Outside, I could finally focus on actively testing my new ability. While it was fascinating to study my companions with it and draw conclusions from the way the animating power of their bodies moved through them, I wasn’t about to try doing anything with those powers. That sounded like an incredibly reckless and fairly stupid thing to do, something that could easily end up changing them on a fundamental level I couldn’t even begin to understand at the moment.

Instead, I decided to start with something simple and fairly contained. Amusingly, simple in this case didn’t mean something like a rock or pebble, those seemed to be connected on a fairly deep level, one that was highly reminiscent of the faint echoes of power I could detect in the shadows. Not quite as if all rocks shared the same soul but it made me think that all rocks had a shadow of something greater within them. Or, given that they had nothing to do with the Shadows, calling it an echo might be a better word, a remnant of past connections that echoed through the present into the future. Just what exactly that connection entailed, how deep it went and what one might be able to accomplish with it, I had no idea and couldn’t even begin to guess but with it present, I wasn’t about to experiment with it. If nothing else, there’d likely be some sort of experimental echo.

No, it was a lot better to take something contained within itself, at least contained at the level I could detect. A living thing, in other words. My first instinct was to reach for plants, they didn’t seem to have any connection beyond their physical roots, nothing reaching out and connecting them into some sort of giant collective mind. At least not the simple grass I could find near the hole we were currently sheltering in, it would be interesting to see if other places had a stronger interconnectivity, maybe if we were in a forest, I could see something like that, or by studying colonel fungi. I had little doubt that the Withering Fungi had a connection beyond the psychic one, though where to draw boundaries between a psychic connection and one of the soul, I didn’t know.

Just looking at the grass, I could see traces of vitality but little else, no animus, nothing that came even close to the complexity of my companions. Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the grass was just that, a little, stubborn weed, clinging to life as it slowly drew nutrients from the soil and the air, transforming them with energy from the Sun. Now, with night falling, the grass was going dormant, its processes slowing down as it waited for the dawn and new energy from above.

Curious, I started to try reaching for the energy, at first by simply sending out probes of Astral Power. Sadly, I quickly realised that just using Astral Power wasn’t the right thing to do, my Astral Power didn’t interact with the essence of the weed at all, at least not directly. Sure, if I used too much power or didn’t control the power I was using tightly enough the physical structure of the grass was crushed with the expected negative consequences for the vital energy within but that wasn’t really the manipulation I was looking for. That was more akin to trying to draw water from a container and smashing the container in the process. Sure, you might catch a little water if you were lucky but it really wasn’t the point of the exercise.

With that realisation, I began to try influencing the vital essence without destroying the physical structure of the grass I was working on. By now, I had already destroyed a number of plants but given that I only targeted individual plants, it wasn’t too much.

Sadly, I wasn’t making much progress. Or rather, I wasn’t making any progress, as I had yet to find the right way to interact with the essence of the grass in the first place. I was trying to use different combinations of Astral Power but it looked like Astral Power wasn’t the answer here. Nor was trying to focus on the grass with my will, without employing any Astral Power, merely attempting to bring my extra-sensory perception to the forefront of my mind. Without Mind Magic, I wasn’t sure I was actually doing anything, I certainly couldn’t detect any alteration to either myself or the grass. Well, unless I counted that I began to feel silly, though I doubted that was a direct result of something happening with my extra-sensory perception unless I counted feeling self-conscious.

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Well, there was one way I could use to influence the vital essence, it was an incredibly simple way but not a terribly useful one. Death Magic could easily destroy the essence, causing the grass to wither nearly instantly before falling to dust moments later. But that wasn’t really influencing it, merely destroying it, which wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I needed the opposite, but sadly, I couldn’t access Life Magic. Blood Magic, which I tried using, only influenced the physical structure and while that had a slight knock-on effect, it wasn’t what I was looking for.

As I was considering ways to somehow turn my Blood Magic into the conceptually different Life Magic, a type of magic I had a decent amount of exposure to thanks to training Luna, I felt a wave of power emanating from the shelter behind me. Luckily, I instantly recognised the flavour of the power surging into the world as coming from Lady Hecate, allowing me to remain fairly calm. Most likely, it had something to do with either Luna or Silva, the former a lot more likely than the latter, as Luna hadn’t received her reward just yet.

And her reward would be to cross the first divide, though I hadn’t expected it would have such an impact. My own crossing had been a lot more low-key, as had those of Silva, Lia and even Alex. Alex had actually left the smallest impact, to the point that I hadn’t even realised that they had crossed for a few days, only when they began to produce some truly strange equipment with Lia’s help I noticed that something odd was going on.

My munchkin apparently couldn’t help but shout out into the world that she had changed. Or maybe Lady Hecate felt that having Her favourite child reach a new milestone had to be celebrated, like a birthday or something.

Grinning to myself, I rose and walked back inside, the power in the air feeling quite comfortable, a far cry from the irritating influence of the Charland. Sure, it wasn’t as comfortable as a glacier or something like that but it was progress.

Inside, I was met by Silva who happily wagged her tail, obviously pleased with the result of Luna’s advancement. When I stepped into the small cave that acted as Luna’s ‘bedroom’ I was assaulted by a small munchkin who wrapped her arms around my waist, her head burying into my chest.

“Missed you, mum,” she muttered, her voice sounding strangely relived. It took me a moment to realise that she might have spent a similar time in Hecate’s realm as I had and was feeling like she hadn’t seen me in quite some time, so I reached up, gently stroking her hair.

“Did you learn something in Lady Hecate’s realm?” I softly asked, feeling her head move against my chest in a nod moments later.

“Mhm, I did. The Maiden played with me, the Mother was teaching me and the Crone watched me as I ran around. It was fun but I missed you loads,” she explained, her voice muffled by my clothes.

“And did you have fun?” I prodded, faintly amused by the whole thing. Again, there was a nod before she replied verbally.

“Yeah, loads,” she admitted, “Lady Hecate told me that she felt a little bad that I was growing up so fast, so she wanted me to enjoy myself, at least for a while. It sounded like my growth will take another jump forward now.”

Now, my amusement vanished quite rapidly, a familiar guilty feeling welling up in my gut once more. It was annoyingly irrational, intellectually, I was fully aware that Luna would have been forced to grow up by the Change and the utter chaos it left in its wake, there simply were no resources to allow a child to enjoy their childhood. And yet, hearing her talk almost like a small adult instead of the six-year-old she actually was didn’t feel right.

“Why don’t you tell me about it, little one? Lia and Alex are out hunting, so we’ve got time. And if you want to test around with the new tricks you undoubtedly learned from the Lady, we can do that, too,” I offered, grinning when Luna nodded once more, only to remain stationary afterwards, snuggled up to my body. Apparently, testing and speaking would have to wait. For now, the munchkin wanted cuddles.