By the time I was done with the locals, midnight was but a fond memory. Teaching people was always an experience, some of the questions would likely always surprise me. Sure, there were the usual staples I had been asked before, but I had a feeling some would always be new. Or maybe that would only last so long, at some point, when I got to the Grandmother’s age, that might taper off. Or maybe it wouldn’t, as both the world around me and my understanding of magic evolved, the questions and their answers would evolve, too.

But the biggest take-away of the teaching was a somewhat welcome surprise, namely that I had managed to cobble together the FIre Magic skill, quite possibly by peering across the shoulder of an aspiring FIre Mage as they gained their initial rune. Getting the Fire Rune Mastery skill would be a challenge, but the four primary elements were mine now, and with them came a neat title.

Title gained! You gained the title: Elementalist For gaining access to the four primary elements, you gain the title Elementalist. It grants you a minor increase in your affinity to all elemental Magic.

It wasn’t terribly fancy, but I was quite curious about the definition of ‘elemental Magic’. I doubted it would include Blood, Mind or Death Magic, but I wasn’t sure. Darkness Magic was a bit maybe and even Ice Magic was questionable. Sure, it could be considered as a combination of Water and Wind, but I wasn’t sure. When I tested it, the boost wasn’t readily perceivable, but that didn’t proof anything. It might simply be a case of the minor boost being too small to register compared to my already rather high affinity. Either way, it was a wonderful thing to gain, hopefully allowing me to branch out even further. I wanted to learn all the magic, to make my path as broad as possible, especially before I crossed the first divide. I had no idea what I might gain, but hopefully, I would get some major benefits from it.

In addition to learning Fire Magic, I also gained two more points in Mind Magic, bringing it to twenty-three and one more in Astral Meditation, bringing it to twenty-eight. Sadly, I also gained a headache to go with the increases but that was just a consequence of delving into other minds and carefully pulling them into the Astral River for guidance. Or maybe it came from the one person with a Darkness Affinity, I had decided to get fancy and pull Lia in with us, allowing her to get a good look into our shared affinity. Delving into two other minds, pulling two people into the Astral and protecting them there had been challenging.

But what’s a mother Mistress, to do? Helping my child charge felt… right as if it was the thing I should do. That her increased strength helped me as well was just a side benefit, but a part of me wanted her to flourish and prosper, to become the best and strongest she could be. It was an odd sensation, but strangely not an unpleasant one.

“What are we going to do with the rest of the night?” Lia asked as we were walking away from the farm.

“Not quite sure. We could get some hunting done, but we still have a cow back at our lair. Maybe look at the flowers, we’ve been focused on the change to the animals and people, no idea what the change might have done to the plants. There were some rather interesting plants on Mundus, and Alchemy could do some insane things. I’ve never really worked in it, there were a few poisons I had looked into, but nothing really big. I always preferred to focus my efforts on my magic, trying to perfect it as much as possible,” I admitted, thinking of the poison I had used against the Centaurs. Poisoned supplies could be rather nasty, especially if the people poisoning were still out there, trying to make sure that you couldn’t get any extra.

“Well, and I made some dye once. It kinda worked but at the end of the day, we were travelling most of the time. There was simply no space or equipment to focus on preparing some potions or something like that, but I know they existed. Maybe, if we go looking for it, we might be able to sniff out some interesting plants, something that could give us and advantage. What do you think?” I asked my two companions, getting a chuff from Silva but a more thoughtful answer from Lia. Maybe Silva wasn’t too happy with the idea of hunting for grass, not while there was better game to be hunted.

“Do you think something like that would work on me? My condition is a little…” she paused, maybe not quite sure how her vampiric condition compared to the vampires of the pre-change fiction. Granted, I had no real idea myself, though I knew she wasn’t truly undead, the difference might be an academic one. Her body wasn’t animated by necrotic energies, or fungi for that matter, but there still was a magical component to her existence, her inner elements closely bound to Ice, Blood and Darkness.

“Maybe you don’t need the same potions I need, but I’m confident that there are things we could prepare that help you. If only some sort of solution to keep my blood fresh and infused with Astral Power, even if I’d be a little leery to prepare something like that,” I replied, shaking my head at the idea. I could still remember that insane pyromancer trying to cook me alive from hundreds of kilometres away, no need to prepare the perfect focus for that. Sure, nobody on Earth could use it just yet, even I wasn’t confident to pull that off just yet. But eventually, there would be other Blood Mages, or even just somebody able to cast through the Astral River with a beacon like that. Better to not go there in the first place, or to make perfectly sure that such a sample would have a highly limited shelf-life of a day or something like that.

“Why is that?” Lia asked, her voice sounding a little like a kicked puppy. For the next half-hour, I told her about the dangers of bodily material as focus and what one could do with it. From targeting people at a distance, to bypassing their magical defences, there were so many ways your physical substance could be used and abused against you, it wasn’t even funny. It got even worse if the physical was infused with the magical, at that point, the other party had your life in their hand unless you were very far away or very lucky. Or both.

We were in the middle of discussing what it might take to make more like her, to turn somebody else into a vampire, when I noticed an unfamiliar scent in the air. We had been walking along the dirt paths between the different fields, not really going anywhere and only vaguely keeping track of our location, trusting in Silva’s ability to find our way home, looking for something interesting. And maybe, I had just found that something.

“There’s something,” I remarked, just as Lia finished an idea of hers, to use her Blood mixed with my own and our combined Blood Magic to turn another Shattered into a vampire, an idea that I didn’t think promising. Shattered were just too far gone, I considered what happened to her a minor miracle. A perfect combination of luck, me recklessly channelling the Astral Power unleashed by prayer, Blood Magic and maybe some divine help, I wasn’t certain in regards to the last one. Not something I would try recreating.

Following my nose, we moved towards one of the ditches that ran through the fields, ready to carry an overflow of rainwater away. Looking down into the morass, I pushed some Astral Power into my eyes, activating my magic sight and immediately, an otherwise unremarkable flower stood out.

“Curious,” I crouched down, getting a better look at it. It might have been a wild strawberry before the change, small, red fruits hanging from thin stems, only now, those berries were filled with a bit of Nature Magic. Touching the ground, I noticed one that was partially eaten, the source of the scent I had caught.

“I think we’ll take these, at least the fruits. I’d love to be able to cultivate something like that, but I doubt we’ll remain in the brewery for long enough to make replanting it worth the effort,” I admitted, drawing a set of Ice Runes into the air to conjure up a box to carry our loot.

“What is it?” Lia asked, and I began to explain to her what we had found. At least what I hoped we had found, I actually wasn’t sure myself. But it was something new, something shiny and something that might allow me to stretch my magical abilities a little further. I just had to take the stuff back and get some experiments done.