Over the next couple of days, we made our way back towards Adernas, actively looking for groups of nymphs and dryads on the way and happening upon two more groups. Both were small and easily dealt with, when we changed our approach a little, sending Adra off to the side before the encounter and letting her strike into the other group’s flank, once they engaged with the rest of us. My own first strikes worked out well, to the point that I started using two icicles at once, with individual targets. The individual attacks were weaker, but still easily able to penetrate our current opponents and rip them apart with the detonation.

Thanks to the fights, I gained another level, bringing me to 53, and skill-points in Ice Magic and Ice-Rune Mastery.

During the nights, I tried to make sense of the Earthen Staff, linking myself to it and carefully inspecting any occurring changes with Lenore’s vision. I even let myself sink into a meditative trance, trying to examine changes in that state, but had little success, even though I gained two points in Astral Meditation.

Once I got to the point that I wanted to smash the staff against something hard, I read in the grimoire from the Grandmother, trying to further my understanding of the spells I had already tried. There was more to learn, even if I was able to use them with the book. I wanted to understand them on a fundamental level, understand how the chants guided my power into the runes that made up the spell. That would allow me to truly make them my own and make variants of them for myself, maybe even teach me new runes.

Just as I got to the point that I wanted to throw the staff away, Rai approached me. He had been rather contemplative over the last few days, often staring into the distance with unseeing eyes. I had heard the term “thousand-yard stare” and felt that it was appropriate, wondering just what was going on in his mind. Now, it seemed I might find out.

“Morgana, can I ask you a question?” he asked. I had to suppress a snicker and the rather gilb answer that he just had.

“Yes, sure.”

“Do you think that father’s plan will work? That my actions will be forgiven and I can move on with my life?” His voice cracked a little as he asked, giving me the impression that he already knew the answer and just needed me to confirm his thoughts.

“Forgiven? Maybe, given time and effort on your part. But I doubt that they will ever be forgotten.” I decided to give him my brutally honest assessment.

He looked at me for a moment with a pained expression, before he spoke. “I see. So, if I stay, I will be forever remembered as the coward, the one who needed outsiders to bail him out, too weak to take care of my own life.”

There was nothing I could say; it was too easy to imagine the attitude of the rest of the village - there might even be someone trying to use Rai’s failure against his father, it wasn’t impossible. But I knew that there was nothing an outsider could do to change the village’s attitude and I told him that, while extending an offer to help him, if needed. I wanted to encourage the increase in maturity he had displayed over the last few days, Compared to the surly, entitled brat he had been when we first met him, it was worlds apart; he had valiantly done his part, not only when it came to fighting but also when it came to the mundane chores - those annoying things that nobody wanted to do, but someone had to. He had done his part and more, not once offering a serious complaint.

We sat for a little longer in silence, I thought that he might say something more, but after some time, he simply wished me a good night and moved off a little. For me, that meant going back to the grimoire and trying to understand more magic.

That night, something was different about the book, however: there was another spell on a page that had been blank before. I was a little unsure just what had caused the spell to appear, it wasn’t as if I had achieved some sort of milestone or something similar. But, no matter why, there was a new spell, a spell called Water Mirror. From the description, it used a small body of water to form a window to look at a different place by connecting to a different body of water. The idea was that all water was magically connected. It was understandable, as a mystical concept, by imagining the water-cycle, rain falling, flowing into a river and then the sea, before turning into vapor and clouds before turning back into rain. With that in mind, it was quite easy to see a connection between individual bodies of water and use magic to connect them with each other.

I tried it out, making a puddle and casting directly from the book. At first, it didn’t work - only once I made a second puddle, a little away from us, did I manage to get a working connection. But the Astral Power drain was quite insane, for a spell that just let me look out of a puddle a few meters away. But it got me thinking: maybe I didn’t have to use water as a medium.

Sinking into a meditative trance, I tried to taste what the chant meant, which runes meant what. A few of them gave me the impression of water and it was hard to hold onto them, never mind understand them. But most of the runes gave me a different impression, not water but something else, something I could not grasp at all. By thinking how the spell worked, I would assume that they had to do with the shifting of the viewpoint, so some sort of divination or space, depending on the interpretation. I tried to substitute the water-runes with darkness-runes, letting me use a shadow as medium for the viewpoint-shifting.

Turning the runes into chants was a strange feeling, the chants themselves held no real meaning themselves, they only guided the mind in the pattern laid out in the runes. In a way, it was similar to the spell creation I was able to use as a Sorcerer, formalizing individual magic expression to create spells that were universally teachable. I could have tried to keep the runes as runes and add the chant for those I could not understand as runes, but I had no idea how to merge them in a satisfactory manner. After a while I had an impression how the chant should sound, how it should work and opened my eyes again.

The first thing I realised was that I had gained some skill-levels.

Skill increased You increased your skill: Astral Meditation [43/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Darkness Rune-Mastery [62/100]

Turning my back to the fire, to have a nice, deep shadow, I started chanting, carefully keeping an eye on my mental condition and ready to interrupt my magic if something strange happened. There had been far too many strange incidents when I experimented with magic, especially with Darkness -Magic. Well, and Blood-Magic.

There was a bit of dissonance - the magic was not quite meshing as it should, as if the gears that made the magic were not quite the right size - but I felt them grip nonetheless, even if I needed to jiggle them a little with my Darkness Magic. I felt Lenore’s mind join with mine, not merging but lending her skill to mine, helping with the unfamiliar magic. Her joining me helped, as we shared an ability that worked similarly - linking my own sense of sight with hers - allowing us to use it as a reference.

I had targeted a shadow a few trees away and I felt my senses shift from one shadow to the other. It was no longer the reflective surface of water that worked as a mirror, now I was looking into one shadow and out of the other, in a strange twist of perspective. Luckily, I was already sitting, or the escheresque view would have knocked me flat.

A little experimentation allowed me to use Darkness Magic to shift the viewpoint and even to look back at the clearing with our camp, only to discover that it was not visible. Curious, I tried to stretch the sensing towards the camp, using the shadows of the forest, when I felt resistance. With strengthened curiosity, I pushed against the resistance, feeling it give and, with another, even stronger, push, break. Just as it did, an audible alarm, almost like ringing bells filled our clearing and Adra jumped up from the relaxed, almost napping, position she had taken after dinner, almost as if something had stung her.

“Something triggered our wards, I think someone tried to scry our position, get ready to run!” she exclaimed with a panicked voice, as she started to grab her things. Rai and Sigmir heard her voice and were just as alarmed.

I heard Lenore snicker in my mind and felt my cheeks blush.

“Wait, can you trace the magic? I experimented with a farsight-spell and wondered why I couldn’t see our camp, so I tried to push it a little…”

If looks could kill, I would have found out how it feels to respawn in game. Adra stood and muttered under her breath before looking at me,

“Did you use Darkness-Magic to scry?”

“Yes, why?”

“Well, it was most likely you who triggered my wards. The magic was rather clumsy and Darkness-based, so I guess we can stay here tonight. Please warn me if you try something like that in the future.”

I simply nodded, feeling a little bad. But at the same time, I was glad that our wards seemed to work quite well against magical intrusion, I had wondered a little, they had seemed a bit useless, as they glowed in Lenore’s magic sight, giving away that someone was there. While Adra reestablished her ward, I looked at my log, while settling down in Sigmir’s lap.

Skill increased You increased your skill: Darkness Rune-Mastery [63/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Darkness Magic [41/100]

Satisfied with the gains, I happily snuggled in, enjoying the feeling of Sigmir’s arms around me and looking forward to the next time we had some privacy.