Madris stuck around for a while after Regina returned, and she paid a bit more attention to her. It was plain to see that her teacher was happier; clearly, making up with her younger sister — she’d asked and it turned out her impression was correct and Icnes was indeed the younger one — had boosted her mood. Regina still wasn’t entirely clear on what they had fought about, or planned, or for that matter how much of their issues they’d worked through, but she was happy to see it.
Of course, perhaps as a side effect of that, Madris was also more enthusiastic in her pursuits, which included some magical research and teaching Regina. She seemed to have decided that it was time to renew their lessons.
At the same time, Galatea had finally returned from an extended trip, and said she was also planning to stick around for a while. Regina was happy to hear that, too, but she didn’t quite realize it would lead to the two of them teaming up regarding their common goals. After some quiet maneuvering, or so she surmised, they seemed to have come to some kind of agreement.
Which brought all three of them plus June sitting outside in the garden one afternoon, a few days after she’d secured the Hivekind’s stasis pod, and looking at what must have been a ritual circle carved into a sheet of metal spread on the ground. The piles of materials on both sides were a pretty big hint. The two older women must have cooperated on it, they were both smiling in apparent satisfaction.
“This looks surprisingly simple considering the way you both are grinning,” Regina said.
“We are hardly grinning,” said Madris calmly, but still with a hint of that characteristic ‘disappointed teacher’ tone. “And this might look simple, but preparing the metal was the easy part. The hard one was working out all the details of how we should set up the circles.”
Regina shrugged. “I admit ritual magic still isn’t my strong suit,” she said. She could memorize some metaphysical rules and properties of ingredients, and had made a cursory attempt at it, but the way they all fit together to produce a ritual, the logic behind how it would work, just didn’t make sense to her. It was like some kind of twisted logic puzzle where someone had deliberately used the wrong kind of puzzle pieces and replaced ‘logic’ with ‘esoteric nonsense and ridiculous brain-bending pseudo-logic‘, or maybe absurdist humor. Simple rituals were fine, but going beyond that, trying to make her own? Regina wasn’t too proud to admit she wasn’t cut out for that. She’d focused on other things, in the copious free time she had when she’d managed to carve out some time to devote to her magic.
“Believe me, I know,” Galatea said. “It frankly isn’t mine, either, but Madris and I were in agreement that a ritual would be best for this particular project. We consulted with Zephyr as well, but he doesn’t know all the details.”
“While I’m glad to see your newfound closeness is producing results, what is this thing meant to accomplish?”
“I was wondering that, too,” June piped up, staring down at the circle. “Does this include psychic magic?”
Regina was sure it did, she could pick up that much, even if Madris hadn’t been involved.
“The purpose of this is two-fold,” Madris explained. “First, to help your efforts to find other people to train in the psychic arts. You’re hardly going to have much success just groping around blindly. As I told you before, Regina, you’re not the first to have tried teaching mages psychic skills.” Regina nodded with a slight grimace, she remembered that. “Finding people with latent psychic ability, or perhaps just magic that can be easily bent to that purpose — admittedly, the details of how it might work aren’t thoroughly explored. Occasionally, a student will have a breakthrough like June. Congratulations again,” she added, nodding at June. “Sometimes they’ll develop some basic competency but are unable to delve deeper. Who might show success is unpredictable. That is why we’re here.”
“The second part is to help train them if we do find a good candidate,” Galatea added.
“It’s rather theoretical,” Madris said, unperturbed, “but I’m eager to see what comes of it, personally.”
Regina tugged on her mandible, taking a moment to think about their introduction. “I’ve got a few questions,” she said. “First of all, before we get into the mechanics of it, you said people have tried things like this before, Madris. But not something like this? What makes your creation different?”
Madris smiled again. It looked vaguely menacing, although that probably wasn’t the intention. “Well, to put it shortly, because Galatea offered something my contacts didn’t have. There’s a tiny bit of soul magic involved here.”
Regina sucked in a breath. She switched her gaze to Galatea and raised an eyebrow questioningly. “I wasn’t aware you knew soul magic.” Whatever that actually was, she could only think of however the old Hivekind had apparently moved people’s souls into Hive Queen eggs as an example.
