“And, did anything happen while I was gone?” I asked Lenore, once Maggie had left my capsule-space and I had returned to Mundus. My Avatar had been stashed in her Hallow while I had been gone and she was currently flying over the grassy mountainside of the White Mountains, some distance above the ancient Road.

“The road passed the treeline, so there’ll be very little in the way of cover for quite a while. Other than that, another type of mountain-goat that might just be able to run up vertical cliffs and a buzzard tried to take a bite out of me. Stupid bird, it was barely level fifty and I’m pretty sure it hadn’t even crossed the first divide.” she grumbled, annoyance warring with pride in the last statement.

Her nature made her far less inclined to physical confrontations than other beasts, but now that she was coming into her magic, that only gave her the appearance of weakness. If anything, she was one of the deadliest beings in our group, the ability to fly alongside the combination of Wind and Death-Magic, giving her a medium to spread magical blight across the land gave her lethal potential. Not so much against enemies at the same level, but when it came to the extermination of weaker foes, I was pretty sure she had me beat. Getting underestimated by a predator was a sure way to ruffle her feathers and tearing the predator apart would go a long way to restore her mood.

“There’s always one, isn’t there?” I asked, thinking of the few occasions I had sparred at the Martial Arts Center. My slender frame and lack of physical height had caused more than one person to underestimate me, especially the males. Sure, they could bench-press my weight, maybe even bench-press double my weight but their bodies could be broken all the same, with little force required. Not that I had ever done so, it was all done with a point-system, allowing me to win my fair share of matches. Especially if they underestimated me.

“Let’s head down to the others.” I suggested, pushing out my senses a little, to enjoy the feeling of flight. How I would love to fly on my own, but sadly, I doubted that would be on the table. Borrowing Lenore’s abilities was the closest I could get, but it was good enough.

The time we spent descending also gave me a bit of time to consider my conversation with Maggie again, especially in what I had noticed afterwards. The great thing about conversing within one’s capsule-space was that the space itself was yours, allowing you to retrieve recordings of everything that had happened within it for a short time afterwards. Going over my conversation with Maggie with a fine-toothed comb, trying to analyse the minute flashes of emotion visible on her face, the brief bursts of uncontrolled expression that had quickly been hidden away beneath her mask had been fascinating.

While I had considered her an accomplished actor after noticing a few short moments of sincerity during our conversation, someone who used an overly peppy and excited persona to cover up her underlying emotions, the child-like curiosity allowing her to ask questions normally regarded as impolite, the later analysis made me wonder if what we had seen had actually been her face at all.

There had been a few moments during which the moments didn’t quite seem natural, a little unbalanced and misaligned. Back, right after I had received the capsule, I had tried to match the movement of the Avatar to my mental landscape, a process I had to predicically repeat to make sure my mental coordination was keeping up with the progress granted by attributes on Mundus. I wasn’t quite certain if what I had seen was a small remnant, impossible to detect without recording the person from multiple angles and dissecting their movements to an insane degree, or if it simply came from the person being slightly afraid of heights.

Either way, Maggie had managed to make an impression, as one sneaky and deceptive lady. It made me wonder just who she was on Mundus, though I doubted I would be able to easily find out her identity, not if she truly wanted to keep it hidden. Maybe Tobiuno would be able to give me an idea, but I didn’t want to actually ask him, didn’t want to put down a marker that might be regarded as a debt.

Spotting the others was simple, making it obvious why an aerial predator would love the area. There was no cover larger than some shrubs and a couple of rocks sticking out of the tough grass, making hiding entirely impossible without magic.

After Lenore had confirmed to the others that nothing was incoming, we had a brief reunion, the others filling me in on the events of the last few hours. Not that there was a lot to fill in, the mountains were relatively boring, if beautiful.

“You might want to stick close, just in case the next bird that comes after you is not just some overconfident buzzard.” I told Lenore, thinking of the Manticores that had been seen in these mountains. We were hunting them, but I had no doubt that they’d be hunting us, too. A part of me wondered if trying to actually hunt them was a wise idea, or if simply trying to travel through these mountains was enough of a challenge without going out of our way to aggravate the local predators. Without knowing how powerful they actually were, outside the quest-difficulty of “Hard”, made any actual threat-assessment impossible.

For the remainder of the day, we continued walking along the ancient road, keeping an eye out for anything that might want to attack us. Luckily, that was mostly done by the others, allowing me to focus my thoughts inwards, walking after Sigmir without taking in my surroundings at all. I had become quite good at that, it gave me valuable time to consider my magic, how to work problems that had eluded me.

For example, how could I draw out the divine essence from Sigmir and myself, siphoning off just a small amount of it, enough that we’d hopefully restore it over time and use it to boost Ylva towards the second Divide? Instinctively, I thought it would be possible, that removing a small part of the whole wouldn’t permanently harm us, a little like a Blood Transfusion. Though, it was quite possible that the mental analogues I was creating were simply wrong and that there was no way for us to regain the essence I planned to use. Sadly, I doubted there was any way to find out, other than to try it.

In the evening, once we had a camp-site between a couple of small rocks, as sheltered as possible on the windy mountain, I was able to experiment a little. For once, I wasn’t using my Throne, as I mentally associated the Throne with the Astral, both with the network of Astral Power within myself and the Astral River flowing through reality all around me. What I sought wasn’t in the Astral, but hidden in my Blood, a minute trace of something more.

Using my silver dagger, long since cleansed from the blood of the Lycantroll, I made a small incision into my hand, placing the fingers of my other hand over the cut. It was utterly symbolic, at the end of the day I was constantly “touching” my blood, but symbols had their own use. In this case, the sting and the wet sensation on my fingers gave me something to focus my magic on.

The sensation was a confusing one, it was neither the mental clarity that accompanied my journeys through the Astral River, nor was it the purely physical experience that helped me to heal with my Blood Magic, giving me an idea how damaged a body was. It was both of it, but neither, the pulsing sensation of my Blood bringing a sharp coppery taste to my mouth.

Keeping my eyes closed, I tried to look for something similar to the golden Blood I had ripped from the Black Wolf all those months ago, something divine to latch onto. But what was Divine, how could I differentiate it from my normal Blood, or even the Blood infused with my Astral Power that I drained with my Blood Magic? I was relatively certain that it would be closer to the infused Blood, but that would mean I needed Divine Power within my body, which I lacked, as evidenced by my character-sheet. Or was the Divine Power mentioned on my character-sheet something separate from the Divine Essence I wanted to drain?

Had the Black Wolf I had drained back then actually some sort of magic, allowing him to gain power from the wolf-gods? More questions but no answers forthcoming.

After the third time I had to cut the wound back open, to keep the blood fresh and flowing, I decided that I had achieved everything I could for the night, even if that was nothing, and made a mental note to talk to Olivia about the nature of Divine Power and how she channelled the powers of her Goddess. Maybe that would set me on the right track to help Ylva.