Walking over to the stream, I decided to make myself comfortable. Sure, it might be more traditional to sit on the earth, with my legs crossed but I had no idea how long I was going to need. In addition, the ground was still rather wet, which would just add to the discomfort. No, I could easily work in style and comfort. Drawing my Athame and channelling my Astral Power through the gem set into its pommel allowed me to create runes using less Astral Power without reducing their effect. Creating the rune for Ice was second nature by now, even if I used Hard Ice for most combat-purposes now, I had used the Ice-Rune a lot. The mental image was one that I had used a few times before and gradually refined, the comfortable armchair that had morphed into a Throne over time, the backrest formed by the wings of a raven, the armrests looking like wolves. In addition the the decorations, I added a comfortable, at least for someone who was mostly immune to cold, cushion out of diamond dust, using its strange properties to make it soft and springy.

With my preparations completed, I sat down and started to finalise my plans with Lenore.

After batting around ideas for some time, maybe an hour, we decided that we had our first plan. With Adra’s spear, the one she had magically crafted from a piece of crystal wood given to her by Kallista, from the trees that I had only seen around Neyto, I hoped to be able to focus on those trees, maybe even cast a scrying-spell into the area. The process should be similar to what I had done to track down that one stooge, using his blood and causing him to die, from a couple of miles away.

Placing the wooden spear in front of me, I tried to reach out with my magical abilities in an attempt to tune into it. At first, there was nothing, no feedback or anything that might help me guide me on my path. Remembering that I had once used darkness-magic to help with such a connection, even if I had used hair back then, I surrounded the wood with the oily, creeping mist that I could create, trying to use my connection to the mist to somehow bridge the magical distance between me and the wood.

“It’s not working, is it?” Lenore asked after maybe twenty minutes of staring at the wood, battering my magical senses against that wall.

“No, it’s not.” I admitted, wrecking my brain to come up with a way to feel it.

“Maybe that will help.” I told her, while raising my hand and carefully cutting it on the spear’s edge. I knew from seeing Adra dispatch enemies with it that the edges were insanely sharp and, as expected, it easily cut a bloody line into my hand. From there, I forced some Astral Power from my hair into the blood, using the enriched blood to coat the spear, trying to get a feeling on that route.

But again, other than making Adra’s spear bloody, I wasn’t able to achieve anything, not even a trickle that would have encouraged me to continue trying. With a soft curse, I closed the wound and, with a little help from Lenore, made sure that the blood I had shed was gathered in a single spot and completely destroyed with her Death-Magic, turning it into nothing but inanimate dust. It was something I had to make a habit off, not just remembering it from time to time as I did now. My blood, especially enriched with magic and my hair, they gave an enemy a far too easy time attacking me.

“Well, there goes that idea.” I muttered to Lenore, while scattering the dust using the frozen liquid that had been part of the blood.

“It was a long-shot, neither of us have any affinity to Wood or Vegetation after all.Let’s try the next way.” she spurred me on and I obliged.

The second way was both more complicated and less so. It only relied on magic I had used before but on a scale that was new.

Calling up Darkness, as I did to create the scrying-spells I had used before, was easy and within moments a small cloud of blackness hung in front of me, creating a strange effect as if it was sucking in the light. It was curious but nothing I hadn't seen before. The next step was also something I had done before, switching my point-of-view with a shadow, allowing me to gaze out of it. What was new was that I used the memory and knowledge of such a shadow, beneath a tree just outside of Neyto, hoping that I could shift the viewpoint from there, hopefully without triggering some lethal trap or ward of the Grandmother. I had no doubt that she had something around her grove but I was banking that the first layer was something that merely alerted her, not directly destroyed the intruder. If so, I would hopefully be able to talk to her, through the scrying spell.

As I focused on the shadow I wanted to reach, I felt the spell start to drain more and more Astral Power, forcing me to activate Overflow, just to keep it together. Within moments, I felt the Astral Power in my body plummet, flooding into the spell. And then, there was nothing more to drain, not without using Blood Magic and possibly killing myself. It was as if I had ran into a wall, the spell trying to drain more, dragging me behind but I was suddenly stopped. The spell in front of me shattered into motes of darkness, swirling around me for a moment, before dissipating into the Astral River again while I was leaning back on my seat, breathing heavily and trying to see the license-plate on the truck that had run me over.

