Chapter 1071

“Luna, do you know where Liam and Sandy are?” I immediately asked, ignoring the not-so-small voice somewhere in the back of my mind that was intensely curious about my daughter’s latest experiment. From the look of the clearing, she was using the area as a personal training ground, trying things out that needed soil and light instead of the unforgiving rock of the tower. But, for now, my curiosity had to wait, while we were looking for those two stupid kids.

“The kids?” She asked in response and for a moment, I had to control myself or I’d have started to laugh, given that Luna, despite her artificially enhanced maturity, was half their age. And yet, she called them kids and would likely be quite insulted if the pair of them called her a kid or, really, anything but a young adult and treated her with the respect she felt deserving of. Not that I could really criticise her there, Luna had the maturity and, maybe more importantly, the power of an adult, was taking on the responsibilities of one and largely acting like one, so she should be treated like one, at least in most regards.

“Haven’t seen them in a while, certainly not out here,” she assured us, her face twisting into a frown, something mirrored by the vegetation she was still controlling with her magic. It was an interesting effect, a lot more fluid than the way she usually controlled them, though it made me wonder if that was on purpose, forced control could be a lot more precise than the organic movement I was seeing now. Something to ask about later, for now, we needed to figure out where the stupid kids had gone and it sounded like Luna’s disappearance alongside theirs was simply a coincidence.

“You are closest to them in age, any idea where they might have gone?” I asked, hoping that there might be some sort of friendship between the three, they had been talking on occasion, though I wasn’t sure what they had been talking about.

“No, sorry,” she admitted, “They’ve mostly wanted to know how I managed to make you let me travel and fight and stuff. Didn’t really get that it was less of a let me do something and more of a case that I had to fight to survive, especially as we travelled,” she sighed, a sentiment I returned. To outsiders, having the power Luna wielded might sound awesome, and there were many cases in which it truly was, but the flip side was the countless fights and the endless death needed to get to our level of power. A part of me wanted to return to the mindset I had on Mundus, where I considered only those closest to me as important, while happily letting the rest of the world burn, or rather freeze in my case, but I was somewhat aware that the mindset hadn’t been a healthy one, at least not in the long run.

“Tracks with what I thought happened, they want to test their powers in real combat, stupid kids,” I growled, trying to come up with a way to track them other than Silva’s nose. Sure, if she had an idea what the kids individually smelled like, she’d likely be able to track them but finding that sample and the right spot to start wouldn’t be easy.

On the other hand, I had a faint idea of how their magic felt, I had helped them get comfortable with the Astral River, there might be a way for me to track their movement through the river and get an idea of where they were in the real world. Both ideas had merit, but I wouldn’t be able to pursue both paths at the same time.

“Silva, Maggy, the two of you go back to the tower, get a sample of their scent and track them that way. Maybe grab a few extra guys, just in case the kids have managed to find more trouble than you can handle and follow them,” I ordered, not even bothering to phrase it as a question, simply giving them directions to obey.

“What are you going to do?” Maggy asked, sounding a little bit annoyed but mostly curious about what I had in mind now.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Got another idea how to find them but it’s something only I can do,” I replied before looking at the pair with an intent gaze, “Go now, I don’t want those silly kids to die,” I repeated my order sternly and now, Silva and Maggy were off, swiftly heading back to the tower.

“So, what are you going to do?” Luna repeated the question Maggy had asked just moments before, getting a slightly annoyed look from me while I was checking the sun and deciding which of the nearby trees would give me the right amount of shadow to get comfortable. “And why are you so intent on keeping those two safe?” she asked, her tone making me wonder if she was worried about getting replaced.

“They might become quite powerful spellcasters in the future, I don’t want to see their path cut short before they manage to accomplish their potential. Though, if they insist on being stupid, I don’t think I’ll be able to keep them from ending their path,” I admitted, stepping over to Luna and pulling my daughter into a hug. “Think about it like this, would Lady Hecate want them to fall or would she want them to grow and learn?”

“She’d want them to find their own path, but if they insist on walking off a cliff, she’d readily let them fall. Whether they’d survive is on them, if they can’t use enough magic to get out of the trouble they get themself in, that’s on them;” Luna argued, though I had a feeling her heart wasn’t entirely in it.

“Maybe but at the end of the day, they are my students and I don’t want them to die,” I told her, giving her another squeeze before stepping back, towards the shadows, “Plus, those two are interesting and I want to see whether I might be able to learn a thing or two about the way they combine their magic to create an entirely new element between the two of them. I managed to make lightning on my own but I’m really not good with it,” I added, now noticing a grin on Luna’s face when she accepted my reasoning.

Sitting down in the shade, I let myself drift into the Astral River. There, I could feel the elements swirl around me, the slightly painful abundance of Light all around the area already starting to give me a headache. But, just as I could feel the magical elements all around me, I could also feel a slight anomaly where their composition changed just a little, the spot where Luna’s presence in the real world had an effect on the Astral River. She was drawing power from the river and that had an effect, not a large one but I could feel and even identify it, as I knew my daughter well.

Now, I only needed to translate the ability to find my daughter into a trick to find the two stupid kids, hopefully before they managed to find a way to get themself into some sort of terminal trouble.

Following individual threads within the Astral River wouldn’t work, there were simply too many of those and even following major veins wouldn’t help me, as the kids didn’t have enough of a magical weight to draw power from a large area, they would have to be right on top of a major vein for me to notice their draw from it. If that, I wasn’t even sure if their draw would register on the sheer scale of a major vein.

So, I needed to spread my own presence out, something I could only accomplish thanks to my prodigious attributes, further enhanced by my Titanic Ambition and the boost the trait was giving me, after all, this was something I had never tried before and it was most certainly a magical undertaking.

For a moment, I lost myself in the deluge of impressions, my mind unable to cope with the sheer scale of my undertaking. I was, quite literally, trying to look at an area some two square kilometres in size at the same time, while getting enough detail to identify a person by their hair colour. It was just about impossible and I felt my previous headache grow rapidly into a full-fledged migraine. Every moment was incredibly exhausting and would soon turn to agony but I held on for as long as I could, my mind wrestling with it all until I noticed a flare, for lack of a better word. For a moment, the relatively consistent tapestry of the Astral River changed, the alteration enough to draw my metaphysical eye.

My focus now rapidly shrinking, I could spare enough mental capacity to realise what I had seen, what that change had been. Liam and Sandy had joined their magic to create lightning, the combination enough to alter their weight within the Astral River and, in this case, catch my attention.

Now, I only had to figure out how to get to them.