Working on my program to control a Shattered over a fairly long time took more effort than I had initially anticipated. It wasn’t just a question of putting down tasks, one after the other, I also had to anticipate circumstances and estimate distances, numbers and everything. It was quite akin to a computer script, only that I had to plan for a wide variety of circumstances and prepare contingencies. That made it a huge task, one that I couldn’t permanently work on, or I’d drive myself completely around the bend.

So, instead of continuously bashing my head against that particular wall, I started to add a bit of variety to my mental diet. One part of my efforts was obviously the continued teaching of Sonja and Lars, their progress was quite impressive for the time they had been learning magic, but the bigger part was my own training.

With the realisation about the best way to increase my skills, I now started to consciously branch out what I could do. Lowering the temperature around my hand with Ice Magic was nothing but a joke, to the point that I’d probably done something similar out of instinct at some point, but projecting that lowering of temperature outwards, so it either affected a defined volume of space or into a literal beam of freezing energy? That was a lot more difficult, but managing to do either was well worth it, awarding four skill points in Ice Magic, bringing the skill to fifty-eight.

Similarly, my work with Darkness was branching out greatly, returning to paths I had trodden on while I was on Mundus. The Void was everpresent, one only had to learn where to look. Namely, one had to seek out the space within reality, to look between the ups and downs in the minuscule world. It was a scale my mind could only comprehend in magical metaphor, it was so far beyond the scale my eyes could perceive, that I generally left them shut and simply felt the world around me.

To recognise the difference between the solid concrete, a sample of fluid water and the, obviously, gaseous air all around me was fairly simple, once I managed to recapture that peculiar way of feeling out the world around me. Or rather, to feel out the void within the world around me, to map and track it and its concentration in everything. It was strangely counterintuitive that within my perception, feeling more Void meant that there was less matter there, that an area my Void-sense told me was densely filled was actually nothing but air, while an area my Void-sense considered to be fairly empty was the dense concrete. Intellectually, I could easily understand the reason, I literally perceived where there was no matter, so more area that wasn’t filled with matter meant that there was obviously less matter there. That, in turn, meant either higher pressure involved if it was gas, not that that had happened so far, or that something was a liquid or solid. Amusingly despite knowing all that, my senses remained convinced that no void meant empty, giving me a bit of cognitive dissonance but it wasn’t too bad. I would eventually get used to it. Hopefully.

The next step, after learning to sense the Void, and earn three skill points for Darkness Magic in the process, was to learn how to manipulate it. That was incredibly strange, as I had to learn to manipulate it by volume, otherwise, there simply wasn’t anything there for my mind to latch on to. It was another of those things my mind was struggling with, simply because it was something no human could ever have begun to perceive without the help of sophisticated equipment. It worked, at least to a point, but it wasn’t anything I could use in a useful fashion. At least for now, if I got better with it, this would be the literal universal cutter, combined with simple micro and macro-kinesis, even if I doubted I’d learn to use it in combat. But just knowing that I could make the equivalent of a molecule precise cut was fairly impressive, even if that cut was currently limited to working between distinctly different materials while eating up a stupidly large amount of Astral Power. Or, in other words, I could briefly enlarge the void between a sheet of paper and the concrete the paper was lying on, causing the paper to float up for a moment, held on nothing but Darkness. Doing so used up a significant amount of Astral Power, but it was possible and while the feat had given me a headache, it had also pushed Darkness Magic up yet another point, bringing it to fifty-six. Maybe that was because I was bending reality to a significant degree, even with magic involved, but hey, I could make things float on literal nothingness. And it made me wonder just what would happen if I started to exert that sort of force in space, where there was a lot more ‘nothing’ to work with.

That idea, in turn, spawned yet another new project to work on. Namely, regaining my abilities with Astral Meditation, not only when it came to remote sensing but also the creating and control of scrying constructs and Astral Projection. I wanted to be able to feel where powerful creatures asserted influence over the Astral by virtue of their existence and learn how to map that output into reality. The second part was a lot easier than the first, especially when considering how many ways there had to be to conceal that impact, but those also had to be learned. Unless they were innate, but I doubted that truly powerful creatures would have innate hiding abilities. Maybe if they were ambush predators.

That the Astral remained unsettled made those ideas a lot more complicated than they’d have been while on Mundus, but knowing what was possible helped a great deal. I knew that I could project parts of myself through the Astral and use them to communicate across vast distances. The talk I had with the Grandmother while half a continent away, done without having divine assistance, was evidence of that. Similarly, I’d eventually manage to talk with her while both of us were on different worlds, though that was still very much a work in progress, with no progress made thus far. I had ideas about what might work, but so far, reality had rejected all my ideas, unless Hecate Herself was involved and willing to help. But that would require me to ask for that help, to grovel and beg, something I was unwilling to do. Not for something as insignificant as talking to the Grandmother,

One part of that training, of delving into the local Astral and exploring it further, was to try to find the subject I wanted to command. It had to be either a Scorched or Shattered with considerable individual power, so it could draw enough Undead under its command to make the attack feel threatening but I also needed it to be defeatable by the locals. The second part would most likely be impossible, meaning it would need to be defeated by Lia or myself, with Lia being the better option.

As it turned out, what I was trying to do might be simply impossible. Maybe completely, maybe only at my current skill level, the problem I ran across was one of resolution. Just like I was unable to differentiate between different materials with similar density, to say nothing of differentiating between different molecules within the same material, I was unable to differentiate between Shattered, Scorched and everything else. The entire city was far too steeped in Death, tainting the Astral River considerably. I was able to detect parks and such, spaces where Life was clinging on by a threat, but ferreting out the differences within the Death Astral Power? That was impossible, it all blurred into a singular, swirling mess if I tried to focus on it. Granted, I gained a point in Astral Meditation in my attempts, but ultimately, I failed.

Just like I failed in my experiment when it came to sensing the Void of Space. I tried to project myself along the lines of the Astral River but long before I reached anywhere close to the Void, I had to abort and retreat into my body, feeling battered and beaten by the forces flowing through the Astral River in the sky. It was as if the area up there was an even bigger mess than what was going on down here, making me wonder if the integration was starting at the core and moving outwards. Or maybe solid matter made it easier for the Astral River to establish sturdy channels, I had no idea.

But for now, trying to interact with the Void was impossible.

All in all, the time I spent working on my program was well spent, giving me a few more skill points, and a lot of ideas and making me realise just how much there was still to learn. Most likely, I was only seeing a tiny amount and I’d understand just how much I didn’t know as I learned more.