Chương 230: Day Two Hundred And Twenty-Eight

Dear Diary, So, it turns out that having the right tools for a job make a job way easier to do, and improve the final product too. Go figure. After speaking with General Lancaster, and leaving him looking at least as smug as I'd ever seen Vulcan, I stepped directly back to the Map Room. Or, correctly, the Scrying Room. My first attempt had a little bit of stupid, but I mean, this is me we're talking about. If not stupidity was involved, was it really me?

Or just Saffron cosplaying me for nefarious, likely bedroom related purposes? Okay, that's not really fair. If Saffron were cosplaying me, there's at least a fifty percent chance that it had something to do with needing to intimidate somebody dragging their heels for political reasons. Heh, reminds me of a line my civics teacher once laid down.

"Diplomacy is the fine art of treating your enemies like your friends until it's true. Politics is the opposite of that." Anyway, for my first attempt at scrying I figured I'd do the easy one. I hollered for Oscar, and one of the ubiquitous butlers stepped over to me.

"Pardon, ma'am, but Oscar is presently taking care of some tasks assigned him earlier. May I be of service?"

"What's your name?"

"Peter, ma'am." I nodded.

"Cool. Peter, can you go get me a bowl, a big one, about two thirds full of water?"

"How big, ma'am?" I held my hands out, approximating the dimensions of Sigyn's bowl.

"Maybe this size? Shouldn't need to be more than a couple inches deep, I don't think." He looked a little constipated, which made me think he was having a hard time envisioning what I wanted.

"Would a tub or washbasin suffice?" Hey Boss? Any particulars on what I need in terms of vessel to hold my scrying pool? Technically no, but the less skilled the practitioner, the more rarified the materials they ought use. In short, I would recommend precious metals, purest glass, or perhaps cut crystal for someone of your skill level. Thanks Boss, you're the best. I know.

"Okay, I don't think so on the tub or washbasin. It needs to be silver, gold, glass, or maybe cut crystal." At the last two words, his eyes lit up and he asked, "A shallow bowl is acceptable though?"

"Yeah. Not, like, a plate, but shallow is fine." He gave me that little nod-bow and said, "I shall return presently." As he walked away he waved two other lesser mini-butlers to his side. Ten minutes later they returned, Peter leading the other two, who carried what looked like a big shallow cut crystal punch bowl between them. I waved them over to a spot near the picture of Lancaster House on the floor.

"Will this suffice, ma'am?" I nodded.

"If this doesn't work, it won't be because I don't have the right materials. Thanks, Peter. That'll be all for now."

"Very good, ma'am." He wandered off back to wherever the staff waited for people to call for them. For a minute I wondered if they had, like, a break room with a card table and snacks or books or, fuck, cards to play set up while they waited, or if they were expected to just stand in an alcove like statuary until somebody needed something. I really hoped it wasn't that latter, or if it was hoped Larry had put it on his list of 'shit to fix'.

I walked over to the punch bowl, put myself where I could see it while touching the picture of Lancaster House, thought about it a bit and pulled off my boots and socks, then stood barefoot on the picture of Lancaster House and molded Mana the way Loki had shown me.

It took a bit more effort than it had when I'd scried on Saffron from Loki's cave, and I'm totally not sure if that was due to my lack of 'connection' to Lancaster House, getting the shape of the Scrying Spell not quite right, or doing something dumb like scrying, essentially, on myself. After a while, though, the water in the punch bowl wavered, rippled, then cleared, showing me a view of Lancaster House from the same angle and distance as the picture I'd focused on.

I let out a whoop in celebration, watching a few figures moving around outside the house. I zoomed in to see if I could get inside the building, and right about then the fuck of my up became apparent. I don't remember if Loki'd shown me this, but this scrying had inherently come up full spectrum, almost like a little invisible window to the place I'd scried on. So when I moved the focal point closer, inside the building, I caught the tail end of my whoop's echo. Which send out another whoop from my scrying pool.

