It was pretty amusing to watch my daughters go wide-eyed at the description of the various dragons now living in the Temple of the First Dragon. Living and breeding, peacefully and in harmony, something neither Luna nor I could honestly believe. Sure, with the divine power I had noticed in the temple, it was plausible, but for these circumstances to occur naturally?

The more I thought about it, the less I believed that this had truly all happened by mere chance. Sure, I had set up the different dominoes, not terribly concerned with their position relative to each other, but for all those largely unrelated dominoes to fall in just the right way at just the right time to create something like this? It was mindboggling, and yet, it was the least concerning explanation.

The other option I could see was that some outside actor had managed to manipulate the situation according to their own agenda. Given that these dominoes had been set up by my hand, anyone manipulating the situation would have had to either manipulate me while I was doing so or keep an eye on my actions and then, after I set up my unrelated dominoes, nudge them in just the right way to create the desired outcome. Meaning, I had either a stalker who managed to twist my creation to suit their own, unknown agenda, or I was nothing but a puppet, dancing on strings I couldn't see.

Neither thought was pleasant, and the more I thought about it, the less I enjoyed the situation. However, without any actual indication of what was going on, there was little I could do. Sure, I could try to push my vigilance even further than I usually did, but I already had been incredibly cautious, even indulging in the occasional bout of paranoia. If I tried to go further, I'd likely start reacting to false positives, blowing up utterly harmless trees and rocks, just because some sort of monster might be hiding behind them.

Or I could simply accept this as it was, without making myself go completely insane about the possibilities. I wasn't sure if I would be able to manage as I tended to overthink things to an occasionally ridiculous degree, but I could certainly try.

"So, what's the plan now?" Lia asked me after the news about the Temple of the First Dragon had been explained and properly digested. "I mean, we can hardly move around the temple, you can hide well enough, and I might be able to manage, but Luna?" She let her words hang in the air, her meaning sufficiently conveyed.

"I wouldn't be able to conceal myself, I know," Luna admitted, sounding a little annoyed at her inability. While Luna wasn't terrible when it came to stealth, she was limited to physical methods of sneaking around, and those methods had some severe limits, unless class skills augmented them. Which Luna simply didn't have.

"So, visiting the temple is out. We could use it as a springboard to explore the surrounding area. We didn't spend a lot of time there, but I'm not sure how interesting that would be. It's in the wilderness after all, and I'm pretty sure winter has fallen there, too," I shrugged, admitting that the wilderness there would be just as dull in the winter as this area was. Everything was hiding from the cold in some fashion, trying to simply survive until spring thawed things and life could continue.

The most interesting creatures we could hope to observe were the giants, but even they didn't interest Luna all that much. As things stood right now, the giants were too hostile, leaving my scrying constructs or stealth as the only ways to observe them in their natural habitat.

"Do you think we could make it to Jademoon Tower? Last year, the winter there was quite interesting," Lia suggested, surprising both Luna and me. Given the difficulties Lia had suffered after we left the tower and she stayed behind, I hadn't expected her desire to return there.

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"Are you sure?" I couldn't help but ask, looking at her with worry and curiosity.

"Sure?" She paused for a moment, considering, "No, I'm honestly not. But I refuse to let my difficulties hold me back, especially if part of those difficulties was self-inflicted," she admitted, looking resolute. Her words made me perk up a little, as she had been somewhat tight-lipped about the events that led to her spiralling into what I thought had been a fairly bad depression. A depression possibly exacerbated by something akin to magical withdrawal, after she changed sustenance and relied on blood from Sam and magic drawn from the tower.

"Okay," I nodded, "If you feel that you can handle going there, I'm willing to try. However, on an unrelated note, I'd prefer to test our ability to carry Luna through the shadows by stepping across shorter distances first. You know, work our way up from stepping from one place within the tower to another, then to the area near the giants and so on. We've teleported together before, sure, but never across such a distance," I suggested, getting nods from both and a look of slight apprehension from Luna.

Given the lack of experience when it came to taking Luna through the shadows, we started carefully. First, I simply drew the shadows around us, something I had done before, but intensified the power I funnelled into the magic as much as possible until, finally, the difference between the shadows I conjured and the realm of shadows was negligible. If Luna had taken a single step, she would have been in the actual realm of shadows, which was exactly what we tried next, allowing her to be in control of her movement.

Like that, we worked our way up from stepping into the shadow like that and back out to having Lia and me each take one side of her and take her across the room, then to another room and so on. Finally, after a little over an hour of stepping through the shadows and a brief feeding for Lia, allowing her to regenerate the magic she had spent on these endeavours, we took it a step further.

And made our way down the mountain, into the cave Lia and I had used while observing the giants. It worked just as well as our tests in the tower had, though I noticed that it was a lot harder to carry Luna than it was to move on my own.

Out of curiosity, we repeated the tests, only this time I was carrying Luna without Lia's help. When those tests worked just as well as they had with Lia's help, I began to experiment a little, stepping across longer distances, namely, between the Nexus Tower, the cave near the giants and the small laboratory I had set up to study the Qalupalik near the ocean. Given that the cave was almost directly between the Tower and the laboratory, stepping between the three allowed me to make fairly detailed observations regarding the difficulty and cost of our steps, relative to the distance involved.

Then, remembering the location I had set up near the burned area, I added that to my tests, first stepping alone, then taking Lia and, finally, having Lia help me take Luna there. It was a little exhausting, but with Lia and me working in tandem, it wasn't a problem. Again, Lia needed a bit of blood, and I had to rest a little, especially after refuelling Lia, but ultimately, it worked without issue.

Out of idle curiosity, I conjured a few scrying constructs to take a look at the Burned Land, only to find that everything was covered in snow. It was difficult to tell if things were on the way to recovery due to that, but I thought I noticed a few small plants barely sticking out, trying their best to last the winter. Maybe we would have to return in the spring and take another look. However, no matter what, it was obvious that the burned land had been extinguished when we last visited; no snow could have lasted in that area.

Compared to the distance between the laboratory near the coast and the one near the burned land, the distance between the burned land and the temple was just a brief hop. Once we arrived, I took a moment to conjure a few scrying constructs and examine the surrounding area. What I found was a little more interesting than I had anticipated. The local dragons seemed to stay clear of one another while within and near the temple, but further away, they made sure to remain on their own.

One positive aspect of my brief exploration of the nearby area was that it allowed all of us to recover a bit. Amusingly, Luna was having the hardest time of it, despite getting carried the whole way, but then, we were dragging her through a realm she had little affinity with, so I couldn't be hard on her.

Then, once we were all back in good condition, Lia and I held Luna's hands again and returned to the shadows, rapidly making our way to Jademoon Tower. It would be interesting to see what we found there.

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