I was contemplating death. Wouldn’t it be the height of irony, if the first time I died in Road to Purgatory was by my own hand? And not in a magical experiment gone wrong, but in a calculated, deliberate decision that death and respawn was an easier way to go about things compared to continuing? The arm I had used to hold up the chunk of Eternal Ice looked like something a scientist had found buried in some glacier.

After we had fled Yaksha - putting another town on the list of places I was no longer welcome - Sigmir had continued to carry me, despite my objection that it was my arm that was damaged and I didn’t need it to run. The look she gave me made me rethink my stance, there was no loss to be carried and I had a feeling that arguing with her would only hurt her. So, I simply watched her face, the mix of fierceness, determination and gentleness making me marvel at the partner that stood beside me.

Adra and Rai quickly caught up and after a few minutes of running, Sigmir slowed down and asked Adra for a concealment-spell. As soon as that was cast, she changed directions a few times, changing our direction so we ended up roughly parallel to the road south. I managed to reestablish my mental filter to keep Lenore from being cold in her Hallow but trying to heal my hand proved to be too difficult in my shaken state. The pain must have taken a bigger toll on me than I had thought; my mind felt sluggish, almost as if I was trying to think through thick molasses. I felt Lenore’s mind close by and started to take shelter with her, letting her presence soothe me, even when my mind only wanted to drift away.

Finally, one of the others spotted a secluded spot to rest for a time; obviously their bodies were feeling the effect of a rather long and exhausting day, just as mine was nearing its limit. I was only dimly aware that Sigmir placed me on the bedding we shared and after some time, she brought some stew, feeding it to me.

In that time of waiting, I was contemplating if making an official shelter, setting it as my spawn-point and killing myself would be easier compared to trying to restore my hand. I had started to try, once Sigmir had placed me in bed, but the effect I was having was massively limited, my Blood Magic apparently had problems with restoring that type of damage, even compared to closing deep wounds. But Lenore kept harping on me, pushing and prodding that I wouldn’t try such a thing, arguing that the gods that were responsible for bringing my consciousness here would likely take a dim view on such an attempt to use their system to my advantage. I idly wondered, deep in the recesses of my mind, if that was part of some sort of anti-cheating thing or if Lenore was speaking her own thoughts.

Both were possible and so, I kept trying.

When Sigmir came and fed me, literally spoon-fed me, brooking no resistance from me, reminding me of the time she had been injured and I had taken care of her, I had been at the point that I slowly managed to get circulation into the damaged limb without poisoning myself, using my magic to filter the toxins out. The blood supply had, possibly due to an subconscious use of magic on my part, shut off at some point - and from what I felt with my magic, that was a good thing, or I would be in an even worse state. Keeping the filtration and circulation going took quite a bit of my attention, so it might have been a good thing that Sigmir had decided to feed me, or I would have made a mess.

After eating, I tried to assert myself that I would be able to take a watch but Sigmir simply put a hand on my chest and said no. Once more, I looked into her eyes and saw steely determination there, making sure that I knew she would not budge on that point, that I would not get out of bed before morning and that I was lucky Pantheon had not insisted on including all biological processes into their game.

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Even if I had wanted to protest some more, I had nothing left to protest with so I simply let her have her way, sinking back into the bedding, noticing how Ylva left Sigmir’s Hallow, pacing the camping-spot as if to make sure she knew where what was.

“Sleep, dear. Ylva promised to guard us and you need your rest.” Sigmir whispered to me, as she draped herself around me, encircling me in her arms.

I gave her a soft kiss, assuring her that I would rest. What better way to rest than in her arms?

But resting did not mean sleeping - if I let my arm deteriorate more, I would really have to think about cutting it off - so while my body rested, my mind and magic were busy, using blood to slowly change the flesh bit by bit, maybe cell by cell. It was hard to frame the information I received from my magic in terms I could align with the biology I knew, the sensations were much more rooted in feelings and my self-perception, making that particular task rather difficult. But bit by bit, I was able to get my hand back into working condition, even if I had to pry loose cell after cell, extract it with Blood Magic, replace it with my magic and move on to the next cell. That was roughly the process I had to use; maybe I was working on a slightly larger scale, replacing more than just single cells, but I was not sure.

Once I had the process figured out, it quickly became a task of repetition and my mind started to mingle with Lenore, our combined minds using a small part of the whole that made us to keep an eye on things while we held a conversation about more interesting topics. Normally, we would talk about magic, which was our biggest, shared interest, but there was something I was curious about, especially if we continued on our current path.

If we did so, our path would lead us further south, staying on the western side of the mountain-range in which we had hunted Wind Raptors and the mountain range would cut us off from the area we had previously been in.

So, what I wanted to know, was if Ylva was planning to go after the black wolves that had hunted her pack, back when we met. It had been at the back of my mind all that time, especially when I had taken the blood from the black Alpha-wolf and fed it to Ylva.

My connection with Lenore gave me her perspective on things, and I noticed that that perspective was much more rooted in the present; while she remembered things, Lenore was much less emotionally attached to the past. To her, the past was to be remembered but she would not dwell in feelings about it. No remorse, but also no joyous remembrance. No regrets, but that also meant less motivation.

I noticed that that particular trait was the reason why she never went after me about my magic experimentation, once she could tell me off for it, the experiment was already over and in the past.

It was a strange dichotomy, her reverence for her Ancestor and her almost negligent view on lessons learned from past behaviour. Her mind quickly provided the answer: her Ancestor was part of what made her into her current form, so it was only right to revere him. In that regard, her mental processes simply made no sense to me when I looked at them without the benefit that the combination of our minds gave me. When I looked at her thoughts without her mind there with me, they made a lot less sense than when our minds were joined; we both needed the other’s mind to interpret memories and thoughts of the other, our own minds lacking the reference-frame to do so.

In our shared, mental gestalt, the night passed relatively quick and once the sun rose, I took stock of the progress we had made with my hand. It no longer looked like it belonged to Ötzi; it looked almost like a living limb again. Moving it was still impossible, but at least I was relatively sure that I would be able to heal the rest of it and no longer contemplating to test whether respawning fixed previously-damaged body-parts. A look at my log showed that I had gained two points in my Blood Magic, something I had expected. I had used that particular magic intensively in a complex and new manner, so skill-gains were expected.

I was fed breakfast again, despite my improved arm, and during breakfast, we discussed our further plans.