Circumventing the wards came with a few challenges. Both Darkness and Ice Magic didn’t last long within their confines; spells and constructs that would normally last for hours, if not for entire days or weeks, were burned away within minutes, with some not even lasting that long. Any purely magic construct was burned away within seconds, and if I anchored them to physical objects, like my scrying constructs were anchored to conjured Ice, they lasted a little longer. Still, not long enough to make me want to take the risk and have a scrying construct carry the small bag Lia had prepared into town.

  Instead, I once again tried to figure out a way to slip past the wards. Digging under the wards would work, but I wasn’t sure if I was able to make my way through the earth without disturbing the ground above. Additionally, I had no idea if the wards would seep into the ground or something like that. It was possible, plausible even, that the wards might disrupt the Earth Magic I used to dig and secure my tunnels, causing them to come crashing down. The possibility, while fairly unlikely, wasn’t something I was willing to test with my body.

  Hel, I wasn’t willing to test it at all. Even if I wasn’t caught up in a crash, having a tunnel collapse would give away my presence, making it almost certain that the people of the Blessed City would learn of our efforts here.

  So far, we hadn’t been caught. If we were, things could get quite complicated all of a sudden. Lorgar and his friends probably knew that we were back in the area, largely because I had been a bit of a fool and contacted Maggy right after we got here. Additionally, Lia had been somewhat active in the area on nights when we didn’t visit the Blessed City to play our tricks on the locals, and I couldn’t be confident that she hadn’t been seen.

  All in all, that meant the locals, those we had met before the Blessed City was built, knew about our presence. There were, to the best of my knowledge, only a few personal connections between those living in the Blessed City and everyone else, but that didn’t mean there were none. Sure, a few of the steps on the way to inform Lorgar and his friends of our presence were a question of chance, but that didn’t mean much. It was safer to assume they had been informed and were simply not acting on the knowledge yet than to think the opposite. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst and all that.

  Regardless, digging under the wards was out, and while flying above the wards was possible, dropping the small satchel and hoping it landed in the right spot wasn’t what I considered a reliable delivery mechanism either.

  Which meant a different mechanism was needed. Luckily, the idea I came up with doubled as a useful experiment, making it inherently suitable for our purpose.

  The first step to make my idea work was to catch a local bird. There weren’t all that many around, but I was able to find a crow and pacify it with my Mind Magic to the point that I could draw a blood sample.

  Once I had that sample, I started to work on influencing the bird. Initially, I considered subsuming it completely and puppeting its body, as I did with my scrying constructs, but I soon realised that wasn’t necessary. It turned out that the bird was smart enough to be commanded instead of controlled, the process turning out to be remarkably similar to the one I was refining to control humans.

  After a few hours of experimenting with the crow, I was confident that I could have the bird fly around in town as much as I wanted, and the wards wouldn’t trigger. That knowledge also made me assume the wards wouldn’t trigger when I used the exact same magic to influence the local woman I wanted to use to taint their salt supply with the Rage Powder Lia had cooked up.

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  Not willing to leave this to chance or assumptions, I decided to use some of the blood I had gathered and conduct an experiment. Not on the woman I wanted to control, but on another one from whom I had gathered blood. I wasn’t sure what I wanted her to do, but given that I didn’t even know what possibilities there were, I wasn’t about to commit to some form of conduct.

  With that bit of blood, I created a runic circle and started to channel Mind Magic into it, using the link provided by blood and runes to apply the magic to my target. That was where I encountered the first issue: I didn’t receive any meaningful feedback. It was possible that my Mind Magic immediately took, but as I wasn’t able to see the woman I had targeted, I wouldn’t know. I could feel a drain on my Astral Power, but that only meant something was happening; it was entirely possible that I gave the woman some weird dream or that she was actively fighting off my control, I simply didn’t know.

  For a moment, I considered my options before deciding to add another layer to my control and the Blood Magic. Thanks to the lingering link between the blood I used for my magic and the blood still in the woman’s body, I wove together a magical formation based on Water and Blood to create a detection for her presence, allowing me to perceive the woman’s position fairly accurately. Or rather, to perceive her blood, but that was good enough for my purpose.

  In this case, I was able to see that the woman was lying on her side, likely on a bed, but that was all I could perceive. She wasn’t moving around, but then, I hadn’t given any commands just yet.

  Regardless, it was a suitable first step and from there, I began to experiment further, slowly widening my ability to perceive the woman and to command her. And not only that single woman, but any of the women I had managed to get that bit of blood from, simply because using the blood as a link and channel magic through the link made the blood deteriorate, meaning I only had a little over fifteen minutes per attempt. Once the time was over, the blood had deteriorated too far to give me a decent channel, and the efficiency of my magic dropped rapidly. I might be able to maintain the connection for a few more minutes, despite the lowered efficiency, but not for long - certainly not for more than an additional five minutes. And even that would require the use of Overflow and a significant portion of my vast pool of power, highlighting just how unsuitable it would be.

  Still, my experiments left me confident that my plans would work. How well, I wasn’t sure, but the general premise would work just fine.

  It was pretty early in the morning, with the sun almost rising behind the eastern mountains, that I sent my controlled crow into town. It easily dropped the small sack in front of the woman’s door, before I had the bird return and rewarded its performance with a bit of food. Just a couple of nuts and dried berries, making the crow chortle in a way I recognised as joy. Or maybe glee, it wasn’t that easy to recognise a crow’s emotions from the noise they made. I was only able to do so thanks to the connection I shared with Lenore back on Mundus. There was a fair amount of overlap between the emotional expressions of crows and ravens.

  However, the happy crow wasn’t what I cared about most at the moment.

  Instead, what I cared about was the woman I wanted to control.

  Using my second-to-last blood sample, I activated the runic circle I had been using throughout the night for my experiments, easily gaining control over the woman. Then, I commanded her to rise and made her quietly go out to pick up the sack. That, too, worked out fine, and I was fairly certain that the next step, making her forget about her actions, was successful as well. She certainly didn’t acknowledge the sack while I observed her going about her day, getting ready and everything.

  Then, once she began preparing breakfast, I used my last sample and commanded her once again, forcing her to mix the powder into the salt, shaking their supply to taint it all. Afterwards, once the deed was done, I commanded her to forget once more, hopefully leaving her none the wiser about her actions.

  With a wide yawn, I hopped off the branch I had spent the last few hours on, glancing at the Blessed City once more before turning away and leaving, my feet leaving no trace in the snow as I slid through the pristinely white forest, enjoying the cold air flowing around my face. It would be interesting to see the success of this in the next few days.