Rebuilding my throne might have been premature, but it most certainly was comfortable. Just sitting on the sturdy edifice of Ice made me feel calm and empowered, the runes I had engraved into the back and the armrests helping me to connect to the circle around me, letting my mind slip into the Astral River with ease.

The ritual circle I was using was pretty simple in its design, mostly taken from my grimoire and one I had used on Mundus, but the purpose needed to be simplified. While the summer, with its long days, meant that travelling was difficult for my group, it gave me a lot of free time to figure out where to go next. What was the next step on my path, how could I get my Sigmir back to me. To pull a soul from the void, to create a body for her and to fill her mind with the memories she needed to be my Sigmir, all of those were incredibly difficult challenges individually, to say nothing of the combination.

And yet, all three parts were necessary and building upon each other. Without Sigmir’s soul, nothing could be done. It was the foundation of a person, the filter through which reality was experienced and the impetus shaping the body. Without my beloved’s soul, I couldn’t even begin to bring her back. Sadly, it was also an incredibly difficult thing to grasp, as Souls seemed to be almost indestructible, returning to the River of Souls after the body died to be washed clean and returned to the cycle. Unless somebody imprisoned a soul to weaken it to the point of fading, they would always be part of the cycle, which made finding the right soul nearly impossible, at least that was my understanding. Sigmir and I had discussed parts of it, though given that Sigmir had acquired her knowledge within a relatively primitive culture I couldn’t be completely certain about the information presented, though what she had told me was somewhat corroborated by the Grandmother, lending it quite a bit of credence. Though, how much even the Grandmother knew about these kinds of things was a little questionable. Hel, what any mortal knew about these kinds of things was questionable, but I had to start somewhere.

And when one wanted to start something, the easiest was to start with the simplest part of the whole. In this case, that meant the body, as bodies were made every day, or at least they had been before the change. In our current situation, I wouldn’t bet on a human birth every day, certainly not a survivable one. But who knew, I might be wrong. Either way, Sigmir’s soul needed a body unless I wanted her to be my hot ghost lover and as amusing as spirit sex sounded, I wanted her to have a body, if only because cuddling without bodies sounded a lot less fun. So, creating a body was simple, creating Sigmir’s body? Not so much, mostly because my beloved had been a Giant Blood, literally carrying the bloodline of a divine Frost Giant, something the two of us shared.

Which sounded a whole lot creepier than I was comfortable with. Intellectually, I was well aware that the blood relation between Sigmir was so distant as to be utterly irrelevant, even further back than the joke about ten per cent of Asians descending from Ghengis Khan, making a lot of people relatives that way.

Still, I needed to get Loki’s Divine Blood for my beloved’s body and I had a somewhat weird feeling that I was the only one with that distinct Blood Line within my body. Which was… something, I would have to deal with, at some point. But not now, the question of whether using my own blood to recreate Sigmir’s body would make her some sort of sister and what to think or do about that wasn’t one I wanted to consider. Not until I was a whole lot further on that path and had more information.

Lastly, and maybe the most complex problem, were the memories. What was a person, but the product of their experience? One’s identity was in many ways tied to them, the path they took through life shaping and changing them. Sure, the memories were filtered through the soul, interpreted and, curiously, coloured by later experiences as the original was recalled, but without the memories to be interpreted in the first place, the being would be a blank slate. Even if I had Sigmir’s soul and a fitting body, if I couldn’t add the memories that made her who she was, it wouldn’t be Sigmir.

The body might grow into a person similar to her, but without the experiences that shaped my Sigmir into who she was, it wouldn’t be her. It would be akin to Callisto and Adra, two lovers separated by death, with Adra being reborn after centuries, maybe even millennia, I had never asked about the exact time-frame. Either way, Callisto and the Grandmother had recognised Adra’s soul, had asked me to keep an eye on her, but even by the end of our shared travels, Adra had never regained the memories of her previous life. She had even started a fairly intimate relationship with Rai, starting as friends but eventually becoming lovers. Just the idea that Sigmir might end up with somebody else flooded my body with anger, the air around me misting up and chilling, as my Astral Power started to flare with hate. Sigmir was mine, just like I was hers, nobody was allowed to come between us, not even Death.

Which meant I needed to figure out how to recover those memories. Mastery over Mind Magic, Lady Hecate had said, meaning I had to learn a lot about that complicated branch of magic. Experimentation was needed, and not just of the calm, gentle methods I had been using while teaching, nor the brutal, combative approach I was using against my enemies. I needed to study the intricacies of the Mind, until I could draw out memories from the Soul.

Sadly, if I managed to do so, it would permanently alter the person I was working on, meaning I had to find people nobody would miss. While I might be able to use animals for my testing, the mind of an animal was likely structured differently compared to that of a human, or humanoid. And for that testing, I needed a real base, not just the simple cellar I had here. Something like my tower in the frozen valley would be perfect and that thought had led to me setting up the circle I was sitting in.

Terra’s Astral River would eventually settle down. Its ebb and flow had calmed greatly, compared to the surging rapids I had felt when the river originally buried its way into the foundation of our reality, but it wasn’t finished just yet. But once it was, Nexuses would be forming, conduits through which the Astral Power from beyond surged through our world, before flowing back into the beyond again.

Figuring out where the Nexuses would be before they formed would likely be difficult, but even if I was unable to do so, just finding a Nexus would be a major boon. Well, finding and taking the right Nexus would be, having a Nexus aligned to Ice or Darkness would grant me dominion over the area, making me the unassailable Queen as long as I remained within my domain.

And for that, I had to study the Astral. Letting out a deep breath, I let my mind surge forth, delving into the Astral, keeping myself tethered to my body and Throne. Just like I had discovered on Mundus, I could feel the minute strands of the Astral River flow through reality, just like veins and arteries within a body. Not every blood vessel was a major one, most of them were minor capillaries, but they were all connected to the heart, it only depended on the directness of that connection.

Through the thin strands around me, I let myself get carried along the stream, trying to get a feel for the energies around me. Fire was dominant, as one might expect during a hot summer day, but there were other energies around as well. Wind, Water, joined together in a fairly intricate balance, rubbing together to give birth to lightning, it was a fascinating mixture running across the deep, almost imperceptible current of Earth. The Earth Magic wasn’t doing a whole lot, but it was there, incredibly powerful in its potential but ultimately untapped. Where the mixture of Water and Wind promised an explosive release of power, maybe a lightning storm, the Earth was bound, but far more powerful. Maybe the potential for an Earthquake, or a volcanic eruption? I wasn’t sure, but it was fascinating.

Sadly, I was unable to figure out a way to find the Nexus I was looking for, if it even existed at this point. But I had the whole summer, I only needed to be patient. Eventually, I would claim my Nexus, setting up my domain. And once that happened, I could start mastering Mind Magic, with nobody able to stop me.

One step at a time, and after many steps, I would have Sigmir back in my arms.