It didn’t take long for Sonja to make her decision. In fact, after I made the offer, she didn’t even leave the room, she only talked for a few moments with the boy I had thrown into the Astral River earlier before sitting in the corner, thinking for a few minutes before returning to me with a counteroffer. Or maybe calling it an expanded suggestion would be more fitting.

She wanted to take the deal, but to open the deal to the boy, Lars, as well. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was her brother, boyfriend or whatever, but she wanted to have him work with her on the project and, in turn, get the same benefits I had offered earlier.

It wasn’t a bad deal and, quite frankly, I was somewhat curious what the difference in regards to their connection to the Astral River I had noticed before would amount to, so I didn’t really mind. It would make the deal more favourable to them, as I wouldn’t get any additional information, I’d only get the information I was interested in faster while having to teach two pupils instead of one, but given that teaching literally had its own benefits, it wasn’t all that bad.

Now, I only needed to turn my own knowledge into a lesson digestible by these teenagers, something they could understand without the instincts gained from higher attributes, affinities and abilities I had. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be an easy task, but nothing ever was. Maybe I should take the time and start writing those lessons down as I prepared them, I had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last time I’d teach somebody about the fundamental parts of magic.

As soon as I had that thought, I realised just how important this kind of writing might be. Back, before we left the forest, Luna had suggested that we write down our findings to share with others as an act the Lady Hecate would strongly approve of, to the point that Luna got a divine quest to do just that. And that was only writing down our findings in regards to that particular, if particularly weird, forest, not the entire body of magic and our knowledge about it.

With that determination in mind, I got myself a notebook and started writing. It wasn’t anything coherent, merely getting the initial thoughts out of my mind and onto the paper, so I could start formulating them into an understandable text in the future. For example, I wasn’t sure where to begin my introduction to magic. Should I begin with the Astral River, as I considered it the source of all magic as it had brought that power to our reality and was still embedding itself deeper in it? Or should I start with the system, my findings in regard to it and how it related to and qualified affinities? Both were integral parts of the field of magic, with deep and far-reaching consequences, so with which should I start? Or should I start with the Lady Hecate, as She was part of the reason why I was writing this in the first place and held dominion about magic?

I wasn’t sure, but once the mess of thoughts within my mind had finished flowing onto the pages of my notebook, I might find a good place to start. Or maybe it would be a bad place, I wasn’t sure but at the end of the day, I didn’t need certainty. I had a feeling this project would be one for a lifetime, an endless labour that I might come to love, or maybe I would abandon it. Either way, having a written compilation of my understanding of the foundations and intricacies of magic would be useful. If only to give myself a way to keep track of my thoughts, sometimes there were simply too many of them and they could get away from me, even with my fairly high Intelligence.

This thought made me wonder, how exactly did the Intelligence attribute correlate with the quality of one’s memory? It supposedly made the memory work better, but how exactly? Could I recall details in greater fidelity or did I simply forget less of the trivial details? But if so, what was a trivial detail? For example, the names of the people introduced only this morning, I could remember a few of them but not all. Just as I couldn’t exactly remember how many weapons of which type they had used, or their clothes. I had something of a general idea but the details were lacking, maybe because I didn’t care about them.

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As I thought back to the introduction, my mind started to fill in the blanks of the image, only I wasn’t sure if it was filling them in correctly. Did I truly remember the slogans of that one guy’s t-shirt correctly or had I only registered that it was something humorous and was now imagining something that would fit with that recollection? Did I recall correctly that four of the locals had used bows, three had used simple javelins, three more had slings while two had no real ranged weapons at all, only their arms to throw rocks with, and a sharpened stick lying near their feet? In a way, those were some fairly insignificant details but in another way, it was incredibly important tactical information that could make the difference between life or death. But how did my mind, my subconscious, filter what was important and what wasn’t, if the definition of important changed over time and due to different circumstances?

Shaking my head, I made sure to note down to have my minions ask the people about their intelligence attribute and whether they felt an impact of their ability to remember things. It most likely would amount to nothing, simply because memories and the quality of them were completely subjective, but it was interesting. And even the smallest chance of success was worthy of being investigated.

However, in regards to the unreliability of the information gained, maybe there was a way to make things more reliable. I was, after all, somewhat adept at Mind Magic, meaning there was no reason why I couldn’t employ magic in an attempt to learn more about the way the mind worked, or in this case, memory worked.

Closing my eyes once again, I focused inwards. Not trying to delve into the intricacies of Astral Power flowing through my body, not trying to sense anything using my Blood Magic, no, for once, I was seeking to understand my mind. Carefully, oh-so-carefully, I channelled a smidgen of Astral Power, barely enough to count, in an attempt to read my own memories.

I had to be incredibly careful because if there was one place I didn’t want to be careless, it was my own mind, or my own brain. I had no idea how this would work, so acting with the utmost caution was not only prudent, it was imperative. Just a bit too much power and I might end up crippling myself, thus, I was prepared to withdraw at even the smallest bit of pain or discomfort.

Thinking back to the ways I had previously used Mind Magic in failed attempts to delve into the memory of other people, I sought out the boundaries of my mind, looking for the right place to start. The biggest problem was the lack of simple visualisation. an image that allowed me to make sense of the sensations I received. I could sense other minds and visualised them as burning candles, the mental image too useful to discard because of my dislike of fire, but when it came to my own mind, I couldn’t really do that. I wasn’t fire, I would never be fire, I might use fire, but I wasn’t fire. It might be a mental block, but I simply couldn’t visualise myself as fire, there was a fundamental incompatibility. As if I was trying to lie to myself while knowing I was lying to myself at the same time as trying to convince myself I wasn’t lying. It simply couldn’t work.

Leaving me, once again, at a loss as the usual image didn’t work. I’d either need to form an entirely new image or I’d have to find a way to make myself comfortable as fire. A flame, only for myself.

Almost unbidden, a memory intruded into the serenity of my thoughts, one triggered by that very idea. A flame for myself, my own flame…

My own Flame. Like the freezingly cold flames, I had conjured when Sigmir died. It had been my own flame, a flame I was fully comfortable with as it was, one that was so much part of myself I had conjured it without thought, without any concept but the need to overcome impossible odds. A flame that wasn’t Fire.

Maybe I should try to find that impossibly cold flame, if only because it was a deeply ingrained part of myself. And, if there was one thing a dragon truly needed to grow up, it was their own flame. Given that I had a trait called Dragon-Touched, one had become part of my own class, finding that flame might be more important than just having something I could visualise my own mind as.

Shaking my head once again, I opened my eyes, found a new page in the notebook I had been using and started to write. There was much to do, and the list of it only became longer each day.