Waking up was a slow, gradual process. While my body felt fine, my mind felt like it was a little slow, not up to the task of fully operating. Half-remembered dreams, of the lonely journey the moon made through the darkness, of a slowly changing world, changed by the eternal observation of an eternally frozen observer. The experience brought back the question, just what had I made contact with?

There were various myths about creatures living on the moon, or stories about them being sealed within the moon. The Jade Hare was, for obvious reasons, one of my favourites, the loyal companion and diligent worker, toiling away for the immortals who went to have their various shenanigans.

On the other hand, Pantheon seemed to have taken a lot of Norse and Greek myths into their work, even the name of the company implied a Greek connection, so some deity might call the moon their home. Or I might be completely off-base, creating conjecture from missing information, filling in what I didn’t know, which was a lot, with speculation, building on that speculation and coming up with a solution of two plus two equalling twenty-two.

Another possibility I had to keep in mind, maybe a cautious mind, was that the Moon orbiting Mundus was similar to the Soul-Prison I was carrying around. Some ancient entity imprisoned within, something I might have woken up with my probing, contained but not diminished like the one within my Soul-Prison. There was a certain story-book feel to it, giving Pantheon a powerful entity that they could use in some future content, opening up new frontiers and all that, but what if they had essentially placed it there, ready to be used, and I had accidentally kicked off the festivities early? Again, lacking information prevented me from doing more than widely speculating, even as I was considering whether a bond to such an entity would be entirely bad.

Similarly to my situation with the Soul-Prison in my pack, it would be something making me a stand-out character, not merely one of dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands of content creators covering high-end Road to Purgatory-Content using a character with a magical bend. Did I want to be one of those masses, struggling tooth and nail to get myself truly established, something inherently difficult, even with the modest fame I had from my identity as Titania and the things I had done on Mundus until now? Or did I want to be that one unique perspective, even if it might mean serious trouble down the road, in addition to being relatively limited when it came to faction-interaction?

For now, my answer was that standing out as unique was to be desired, at least on Mundus. In addition, if I managed to time the big event I anticipated if, or rather when, I managed to crack open the Soul-Prison to be close to the end of the Beta, showing off everything I was able to do right before knowledge on my capabilities would become worthless, I would be well set-up with followers. I might even be able to secure some monetary deals from that, something I had to consider for after the beta, once my year-long vacation was over.

But for the time being, I snuggled a little closer, if such was even possible, into Sigmir, enjoying her presence. I felt her arms wrapped around me, keeping me in a protective embrace. She must have noticed me waking, as she shifted against me, so she could look at my face.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked, concern visible on her face.

“Some strange dreams but that was to be expected after my experience last night. It was…” my voice trailed off, not sure what word to use. It had been confusing, intriguing and thoroughly weird but there was simply no word to briefly describe it.

“That might have been it. You’ve been clinging to me all night.” she explained, causing me to blush a little. Briefly, I was reminded that I would have to come up with something to prepare myself for the end of the Beta and my separation from Sigmir, unless I found a way around it, but I pushed the thought away as quickly as it appeared, there would be more than enough time to deal with it later, for now it would only cause me grief. For once, I was thoroughly enjoying an interpersonal relationship, even if it might be with the result of a complex algorithm, it felt right and feeling right and comfortable was not something that I was used to feeling.

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To hide my moment of discomfort, I gave Sigmir a quick kiss before pushing myself up, using a brief spell to make sure my body and clothes were pristine. The spell had been in the Grimoire the Grandmother had given me, the first I had ever learned from it, and but crafted in a way that I was unable to understand it, the underlying principles a mystery to me. It worked but I couldn’t even begin to describe why, even now. It made me a little uneasy but the sheer usefulness of the spell outweighed my caution. It helped that Lenore and I had carefully checked to see if there was an outgoing connection or something like that, finding one.

“Where are the others?” I asked when I noticed that the camp around us was empty and the sun higher in the sky than anticipated, demonstrating that my sleep had indeed been deep, to make me lose track of the world to such an extent.

“They are scouting and hunting, I thought you might want to take a day off from travelling. In addition, we could use some fresh meat, our stocks are slowly running low.” Sigmir explained, causing me to nod, again.

“That doesn’t sound too bad. It’ll allow me to familiarise myself with the changes to my body and magic.” I admitted, prodding Lenore awake, planning to start with the biggest change, my new type of magic.

“I’ll take some distance, I’m not sure just how well I’ll be able to control the changes.” I added, to which Sigmir nodded, while keeping a close eye on me. Thanks to our connection I was aware that she was worried but I didn’t know what to do about it, how to assure her. Only time could do so, so time had to pass.

While I was walking some twenty meters away from camp, Lenore turned her attention to our surroundings, mentally joining with me to plan out the best way for me to get to know Death Magic and how to use it. I had watched Lenore use it quite a few times, for everything from simply killing something ,literally ripping away its life-force, to raising up the dead as undead monstrosities or even devour will-o-wisps, something she was assuring me would kill me.

“The easiest would be to observe the process of dying, to familiarise yourself with the magical aspects of it.” Lenore told me, guiding my attention to a nearby flower.

“Pick it and watch. I will lend you my sight, and show you what to look for.” she added and I followed her advice. It was an ability I had gained thanks to her, so listening to her advice seemed like a good idea.

After picking the flower, a small wild-flower with white petals, I sat down, leaning against a nearby tree and started watching. When fully focusing on the flower, pushing the world around me away, Lenore’s sight allowed me to gain a vague understanding of the elemental make-up of the flower, elemental in the meaning of its most fundamental parts but also of the elements, of faint traces of elemental aligned Astral Power. It was difficult to see, without my recent attribute-boosts most likely impossible, but together with Lenore, I was able to see.

That alone was interesting, watching how the tiny amount of Astral Power within the flower was composed out of different elements, all complimenting another to form a blended whole but that wasn’t what I was after. No, it was the slow process in which the Astral Power that had been within the flower was slowly changing, parts of it fading while others transformed.

“That is Death-Energy, the energy remaining after life has faded.” Lenore told me after almost an hour of watching the flower. My own senses had allowed me to get an impression as well, the sweet smell of life, oh so similar to the aroma of the flower itself, slowly fading away, giving off a smell that faintly reminded me of the Barrow Den.

“I see it.” I needlessly confirmed, she had been closely linked to my mind but it felt right nonetheless.

“Now, manipulate it. Draw it out, strengthen it.” she told me, her mind supplying how she would do it. I couldn’t just follow her example, my mind worked in a different way but her guidance allowed me to find the right way within my mind.

For a moment, I felt as if I was trying to push a heavy boulder uphill, a strong resistance that suddenly broke, Astral Power flowing out of me in an almost painful manner. The flower in my hand, the target of my manipulation, crumbled to dust, most of it getting carried away by the wind.

“That is Death-Magic.” Lenore told me, as I looked at my slightly dusty hand, that had held the plucked flower just moments before, while a blue window informed me that my Death Magic skill had reached level two.