If there was one thing I realised about these brown-furred primates, it was that their senses were extraordinary. Even with my advanced abilities to conceal myself, I had to be cautious and take things slow if I wanted to sneak up on them. If I used abilities on them, like Observe, for example, they noticed me, despite my attempts to use Darkness Magic to hide the ability’s activation, forcing me to either retreat or fight. As I wasn’t interested in killing the lot of them, I habitually retreated, something relatively easy thanks to my cloak’s ability to fly.
Sure, I could use my wings to accomplish the same, but the two methods worked in very different ways, creating a vastly different experience in the air. My cloak worked more on principles of levitation, allowing me to hover and move easily, somewhat akin to a helicopter and similar devices, while my wings worked on the same principles as the wings of a bird or plane, just with a lot of magic involved in the lift and acceleration. In essence, if I merely wanted to move a short distance, the cloak was the better option; if I wanted to go far, the wings provided a better speed, efficiency and overall experience.
However, despite my magical abilities, evading the Sasquatch, as the system referred to these creatures, was a fair challenge regardless of the method used to conceal myself. They had an incredibly advanced Intuition for the physical realm, allowing them to detect even absurdly subtle effects, such as the displacement of air from a hidden person and their effect on the natural movement of the wind. At least, I thought that was the method they used to detect me when I didn’t manage to completely smooth out the effects the Wind Magic I used to conceal my scent had.
Or they might have used something entirely different. It was hard to experiment properly with the perception of others without their feedback. For now, I was only able to determine that leaving out some methods of concealment resulted in my detection at different ranges, though the local conditions also played into it. The one attempt at sneaking up on them while the mountainside had been covered in mist, for example, was an abject failure, despite the Ice Magic I had used to blend into the mist, making me functionally invisible. Something about the mist allowed them to detect me, but I hadn’t been able to readily nail down what that ‘something’ was. I thought it might be a subtle, maybe even purely instinctual, application of Ice Magic, making me somewhat miffed that I hadn’t been able to detect it easily but these creatures had obviously their own skills and abilities.
All in all, after carefully studying the Sasquatch for a little over a week, mostly from a distance, I was somewhat intrigued. Their levels weren’t all that exciting, at least when it came to local beasts. The adults were only between level fifty and sixty-five, at the low end of the local wildlife, but they made up for that with their unity, advanced perception and relatively high intelligence. Sure, their intelligence wasn’t as advanced as that of humans, but they seemed to be getting there, displaying the use of tools, tactics and even a rudimentary language.
In a few generations, these might become something similar to humans, though they’d obviously need time to catch up technologically if they ventured down that path of civilisation. It would be interesting to see if they used a different discipline to underpin their burgeoning civilisation. Observing the development of a people who used pure magic to build their civilisation would be quite fascinating.
“These things are good,” Lia had to admit one evening after she had tried to observe the Sasquatch from up close once again. She had just as many troubles sneaking up on them as I had, which is why she had only been allowed to try after I made sure she was able to shadow-step across a short distance in an instant. That made catching her nigh impossible, as there were always shadows in the night. Otherwise, I would have been a little hesitant.
Not because the Sasquatch were strong enough to kill her but because I didn’t want to disturb their development too much, and I certainly didn’t want to diminish their already limited numbers even further.
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“That they are,” I admitted, “I might have to switch to shadow-stepping to retreat from them. When I sneaked up on them yesterday, one of them almost managed to hit me with a projectile.”
“What did the Sasquatch throw at you?” Luna asked, just a tiny bit annoyed that she was the only one unable to get a closer look at these things. She simply didn’t have the stealth capabilities to remain hidden, so remote observation with scrying constructs was the only option for her.
In response to her question, I only let out a soft grumble, unwilling to respond properly as the Sasquatch had stumbled upon a rather foul method of attack. At first, they had thrown sticks and stones in my general direction when discovering me, trying to hit my flying form as I retreated, but now, that had changed. Hopefully, it was an insular incident. Otherwise, I would truly have to stick to the shadows and teleport away if needed.
“Come on, tell me,” Luna prodded, noticing my reluctance to reply, something she apparently wasn’t willing to let stand.
“Fecal matter, okay?” I grumbled out my response a little louder, a part of me shuddering just from remembering the stench the small projectile had exuded, nearly making me gag just from flying past me with a metre or so to spare.
“Shit,” Lia giggled, making me grumble even more, “That’s a fairly foul thing to do.”
“Indeed,” I snarked back, not joining in the merriment despite a small smile trying to twist my lips.
“Regardless of their projectiles of choice, what have the two of you learned about these creatures, their behaviour and their social structures?” I asked after a bit of laughter, bringing the discussion back to a sensible track.
All three of us had been observing from different angles and at different times, meaning we all had different insights into these creatures, making me quite curious about what my daughters had learned. I especially wanted to find out if they had noticed a good way to acquire one of these Sasquatch for study and possible experimentation, as I had some hope they might prove to be highly compatible with Ice Magic, allowing me to create a creature wielding an advanced version of my favourite element. So far, I had only been able to conclude that the Ice Magic was part of their perceptive abilities, nothing more. Which, in my opinion, was far from enough.
While a part of me was pondering the way these creatures might function, a bigger part of me listened to my daughters as they described their observations. Lia had obviously been focused on their behaviour at night, which was somewhat limited as these creatures turned out to be largely diurnal, with limited activity during twilight times. Because of that, she had mostly observed their sleeping habits, with a few small tests to see how they reacted to potential threats during the night. Her observations were quite interesting, painting the picture of a strong communal species, especially in regard to threat response. A single male would directly respond to a potential threat, moving towards the noise, while multiple other males remained between that scout and the rest of the group, slowly moving up so they could react to attacks on either. Quite sophisticated, though I honestly had limited knowledge of the way other primates would react to potential threats.
Luna, on the other hand, had been forced to rely on scrying constructs to observe them. Thus, she had spent some time watching their community during the day. Her curiosity largely focused on what I thought were children and the way the Sasquatch taught them. From what she could tell, it seemed that these were, indeed, young ones, their size indicating a fairly fast maturation. Faster than humans, at least, but that was true for the vast majority of animals out there.
My own observations, which I shared with my daughters, had focused on individual Sasquatch, following them during their daily trips to forage for food or hunt game. There was a curious difference between the obviously tactical and communal behaviour they displayed during the night and the solitary wanderings the males performed during the day, making me wonder why their behaviours were so different from one-another.
Sadly, we needed a lot more information to really understand these creatures and their behaviour, something we could only do by remaining in the area and observing them for a longer period of time. I wasn’t certain if I was willing to invest the needed time and effort into these somewhat simple yet interesting creatures.
