When the fighting was done, I asked Sigmir and Adra to take care of the corpses, it would be sad if we wasted the preparation they had already done in the camp, so we would take it over. In addition, I wanted to get my four volunteer-subjects dealt with. I ignored the messages of experience-gain and went to work.

Looking over my four test-subjects I thought about the best methodology. I could either start with the weakest and work my way to the strongest or vice-versa. Both ways had advantages, but for now, I wanted to start with the strongest, mainly to get possible mistakes out of the way. The best result would be to get two of them under control, the weakest two at that, the other two were expendable. Two, I could control without the collar, if need be, but more were not possible.

With that in mind, I went over to the downed dryad, who had yet to twitch. She would be my first target, easily the strongest of the bunch and the one with magic training of her own. If any of them died in the process, I wanted it to be this one.

First, I created a collar around her neck, without any flourishes; a simple band out of hard ice - no need for clasps or hinges or anything, it would never come off anyway. Into the collar, I inscribed the runes I had envisioned, making sure that I did not channel any Astral Power into them, without preparing the darkness and blood runes with their appropriate medium.

This first part was rather easy, it only used actions I had done multiple times before in a slightly different fashion. Filling the runes with their medium - Shadeleaf-paste for the Darkness-runes, and the dryad’s blood for the central blood-runes - was easy as well. The connecting lines, between the various runes, I filled with a mix of the dryad’s blood, my own blood and Shadeleaf-paste. I was not certain that it was the best way, but magic was mainly guided by intent and will. Runes, inscriptions and materials were just guiding and focusing tools, the true work was done by the caster’s will and mind.

The next part, however, was new. I had to create a permanent effect at an appropriate strength that I could either completely leave alone or use in a ‘background noise’ manner, without focusing on it.

Remembering the way I had used my darkness-curses before and the fact that Darkness-magic was, as the magic of madness and insanity, at least partially the governing magic of the mind and mental-magic, I attempted something new. I reached out with my Darkness-Magic and tried to gain an impression of the dryad’s mind. With some focus, I managed to gain the impression that there was something there. I could not read any thoughts, if there were any with the dryad in an almost comatose slumber, but I could feel a subdued ‘glow’, like a darkened lamp or a glimmering ember. Lenore joined her sight to mine, and I gained a better impression of my magic reaching for the mind of the dryad, her mind and magic represented by a multi-hued greenish-brown in Lenore’s sight, intermingled with the silver and black traces of the curses I had wrapped around her before.

With the slight hook into the dryad’s mind in place, I started channeling Astral Power into the collar, careful to keep the flow steady and low, I did not want to destroy the collar due to stupidity on my part. There was only so much Shadeleaf-paste left, no need to waste any.

Soon, I felt the different runes connect within their formations and I focused to guide them in the right manner, connecting the curse-runes to each other, connecting the effect-runes - meaning the runes that told the curse what it was supposed to do - together, creating two separate but connected triangles around the blood-rune in the middle. Once they were ready, the triangles connected to each other and formed the seven-rune formation by joining with the blood-rune in the middle.

With the main-formations prepared, I tried to tie them together, using their geometric positions and the central blood-runes as mediums to connect them into a larger formation. In a way, it was not a three runes-formation, but a twenty-seven runes formation, something I was not sure I could use. I had done something similar with the ritual magic I had used against the Devourer, but that had been a rework of an existing ritual, not done from scratch, as I did now.

But with a lot of focus, and a slight headache, I managed to connect them and felt the strands of magic reach out to the dryad. The silvery light representing Ice, the black, light-swallowing radiance of Darkness and the vibrant, pulsating red of Blood, each playing their part in the magical web that tried to envelop the dryad’s body, mind and maybe even her soul. But there was a resistance, the strands slid off, or maybe they were pushed off, not managing to connect and do their part.

