A Jaded Life

Maria, the newly created Shadow Vampire Monster was only a first attempt to make something interesting, an attempt I tentatively declared a success. I had no idea what had happened with the creature after we left the clearing, but given its raw power, its Darkness affinity and general potential, I was fairly positive it wouldn’t just die in some ditch. No, if it was anything like Lia had been initially, just without her intelligence, the creature would likely hunt in the forest for a bit, getting a few levels or something, and live its best life. Maybe catch a human or two, I wasn’t sure how its instincts had turned out, but it didn’t really matter, even if a part of me wanted to stalk the thing and make some sort of documentary about it. If only I could summon David Attenborough to voice it. Alas, I doubted that’d be possible, so I had to be content with creating more interesting creatures that would never happen naturally.

For example, the second person turning up at a meeting point, after another had either gotten cold feet or lost, had a small, innate bias for Earth Magic, not enough to give him any real advantage, let alone the magical affinity, but it was something we could build upon.

The result was quite interesting and one I could readily classify as a complete success. Sure, the screaming as I had infused the guy’s very soul with Earth Magic had been a little painful, fellah had a real set of lungs on him, but thanks to Luna, and a bit of help from Lia, we managed to keep the guy alive throughout the procedure, resulting in a being a lot more durable than an ordinary human.

By the time we were finished, the guy looked more like the Thing from a popular comic, only not quite as orange. Maybe that was for the best, people had come to associate the orange man with evil and I doubted even the apocalypse had changed that. No, instead, our newly infused experiment had brown skin, covered in rocky plates that increased his durability even further. And it was an impressive durability, at least against physical attacks. Now, he was sturdy enough that I’d need a weapon to harm him physically, despite the fact that I had enough strength to moonlight as a physical fighter around level forty, maybe forty-five and the guy had a pitiful level of eight. His strength was increased as well, though it was a little lacking compared to his endurance, though clearly superhuman. If he managed to get a couple of levels under his belt, he’d be quite the monster, especially as he had managed to keep his human mind, though I had been forced to use a bit of Mind Magic on him, so he wouldn’t spoil the other experiments I had planned. He’d sleep for a few days and be somewhat disoriented, but I was fairly confident he would be fine. Maybe. Eventually. Hopefully…

Another of the experiments was similar to the one performed on Maria, another vampire. But this time, I didn’t try to augment their magical affinity right off the bat, instead, I waited until the transformation was over so Lia and I could evaluate the success of our experiment. The results were quite fascinating, while the subject’s memories hadn’t been damaged, there was a clear disconnect between their lived experience and their current state of mind. It was eerily similar to Lia’s awakening, making me think that the disconnect between her memories and her personality hadn’t been due to her being Shattered beforehand but due to the transformation.

That, in turn, brought up quite a few questions about Shattered in general, making me wonder if there could be a way to actually help them, but I just didn’t know. Maybe I could perform a few experiments, there might still be some Shattered left but I had a feeling they were a dying breed. Though, given that there’d likely be no more Shattered coming into existence, they always had been, just a limited, if large, number of creatures that would exist for a while before dying out.

After the evaluation was done, I decided that I could perform another experiment on the newly created Vampire and if it perished, so be it. It wasn’t as if Lia and I would continue studying the result of our experiment, we just wouldn’t be around to see what happened further. Maybe I could occasionally look in on them with scrying constructs but really, there wouldn’t be any further investigation. So, if I broke the subject, we wouldn’t lose out.

Similar to the experiments done on mortals, just without Luna to stabilise their Bodies and Souls with her Life Magic, I channelled Blood Magic, the strongest magical affinity of the newly created Vampire directly into its Soul. The results were thoroughly fascinating. Instead of influencing and altering the Soul, it looked almost as if the power was absorbed into the devouring darkness at the centre of vampiric Souls, As I continued channelling power, trying to find out what was going on, I eventually reached a point of saturation, or some strange limit was breached and, all of a sudden, the Soul started to twist in on itself and flickered out of existence in an instant. I had no idea what exactly had happened but the body simply stilled, after having thrashed around in pain moments earlier, lying completely still. There was no breath, though given that it was a vampire that was no surprise. But there was nothing visible that suggested the shell had ever been animated, only some trace Blood Magic still holding strong within the flesh. Out of curiosity, I tried to use my MInd Magic to detect if there was anything remaining but I could only sense a dying flicker, some remnant impulses maybe, or memories just fading away. If nothing else, the experience proved just how complicated and interconnected the relationship between Body, Mind and Soul was.

