“So, there’s somebody sleeping over there?” I asked, not quite sure what to make of this unexpected development. The wall of thorns appeared to be fairly solid, meaning it would provide decent shelter against animals and similar beasts, but, at the end of the day, it was just a mess of tangled and possibly haphazardly woven vines. Without a whole lot of clay or something similar to make the tangled mess wind-proof, this shelter would be incredibly drafty, meaning it wouldn’t work for most of the year, simply because it was too cold. Maybe if the person using it was as resistant to cold as I was, but that was a bit of a stretch.

“Might be a temporary shelter used while hunting,” Luna suggested quietly, her mind possibly following a similar path as mine.

“Could be,” I nodded, “Can’t really be a permanent one, not in the local climate.”

“Want me to investigate more?” Lia asked, ready to return to the trees and sneak up on some unsuspecting sod. Not that said sod would ever know about us sneaking up on them, unless they were a lot more mentally aware and sensitive than I imagined.

“No, I’ll take a look.” I shook my head, closing my eyes to conjure a scrying construct, letting it immediately take to the air.

For a raven, it was even easier to get access to the structure than it had been for Lia. She needed to jump from tree to tree, having to carefully absorb the impact of her jumps to keep them from shaking the trees and giving away her presence, or she had to step through the shadows, using a fair amount of magic and leaving a magical trail somebody with the right skills could follow. The raven just had to flap its wings a few times to soar between the trees until it reached a suitable one to perch, looking into the space from above.

Sadly, the roof seemed to be made with more care than the outer walls, preventing me from getting a good look, though I could see that the space in the middle, directly below the opening in their roof, held a fairly large fire-pit, making the opening a chimney of sorts. Luckily, it was late enough in the night that the fire had burned down to embers, allowing my construct to easily investigate the dwelling through said hole.

Landing the construct on the edge of the hole made me briefly wonder just what would happen if I had a scrying construct fly through the hot air above a fire, or even through an actual fire. It wasn’t as if one of my ravens could burn; there was nothing flammable in the magical construct, so that part was safe but elementally, these constructs were almost entirely antithetical to the light and heat of a fire, meaning something interesting could happen. Maybe I should test that at a later time, just to see what could happen, but for now, I had a temporary shelter to scout out.

Looking inside, I was briefly confused. At first glance, I wouldn’t have thought that I was looking at the home, however temporary, of an intelligent being at all. There were some bones piled up in one spot, most of them looking as if the flesh had been gnawed off after roasting the entire thing over a fire, but there was nothing I’d consider furniture. Nor could I see anything from before the Change, no clothes, none of the various plastic items people had preserved as they continued to work just as well as they had before the world went mad.

Regardless of before or after the change, large containers that could be closed securely were a useful thing to have, allowing the transport of liquids without worrying about spills, while also preventing evaporation. Sure, here in the relatively cold and chilly north, evaporation wasn’t as troublesome as it was down south, but that didn’t mean carrying water was any easier. Unless the being in here could conjure water, but I somewhat doubted that possibility.

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Similarly, tarps and such were a wonderful thing to have, but the person in here was using none of those. Now, I really wanted to find out just who was sleeping within this shelter, but, sadly, the sound of breathing I could hear through my construct came from below and behind its current perch, forcing me to jump around the opening until I could see.

And what I saw made me almost lose control over my construct. If I had been there in person, I was fairly sure my eyes would be bugging out of my head, simply because I was staring so hard.

There, curled up on a bunch of roughly processed furs, dirty and matted furs, was a massive humanoid figure, easily twice my height. It was hard to judge due to the way they were curled up, but if nothing else, their size explained why the shelter was built as it was. However, their size was only part of the reason why I was staring so utterly flabbergasted. The bigger reason was that, even in the darkness of their shelter, I could make out the colour of their skin, and it was a familiar, pale-blue colour. Not quite the same as mine, but close enough to drive home the similarity, to say nothing of the similarity this one’s colour had with my beloved Sigmir’s skin.

“It’s a giant,” I couldn’t help but whisper, the being’s size, burly physique, and overall appearance driving that point home quite well. That thing in there was big enough to make my beloved Sigmir, despite her impressive size and physique, look like a child, and, unless I completely missed my guess, its skin indicated that the giant was a frost one, like some of Sigmir’s ancestors had been.

Pushing my focus back into the scrying construct, I continued to look into the dwelling and the more I looked, the less impressed I became. This wasn’t the home of an intelligent being; it was the den of a beast. The few tools, if you could call a sharpened stick that, looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned, ever, and I couldn’t tell if the giant had actually any supplies stored away or if it was just living from day to day.

Regardless, a part of me, the one that associated this giant with Sigmir, became deeply disappointed, to the point that I briefly considered flaying this witless being, just to drive home the fact that this wasn’t Sigmir, that my beloved was so much more than this brutish monster.

“What are we going to do now?” Luna asked, her voice quiet but insistent enough to draw my mind out of the scrying construct I had used to observe the giant and its den.

“We’ll keep investigating, this might be useful,” I replied, my voice just as quiet. The giant, alongside any others of its kind, could be incredibly important to my quest, simply because it represented an opportunity to get something I needed but didn’t have a way of getting. These creatures could be considered primogenitors of beings like Sigmir, meaning that my beloved had some of their biological essence held within her. This, in turn, meant that to succeed on my quest and resurrect my beloved, I had to gain access to said biological essence; in other words, I needed some of their parts.

A lot of their parts, as I did not doubt that we’d need several tests and experiments, until we finally managed to succeed and create a body for my beloved, a body that I wanted to be as perfect as possible. No defects for my beloved, no disabilities or malformed parts, I wanted her to be just as wonderful and perfect as she always had been.

“You think there are more of these?” Lia asked, her voice nary a whisper, too.

“Probably, I can’t imagine one single giant would trample all these paths into the forest,” I shrugged, curious about the potential social structure of these beings. If they had a society at all, they might be more along the lines of an animal’s territorial structure. I wasn’t sure, and a part of me wasn’t overly eager to find out.

“So, we keep hidden and spy on this one, until we find out all there is about it and its friends?” Lia asked, getting a nod from me in response. “Luna, I need you to learn all about the biology of these beings. Everything you can, in as much detail as possible,” I ordered, my tone one I rarely used. A tone of command, one that my daughters both knew, brooked no discussion. I usually used it only during combat, when hesitation cost lives, but now, I made it clear to Luna that she would do as I told her.

“Yes, Mother,” came her reply, her tone just as grave as mine had been, making it obvious that she understood. This was important, and I didn’t want anything to go wrong.