A Jaded Life

Ultimately, I decided that I would take a single shot at taking out the Shattered in town and if that shot didn’t work, or rather, if it missed, we would move on and try to find another place to explore. There was a whole world out there, just waiting for us, or maybe some other enterprising explorer, to discover and exploit its mysteries and I wasn’t about to wait for weeks and months on end to finally figure out a way to overcome the local troubles. There might be a great reward if we persisted but we had no actual indication of such a reward, well, unless I counted the powerful enemies.

If this were a video game, I would be fairly confident that there’d be a reward, or that I had stumbled across an unfinished area, but without an intelligent designer, the presence of enemies couldn’t be taken as evidence of treasure. Though, thinking back, there had been some instances on Mundus that had given the appearance of design and, in some cases, even sounded very much as if they were referencing some contemporary art or culture, things like plays, songs or movies. Things even I noticed and recognised, meaning it was likely there were many more that I hadn’t noticed, thanks to the lack of interest I held in such things.

This made me wonder, how could that work? Mere coincidence? Some strange form of divine intervention, but why would there be any in the first place, what was the reason, let alone why would some deity choose to create these seemingly inconspicuous jokes if the only people who would recognise them were the Travellers from Terra? Maybe some sort of trickster could have done it and considered it amusing but all that, for a joke almost nobody understood? Maybe it made sense to a god but to my feeble, mortal mind, it was utterly idiotic, though I couldn’t, shouldn’t, assume that I had all the facts. So, the best way to deal with the conundrum was to push it back into the ever-growing mental file labelled ‘need more information’. For all I knew, it might be some part of the system that tried to propagate through the various dimensions it connected and these pieces of culture I remembered were some sort of precursor. It might explain why some of the horrible pop music had come into existence, it was actually a sign, a warning, of the coming apocalypse. The conspiracy nuts might have been right, the idea making me shake my head in amusement, even if I was somewhat disconcerted by it, too.

Pushing these thoughts away, I focused on a much more practical idea, namely my plan to take out some, maybe all, of the Shattered. Obviously, if I wanted to destroy them all, I needed a medium that would spread all across town, seep into every nook and cranny so it could get them all and into that medium, I would need to imbue a powerful effect to take care of them.

After my last trip into town, I had a fair idea of what I could use as the medium to carry my magic, even if it wasn’t my favourite element. On the way back, the thick rain clouds had given way to an annoyingly cold drizzle, the cold and damp wetness enough to make even me uncomfortable, though not so much because of the cold but because my clothes started to become heavy and stick to my frame- Even more annoying, and much more uncomfortable, was that my concealment was a lot less effective in the rain. Part of that was due to the better transmission of scents in moist air but mainly because I wasn’t yet at the point where I could make rain fall through me unless I retreated into the Shadows. So, while I was sneaking and moving about, there was an area where no rain was falling through, something a vigilant observer would easily detect, allowing them to detect me in turn. Or at least detect a suspiciously person-shaped area, giving the game away.

However, while rain was annoying for me, the rain and the subsequent moisture and mist in the air could be used by me. It would take some doing, especially if I wanted to imbue the rain as it was falling down so I could use a natural medium to carry my magic, I would have to work in, or rather on, the clouds from the start. Luckily, I had my cloak so I could fly, allowing me to experiment with my idea, if only to see if it could work. And if it worked, I might have a way to create massive attacks, though they would be highly indiscriminate.

With that in mind, I made my way up into the clouds during a night that threatened rain. I had no desire to use massive amounts of magical power to create that much water but given that it was already here, just hanging in the sky as large, foreboding clouds, I had no problem with making my way up there, trying to find the clouds. Not necessarily an easy task, as clouds weren’t as distinct and solid as they appeared from below but by going up until things got very wet and clammy, I could make my way around and mark the right spots.

Given that I wanted to channel massive amounts of Astral Power into the clouds, I had no desire to remain up here, in the cold, damp mist, having to focus on my levitation while also paying attention to my Astral Power reserves and hope that I didn’t exhaust myself in the channelling process and drop from the sky like a rock. No, trying to do the whole thing in flight was a fairly dumb idea but what I could do was use my cloak to create a formation and channel a faint amount of power into it while I made my way back down and into our base. There, I had prepared my throne and the same runic formation I wanted to use in the sky around it. If I linked the runic formation on the ground with one I prepared in the sky, I should be able to channel Astral Power into one and get the effect out of the other, with only a bit of transmission loss in the process.

So, I began to carve runes into the clouds, using tiny droplets of Blood infused with Astral Power as my medium. It was an incredibly fiddly process but also a highly interesting one, requiring me to put a great deal of focus on my creations as I wanted to make the runes part of the floating clouds, meaning I had to make the drops of blood incredibly minuscule while creating the shapes I wanted them to be in. Thankfully, I had my Titanic Ambition, giving me the attributes I needed to make my vision a reality, and allowing me to create my largest runic formation. For once, it wasn’t a simple formation made out of the few runes I wanted to combine, it was a chain of runic formations, all of them built from runes of Water, Ice, Blood and Darkness, all linked together into one singular formation big enough to encompass the entire town. It was massive, big enough that I needed hours to create it in the first place and a tremendous amount of Astral Power. Maybe I was overdoing things, but I wanted to see if it was possible. And, by the looks of it, I was succeeding in my endeavour.

Finally, just as the clouds started to slowly drop their rainy load on the town, I was finished and quickly made my way back into our lair, easily landing on my throne while Lia was closing things down, aware that I was trying something incredibly grand that might just get all the Shattered riled up while channelling stupendous amounts of power, enough that they might be able to track us down.

Luna bestowed one of her Blessings on me as I landed, an actual benediction powered by Divine Power, granted by Lady Hecate Herself, not just an almost automatic reaction to the invocation of Her cleric. It was a fascinating experience, one that I hadn’t had all that often yet as if I had been looking at simple, maybe even cheap, prints and copies from famous artwork before and now, I was allowed to study a masterwork, made by the master Herself, while that master was looking over my shoulder with a faint smile on Her face. Or something like that.

Whatever the case, I could feel my Astral Power return far quicker than normal and I could even feel that faint presence in the air, similar to the presence I had felt in the temple near the Charlands, right after we created it.

With the realisation that I might have an actual divine observer interested in my attempt at large-scale magic, I knew I wouldn’t back out. No, I wanted to show Lady Hecate and all the other Gods who might be watching, just what I was made of, to let them see my ambition and the lengths I was willing to go to achieve them. Hopefully, they would know not to try to block my path to achieving my ultimate ambition.