Given that we didn’t manage to get back to our lair, we were trapped near the edge of the city, hiding out in a basement to pass the day by. Without my notes on alchemy and general crafting, I couldn’t really work on those, so I decided to spend the day doing something almost as interesting. I, once again, began experimenting with my magic, focusing on the elements I wasn’t familiar with.

After a brief moment of consideration, I decided to begin working with Earth-Magic first, trying to get a feeling for the rock around me. I remembered being able to feel large parts of the glacier I had visited on Mundus, in the frozen valley, even before I became its Queen. It had been a practical application of my Ice Magic and there might be an equivalent skill for Earth Magic, allowing me to get a feeling for the ground around me. Optimally, I would have wanted to try it with a patch of natural ground first, but going outside during the day was impossible, so I just had to make do with the concrete floor of the cellar.

Sinking into a meditative trance, I tried to stretch my senses into the ground, to get a feeling for it. Back in the valley, it had mostly worked with using minute amounts of magic, almost as if I was trying to move the Ice beneath me, so I tried to accomplish the same here and projected my magic out into the area around me as if I was trying to move all the concrete at once.

“Ouch,” I let out a curse, my meditative trance shattered by a pain quite similar to that of a blow to the head, only that the blow had come from inside my head. I had quite literally blown my mind up, or at least that was what it felt like. A combination of an intense influx of information and an extreme outflow of Astral Power, the combination serving as a reminder that I was far weaker than I had been on Mundus, to say nothing of Lenore’s presence there, likely helping in the background. Even with the traits and titles increasing my general affinity, I was relatively sure that my current affinity for Ice Magic was still lower than Morgana’s, as Morgana had allowed Ice to take hold of her soul. Whatever that meant in the context, I wasn’t sure, though remembering it made me want to look into it. I was relatively certain that Morgana didn’t have her own soul, whatever a soul actually was, given that she was merely the Avatar I controlled.

Maybe there was a way to regain that increased affinity, to let the Ice back into my soul, but would that push my other affinities further down? It would be incredibly annoying to lose the improvements to my affinity for Fire Magic, to say nothing of those for the other elements. It might even unbalance things to the point that I lose the Elementalist Title, reducing my other affinities even further. Maybe it was just not worth it, even if I ignored the risk of messing with my soul.

Shaking my head again, trying to get rid of the spots swimming in my eyes, I leaned against the wall, letting my mind roam a little. My attempt to sense with my Earth Magic had improved my skill level by one, bringing it to five, but it was still far from where I wanted it to be. Not that I was about to try the same stunt again, that was just painful, but there were other things I wanted to try.

Picking up one of the small pieces of debris that had crumbled off the wall at some point, mostly plaster but with some masonry clinging to it, I tried again. Only this time, I didn’t try to figure out the ground around me, I focused only on that one, small piece. Far less information to process that way and far less Astral Power needed to infuse the rock, so I didn’t keel over in pain again.

But I also didn’t manage to learn a lot. I could feel the difference in texture, even managing to gauge where the plaster ended and the masonry began but other than that, there was little I could glean. Pulling my hand away, I let the rock float before me, just as I would do when levitating Ice with my Ice Magic, but there was little more I could do. Though the realisation that I could use Earth Magic in that manner was quite startling, it meant I would be able to use the ground most battles happened upon as my weapon, just like I had used Ice and Snow to strike my foe when in the Northern Forests of Mundus, or later in the Mountains of Ice. Having control over your environment was an incredible advantage and gaining it in more locations would be invaluable.

Earth, Wind and Water, if I managed to master all three of those, I would never have to conjure anything to attack, the very world around us would be my weapon. Unless I went to space, but even there I could use something. Only, it would be the Darkness and Void of Space, something I could already wield to some extent.

Not a short-term project, but something to consider for the future.

Grinning to myself, I tried a bit of multi-tasking, letting the rock I had picked up orbit around me, joined by a conjured piece of Ice, moving in the opposite direction. I was curious how the difference in skill would impact things, to say nothing of the vastly different affinity I had for both elements.

Closing my eyes once more, I tried to focus on the amount of Astral Power I felt flowing out of me in an attempt to compare what I needed for the Ice Magic with the amount needed for the Earth Magic.

I immediately ran into a problem. To my senses, it felt as if there was only one river, so to speak, only one stream of power going out. To separate the two, I would have to be a little more creative, so I tried to get a measure of the amount of power I needed for both before setting the piece of rock down and letting my Earth Magic fade away.

With the magic gone, the amount of power flowing out of me immediately lessened, dropping by almost ninety per cent. My mind boggled a little at the difference, that would mean my Ice Magic needed only a tenth of the Astral Power I needed to accomplish the same task with Earth Magic. I had known I was better with Ice Magic, obviously, but had never quite realised the magnitude of the difference.

To confirm my findings, I picked the bit of rock back up, noting how the drain of my Astral Power returned to the original level, before setting the Ice down, watching how the drain on my power lessened.

Lessened far further than I would have expected. Using only my Earth Magic, the amount of power I felt flowing out of me went down by about twenty per cent, meaning that something else was going on. If I needed ten per cent of the original for my Ice Magic, and eighty per cent for my Earth Magic, then that meant there was some power unaccounted for.

Likely due to the parallel use of two magical abilities, decreasing the overall efficiency by some factor. Or it was due to that particular combination. There were countless possible options, and I wasn’t about to try hunting the exact cause down, at least not at the moment.

Instead, I kept playing around with my magic for a bit, before resting for the night. Lia and I wanted to get back to our lair but we had decided to pay Apple Gate Farm a visit on the way. Test their guards, talk to Mrs Wu and the rest of their leadership, that kind of thing. They needed to know that the raccoons were controlling the Undead if that was what was happening. I wasn’t quite certain about the mechanics, who was the controller and who was being controlled, but I was confident that there would be problems in the future. Problems that people needed to be prepared for, or even more of the already limited number of people would succumb.

Sure, I didn’t like many people, and disliked people in general, but that didn’t mean I wanted them all to die off. Until I managed to create some sort of animated servant, I wanted to keep people around, if only to grow my food. There was no way I would take up gardening, nor did I feel like constructs to tend the fields would be easy to make.

No, better to keep some less odious people around, they had their uses.