After it became clear that there was no point in trying to engage the centaurs again, we tried to make an educated guess about the location of the ancient, imperial road, planning to use it to create distance between the elite centaur-squad we assumed was there to hunt us and ourselves. We had to make estimates about the path we had taken to the battlefield where we had met the wolves first, followed by guessing at the position of the main den and the path we had taken from the main-den to the centaur-camps. At that point, I wished that there was some sort of map-function, allowing me to get a better understanding of our position, but sadly, there wasn’t such a thing, making our position mostly a rough estimate.

But that was just fine, after all, we could only guess at the position of the imperial road, even if it seemed like a good guess that it remained as straight as it had been the whole time we had travelled on it. That allowed us to divine a route from our estimated position to the extrapolated course of the road. Or, in more simple terms, we decided to go south-west, hoping to stumble upon the road, following it once we did.

Knowing it wasn’t unlikely that the centaurs would try to track us, we stayed in as rough terrain as possible, sticking to freshly thawed bog, barely navigable, thick forest and making our way through every rocky outcropping we could find. It slowed us down, but compared to the effort needed for an equine race such as the centaurs, we were virtually speeding through the difficult terrain.

Luckily, the local fauna wasn’t too dangerous, mostly leaving us alone and we returned the favour. There were a few polecats that were attracted to the smell of food but we were able to send them off without too much trouble, getting some nice pelts in return.

Curiously, the local flora was a lot less forgiving, some of it acting quite aggressive and, at least in my opinion, magical, trying to wrap us in vines to turn us into fertiliser or using poisonous spores once we got to close and similar shenanigans. For the first time, I wished that I had a talent in fire-magic, despite the disgusted shudder that ran down my spine, just thinking about it. The idea to simply set fire to the whole area in a bid to get rid of the vegetating pests had a strange, primal appeal, even for me.

Without the option to simply purge the area with fire, we had to uproot the plants one after the other, after convincing them that going back to dormancy with a sudden cold snap. The advantage of that tactic, as Lenore put it, was that we could farvest the poisonous plants and leave the merely annoying ones behind, as a friendly gift to a possibly pursuing force. As we harvested a particularly nasty plant that smelled a little like mustard, I mentioned to Lenore how airborne poisons had been used to lethal effect in my world and it was as if I had triggered a switch. When she heard what little I remembered off-hand about the horrors of trench warfare during the first world war, she not only wanted to know more, no, she wanted to know everything.

Due to that, I most likely ended up on a few watch-lists in the real world, my internet searches about the various ways people had used to kill others on a wide scale undoubtedly triggering a few watch-words. But after a few hours of searching through the internet, I had a few ideas about the best ways to combine the magical skills of Lenore and me with a lot of harvested material to create something more, something truly and viciously deadly. Sadly, at that point we had left the centaur-camps behind by quite a bit, so we were lacking easy targets to test my ideas on, not to speak of the amount of toxic plants we needed to gather and process. But it was a way to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of enemies, with our current power. We just needed the right poison to add some spice to the magic.

When I told Lenore about it, she was delighted, picking my half-formed ideas up and running with them, fast. The sheer enthusiasm she showed made me realise just how much she wanted a way to use her magic in an offensive manner, to prove her worth. To me, she didn’t need to do that, I knew just how valuable she was when working with me on a major spell, or even leading one, as she did when we augmented the natural storm, but I fully supported her in her goal. Not just because it was fascinating to see what she developed in her mind, the sheer scope of ideas how to use her wind-magic, possibly in combination with my Darkness-Magic and either natural or even magically augmented poisons to wreak havoc. The sheer, creative malice that she demonstrated made me shudder, just trying to imagine the consequences for next settlement that annoyed us.

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Over the next few days, I rarely spoke with the others, mostly just mindlessly following after Sigmir, instead, I was caught up in intent discussions with Lenore. We bounced ideas of each other, trying to combine the research I had done outside of Mundus with our powers while, at the same time, trying to come up with counter-measures and ways to defeat such counter-measures.

It was at that time that I realised that, while magic was a powerful tool, if we managed to bring a paradigm from Earth into Mundus, we might be able to achieve surprising results as the defenses on Mundus were geared towards what was used in conflicts on Mundus. So, an army would undoubtedly have powerful warding to keep large-scale magic away and vigilant mages to prevent anyone from simply blowing them to kingdom come with a simple spell.

But what if, say, Lenore and I merely conjured up a wind, nothing nefarious, merely moving air. Simple physics would keep the air moving, even if the magic that had set it into motion was dispelled, until the resting air our wind was pushing into had absorbed the kinetic energy we had invested into it. Warding against simple, slow-moving air-current was next to impossible unless one were to use an air-tight spell and in that case, an army would suffocate inside. Sure, there might be magic to prevent even that, but at some point, the investment in defense was simply not worth it, without a known threat.

Back to the slow-moving air-current, what if we managed to produce one of the gas-weapons used in the wars of Earth’s past, preferably something like Sarin, without a distinctive smell or taste, invisible to the eye and incredibly deadly, and added it to our slow-moving breeze, before letting it waft over a hostile army?

Part of me was intrigued by the possibilities, but another part? Another part was wondering just what we would unleash upon Mundus while asking myself if the developers had anticipated something along those lines or if they had made sure that such substances couldn’t be used.

That question brought me to another curious question, what about gunpowder?

Producing it, purely from a chemical position, was comparatively easy as long as one could source the ingredients. For those, a little creative tinkering would be needed but even that shouldn’t be a problem, especially in a world where alchemy was a pursued activity. From what I could see, alchemy was just a combination of chemistry and magic, which would mean that normal chemistry should work, up to a point.

And from there, it came back to the question of defenses against known threats, as nobody could defend against everything. Defenses would always be tailored to deal with the threats that were thrown at them and finding a new way to attack would temporarily allow to bypass defenses with impunity.

Curiously, the idea to use gunpowder to blow enemies up or to even produce something akin to a primitive gun was not an idea Lenore was interested in. When I shared the ideas regarding that, she reacted with curiosity, until she understood the concept but once she did, I could feel her bored indifference.

It took me a few minutes to understand her reasoning, she didn’t want something to replace her magic, she wanted something to enhance her magic and airborne poisons were the answer she wanted to pursue.

Finally, after three days of discussing possible ways to combine our magic and poison our discussion came to a stop, with the result that we’d have to source the needed materials first before we could continue.

To me, that was just fine, as the night of the full-moon was quickly approaching, so putting the project on a shelf allowed me to fully focus on the upcoming delving into the Astral River.