Which echoed a little louder. I managed to shove the scry back until it hovered way outside before more than a couple additional echoes bounced around the entryway. I looked over to the alcove where Peter had disappeared, only to see him leaning out to see what was going on.

"Oops. Minor mistake, all my fault, taken care of. Thanks again for the bowl!"

"Of course, ma'am. Very good, ma'am." Fuck. No wonder rich people were so damn confident. They had their very own 'yes men' blowing their asses full of smoke no matter how they screwed up. I bet if I'd have had a couple of those in Camden I wouldn't have quite so many self-confidence issues now. Yes, I have self confidence issues. Really.

No, I know I'm cool and awesome and powerful and smell nice and people like me, but somewhere deep inside I know, balls to bone, that at any given moment I am likely to screw everything up forever. The worst part? I don't think I'll realize I've done so until exactly one moment after the point of no return. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. I know, I know, you're all not believing that, wanting pics or it didn't... won't... willn't have not happeneded.

Fuck, you know what I mean. But if I knew something was gonna happen, that I was gonna fuck everything up forever, I wouldn't do it, now would I? Okay, I guess maybe if somebody pressured me into it, or I figured out that all other options were fucked up even worse for even more people for even longer I might do something like that. But mostly? I figured it would be realizing, 'oh, shit, I'm pregnant' right after an insufficiently approved visit to Raymond which I also forgot to livestream to Saffron.

Y'know, like I said, fuck everything up forever. Wait, maybe Loki can teach me how to scry on the future? Daughter, if I could, and you wished it, I would do so, but only after cautioning you that you ought not. Why not? Do bad things happen to wizards who meddle with time? He laughed. No. Not specifically. But foreseeing the future is rarely useful, and frequently drives Oracles mad. If I may be permitted to turn your own words upon you, consider this a half-star Yelp review of being an Oracle. Oh. Oh, shit.

Okay, Boss. Point taken. Thanks Boss. You're the best. I know. Anyway, with Peter giving me a vote of confidence and Loki warning me off trying to point my punch bowl at the future, I went over, picked it up to avoid screwing up the floor, staggered over to the farmstead one step north and east of Lancaster House, and went through the whole process again. It took me a little longer than forming a scrying image of Lancaster House, but I felt the power growing, saw the Shape forming a lot more clearly this time.

Eventually, much like the other scryings I'd done, the water rippled, then the image snapped into focus between one eyeblink and the next. This one I couldn't be as sure of, since I'd only seen it from a kind of sideways angle as we approached, but the view of the farmstead in the bowl matched the one on the floor.

People wandered between the bunkhouses and the main farmhouse, most of them wearing dresses rather than slacks, which gave me some hope both that Terrence hadn't gotten himself lynched, and that the image wasn't some kind of floor-based recording. I zoomed it in, because this time instead of courting epic reality feedback I'd scried on, y'know, someplace far away. When I got inside the main dining room of the farmhouse, Terrence sat at the head of the table, his sister to his left, an older woman to his right.

At least two thirds of the people at the table were women, most of them doing some kind of portable sewing thing. Crochet? Needlepoint? Pointilism? Yeah, no idea about any of that shit. Fabric and string was involved. Marie could probably do it, but it really held no appeal for me at this point.

The important thing, though, is that Terrence seemed to have about the right appetite for a kid his size, and his sister was tearing into what looked like the picked over remains of breakfast with as much enthusiasm as he was. I thought about Saffron's response to me scrying on her the one time and zoomed in further, until I was pretty much looking down at Terrence like I'd sat down tailor fashion on his plate.

"Hey Terry, can you hear me?" He looked around, like he'd heard something but couldn't quite tell what it was. I tried again, doing that whole 'speak clearly and slowly' thing you did with the elderly, people high on their own supply, and people who 'couldn't understand your accent' who were from like, two blocks away from you, but couldn't understand 'brown'.

"Farmstead Holder Terrence. This is Commander Tabitha Diaz. If you can hear me, say hello." This time he looked all around, then shrugged and said, "Hello."