Galatea shrugged. “As I said, I only picked up a little bit from my source — you know who I’m talking about,” she added, and Regina nodded, mentally translating it to ‘Leian’. “They say it’s not their specialty, and while I’m sure there’s some things they’ve kept to themselves, I do understand their point; it’s not the kind of thing you want someone half-trained messing about with, generally. But I do know a few very basic principles, and one of them struck me as appropriate here, inspiring our approach to this problem. The principle of brain-mind-soul reflection in particular. I wouldn’t even say there’s really soul magic involved here, necessarily.”
“… Alright,” Regina said dubiously. “But how does it relate? How did you do this?”
What followed was a rather complicated explanation, and Regina made mental notes to ask for clarification on a few of the points later. It reminded her that she was talking to probably two of the most experienced and skilled mages she was ever likely to meet. However, she had learned enough herself that she mostly followed their explanation.
As Galatea explained, having magic left traces. The soul was connected to the body, primarily the brain — “Not physically, of course, it’s a metaphysical connection” — Alright, she was willing to trust her on that one — and the same went for the mind, obviously. A person’s magic potential was presumably linked to it or at least reflected on their soul (the ‘outer parts’, apparently, though Galatea didn’t seem to know more than the term). It made sense when Regina thought about it for a moment. After all, she’d apparently possessed excellent if latent magic aptitude as a human, so the Hivekind had approached her, and they hadn’t worried about it changing once they got her soul apart from her body and moved into a new one. The same was clearly true of (latent or not) psychic ability, which was some kind of variant of a magical talent — it generally only occurred in mages, even ones with minor and undeveloped potential. Of course, the problem was that they couldn’t exactly see people’s souls to check them.
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That was where it got actually complicated. Madris and Galatea had worked out a scheme for analyzing fluctuations in a person’s innate mana, especially around the head. The usual abstraction was a ‘mana pool’, but actually mana was spread through and around the body — metaphysically, of course — and use of magic could be detected that way. They were now looking for patterns that corresponded to psychic ability. It would be a lot harder than just testing if people could accomplish something magically, the normal method for testing mages, but in theory, it could help. Whether they would have to focus on telling test subjects to try hard to reach out to other minds and use psychic magic, or whether it would be more of a passive scan was still an open question. They’d just have to try things. And probably refine and develop this particular setup further.
“It sounds like we have a lot of testing ahead of us,” Regina finally concluded. “That’s not a criticism, of course. That’s how the scientific methods works.”
“Excuse me if I missed something,” June asked, “but as I understand it, the basic idea is that we stick people in this circle, either tell them to daydream or to try and stretch their mind, whatever, then you look at some rough indications of their mana levels and from that, we find out if they have psychic potential? Honestly, that doesn’t seem like a big breakthrough.”
Galatea shrugged, clearly unbothered. “You’re not wrong, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.”
“It’s going to take a lot of time,” she pointed out. “And resources. Aren’t the materials expensive? How much does it take for any one person, how many can we even send here?”
"It would certainly be better to have some candidates in mind instead of trying to test people randomly,” Madris agreed, her smile looking closer to a smirk. “As for the resources, none of these materials are extremely difficult to get. We did try to keep pragmatic constraints in mind, you know. And while a few might be expensive, I am sure our glorious ruler can afford it.”
Regina sent her a dark look and took a closer look at the materials. The metals wouldn’t be too bad, they could easily Conjure those if necessary. What seemed to be remains of organic materials were harder; primarily monster parts, if she had to guess. Maybe some rare plants. She’d have to take a closer look at the crystals, or ask some of her drones who knew more about that field. Madris was right, she would probably be able to afford all of this. They were more likely to run into time constraints than use up all of their money, although she would have to work out a budget. Or make Ira work one out, she amended. Or work on it together.
"We will have to choose the people we test wisely,” Galatea added.
“Perhaps we can seek out some Delvers,” Regina mused, “or a few officials at court that I trust. We don’t need to tell them every detail of this ritual, right? So it doesn’t matter if they haven’t got a full magical education, either.”
