Once my Darkness Rune Mastery was back, I began the slightly more painful process of regaining my Blood Magic. The initial runes there had to do with the simplest processes of healing and harm, of staunching a bleeding wound and of splattering the blood out. The foundational rune of it all, similar to the way it was in Darkness and Ice, was the rune that symbolised the element as a whole, the Blood Rune. The three gave access to ordinary manipulation and the ability to shape it in a predominately helpful or harmful way.

To truly apply them, I needed access to the substance in question, namely blood. Carefully drawing my blade across my hand, I let out a hiss of discomfort, as blood started to quickly well up from the cut. Stopping myself from reflexively using Blood Magic, the simple, direct manipulation, to lessen the cut, I instead closed my eyes, remembering the vague shape in my mind. My other hand started to move and within moments, the combination of my memories and the Legacy of Morgana came together, guiding that hand and letting Astral Power flow into the world. Once the Rune was complete, I infused it with power, focusing the energies onto the bleeding wound in my hand and with a flash of power, the rune was complete, unleashing its effect into my blood.

And causing me to cry out in pain, as the Spout-Rune caused blood to gush from the wound of my hand, splattering on the floor nearby. The room was immediately filled with the coppery scent of blood, causing Silva to pace vigilantly, looking for any potential enemy.

“Girl, that was me, nothing to worry about,” I assured her, even as my hand was quickly flashing through the air again, drawing a second rune. This time, it was about healing, about staunching the flow of blood, letting it clot and heal.

Once the Clot-Rune took effect, I let out a sigh as the pain faded away, leaving behind nothing but a faint scar, and even that would soon be gone.

Now, I just had to remove the splattered blood and luckily, a combination of Blood and Devour-Runes was perfectly capable of doing that, leaving the floor mostly clean and certainly without any magical significance or link to me. Of that, I was certain and made a mental note to make sure not to leave any hair or similar objects behind. While I was mostly confident that nobody had the ability to use such foci just yet, forming a vigilant mindset couldn’t begin too early.

Next, I decided to test if I had gained Lenore’s magical sight from the Raven’s Shadow Trait. I knew there was magic in the area, I knew what types, so I should be able to make some sense of things, if I saw something. And if I saw nothing, I would know that I hadn’t gained her sight.

Remembering how it had felt when she shared her sight, I focused on my Astral Power, trying to channel it into my eyes. For a few seconds, there was nothing but a slowly growing irritation as I wanted to blink until I felt as if a switch had flicked and suddenly, it was as if a filter was placed over my eyes, only this filter didn’t change the colour of everything into sepia, it added a thin layer of colours to my sight, differing in vibrancy and depth, likely indicating the amount of magic of a given type I was looking at.

The area I had used to experiment had the obvious traces of Blood- and Darkness-Magic, but what surprised me was there there was a lot more in the area, not just on top of the world but within the world itself.

For a moment, I just stared, my mind wrangling with my senses, trying to interpret what I saw and form a coherent image from the data my eyes were gathering. Finally, it was as if I was looking at one of those optical illusions, in which you first see two wine glasses, until your mind shifts and suddenly, you see two kissing people. It was a similar shift, only instead of kissing people, I realised that I wasn’t just looking at the mundane matter. I was looking at matter that was being infused with vast amounts of Astral Power, enough to overload my senses. My senses must have simply ignored them, refusing to acknowledge the existence of that power in self-defence, only for my mind to stare into the sun, with the expected effect.

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Cursing, I rapidly blinked, trying to get rid of the dancing spots before my eyes. A small part of me wondered what would happen if I focused on my innate magical perception. It let me perceive magic as scent and taste, the information never as open as Lenore’s senses had been, but better when it came to parsing minute differences, recognising and following traces. Both had their advantages, though I readily admitted that for a lot of activities, sight was the more important sense. Likely because my mind had evolved to process visual information, in opposition to something like a canine mind, which likely would be able to glean even more from scent and taste than I, but given that my mind was, at least for now, mostly human, there was nothing to be done about it.

But having learned my lesson, I didn’t try to use my own senses, instead, I closed my eyes, letting my mind relax. Delving into the Astral River had always been a comforting and calming activity, allowing me to learn quite a bit about the world of Mundus. Now, I had to introduce myself to that odd realm that covered the entire world, within the ground, in the atmosphere and even beyond that. Or maybe it was to re-acquaint, I had never learned just how far the Astral River stretched, the furthest I had gone on Mundus was to the frozen surface of their moon.

The best comparison I had managed to come up with was that it was similar to a circulatory system, carrying power to every part of the planet, just like the circulatory system carried blood to every part of the body. And just like within a circulatory system, there were major and minor veins, some easily detected, others only inferred by the simple fact that there was Astral Power in the area.

Slowly easing my mind outwards, I opened up my senses, not trying to directly enter the Astral River, but merely glimpsing it, dipping my toes in to test the waters, so to speak. Given the roiling, chaotic nature of the magic infusing everything, I was going in carefully, trying to get my bearings before I was swept away.

And it was a good thing that I did, if the Astral River I had experienced on Mundus was akin to a wide, placid stream, the Astral River I could feel here was more akin to a torrential flood, streams of power breaking through the previously magically inert reality and carving their channels into the world.

The streams of power were raging, violently ebbing and swelling as they infused reality. Just imagining delving into them sent a cold shiver down my spine, as I could almost feel my mind and soul get swept away to some distant place, maybe with enough force to sever the thread that connected my spiritual body to my physical body. If that happened, I was relatively sure my body would simply wither and die, as if my spirit had been extinguished by powerful magic, while my spiritual body would linger, until the last of my Astral Power was drained and it would fade, too. A lost soul, fading away into whatever afterlife might have in store for me.

For a while, I simply let myself observe the roiling Astral, not trying to interact with it in any way, just watching. It was oddly calming, akin to watching a thunderstorm through a window, the extreme violence of nature just a short distance away from you and yet separate.

But the Astral wasn’t truly separate and I knew that. A single misstep would see me ripped away, my spirit torn to pieces by the powers that were changing the reality I had always lived in.

Finally, I opened my eyes back up, somewhat refreshed and calm. A message informed me that I had gained the Astral Meditation Skill and had even levelled it to two. The gain was welcome and yet, in the whole ordeal, it was the least I had gained. The change in perspective I had gained was much more important, allowing me to see the world in a different light. The damage and horror Morgana had wrought, I had wrought, on Mundus had been mere superficial changes, at most I had unleashed a being that shouldn’t be sealed, a necessary entity in the cycle of a world.

Compared to the forces of nature that ravaged my world, my actions were akin to a tempest in a teapot. The changes brought by the forces I could see were altering the very fabric of reality, turning it into something fundamentally different. Compared to that, I was nothing.

Somehow, that knowledge helped me calm down, as amusing as it was to my thinking mind. Emotions could be truly weird and understanding them would likely always be a challenge for me.

But at least night had fallen and I didn’t need to hide from the accursed sun.