“Luna, can you take care of things here?” I asked, my voice a little hoarse from the brutal headache I was now suffering. “Bring the locals back to their village, we’ll meet up somewhere, I’ll find you,” I added, knowing that I’d be able to find my daughters without trouble, even if there was some distance between us.

However, given the brutal pain and the weird feedback I had suffered when that girl, I believe Angelina was her name, somehow managed to connect to the Pale Lady, I had no desire to meet her in person. Who knew what might happen in that case if merely witnessing the summoning through a scrying focus was enough to make me suffer like this? I had no idea and, quite frankly, this was one of the incredibly rare cases in which I didn’t want to know, or at least I didn’t want to find out with my body. Just the feedback alone was enough to make me wonder if my head would burst like a watermelon dropped from up high or maybe shatter like a crystal glass exposed to extremely high-frequency sounds.

“I’ll take care of things,” she promised, and I started to make my way outside, the locals looking at me with a fair amount of confusion and a bit of worry. To them, something strange had just happened within the dungeon, and I was affected. They could see the correlation, and it was easy to assume causation between the two. I doubted anyone had a good idea what the connection was just yet, but they would form theories, start to gossip and come to their own conclusions, however inaccurate they might be. It would be interesting to hear what Luna and Lia heard about their ideas, but for now, I wanted nothing more than to get away from this area. Hopefully, something as simple as physical distance, in addition to a lack of information, would be sufficient to quell the horrible noise piercing my head. Otherwise, I might just have to go and murder Angelina, just to get some peace and quiet.

Outside, I picked a direction at random and simply started running. Given that I wanted nothing more than to get away, I didn’t bother to try to find a path through the tentacle field around the central area; I simply wrapped myself in Wind Magic and used Blood Magic to improve my speed and started to run as fast as I could.

It was an interesting experience, mainly because the mental effort to keep up with the tentacles that shot up from the ground, the required focus was enough to take my mind off the pain, so that was something. Still, I had to keep moving and react quickly, or the tentacles would take my feet out from beneath me. I considered trying to fly, but given the heat rays emitted by the towers behind me, I wasn’t willing to take that risk. Instead, I simply kept running, dodging around tentacles and Bitumen, speed, alongside a bit of concealment from my cloak, were the best tools to keep me safe.

Looking back, I was somewhat amused to see numerous tentacles reaching out, waving around as if trying to find me. Stumbling a little, I managed to keep my feet under me until I was far enough out to be confident the towers behind me wouldn’t be able to reach me.

Then, I focused some Astral Power into my back, letting my wings flare out while leaping into the air. Immediately, I felt the air catch in my wings and my body tilted forward, my tail waving wildly to stabilise my body as my wings flapped a few times, wind surging out and speeding me up. Behind me, the ground was churned up by the speed of my passage, sending some of the goop flying.

As I was speeding away, my mind was focused behind me, trying to make sure no beams of heat were lancing towards me, eager to burn me to a crisp. Getting hit now, even if the beams might not be strong enough to incinerate me, would be bad, simply because of my low altitude. Getting burned would be seriously distracting, likely making me lose control of my flight and crashing me into the ground, seriously injuring me in the process, given my speed. But, as the brutal headache seemed to fade just a little bit with every metre of distance I managed to put between me and the dungeon, I wasn’t about to slow down. If anything, I was trying to speed up while angling my flight upwards, using speed and distance to avoid the occasional Bitumen and even the odd artillery beast coming from the ground.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

It turned out that these creatures were all focused on defending their territory with a special dedication to stopping everything heading towards the centre. With me going in the opposite direction, it was almost as if they were confused, needing an extra second or three to aim for me. When they did, their aim was off, aiming where I was instead of where I was going. Maybe they worked under the assumption that heading in the direction I was moving in could only be a feint, and I’d double back if they chose to aim for future positions, something they would want to avoid. It was possible, though I wasn’t about to turn and find out.

Instead, I simply kept climbing until I reached a comfortable height where I started to orient myself, looking around to see landmarks on the ground so I could figure out where I was and where I wanted to go from here.

With the strange interaction I had suffered, there was no way I was willing to return to the village until I was confident it wouldn’t happen again. The pain had been brutal, the sort of agony that made you want to smash your head with a hammer, just to make it go away. Not something I was willing to chance, at least not without some incredibly good reasons.

After circling for a few minutes, simply letting the air flow around my face as a pleasant wind, I felt a little better and knew where I was in relation to other nearby landmarks. Landmarks like the mountain I had built my shelter under, the space where I had conjured up that massive storm. Given the amount of additional mass the various artillery beasts had launched at said mountain, I was willing to bet nothing physical would be able to reach me there. Maybe some sort of conceptual, spiritual or otherwise non-physical attack, or something channelled through the Astral River, but the techniques required for something like that were quite advanced, not something I currently had to worry about.

Nodding to myself and turned, lazily gliding towards that mountain, idly watching the ground beneath me. There, I could see some changes in the burned land; there were no Bitumen around, no Artillery Beasts or anything like them, nothing. It was quite curious, making me wonder what had changed in the minutes between my exit from the central area and now. Maybe I’d be able to figure it out after talking to Luna, who would hopefully interrogate the locals who had delved into the dungeon, as they were the most likely source of this change.

Soon, I was circling above my mountain, slowly letting myself descend. By now, the headache had largely faded, though whether that came from time, distance or some other factor, I wasn’t sure. Whatever the case may be, I was glad that it was going away; that sort of agony was nothing I wanted to experience again, even with my fairly expansive list of magical mishaps during experimentation. Many of those had been quite painful, especially that one time when I had accidentally bumbled into a divine realm and been evicted; that one had been horrible.

Landing, I only stumbled a little when my legs didn’t quite want to separate and work, but then, I could steady myself and step through the shadows, landing in the tunnel leading deeper into the mountain.

Despite my two weeks of absence, the air remained fresh and breathable, a testament to the work I had done here, allowing me to relax even further and grab a bite to eat from my bag as I made my way to the central area and my throne. While I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do, beyond sleeping for a few hours, I felt that sitting on my throne, a representation of my power and self, would be a good idea, especially if I wanted to delve into my mind and soul, trying to figure out just what had caused that horrible feedback I had experienced.

Sitting down, I munched on some dried meat and fruits until I closed my eyes, letting my mind fall inwards to assess just what had happened to me. And maybe figure out how that shade of Lenore had made its way to this world, that, too, was an incredibly interesting question.