When I climbed into the capsule, muscles I didn’t knew I had were staging a protest about the abuse I had put them through. After Shifu had surprised me, his wife had sought me out, telling me that now, she would teach me. I was rather perplexed, not quite sure why she was offering now, or how it came about but, as it was something that I had been interested in for some time, I gratefully accepted. And was taught that the smiling, kindly grandmother was just a facade for the devil lurking below, her friendly smile never wavering as she instructed me how to twist my body into shapes that no vertebrate was ever meant to take. I had been under the impression that my body was quite flexible but the exercises she put me through taught me better. Still, when she told me that we would have a weekly session from now on, I had instantly accepted.

I let out an involuntary sigh of relief as the technology of the capsule shunted my mind from my aching physical body into the hale and rested body of Morgana, my eyes opening to let in the light. In Mundus, it was late morning and the others looked like they had been up for some time, while my body was in the mostly intangible state it entered while I was logged out. It was another thing I felt a need to raise with Pantheon Entertainment, that there needed to be some way to allow for taking breaks while travelling without running into problems. My last quest, for example, had required me to play almost constantly, with little room for error. For me, that had been possible due to my freed schedule but for most people, that would be next to impossible.

“Good Morning, love.” Sigmir smiled when she realised that I had started to move.

“Good Morning.” I replied as I pushed myself up and moved over to give her a small kiss. “Did anything happen while I was gone?” I asked when I realised that Lenore wasn’t in range and I couldn’t see Rai and Adra. We had almost reached the imperial road the day before and decided to observe a little before moving on.

“No, not really. The others just went out to check if there are patrols on the ancient, imperial road and Lenore decided to fly towards the east, to see if there was some sort of checkpoint as you mentioned.” Sigmir explained as she reached out and pulled me onto her lap, her arms wrapping around me. Feeling no need to move further, I simply rested my head on her chest, relaxing into her embrace. It gave me a wonderfully secure feeling, putting a smile on my face.

We sat there, simply basking in the presence of the other, a comfortable silence around us, as neither of us felt a need to speak or move. Sadly, it didn’t take long for Adra and Rai to return to camp, disturbing the silence between us. When I heard them, I remained on Sigmir’s lap but twisted around a little, so that I could look over to them, with her arms still wrapped around me.

“Ah, you are up, good.” Adra said by way of greeting, before telling us what they found. “We checked the road and it doesn’t look like there are patrols moving along it. We might be wrong, but I don’t think so.” she explained, sounding confident.

I wondered about that, the road was mostly self-cleaning, so traces would quickly vanish, making it difficult to get a good idea by mere physical observation. In addition, it had looked like the centaurs we had fought before had advanced along a stretch of land that was mostly steppe, a mixture of grass and shrubbery between the endless forests that seemed to cover this part of Aretia. With that in mind, and under the assumption that the centaurs were actually trying to increase an area of political influence and not trying to reach some specific geographic location, it would be rather surprising if they ignored the ancient imperial road that would increase their mobility by a huge amount while allowing the same for an attacking force. No, if there was one objective to control, it was that road.

Hopefully, Lenore would manage to get more information. Knowing that she’d most likely need some more time, I decided to do some scrying myself and conjured up the cloud I used to shift my viewpoint in distant shadows. While there was a bit of distance between the forest and the road, it was just a small patch so I could simply shift my viewpoint along the shadows of the forest, while looking over to the road.

Sadly, my scrying without Lenore to help was still limited and I only managed to cover a stretch of about two kilometers down the road before Lenore returned. When I was unable to see any conclusive hints that it was used to shift troops or supplies, I dispelled the scrying focus, instead relaxing into Sigmir’s embrace when I felt Lenore’s mind enter our shared perception.

To make it easy for her to land, I pulled out the repaired perch-turned-staff and used a bit of Ice-Magic to create a base for it, so I could stay in Sigmir’s arms. Moments later, Lenore landed on the perch, ruffling her feathers to get a little warmer while talking to us.

“I found something.” she stated, sounding proud of herself.

“And what would that be?” I asked, when she stopped to preen, both literally and figuratively.

“There’s a quite large centaur-camp at the edge of the windswept plains. Easily four, maybe even five, times the area of the camps we have seen before. And they look like they are there to stay, slowly replacing their tents with wooden structures as they harvest wood from the area.” she explained and shared a memory with me.

Once again, I was experiencing the awesomeness of flight, even if only second hand, soaring through the skies and riding the cold wind. Beneath me, there was a large, fortified area, right next to the road. From above, I realised for the first time just how strange the sudden change in the landscape was, almost as if someone had taken a straight-edge to the land, drawn a line and said ‘on the right side, there’s forest, on the left side is steppe’. While I was used to seeing straight lines on maps, courtesy of Earth and the human interference into nature, seeing something I had thought of as natural having such a straight demarcation made me question that thought.

Focusing on the camp beneath, I took in more details. The camp itself was quite obviously an enlarged version of the camps we had seen before, only that instead of a simple trench and berm to defend it, this one had an actual palisade, to keep people out. I questioned how useful that would be for centaurs, in my mind it was more a limitation to them but apparently they thought differently. I was also able to see what Lenore meant with them settling in to stay, the middle of the camp was dominated by log-buildings that looked like a strange cross between house and stable. The rest of the camp was still a tent-city but I was quite sure that if we would check back in a month, that would have changed. Even now, there was ongoing construction, another tent being replaced by a log-building.

Following Lenore’s flight, I now saw the clear-cut area around the camp, where centaurs were dragging freshly cut logs back towards their camp, to fuel their construction. Part of me wondered if there was more involved than I could see but ultimately, it didn't matter. We weren’t here to fight with the centaurs, merely travelling through, even if I wouldn’t mind to give them pain, just for the wolves that were not bound to the main-den.

Blinking a couple of times, I shook off the memory Lenore had shared, looking at the others.

“If we take the imperial road, we will run into centaurs, no doubt about it. The camp Lenore saw would need regular supply-shipments and they don’t look like they are starving. We’ll have to decide how we want to go about things.” I explained, closing my eyes to map possible ways to continue.

“We could simply stay off the road, keeping to the forest but that would slow us down. Personally, I’ve seen enough pine-forest to last me a couple of years, even if I don’t see another pine. I want to see what the rest of Mundus looks like, not traipsing through the same type of forest for another couple of months.” I began, mentally groaning at the idea of slowly travelling through the forest.

“Or we could leave the magic bags we have taken from the centaurs, simply moving along the road without a care in the world. In that case, we’d bank on the fact that the centaurs are acting as settlers and soldiers, not as bandits. If that’s the case, we simply don’t know but unless we are seriously unlucky, we should be fine either way, even if they attack us. What do you guys think?” I asked, looking the others over.