The Chained Watcher

Backstory: Privacy (pt5)

~~~

Things were mostly normal in the private retreat.

The mortals still were wary of him, but it was more out of ingrained habit than anything else by now. They were almost unphased by most of the strange magic items lying around in random places, though sometimes one of the more eccentric items would surprise them. But as a whole, they had adapted to the state of things as a 'new normal'.

He'd also started messing around with imbuing statues, which had resulted in some golems that are mildly... quirky.

Sure, some of them would do what he told them to, but most of them just acted like whatever they looked like. A panther statue had decided that a particularly large tree was its new plinth, a wolf statue acted more like a domesticated dog, and the plethora of bird statues he'd gotten were now roosting in the rose bushes. Yes, the carnivorous rose bushes.

Sure, they might end up doing something to invaders, but they'd shown no inclination to attack anything that wasn't their natural prey. But at least the ravine is developing nicely as a defensive feature.

Maybe it's because of the heavily magical nature of the mist, but the things that made their home in its depths are mutating to better fit their environment all on their own. Which is a good thing for him, since he had no idea how to manually adapt living creatures for that sort of environment. He's never been interested in biological manipulation, and apart from learning how to mildly optimize what's already there his skills are practically nonexistent.

It's not even anything complex, with it basically being just giving their bodies enough magic for it to change itself. Mixing it with intent now might make for some interesting results, but doing that with anything more complex than a small animal sounds like a bad idea. Maybe an acorn, if the urge to try it strikes him.

When watching over the ravine's diversifying ecosystem, he'd actually watched one of the creatures leap out of the mist to catch a bird flying overhead. They seemed to be decently territorial, so they should function fairly well as a deterrence to any seeking to cross.

Some trees that grew on the edge of the ravine had actually started mutating too, though he wasn't quite sure what effects it was having on them. Their leaves were closer to a misty gray than their former green, and at night they gave off a very dim light for some reason. It was a diffuse light, and if he's not wrong some of the trees closer to the ravine had started producing an ordinary mist at night.

Quite interesting, though he'll have to wait to see what they end up turning into.

And the best thing about the ravine is the utter lack of any noticeable magic to it. Sure, anyone paying attention can notice that it rebuffs their senses much more thoroughly than any normal mist could, but even then there's nothing to sense. And that means no one will be able to sense any traces of his own magic on it, no matter how much they try.

With any luck, the mist itself will distract anyone observant enough to come here, and the opaqueness will keep them from ever knowing if they've checked the entire ravine.

~~~

His first impression was that today was another average day.

Nothing felt out of place, and even the miscellaneous magic items were behaving, which... wasn't normal. Come to think of it, where were the mortals right now? They're normally near the kitchen at this hour, but his senses point to them being up in the courtyard on the surface.

Did one of them get too close to the roses again? The carnivorous bushes aren't strong enough to actually kill any of them, but the thorns are more than enough to cause pain should a limb get caught.