The conversation turned to more practical details. Galatea suggested that she and Madris would both want to be there for the first, initial tests, but once they had figured out a way to go about it, it wasn’t necessary to have both of them present. If they ever established a real routine, it would probably be enough to have one of the four of them there to oversee things. And they could talk about including more people later, too.
Eventually, Madris announced she had another appointment and left, while June was starting to fidget, anxious to get started with some practical magic. Galatea remained, though, looking at Regina.
“I have a few other matters I wanted to bring up, things I noticed while I was traveling,” she said. “Do you have a minute?”
“Of course,” Regina answered, already planning to tell Ira to push back her next appointment. “There are a few things I wanted to get your opinion on, anyway.”
“I suppose I’ll just go visit my mother, then,” June sighed.
“Thanks, tell her hello from me,” Regina said, already distracted.
Once June left, she turned and walked a few steps with Galatea, heading to a slightly more secluded part of the garden that was covered by a few trees and flowering bushes. Regina could sense every person in the building, of course, including all the drone guards, so it wasn’t really necessary, but she also liked the spot.
Without wasting much time, Regina explained briefly about her trip to the hive’s bases and the forest, explaining that she had been trying to get in contact with Leian, which Galatea should already be aware of, and that she’d examined the stasis pod and had brought it out of the vault. “I hope I can count on your help in trying to study it,” she concluded.
Galatea seemed thoughtful. She stared past the apple tree in the corner, then turned her head and smiled a little. “I doubt you would get very far on your own,” she said. “Of course I will contribute, it sounds intriguing. Do run your plans for a temple by me, as well, choosing the right location might be enough to give you an edge.”
Regina nodded, smiling at her friend. “I will. Thanks, Galatea.”
They were quiet for a bit. “I hope she’s alright,” Galatea said with a sigh. “I know she can take care of herself. Probably better than any of us. Still, she’s my friend, and the other gods —“
“Are kind of assholes?” Regina finished.
Galatea grinned. “Such language for an empress. But yeah, that is what I meant.”
“Well, she’s got that other guy, right? Berren?”
“True,” Galatea conceded. “I wouldn’t want to piss him off too much, either. And they have a complicated relationship, but I honestly don’t think he wants her dead, or that he’d let anyone else do it.”
“Sounds healthy,” Regina said drily. “Not that I’m one to talk, I guess. But what did you want to talk about?”
Galatea seemed to take that question as permission to regale her with stories about her recent travels. Regina stayed quiet and listened, making the appropriate noises at the interesting parts, and didn’t complain that her friend was drawing out the storytelling.
“So, I headed into Nerlia for a bit,” Galatea continued, “and I looked around before going to the capital. The area is honestly a bit behind Cernlia, probably because you’re here, but it’s not too bad. You should pay a little more attention to the Nerlian court, though. If you ignore them for too long, it might come back to bite you.”
Regina sighed. She knew Galatea was probably right, but it was still annoying. It wasn’t like she’d actually ignored all of Nerlia. “Is there trouble brewing, or are you just saying they’re miffed that I haven’t given them enough attention?”
“They probably are. And I didn’t spend enough time there to ferret out any intrigues, but it’s probably a safe bet that there are some. You should definitely think about your opinion on the Nerlian succession before someone decides it for you, Regina.”
Regina resisted the urge to sigh again. “In principle, I’d prefer Princess Adelaide,” she murmured. “She’s competent and female rulers have been passed over too many times in Nerlia. But Prince Raymond might be the wiser choice. Not just because having all three of the crowns in the Empire being worn by women, plus mine and Kiara’s successors, might be a bit too much. He’s competent, too, and the one candidate no one would complain about.” She tugged on her mandible. “But this is not urgent, is it? It’s not like King Roger is going to die any day now.”
Galatea shrugged. “Probably not, but that’s never stopped nobles from speculating or maneuvering,” she pointed out.
Regina craned her head back to look at the sky. “Thanks for the advice, I’ll consider it. I think I’d prefer a magic lesson to another political headache right now, though.”
Her friend laughed. “That’s my default assumption,” she said. “But let’s see what we can do.”
Regina smiled at her. Of the two of them, it was probably a good thing that she was the one who’d built an empire. Despite her complaints, she generally enjoyed it. Magic lessons with Galatea were more immediately enjoyable, though.