---Maddy---

After the talk with the Queen, Maddy started making a massive number of ‘big decisions’ one after another. First, the decision to gain a third affinity.

She couldn’t do it without giving something up…but maybe that was the point. The power it gave her would directly relate to how much she would gain after finally committing.

Body stat was a split-second decision. Barely even missed its passing.

The problem is what came from there. For the best result, Maddy needed to sacrifice three more areas.

One for combo with dark/light. One for death/life. One for Dark-Death/Light-Life.

She had six options. Considering her soul was simply an astral body her mind could inhabit instead of her body…and considering she now knew that and couldn’t trick herself into giving it more importance in her magic.

Well, she was leaning towards dropping soul stats over mental stats. Initially, she was imagining dropping all three – but then she had started second guessing herself and trying to imagine the utility of each stat.

Each stat she had needed to have a purpose to be worth keeping.

Her foundation and shift through mutation meant that the meaning of her mental stats had shifted slightly. Mental defense was the durability of her ‘mental web’. The strength of the connections between different areas. If her doppelganger was to be believed, the stat was the major factor preventing the negative parts of her foundation from appearing. The warning it had given back when she chose it.

Considering it also helped resist the most insidious of attacks – rare mental abilities – Maddy was loath to remove it.

Mental power was roughly the number of mental threads she could use. It had blossomed to the point where Maddy could theoretically keep track of thousands of separate things at once, but Maddy rarely ever took advantage of that. Mental speed had shifted the most. Using the web metaphor, it was the number of connections between each area. Its major focus seemed to be letting her separate mental threads communicate with each other. As a computer metaphor, that was her thread synchronization.

Soul defense was how long she could stay in the astral – how long her soul could survive outside of her body. Soul speed was how she could move herself as a soul. And soul power was how she could affect things as a soul. Soul stats sounded impressive…but they only felt like they came into play if she actively used them. Soul power and speed only came into play if she was floating about as a ghost trying to activate things.

Maddy…felt like soul power and speed were the easiest two to give up. She wouldn’t want to actively be trying to affect things as a ghost.

But something caught when she thought about giving up soul defense. If…if anything happened to her body, her mind had a safe place to go. Maddy had life mana – she had healing – so while she couldn’t yet…a faint part of her had imagined the idea of healing back from death safe inside her soul. She didn’t have a body foundation to facilitate it…but that shouldn’t be locked away from her if she grew stronger.

So maybe she should drop one of the mental stats instead?

Between them. Mental defense was the most boring but felt the most important. Removing power when she wasn’t taking advantage of it…felt safest. Felt like nerfing her potential instead of her current abilities. Removing mental speed/sync on the other hand. It felt like…it felt like embracing the idea behind her foundation while weakening it slightly.

That’s how everything felt. After taking two days of rest and ruminating on these in several different ways Maddy made a decision. Mental power embraced her foundation and built off of it while mental speed simply mitigated a potential problem from it. It felt like a weaker choice. If she had chosen a focused mind that distinction might have swapped…but ‘as is’ Maddy felt the best about removing mental speed as a growing stat and committed.

Traveling through to the bottom of the easier dungeon, Maddy wrote her desired exchange onto her stomach and then collected a large amount of donated creation/destruction mana from Jess before using the boss to lock it in. Despite doing the majority of the fight alone it had barely been enough of an achievement to lock it in. No stats accompanied the fight as a repeat and yet her goal had been achieved.

…

That had been a rush. Everything had worked pretty much exactly how she had imagined it. She felt slightly weaker as her existing body speed stats disappeared, didn’t even notice the reduction to her soul stats and then found her mentality shifting rapidly. Her mental stats were the big cost, and she could feel it in the change to her resting thoughts. Her mental speed was pushed aside, and her mind splintered slightly, each mental thread untethering ‘a teensy bit’ from each other. It very quickly started to feel like she had multiple minds instead of simply one mind that was incredibly good at multitasking.

Her skill for gaining the affinity had been ‘healing water’. The ability to ‘create’ a liquid full of healing life mana that was stable and lasted until it was used or broken in some other way.

…but that skill had been broken into its parts nearly instantly and wasn’t something Maddy wanted to focus on just yet.

Several of the connections between her threads snapped but those that remained were still strong and firm. Perhaps if she had removed defense all the threads would have snapped entirely before floating away?

Her mind was splintered slightly and yet it was still her. That’s all there was to it. There was no conflicting personalities fighting over control or anything similar, there was simply different parts of her mind focusing on different things and not collaborating as much as they had been up to that point.

More importantly there was what she had gained.

The triple combined mana pool was exponentially stronger. A single tiniest drop of dark-destructive-death – or DDD as Maddy had mentally called it could melt through nearly any unreinforced object or creature she could direct it at.

She could create simple small purple tinged items using creation mana or realistic small and simple items using ‘creation/light’. All quick and simple things to study but there was something she wanted to do first.

Her current plan.

Her current massive undertaking.

A new focus.

