If there was one thing that was absolute proof of the importance Lady Hecate attached to the analysis of the central crater, it was the zone of protection Luna and Silva laid down before Luna started to try to understand the crystal growth in the crater. And the crater itself, the strange Astral Power in the air and everything else that made this region so peculiar. The power the two of them invoked was strong enough to be palpable without concentrating on them, which was quite impressive for divine magic, there was fairly little subtly involved, just power. A whole lot of power. Normally, Divine Magic was all about efficiency, and I had a feeling that the refined nature of Divine Power, compared to Astral Power, made that even more so. The Gods, with who knew how many years, decades, centuries or even millennia under their belt knew how to produce the desired effect with the least amount of power, in addition to having a domain that most likely helped it along. When their followers then invoked the spells granted to them by their god, they would essentially get these highly refined and efficient spells, spells that were also optimised to accept the specific blend of power inherent to their particular Divine Power.

In other words, there was no way for a mortal spellcaster to reach similar levels of refinement, not without having spent untold years to get the effect just right. But, in turn, the mortal had direct influence over the effect a spell would take, making them more flexible and a Sorcerer who made their own spells from their raw Astral Power with maybe a few runes to guide the process had the most flexibility but, in turn, had to do the most work to make things efficient.

At least that was the usual case, as I currently understood these things. Granted, I might be wrong somewhere but I doubted it, it fit with what I had seen and learned on Mundus while also being internally consistent, adding to my confidence. This case, however, was anything but usual, the protection invoked by Luna and Silva didn’t have that refined feeling and it also leaked power into its surroundings, power I recognised as the Divine Power of Lady Hecate. By now, I knew the incredibly complex blend, mostly from the conversations I had with Her in my dreams but also from my investigation into the blessing placed upon me, it was Her power.

And there was a lot of it, not only contained in the silvery light that had sprung up all around Luna, who was staring at the crystal in the crater, occasionally drawing unknown symbols into the air but everywhere around us. And that wasn’t all, the air was filled with power, making things even more interesting. It was interesting enough to draw my attention, which was quite the feat given that Luna was using unknown symbols, their style completely different from the Runes I had originally learned on Mundus and the style of the runes I had newly learned here on Terra. And sure, the symbols were fascinating but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to understand them anyway, given that I suspected they were some sort of Divine Language, maybe even unique to Hecate, and likely only usable by Gods and those who had direct permission from the Gods. Not something I could reasonably expect to employ anytime soon.

On the other hand, the Divine Power saturating the area and somehow overpowering the constant influx of power radiating from the central crystal was something new and different. It was somewhat similar to the way my mix of Water and Ice had neutralised the power in the ground the previous night but at the same time, it was different. The result was similar but the mechanism didn’t feel like it was the same. To use my previous metaphor, my method had neutralised acid with a base leaving something roughly neutral and this method was more akin to using a beaker or filter to keep the acid away from the area you wanted to work in. Not that the metaphor was completely coherent but it worked well enough for me to understand and make a bit of sense of the situation.

Sadly, the method, as far as I understood it, meant that the corrosive power from the crystal was increased away from Luna, making it a little difficult to explore on my own. And, to make matters worse, the increase in power attracted some of the weirder creatures, drawing them like moths to the flame, until they got in range of the protective magic Luna was employing. Then, they became feral and berserk, trying to charge at my munchkin and tear her apart.

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Which, in a way, solved the problem of boredom, it was hard to be bored when a critter or five tried to devour your daughter every few minutes, forcing Lia, Silva, Alex and me to kill every critter that came too close. And they all came to close, apparently following the gradient of power, trying to get to the source of the effect, only to realise that the source wasn’t what they were looking for. Or die long before they got too close.

The constant attacks were both incredibly annoying and fascinating in their own right, mainly because the power saturating the air made magic work in… interesting ways. Or incredibly wonky ways, to use a more colloquial expression, it certainly didn’t function like it normally did. Hecate’s power was one thing, it made things work a little more smoothly, as if the different types of Astral Power were easier to combine under the influence of Her power.

But the power radiating from the crystal was different. It was corrosive and annoying, changing every spell I used by altering the effects of my Astral Power in subtle or incredibly obvious ways. In some cases, that meant the Ice I conjured to launch at my foes suddenly started to burn, but burn without melting, at least until it struck. On impact, the shards either burst into flames that rapidly froze the target or they might suddenly sputter out, leaving a puddle of acid or some other effect. It wasn’t consistent and it seemed to be almost random, making it incredibly difficult to adapt my spells or estimate their effect. Things simply seemed to happen in an annoyingly chaotic manner.

Luckily, studying these interactions was fascinating in its own right. Sure, I had no idea how they actually worked but they clearly did and some of them increased the effect of my spells, though I couldn’t account for the amount of power it took to create that increase. That, and knowing that I certainly was capable of using Fire Magic and would likely be able to learn to wield the other elements that made up the power radiating from the central crystal, meant I might be able to create spells that used these interactions in a controlled fashion.

Ice that melted into acid sounded like something quite interesting, giving my attacks a completely different damage mechanism, one that would bypass quite a few defences I’d normally struggle with. So, while I still made sure to kill the annoying critters that tried to get a bite of Luna, I also made sure to study just how the power in the environment latched onto my spells. Just seeing the process was sadly not tremendously informative, to my sight it looked simply like a different substance was coating my pristine projectiles, occasionally seeping into them, too.

I even started to use Bullet Time, giving me a lot more, well, time to study the mechanism, to the point that I conjured Ice and stuck it outside of the shelter created by the divine magic all around us, hoping that the contamination would occur, even if I wasn’t actively attacking.

And it did, the floating bit of Ice getting slowly infused with the corrosive influence, just like my projectiles did. Repeated testing showed that it also wasn’t infused uniformly, making me think that the energy radiating from the crystal wasn’t uniform but fluctuated quite a bit and what I had previously sensed was only the generalisation. It wasn’t just Fire, Poison, Decay and Disease, it was all of that and a whole slew of mixtures, not necessarily made up of those four. It was chaos and incredibly fascinating as not even the location of these different effects was static, even that changed constantly.

I kept continuing my experiments, trying to understand what was going on and how the power from the crystal altered the effects of my magic. That is, until loud noises in the distance caught my attention, forcing me to abandon my experiments. Something was heading for us, something big and, by the roaring sounds it was making, something angry.

Maybe I would meet the draconic pretender after all. I wasn’t sure if I was looking forward to it or not.