A Jaded Life

Capturing more Shattered for experimentation turned out to be an ongoing challenge, as they adapted to the different methods I could employ to capture one of their number. Soon, the only way to get more test subjects would be by wiping out groups of them, keeping only one or two of them alive for later testing. The problem with that was twofold, one was a lack of speed, meaning that while we fought with the group, more Shattered would arrive, making the whole thing incredibly risky and the other was an even faster depletion of the limited number of Shattered we had access to. Sure, there were a lot of Shattered in town, easily a few hundred, maybe even a thousand, but if we had to wipe out twenty Shattered to capture one of them, that number wouldn’t last all that long.

So, creativity was needed. The initial acquisition of Shattered, once they had started to lay traps and ambushes for me while I was flying over, was fairly simple. Knowing that I could influence them with my Mind Magic and even give limited commands, as evidenced by the fact that I could send them into a comatose state, I decided to roll with that. Commanding a single, lone Shattered to leave town wasn’t as simple as sending one to sleep was but with a few tries, the Shattered marched out of town, allowing us to capture it a little later. The rest of their pod, or whatever a group of Shattered should be called, noticed the magical energy I couldn’t hide while using that much Astral Power but they didn’t stop that first Shattered. Sadly, when I tried to repeat the feat the next day, I wasn’t as lucky and the enthralled Shattered was stopped and dragged back underground. As they dragged it back, I did my best to purge as much of my power from it as I could in an attempt to make it more difficult for them to find out what I was doing, or, even worse, get some sort of lock on me that might allow them to trace me. I had no idea if that was even possible but I wasn’t about to let the Shattered find out, they had some abilities I didn’t have and had no real idea how to replicate, at least not on the scale they could employ them.

The next Shattered we captured was, amusingly, not done by myself, at least not alone. Instead, Alex teamed up with Lia and together, they did something to capture a pair of them while I was distracting the rest on the other side of town. How they managed to get past their tremor sense or how they could knock out the Shattered wasn’t something I understood, though not for lack of trying to explain on their part. The problem was that, as so often when trying to discuss one of the more arcane and complicated topics of magic or alchemy, the explanation only made sense for those with a decent understanding and a solid foundation in the topic. Without those, the only way was to resort to comparisons and metaphors, neither of which could convey the truth of the matter in a way conducive to understanding. And so, I simply accepted that they did ‘alchemy’ to capture their pair, just as they had to accept the next day that the Shattered did ‘magic’ to make a repeat of their success impossible. Not that it stopped them from trying but the next successful capture came from me.

That success was borne from a bit of thinking I had done and a lot of experimenting. Back on Mundus, I had managed to make Ice statues and animate them magically, essentially using them as a body double to fight attackers while I remained safe and sound on my frozen throne. Using that idea, I decided to try and see if I could make a scrying construct from solid materials, in this case, a large bird of prey, carved from the lightest Ice I could manage with a few Hard Ice additions to make grabbing a foe possible.

Making the construct was the easy part, though having the conflicting design goals of having it be as light as possible while also as durable as possible was quite the challenge. Instead of being able to simply increase the density of the Ice and pack more Astral Power into the same volume, I had to try something else, altering the structure within the Ice, adding empty spaces and creating lattice structures that would distribute the forces acting upon the construct as much as possible. The result was quite impressive, with an almost three-metre wingspan and an almost translucent body made of Ice and crystals that glittered even in the darkness. The physique was reminiscent of a raptor, only with longer legs, allowing it to swoop down and grab a Shattered before lifting the body back up. Additionally, there were multiple Runes engraved in the body, making it somewhat sturdier than it had any right to be while allowing the most important process of them all, the runes allowed it to fly. At least as long as I charged them with infused Blood, otherwise, they would merely be pretty but also pretty useless.

Controlling the thing was fairly straight-forward, it functioned the same way the scrying constructs did. The problem came with letting it fly. Even with the runes and the magic I had woven into the construct, it wasn’t as convenient as the construct made from shadows was, simply because the raptor had mass and was subject to aerodynamics. During more than one test flight, I also included an involuntary durability test when the construct crashed but after a few days of trying, during which we also unsuccessfully tested different ways to capture Shattered, I was finally able to let it soar.

Knowing how easily the Shattered could strike down flying targets, they had managed to tear apart a construct made from nothing but shadow after all, I decided that I didn’t want add additional risk by letting my flyer move through the streets, so I needed a way to get a Shattered up on a rooftop. Remembering how the miasma spread from Blood Magic could attract Shattered, I filled some blood infused with Astral Power into a thin shell made from ice and put it into the construct’s talons, letting it drop onto a roof from high above as the construct was flying over.

It didn’t take long for a Shattered to be attracted to the scent of power coming from the broken shell and as it bent down to lap the blood up, the Raptor came swooping in from above, grabbing its chest and making off with it. The Shattered tried to free itself but given the speed of the construct, it didn’t manage to get free before I could drop the Shattered into a prepared position between the others who were standing by to subdue it.

With the first Shattered captured fairly easily, I decided to try for a few more. When the construct returned to town, it looked like a kicked-over anthill, with dozens of Shattered swarming around the area where I had dropped the vial. The image made me grin back on my throne, as the sheer number of them meant that some of them were at the edge of the group, scouting nearby roofs and generally keeping watch. But they mainly kept watch on the ground, allowing me to let my construct swoop in and grab another Shattered, though when I looked back down after grabbing it, I noticed that there were multiple Shattered picking themself up in the street, as if they had fallen from the nearby roofs. Most likely, they had tried to catch the swooping construct but had failed, as the added weight of a Shattered hadn’t slowed it down enough for them to leap onto it.

Still, their rapid reactions and adaptions spelt bad news for further attempts to capture Shattered from the air, at least without additional traps and distractions. Maybe I would be able to add some sort of knock-out poison or magic to the construct’s talons, allowing me to grab up Shattered without risking my construct every time, or the need to have the others lay in wait for me to drop off the Shattered, meaning they could head out and act as distractions.

Another option would be to see if I could create some wide-area knock-out spell, allowing me to disable an entire group of Shattered so the others could move in and grab one or two before immediately leaving. Or maybe a construct able to walk, shaped like a human, so I could have something I was ready to discard act as bait. Or experiment with the realm of Shadows, trying to see if I could step in, grab a Shattered and step out.

There were so many possibilities and I was quite curious how the Shattered would adapt, forcing us to adapt to them in turn. It was truly an arms race of innovation, something I greatly enjoyed. But now, I was steering my construct back towards town, planning to observe the Shattered a little more. Part of science was to observe the results of an experiment and there was always science to be done.