A Jaded Life

Even after leaving the grassy area around the World Tree Sapling behind, I couldn’t get the images my mind used to conceptualise what my magical senses were telling me out of my mind. Death, Rot, Poison, all these words came to mind when I had sensed the remnants of power that were starting to accumulate beneath the World Tree. So far, it was next to nothing, I had only sensed it because I was right on top of it and had been looking for something interesting but then, the World Tree had only stood in that position for a little over half a year. That wasn’t a whole lot of time for it to grow and filter Astral Power, leaving the dregs to accumulate around its roots. If I tried to estimate the growth of these accumulations, things looked fairly dire, sure, the tree would continue to grow and thus spread them out over a much larger area but that wasn’t a real reprieve, it only delayed that these accumulations would have trouble for the tree.

Sitting in the Gingerstone House, I started to wonder if there was a way to use these accumulations. They, too, were Astral Power, only with a strong bias towards certain elements generally inimical to the elements that made up Life and Nature but that didn’t mean these elements were automatically bad or evil. Just that one had to be cautious in one’s dealing with them but that was somewhat true for Ice and Darkness, too.

Granted, some people would think that both Ice and Darkness should be part of these bad elements but it didn’t look like the World Tree filtered them out, at least from what I had been able to sense. It might be because I hadn’t been able to make out any real details of these accumulations or it might be because both Darkness and Ice are inextricable parts of Nature but so are Death, Poison and Rot. Death is just as necessary as Life while Poison is the weapon of choice for numerous predators and a defensive tool for countless other beings, both plants and animals. Rot, on the other hand, is in many ways a living process, similar to the digestive processes of animals, only that the digestion happens without the digested thing being enveloped as the digesting beings are far smaller than what they eat. Nature at its finest but somehow, the World Tree didn’t seem to agree with my reasoning and, similarly, my senses didn’t seem to agree with my mind’s conclusions. They, too, had considered the Astral Power released by the World Tree a lot more pleasant and pure than what I could normally take it, which was a slightly weird sensation. Was there something inherently ‘off’ about these elements or was it some sort of weird, magical pretty privilege, where elements that could be considered predatory, for lack of a better word, were automatically deemed dangerous?

If so, shouldn’t Nature, or maybe Life in general, be considered the most predatory and dangerous? Before the change, every predator was a living being and while there were Undead now, that didn’t change the primary dynamic as they, too, were mimicking the behaviour of living beings. Sure, they were powered by a different type of energy but did that fundamentally change things? Intellectually, I wanted to say no, it didn’t but at this point, my mind was getting into conflict with what my senses told me about the world. Should I try sticking to logic, trying to make it override my senses or should I go with what my senses told me and try to adjust my thinking? Was this distaste akin to the distaste one initially had for anything other than sweetness, something that had to be overcome as one acquired new tastes or was it something different?

The question gave me a bit of a headache but, amusingly, it also answered why I might want to destroy the World Tree. As it was, the World Tree was accumulating power below its roots, letting the storage grow as it seeped into the soil. Eventually, I could use that accumulated power for myself, maybe to cross a Divide, as Adra had when she had torn down the tree of Tegi, using the power stored within for herself. Or maybe I could use the accumulated Death Astral Power to improve my own affinity to the element, another worthwhile endeavour. Sure, I’d need to let the tree filter a lot more power but someday, the accumulation would be quite… significant.

Sadly, I doubted it would be useful to bring Sigmir back to life, the elements simply didn’t match, but for other projects? For those, it could be invaluable. One day.

Shaking off my somewhat covetous and hungry thoughts, I focused on the present and what opportunities staying in this place might have. The sad part was, that there were quite few. The dryads had their Nature Magic, so they had little to no interest in different elements, not even those I’d consider natural and adjacent to Nature. Water or Earth Magic didn’t hold any real attraction to them and the less said about Fire, Ice and Wind the better. To them, these forces represented destruction and something to be left alone, while Water and Earth were deemed lacking. I didn’t understand their logic, mostly because there didn’t seem to be any, but I doubted I’d be able to spend productive time teaching here.

Similarly, there was no divine presence in the area, something that Luna had already remarked on, meaning it was unlikely we would be allowed, or able, to build a shrine here. On one hand, I greatly enjoyed the idea that the Gods were limited by the World Tree’s presence, on the other hand, it meant that another avenue to get EXP was blocked from us, even if I was uncertain if Lady Hecate would give me any for helping Luna build a shrine here. She didn’t seem to care about the dryads or the World Tree, and the more I learned about them, the more I understood.

Lady Hecate was all about discovery, about pushing boundaries and learning more, while the dryads were complacent and seemed to prefer letting their powers grow naturally without any pushing at all, the exact opposite.

With the usual avenues to grow my power closed, I decided to try moving in a different direction. These last few months, I had neglected my Mind Magic a little and my Astral Meditation as well. The latter, I had mostly used to keep track of the direction I thought the Nexus was in, without actually pushing what I could do, simply because the unsettled nature of the Astral River made things difficult. Maybe it was time to push past that difficulty, or at least try to.

Mind Magic was in a similar vein, there simply were few times I could employ the skill. Shattered and Undead were quite unsatisfactory, even if using the skill on them worked and had some weird results. Maybe because their minds were fairly static, more akin to a computer than to an actual living mind, meaning anything I learned while manipulating them would be worthless when manipulating others.

Sadly, I couldn’t use my Mind Magic on the locals without their consent, as it would be classified as a hostile action, at least to me, which seemed to be a good test of what counted as one and what didn’t, the good, old Golden Rule. If I would consider an action as hostile, I wouldn’t perform said action here, that way, I should be relatively safe.

But there were other ways to work on both skills or at least work on one and try to put that work to use when employing the other skill. For that, I needed to recreate my throne, as it allowed me to leave my body mostly unattended and yet find my way back to it fairly easily. The runes I had used on Mundus wouldn’t work any longer, I wasn’t Morgana any longer, or rather, I wasn’t just Morgana any longer. Now, I was more than Morgana, I was growing in ways Morgana never had and likely never could.

Still, the throne I conjured from Hard Ice had large similarities with the one Morgana had sat one but, at the same time, there were major differences. Other elements were worked into the Ice, giving the Ice an unearthly sheen and glow from the powers I channelled into the Ice. There was a great deal of experimentation involved, mostly using Crystal Magic as a base to bind other elements into the Ice without having the Astral Power interact with it, but the effort was well-worth it. Not only did I gain a slew of different skill-points, but I also learned something entirely new and the final result, my throne, was more than just a seat to rest my behind. It was a spell-focus and while it was far from the sheer magnitude of the Frozen Citadel, it was beyond the citadel in versatility.

Now, some three days after I had started to work on it, I was finished and could send my gaze elsewhere.