Peering into the darkness, I tried to use the same magic I had used before, to create an outlook from another shadow, my variant of the water-mirror spell. I had done so before, so I thought I would be able to do so again. The difference was that back then, I had simply shifted my viewpoint from one shadow I was able to see, into another. Now, I wanted to move from one shadow I could see - or rather, a dense pool of Darkness - into a shadow I couldn’t see, was not certain was actually there, and which was in a position I had never personally seen. That added to the difficulty, but to make up for that increase, I had Lenore aiding me and she had seen the position recently, including the magical formations around the camp.

As Lenore projected the area I wanted to link the darkness before me into my mind, I focused on the concepts and runes described in the water-mirror spell, just replacing those concerning water with runes concerning darkness. Both were merely used as a medium; a link between the point of origin and the target. Water worked well, as it was a transient medium, perpetually flowing and cycling. Darkness on the other hand wasn’t flowing but it was forever changing, as it wasn’t something that existed, it was a state of non-existence, the absence of light.

I felt a reaction to my attempt to connect the darkness in front of me to the distant darkness, to link the two of them so I could see out of the distant one, as if I was looking through a window. At first, I thought it was due to the factors that I had considered but as I poked and prodded, slightly changed the mental framing I was using, I realised that the problem wasn’t in the spell as such, it was in the destination. In a bit of an experiment, I used a different patch, not inside the camp, merely somewhere between my position and the camp, a spot that Lenore had coincidentally noticed because it was a relatively large clearing, and tried to look at it from a ground level.

Just from knowing that there were shadows beneath the trees where the soft starlight was blocked out and kept away, I was able to form a bridge, a window into that clearing. To make sure it worked as I wanted it to work, I moved the focus around, slowly looking at different parts, even trying to focus on specific things to bring them closer, it was certainly possible, if a little challenging.

After a few moments of looking around and testing whether I was able to use magic through the window - an attempt that ended in absolute failure, I wasn’t even able to perceive the ice and snow with my magical senses - I let the magic evaporate.

“Well, that didn’t work.” I mentally grumbled to Lenore. “Their warding seems to prevent that way of scrying, do you know any other?” I asked, slightly annoyed that I had been thwarted that easily.

“No, I’m afraid not. It seems that the water mirror, or maybe that particular form of scrying is common enough that wards against it are prevalent.” Lenore joined in, sounding peeved as well. Maybe because she would be tapped for regular scouting, if the scrying fell flat. “But I do have an idea what we can try, if you want to.” she continued, making me grin with enthusiasm.

“Is it safe?” I asked, before I got carried away and did something risky again.

“It should be. What I have in mind is essentially a practical application of two skills we already have, only that I want to try it in our Avatar-state so we can combine our skills to make it a reality.” she explained, her mind sending a stream of thoughts to elaborate.

It only took moments for me to understand what she had in mind and I thought it was worth a try. So, without great gestures or ceremony, we fully merged, joining together in our powerful Avatar-state, the Raven’s Shadow.

But that was only the first step, together, we slightly changed the runes we had used to create the darkness in front of us, shifting it to create darkness around us, almost what we had done to isolate the nymph, so long ago, in order to break into her mind.

For a second we were completely enveloped by darkness, a darkness so all encompassing and absolute, we wouldn’t have known if our eyes were open or closed. But then, we started reaching out with our magic, feeling the darkness around us, and while we couldn’t see, we knew where there was light and where there was darkness in our surroundings. We knew that it wasn’t the surroundings that had changed, but our perception.

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The next step was slightly different, instead of shifting my awareness into Lenore, as I did when I looked out through her eyes, I shifted my awareness into the absolute darkness around us. It was a strange feeling, not quite like touching, not quite like seeing, neither really mapped to the experience of feeling the darkness.

It reminded me a little of the strange state I had reached, back when we had avenged Sigmir, visiting bloody vengeance on her tribe, I had pondered that state and my apparent ability to move through shadows and even teleport through one at the end, but I had never quite managed to recreate it, not wanting to nearly kill myself to even start experimenting.

But now, it seemed as if Lenore and I had managed to get us into a state that was quite similar to that I had been in back then.

Focusing on the direction we knew the camp was in, we started to shift the darkness, using the mental construct of a raven, made purely from darkness, without depth, without texture, merely a shadow in the night. Now, we truly were the Raven’s Shadow.

In that state, moving relied more on our will to shift than on any physical features, making the journey quite interesting; it was as if we were dreaming while being awake, disassociated from our body, but still inseparably linked to it. It was almost as if we had formed a companion-bond with the Darkness around us, a formless, featureless mass, and had half of our combined existence, taking parts from both of us, shifted into it to create the shadow construct.

Our journey to the centaur camp felt like it had taken hours, but the part of me that was still linked to my body knew that it hadn’t been more than five minutes, merely from having a rough idea of how often we had breathed during that time. But, in the state Lenore and I were in, having temporal dissociation might be just par-for-the-course. We just didn’t know, having no experience to exist as darkness. It would make sense, that Darkness had no sense of time, being defined as something being absent.

“We are almost there.” Lenore caught my attention, helping me focus on our joined thoughts instead of letting my mind fall down the rabbit-holes of our strange state.

“I see it.” I answered, focusing on the flickering, shifting light, coming from campfires, in front of us and the similarly moving shadows that light created. We were even able to get a sense of the magical warding around the camp, not that either of us was able to identify its components, just that it was there and used to keep things out. But apparently, constructs created from pure darkness were not on the list of things to be kept out, allowing us to simply move across the barrier and into the camp itself.

Inside, we continued to shift from shadow to shadow, sometimes creeping behind tents, other times hitching a ride on one of the ponies, merging our shadowy construct with the inevitable shadow such a being cast.

It was rather fun, to move about in their camp, knowing that only there seemed to be no way for them to stop us, no way for them to even detect us. We ghosted through the outer perimeter, getting looks into some of the tents, making mental notes where they kept their food and that their weapons and armour seemed to be left to the individuals, instead of having some sort of armoury. But, just knowing which thents had their food and where their support-personnel slept was valuable, if we wanted to push them back, destroying their food was an excellent way to weaken them.

Once we were done with the outer perimeter, we moved to the inner tents, those eight tents that were obviously more important. There, we ran into a snag: the tents were illuminated brightly, looking from the outside as if they had light-bulbs in there. It made it impossible for me to simply shift inside; I could change my shape to conform to the shadows I had hidden in before, but I needed a deep enough shadow to do that. In there, I had no chance to even try - it was too bright.

We tried for a few more minutes, until the part of me that was still in my body started to experience headache and a bit of lethargy, making me realise that we had continually used a little more Astral Power than we were regenerating, despite our increased attributes as an Avatar.

Together, Lenore and I let go of the shadow we had controlled, letting our awareness snap back into our bodies, which was a bad idea. While our awareness and the pieces of ourselves we had linked into the shadow were still connected to the rest, and would always be, the connection apparently acted like a rubber band, and letting us snap back to reality caused a major headache.

But we had achieved what we had set out to, without getting caught.

I certainly counted that as a win, headache or not.