Looking through the eyes of a scrying construct only showed me that the Blessed City seemed to be incredibly tense. Nobody was moving outside; nobody seemed to be active at all. Everyone was hunkered down, as if trying to avoid the diminishing rays of the Sun.

  Given that this would be the longest night, and presumably the weakest their deity would be within the year, I wasn’t sure why Lorgar wasn’t pushing something, performing a service, festival or something along those lines. They were just sitting around, apparently waiting for the other shoe to drop, something I now felt inclined to arrange.

  “So, Lia, that additional component, is it liquid or a gas?” I asked, withdrawing my mind from the distant scrying construct and looking at my daughter.

  “It’s most potent when ingested as a liquid, but it works just as well when people are exposed to the gas,” she replied, a proud tone in her voice. Nodding, I had to agree with her pride; this seemed to be an exceptionally potent and probably tricky concoction. For it to work in either phase without its function being disrupted by the transfer was impressive.

  “So, if we make a few orbs, fill them with the gaseous version and drop them in the Blessed City, things should get interesting throughout the night, right?” I prodded, and she nodded in reply. This sounded quite doable, and it would do exactly what we wanted. Weaken Sunna and her hold over the community, while possibly shifting the community in a better direction for us.

  After all, if this turned into a large orgy, there’d likely be kids produced. Kids that might very well fall into the divine domain of the Mother, as I had a direct hand in their production. As odd as that idea was, this might give me enough of a claim to place a Blessing on them, giving the community a severe headache, if it even survived the night. Their social structures likely wouldn’t, at least if the people there acted like, well, people. And Lorgar didn’t use the magical wards to enforce compliance, but even divinely enforced compliance would eventually shatter under the strain. Otherwise, the Gods would simply run massive mind-control empires, which the state of Mundus seemed to disprove. However, I couldn’t tell whether that was due to exceptional circumstances in Mundus’ past or to an external factor.

  “Let’s send them a Christmas present,” I chuckled, remembering the festival celebrated before our old civilisation died. A small part of me felt a tinge of regret, especially when remembering the celebrations of my childhood, when my parents were still there with me, but those felt so incredibly long ago. For a moment, I wondered what my mother would say about my actions, about the adoption of Lia and Luna, and the horrors I had wrought on several communities. Or of my relationship with Sigmir, and the absolute need I felt to get her back. What did it say about me that I was utterly committed to bringing back Sigmir, while never even considering if I could do the same with my parents?

  Shaking my head, I focused my mind on the present and the task at hand. We needed a construct to carry the orbs Lia was preparing to the Blessed City and drop them into their wards, with bonus points if I could do so without being obvious. After all, if Sunna noticed that we threw something into her city and shortly afterwards an orgy broke out, it wouldn’t be hard to guess that we were responsible.

  Or maybe I could go into the area around the Blessed City, stay mostly hidden in the shadows and simply throw the orbs. While I wouldn’t be able to actually aim them, hitting a city-sized target should be well within my physical ability. It should be enough to give us a layer of plausible deniability to prevent Sunna from making the connection. By all appearances, the gods needed actual, direct proof, or maybe they could only act in specific circumstances, or within special rules. Without actually knowing how the rules worked, I could only use the few instances of direct divine action I had experienced to guess. But with only two of those at hand, namely the two times I had died on Mundus, that wasn’t a whole lot of data to work with.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Here they are,” Lia handed me five orbs made from some thin, slightly opaque crystal. I could faintly feel the material with my Crystal Magic, sensing that it was more durable than I would have expected, but also quite brittle. Not as bad as glass, but bad enough.

  “What are these?” I asked, lifting one of the tennis-ball-sized orbs, feeling its weight and peering through it to see the substance encased in the crystal. Not that I could tell a whole lot; the stuff was either completely translucent or the crystal's opacity was masking its appearance.

  “They are based on sugar and should dissolve in water. You know, to get rid of evidence,” she explained, making me grin in approval.

  “Yeah, this should work,” I nodded, already considering from where I could throw these and hit the right areas in the city. “How well do you think the gas spreads? Do people need to get close, or will it fill the town? How does that work?”

  “I’m not sure,” Lia admitted, “I’ve tested it in somewhat controlled conditions, but there’s a limit to the testing, given that it’s pretty much undetectable. I’d need some other appliances and sensors, none of which I have, or even know what they’d look like.”

  “But it should still work?” I asked, just to make sure, “Or I might be able to conjure up some wind around the Blessed City, trying to circulate the air for an hour or two, then come back here, and we can have a small celebration of our own,” I said, mainly talking to myself as I considered my options. Lia simply nodded, indicating that those ideas might work, even if we both knew that my attempts might do nothing at all. It wasn’t as if I would be able to completely isolate the Blessed City from all outside air. That would take far too much power and would be completely obvious to anyone with even a smidgen of arcane abilities.

  “Eh, we’ll see,” I shook my head one more time, deciding that this might be up to fate and circumstance. Then, without further discussion, I stepped into the shadows, disappearing from my tower and rapidly moving into the forest near the Blessed City.

  Once there, I stuck to the shadows, wrapped in my cloak and channelling Darkness Magic to make myself as undetectable and concealed as possible. I wasn’t quite invisible, but in the dim gloom of dusk, I was the next best thing, especially when seen from a distance.

  One by one, I lobbed the orbs Lia had prepared into the Blessed City, faintly hearing the crunching sound they made when hitting the ground. Nobody else seemed to notice, at least not enough for anyone to be interested in investigating the noise.

  Then, once all orbs had broken within the city, I reached out and conjured a bit of wind. It wasn’t much, just a breeze, but I kept moving around the city, shifting the wind to form a subtle barrier around town. Not enough to alter the weather on any large scale, just enough to keep the gas contained, hopefully.

  For about an hour, until the sun had fully and truly set and even the time of twilight had passed, I kept that dance up. Constantly moving around the city, always cautious that the gas might just do something to me, too. At the same time, I was curious to hear if there were any effects of the gas within the city, so I kept my ears peeled. I did hear some suspicious noises strongly indicating that people were enjoying themselves under the cover of the Longest Night within the Blessed City. Still, I had no idea if it was due to the added gas, the original liquid courage we had poured into their water supply or because people were, at the end of the day, just that. People, who had their interests, needs and desires, some of which they sated with their chosen partners.

  Regardless of the circumstances, I was unable to hear any screams of pain or general sounds of discomfort, just the usual noises one would hear at night in some places. Maybe a lot more of those noises, but nothing truly troublesome.

  Nodding to myself that this seemed to have worked out in the best way possible, I returned to the shadows, rapidly moving through their gloomy realm, until I reappeared in Jademoon Tower, freezing for a moment when I realised that my daughters had prepared a small feast and celebration just for us. Nothing big, nothing overly fancy, just comfort and family. Exactly how a night like this should be celebrated.