While my scrying constructs were flying towards the strange structure I had spotted in the distance, I continued my way towards the village. The progression I could see on the ground was quite interesting, allowing me to judge the severity of the storm I had, partially inadvertently, created and how it dropped off over the distance. It was quite obvious that the strongest winds had been around the mountain I had hit beneath, with a focal point around the boundary of the burned land, where the cold rain dropped onto the burned ground and evaporated, creating that hot, steaming cloud I had observed as things happened.

Curiously, it looked as if the burned land had held enough heat to essentially overpower the cold clouds over time, warming the clouds up enough to break the storm, something I wouldn’t have believed without seeing it now. Or maybe the mechanism was a different one here, I didn’t know enough about meteorology to be certain, I could only compare it to some of the weather reports I had seen about hurricanes, where warm, moist air from the ocean rose and met with the cold air in the higher atmosphere, creating these gale force winds. Given that those conditions were similar enough to what I could observe here, the explanation was good enough for me.

The damage progression on the ground was fairly straightforward. On one side of the spectrum was the utter devastation I had seen around the mountain I had built my lair under, the top layer of soil and vegetation stripped away and replaced with a muddy layer of earth, where all trees had been blown over and even some large rocks had shifted and the hills literally changed their outlines, showing just how utterly destructive the storm had been.

Further along the way, the top layer of soil started to become visible again, showing that grass had survived, as had a few trees, though those trees looked quite bad, with a majority of their branches broken off and the leaves stripped away, but at least they were still standing. Some of them also showed lightning damage, though most of those had fallen over and were reduced to broken husks on the ground, lying alongside the countless trees the storm had felled outright. If looking at the images in isolation, I would be appalled by the destruction, but compared to the utter devastation I had seen around my mountain? This was quite harmless.

Finally, by the time I had completely left the burned land behind me, the damage showed that the storm had barely reached here. Sure, the ground was soaked by pouring rain, and I could see a few hailstones on the ground, but overall, the forest had literally weathered the storm with just a few broken branches and a couple of fallen trees, nothing I would call severe damage.

In the meantime, while I was continuing my flight towards the village and my daughters, my scrying constructs allowed me to observe the burned land as well. There, the picture of damaged areas was quite different, but that was mostly because the land had already been devastated. There were no trees to blow over in the burned land, no grass to hold down the topsoil, hel, there wasn’t even actual ground, just the ubiquitous layer of hot, sandy goop I had come to hate. It was everywhere and, if left alone, it was irritating and hot, giving me the most annoying rash if I didn’t make sure I got rid of it.

Near my mountain, said layer of goop had solidified into those craggy black rocks, with sharp edges and an overall broken appearance, but, as I could now see, those rocks had only been formed where the storm had been at its most fierce.

Further along the path, the goopy sand still looked like it did before, though the heat-haze usually hanging over the burned land was gone here, showing just how much power had been needed to overwhelm the storm.

Compared to the progression of damage over the normal, not-burned land, the damage here was a lot subtler. Instead of broken trees and overturned ground, it was limited to the heat and power held in the ground, but the progression was just as interesting to observe, now that I knew what to look for. Though while I could judge the damage with my own eyes, I could only estimate just how much power the burned land had held before I forced it to expend a lot of power to withstand the storm.

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The result was quite sobering, making me wonder just what sort of creature or conglomerate was at the centre of it. Whether it was something similar to the scorched land we had seen the previous year or something more akin to the Withered, just with a lot more fire, a part of me was incredibly curious and truly wanted to find out. And yet, while a part of me was inquisitive, another part was genuinely fearful, knowing that this might be more than we could handle and it might force us to retreat, an emotion I was quite unhappy with. I did not want to retreat, I didn’t want to quit, I didn’t want to accept that we might fail here as accepting that would force me to accept that failure was a possibility in the first place. While I could accept failing an experiment or being forced to take a different approach, I didn’t want to contemplate something being impossible to achieve for me. Not if contemplating that might mean I would be forced to contemplate I might fail to bring Sigmir back.

Just the idea sent a shiver down my spine and made me deeply uncomfortable, so I immediately banished the notion back to where it came from, the deepest recesses of my insecurities, and forced myself to focus on the present and my current problems.

Problems, like the growing number of artillery beasts on the ground, demonstrating that there were quite a few of them, even if they didn’t bother to try hitting the ravens I was using as scrying constructs, likely because I could finally have my constructs remain high in the air, beyond what I considered the effective range of the artillery beasts. Or it might be because these creatures were quite busy throwing more burning goop at the layer of burned land that had lost its heat, making me wonder if that was an effective method to transfer heat. I couldn’t really believe it was, the waves had to lose a tremendous amount of energy to the chilling effect of the air, but it likely was a lot faster to transfer heat like this than it was to wait for heat to transfer through static material.

Finally, my scrying constructs reached the area closest to the strange structures I had spotted, and what I saw there was quite interesting. Here, there wasn’t anything I could call ground, just a layer of what looked like black liquid, though it had to be incredibly thick and viscous, given the way it moved when some black creature similar to the Bitumen in form moved across it. Additionally, I was fairly certain it was incredibly hot, as the air above it formed a highly distorted haze, though it was difficult to say for sure.

And then there were the structures, made from black stone, or at least they appeared to be. By now, I wasn’t about to discard the possibility that they were made from the same black liquid the ground was made of, just held together magically until somebody got too close. Hel, they might even be another type of creature. There certainly were enough of these objects that looked like eyes dotted all over them, so I wasn’t about to make any definitive judgment.

The most interesting part of it all might be that the black liquid, and these strange structures, all surrounded a large opening in the ground, though with the light-absorbing black material everything here was made of, it was difficult to judge shapes and sizes in the first place, making me nudge my scrying constructs just a little closer.

For a moment, I was fairly certain I could see stairs or steps going down the hole into the ground, but something strange happened before I could get a better look or confirm the identification.

Suddenly, one of the eye-like objects moved and, for lack of a better word, blinked, causing a coherent beam of energy to lance out, striking the closest of my scrying constructs, the one I had been observing through. I felt nothing but a brief flash of pain and could see the scrying construct fade away thanks to my other constructs, but that was all I managed to accomplish. Before I could react and pull the other constructs back, more beams of energy struck from these eyes, destroying the rest of my constructs and leaving me reeling with a headache, wondering just what the hel had happened now.

I could see the Bitumen and the artillery beasts throw around goop, all good, all a somewhat expected pattern, nothing too complex. But to go from creatures only able to fling about burning goop to literal death beams was a little… out there.

However, until I could better explain what I had just observed, I had to accept the current conclusion, which was that the burned land had death beams. Or at least something close enough, I was well aware that my scrying constructs weren’t the sturdiest of creations out there.

Luckily, didn’t have to continue contemplating that particular bit of insanity, as I could see my daughters make their way through the mostly undamaged forest beneath, giving me something else to focus on.