Projecting my soul outwards was only the first step when it came to perceiving souls. Once I managed that first step, the next was to change the path I naturally channelled it through to the one desired, in my case that meant I had to channel it through my eyes instead of my throat, so I would be able to see souls instead of being able to smell and taste them. It was a little amusing to me that apparently my natural inclination when it came to perception was olfactory and gustatory, making me wonder what a soul would taste like. Maybe cotton candy if it was a nice and sweet person, or maybe akin to hot sauce if the person was particularly aggressive. Sadly, these two senses were fairly unsuitable for the perception of souls, simply because of the direct involvement needed for them to work. Sight worked indirectly, off reflections from the perceived subject while scent and taste required direct exposure. Or, in other words, it would be fairly useless to be able to tell that there was a soul present after I had bitten into something because, at that point, I’d have other problems. Granted, it might work by licking some substance but, again, not the most practical way of searching for souls. Unless I wanted to find out if Icecream had a soul, in that case, I might be golden.
Luckily, I had Lady Hecate with me and under her guidance, I slowly changed the channel my soul would naturally take towards a more suitable one. Namely, towards my sight. Amusingly, her lessons expanded a little when she realised that my natural sensory inclination for magic was the same as it was for souls, something apparently fairly common, but that I had inherited the magical sight from Lenore, allowing me to perceive magic through my eyes as a secondary sense. Given the similarities in the process, she pushed me towards learning how to switch my perception naturally instead of relying on the inherited skill, which was a fascinating process.
And, to make things even better, she gave me lessons towards parsing the magic I was seeing, similar to the way I could already parse the magic I was smelling and tasting. My eyes were still not as accurate when it came to the different subtexts but I was getting there and beginning to learn how to unravel magical processes by sight alone. To help me develop that ability, Lady Hecate had created a wide, wide variety of magical effects, just hanging in the endless grey expanse around us, allowing me to study them at my leisure.
It was an impossible, maddening challenge, like putting me into a huge library but one where I couldn’t read the languages used, at least not fully. Instead, I had to study effects I could somewhat understand, mostly Ice, Darkness or even Blood magical effects She had created, and from there, I could somewhat draw inferences in regards to the other effects. At least to a point, some processes looked similar, regardless of the magic they were created with but given the limited options, it was slow going. To make matters even more difficult, Lady Hecate wasn’t showing me the results of the magical effects, only a snapshot of the process at one of its points. It could be an explosive fireball as it would look while it was flying towards somebody or it might be a Blood Curse as it would look like the moment it entered the target’s system. How she had done that last image, I had no idea, given that there was nothing for the curse to work on and yet, it appeared to my senses as if the curse would take effect the next moment, spreading through something that just wasn’t there. At least nothing I could detect but given that we were in the realm of Hecate, I probably shouldn’t be surprised that she could do whatever She wanted in regards to her Domain.
Sadly, even with all that help She was giving me, it would take some time to get used to this new way of studying magic. A lot of time, most likely, but Lady Hecate assured me I’d eventually learn how to understand any magic I saw if I only kept working on the skill. And working on it, I would, even as Her assurance brought a wide grin to my face. Maybe I had neglected my Insight a little too much due to my focus on improving my Intelligence, something I might want to correct sometime in the future.
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Once I was able to push my soul towards my eyes, Lady Hecate gave me something to look for, creating dozens of animated constructs, all looking identical, but with a single soul hiding amongst them. My task was to find the soul, which was harder than I would have imagined, but slowly, and with a lot of effort, I was getting there.
By the time I got to that point, I no longer had any idea how long I had been in Her realm, though I honestly didn’t mind too much. I was fairly certain that, no matter how long I was with Her, I would wake up during the evening of the same day I had gone to sleep, as I had before, so I was taking the time She was granting me as a reward and trying to make the most of it. For some reason, She had decided to give me this fairly major boon and I was nothing but grateful.
Alas, all things had to come to an end. In this case, the end came when I was able to successfully spot the soul seven times out of ten, which I considered an acceptable feat. To make things even better, I had managed to decipher a few of the magical processes she had left in the air around me, taking inspiration from the way She used Her magic and planning to work some of these ideas into my own spellcasting. After all, if there was one being who knew a lot about magic, it would be the literal Goddess of Magic, meaning I would be a fool of the highest calibre if I didn’t take advantage of her reward. And I didn’t think I was a fool.
Sadly, taking what I had learned and applying it to what I could do would, as so many things, take time. Time outside of Lady Hecate’s realm, time to test and experiment. But I would make the time, hopefully allowing me to perform some amazing feats of magic.
With the lessons over, Lady Hecate bid me farewell and for a moment, I was surrounded by darkness before realising that the darkness wasn’t actually that but that my eyes were shut. It took a few more moments for my mind, or maybe my soul, to fully control my body once more, the sensation eerily similar to that of the capsule and Road to Purgatory, so I could open my eyes.
Looking around, I quickly confirmed that, yes, it had only been about eight hours since I went to sleep and somehow, despite having spent countless hours working with Lady Hecate I felt fully rested as if I had simply slept the hours away. For a brief moment, I was utterly jealous of the Goddess, only to realise how silly that emotion was. She was simply far more powerful and knowledgeable about magic, it was a simple fact I had to accept. She could do things I could only wish for, had literally the ability to create Divine Miracles, so jealousy was a little… silly. Some day, I might be able to do the same. Manipulating time, maybe using Darkness and what I thought might be its ultimate concept, the Void. Black Holes sprung to mind, gravity strong enough that even the light couldn’t escape. If I remember correctly, they could distort time, even if I wasn’t sure if that idea only came from science fiction or if there was fact behind it, too. And even if there was, I wasn’t quite powerful enough to create something that dense, nor would I be able to control the resulting forces.
With my eyes now open, they flickered to the notifications I had received in Lady Hecate’s realm and was happy to see that I hadn’t just received the EXP from the quest she had sent us on, just barely enough to bring me to level eighty-one, but I had also gained a single point in Intuition, bringing the attribute to fifty and granting me a trait.
Though, what I was supposed to think about the fact that the trait I had gained was called Soul Perception, improving my ability to see souls, to go with the Special Ability I had gained in Lady Hecate’s realm called Soul Sight, I wasn’t quite sure.
It made me wonder if that was a coincidence or if a certain Goddess of Magic, Crossroads and quite a few other things had slightly put her finger on the scale or weighted down the dice.
Just a little amused, I pushed myself up, curious how the others had fared and what they had received as their just rewards.