Maybe letting Luna play in the forest of murderous plants hadn’t been the best idea I’ve ever had. On the one hand, her life magic went through the roof from what she told me, gaining quite a few skill points and even adding an interesting special ability to her repertoire after communing with Hecate. It allowed her to control the plants she grew with her magic to a far greater extent. Now, instead of simply wrapping an enemy up with rapidly grown ivy vines, she had something… bigger.

On the other hand, knowing that she could conjure these spiky thorn bushes or the smashing vines growing in many areas of the forest was somewhat calming to me, it told me that my munchkin could take care of herself. On the other hand, I started to worry a little when I realised that she, somehow, had managed to splice the two plants together into what I could only describe as an unholy abomination, even if I had a feeling Lady Hecate had ordered a few of them for her garden or something along those lines.

The result of her splicing was a vine, roughly as thick as my thumb and as agile as a whip, ending in a spiked pod that looked fairly similar to a morning star, only that the spikes on the pod could be launched with enough force to penetrate solid wood about ten centimetres. In addition, the vine could generate enough force to strike mid-sized trees with enough to make them sway from the blow. Sure, if Luna did that, she also toppled from the recoiling force but that didn’t make the sound any more comforting. If these things became wild, the forest would turn into a serious death zone, one that none of us would want to visit.

We had yet to come across any enemies worthy of being made test subjects of her inventions but the grin on her face when she demonstrated her newly designed plants was enough to drive home the fact that she truly was my daughter. Now, I only needed to figure out how to keep her from creating her own apocalypse, especially accidentally. If a world was destroyed, it should at least be done on purpose.

Sadly, where Luna had made incredible strides with her powers and Lia was enjoying the forest to the fullest, the many trees branches and insane flora allowing her to train her physicality in ways she hadn’t been able to around the city, I was at a bit of a loss.

Understanding the Void Crystal was challenging, especially as I wasn’t about to start prodding it with my magic. Not after what happened when I prodded the Eternal Ice I found in the dungeon under the glacier, I had no temptation to find out what would happen if the Darkness took over part of my soul. Sure, having it happen with Ice had turned out to be beneficial in the short term, but in the long term? I had no idea how much the change to my magical markup would have hindered my growth in different magical aspects. Here, on Terra, I wasn’t just focusing on Ice or Darkness, i was trying to learn as much as possible about all the elements, about every type of magic I possibly could. So, limiting myself to one element, even if I increased my ability in that one element greatly, wasn’t something I had any interest in.

Due to that, I was using a more circumspect route, trying to figure out possible rituals that might imbue the power of the Void Crystal into another object, either in some form of enchantment or some other permanent effect, maybe an alchemical one. Though, given my limited experience in that discipline, I focused on the enchantments.

Curiously, my current best option, at least in my opinion, was to use Lenore’s Feather I had been granted a while back when I summoned the Zevarra Agha into this world. I wasn’t quite sure how I could combine the two, but I felt a certain compatibility between the two objects, similar energies, or rather the drawing in of energy, that made me think they would work well together.

But there was also a need for a stabiliser. Something to tie the two powerful objects together, something to give the whole form and function. For now, I had power in spades, from both the Void Crystal and the feather, but power alone wasn’t going to cut it.

I’d have to keep an eye out for something suitable, or maybe I could manage to make something, I wasn’t certain.

Another ongoing project of mine was proving similarly difficult. Namely, contacting the Grandmother. For now, I was pursuing a different idea, something other than trying to project myself through the Astral River, as there were some major difficulties I’d have to fix first. The biggest being that I had no idea how I’d even begin to target something like that, the ritual I had used to gain the Zevarra Agha and the feather used different principles, so it was only partially useful.

If I wanted to follow the Astral River, I’d need to find a path that guided me not only through the endless void of the physical but also through the boundaries between dimensions. And I had no idea where to even start something like that. If I had access to a capsule, I might be able to use the mechanism used by the Pantheon to project the minds, or maybe the souls, of the users to Mundus, but given that I hadn’t been able to acquire a capsule, that just wasn’t possible.

But Lady Hecate had named the Grandmother as the Crone, with me acting as Mother and Luna as the Maiden, so there was a connection there. The shelter Luna and I had created was infused with Hecate’s power, thanks to the repeated prayers Luna and Silva performed before Her idol, making me think that I might be able to use the presence and power of Hecate to create a link between the three parts of our triad.

Working out the details for the ritual was fairly interesting in its own right. I had little to no ability when it came to divine magic but the ritual we used to contact Hecate for Luna’s dedication and the ritual used to summon the Zevarra Agha were both on the border to divine magic, so I had a starting point. With that starting point, and quite a few conversations with Luna and even a few exchanges with Silva, we managed to cludge something together.

Whether it would work, only using the ritual would tell and so, during a night with a strong, waning moon, hoping that the waning aspect of the moon would correlate with the waning aspect of the Crone, Luna and I were in the room holding Hecate’s idol.

There, we had prepared our ritual, the circle amusingly similar to that of a runic formation using three runes. Three focal points, one for Luna, as the Maiden, one for me, as the Mother and the last one for the Crone, currently holding an Ice sculpture, depicting the Grandmother. It was amusing, given that the Icon of Hecate Luna had sculpted from the root was using the Grandmother to symbolise the Crone, we now had two sculptures of the Grandmother, one of me and one of Luna, in addition to Luna and myself in the room. I had a feeling there was a joke in this set-up, but I hadn’t managed to find it just yet. We just managed to set up the ritual and could only hope that chance wouldn’t make us the butt of the joke.

The three points were connected by simple symbols, all of them added by Luna. Their forms were quite fascinating and I could see distinct patterns that made me think of writing, but it wasn’t in any language I had ever seen. It was a runic language, that much was obvious, but I didn’t have a chance to understand it, just as I doubted anyone could easily read the runes I was using unless they had a high level of the appropriate Runic Mastery. But that lack of understanding hadn’t kept me from studying them and committing them to memory.

When the ritual began, Luna and I were chanting softly, intoning an invocation, almost a prayer only that we weren’t supplicating, we were invoking the presence of the triad. With Hecate as the example, we were trying to invoke the Triad of Maiden, Mother and Crone. Both of us were unleashing quite a bit of power, Luna using the Divine Power of Hecate while I contributed my own Astral Power, the two differing energies combining surprisingly well.

It wasn’t quite a summoning, dragging the Grandmother’s mind to this plane without her consent would be beyond rude, but it was a firm and direct invitation. One that could be declined but hopefully, the Grandmother wouldn’t do so.

A minute passed as we chanted, then another as we kept going, hoping for some sort of response. Finally, after ten minutes passed, the energy we had been channelling the whole time suddenly flared and surged into the statue of the Grandmother I had created. For a moment, I felt my breath catch, only to feel it whoosh from my breath in a giant sigh when the statue shattered into fine Diamond Dust.

The ritual had, quite obviously, failed. Luckily, the failure hadn’t been explosive.