“That wasn’t too bad,” Maggie decided, after she stumbled out of the shadows we had just stepped through. I had just pushed her out of the realm of shadows without exiting them myself, just in case Sunna was keeping a close eye on this area. It was almost certainly unnecessary, but I wasn’t willing to take that chance, not if there was no actual benefit to it.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” I told her, using Wind Magic to make the words audible outside of the shadows. Without the magic, my voice would have been lost in the gloom of the realm of shadows, with only a strange, alien sound reaching the outside. Luna had described that sound as the cry of a desperate ghost, but I hoped she was only being poetic there. Or maybe ghosts haunted these shadows. If there were any, I might be able to take control of them, similar to the way I had taken control of the lost spirits in the Nexus valley on Mundus, giving them bodies in exchange for their service as soldiers and guardians. But so far, I hadn’t actually seen anything like that. Only the odd sensation of being watched suggested that something might be hiding in these shadows. And even that sensation was far weaker on Terra than it had been on Mundus.

  Crossing the distance between the spot I had dropped off Maggie and her village took me only a few seconds. Amusingly, the difficulty wasn’t so much the crossing of the distance but finding the right way and exiting at the right spot. Distances didn’t matter much in the shadows, but navigation was a challenge, especially when the travel wasn’t towards a seal or other prepared position. Due to that, the difference in difficulty between travelling the relatively short distance here and stepping from one side of the continent to a prepared seal on the other was similar.

  “Who’s next?” I asked, once I exited the shadows in Maggie’s village, looking at the group she had called together to help her deal with the people of the Blessed City.

  “I’ll go,” one of the two guys of the group offered, stepping forward with barely any hesitation. The guy was quite the specimen, almost as large as Murray, but a little heavier in his build. Calling him a proverbial brick shithouse wouldn’t be far off, and I briefly wondered if the guy, despite his relatively low level in the fifties, was stronger than me. I doubted it, simply because my draconic traits massively inflated my strength, but it was possible.

  “Certainly,” I nodded, taking his hand and pulling him into the shadows.

  Just like earlier, the travel took only seconds, then I pushed him out of the shadows, watching with faint amusement as he immediately collapsed into the snow, throwing up far more than I thought a stomach could hold.

  “Lucas?” Maggie asked, looking at her companion with a hint of worry. It made me wonder whether I needed to be more careful with these relatively low-level people, maybe work harder to shield them from the gloomy aura that suffused the shadows. As I stepped away to get the next person, Maggie stepped up to Lucas, kneeling beside him to help him.

  Nodding to myself as I sped away, I decided to try shielding the next person, just to see if it helped.

  The next volunteer was one of the women, cursed with the slightly unfortunate name Karen. The name was the most remarkable thing about her; otherwise, she was just an average woman. Not tall, not short, not beautiful, just painfully average. As I pulled her through the shadows, I did my best to keep the gloomy atmosphere from her, constantly enveloping us in a shroud of darkness, and to infuse it with positive sensations. Darkness didn’t have to be spooky or gloomy; it could also be the cool shadow on a hot summer day, or the excitement of discovery, both sensations were strongly tied to the shadows and darkness. Now, I used those concepts to shield her from the shadows' influence, hopefully keeping her from suffering too much.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “That was something,” Karen whispered, her voice filled with a faint hint of awe as she was pushed out of the shadows, looking at Lucas, who was still suffering with Maggie next to him. “Are you okay?” she asked, clearly uncertain why she was largely unaffected while Lucas was decorating the snow with his lunch. And maybe breakfast, last night’s dinner and everything else that his body could throw up.

  There was a certain discongruence to travelling between two points at the speeds I was using. Hearing only half of a conversation because a sentence or two were spoken while I was literally travelling back to their town, grabbing another of their group and returning was a strange experience. Though it was somewhat amusing to realise that the two guys were getting teased for having the most extreme reaction to the shadow travel, mostly due to luck of the draw.

  After Karen hadn’t suffered any side effects, I had reduced my efforts by a lot when dragging Landon, the other guy, through the shadows. With the result that Landon joined Lucas in his recolouration of the snow by way of gastrointestinal distress, pushing me to take my efforts up a notch when bringing the last person of their group, Lily.

  “If you need anything, please just call out or wave,” I told the group, not leaving the shadows, “I’ll see what I can do, but I’d prefer not to personally appear, as some of these people have already judged me as evil, without ever meeting me, simply because their wonderful brainwashing deity decided so,” I explained, getting affirmative responses from all of them before I disappeared back to Jademoon Tower.

  “Did everything work out?” Luna asked when I sat down on my throne. Lia had already left, intending to keep track of the people who left the Blessed City, while Luna was still in my tower, planning to head over to Maggie’s town the next morning.

  “So far, yes,” I confirmed. Then, I began to conjure up my usual scrying constructs and send them flying towards the Blessed City, planning to do as promised and keep an eye on things. While I wasn’t completely confident to channel delicate spells through my constructs, I was certain I would be able to launch a few crude but relatively powerful spells if it turned out to be necessary. Either to attack and strike down a few fools, or to heal a couple of people, both options were possible, but neither option would be pretty.

  “Maggie and her group are just walking towards the Blessed City, and the people there have already noticed them,” I told Luna, watching their approach from above.

  The people of the Blessed City were mulling around, obviously uncertain what to do, but even as things were, I wondered why they hadn’t managed to organise just yet. Maybe the drug we had unleashed was still lingering, or maybe the brainwashing had done more damage than we hoped, leaving these people in a dazed or confused state. Hopefully, that would eventually fade, and these people could regain their wits, or things might get difficult.

  However, given how they seemed to take to Maggie and simply accept her taking charge of them, it might be a good thing. Letting one of my scrying constructs drop low, I started to listen to their conversations, just in case they needed me to intercede.

  But it didn’t look like it. Maggie was already dividing the people into groups and assigning each group one of her people as leader. If nothing else, this confirmed to me that these people weren’t in full possession of their senses. Otherwise, someone would have protested, someone would have been a contrarian; it was simply human nature. People had their opinions, and for a group as large as this one, easily five-hundred people, to simply knuckle under an outsider, especially without some form of intimidation or some display of power?

  It wasn’t natural, but Maggie seemed to manage just fine, showing me once more why I considered her to be quite dangerous. Maybe not directly dangerous, but she was a capable leader and manager, giving her a power of her own, complete with some capabilities I just couldn’t match.

  People just weren’t my domain, especially not large groups of them. Numbers, data, that were things I could manage, even in large quantities, but people? Give me one or two, a handful if things get serious, and I’d be perfectly happy. More than that, and I’d probably leave if at all possible, retreating somewhere I could be on my own.

  To deal with a group like the one Maggie was now directing, having them dismantle their old homes and gather up as many supplies and resources as possible?

  Yeah, I wouldn’t be able to lead them, not productively at least. It just wasn’t in my nature.