"Thank fuck." I muttered, then said, "I'm testing out the Scrying Room at Lancaster House, to see if I can use it to communicate. Can you hear me okay?" His eyes lit up.

"Magical communication? Cool!" I heard some mutters from around the table, but tried to stay focused on him when he said, "I can't hear everything you're saying. At least I don't think I can. It's like you're talking from a long way away, and it's echoing a lot. Can you hear me?" I sighed, hopes of setting up some kind of Magical Facetime calling dashed. Still... I tried again, this time leaving big gaps between my words.

"I." Pause.

"Hear." Pause.

"You." Pause.

"Fine." Pause.

"Repeat." Pause.

"What." Pause.

"I." Pause.

"Just." Pause.

"Said." He listened, then cocked his head.

"Why would I need to repeat what you said if you can hear me fine?" Fuck it, the kid was what, ten? Maybe a precocious seven? Maybe a slow thirteen? No idea. On a par with the menace? Maybe, but she was one. But she was precocious as fuck, so maybe not a fair comparison.

"Do. You. Need. Anything?" He looked around, repeated my question to the table, and did a passable job, for a seven year old, of summing it all up.

"We need fabric, or soap if we're gonna use the fabric people died on, or we'll have to make soap out of them, which is disrespectful and creepy. We're also gonna need some seeds if the winter goes on longer than normal; if we can't plant by..." a pause while he dickered a bit with a couple people at the table, who disagreed on when they needed to plant by.

"Okay, Mom says we need to plant by the first of May, but Arnold, he's our head planting guy at this point, says we need to plant by the first of April at the latest or we won't have enough to get us through next winter. So, y'know, I'm gonna go with April? Because if we plant by then and Mom's right, no big, but if we don't plant till May and Arnold's right, we're gonna all starve?" He paused, out of steam, then looked a little abashed.

"Did. You. Get. All. That?"

"Yes." I paused, wondering how to get my point across that even if he had a hard time hearing me, I could hear him just fine. After a moment I gave up and left that as a problem for later Tabitha to deal with.

"Soap. And. Seeds. Good. Bye." I shut down the scry, hoping he got those two last bits and didn't sit there talking at the air for half an hour. Then again, worst case, if he got in the habit of talking about what his farmstead needed out loud, maybe I'd scry on him, or one of the adults on the farm would. Or maybe if I left boot prints in enough divine rectums one of them would get off their ass and listen. Not really fair, I guess.

Hestia seemed to be doing her best up here in Lancaster, especially since it seemed she was a 'Priestess' type, and Priestesses in Lancaster got the shaft, both literally and figuratively it seemed. It turned out it took like half an hour for me to move the bowl, let the water settle, shape the mana, make contact, and communicate if possible, get a bird's eye view if not. Eventually the other Cadets wandered down around lunchtime; I told them they could watch all they wanted, but I needed to concentrate.

Raven stuck around to take notes on what folks needed. By the time dinner rolled around, I wasn't exhausted, per se; I had plenty of Mana left, and physically was barely warmed up from my once-every-half-hour bowl deadlift and carry, but something about maintaining the scry got more and more mentally strenuous the further out I got. Still, we had a list of supplies each of the inhabited farmstead's we'd visited needed. I'd also checked around at some of the ones we hadn't visited, starting with the ones east of us.

No place we hadn't visited would respond to me, but the farmsteads just to the west of our perimeter all seemed to have normal winter shit going on. Smoke from chimneys, folks heading to barns and back, mostly everybody trying to spend as much time as possible in out of the cold while getting shit done. A cone of farmsteads to the east, centered on the road that eventually led to Phileo, narrow at the Lancaster House end and covering at least five farms north-to-south all lay dead. No smoke. No movement.

Nothing, just snow covered mounds, only discernable as farmsteads by the distinctive three-building outline. I know we'd saved a bunch of folks. I know a lot of those farmsteads, probably all of them, were dead before we even set out from Phileo. Still felt like shit. Like we'd failed the people of Lancaster. Like I'd failed people who trusted me to save them.