Sleeping in the shrine was strangely comforting. While the bed I occasionally conjured there lacked some of the comforts my usual bed had, the atmosphere more than made up for these minor inconveniences. Knowing that I was safe, that Lady Hecate was literally watching over my rest and protecting me, allowed me to fully relax and sleep without worrying that Sunna took offence to something I had done. Given that I had actively sabotaged her town and effectively cost her hundreds of faithful, I had a feeling she might be particularly annoyed with me.
Or she might not care at all. I had to remind myself that deities might not have the same priorities mortals had. Additionally, I had no real idea of the scope and scale the deities were working on. It was entirely possible that a single small city on a recently broken world mattered little to them. I doubted it, mostly due to my previous interactions with Lady Hecate, but it was possible.
Regardless, thanks to sleeping within the confines of the shrine, I was well rested when dawn came knocking. While I had no interest in heading out personally, I was planning to have a few scrying constructs wait for the people of the Blessed City when they woke up and headed out. While there weren’t many predators living in the nearby woods, there were some, and a few of those could be a danger to anyone below level fifty. With only five people, Maggie would have a seriously hard time escorting the roughly eight-hundred people that had banded together after the Blessed City turned cursed.
It would be interesting to see how the presence of my scrying constructs would affect these people. Some might have heard what the strange ravens were, but the majority wouldn’t necessarily know. It would be interesting to see how many of these people talked and what they might say about them. Would they form some form of emotional attachment to the ravens, especially if I used the birds to channel spells that protected them, or would they truly exchange their faith in Sunna and her light with one worshipping the ravens as messengers of a certain Pale Lady?
It was a bit of an experiment, made even more interesting by the presence of those who knew about the ravens. I couldn’t help but look forward to listening quietly and observing from a distance.
Shaking my head, I briefly closed my eyes, conjuring a large flock of them, sending them soaring out of my tower. As I ate breakfast with Luna, the ravens continued to fly, guided by the Bound Spirit, allowing me to discuss the plans for the next few days with my daughter.
Lia was already out, likely planning to observe the ruins herself and keeping track of those unwilling to abandon their faith in Sunna. It would be interesting to hear how many of those who didn’t join Maggie’s group were going elsewhere because of the trauma they endured here, compared to the number of people who wanted to remain faithful. She had little interest in the people who had already given up on Sunna, but those who hadn’t would likely meet her in the near future.
Amusingly, she had little interest in attacking Lorgar and his buddies. Part of it was because of their strength. While Lia would undoubtedly be able to fight two of them without too much trouble, trying to fight five people who could support one another was a foolish idea, especially if they all had access ot divine magic that was directly anathema to your entire being. Which was exactly what these five had. Maybe I was overestimating Lorgar and the amount of power Sunna was willing to lend to him, but I would rather err on the side of caution, a sentiment Lia shared.
Instead, she planned to haunt the small groups that had already broken off from the two primary groups, letting the small group of faithful that remained around Lorgar serve as a cautionary tale and a bad example. We just had to make sure they remained miserable, possibly by reminding the people in the area of the mind control Sunna had used on her faithful, if the local populace ever forgot that.
When my scrying constructs reached the Blessed City, it was immediately obvious that I had taken a little too long. The people there were already awake, despite the early morning, and both of the large groups were trying to secure the last supplies their community had gathered.
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By the looks of it, neither group was actively hostile towards the other, which I considered surprising, though both groups were clearly wary. Maybe the people here were simply unwilling to strike the first blow, possibly due to the large number of dead they had already suffered.
“Good morning, Maggie,” I greeted her, when one of my ravens landed on her shoulder again. She had been directing a few of the locals, and I could see that the people were slowly getting out of the stupor they had been in. They weren’t completely free of it yet, but they were getting there. Maybe that was for the best; if they had been in a normal state of mind, they might have vented the anger about the brainwashing some of them undoubtedly had on the people who wished to remain faithful.
“Morning, Jade,” she returned the greeting, pausing her instructions for a moment. “Could you do me a favour and dig graves for those who died during the longest night? We need a hundred and thirty-two graves. Even if everyone helped, it would take a while due to the frozen ground.”
For a moment, I felt guilty and was happy that my physical body, and thus every subconscious response, was far away from Maggie and the people here. Otherwise, they might have noticed my emotions and wondered why I felt that way. It was strange. I didn’t mind killing, and I was fairly confident that I had killed more people than that by orders of magnitude on Mundus, but that felt different. Maybe because I wasn’t around to witness the devastation, maybe because I didn’t see the survivors and their desperation. Despite their stupor, which dampened their emotions, it was almost palpable in the air.
“Certainly,” I promised, already conjuring up a new flight of ravens back in the tower, knowing that I would consume a number of them while digging the necessary graves.
Looking at the open area, where one of the fields of the Blessed City had been, I had one of my ravens land on a nearby pole. I had no idea what it had been used for. Right now, it didn’t matter; what mattered was that it gave me a good overview of the area.
After a quick calculation, I decided to go with twelve graves per row and eleven rows in total. For that, twelve more ravens landed in the field, each raven three metres from the next, the raven on the pole allowing me to position them neatly. I wanted to make this look good, especially if it became a side of remembrance for those killed by blind faith in Sunna. Not quite what had happened, but it was close enough to the truth that I would be spreading that interpretation.
Digging the graves wasn’t hard. Using one raven after the other, I channelled Earth Magic through them, drawing some of the soil up and transmuting it into a simple stone sarcophagus. Once the body was interred in the sarcophagus, I was planning to lower it into the ground, deep enough to prevent any wild animal from digging up these remains.
“The first twelve can be interred,” I told Maggie, once I was done with the first row.
“Thank you,” she replied, quickly organising a group of volunteers to carry the bodies. It was a grim but necessary task, and the people carried it out solemnly.
Once the first body was in its final resting place, I created a lid over the coffin and started lowering it into the ground. It likely looked quite odd to the people watching; the ground seemed to flow apart and swallow the coffin, but that was the easiest and best way to go about it. As I lowered the coffin, I also made small gaps in it, allowing worms and similar critters to do their job. It felt like a good compromise between dignity for the deceased and necessity.
As soon as the coffin was in position, I conjured a marker for the grave, inquiring about the name of the person I had just buried and added it to the marker. I had considered making the marker a cross, but quickly decided against it. But I also avoided any other common religious symbols, especially those associated with Sunna. Instead, I created a simple torch made of stone. It looked almost like a flower, with a short stone stem ending in a crystalline flame. The flame didn’t burn, but it shed a cold, blue light, providing a stark contrast to the sunlight associated with Sunna.
I had a feeling nobody would forget this by the time I was done here. That the torch was also one of Lady Hecate’s symbols was, of course, a mere coincidence. But I had a feeling it would prove useful in the future, if only because I could ask Luna to make sure the graveyard here was divinely consecrated, or the dead might rise from their graves in the future. That might get messy.
