Soul Magic was… something. Even with the skill, it was as confusing and illogical as ever. Before, I had thought that I was unable to notice the Soul in some plants or even some smaller animals because I was inexperienced with the skill and would need some time to get used to it, just as I had needed time to learn the skill in the first place but now, with the ability to, at least in theory, manipulate souls using the newly acquired Soul Magic skill I started to wonder. So far, I had only been able to manipulate souls I had previously observed with my Soul Sight, otherwise, nothing seemed to happen, at least I was unable to perceive anything. That made me wonder, was I unable to perceive souls in these things because they didn’t have one and I was failing to manipulate them because there simply wasn’t anything there or was the problem that I could only manipulate what I could perceive?

The question started me down on a path of reflection, trying to ascertain more about my unusual senses and their utility especially those that tied into my magical abilities and affinities. For example, I was slowly developing an Earth Sense, an ability that was obviously part of Earth Magic and I had learned to perceive Shadows and what was hidden within using my Darkness Magic. That brought up the question, did I rely on general knowledge that the ground was made up of earth and rocks when I used my magic to manipulate it or did I subconsciously sense what I was manipulating before doing so? If so, just how far could I stretch those senses if I focused on them and how easy would it be to push the information I gathered into my conscious mind?

I didn’t need to focus on my ears or eyes to hear and see but I needed to immerse myself in my mind to feel what my magic was telling me, something that might be useful to change. If I could sense the air around me, using my Wind Magic, or detect the slightest tremors in the ground with my Earth Magic, it would be night impossible to sneak up on me. Similarly, while I doubted I’d ever be able to sense the light all around me and use the countless reflections and refractions to sense things that were hidden from me, I might be able to use the Darkness, especially if I learned to sense the darkness that was hidden within all matter. Sadly, the biggest problem would likely be information overload because my mind just wasn’t built to filter that sort of information, meaning I would lack any supportive instinct but maybe I would be able to learn regardless. But it would take a lot of experimentation and time, luckily something I had in abundance.

Earth Magic was, unsurprisingly, the easiest to begin working on, simply because there was always ground nearby, unless I was using my cloak to fly, and the earth was quite patient, allowing me to spread my senses and contemplate what they were telling me. Sadly, just because I could spread my senses didn’t mean I could immediately figure out what they were telling me. Learning to differentiate between the density in materials I was feeling below was slow-going, meaning I could barely tell the difference between soggy, swampy ground and the rocks embedded within but it was a start.

Luckily, telling if something wasn’t something that I could manipulate with my Earth Magic was a lot easier, allowing me to sense things like roots but also air, if there was a small animal tunnel in the ground below.

Similarly, my reach was incredibly limited, just a few metres if I focused on the sensation but at least I didn’t have to let myself drift into a full meditative trance to sense anything at all. So, I was taking it as a form of success and slowly working my way upwards to more difficult and bigger things as we continued to travel.

But I wasn’t just focusing on sensing with my Earth Magic, I was also working to sense the air around me using Wind Magic and to be conscious of the Shadows in my vicinity with my Darkness Magic.

Sensing the Shadows was quite simple, something I realised I had been doing without even noticing, at least to a point. While I couldn’t instantly tell what was hidden in the darkness, I could easily find my way even without relying on my sight, simply because I could feel the cast shadows and, from that, sense the objects themself. It was quite interesting and allowed me to perceive a fair area but if I tried to push myself too hard, it only took a few seconds to develop a severe headache. Sure, in those seconds I was aware of everything within a radius of almost thirty metres but that didn’t help me much if the headache debilitated me the moment I was aware of things.

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Getting a feel for the air around me was the most interesting in its own way. At first, I tried to sense the air around me as I stood on the ground but given that we were still in the forest, there was just too much going on. There was turbulence everywhere, making it nigh impossible to tell what was going on in a specific spot and no matter what I tried, I only succeeded in getting a severe headache, often with a nosebleed added in for good measure.

So, my next step was to climb as high into a tree as I could, setting myself up on a fairly isolated branch in an attempt to get as close to the sky as possible and eliminate the clutter I was suffering from closer to the ground. It helped but only a little and my precarious position meant I had to tie myself down or would fall to the ground.

After almost dropping off the branch for the second time, I decided to try something entirely different and likely incredibly risky. Instead of sitting on a branch or the ground, I let myself rise into the sky using my cloak, letting the winds carry me. If I managed to overdo it, I might just fall out of the sky but the big advantage was that I had my own wind that I could focus on. Instead of trying to generally sense the air and let myself get inundated with the wind, I could solely focus on the wind I controlled and how it interacted with the empty air around me. That way, there were no objects cluttering the airstream, only the wind I was creating and the air that was flowing around me, nothing else, at least in my vicinity.

The difference between the ground, the branch and the open sky was remarkable. The wind allowed me to feel a lot further, at least when directing my senses in the direction the wind was blowing from, to the point that I could briefly sense the turbulence a far-distant mountain range was causing, one that I could barely make out on the horizon. Sure, the sensation was incredibly faint and I couldn’t make out any details or if anything was influencing the wind between the mountains and myself but I could get that brief glimpse. It was remarkable and incredibly fascinating, though I quickly realised that the general sense I was developing wasn’t too useful as it primarily worked with the wind that had passed something and was now moving around me. If I wanted to get an understanding of the area around me, I’d have to work out something else, this was more akin to smelling what the wind had touched than it was to sensing the world. But, as with Darkness and the Earth, it was an excellent first step, one that I wanted to expand upon as we travelled.

Equally fascinating as the experiments with my magically enhanced senses were the experiments Luna and I conducted with my Soul Magic. Since gaining the skill, things had started to get a little easier, though we still needed to be excessively careful and had to rely on trial and error a lot. Luckily, the trial and error meant I was getting a few skill points in Soul Magic and had managed to level the skill to three.

After the initial success we had with what I had dubbed a Wind Rabbit, we tried a few different critters and soon realised that there had to be some sort of association or connection between the element we wanted to infuse and the creature. Just like with people, the creature needed the right affinity and trying to infuse the wrong element was a recipe for failure. Sadly, finding out what the right affinity was turned out to be quite difficult, at least with critters. I was considering whether we should try to infuse an element into volunteers drawn from the next group of survivors but I was a little leery of that idea. Turning some poor schmuck into a smear on the wall would be traumatising for Luna, it was bad enough when some poor critter was torn apart, and I had no doubt that the people of that hypothetical community would be quite put-out.

So, we continued to experiment on critters, trying to find a way to tell their affinity in advance while creating a few new and interesting species of magical critters by releasing the survivors of our little experiments into the wild.