“I guess it might work, in theory.” I told Lenore, whispering in hopes to keep my headache from killing me.

Lenore wasn’t afflicted quite as badly, but she wasn’t a happy bird either. We had agreed that it was a viable option and unless I misunderstood what had happened it was, we just didn’t have the power to make it work. Most likely the amount of power needed to scry was directly dependant on the distance between you and the point you wanted to see. We had been travelling away from Neyto for months, moving about halfway across a continent, so the distance was quite significant.

Trying to soothe my mind, I let myself drop into the Astral River, clearing away everything in my mind, leaving nothing but emptiness. I felt the flow of Astral Power around me and started to slowly draw some of it into me to replenish what I had lost but that was only secondary. The calm serenity of the river, the soothing, ethereal song of the river, letting it was over and through my mind, it helped with the pain.

Just feeling the interplay of power, knowing that we, all the beings on Mundus, were merely grains on the banks of a cosmic river, it was humbling, even as the sheer beauty of it all filled me with awe. As I was looking at the flow of Ice Astral Power, slowly interweaving with the flow of Water, a process that would take a few months as winter was turning to spring, which would bring Ice to its weakest point, I realised something. I didn’t need to cross the distance back to Neyto, not a physical distance at least. But preparations needed to be made.

I opened my eyes again, slowly, as I still had a bit of a headache and explained Lenore what I had in mind.

“It is risky, you know that, right? You could lose yourself in the flow, your body turning into a slowly withering husk while your mind fades into the background-flow of the Astral River. I have no idea what magical laws govern the transfer of your being between your world and Mundus, but what you have in mind might just kill you, permanently.” she objected but I could hear that she thought it was a good, if risky, idea.

“So, we make sure that I have something to guide me back. Two somethings, actually.” I explained, laying out what I had in mind. The first step was simple, Lenore and I were connected on a deep level, the time we had spent in each other’s head allowing us to know the other like ourselves, maybe even better. Lenore would be the first anchor, sitting on my physical shoulder, while submerging her own mind into the Astral River as I had done just now. Hopefully, that would give me a beacon to guide me back.

The second was a little more complicated but not by much. Using my own blood, enriched with the essence of my magic, I wrote my name onto the Ice of the Throne I was sitting on. Part of me wanted to create a rune that signified me and only me but I wasn’t sure how that would look. I might be able to figure it out but I was hesitant, such a rune would be, in effect, the same as True Name, something that represented me in my entirety. And there was tremendous Power in such a symbol, for good or ill.

The Name I had given my Avatar would have to do for now and that was what I used.

Next, I let myself drop into the Astral River, submerging myself in the stream of Ice, like I had done earlier in the small brook next to the camp. Only that now, I was letting myself go with the flow, so to speak, only keeping a tenuous hold on my body. It was a similar experience to the one I had when crossing the first Divide, only that now, I didn’t have the magic potion Kallista had given me back then.

But it worked, I felt the Astral River flow around me as I lost all sense of time. I was floating along, perfectly content, my body feeling so far away, at least until I felt a slight change, almost like a change in pressure. I was reasonably certain that it was the point of change, where the Nexus acted as a bridge between the Astral and the Physical and focused on that bridge.

Moving in the manner I desired wasn’t easy but I persisted, focusing on my goal when I felt as if I had broken through the surface of a pool of water. Grasping the Astral Power around me, I pulled together something, trying to make a form that looked like me in an attempt to project my mind into the form. Suddenly, I felt something approach, something ancient and angry, the wrath and power of that being so far off my own scale that it was barely comprehensible. It was as if a continent was pressing down on me, an angry continent.

I was about to simply give up to let my mind flow back into the Astral, when the pressure vanished and I was gently held, cradled in the power of that being and a soft voice asked, “Morgana?”