As Maddy was a mage, she had to convey her intent with her mana in an external way. That meant writing down a spell. A focus was the device those spells were written on and important for a single reason. If she used it to cast the same spell again and again, the spell would grow stronger. More efficient – the mana better able to understand her intent as it built on all the spells that had been cast before.

There was some meaning held in an object.

The meaning which could make someone’s most cherished and well used homemade object immensely stronger as a focus than something someone else had made – no matter how many bells and whistles they might have added. Instead of buying a specially made focus she was better off picking any old object that resonated with her and using that. Someone’s childhood toy could have more power than a traded archmage’s grimoire. There was power in the spoon someone used to eat during a famine that simply did not exist from an item crafted by another.

There was a certain magic in the mundane. A magic in history, a magic contained in the feelings one might have for something.

And that’s where Maddy’s focus had shifted. She had felt a link to her scythe and had felt how it had grown with her. Spell after spell cast through it each becoming stronger over weeks of time. A cloak hadn’t been the same, no matter how useful of a canvas it had been.

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And despite loving her scythe it had been lost to her. Despite a cloak being useful it had been easily broken. Maybe if she had cared more she would have spent more effort on the cloak but it had only ever been a replacement to her.

That was the difference.

What Maddy wanted was spells that couldn’t be broken. A focus that couldn’t be taken from her.

The simplest option was obviously to figure out how to prevent anyone from taking her focus from her. Figuring out how to make an item that could follow her about or defend itself.

And yet…that’s not where Maddy’s mind had stayed. She hadn’t gone with the ‘simple’ option. The idea of trying to make a living staff that crawled around after her and defended itself had felt flimsy in a way she couldn’t quite place.

No, Maddy’s mind had gone down a more extreme path. Of embedding her magic into her body.

She could of course simply go ham on the tattoos. Those would be hard to remove.

But Maddy had had tattoos and her doppelganger had neutralized them. Something visible on her skin…it didn’t feel protected.

What Maddy wanted was to act almost like an internal magic user. She wanted…to place her spells deep within her body. Protect them with the same level of effort as she would protect her brain or heart. In fact…if she managed to make spells that could revive her from death, they would become even more important than those unmagical fleshy organs.

Her first idea had been to swallow something. That had immediately shifted to the idea of cutting open a section of her body and inserting a focus then healing it back.

And finally it had shifted to her current plan.

She was going to carve her magic directly into her body.

Specifically her bones.

She couldn’t think of an object that meant a lot to her and so using a part of her body felt even more meaningful. There was also a resonance with her bones and how her magic felt. Death had a link to bones and as they would be deep inside of her, they would be constantly in darkness. They weren’t quite something that linked to creation or destruction but they still felt better than something random.

And this is where her plan got weird. Despite vaguely feeling like she could roughly carve stuff onto her bones from outside her body…despite that being a possibility it wouldn’t have felt accurate.

Which led to carving it outside of her body and then placing it back in her body.

Something that should not have been the idea she should have focused on and yet as soon as Maddy imagined that solution she couldn’t bring herself to let it go. She kept coming back to this insane plan until finally after removing a bone from her toe and healing it back good as new in a morbid test she committed.

…

Maddy very awkwardly lay in the groups shared room surrounded by the bed’s shared curtain with very specific instructions not to enter. In the middle of the bed lay a washbasin full of altered healing liquid she had taken an entire day to fill. The basin itself was covered in words spelling out its purpose countless lines of repeating intent separating the goal of the liquid into two parts.

In front of her lay her two hip bones. One of the biggest bones in her body and easiest to write on with its flat sections.

Her stomach and both legs were covered in writing – a steady trickle of life mana keeping it stable and removing the majority of pain from breaking her concentration even as the liquid slowly dropped. A single massive slit ran across the bottom of her stomach, an application of destructive darkness having facilitated this self surgery.

Maddy couldn’t feel her legs. Even without pain the extraction had been messy. Even with the amount of healing life mana and steps she had taken this all felt risky. She ‘felt’ and believed with all her heart that this would work but…would probably not have done this if it weren’t for the safety she knew she had in terms of extra lives.

This felt like too massive of a jump forward but also felt like her best chance of advancement. She wasn’t jumping into things – she had come up with this plan in part while captured and stressed beyond her mind but Maddy hadn’t implemented it then. She had waited long enough, it felt like a rational decision instead of one made in the heat of the moment. She had put in place as many safety measures as possible and committed on a down day in case this operation took her out for longer than she was anticipating.

Maddy lay in a vague cloudy realm above pain and worldly concerns. Her situation almost slipped away – it almost felt fake. She was dissociating hard right now and embracing the degree she was separated in the moment.

Holding her charcoal pencil in a loose relaxed manner Maddy wrote magic onto a bumpy canvas. A canvas surprisingly free of blood after being cleaned and dried on the cloth beside her.

She doodled slightly letting her experiences guide her hand as they looped lines and scribbled words about the runes cementing each focus into prominence.

