Chapter 1390 (Patreon)

AN: Things got a little mixed up, the Awaken-Interlude should have been after Chapter 1389, so right before this one. Doesn't change a whole lot, just gives a slightly different context for the Interlude. Enjoy.

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For once, I could remember my dreams. Or maybe I rarely dreamed in the first place; I wasn’t sure- how could I be, if I didn’t remember them upon waking? Maybe I remembered them this time due to the experience I had before going to sleep, the discovery of my apparent nature, or the nature of my soul.

Regardless of the reason, my dreams had been fascinating. Incredibly strange, slightly disconcerting and discombobulating, but fascinating nonetheless. A part of me wanted to analyse just what my subconscious was trying to tell me, or maybe what my Soul was trying to tell me. I wasn’t quite sure where those dreams originated from, but given past experience? I knew that trying to read too much into dreams was a sure way to madness, or at least to complete and utter confusion. So, instead of delving into my dreams, I focused on more practical pursuits and considered what I had learned during the previous meditation. 

There was, of course, the lingering question of whether what I saw during my internal meditations was real in the first place. While I could independently confirm that my experiences with the Astral River were real, I had seen enough undeniable evidence of that; I couldn’t do the same for my internal meditations. The things I had seen there might ultimately turn out to be nothing but figments of my imagination, brought into existence on a quest to understand something I couldn’t. Or maybe I was subconsciously making up answers to important questions to convince myself I was making progress on Sigmir’s resurrection; it was possible. 

I didn’t think it to be the case, but then, if it were, I might just be the last to know. I might just be fooled by my own mind, blinded by my own desires and unable to see reality. It was possible and, at times, when the world went quiet around me and I was a little too alone with my thoughts, I couldn’t help but wonder. Was I really making progress on an issue that the Grandmother, for all her centuries or millennia of experience, for all her incredible, world-shaking power, had all but abandoned? Or was I simply fooling myself, unwilling to accept reality and taking refuge in dreams and delusions?

For a moment, I entertained that idea, but then I pushed it out of my mind. If this was merely a delusion, I didn’t want to know. If that meant my entire project was built on nothing but smoke, self-delusion and a lack of mirrors, I would find out the moment things came crashing down around me, hopefully in a terminal fashion. I didn’t want to entertain the possibility of a world in which I would never see Sigmir again. 

I would either succeed or I would die trying. And I was strangely okay with that. 

Shaking my head, I pushed those morbid thoughts away. While I had no actual evidence that my internal meditation worked, that the things I saw and experienced weren’t mere figments of my imagination, the opposite was true as well. I had no evidence that those experiences were false, and given that they aligned with my experiences in external meditation and had already borne fruit in the past, I was willing to assume they reflected reality well enough. Likely not completely, though mostly because one’s perception of reality was always filtered through one’s senses. The difference between the colour red and a colour that only reflected red light.

Self-doubts wouldn’t help me, and they certainly wouldn’t stop me. 

Instead, I refocused. Whether my Soul was that of a dragon was, ultimately, irrelevant to Sigmir’s resurrection. According to Lady Hecate, I needed Mastery over Life, Dominion over Souls and deep insight into the mysteries of the Mind; nothing there spoke of a human or elven Soul. Hel, it didn’t even mention a mortal body at any point, though I realised that keeping my current body might be advisable, simply because the connection Firn Elves had to Loki was one partially shared with Frost Giantbloods like Sigmir had been one. So, depending on circumstances, I might have to use some of my blood to extract part of that divine heritage so I could add it to the body Luna would be growing. 

So, this would ultimately be something to, well, simply accept. It was now part of my reality, and it didn’t feel like something I would be able to change, not that I really wanted to, so what option other than accepting it did I have? It was a rather binary choice: either accept this as part of my reality, or try to change it. 

With that realisation firmly stuck in my mind, I decided to distract myself. If I remained here, no matter how comfortable the Nexus Tower was, I would likely get broody and lose myself in my thoughts, churning through scenarios and considering possibilities until something shook me out of it. Instead of doing that, and potentially losing days on end with little to show for it, I acted and dropped into the shadows with nary a thought. 

The shadows were as cool and comfortable as always, though I had noticed a faint change recently. Or maybe the change had been ongoing from the start, and I was only now sensitive enough to notice the progression; I wasn’t sure. Regardless, I had noticed that the shadows were gaining a faint sense of presence, making me feel as if something was watching me whenever I entered them. It was somewhat similar to the sensation I had experienced on Mundus, only much weaker and easily ignored. But it was either slowly getting stronger or there had been some qualitative change that made me feel it; I wasn’t sure.

Either way, it didn’t matter all that much. That sensation hadn’t been able to keep me out of the shadows on Mundus, and it certainly wouldn’t manage on Terra. The only interesting question was whether there was some entity within the shadows, or maybe proto-entity would be more fitting, and if there was, whether I could communicate with said entity. After all, it had to be rather lonely to be stuck within the shadows at all times, unable to leave them. Or maybe leaving wasn’t the problem; the theoretical entity was of the shadows after all, making the shadows their home. Leaving them would be akin to leaving Terra for me: interesting and fascinating in theory, but there were considerations, and I would act only if I knew Sigmir could join me. It was something to consider, something to explore, but not for now. For now, I simply left the shadows in the shelter I had set up during my search for the Charland, the much warmer air in the south hitting me like a brick. Summer was definitely on the march, though it hadn’t been able to overcome spring just yet. Soon, but not yet.

The forest around me was feeling, as always, both quiet and rather loud at the same time. The noise came from inadvertent places. The wind was moving through the branches above; the trees occasionally groaned, and the wildlife couldn’t completely conceal itself from me, no matter how hard it tried. Well, or they didn’t try to hide, like the insects; instead, they relied on their small size and relatively high speed to evade danger.

On the other hand, the sense of quietness came from the overall lack of movement. The trees obviously didn’t walk around, and the wildlife generally did its best to remain unnoticed so no predator could find them. Or if the wildlife was a predator, like the foxes and weasels I noticed, they did their best to remain hidden so their prey wouldn’t disappear. Curiously, the foxes used a bit of magic to visually conceal themself, mostly by bending light with an offshoot of Fire Magic, while the weasels completely hid their scents by using Wind Magic. Rather ingenious, especially since the examples of either species weren’t above level fifty, making their abilities all the more impressive.

The animals they preyed on were similarly advanced. The few rabbits I noticed were, amusingly, using tricks similar to those of the foxes, only that the rabbits were somehow using the moon’s light and the shadows of the night to obscure their position, making them appear some distance away from where they actually were. The deer, on the other hand, occasionally stomped the ground, sending out a ripple that told them everything about their surroundings, a technique similar to echolocation. 

Other animals had their own ways of detecting danger or concealing themselves, driving home the point that this area was becoming more and more interesting the closer I got to the Charland. Now I only needed to find the place, though the rising power of the animals in the vicinity was enough to convince me I was getting close. My nose, on the other hand, made me want to turn around and leave, as the Charland’s stench in the air was getting more noxious by the day.