If there was one thing that stood out when travelling through what used to be northern Canada, it was the incredible landscape. The forests stretched seemingly forever, and even in the single year since the change, they had regenerated from what damage humanity had managed to cause. Animals were thriving; bears, moose, and all kinds of critters were plentiful and, quite frankly, frighteningly large. However, it looked like the trees were doing their best to keep up with the relative size of things. Using my scrying constructs to watch a moose the size of an elephant rub itself against a tree large enough to make the moose look small and dainty was inspiring. As was observing a bear, a grizzly or something like that, the size of a bus sitting in a river and gorge itself on fish, some of which were large enough to ride.

Further to the west of us, I could see the occasional mountain, thanks to the elevated viewpoint my constructs provided, and all around us were numerous streams, lakes, and rivers, adding a tremendous amount of water to the landscape. Sadly, those lakes and rivers also played host to an insane number of mosquitoes and flies, all of which were quite attracted to our furless and thin-skinned bodies, only to learn that the Death Magic chokers I had made a while ago were still going strong. Granted, I had to up the dose of Death Magic the chokers used to let them kill even the largest mosquitoes, which had grown to match the rest of the oversized wildlife we had observed. The first time I saw a mosquito almost five centimetres in diameter, I briefly wondered how that alien abomination could fly. Then, I blasted it with enough Death Magic to turn it to dust in an instant, before making sure that all of us were warded. That thing didn’t need to suck blood or carry disease to be a significant nuisance, its stinger alone would be pretty painful.

Thanks to the oversized plants and animals in the area, things got occasionally quite exciting, especially when one of the larger critters got overly curious and tried to find out just what was travelling through their territory. One of those encounters had been when some sort of giant badger decided to find out what the scent coming from the ground was and dug up the shelter I had built into the ground to spend the day in.

Luckily, the badger had done so relatively late in the evening, when the Sun had mostly set. Still, there was something seriously disconcerting about having the roof of your temporary home get ripped apart by massive claws attached to paws that could double as shovels for an excavator. The thing certainly managed to excavate us, disturbing our rest and forcing me to demonstrate some of the less pleasant Mind Magic on it. Inducing fear was a fairly useful effect, circumventing the usual fight-or-flight response by essentially forcing it into the flight response. If I hadn’t done so, the stupid thing might have managed to cave in the den I had dug, and even I would have some trouble keeping a few cubic metres of dirt from crashing down on us once the dirt was in motion.

Afterwards, my previous project, creating boots that would allow my daughters to fly, was shelved once more, and I began to look into magical defences to keep overly curious critters from finding us. Unsurprisingly, such defences were something the Zevarra Agha contained, though not quite in the way I wanted them to work. Thus, the project changed from figuring out an entirely new way to ward off such critters to redesigning the wards from the book. Those wards were focused on slowing critters down, mainly by creating obstacles or attacks in their way, but I was more interested in making sure that the critters didn’t find us in the first place. Concealment instead of active defence, though I made note that having some active defences would likely be useful, too, just in case the concealment failed.

Additionally, I wanted to have my wards alert me in case something or someone managed to evade and overcome them, allowing us to rest even more easily.

As I was working, I soon realised that I wouldn’t be able to fit all those functions into a single ward. At least, not with my current knowledge; it might become possible as I learned more about this type of magic, and once I improved my skills to some extent. However, for now, it was impossible.

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Due to that, I had to come up with a way to layer my wards, allowing them to work in sequence and have each ward fulfil a singular function. To make matters worse, those layers had to be anchored to different items, and as I soon learned, different wards didn’t play nice with other wards, especially when it came to alarm and concealment. Individually, figuring them out was somewhat simple, but making them work in sequence was not.

For some reason, having an alert ward within a concealment ward caused the alert ward to become concealed, making it utterly useless. Unless the concealment ward was anchored outside the alert ward, then it worked if I could link the concealment ward to the inside of the alert ward. It was, quite frankly, a mess, and I managed to gain a few points in enchanting during my attempts to make it work, finally bringing the skill above fifty.

The next problem I ran into with my wards was that the anchor’s material was quite specific to the ward, with crystals, stones, ice and living wood all having their preferred materials. Even worse, those materials had their own subcategories, making me realise just how deep and wide the field I was wading into actually was. There were likely countless ways to make what I wanted work, and, eventually, there’d be just as many ways to circumvent what I was designing now, in order to do the people protected by the wards a mischief.

All in all, wards were a challenge wrapped in a puzzle surrounded by numerous questions, something I would likely have to work on for quite some time. But, at least for now, I had a few basic ideas I could work with, allowing me to spread my research out again.

Another topic I continually worked on was the question of my potential divinity. Introspection and meditation were among the tools I continued to use, trying to observe the internal world formed by my body, mind, and soul. There had to be some sort of alteration, something abnormal or changed within that inner world, but as of yet, I hadn’t been able to find just what that might be.

Indeed, a significant part of the problem was the extreme lack of options for comparison. I had my own inner world to observe, and I could faintly make out Luna’s, though that was a struggle. I had to use Blood Magic to analyse her body, Mind Magic to gain insight into her mind, while also channelling power to my eyes so I could see her soul. Then, I had to form all that vastly disparate information into a greater whole. To say it was complicated was a vast understatement, but it was possible. Not as easy as observing my inner world, nor was the format, for lack of a better word, the same but I could perceive something. Nothing I could understand just yet, but it was a start.

Sadly, Luna was about the worst possible candidate for my research while also being the only option I had. Sasha’s inner world didn’t work due to the fundamental changes it had undergone as she went from human to Shattered before turning into a Sasquatch. Silva, similarly, had a fundamentally different body, while her mind and soul had some similarities, but they were minor.

Lastly, there was Lia, with her Shattered and, for lack of a better word, inverted soul, no longer running on the energies of life but those infused into her by my ritual. Not something I could use as a basis for comparison, meaning Luna was the only option.

Luna, who, just like me, was connected to the Grandmother in a triad divinity, meaning her inner world should have the same structure for that as mine, making it even more difficult to find out where said structure could be.

Still, given that we were talking about divinity, I couldn’t quite believe that whatever made a soul divine in nature was something small or easily overlooked, even if looked at the inner world from afar. I just hadn’t found it yet, though that could easily be because I didn’t have enough time to try.

If nothing else, these inner worlds formed by our body, mind and soul were incredibly complex and interesting, allowing me to gain a bit of insight into parts of myself I hadn’t been able to explore. Hopefully, this would be a case of more information being better and not one of ignorance being bliss. Because the more I explored my inner world, the more I learned about myself, even if I wasn’t too happy with some of the things I found out.