In some ways the way she was writing her current spells felt like regression. Instead of writing a rhyme Maddy was using an older version of her knowledge where mana flowed along sentences and paths looping back onto runes or splitting like the roots of a tree.

She had realized she wasn’t good at rhymes or poems and the only reason they held strength was due to being harder to write. A self imposed limit Maddy didn’t want to be forced into for the future. There was a lot of those self imposed limits to magic – something she could focus on soon but which was a distraction in the moment.

What Maddy was doing for her dual magic was simple in concept.

First she drew every single one of her current runes along both pelvic bones similar to how she had set up her tongue but with a few small changes. Instead of sound in the center Application was the focus in a very real way. It was a glue concept – something weakened by stretching in too many directions and gaining an incredible amount of flexibility due to that stretching.

She had mostly set runes and spellforms that overlapped between spells in similar spots. The most complicated and understood spell remained her eggs that split into healing vines or deadly maggots and one of the more simple but heavily shaped spells was her scout eyes.

Both had improved as she had grown – splitting eggs benefited greatly from the concept of polarity shifting the mana and locking it into a side. Eyes benefited from creation mana and the innate concept of creation.

The majority of her focus was in layout however. Her left bone was had most of her attack and damage spells, right had most of her utility spells or spells with a ‘softer’ focus. Healing and helping others.

In many ways this sort of combined focus was worse. There felt like there was a meaning to making a separate bone for each spell. To making sure the written form of spells didn’t overlap and potentially corrupt each other.

And yet Maddy focused on this to start because it would immediately remove how weak she felt without access to a simple kit of abilities. Her goal wasn’t to solve every possible problem or to create incredibly generalized spells like her tongue had been. Her goal was to solve every simple situation she could think of in as efficient a way as she could.

This in some ways would be her foundation. Future bones could have higher purposes.

She also liked the theming she was doing – by separating spells by a vague ‘passive’/’hostile’ goal she hoped they would interact in a beneficial way. Sharing strength instead of weakening each other.

Finishing up the last her her spells – a simple incredibly low mana light orb written across the edge of the right femur – Maddy looked over her drawings carefully.

There was a final reason for her ‘all in’ plan. Maddy wanted to practice and study her new affinity while keeping the majority of her old power intact. If she created specific new spells she could place them on new bones. Future bones should be easier to reach but smaller and harder to write on and better fits for a ‘single spell’. This was her best shot of a combined focus.

Not seeing any glaring problems in her sketches Maddy began to slowly carve her drawings. Her finger was covered in a quick spell to help her focus and she activated it now. A single drop of DDD formed on the tip and sharpening into a point slightly turning her finger into a dark purple claw.

Carefully Maddy carved each of her runes soaking her mana into each carving as she worked. She spent as much time on them as she could before moving to the words and helper shapes mapping out each spell in a web of connections.

Finishing off both of her focuses Maddy glanced over the carved runes critically. It felt like she should fill them with something. Pour molten gold into the carved cracks or something…but Maddy didn’t have a specific medium to do that with. None of her concepts were really a physical solid she could imbue. There were no meaningful elements she felt fit.

A future test?

It would have to be.

As if waking from a dream Maddy stared down at her mangled and surgically preserved bottom with a wince. Before she started to fully come to terms with her state Maddy pulled her carved bones down and began squeezing each into place.

Her flesh parted a fresh burst of blood dying the healing liquid around her a darker shade before with a few quick alterations to the basins script, Maddy deactivated the first part and enabled the second part of the magic.

Slowly the magic that kept her situation preserved was tipped. Instead of healing ongoing damage Maddy healed the more fundamental damage of her bones being removed.

The pool began to drain rapidly her flesh knitting up immediately while the pool continued to flow into her soaking deep into her skin.

For an agonizing period of uncertainty Maddy continued to find her body frozen. Her legs wouldn’t move. She had irreversibly broken herself, hadn’t she? What had led to her thinking this was a good idea? Why couldn’t she feel her lower half yet?

Then with a spasm of her knee, Maddy found her nerves and whatever else governed her lower body had been fixed.

Watching the last of the liquid drain – all that was left was a reddish sludge – Maddy slowly lifted herself out of the basin triumphant.

It had worked like she knew it would.

Reaching a single hand out Maddy felt a link to the runes inside her and directed mana to a small section with barely a thought. Beside her lighting up the entire bed and casting a bright glow upon the scene sat a small floating orb of light. Shifting it to red and then blue with a focused thought Maddy spent a bit more effort to change the size and move her light about her head the more advanced forms drawing a heavier cost of mana.

She laughed despite herself, flexing her will and causing a dozen orbs to appear and then a hundred and then a thousand watching them all dim and pop like soap bubbles as her light mana ran dry.

She had done it! Time would increase efficiency and she would need to cast every single spell several times to make sure they set properly…but that was easy enough with the dungeon nearby.

Now…now Maddy could start studying her new affinity in earnest.

I wonder what I can create next?