A Jaded Life

Even for a relative novice, the design imparted to me by Lady Hecate had obvious Greek influence. A geometric arrangement of narrow columns to carry the roof, the walls more to protect from the wind and weather than to bear loads, the design was both graceful and somewhat mysterious, greatly arousing my desire to see it complete. That was beyond the challenge it posed to arrange, especially as I was working alone, with only my magic to assist me in this endeavour. Sure, the magic I wielded was more powerful than anything the ancient Greeks had at their disposal but still, the challenge felt somewhat daunting. Construction times in the ancient world had been measured in years, or even centuries for some of the mega projects, so to create something in the time I could afford to spend? Truly, it was a daunting prospect.

And despite that, I wasn’t about to accept defeat or lose heart, instead, I simply pushed onwards. Levelling the land with Earth Magic and pushing foundations into the ground to accept greater loads soon after, before laying down a layer of concrete and gravel. That layer was fused together with my Earth Magic, using a few of the tricks Hecate had shown me in her Realm, creating the ground level of the Shrine. There were some prepared holes in the layer, allowing me to fuse the columns that would bear the loads directly with the prepared foundations below, decoupling the floor from the ceiling and allowing me some greater freedom. It took a few days, and gave me an additional three points in Earth Magic, alongside three in Earth Rune Mastery and one in Crystal Magic, but it worked out fairly well.

With the ground layer established, I started to build the columns and there, I was cheating a little. The columns weren’t just made from simple stone, not even stone compressed or fused together with my crystal magic, instead, I had Alex make me metal spirals, before filling them with rock and fusing the stone together and with the spiral. That way, the compressive forces would completely rest on the stone but any lateral forces would be carried by the metal inside, greatly increasing the carrying capacity of my columns.

I only could put up two of these columns a day and by the end of the process, I had gained even more points in Crystal and Earth Magic, bringing Crystal Magic to thirty-one and Earth Magic to thirty-six. It was, quite frankly, insane how quickly the skills were growing but I had a sneaking suspicion that Lady Hecate was putting a finger on the scale, as I was working on a project for her.

Filling in the walls was fairly simple, they didn’t have to bear any loads or withstand serious forces but I wanted to make them look exceptionally smooth, with some nice relief work to make the shrine even more impressive. For that, I first conjured a pair of perfectly smooth Ice Walls next to each other, making it extra slick and smooth by adding a bit of Water Magic and freezing it afterwards. The walls were framing the space I wanted to use for the actual wall, and once they were done, I could fill in the space between the Ice Wall and slowly fuse the stone into one perfectly smooth whole. That, too, took some time but at that point, I was quite good at the process, especially as I had put my remaining points into Intelligence, getting a suitable trait for my troubles.

The trait was a bit of a surprise, as it was an almost direct upgrade, or maybe a successor trait of one I already had. Quite a while ago, I received the Arcane Adept trait, increasing my affinity to every element and now, I got the Arcane Expert trait. It did the same as the Arcane Adept, only that it added the words ‘even further’ at the end, making me grin just a little. It was, without a doubt, an incredibly powerful trait but that the wording hadn’t really changed felt fairly amusing to me.

The result was that my magic felt just a little more responsive with everything I tried to do and I noticed that delving into the Astral River was more enjoyable, too. I still didn’t know how long we’d have to travel to reach the Nexus, but I felt as if the heading was narrowing down just a little. My repeated delves also resulted in two points in my slightly neglected Astral Meditation Trait, bringing it to thirty-eight. I also delved for the new Blood Rune I could learn and came up with the Infuse Rune, allowing me to infuse Astral Power into the blood more easily. It worked especially well in conjunction with the Sacrifice Rune when I drained the blood from other creatures and once I managed to teach it to Lia, she could actually sustain herself without my help, if she needed to. Sure, she preferred to be fed from my hand but opening up the possibility was a good thing in my eyes. It gave us more options and that was never a bad thing.

The Shrine’s construction continued at a steady pace and once the columns were placed, it was time to raise the roof. Here, too, I used my Ice Magic to provide the scaffolding and framing, simply because I was so much more adept in its use. I’d have been able to use Earth Magic but, quite frankly, I preferred to work in Ice. And given the amount of Earth Magic I had utilised in the construction, it wasn’t as if I was neglecting the other skill, it had grown by leaps and bounds these days and I had a feeling it would continue to grow.

The roof was, amusingly, fairly simple, though that was mostly because the plans Lady Hecate had provided made it so. With my Ice Magic to provide framing, it wasn’t any harder than the walls had been, maybe even easier. Ultimately, it only took me two days to put the roof up and resulted in a single point of Earth Magic alongside a single point in Earth Rune Mastery, bringing the skills to thirty-seven and twenty-nine respectively, showing just how immense the work on the shrine had paid off. Sure, a month of labour was quite the time investment but some twenty points across three skills was nothing to scoff at.

During the latter part of the construction, Luna had been hard at work, too. Her work was invisible to the naked eye but to my arcane senses, it shone like a beacon. She had placed multiple protections around the construction and was adding benedictions, blessings and various wards to it, likely under the guidance of Lady Hecate.

My own work wasn’t done either, even if the building itself was complete. The shrine was too plain and bare, something I wanted to correct as I felt quite proud of my work and wanted it to be decorated and awe-inspiring. Thus, I added reliefs around the building, my mind and magic inspired by Lady Hecate. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have added images of myself but as the work progressed, I noticed that my own image, alongside that of Luna and the Grandmother, was present at multiple points. Curiously, the two primary statues in the temple, those that framed and guarded the altar, were visibly distinct from each other.

One of them had the three of us, Luna, the Grandmother and myself, while the other had a different image, one I only knew from Lady Hecate’s grey realm. It felt a little strange, to know that my own image stood in the same position as that of a literal deity and the oddity was even more pronounced when I considered that it was that same deity who had guided the construction. Odd, maybe a little bit daunting and highly confusing. Lady Hecate had an agenda but I couldn’t find a reason why a deity would want to lift mortals to her level, or her station.

Unless she was lonely or something like that but it wasn’t the vibe I got from her. Curiosity, maybe a bit of pride during the training she had given me but nothing else. A teacher, maybe a researcher, but no bigger personal connection.

After the decorations were done, the shrine needed the information we wanted it to contain. Here, Lady Hecate helped out once more, making it so we didn’t need to engrave the information into slabs of stone. Instead, Luna performed one of Lady Hecate’s rituals and a slivery-grey crystal appeared and was set into the altar, providing an interface that looked almost identical to the system interface, if one ignored the fact that it was visible to others without problems. With a simple gesture and a short prayer to Lady Hecate, one could make it appear within the confines of the temple and it acted like a simple computer system, allowing us to input text and images without problems. A part of me wanted to study the magic but when I tried, I didn’t get anything but a headache. Maybe there was some magical copyright protection, maybe it was far beyond my current abilities, I wasn’t sure. But I was impressed and just a little bit envious.

Finally, after a little over a month of work, the shrine was done, the last blessing in place and a vast amount of information was added to the magical archive. The quest was complete, now, it was time for us to receive our rewards.