Delegation was such a wonderful thing. The Chief had, after some discussion, agreed that a raid on the burned land’s central dungeon was a necessity. Despite knowing that the chance that everyone who went into the dungeon got back out okay was slim, with a solid chance nobody would survive at all.

Due to those chances, he had added a few stipulations to the raid, mainly regarding communication and training. The big one was that there needed to be a way for those outside the dungeon to keep an eye on things inside; he likened the idea to body cams. That way, the worst-case scenario could be averted: the group went into the dungeon and never came back out, leaving the dungeon just as unknown as it was now. With the body cams he wanted them to have, the village would know their fate and get information about the dungeon, too, making it a vital tool.

Given that I was already able to make my scrying constructs, I felt somewhat confident in the creation of something like that. I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it, whether to make it an independent construct or if I should seek a way to use my Mind Magic to insert a hook of some sort into the people going in, so I could remotely track what they experienced.

Both ideas had their own merits, and I soon realised I should be trying both, just in case the major liability of the scrying constructs came into effect. Namely, that the system might keep them from entering the dungeon in the first place, or that they might be shunted into their own instance of the dungeon, leaving me blind where it mattered.

Figuring out how to create sturdy enough constructs was one thing, I would likely have to lean heavily on the Spirit I had bound a few weeks ago but to come up with a way that let me tap the senses of another being over a distance?

That was an entirely different matter.

The closest example I had of something like that working was the connection Lenore and I had shared on Mundus, as that had allowed me to see through her eyes with ease, and even channel my magic through her body. But given just how closely we had to bond for that connection to work that way, I already knew it wouldn’t work for this. I was well aware that even trying to build a connection that deep and meaningful to one of the locals was impossible. There were just too many differences between their lives and mine, too much going on for it to ever work. Finally, and maybe most important of all, there was no way in all infernal dimensions that I would try to form a connection that could jeopardise my ability to bring Sigmir back and make our relationship work.

Connecting with another human like that? It would never happen, not willingly on my part at least. And the idea of such a bond being forced upon me? It enraged me enough to chill the environment around me with my roiling magic; I likely wouldn’t even have to consciously act. Instead, my magic might just lash out by itself and end the bond, and whatever creature forced it, or destroy me while trying.

But with Mind Magic? There might be a possibility to accomplish the same thing without the bond. I’d just have to experiment for a bit, figure out a way to link the bond I usually used with my scrying constructs to a human. Or maybe I could use Mind Magic to create one of my scrying constructs within a human, only without a physical form.

A few ideas popped into my mind, some of them more promising than others, but figuring out which worked would take some time.

Which is why delegation was so important. Time was the one resource I couldn’t bypass, which was somewhat amusing, as there had been occasions when I was almost desperate for it to pass. Assembling and training the group who would go into the dungeon would take some time and effort, something I just couldn’t spare if I wanted to make these spells work.

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Thus, delegation was the key. Namely, delegating the task of forming the group, of picking the right members and so on, to the Chief, with support from my daughters, who would also take care of the actual training. Though, could it really be called delegation if the guy I delegated something to was supposedly the one in charge in the first place?

Regardless, with my daughters, and even Silva and Sasha, all working together to make the designated group work, I could focus on making the magic they needed to let us keep an eye on them work.

For that, I started with the more obvious option, the scrying constructs. Instead of conjuring them in the usual pattern, one I had been working with for months as I slowly refined it more and more, I began with a blank slate. Not because my pattern was bad, but because the refinement of it was aimed at making it the best at flying around the area without a lot of input from me, allowing me to keep an eye out for danger without requiring me to completely focus on the construct. I was good at what it did, and would likely get better as time went on, but it wasn’t what I needed or wanted here.

Starting with a blank slate meant beginning with a pair of diffuse balls made of Darkness and Wind, the two elements I considered best for creating a formless construct. Something I considered important, as I had no idea about the dungeon’s interior, what conditions were waiting for the team in there and what might happen to them. A corporeal construct had its advantages, but it also had a lot of disadvantages, mainly in the form of its fragility. Destroying a corporeal construct was easily accomplished with a bit of physical force, something ubiquitous in any combat situation. In contrast, a construct without a physical form was much more complex to disperse, unless you had the right magical tricks to do so.

Weaving the two elements together was fairly simple. By now, I had a lot of experience in controlling them and the combination was the basis of an entire branch of my magical abilities, namely everything to do with stealth was based on it. But while weaving them together was simple, making something that didn’t just dissipate without an anchor was not. Even just making it so the magic I used to link my mind to the construct seemed to conflict with the Darkness and Wind, which was quite strange. Darkness and Wind were components used in my scrying constructs after all, but without the Ice, it didn’t work all that well. Or rather, it didn’t work at all.

After a little bit of thinking and a few additional tests, I came to the conclusion that the scrying constructs I made before were always anchored by something solid, unless I briefly held them together with nothing but my will.

With that realisation out of the way, I began to work with something simpler. If Wind was too insubstantial to act as an anchor, I decided to try with Water. That way, the anchor was corporeal enough without being fragile, or so I hoped. It wouldn’t work for the dungeon, not with the amount of heat I expected the group to be faced with, but, as it turned out, it worked as a starting point.

The construct made of Water, Darkness and Wind, essentially an orb of strangely foamy water with a dark tint, worked fairly well. I couldn’t make it move as readily as I could with the scrying raven, but that seemed to be more due to the form, not the elements involved. When I turned the construct into a raven, just one that looked a little different than usual, it worked fairly well, and the bird could fly. Making me wonder if the reason why my scrying constructs could fly was that I was used to them being able to fly, as their original iteration had been made with Lenore’s help. Her help and her instincts, which were obviously geared towards flying. She was a bird after all.

Sadly, that realisation didn’t help me all that much, not if I wanted constructs to use within the dungeon. If the solution were as simple as using a bird with slightly different feathers, I wouldn’t be as pressed to find one. No, if I wanted to make this work, I would have to go at this problem from a different direction.

Whistling softly to myself, I began to play with the constructs, shifting things slightly to try and make things work differently, weaving the magic in other ways I had before, all the while keeping the idea in mind that I wasn’t failing right now. I was merely finding all the ways to make a scrying construct to the specifications I wanted that didn’t work.