After making a few more samples for Querit to play with, I left him to his work. There were a few other things I had to catch up on, namely checking on what Ammun was doing up on the moon and helping Grandfather confirm everything was fine so he could do whatever it was he was planning. After that… helping Father get rid of Shel should have been a priority, but I was very much alright with ignoring that particular problem.

Before I left for Eyrie Peak, I spent a bit of time doing my own long-range scrying. I’d modified my scrying chamber months ago so that I wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of spending half an hour setting up the ritual every time I wanted to use it. Now it included an actual basin of liquid mana big enough for me to completely submerge myself in, the interior of which was covered in the necessary runes.

I scoured the surface of the moon Ammun was trapped on, hindered mostly by the fact that his own magic was hiding whatever it was he was building. Unraveling it from this distance was sure to be difficult, which made me wonder exactly how the gestalt had done it – probably by brute force. That was the primary advantage of having millions upon millions of bodies to throw at a problem.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to find out the gestalt was looking at the entirety of the moon through thousands of different scrying mirrors at the same time and noting which places they couldn’t see so they could refine their spells to search there. It was impossible for a normal person to do, even someone like me, but for a gestalt entity, the only limiting factor would be the mana. It was too bad their ability to utilize lossless casting was practically nonexistent.

Giving up the attempt at scrying Ammun’s activities as a bad job, I slipped through my demesne to appear on my teleportation platform. One quick spell later, I was standing on an identical platform on Eyrie Peak and on my way up to speak to Grandfather.

Surprisingly, the old grayfeather was nowhere to be found. Either he’d decided to proceed with his vacation without me, or he was just somewhere nearby on the mountain. I could see him slowly starting to venture out as he got more comfortable with the new enchantments holding the brakvaw’s graveyard up above the clouds.

Rather than go looking for him, I decided to just seek out the gestalt instead. They were, as always, in their underground cavern, and also crawling across the portal network, and on the other side of it. Odds were they were quite a few other places I wasn’t aware of, as well.

‘Keiran,’ their odd voice spoke in my head. ‘You’ve received our message about your enemy?’

“I did,” I said. “I would have been here earlier, but I was delayed with another project.”

‘We see that your core has changed again. This is the second time since we have known you.’

That was a bit surprising to find out that the gestalt was able to feel enough of my mana core to notice the changes. I kept it shielded from casual observation at all times, and I would have expected to know if someone was snooping around, trying to get a good look.

Assuming my shielding technique was as good as I thought it was, that meant the gestalt was able to tell the difference based on the visible mana that supported the various spells I’d cast in their presence. So, they probably didn’t know what stage my core was at, just that I’d advanced it twice. Still, it was impressive that they could feel the difference in my mana well enough to note the change.

“Yes. Just earlier today I finished my advancement. You told my assistant that you’d detected a building on Yulitar’s surface, but I wasn’t able to find it with my own scrying.”

‘Correct,’ the gestalt sent. ‘We will show you.’

I flew over the carpet of ants below me so as not to step on any part of the gestalt and approached the three mirror balls I’d made. All of them were already working, each individual facet showing a stretch of empty moonscape. As I’d suspected, with thousands of images to work from and their unique ability to piece together disparate sensory perceptions, the gestalt had sniffed out Ammun’s secrets through pure brute force.

Next to the scrying orbs was an illusion of the moon with a particular spot highlighted in red. It showed a small, square tower perhaps four floors high. ‘We were not able to see inside of this structure,’ the gestalt told him ‘Not without some way to transfer some of our bodies to this location, and that would present its own series of challenges.’

Maintaining the connection to the rest of the gestalt would be damn near impossible over that kind of distance. They would almost have to split off a second, smaller gestalt to find what they wanted, then merge them back together after, something that a gestalt preferred to avoid doing. There was no guarantee the new gestalt would consent to rejoin their host once they’d been separated.

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I might have to go back up there and investigate this myself. I’d been hoping to avoid another fight with Ammun after I’d lost so bad in our last encounter. Unused to fighting under the effects of the moon’s gravity and with no air, I’d failed to properly defend myself, nearly died, and ended up fleeing.

Now, Ammun had been up there for months and was fully acclimated to the environment. Worse, he’d no doubt already finished tying his phylactery to the moon’s core. He’d be at full strength if we fought again.