Both Lia and Luna were quite pleased with the progress we were making. Luna considered the entire thing a fascinating challenge, to keep creatures alive even if they didn’t have any business to remain alive while Lia was inordinately happy that we managed to create a few vampires. Curiously, she didn’t develop maternal feelings towards our creations, demonstrating a marked difference between the two of us. To me, Lia and Luna were my daughters but Lia had no problem to proverbially push the newly created vampires out of the nest, forcing them to fly or fall on their own.

Those were just some of the experiments we managed to carry out in the mountains above New Dawn. Sadly, not all the appointments could be kept. Two people got cold feet and decided that making the trek would be a bad idea, or maybe they got sick, I wasn’t certain. Either way, they never left New Dawn in order to get to us, so they’d never receive powers. Another person managed to get lost, though luckily I managed to discover them while using a scrying construct to observe the area and the experiment could be performed regardless of their lack of orientation. Sadly, the experiment failed but even failures could yield a lot of good information, so was it really a failure just because the test subject died?

Lastly, there were those who were followed by Largar and his merry men, either voluntarily or not. In both cases, my response was the same, namely, I combined experiments with Scrying Constructs and experiments with Mind Magic, seeking to make Lorgar and his buddies lose their way. Whether that was with the test subjects at their side or not, it was a fascinating challenge, one that forced me to get quite creative with magical concepts, especially those rooted in Darkness Magic. But, at the same time, it was an incredible challenge and I even began to wonder if I should stick around even longer, just to see how far I might be able to twist Lorgar. The guy was quite messed up from the start, so adding Mind Magic in the mix might have some unforeseen side effects, but what were experiments without those, if everything came out just as planned? We’d never learn anything.

Luckily, that wasn’t the case and we learned plenty in the time we spent above New Dawn, both when it came to the malleability of Souls, but also in regards to the connection between the Mind, the Body and the Soul. Not enough to fully understand any of them but I was starting to get a faint idea of how the Soul influenced the Body, though I was fairly certain the reverse was true, too. I didn’t have any experimental evidence to back that idea up, other than my own experience, but I was slowly getting there. It was only a matter of time until I could unravel those mysteries, well, a matter of time and many, many experiments.

The massive strides in understanding were reflected by similarly massive strides in skill levels, mainly when it came to Soul Magic, Mind Magic and Astral Meditation. All three of those levelled multiple times over the three weeks we were up there, with Mind Magic reaching level sixty-eight, Astral Meditation reaching level fifty-two and Soul Magic reaching a whopping level eighteen, pleasing me greatly. Knowing that I was steadily getting closer to reviving my Sigmir pleased me greatly.

I even gained two normal levels, bringing me to ninety-one. Before levelling up to ninety, I put my open points into Intelligence, pushing the attribute to eighty and giving me a new trait, as usual. It wasn’t a terribly exciting trait on the face of things but I had a feeling it might be highly useful. Astral Solidity decreased the rate at which my Astral Power was returning to the Astral River, meaning all magic I used would last longer.

All in all, the time above New Dawn was very well spent, but eventually, there wouldn’t be more test subjects coming up into the mountains and Lorgar had started to use Divine Magic to protect his Mind, making it more and more difficult to avoid him. I considered trying to attack his group directly but given the levels involved, I was hesitant. Sure, if things worked out well, we should be able to overcome them, but I wasn’t about to risk either of my daughters on ‘should’. So, we simply packed up our things and started to travel north, away from New Dawn.