A strange feeling of loss started to well up within me, when I woke up, driving away the comfort I had felt during my dreams. She was far from me again, after I had been so close to her in my dreams. The memories of my dreams were a little vague, blurry, but I could remember sitting with Sigmir at a table made of Ice, drinking tea, as we were talking about our day.

Was it my imagination that had created the story Sigmir had told me about Ladrin and its bath-houses? If I closed my eyes, the images coming to my mind were so vivid, almost like one of the memories Lenore had shared with me, but they couldn’t be hers. Part of me wondered if I had filled in some details with things I had seen myself, if only on the internet, but I wondered. The spigots shaped like mystical beasts or exotic animals, pouring forth water, all made from brass, the pools of marble, some with flowing water to wash in, some with still water to soak and relax, it was unfamiliar to me. Had they truly been created by my imagination or was there something else?

My confusion was made worse when I vividly remembered a tale so very much like the ones told by Olivia, especially with the inclusion of saucy details, but told in Sigmir’s voice. Shaking my head, I decided that there wouldn’t be any answers forthcoming by wrestling with these questions within my mind and forcibly pushed them away. There was breakfast to be had, adventure to be sought and, quite possibly, the travel back to be considered.

Sitting on my throne, high above the land below, was an interesting experience. It was appealing, in the most curious fashion. The feeling of lording above, of dominance and power. To simply look down onto the world from my lofty perch.

Only two things could make it better, one to have Sigmir by my side, sitting beside me, the other to have people to lord over. Not just open wilderness, with nobody to acknowledge my superiority.

But for that, I’d need power, enough power to dominate whoever claimed the lands beneath me, to force them to grovel at my feet, to beg for mercy and pray for my grace. Such a wonderful idea. Alas, not for some time. Not until I had grasped that all-elusive power.

“But what would you do with people living beneath you?” Lenore asked, having followed the thoughts in my mind, quite a bit of amusement filling her voice.

“Don’t you prefer to avoid people, whenever possible?” she added, knowing me at least as well as I knew myself. She wasn’t wrong there, if given the choice between meeting strangers and having something interesting to read, I’d reach for the book ten times out of then, yet, here I was having fantasies about setting up as a Queen.

“Nevermind that.” I replied, chuckling to myself, at the ridiculous thoughts I was having. What need did I have for people beneath me, just a throne, high above the world was enough, akin to my capsule-space. A space for myself, towering above the world, just for me and mine, where I could learn about the magic of Mundus, maybe with some way to reach out and touch the world. Maybe with some space for fluffy critters, like the Winter Wolves, for me to pet and have intruders ripped apart. That would be much better than having some peasants grovelling beneath me.

My lips curled into a smile when I realised just how similar my ideal was to the dominion of the Grandmother. Sure, she had a few more people living in Neyto than I would be comfortable with, and there was a distinct lack of furry critters, but maybe that was just a product of the passing time. She might have started out with just a single tree, or maybe even a fuzzy-bearded dwarf, and over time, things had slowly grown into the town I had visited. Still, too few fuzzy critters, and her hut, as impressive as it was, simply lacked a great deal of height. What good was the ability to make a space that was larger than it should be, if you hid it within a simple hovel?

“Let’s head out.” Lenore suggested, once we both had finished eating our breakfast of left-overs from the day before. There was something to be said about the ability to have indefinite, portable refrigeration to make travel far more convenient. No need to worry about food-spoilage, if you could simply freeze it for however long you needed.

“Yeah, maybe we’ll find some bandits or something like that. No need to just kill some poor critter who is just trying to get by.” I agreed, pushing myself into my Hallow after turning the Throne I had slept on into a glittering rain of Ice. Lenore didn’t disagree and simply flapped her wings, flying along the mountains as we headed further west. It would be the last day of travelling that direction, before we doubled back to reunite with the others. It made for an inefficient route but flying around, looking for an adventure was a lot better than sitting on some tree, just waiting for the others.

Finally, in the safety of my Hallow, I took a moment and realised that my Astral excursion during the night had yielded some results. Two points of Darkness-Magic, one Darkness-Rune-Magic and a single point in Astral Meditation. Massive gains, for a single night of effort, leaving me utterly confused. If I was looking at those gains from an outside perspective, I would think that I had made major progress but when I looked at what I had actually achieved, it left me utterly confused.

Sure, travelling the Astral to Sigmir was something slightly new but not really, I had used a similar method to talk to the Grandmother, who had the ability to meet me within the Astral and provide a place to talk. In comparison, following my connection to Sigmir felt a little insignificant, at least on the magical side.

And staring into the void for hours, without really seeing anything, why was that an achievement worth multiple skill-points? For the first time since starting to consciously research magic, I felt that it made no sense. Could I accidentally have encountered some type of bug and gained due to an accident of the system? It was a Beta, so bugs were somewhat expected to occur, to the point that the lack of them had been noticed.

After a moment of consideration, I decided to write a report and not worry about it. If it had been a bug, the points might get reverted, if it hadn’t been, there most likely was something I had missed.

Lenore and I kept flying at a speed comfortable for long distances, looking down at the land, when Lenore suddenly started to quickly beat her wings, starting to circle.

“Look at that.” she told me, pushing her own perception at me. Shutting off my own perception, for a better focus, I looked through her eyes and instantly realised what she meant. The landscape beneath us was filled with a dense, intricate web of magic, its complexity easily rivaling the magic we had seen in Neamov and Kolyug, on their city-defenses. The magical weave we were looking at might even surpass those places, just with a very different focus.

In the cities, the magic was part of their physical defenses, reinforcing them and adding a magical element where the physical didn’t reach. But here, neither Lenore nor I could see past the concealment-magic that covered one of the valleys, leaving us a little confused and very interested. There had only been two places with more elaborate and intricate magic, one had housed the Grandmother, the other had contained a bound Titan. Just what might be hiding in this place, hidden behind the incredible web of concealment, obfuscation and misdirection.

“Wow…” I muttered, my mind struggling to take small parts of the whole, trying to figure them out one by one. It was similar to the way I had to try to comprehend the magic of the Ancient Road, only that here, I could see the whole, where I had only small parts to work with in my perception when it came to the Ancient Road, making things difficult there.

“Let’s see if we can sit down outside of the magical formations and take some time to look.” Lenore suggested, carefully taking a distance.

“Yeah, let’s stay well clear of that magic. I have no idea what the magic might do to us, but I’d almost bet that whoever set it up would notice us.” I agreed, fascinated by the incredible complexity before us. Part of me wanted to meet the being who had created it, while another part feared who it might have been. But for now, I was happy to lose myself in the study of their wonderful, artful work.