No, going back up to Yulitar was out of the question. I needed to spend however much time I had left preparing for Ammun’s return. If I was lucky, his tower would be starved of mana before he got back, leaving him with no demesne to return to. He’d still be formidable, but not unbeatable. Of course, just destroying his body would just send him back up to the moon, where he’d teleport back again once he was recovered.

I had plans to deal with that. Ammun wouldn’t find it so easy to flee the next time I beat him.

‘Do you have any requests for what you’d like us to search for now?’ the gestalt asked.

“Presumably, if Ammun’s anti-divination wards on this tower fall, that means he’s left. That could be used as a warning to let us know that he’s returned,” I said. “Then again, it’s just as likely that he’s built them to run on ambient mana up there. It’s not a reliable indicator. Damn. There’s got to be something we can do with this information.”

If I did go up there, could I do it without being discovered? And if so, could I infiltrate Ammun’s wards? For that matter, was this tower even real? It could be a simple decoy he stone shaped then warded to keep our attention on it. There was no way to tell, not right now.

“Keep trying to get a look inside,” I said. “Hopefully this tower is the real deal. I’ll keep making preparations to deal with Ammun when he makes it back here.”

What those preparations were going to be, I didn’t yet know. There was no way I was going to be able to create an emergency recall charm that would take me back down to the planet. If I went up there, it’d be a one-way trip until I managed to carve out a ritual circle to bring me back. I’d need to make sure I destroyed it as soon as I left, too. If it fell into Ammun’s hands, he could use it to follow me back down here. The more I considered the idea of making a second trip to Yulitar, the more I found reasons not to do it.

I glanced at the illusory moonscape again and scowled. I’d hoped to get another year or two before he figured out how to get home. The fact that it was a multi-floor tower was encouraging. It meant he was still thinking in terms of a group ritual, probably trying to figure out how to do every part of it at once by himself. Or it meant that he wanted me to think that and his real ritual chamber was underground where we’d never be able to scry it. That was the smart thing to do.

‘We shall continue to monitor the surface of this moon,’ the gestalt said. ‘It is no great trouble to our mind, but you shall need to supply the needed mana for us.’

I nodded absently and poured mana into the three mirror balls. The enchantments were incredibly efficient, but a thousand different scrying mirrors were still a steady drain on their reserves, especially viewing something so far away. Topping all three of them off took all the mana I had in my core.

As long as I didn’t need to cast any master-tier spells in the next hour, that was fine. And if I did, my mana crystal was over half full, easily able to support a dozen or so spells. I was in no way defenseless.

“Done,” I said. “Do you know where Grandfather went? I’m supposed to find him, too.”

‘The patriarch departed, flying straight up past the clouds an hour ago.’

Crap. Of course he did. “Did anyone else go with him?” I asked. If not, I could probably sneak up there and see what he needed.

‘Four of the elder brakvaw,’ the gestalt told me

Out of luck, again. I wasn’t on good terms with the elder council to begin with, and intruding on some brakvaw ceremony that took place on their floating graveyard island was just asking for trouble. I’d have to come back some other time, and it probably wouldn’t be anytime soon. My hibernation and ascent to stage eight had put me behind schedule.

“Did you scry out that other thing I asked for?” I asked.

Information flooded my mind, almost too much to process. It was damn near a mental attack, but I’d been expecting something like this and I was prepared for it, even going so far as to suppress the mental defenses on my shield ward for a few seconds.

“Thank you for the information,” I said as I flew back out of the gestalt’s lair. They sent a feeling of acknowledgement after me.

I’d leave Grandfather a message and see about scheduling some time with the old bird later. I just needed to find a brakvaw to pass the message along to. Luckily, there was always at least one guard at the teleportation platform. One of them could serve as my messenger.

I flew back down and picked the larger of the two to let Grandfather know I’d come by. I got something that I took to be an acknowledgement without words, mostly because brakvaw couldn’t speak anything remotely resembling a human language naturally, and not all of them knew enough magic to mimic words. Some of them also didn’t understand Elotian, for that matter.

Usually the platform guards were in the group that could communicate with outsiders, though I didn’t know how many people actually showed up here besides me. In this case… I wasn’t sure with this guy. Maybe he just didn’t like me. Either way, I suspected someone would tell Grandfather I’d been around and he’d come find me. If nothing else, the gestalt could let him know.

Or not. And that was fine, too. I had other stops to make and plenty to keep me busy. There was a whole map in my head now, just waiting for me to address it. It would probably be best to wait for my mana core to refill before I started on that, though, so I headed home to speak to my family next.