I joined my own will to the web, guiding and strengthening it, while letting more magic flow into the formation, forcing the connection and the envelopment. Now, I felt the pushback myself and got an impression of desperation as the combination of my will and the web slowly encroached closer and deeper into the sanctity of the dryad’s mind. With a slight smile on my lips, I pushed harder, waiting for the resistance to give way so my magic could do its job.

Suddenly, the resistance was gone and I felt the magic gush in, filling the dryad and doing its job. With a feeling of triumph, I withdrew my mind but realised something. I had not won. Or rather, it had been a hollow victory. The light glow I had felt before was now gone, snuffed out by the pressure I had applied. Looking closer, only those strands of my magic that dealt with the body had taken hold, the purely mental strands were flapping in the breeze, so to speak. Like a cornered animal would fight to the death, the unconscious mind, or maybe the subconscious mind, of the dryad had resisted to the end, trying to push the encroachment out and had perished, instead of submitting.

I looked at the dryad with my normal eyes and saw that she looked vacant - not just unconscious, but truly comatose. She was still awake, but no more sapient than the next tree. Or to use a common analogy, the light was still on, but nobody was home.

Testing possible ways to undo the damage, I first withdrew my magic from the collar and even broke the collar in an attempt to regain as much unstained Shadeleaf-paste as I could, but there was no change in the dryad. There was a certain irony in the fact that I had turned a tree-spirit into a vegetable, but I was careful not to voice that thought out loud, Adra believed me to be a bit insane already, no need to confirm her opinion.

With a thought of ‘Waste not, want not’, I plunged my athame into the dryad and siphoned her blood and power off, creating two nicely-sized pieces of blood-amber to use later. The dryad perished, I gained some experience and skill-increases for Blood Magic, Blood Rune Mastery, Darkness Magic and Darkness Rune-Mastery, demonstrating that new, creative ways to use a skill increased it beyond what repetition could do.

But how to circumvent the problem I had just encountered... Suddenly, it was as if a light-bulb was switched on in my mind: if the unconscious mind is the problem, don’t deal with it. Deal with the active, conscious mind first, break it and use the broken mind to enter. Don’t try to break down the wall - smash in a window, and let the cold in.

After resting and planning a bit, I moved to my next test-subject, one of the nymphs. A quick observe told me that it was one of the weaker nymphs, only level 44. I believed that the easiest way to break her mind, to make her welcome any contact with me, no matter what kind of contact, was probably sensory deprivation. It was supposed to be one of the worst tortures, stripping the subject of everything that made them, well, themselves. In a way, my collars were supposed to do something similar, only faster and with magic.

When I thought a bit about it, Darkness Magic was quite versatile when it came to the mind. My Ice-Magic was rather straightforward, manipulate ice, period. Sure, Darkness-Magic allowed me to deepen shadows and things like that, but what I did now felt more encompassing, as if I had only scratched the surface before, the things dealing with the physical realm and now a whole, new realm was before me, the mental realm, the realm of minds and I was very well aware what darkness could lurk in a sapient mind.

After cutting off all the nymph’s clothing, I went to work. Using runes of shadow, concealment and a bit of disorientation, combined with a lot of Astral Power, I enveloped the nymph in a cocoon of corporeal shadow, lifting her off the snowy ground. With her floating in front of me, I used a bit of blood and darkness-magic to get rid of the effect on her, I had placed them and with a small effort, I could get rid of them again. It did not take long for the nymph to come back to consciousness, not that she would easily be able to tell. My intent in the magic was that the shadows concealed everything, vision, touch, temperature, even the sound of her own voice, everything was swallowed by the dark shadows. It seemed to work, she started to twitch a little, moving her hand but even the touch of her own hand on her own skin was concealed from her. If I did everything right, she was a discorporeal shadow, floating in a sea of endless darkness, unable to even feel herself.

As the controller of the spell around her, I could hear her scream, a primal, desperate cry for help. But of course, other than me, nobody could hear her scream. She could not even hear her own screams.