I watched the videos posted in the thread a couple of times, even going so far to pull the video from my point of view, to get an idea which of my actions had caused what reaction. It was quite interesting, the colours they were seeing, the best comparison I could come up with were random hits on a typewriter. Getting a meaningful picture that way would be akin to randomly hitting keys and hoping to get a novel, if you wanted a specific picture, it would be akin to getting a specific novel. With a single try. So, it would be nigh impossible to use that method to create mental illusions.

But the impressions of the last guy were interesting, I would need Lenore to help me with a few tests. Hopefully, I could use the blood of that guy as a medium to target him, they were now primed to cry on the forum, if strange things happened to them, especially after my threat. And, what better test-subjects could one want, three idiots that kindly supplied me with a reason to use them.

I logged back into the game, orienting myself for a second, before getting comfortable and starting to confer with Lenore over our mental connection.

“I have acquired the last moments of the fools who tried to attack us tonight.” I told her, excitement tinging my thought.

“Oh, so they shared them? You told me, it might happen, but why would anyone supply their enemies with such knowledge? Are they stupid?” She asked, her mental voice incredulous.

“Possibly. But, they did not know I would see the information and hoped someone else could tell them what we did and help them formulate a strategy against it. I placed a small germling, a seed if you will, reminding them about the threat I made. If we manage to attack them using the blood I took, we might get even more information.” I answered.

“If we want to do that, and conduct a meaningful test, we will need to try it on other beings first, so we know that you can actually use the blood to attack someone you don’t see. We managed to attack the dryad a while back, but we could easily see her. And, while you were able to get a direction towards Jongarn, that was far from sufficient to attack him.”

“So, we should try to catch some game, instead of killing it?” I asked, not quite happy. After the ill-fated events with the collars and later seeing myself in Jongarn, I had told myself that I would kill my enemies, not experiment on them.

“Yes. We need to know our capabilities if we want to learn more about magic, you know that.” she gently chastised me. It was humorous, now, she was pushing me forward, normally, I was the one who pushed the her into trying things she was not quite comfortable with. I mentally gave her my acceptance and she sent back supportive thoughts about my own attempt to develop a conscience. But even with a conscience, sometimes animal experiments were necessary. I would gladly use the stooges for all my experiments but I had a feeling that Pantheon would not view a continued imprisonment of other travellers kindly.

I focused on the images I had seen on the forum, sending them to Lenore in as pure form as I could. She agreed with me that manipulating what other beings saw was limited to blocking everything, as the paths were slightly different for everyone, so we would need to either understand how body, mind and soul were exactly connected so we understood the underlying principles or we would have to painstakingly map the responses out for every new enemy. And, if we could do that, we could just use classical conditioning to bend them to our will.

Something else she noticed was that we dropped the blindness we had used originally after getting into their heads. We would have to get better with keeping that up if we wanted our enemies in the dark, literally, just for those moments we were suddenly kicked out of someone’s mind. Lastly, she lamented that we had no subject to test if the impressions she had studied were the same for everyone or how much they varied. If we could send an impression that gave one being the sensation of a small prick and another being the sensation of being stabbed with a spear, it was less useful than knowing what they would feel. It was something we would have to find out and it would be with beings that told us what they felt. Maybe some sort of covert testing, the results should be quite obvious.

As I was thinking about those sensations, I had an idea that I wanted to try out later, alone. It involved Sigmir and a different sense of sensations and their testing. But that was only for the two of us, without Lenore, and only with her consent.

“Don’t worry, I have little interest in watching you two entertain each other. But, if you manage that, would you share the process with me? I would be grateful.” Lenore sent, and there was a distinctly naughty undertone to her thoughts and it was directed at Ylva. The two of them had been close before they had joined us and the few times Lenore had left her Hallow unprompted, they had spent the time close together. I firmly suppressed further imagination in that direction, it was one of those things that would result in strange nightmares. Hopefully, it was not too late.

We discussed further ideas what we could do in our tests, until I got too sleepy. Lenore had a watch later, so she left her Hallow and waited in the outside world. I felt Sigmir next to me, so I grabbed her arm and draped her around me, snuggling into her and taking comfort in her closeness, before quickly drifting off to sleep.

The next morning, I was awakened shortly before dawn, when Lenore spotted something sneaking into the direction of our camp and alerted me using our connection. Even before opening my eyes, she shared what she was seeing. She had taken post on a high branch, that allowed her to keep watch in all directions and there was a large cat moving towards us. Her own power was not suited to attack an animal like that, so I had to help. After a quick, mental discussion, I channelled darkness magic through her, constructing a simple, weakening curse first. It would give me some feedback on the cat’s strength and weaken it.

Sadly, darkness was not well suited for direct attacks, so I slipped out of Sigmir’s embrace and our shared furs, pulling my cloak around me, with the Weaver’s Fury inside. My curse had drastically reduced the cat’s vigour, so I tried something new, using a concealed Observe through Lenore. There was no feedback that it had done anything, so it might be something that I couldn’t channel through her. Maybe because it was a skill, not a spell.

I contemplated drawing the pre-dawn shadows around me and play a game of hide and seek with the cat and realised that it was a good opportunity. The cat was already weakened and it seemed to be a loner, making it good prey. I did just that, conceal myself with both my stealth-skill and my magic, carefully moving towards it.

Sneaking up on the weakened cat was childsplay, thanks to Lenore, and I started to slip a Torpor curse into it, watching as it started to stagger and fell down. Observe told me that it was a level forty lynx, nothing to be excited about. When I was next to it, Hard Ice quickly formed into shackles, immobilising and silencing it, before it even realised what had happened.

Lenore came down from her lofty perch, landing on my shoulder.

“First with hair and line of sight?” she asked, reminding me of the magic I had used to find Jongarn, trying out if it would work to strengthen magic.

After ripping out some hair, hopefully getting the roots as well, I walked off a little and used two more curses on the cat, neither terribly powerful but there was a magical feedback that I was able to judge. The first, without the hair, was slightly harder to cast and took a little more Astral Power, compared to the one used with hair.

“So, let’s move on to blood.” Lenore eagerly supplied. There was a strange animosity for our test-subject, maybe it was some sort of racial dislike for cats.

“Soon. I want to wake at least Sigmir, just in case we get visitors. I don’t really like the idea of getting attacked by Nethersprites while I try to collect data.”

Lenore stayed behind, while I gave Sigmir a gentle kiss to wake her, despite realising that she had been awake all along.

“Dear, could you watch over me while I try to confirm a few things with magic?” I asked, when she opened her eyes and smiled at me.

“Sure, but I want another of those.” her smile grew a size and I paid her, even doubling her asked-for price.

After helping her up, I walked back to Lenore and we started on our experiments.