A night of rest had done both, Lenore and me, a world of good. In the pale twilight of the early morning, the world looked a lot better than it had the day before. Sure, there was now another place we weren’t welcome any longer but had I ever planned to go back there? No, not really. There might have been quests, maybe some insight into the nature of Life and Death that I could have gained by witnessing a birth, maybe some knowledge regarding spirits and the way of communing with them, but other than those potential gains, had we lost anything? Again, no, not really.

The only thing we had to take care of were the people following us, something I planned to do, as soon as possible.

“Love, I think today I’ll go with Lenore, to check on those following us.” I told Sigmir, as we were having breakfast. The look on her face wasn’t too happy, she didn’t like it when I went off on my own, especially if it might be dangerous, but frankly, flight was a major game-changer, allowing Lenore to cross distance as a rate much higher than anything a land-bound creature could manage. If you added Lenore’s affinity for wind-magic and the increase in magical potential gained by having me within my Hallow, she was able to out-pace us by a factor of five.

“Stay high and don’t get caught.” Adra warned, before adding with a grin, “Remember, most young hunters learn their archery hunting small birds and similar game. It would be a shame if some idiot child manages to put an arrow into you.”

The emotion I could feel from Lenore as pure disdain, I could almost see the ruffled feathers at the idea that some child would be able to shoot her down, making me chuckle in response.

“You mean like that one silly orc, just after we left Kolyug?” I asked, still chuckling to myself. In hindsight, making jokes about things like that felt funny, even if it had been horrible at the time. It reminded me, there were still a few things I wanted to learn regarding Blood Magic, maybe I now had some test-subjects delivering themselves to my doorstep. It might be prudent to make some sort of disclaimer, something along the lines ‘If you attack Morgana, you consent to any and all magical experimentation she deems appropriate.’ If companies could do it with their end-user license agreements, maybe there was a way to create something similar using the system. Unlikely, but just the idea made me smile, until I felt a pain in my ear, replacing the amused smile on my face with a pained wince.

“What was that for?” I asked Lenore, who had left her Hallow and was now painfully gripping my ear in her beak.

“You know what. You suggested that some idiot child would be able to shoot me down!” she mentally replied, her feathers actually ruffling in annoyance.

“I was a lot weaker back then, it won’t happen ever again. Never!” she stressed her statement, pinching my ear a little harder, drawing a bead of blood. Somehow, the pure affront she managed to put into her mental voice merely served to make me more amused, prompting me to open my mind a little, letting her experience the situation from my end, the way her outrage merely served to amuse me more. For a moment, nothing happened while she had to sort through the unstructured sending, before I got a reply, in a simple image of her raising her tail towards my face, essentially mooning me. Somehow, that caused me to double over in laughter, knocking her off the perch on my shoulder, prompting a squawk of outrage.

Catching her, I sent another wave of amusement her way, trying to convey how glad I was that she was with. The response I got almost made me laugh again, demonstrating that it was impossible to deceive or prevaricate when using mental communication. On the surface-level, she was projecting indifference but beneath that feigned indifference was a deep layer of affection and friendship.

“We’ll catch up to you.” I promised the others, before setting Lenore down and pushing myself into my Hallow.

“Let’s find out who’s after us.” I told her, before mentally settling in to let her do her thing.

Flying remained a wonderful experience, no matter how often I got to enjoy it. Just the sight I was able to see through Lenore’s eyes, the world beneath us looking like toys, just the right side to be picked up at our leisure. At times, perspective truly mattered.

Finding the people following us didn’t take too long, with me providing additional power to Lenore, she was able to constantly use her magic to increase her flight-speed without exhausting herself so, after maybe thirty minutes, she focused on a particular spot in the meadows below, where a campfire was currently tended to by a small group. We were still too far away to make out details but just from the activity we were able to observe, I began to doubt that they were after us. Compared to the dedication we had witnessed when hunting the centaurs, these orcs seemed to be too relaxed, leisurely sitting around their fire.

We made our way closer and their activity didn’t change, two of them seemed to be preparing breakfast while the others fiddled with their weapons or armour but primarily, they seemed to simply pass the time.

From a few hundred meters away, we were able to make out enough details to make things a little confusing. Lenore’s assessment had been spot-on, from their gear and equipment, the orcs looked like a war-party, ready to fight a serious foe, not a group of hunters. But their actions didn’t match their gear, if they were hunting us, they seemed to ignore any possibility of us attacking them. There weren’t even guards watching the perimeter, at least none that Lenore could spot, which was unlikely as there was no cover around. Unless potential guards had ways to counter Lenore’s sight, and were employing those methods on the off-chance we were scouting from the air, we would have noticed them. It didn’t make any sense.

“Isn’t that Harms? That Traveller who annoyed you?” Lenore asked, focusing on one particular orc.

“Certainly looks like him.” I admitted, looking through her eyes. His presence made me even more confused. I knew that he had seen a few of the videos I had created over the time I had spent on Mundus, he had to know that I preferred to attack from an ambush, deciding the battle with an overwhelming attack before it ever started. Leaving his group open to an attack like that was more than foolish, it was idiotic to the highest order, unless that was what they wanted me to think. An ambush that you knew was coming could be turned against those doing the ambushing, if you had ways to withstand their opening attack. Which made me wonder, was it some sort of double-trap, a gambit based on the assumption that we would attack first, allowing them to turn the tables on us, somehow?

Did they have the power to do that? Harms certainly did not, unless he had somehow managed to gain a massive boost in level since dying against the centaurs. Which seemed unlikely, so what was he doing here? Was he some sort of embedded messenger, who would make sure that word got out, even if they all died?

“Maybe we should just ask.” Lenore suggested, making me chuckle in my Hallow. It wasn’t impossible, given that Harms was a Traveller, I would be able to use the forum to send him a message. He might even have messages from me on some sort of priority that reached him, while logged into Road to Purgatory, there were settings for that, but I doubted I was on such a list, simply because we had never used direct messages between us before. But I had just lit into him the day before, for using knowledge from outside the game, to influence the world of Mundus. Now, I was here, contemplating a rather similar action.

I didn’t like being a hypocrite.

“Remember those shadow-clones Rai showed us? If we work together, we should be able to combine one of those shadow-forms with the magic we use to create a flying shape to scry. Add in a little wind- or mind-magic and we should be able to communicate.” Lenore continued her suggestion, making my eyes open in surprise. Suddenly, the idea seemed a lot more interesting than before.

“Let’s find out, that sounds like a really interesting trick, if we can pull it off.” I admitted, a wide grin on my face.

“We just need a concealed spot, somewhat nearby, maybe somewhere on the forest-edge, to use our magic.” I added, focusing on the trees quite a distance from their camp.

“Agreed. I think I see a suitable tree.” she agreed, angling down towards a large tree, with a dense crown. Perfectly to conceal an elf and her bird, while we caused some magical mischief.