“Finally…” I muttered, stepping onto the old, imperial road.

It had been two days since Sigmir and I had talked things out, about my fears of being left behind by her and the subsequent events. Since then, the connection between us had remained steady, allowing me to constantly know her position and, as long as we were within about a hundred meters of each other, I also knew her general emotional and physical state. At first, the connection had been a little distracting, my mind not used to receive that kind of information, but as time was passing, I was getting more and more used to having it.

Still, we were back to the comfortable state of companionship, only with a little added closeness, that we had before she crossed the second divide.

But while that problem had worked out quite well, my other two projects were making a lot less headway. Crossing the second divide was my main concern and I had two leads for that. The first one was the experiment I had conducted during the full moon, travelling through the Astral to visit the heavenly body, only to do it during a new moon and stay in the moon’s shadow, letting it shield me from the sun’s radiance.

The other idea was a little different and I had stumbled upon it while traversing the channels within my own body, something I had done every evening, trying to learn more about the core within me While I hadn’t learned a lot, I had stumbled upon something.

What I had learned was that there seemed to be a connection between the frozen, tear-drop shaped core and the Ice-Astral-Power flowing within me, the power seemed to nourish the core directly, at least that was my impression. The effect was barely noticeable, but over a couple of days of observation and comparison, I was reasonably sure that it was there. With that in mind, I had started to discuss with Lenore what it might mean and if there was a way to improve upon it. If it was some sort of passive effect, was there a way to actively improve upon it? Maybe that would allow me to cross the second divide.

The core was nothing unique to me, each of us had one, it was part of crossing the divides and part of the reason why crossing the divides made one stronger. What was interesting was that the nourishment of the core was not something shared by the others, at least not by all of them. Ylva told me that her core had been slowly devouring the Power we had drained from the wolves, some three months back, but since that power had been used up, it had remained dormant, not improving at all.

On the other hand, Lenore was able to tell me more, especially thanks to our connection facilitating the transfer of images and concepts which couldn’t be quite put into words. It also helped that her core had been established partially with my help, back when Lenore had been shot and I had fed her power, even going so far to directly drain life-essence into my body with blood magic. The memory of that particular encounter was a little uncomfortable for me, drinking the blood had been necessary but, in hindsight, incredibly creepy. It wasn’t something I would want to do again but at the same time, I knew I wouldn’t hesitate to act, if it was necessary to protect any of my comrades.

Lenore’s core had been established, as she put it, on the border of life and death, allowing her to put a claw into the realm of death without it hurting her. Thanks to her memories, I was able to experience her draining the will-o-wisps in the swamp, gorging herself on the death-energy they had been composed off. When I asked if there was a way for me to do something similar, she could only shrug, it seemed that what she had done had been as reckless as my various experiments, to say nothing of the stunt she had pulled to defeat the Tzar Bolotnik, just a few days later.

The problem with copying her process was that I’d need an outside source of energy to pull it off, something rather major due to the process being rather ineffective. To say nothing of risky.

One such source could have been the core of eternal ice I had looted a while back but, sadly, I had used up the vast majority of it, mostly during the encounter with Tzar Bolotnik when I had used it to give him magical ingestion. It had been necessary which didn’t stop me from being a little annoyed that I didn’t have enough of it any longer.

But if I was honest, it wouldn’t have helped anyway. I didn’t want to only enhance my power regarding Ice-Magic, Darkness was just as integral to me as the Ice was. Sure, Ice-magic had served me well but the protective embrace of the night was not something I was willing to give up. And, while I had seen Eternal Ice as condensed Ice-Astral-Power and an Eternal Ember which was similar, just with Fire, I had yet to encounter an equivalent for Darkness. I didn’t even have an inclining what such a crystal might look like, if it existed.

The other project I had been working on was slowly getting better, I had managed to create a prototype-magic-item, a small rod made from Hard Ice engraved with a simple runic formation. The formation consisted of one Icicle-Rune, one Hail-Rune and one Hard-Ice Rune, linked together with a set of symbols I had designed myself, using the Grandmother’s grimoire and the dwarven symbols I had studied.

Now, the current prototype was relatively weak, only shooting a single Icicle which wasn’t terribly fast or sharp but it only required Astral Power to work and not too much of it. For me, the rod, or wand, was next to useless, the power was simply too underwhelming but even Sigmir or Rai were able to use it. Sure, they could only use it so often before running out of power but for a first prototype it was a good start, especially as I hadn’t used any limited material so far, once I got a better hang of things I was planning to use some of the material i had bought from the dwarves. That way, I might be able to create something I could truly be proud of.

“We should be far enough from the centaurs to continue on the road, don’t you think?” Adra asked, looking both ways and pulling me from my reverie.

“Yes, I think so. I mean, for one it has been almost four weeks that we had any contact with them and they never had a real reason for hunting us, did they? If they knew we had been the source for their trouble further north, near the Wolves’ Den, they might be interested but the only real contacts we had with them was in the town, when I was attacked and they tried to hunt us and when I killed a few low-level centaurs, only for one of them to be a traveller.” I grumbled, the memory still annoying me. Normally, the easiest way to make sure a secret was kept was to make sure anyone wanting to tell it was dead but with a traveller that just didn’t work.

“You think they’d still be interested in us for those things? There must be a lot of incidents all over the place, all requiring attention and some of them having higher importance than some people travelling away from their territory.” I continued, feeling myself rambling a little in indecision.

“They might be but I doubt it, especially due to the distance we have put between us. Sure, there are quite a few ways to share information over a long distance but it requires a reasonably skilled Mage or trained courier-animals.” Sigmir agreed with my assessment, stretching as she moved onto the road as well.

“But even if they do, I doubt that they would be willing to pay the price to see us killed, not if the problem we pose to them will simply go away by waiting. We are leaving after all.” she finished, nodding to herself.

“That’s good. Maybe we’ll get along better with the people down the road, especially if we give them some information on the problem the centaurs might be. I doubt the people who are living here are too pleased with the centaurs moving in, occupying the place.” I reasoned, starting down the road. Hopefully, we’d finally be able to put the trouble with the centaurs behind us and get some quests in the cities further west, maybe even access to the libraries. What I had learned in the dwarven library had given me quite a few new ideas, some of which I’d likely never had on my own.