A Jaded Life

We spent the day relaxing in the hideout close to the Jonari Village. But the relaxation ended the moment dusk settled over the land, covering it in a dim twilight. Our timing had been good, there was no moon in the sky and thin clouds made sure that even starlight was limited. I had seen darker areas, but seldom under the open sky. But to us, the darkness was useful, cloaking and hiding us from anyone who may or may not search for us.

Before setting out, I renewed the concealment spells on all of us and strengthened them for good measure. The most important thing tonight was to not get caught. If we did, everything else was mostly a waste of time. If we did not, the worst that could happen would be an annoyance with little true consequence. Maybe that was the most important thing to keep in mind. The only way to truly fail tonight, was getting caught. Feeling that there might be some emotional component for Sigmir, I made sure to stress that fact to her, I had some concern that she would do something stupid, evidenced by the fact that she wanted to go off by herself to take care of the shaman - maybe the most powerful foe we would have tonight. And while I was willing to punish the Jonari-leadership for their actions against Sigmir, I was not willing to lose Sigmir over that punishment. Not in a thousand years.

On foot, we approached the village, using quite a bit of magic to keep us hidden from view and to hide our tracks. Hiding us felt easier than ever, the dark night helped a lot and the trait I got from my new class strengthened my magic to an extreme degree. I had a feeling that the trait was not linear but some sort of exponential strengthening, making the strengthening at the extreme-points, full and new-moon, a lot more potent than the rest of the time.

I would love to claim that we proudly stood atop a hill, looking down on the dimly lit village we would raid that night. But it would be a lie. We crept into the area around the village through the forest surrounding, sticking to shadows and hiding behind any cover that we could find. No, there was no arrogance in our approach, all three of us were aware that we lacked the strength to do open and ‘honourable’ combat, we had to sneak in and use a knife in the darkness.

I think that need to sneak in was especially hard on Sigmir. To her, honour was a cornerstone of her personality; honourable behaviour - especially in combat - was deeply ingrained in her, deep enough to pledge her life to me for saving hers. That pledge was also the core of her rationalisation right now. To her, our actions were dishonourable but she was not responsible because she only did as ordered. It was rather interesting that she was using self-delusion to that point, but maybe she did not see it as such. Another interesting part was that she had no problem with stealth during a hunt, something that was an entirely different ballgame compared to combat. That was interesting in itself and part of me wondered how close the ‘hunted’ party had to be to her people to count as a combat opponent compared to a prey to be hunted.

Adra was more practical about it. To her stealthy tactics were just natural - she simply considered herself analogous to a great cat waiting for prey in a tree or using tall grass or foilage to sneak up on its prey. There was no differentiation between hunting and combat in her mindset - at least I was unable to detect one.

A part of me would love to study the different races’ mental makeups and find a common thread. I was aware of studies about human morality and human behaviour when confronted with immoral choices, something the programmers had to have used as a baseline, unless they tried to create the psychological makeup of all the species without any baseline, which I doubted as it was a far too complex concept to just eyeball it. So it had to be somehow based on human concepts, or maybe on the concepts of other social species on earth. Looking for those common threads and the basic concepts would be fascinating - the attempt to follow a designer to their template, a designer that did not want things to look designed, but evolved. At least for the natural species, my own species was supposed to be designed from two natural templates, making the evolutionary makeup even more interesting. But that study would have to wait until I got a better handle on my magic-studies, those were more important for now.

I tamped down on my random musings once we left the forest and the possibility of detection from the village turned from ‘extremely unlikely’ to ‘quite possible’. With that change, I focused on my darkness magic, making sure that we were nothing more than a shadow in the dark, invisible to casual observers. Even an awake and watchful observer would be hard pressed to find us in the deep and encompassing darkness.

Sigmir was guiding us through the darkness, keeping us well away from the houses, just in case someone was looking out. It was unlikely, to do so, they would have to open a window, letting a lot of warmth out. According to Sigmir, windows were covered with shutters from the outside and multiple layers of fur and leather from the inside during winter, making the act of opening one a large ordeal. The Jonari had little to no clear glass, meaning that most windows were very small and easily covered anyway. So, as long as we didn’t make too much noise, we should be in the clear.

It was interesting, to see the different stages of civilisation at the same time. The Jonari were slightly less advanced than the wolfman of Adernas who, in turn were less advanced than the bear-beastman in Yari. The Naga-settlement we had visited once had a vastly different stage of development, using different building-materials and techniques. A serious outlier was Neyto, with an almost modern technology-level, but that was easily explained by the power of the inhabitants and the access to serious levels of magic. Part of me was looking forward to the bigger cities and their standards of living.

But right now, I was seeing the buildings of the Jonari around me, built out of hewn wood and insulated with some sort of clay before being whitewashed with chalk or lime or something similar. The fact that Sigmir had lime with her, back when we met, led me to believe that it was a lime-based plaster.

As we sneaked into the village proper, not even the dogs wanted to react, driven back into their shelter by the cold. Or maybe the concealment-magic I had layered on top of us prevented our smell from alerting them. It didn’t really matter what kept them down, but it worked.

Soon, we got to the house of the chieftain, Sigmir still guiding us. As we advanced, I checked for detection wards around the area but there was nothing to be seen. When we got to the door, Sigmir tried to open it. Soft pressure against the door proved fruitless, it didn’t budge in the slightest. A short look to the middle showed that there was no key-hole, so it was most likely barred from the inside. Breaking it open with force would definitely cause enough noise to alert anything in the area, who, in turn, would alert everyone in the village. So, brute force was out.

Pressing against the door caused it to slightly shift back, only a few millimeters but enough for a shadow to creep in. I was quite unsure of what I was doing, but I was able to feel the darkness on the other side, maybe I would be able to do so without the connection and my mind just used the connection as a crutch, but I was feeling the structure of the door, through the door. Thinking of the first manifestation I had used with my darkness-magic, the tendrils, I mentally focused on the rune, trying to manifest them from the darkness on the other side of the door, in order to use them to lift the bar that held the door closed.

Astral Power was slowly flowing out of me, until I felt the tendrils connect with the edges of my mind. Thinking of the way I was using the vines manifested with my Eisblumen-Accessory, I managed to get them to move as I wanted and to lift the bar up, but the moment I did so, the drain on my magic increased by an order of magnitude. Using darkness in such a way was a lot harder than expected, causing me to almost let the heavy bar drop, but it was slowly slipping from the tendrils. Luckily, the pressure I had placed on the door to get the connection caused the door to swing open and allowed Sigmir to make the catch, before the whole house was alerted to our presence.

Now, we just had to find our targets.