well up within me.

"Yeah, just," she paused once again, "I saw something I didn't expect," she admitted, her voice just as quiet as it had been just earlier. My daughter was clearly uncertain and gripped in indecision, and I had no idea what to do about it.

"Okay," I nodded, realising just what might be the cause for her current mental state in this area. The answer was quite obvious, once I took a moment to consider. This wasn't a physical problem, nor was it due to enemy action. This was a mental, or rather, it was an emotional issue, one that could only be solved by my daughter. I could do my best to help, to offer an open ear and listen, to support and encourage, but the impetus and initiative had to come from her. Or from Samantha, but I didn't think that dragging Samantha to my tower and locking her into a room with Lia would solve the problem; it would probably only make things worse.

"What can you tell me about the Undead you saw?" I asked, slightly altering the trajectory of our conversation, "Did they look like newly risen or have they been around for a while, maybe since shortly after the change, and the locals just didn't have the time to deal with them before?"

For a moment, Lia's face displayed relief, before the expression faded away and a pensive one took over her face.

"The Undead looked weird," she paused, chewing on her lower lip, "It wasn't just a simple, risen body, it was an abomination of rotten flesh, bone and earth, more like a golem or something than a regular Undead. So, I'd guess it was neither. Might have started out as a regular Undead a while back, maybe a few months, and slowly turned into the things I've seen," she explained, making me recall encounters with creatures that could readily be described as abominations and nodded. If she had seen something similar, I couldn't fault her for the insecurity.

"Was the graveyard with those Undead an outdoor dungeon? Maybe something similar to the burned land, just a lot smaller and filled with necrotic energy, instead of the fiery energy we had to deal with there?" I suggested, wondering how such an area might alter its surrounding environment and how people would react to it.

"I don't think so," she shook her head, "If there was energy in the environment, the levels were too low for me to perceive it, so I doubt the energy would be sufficient to raise such complex Undead."

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"Unless the energy raised a simple Undead, and it started to mutate, as you suggested. Given enough time, even a low level of background energy could accumulate and have impressive results. Remember, with enough time, even the smallest change can topple a mountain," I gently chided her, fully aware that even a small amount of energy could have surprising results. Or catastrophic ones, Luna had quite a few experiments demonstrating just that.

"We could go there and experiment a little. It would be interesting to find out what forces are active in that graveyard. And what forces are not?" Luna perked up now, her curiosity roused. She was trying to understand why necrotic energy seemed to give a semblance of life, when it was, at least to our understanding, the opposite of it. Why necrotic energy seemed to make mockeries of living things, giving these mindless animations nothing but a powerful desire to drain vital energies, accumulate experience and procreate in their own, weird way.

Almost as if both forces weren't just opposites but also the same, with the same basic impulse. Namely, to procreate and spread out, with the important difference being that necrotic constructs could only procreate by using and corrupting those born of vital energies.

What was that old line by Tolkien again, about the forces of evil and their inability to create? It fit fairly well with my current observations, but I didn't think it was as simple as good and evil in this case. Reality was, sadly, far more complicated than a simple black-and-white view would allow. There were countless other colours involved, some of which became black when mixed, others white.

"We should probably wait for a bit, get used to the area and all that, before we start making waves. The longer we stay covert and quiet, the better our position should be once we make our move," Lia threw in, a slight edge of discomfort in her voice.

"You know, Lia, if you ever want to talk, I'll happily listen to your worries," I promised my daughter in a complete non-sequitur. "But you should also know that I've talked with Maggie, I told you that. People will soon know that we're back, especially as I told Maggie that I'd restart my lessons on magic, and I'd ask you to do the same with the alchemical ones," I reminded her, getting a hesitant nod in return. If only I had a way to help my daughter past her current worries, but alas, without her being willing to face her issues, there was little I could do.

For a moment, she was hesitant again, as if she was about to talk about her issues. Maybe I could give her another gentle push later, when her little sister wasn't there to listen in. Or I might be able to give her an open ear, without any further pushes, by relocating us in a day or two, possibly to investigate the massive chunk of Eternal Ice and Earth we still had stashed away near the Nexus Tower after defeating the Tallest' Guardian. It would be such a waste to have such a resource available and not make use of it, just because it fell by the wayside in the wake of more important efforts.

"Yeah, I'll teach Alchemy to everyone who wants to learn. Might be fun to reconnect with Alex, too; the little critter is probably somewhere nearby. Or the raccoon brigade decided to relocate entirely, who knows," she shrugged, a faint smile now on her face.

"They might have, yes. It would be interesting to see how they fared in these last few months," I nodded, an equally faint smile on my face, only for the smile to disappear when I decided to bring up the last relevant topic we had to discuss about the local Sunna worshippers.

Namely, their leadership and my earlier encounters with them. I had no idea how Lorgar and the Bearers of Lady Sunna's Word, as his group was called according to Maggie, would act when encountering either of my daughters, but I was confident it wouldn't be good. Nor would it be pleasant for anyone involved, which made me reconsider whether this really was the vacation I had hoped it would be. Maybe it wasn't too late to retreat to the burned land, make contact with the Chief and his village and spend the winter there.

However, if we decided to leave here, the situation wouldn't get better. Lorgar and his merry band of fanatics would only spread further and dig in deeper unless somebody stood up to them. And that would only happen if the locals had the motivation to do so, if they had a better offer than to accept the growing religious community in their neighbourhood.

"Do you remember what I've told you about the people of New Dawn? Especially the centaur named Lorgar?" I asked my daughters, reminding them of the troublesome pony.

Was there something about centaurs that made them particularly troublesome, or did I simply have bad luck?