“So, what do you want to know? Or rather, what do you know about clerical powers?” Drega asked, after I had finished my food and was contently sitting with the others.

“Nothing really. I have seen some of the things possible with them but that’s about it.” I answered, hoping to learn more.

“Oh, dear. I guess I should start at the beginning then. Priests, or clerics in general, pray to their gods and we imbue our prayers with the Astral Power our bodies generate. Most do that in a ritual fashion during times that are significant to their patron, for example, I do so during cooking. In return, the gods lend us their own power, but as we mortals are unable to fully grasp that power, it slowly slips from us, flowing back to the gods. But as long as we hold it, we can use it to exert the power of our god unto the world. For example, my patron is Frigg, as I told you and her power centers around keeping the home and hearth safe, but also to divine the future in some ways. In addition, she allows me to heal those who have been wounded, something that most gods allow their vassals, to ease the suffering of us mortals.” Drega explained, giving me some information that seemed rather interesting but left me with even more questions.

“So, how do you actually cast spells? I mean, when I cast spells, I need to first formulate the spell I want to use in runes, draw those runes with the mental image and intent to cast the spell I thought up, and supply it with Astral Power. How do you do it?” I asked, hoping for clarity.

“Not like that. The Goddess has passed down the prayers and benedictions and their purposes, that’s all we need to know. When I heal someone, I pray to Frigg and ask her to soothe his ailings. if I want to protect someone, I pray to Frigg and ask her to warn the other from incoming danger, so they can see what would hurt them and avoid it. I am merely a vessel for the power of Frigg.” Drega explained, her voice filled with emotion.

I simply nodded, thinking about the way I taught spells to Rai; he didn’t need as much knowledge of the concepts involved, but he still needed some of it. Part of me wondered if the Gods were simply teaching such advanced spells that people couldn’t understand them. It would make sense, but I doubted that I would be able to ascertain something like that. But it explained why the spellcasting of clerics seemed so different, allowing for things that were just completely out of reach for my elemental spellcasting. There were videos of wounds melting away in seconds, whereas I would need minutes to close such a wound and it would either take a ton of power from the healer or it would greatly sap the healed one’s strength. But the priests making the videos could simply throw one healing spell after the other.

In addition, I wondered just how versatile priests could be, it sounded as if each priest was very limited depending on their patron, not just compared to me and my freewheeling spell slinging, but even compared to normal mages who had their spells memorized.

“There are also ways to directly plead to our Patron, asking them for direct intervention, that’s how miracles happen. But such occurrences are rare and require someone in great favour with their Patron, you ask them to directly work through you, afterall.” Drega added, contrasting what I had in mind.

“So, what stops someone else, someone like me, from using that sort of magic? Or what stops you from using other types of magic?” I asked.

“In essence, nothing. If you find a deity that wants to help you and accepts your arcane magic, they could lend you their power. If I would do so, the Goddess would likely no longer allow me to borrow her power.”

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Well, they did need a reason why not everyone would be able to use clerical magic, as it sounded less like magic -, needing skills, knowledge and imagination - and more like going to a higher power and begging them for help, making me secretly snigger about the fact that those who wanted to play priests and clerics would mostly need skills in sucking up.

I tried to get some more concrete informations about the gods and their follower but sadly, Drega dodged most questions with vague answers or simply smiled and kept silent, leaving me without a real clue on their capabilities.

But she did tell us some more about Kolyug, even suggesting a store where we could hope to get a good price for the Earthen Staff we had carried around for weeks. Sadly, my biggest hope, finding a public library of some sort, was dashed - there was no such thing. Information was kept by the ruling clan and an established cabal of mages of some sort and getting into their libraries would require a lot of political clout or money and even then, it would not get me access to everything they had.

Otherwise, the city was mainly a place where the various craftsman and traders had set up and banded together for security, similar to Yaksha, only on a much bigger scale.

We made our plans to explore the city until evening and then spend another night in Drega’s inn, before heading out into the wilderness once more. Ylva and Lenore retreated into their respective Hallows, Ylva because her size would be a little problematic and Lenore because she preferred her Hallow anyway.

Sigmir paid our bill, just in case we, for some reason, couldn’t come back as planned, and we left the inn, stepping into the grey, dull streets of Kolyug. The ambience of the city was not helped by the fact that a cold wind was blowing and snow was falling from a dark sky. I felt fine, my cloak keeping the wind away from me and the temperature being not too cold, but Adra and Rai looked quite miserable, looking as if they wanted to turn around and head back into the warm inn. It was funny, the last weeks hadn’t been warmer or more comfortable and we spent all of that time in the wild outdoors, sleeping under the sky, or a nearby tree at most, but after a night in a warm, comfortable inn, the two of them seemed to feel the harsh contrast especially painful. But no, they stuck it out, knowing that we would head out back into the wild the next day so postponing it would only add to their discomfort.

I simply put my hood down and added a little mist to conceal my features, just in case the Outsider-trait decided to act up again; what had happened in Yaksha had been rather strange, even knowing that I had the trait.

As we walked through the streets to the magic shop, some sort of general store for everything magic, from materials to enchantments, potions and scrolls, I noticed again how uniform the city looked. It was as if someone had taken a straight-edge to paper and afterwards used that paper-plan as a blueprint for the magic that had been used in the construction. It was something Drega had confirmed, that the whole city had been constructed using magic, magic on a huge scale. On our way, I used Lenore’s sight to look at the city through that lense and there were trails of ordered magic - not the natural, freely flowing untamed magic I was used to - woven through each part of our surroundings. Seeing that, Lenore and I discussed just how such a feat could be done, such an precise and orderly integration of magic into the whole city, where each part was linked to the next. The only thing we could come up with was that it had been done in a single casting, which, obviously, made us speculate just how such a casting, the construction of a complete city with a single spell, was possible.

Our best guess was that it had been done using ritual magic, something similar to the magic I had used to defeat the Devourer, back in Tegi. First saturating the area with channelled Astral Power, slowly increasing the amount the ritual had to work with - probably done by dozens of Spellcasters over days, maybe weeks - and then, in a concentrated and massive effort, using all that Astral Power at the same time, to shape reality to the casters will.

It was breathtaking, just imagining the amount of power needed to bend reality to their will on such a scale. It made me want to gather more power, as fast as possible; even if I doubted that I could do something similar, I wanted to see just where my limits were, what I could do if I mastered my power and reached for the top.

With such dreams of grandeur, we reached the magic shop and I put my ideas away, curious what we would learn inside.