For two days, Alex, Lia and I had stayed with the people in the community centre, teaching them about the system, the world after the change and this new reality we found ourselves in. In the meantime, I had written a short letter to mark, entrusting it to Silva so she could deliver it. I would have preferred to give it to Alex but Silva was the better choice, bigger, stronger and certainly more durable. Alex was sneaky but if I wanted to see something done, I knew I could rely on Silva. Both of them shared the advantage that they could travel during daytime, without the harm brought to Lia and me by the sun, allowing them to approach the Farm openly, without having to worry the locals. Another advantage of Silva was that she was more distinguishable, there simply weren’t many calf-sized canines around, making it less likely that she was mistaken for an attacking enemy.

Sending her also gave me a bit of time without the Paladin of Hecate, allowing me to discuss the potential patrons Sabrina could choose to follow without a follower of either overhearing what I was telling her. It gave me a bit more leeway to explain my understanding of them, though I was trying my best to be as objective as possible, simply because both had been good to me. I didn’t really want to favour either of them but there was only one Sabrina and I doubted that the two would accept sharing her. Sabrina didn’t feel important enough. They might consider her an interesting mortal, getting led to her by Silva indicated such, but I didn’t think it was to the level of making deities compromise over her service.

Now, two days later, Silva had returned, bringing with her a letter from Mark, promising that one of their group would come by and help bring the people here into the fold if they were interested. It was quite promising, at least in my opinion, offering to send help without issue, but maybe they hoped to find some useful human resources here. I wasn’t convinced that any of these people were useful, other than Sabrina, but I generally wasn’t a people-person, not beyond their use in Blood Magic. And even in Blood Magic, a person wasn’t that much more useful than a pig, the difference primarily was in the amount of Astral Power the resource had.

Still, the two days had been enough to give these people here a decent idea of their possibilities while allowing me to give some light training to Sabrina. I wasn’t about to actually push her physically, not beyond what I vaguely remembered from games in kindergarten and elementary school, but dodgeball and dodge training weren’t that far apart.

In addition to the light training, making sure that she was eating as much as possible and magically helping her to digest the food made it so that her body had all the energy and building blocks needed to restore itself to prime condition.

Bruises had faded on that first day, her skin cleared up a little but surprisingly even her hair had gained some glossiness, though that might have come from the conditioner I had picked up. But the greatest difference was in her eyes, they had gained an almost visible glow, her curiosity strong enough to express itself in a physical way.

And with that glow, determination had appeared. She, just like I had, wanted to become something. Maybe her determination was born from a desire to never be weak again, dependent on those around her or it was from a desire to see the world, similar to what I had experienced on Mundus. Chasing the horizon, to see what is behind the next hill and deep within the mountains. To know the unknown and chase the moon, those desires formed a most wonderous beginning to her path, as any path was a journey of its own.

Or maybe she simply was determined to remain at my side, though I wasn’t sure any attachment could form that quickly, even if the idea to leave her sat in my gut like a stone, rolling around and making my stomach clench in discomfort.

Either way, regardless of what the initial impetuous had been, her determination was fierce and ferocious, ignoring future hardship and danger with a disregard born from a childish sense of invincibility. Knowing that I could only do so much to shield her from future hardship, I tried to inure her from it, mostly by increasing my plans for physical training, though never to the point that it would physically damage her. There were things beyond my ability to heal and I would make sure to err on the side of caution.

Maybe two days of lessons and tales weren’t enough to give a person a good idea about their future patron but the sad thing was, I lacked the information to tell her much more. I knew some tales about the Grandmother and could tell Sabrina what I had personally experienced on Mundus, but that only went so far. Similarly, I could tell her about the things I had heard and read on Mundus and in the capsule, even adding a few vaguely remembered myths and tales from Greek mythology but that was it. I didn’t have more to give her, leaving her with a decision to make.

Once she told me her decision, I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from questioning her reasoning. I had given her the information I had and she had, hopefully, made the decision to the best of her ability, an intensely personal decision with wide-reaching consequences. There was, at least in my eyes, no wrong answer, but the answer needed to be one she was comfortable with. Questioning her answer might make her question herself, ultimately resulting in problems later down the road.

Privately, I had a sneaking suspicion that Sabrina made her decision based on the existence of her loyal fluffiness Silva and Sabrina’s hopes to eventually get a canine companion of her own. I couldn’t promise anything along those lines but at the same time, I wouldn’t be surprised if she got one at some point. The meeting between Silva and me might have been a coincidence or maybe Silva had gained her blessing after me, I wasn’t sure. But either way, Silva had received divine guidance to find Sabrina for a reason and that reason, whatever it might be, could easily result in a personal guardian for her at some point in the future.

With her decision made, it was now up to me to enable her choice. Meaning, I had to somehow get into contact with Hecate in a way that would allow Sabrina to negotiate their contract or however that would work. Everything I had heard about such ceremonies came from established churches, where a senior cleric would lead the neophytes in the ritual, with the conditions and everything laid out by generations of worshippers. But here, we wanted to establish a new church, though one following an already established deity without any real clue what that deity’s church actually did, mainly because there had been no Church of Hecate on Mundus. There had been a bit of worship, primarily by Arcane Spellcasters of some flavour, the closest that came to forming an organisation was the Mages’ Guild.

Which had been a thoroughly arcane institution, not a religious one, it was just the place where Arcane Spellcasters, and thus potential worshippers of Hecate, met.

Making it not an option here, I would have to come up with something of my own. The best idea I had so far was to use a combination of the Ritual I had used to get the Zevarra Agha and the feather from Lenore, mostly because it already involved cross-realm communication, and work from there. My best bet to get the right address, so to speak, was using my Blessing of the Moon as it would hopefully connect us to Hecate. Another connection to Hecate would be Silva’s presence, sadly she couldn’t really lead the ritual, that task needed somebody who could communicate with Sabrina, at least in my opinion it did. I wasn’t about to let my daughter, newly acquired or not, negotiate with a deity without at least some backup.

Those were the basic building blocks I planned to work with. I had a few other ideas that I might be able to incorporate, things that had worked on Mundus, elements of the scrying spell I had used here and finally, to round things out nicely, a couple of wild guesses that might or might not work.

All in all, the ritual was only partially based on guesswork nor was I truly confident that it would work but there had to be a way to commune with the divine without them directing you. There had to be some way for the initial Deities to come into being, so I had high hopes that what I had cludged together would work as intended, at least roughly.

Now, with plans all made and ideas thrown together, we just had to wait, either for a new moon, focusing the ritual on the aspect of Darkness or for a full moon, focusing one Hecate’s Lunar Aspect. Then, we would hopefully be able to make introductions.