The state Stephanie was left in after witnessing Lady Hecate's judgement was quite amusing. For almost a minute after it ended, she just stood there, her eyes flickering from the statues, now no longer concealed in shadow, to the rest of the room before finally settling on Luna and me. Then, she realised she was staring at us and looked away, causing the cycle to start anew.
“Did you notice?” Luna asked quietly at one point, making me look at her with a raised eyebrow, inquiring what she meant. “Those four, when I looked at them as they ran away, I could somehow tell that Lady Hecate had punished them. It was as if they are constantly wearing a big sign, saying, ‘I was naughty and have been punished for it,’ with Lady Hecate’s signature at the bottom of the sign,” she explained, making me frown. I hadn’t noticed anything along those lines, but I had been completely focused on my magical senses to the exclusion of all else.
“No, I did not,” I admitted. Did you notice that phenomenon, Stephanie?” I asked the other witness, which caused her to flinch.
“Yes, I noticed,” she quickly replied. It was quite obvious, though I have no idea how I knew it was Lady Hecate. "
“Curious,” I muttered, turning to get to the front of the house, hopefully allowing me to experience the effect for myself.
Luckily, the frantic flight of the foursome hadn’t brought them all that far; the slick, muddy ground had caused all of them to slip and fall, draining some more of their remaining strength. Otherwise, they would probably have made it to the house, though whether they could have gone in or not, I wasn’t sure. There seemed to be fires burning inside, so they would have to weigh their newly acquired instinctual terror in the presence of a fire with their desire to stay warm, a conundrum I found deeply amusing.
Now, looking at them without the utmost focus on my magical senses, I could feel the effect the others had described, and for a moment, I had to stop myself from giggling when I realised that I had seen a similar effect before. Hel, even now, I was exuding a similar effect myself, though in my case, that effect would tell everyone looking at me that I carried a Titanic Ambition but luckily, I had learned to conceal the effect with my Darkness Magic. Granted, there were some differences, especially as this effect was a lot more understandable for the average person, but other than that, the similarities were striking.
Fascinating, too.
Still, thanks to this effect, nobody would be able to claim that I had wronged these guys in some fashion unless the person doing the thinking was so uninformed that they believed I had the power to enact divine judgment. But if somebody believed that, I was somewhat confident that they would be too scared to try and annoy me for enacting said divine judgment. I was not completely confident; there was always human idiocy to consider, but few normal humans would be foolish enough to annoy a being they believed to be divine, at least I hoped so.
Either way, with the effect in play and with Stephanie acting as a witness, I doubted there’d be trouble for this.
As I was standing there, considering that, Stephanie quickly made her way past me, looking somewhat frantic, and retreated into the primary house, largely ignoring the four guys who had just managed to get out of the mud, as they had been slipping and sliding a little, causing them to be completely covered. It looked quite amusing, at least for anyone observing from the outside; I had no doubt that these four didn’t think this was funny in any way, shape or form.
“What do you think would happen if we decide that the attack was meant to drive us off?” I asked Luna, curious what she would think. We had completed the quest, well, I had completed it while Luna remained behind and gained a share of the EXP for it, but we had yet to receive the reward. So, if we left, ostensibly due to the attack, would the system deem that we had abandoned our reward, or would it be considered a case in which the quest-giver, meaning the locals, had driven us off with the attempted assassination?
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It would be fairly interesting to see, just from an experimental standpoint, so I was quite willing to potentially abandon the reward in order to see what would happen. Even if I had a sinking feeling that the system might be intelligent enough to discern my intent, making any observations I made of the system suspect at best or deliberate misinformation from it at worst. But then, trying to judge the intent and abilities of what might just be a computer program observing a bunch of mice in a lab by acting in specific ways while the computer had at least some access to my mind was questionable. Still, this might just be a fairly unique opportunity to gather data on this.
“Good question,” Luna had to admit, “The system would have to judge whether we were driven off, fearful for our lives, or at least in an abundance of caution, compared to leaving for some other reason. It all comes down to a question of whether the system is able to accurately discern our mental states and motivations,” she paused for a moment, her face turning serious, “On a less humorous note, how confident are you that the fuel they used is the best stuff they have? I noticed there was something weird in the stuff, not quite sure what it actually was; maybe alchemical in nature, so how likely do you think it is that they have something worse? And, if they do, how confident are you to deal with it when surprised in your sleep?”
Luna’s questions were quite unsettling. Sure, I had managed to deal with their firebombs without trouble, but if I hadn’t noticed them before they started, could I have dealt with it just as easily? Or if the fuel they used burned harder, hotter or stronger in some other form? There were ways to set fire to stone and burn through the material; I was even somewhat confident that there were ways to ignite the Astral Power itself, though I was quite confident nobody here could accomplish that. And yet, Luna’s questions began to make me wonder and worry; maybe leaving wasn’t just for the sake of an experiment but simply a wise and cautious idea.
“You might be right,” I admitted, “How long would you need to pack? And how many protections should we install, just to make sure Lady Hecate’s Shrine isn’t vandalised after we leave, you know, just in case?” I asked my daughter, her expression mirroring the grave concern I was likely showing on my own face.
“Give me fifteen to pack, then I’ll commune with the Lady while you continue packing the rest. Thirty minutes from now, we can be on the road, at least if you don’t want to tear down the walls or something,” she told me, and I nodded in agreement. If the Lady wanted extra protection for the place, a quick communion would give us the necessary information, especially if she decided to put her hand in.
Working as fast as possible without sacrificing caution, as I didn’t want to break any of our possessions, I stuffed the various things we had into the magical bags, inordinately happy about that particular project. Thanks to it we could literally carry everything we wanted with us, without having to worry about the weight or size of the different items. Soon, even something as sinfully comfortable and impossible to transport as proper mattresses would join the items we carried and I might even make a magical bag just to fill with those once we found a proper store to raid.
Shaking my head, I cleared my mind of these distractions and, once everything we needed to take was packed, made my way into the shrine, where my dear Luna was radiating an unearthly glow, making it obvious that she was channelling a great deal of Lady Hecate’s power.
Soon, I could feel the enchantments and protections settle in the stone all around us, though this time, I had no idea what was happening, making it obvious that allowing me to observe the earlier cursing had been deliberate on Lady Hecate’s part, maybe as a reward to me.
Whatever the case, once Luna was finished, the three of us quietly made our way out of the enclosure I had created, a fairly large, spiteful part of me clamouring that I should shatter these walls and let the idiots suffer. But I decided against it, especially as another, even larger, part of me was curious if the system would enact a punishment for the outcome of the quest I had performed. For that, altering the conditions would be foolish, and I wanted the observation to be as undisturbed as possible. Thus, I only left a few scrying constructs sitting in various nearby trees, an ominous murder of crows, gazing at the farm we were leaving.
