Crone waited. She wanted to be certain that they had all departed the area before doing some investigating on her own. Was this puppet the thing birthed in the pillar of fire? It didn't seem likely. And what kind of sorcery did it employ that no Great Raven could absorb? There was an Eldering taste about this. Soul-shifting was no simple cantrip, and it had never been common among the wizards even when its techniques were known. Too many tales of madness born within the shifting.

Perhaps this puppet had survived from these times. Crone thought about that. Unlikely.

Magic bloomed on the plain below, then faded. A small magical force scampered from the spot, weaving as it ran. There, thought Crone, there lie the answers to my questions. Destroy my younglings, will you? Would you so easily disdain Crone?

She crooked her wings and dropped. The air whistled around her. She raised a penumbra of protective magic that encapsulated her just as the small figure ceased its march and looked up. Faintly, Crone heard a manic laugh rise up to meet her, then the puppet gestured.

The power that engulfed Crone was immense, far beyond anything she anticipated. Her defences held but she found herself buffeted, as if fists punched her from every direction. She cried out in pain, spinning as she fell. It took all her strength and will to thrust out her battered wings and catch a rising current of air. She voiced an outraged, alarmed shriek as she climbed higher into the night sky. A glance down revealed that the puppet had returned once again to its Warren, for nothing magical was visible.

'Aye.' She sighed. 'What a price to pay for knowledge! Elder Warren indeed, the eldest of them all. Who plays with Chaos? Crone knows naught. All things are gathering, gathering here.' She found another stream of wind and angled south. This was something Anomander Rake must know of, never mind Catadan Brood's instructions that the Tiste Andii lord be kept ignorant of almost everything. Rake was good for more than Brood credited him. 'Destruction, for one.' Crone laughed. 'And death. Good at death!'

She picked up speed, so did not notice the dead smudge on the land below her, nor the woman camped in its centre. There was no magic there to speak of, in any case.

Adjunct Lorn squatted by her bedroll, her eyes scanning the night sky. 'Tool, was all that connected to what we witnessed two nights ago?'

The T'lan Imass shook his head. 'I think not, Adjunct. If anything, this concerns me more. It is sorcery, and it ignores the barrier I have set around us.'

'How?' she asked quietly.

'There is only one possibility, Adjunct. It is Eldering, a lost Warren of ages past, returned to us. Whoever its wielder might be, we must assume it tracks us, with purpose.'