“And you think this will work?” I asked Lenore, as we were flying back to the others.

“Think about it.” she replied, with a mental smirk, before explaining. “If, tomorrow, we would get a magical message from Dura Friebringer, telling us we would perish if we take a specific path, would you instantly decide to rush down that path as fast as possible?” she asked, causing me to mentally agree even if such a warning came from someone who was most likely an enemy, I wouldn’t act contrary to it without a reason. I might disregard the warning and take the path anyway but I would be cautious, paranoid that it might be some sort of trap, the warning a ploy of reverse psychology. I might take a totally different path, I might decide on a number of things, depending on the circumstances, but the one thing I couldn’t imagine doing was simply rushing ahead. Even if the warning came from a suspect source.

“I see what you mean.” I admitted, smiling at her deception.“What do you think they’ll do?” I asked, curious what she thought.

“It looked like they haven't been told about our falling out with their people. At least I think that their reaction would have looked different if they had, but I cannot be sure. But if I’m right, they most likely will discuss the issue, trying to come up with an explanation before heading in a different direction, careful not to run into the trouble that would have caused them to perish. If nothing else, they’ll act more careful than what I observed yesterday and this morning.” she explained and, again, I had to grin at the fact that she, the avian, seemed to have a better understanding of humanoid social relations.

The rest of our flight, we spent in discussion on the way we might be able to improve upon the combination-spell we had used to talk to Harms and his friends. In many ways, it was a relatively short-range communication-spell, as such things were measured. The next step would be to experiment if we would be able to cast the spells needed from a position within the Astral River, which would be a massive accomplishment. Not just for the purpose of communicating, even if that would be a neat side-benefit, but just for the ability to scry and thus spy on people as long as we were able to locate their position from within the Astral.

With a sigh, both happy and annoyed, I realised that the list of magical experimentation had expanded once more, Just looking at the list showed me how much I didn’t know, topics I had somehow touched upon but never been able to expand on.

Just looking at Darkness-Magic, there was the strange teleportation I had used back when we had avenged Sigmir’s Father. Somehow, I had been able to move through the shadow, quite similar to the way Rai was able to since crossing the first Divide, but I had been unable to replicate my feat or duplicate his class-ability. It was something I really wanted to learn, almost desperately so, because it was a wholly different mode of movement, which would increase my survivability by a lot. Maybe by orders of magnitude, it would depend on the specifics.

Then there was an exploration of the Magic-Rune of Darkness, based on the aspect of Change inherent to the element. I had been able to disturb other people’s magic with it and broken a few spells but there were so many more possible ways that a rune like that might be used. It was just a matter of experimentation and thus time, which was preventing me.

Now, there was scrying through the Astral that had been added to that particular list, which was merely a sub-list of the whole topic.

Just as I considered to focus on the exploration of Darkness-Magic, I remembered my troubles with healing those orcs, just a few days prior, and the need to improve upon my Blood Magic, as it was lagging behind my other two innate affinities. I had done some experimentation with carving magical runes and formations directly into flesh, using Blood Magic to link them with the person I was carving into, but it didn't work out quite as planned. But since then, I had learned quite a bit about the creation of magical objects from the dwarves and been able to figure out some enchantments on non-living material, mostly using my Ice-Magic. Which might allow me to go back into the process of carving runic formations into flesh, which was essentially directly enchanting the body, using the flesh as material and blood as a medium. It had worked with that centaur-traveller, to the point that the runic formations were considered equipment by the system governing our revival, making me think I was on the right path. But even if I wasn’t, there might be interesting derivative knowledge in that direction, just waiting for me to discover it. Which, again, would require time and test-subjects.

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The test-subjects were the truly problematic part, time could be made but acquiring test-subjects came with its own set of problems. I might be able to train my healing by offering those services for free in a large city, experimenting on the poor, the downtrodden, those nobody would miss, but then, such an approach had its own problems. One was that it might get me a problematic reputation, as even if I was extraordinarily careful with the disposal of my failed experiments, rumours would spread. Another was that it seemed as if religion was essentially using healing-magic as a major draw, with only a few nature-based spellcasters competing with them. Even ignoring the whole “evil Blood-Magic and immoral experimentation”-angle, they might simply want to stop the competition. In addition, I had a rather bad track-record with cities and groups of sapients so maybe a city was not my natural habitat.

Finally, the element I had spent the most time on, done the most experiments with and thus, progressed the furthest with, my Ice-Magic. It felt the most comfortable to me, the most natural and I thought I was slowly starting to master it, or at least one aspect of it. My use of Ice-Magic had mostly focused on the physical aspects of Ice and Cold, the manipulation of particles. But there was another aspect, as evidenced by the existence of the Rune of Stillness and by extension the freezing of Time hinted at in some descriptions.

The connection between those concepts and the Ice-Magic I had explored thus far was only tenuous, unless I began to consider the molecular level. What happened when matter was unable to interact, what happened to time? Could I freeze time within a small area, or was there a way to interact with the underlying space, the vast emptiness between particles? Or even within particles? Concepts on that level, and trying to imagine them, gave me a headache, but it was fascinating, making me mentally poke that bear, no matter how often I ran into a mental wall.

In addition to my innate elements, there were two more possible disciplines to research. One was the Death-Magic I had been imprinted with by Lenore, a fascinating subject if there ever was one. There were so many possible ways to go about understanding it, so many things to learn and it was a subject I was just starting with, so I would be able to celebrate early success quite often, until I got to the more difficult parts.

The other was Mind-Magic, the composite magic that was influenced by the elements that became part of it. It was the most flexible magic, the one that seemed to be the magic that would be the most individual, unique to only me, which might be both good and bad. Certainly, it was a worthy subject to study, if only I had the time.

Throw in the magic items we had acquired, and the ones I had created, and there was another subject to study, experiment on and understand. Just the latest, the cloak I had been given by Dura Firebringer, seemed to use Darkness-Magic to create portable shade but it felt as if there might be more to it, actually a cooling effect. But how that cooling-effect might work was a mystery I hadn’t had the time to look into. Time, time, time, there was just not enough time to investigate everything properly.

There was a saying on Earth, that modern science was capable of its feats because we were standing on the shoulders of giants, allowing us to see further than ever before. Something similar was true for Mundus, the various magical schools of thought had their own traditions, their own past that allowed them to see further than I would be able to, just standing on my own.

But at the same time, I had once read somewhere that, if a mathematician didn’t write their ground-breaking thesis by the time they turned thirteen, they would never write it. The idea was that once a mathematician was trained to think in the current paradigm, they would never be able to break that paradigm, to innovate and create a new one on their own. The Grandmother had warned me of a similar problem with Magic, that once I followed the path of another, it would be nigh impossible to forge my own path.

“Can you give me directions? We should be near them, but without your connection to Sigmir, finding them will be difficult.” Lenroe’s mental voice broke my considerations, leaving me once again without a firm solution. Instead, I looked into myself, feeling the connection to Sigmir.

“This way.” I told her, mentally adding directions. Finding Sigimir, finding my home in this world, would always be a trivial task for me.