Once again, a bunch of trees were consumed by the black flames of Nidhogg and power was being siphoned off by the soul prison. Lenore and I kept incredibly close watch, making sure that no portals were opening nearby and the moment the drain from the Soul Prison faded, I pulled the remaining Astral Power to me, using it to step into the shadows, dispersing it into the strange realm that connected all the Shadows. There, it became nothing more than background-static and quickly faded away.

Stepping into that realm for the second time during the night, the first being when Lenore and I used that realm to teleport across the river to avoid potential defences against aerial intruders, I instantly noticed that something had changed. Spreading my senses outward, it took only a moment for recognition to set in.

The all-enveloping darkness, which most would find incredibly oppressive but was only a comforting embrace to me, I could recognise it. Or rather, I finally made the connection between this realm I rarely used due to the sensation of being watched I occasionally got here and the realm that I had experienced in the dream I had seen the Nidhogg in. It was the same darkness and now, with the magic of the Nidhogg fading into the realm, I could vaguely feel its presence.

For a moment, I considered hanging around and trying to commune with it once again, but given that I had just lit up another piece of their precious forest and likely triggered any magical sensors from here to who knows where I wasn’t about to stick around. Sure, we were in the realm of shadows but this realm and the physical shadows outside were connected, so a competent being would likely notice me hiding here. And if that happened, I would almost certainly die.

Pushing myself with my will, I quickly traversed the realm of shadows, feeling my Astral Power drain away in the process. While the distance travelled within the shadows didn’t completely correspond to the distance outside, there was some stretching and shrinking involved, it had some correlation. Moving through the shadows used up Astral Power and the further I moved within them, the more I had to use, the increase almost exponential. Stepping from one side of a room to the other was simple, stepping from one side of the continent to the other impossible, at least for me.

By the time my Astral Power dropped to a quarter, I hoped we had travelled far enough and pushed my senses outwards, taking in the foliage around me, realising that this particular bit of shadow happened to be cast by the moonlight shining into the canopy of one of those massive trees. With a grin on my face, I pushed outward, stepping into the physical world again and started dropping. I could feel the burden on my Astral Power fade instantly after leaving the Shadows and even while falling, I kept pushing, exchanging places with Lenore.

There was only a brief moment in which I had been in the physical world and hopefully, it wasn’t enough to leave a trace. Lenore, knowing what I needed her to do, never landed on the branch beneath the one casting the Shadow, instead, she spread her wings and started gliding through the canopy, making no disturbance, just another bird making its life in the branches of the great elven forest.

It was difficult to estimate how far we had actually moved, or in which direction, but with the connection between Sigmir and me, I would never lose her. Focusing on that connection, I could give Lenore a direction and she started flapping her wings, never straying from the shelter of the canopy.

Within my Hallow, I once again contemplated those flames. There was something that made them stick within my mind, a fascination I just couldn’t explain. Sure, I could understand that I wasn’t disgusted by them, as I was by normal fire. If not for the incredible benefits normal fire had, such as having warm meals, I would have done away with it a long time ago, simply to avoid having to look at it. But those black flames, they were so much more, there was nothing fiery about them, they were just a perfect force of devouring, nothing of that wasted heat, wasted light, just pure consumption. What they burned didn’t just get turned into ashes, light and some fumes, it was utterly devoured by the shadows that had spawned them.

However, going from ‘not being disgusted by them’ to ‘being completely fascinated by them’ was a bit of a stretch and I wasn’t quite sure what pulled my mind to them like this. Not only did I want to conjure and watch them, but I also wanted to master them, to make them my own, even if a part of me understood that they weren’t mine and could never be. They were the flames of Nidhogg, not the flames of Morgana.

That simple, quite obvious, thought brought my mind to a stop. The flames of Morgana, the idea had such a wonderful ring to it. What would my flames be? The flames of Nidhogg, at least from what I could see, were a representation of Devouring, the Darkness that ate the world, or maybe the Darkness that gnawed at the root of the World Tree, if one took the myths I had read into account.

But what did I want my own flames to be? Sure, there would have to be an aspect of devouring in them, Darkness was one of my primary affinities and Devouring fit flames so wonderfully. But I wasn’t just a being of Darkness, Ice had to be incorporated as well and even Blood might need to be part of my flames.

Raising my hand, in this space that was mine, and mine alone, I conjured some Liquid Moonlight, looking at the gently moving liquid, not allowing any heat to intrude into my construct. Flames that devoured, flames of ice, the answer seemed to be quite simple, flames that devoured heat. Perfect cooling, maybe a lingering, empowered version of those Beams of Cold I had used in the past, used and mostly discarded outside of special environments, simply due to their lack of physical punch. But if I managed to conceptually enhance them to linger on my target and freeze the target on their own accord, maybe by combining cold with the concept of devouring?

For a moment, I considered infusing the Liquid Moonlight with that concept, to form something similar to the flames of Nidhogg, but before I could put thought into action, I discarded the idea. Or at least postponed it, forming a potentially unstable, magical effect based on two of the most destructive concepts I knew about, in an attempt to synergise them together to make them even more destructive, while being within my Hallow, a space that was conceptually within Lenore, seemed to be incredibly reckless. Sure, I controlled this space but there was no guarantee that I would be able to control my own magic any better than I could outside.

“You know, you could try to add Death into those flames you are considering,” Lenore suggested, obviously both amused and relieved at the thought that I had considered forming something like that in my Hallow but also glad that I had seen the folly of the idea instantly.

“Maybe,” I allowed, letting the idea percolate in my mind for a few moments, trying to imagine the result, “But I don’t think so,” I shook my head.

“It would be too spread out, I think. I don’t even want to add Blood Magic into that idea, even if it might have potential. Flames based on the idea of Devouring Heat, sound like something that would work, it’s a logical and direct consequence of combining Ice- and Darkness-Magic. But adding Death-Magic into it, that doesn’t quite fit, I think. It’s not that I seek to devour Life, which could work, if I based it on Darkness and Death, or maybe even Flames that Devour the Life in your Blood, to push Blood Magic into it, increasing the power but limiting the breadth of my Flames, It’s not what I want,” I rambled, unable to combine those concepts in a satisfactory manner.

“If you say so,” Lenore could only shrug, obviously unable to fully understand where I was going with this.

“Either way, we are almost back at the river, you might want to focus outward, so we can get back into the shadows. Focus, I’d prefer not to get lost,” she reminded me, an amused undertone in her voice.

Realising how long I had been pondering those flames and the question of how my own flames should look, I did what she suggested, focusing on the immediate problems, not some future troubles.