My scrying constructs were helpful for a variety of purposes. Finding and observing my enemies was only the most obvious one, and, admittedly, the one I used the most. Knowing your enemy was half the battle, and my ravens excelled in scouting, unless they were getting destroyed by massive waves of burning goop or deadly heat rays.

Now, however, I hadn’t used them to find an enemy, not even to seek out some sort of hidden or concealed information. No, instead, I had used them to find the highest point, be it the tip of a tree, the top of a hill, or some other feature, even if that point had been one of the few remaining artefacts of the world before the change; I cared little. I merely wanted to place myself atop said point, closest to the sky, so that I could meditate in the darkness of the night, trying to figure out my connection to the divine. Or would that be my own divinity? By now, I was just a little confused about this particular question.

The highest point in a decent radius was, amusingly, an artefact from before the change. Or calling it a relic might be more fitting. Whatever the case, I easily made my way past the largely torn and destroyed fence around the installation before taking a closer look. The mast I was looking at used to hold communication gear, antennas for cell phone service and a radio repeater or something like that. Now, its spindly steel structure was even more fitting than it had been before the change; it truly was the skeleton of a bygone era, though a part of me wondered just how the structure had survived while so many others had been destroyed, even structures supposedly a lot sturdier than this flimsy-looking edifice of metal and plastic.

Maybe it was just luck, maybe it had something to do with its utterly remote and isolated location, given that the tower was atop a rocky mountain top with nothing interesting in the area. Even the system might be tempted to ignore such a boring place, leaving it untouched by the initial change and only now it was slowly breaking due to neglect or something like that. Or, more likely, its survival had been one of the many pieces of random chance happening during that night and in its aftermath. With so much chaos going on all over the world, some places had to remain orderly, just to balance things out.

Whatever the case may have been, now this edifice of modern communication served me as a perch, allowing me to comfortably settle atop a high point. Without my cloak, I wouldn’t have trusted the metal construction but thanks to it, I was confident that I could simply take to the sky if the steel beneath me decided that this night was the one to crumble, aided by the weight of a person sitting atop one of the communication dishes. Not that I weighed all that much, even if my increased height and muscle mass were undoubtedly reflected in an increased weight, but even with that, I wasn’t terribly large.

Setting down on my chosen perch caused a bit of groaning in the metal below, but otherwise, it seemed as if the tower was still as sturdy as it had been before the change. And that was good enough for me, even if I wasn’t about to stay here for longer than necessary, the reminder of the world we had lost didn’t sit completely right with me, even if a not insignificant part of me actually preferred this new world of ours.

Letting my breathing calm and my eyes flicker shut, my focus started to widen and drift. There were a few noises catching my attention. Some were almost constant, like the metallic creaking from the tower beneath me as the wind around us moved it in minute ways, and the sound of said wind pushing past the metal and across the mountain, those were soft, almost harmonious and already quiet. But then, the silence was briefly interrupted when a small rock was loosened by the wind and started to clatter down the mountain, its noise far overpowering the other sounds of the night. Until it stopped, its momentum spent and the stone back at rest, leaving the night nearly silent once again.

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Thanks to my advanced sensory traits, I could easily filter out one noise after the other, which I did after cataloguing them, simply to sate my idle curiosity. What made the numerous noises all around me? Where did they come from? It was an interesting exercise, and one I would have to do again at some point. But for now, I simply wanted to enjoy the silence of the night, even if it wasn’t all that silent, at least not to my senses.

Eventually, my focus was completely turned inwards, into the deepest reaches of what made me into the person I was. By now, I was able to easily recognise the intersection between my body, my mind and my soul, I could even combine the strange sensations into a somewhat coherent whole. There swirling colours acting through my mind, an unheard thrum of sound, almost like the beating of a heart, only that it wasn’t a singular, repeated tone but more akin to an entire orchestra, all adding their parts to a strange, almost cacophonous, harmony. But the images I saw within my mind’s eye and the sounds I heard in the silence were only a small part of a much greater whole. Tastes were flaring on my tongue, some overpowering, some subtle, a rich and incredibly varied blend and my nose was twitching as the tastes were reflected in strange and alluring scents. For a few moments, I could feel Sigmir’s arms wrap around me, my beloved's embrace immediately filling me with longing and desire, only for the embrace to fade and other sensations to intrude into my mind. Avian claws finding purchase on my shoulder, just as Lenore had done countless of times, cold air brushing my skin despite the otherwise warm and humid night, the sensations were quickly getting too much to handle, forcing me to take a mental step back so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by everything going on within myself.

These parts, the numerous facets and faces, the impulses and instincts, the memories and dreams, they, and so much more, were what made me. Or they simply were me. At this point, I wasn’t certain if I could make a distinction between the overwhelming construct I had tried to perceive and the person I was. It was deeply fascinating, but for now, this wasn’t what I had come to explore.

Instead, I took a mental step back. The construct I had formed within my imagination to represent the complex composed of my body, mind, and soul would have to be enough for now. Regardless of how fascinating this all was, how I could literally see different parts of said complex light up and dim as I observed it, making me want to start studying it right away, this wasn’t what I had come here to do, the self-reflection causing different parts of the complex to dim while others brightened. It was incredibly strange, making me wonder just how this worked, how could I use my mind, or my magic, to study said mind? Wouldn’t this be the worst case of confirmation bias ever produced? Could I remain objective while also being the object of my study?

Shelving the question for now, I focused on something within myself I had studied in the past. Namely, the blessing placed upon me by Lady Hecate and its divine magic. It was incredibly complex, far more than anything I had ever seen Luna do, but its complexity wasn’t what I was interested in. Instead, I wanted to see how it connected to Lady Hecate, the strands of divine power connecting me to something impossibly far away from here. The strands were gossamer thin, making me wonder if I would be able to snap them if I so desired, but I quickly dropped the idea. If I wanted to experiment with something like that, the object of experimentation would be the divine curse placed upon me, not the blessing. That notion was reinforced strongly when I noticed that the blessing seemed to be atop the curse, partially blocking it in some way I could barely perceive, let alone understand.

This was too complex to mess with, at least for now, but I hadn’t planned to do so anyway. I had planned to inspect them so I could search for something similar, only that the strands I was looking for weren’t connected to the blessing but to the entire complex I had visualised earlier.

With that in mind, I went to explore the deepest parts of myself, looking for the other side of the connection I had sensed on the idols earlier.

Sadly, my self-exploration was eventually ended before I managed to find what I was looking for. I had seen a lot of things but failed to understand most of them, making me wonder if this sort of self-exploration was doomed from the get-go.

With the sun coming up, I simply couldn’t stay and do more. But there would be other nights.