A Jaded Life

Studying the scattered dust didn’t get me very far. There wasn’t anything special about it, at least as far as I could tell, other than its exposure to a lot of Ice Astral Power, something fairly obvious. However, what I considered interesting, was that I couldn’t detect any Life or Death Magic in the residue, making me wonder if the powers Luna and I had both invoked had somehow disappeared without a trace. Maybe because we both had focused our efforts on the essence, the soul, of the plant and not its physical form so when the soul was forced out of the plant and onwards, it had taken the power we had invoked with it.

At least that was the most plausible conclusion I could come up with, though I was fascinated by the fact that despite the physical changes I had observed, there was no magic remaining. How that could be, I had no idea, somehow, the soul, infused with our magic, had changed the plant without the magic leaking out, or something like that. For a moment, I wondered if it was somehow similar to the system, where a magical, for lack of a better word, change was imposed upon the soul and expressed in physical changes without a direct, physical connection to the source of the change but I was speculating wildly in that regard. The system was, without a doubt, multiple levels above anything I could begin to understand, so maybe I should push any speculation regarding it back, far back. If I ever got to the point where I could say I fully understood the divine, I’d start putting my attention on the system but for now, the system simply was. I could use it, could even try to exploit certain traits it had, but I had to accept it as a part of reality.

Thinking of the system I briefly glanced at my notifications, seeing one that told me my Death Magic had gone up by one, reaching level twenty-four and, to my absolute surprise, my Enchanting had gone up by one, too, reaching level nineteen. For a moment, I wondered how that had happened, only to come to the conclusion that the manipulation of the plant must have counted as Enchanting, according to the system. A fascinating realisation that made me wonder just how expansive the skill actually was if both the runic engraving of metallic objects and the direct magical manipulation of Souls were part of it. There wasn’t a lot of overlap between the two skills, only that both attempted to permanently alter the nature of something else. If that was all the commonality needed to be part of the Enchanting skill, I could see a lot of things fall under it.

“Can you see anything special about the dust?” I asked Luna, curious if her way of seeing the world allowed her to see something I couldn’t.

“There’s something,” she muttered, kneeling next to me and letting some dust run through her fingers, watching it glitter as it fell to the ground, joining the rest of the dust the vegetation had turned into.

As she was studying, or maybe just playing, with the dust, I looked a little further, into the area destroyed by the leaching effect of the plant, noticing that there, the dust was slightly contaminated with the deadly necrotic energy of Death Magic. Stepping over, I carefully studied the remains, even lowering my head close to the ground so I could sniff the air directly above the dust without touching it. That way, I could be fairly sure that the magic of my body wasn’t influencing the result while also making sure I didn’t accidentally inhale any of the dust, something I was quite keen to avoid.

To my surprise, the Death Magic I could detect wasn’t my own. There were some similarities but also clear differences, something I hadn’t expected. If the plant had simply radiated my own Death Magic into the environment, it wouldn’t have changed this much, I’d still be able to recognise it. But like this, I had to conclude that the plant had, somehow, wielded Death Magic reflexively, maybe in an attempt to draw in power to stabilise itself after the alterations it had undergone due to the clash of the contraditionary magics channelled by Luna and myself.

At the original position, Luna had now thrown a few seeds from her pouch to the ground and was carefully channelling Life Magic into them, making me raise an eyebrow, curious about what she was trying to do. For a few seconds, nothing happened and I realised just how careful and slow Luna was working. Normally, she could grow something like a vine to full size in just a few seconds but here, she was taking almost a minute to grow a simple, small flower, a daisy or something like that.

My surprise was even greater when the plant didn’t grow the expected white and yellow blossom but an utterly unique blossom, with one-half of the outer blossom dark grey, with tiny particles drifting away from the plant and vanishing into the air, while the other side was greenish-blue, with a similar effect, only that the particles from that side were drifting upwards before fading from my senses. The centre of the blossom, what would normally be bright yellow, was a beautiful, silvery-blue, a colour I instantly recognised as the colour of Ice Magic.

“Fascinating,” I couldn’t help but mutter, realising that the blossom wasn’t just coloured in this particular way but had taken on a small bias according to the elements present in the dust, with one part attuned to Death Magic, one to Life Magic and the centre attuned to Ice Magic. “Do you think Alex would be able to use a plant like this?” I couldn’t help but ask, wondering just how much we could accomplish with elementally biased plants grown to order.

“I don’t think so,” Luna shook her head, “Lady Hecate taught me how to grow these daisies, they take on foreign magic incredibly easily but they are unable to contain any real power, it’s just a tiny echo. Just enough for us to see but not enough to be of any use.”

“Too bad,” I readily accepted her words, studying the plants a little more, when I realised just how difficult it must be to grow such plants without accidentally pushing the magical bias of the magic used to grow them into the plants. “But very well done,” I praised my munchkin, giving her shoulder a quick squeeze.

“What do you think this means? Neither of us could detect the magical traces, not really, but they are clearly there. Faint, but there,” she asked, looking at the dust before her eyes swept across the outer ring, where the plant had devastated the area.

“I think we accidentally gave the plant a little too much magic, allowing it to become something more, a magical plant, if you will. But because we both used diametrically opposed magical elements, things got weird until the Death Magic I kept channelling overwhelmed what Life Magic you had channelled into it at the beginning. At that moment, the plant became something just a little reminiscent of Lia and Alex, trying to draw in vitality from the environment, like those two take Astral Power from my blood to sustain themself. Well, more Lia than Alex, but Lia actively uses her magic and physical powers while Alex is much more cerebral, using their brain and Alchemy to get things done,” I explained, though while I had a hypothesis, I wasn’t confident in it. Mostly, I was trying to make sense of a fairly insane moment, while wondering if we could make use of the phenomenon.

“So, if we did something similar but not with diametrically opposed elements, we might be able to make something permanent?” Luna asked, making me realise just how much she had learned and mentally matured in her time with Lady Hecate.

“We could try but I think we should be careful. I have no idea what it might do, so maybe we should stick with small plants, maybe a small, harmless critter like a rabbit, mouse or rat, or something like that. Nothing that can easily escape or turn into something dangerous that we immediately have to put down,” I reasoned, taking yet another look at the dust-filled area that had been relatively vibrant with vegetation just a few minutes ago.

“Sounds fun, we definitely should. But maybe after we found a good spot for the Lady’s Shrine,” she gave me a mischievous grin, one that made me ruffle her hair affectionately.

“Wouldn’t want your boss lady to get annoyed with us, would we? We should also try to make contact with our Crone-aspect, it has been a while since we reached out to the Grandmother and now that you’ve crossed the first divide, we might be able to get some real communication going.” I suggested, turning her mischievous grin into a happy one as she quickly nodded.

Together, we continued on our way, looking for a suitable spot to build a shrine once again.