Chapter 1401 (Patreon)

“Fascinating.” It was somewhat amusing to hear Lady Hecate’s voice with clear interest, especially as it didn’t happen all that often. “I wonder how you are doing that,” she continued, making me curious what she was talking about, so instead of focusing on the deity in front of me, I carefully inspected my surroundings. 

As was usually the case when we conversed at night, she had pulled me into her domain, and we were talking in an endless grey expanse, a dark sky with a few faint, distant stars overhead. Nothing new there, at least on her side of the equation, so to speak. However, on my side, I could feel a faint trace of cold seep into the environment, causing a few snowflakes to appear maybe ten to twenty centimetres above my head before drifting down lazily. Most didn’t even make it to the ground; they evaporated beforehand, and those that made it vanished soon after, so it wasn’t all that impressive. Until I realised that these snowflakes were at least partially created from my power, meaning I was subconsciously altering Lady Hecate’s domain.

The realisation made my eyes go wide and my mind race. I had no idea how a deity would react to the intrusion of another’s power into their domain. Her curiosity and current behaviour made me hopeful that I wouldn’t get smote out of hand, but that only assuaged my worries a little. 

“Is there something different about the place you chose to sleep tonight?” Lady Hecate asked, one of her hands reaching past my head, snagging one of the snowflakes out of the air. 

“A snowfield,” I admitted. “The cold felt soothing, and the snow was incredibly comfortable.”

“Curious indeed,” the Maiden nodded, speaking as an individual instead of as part of the triad. “It is not the first time that you slept surrounded by your element, but it is the first time that you brought some of it with you.”

“True,” I nodded in return, “I would even posit that on a purely magical basis, there usually is more Ice around me, as I often sleep on my throne in the Nexus Tower, where I have the Nexus’ power at my proverbial fingertips.” 

I frowned for a moment, uncertain where the difference was coming from. Sure, I had gained a level, but I didn’t think I had crossed some sort of threshold there. Just the usual, so to speak: a little more power, a somewhat weird new special ability I hadn’t tried just yet, and that was it. Out of curiosity, I decided to try said new special ability just to experience it, focusing on the power seeping into the environment. Activating the Pattern Divination ability took a few moments, as it wasn’t all that intuitive, but I managed. The response didn’t come in words or blue boxes. Instead, two images flashed through my mind, one of falling snow, one of solid, static Ice. One, mobile and somewhat adaptable, until it passed a threshold and froze. The other, frozen and eternal, only moving when extreme force was applied.

“You saw something,” the Maiden’s voice immediately pounced on me, likely noticing the change in my expression. When I blushed a little, mostly due to the brief moments of inattention while I activated the ability, I decided to be forthright. 

“A new ability, Pattern Divination,” I explained, “I’m still working out how it works. In this case, it gave me two images, one of falling snow, the other of solid ice.” 

“And what do you make of it?” The Crone asked, her tone suggesting that she was using this as a teaching moment. 

“One is mobile, the other as static as can be. My conclusion would be that the snow is getting dragged along, so to speak, because it is in its nature to move and to transition. Ice needs force to be moved, either magical or mundane, and it generally breaks before bending,” I explained, getting a momentary smile from the Crone. 

“Indeed,” she nodded, “Though you might want to learn control. Your aura is getting stronger, and eventually it might become dangerous to be near you if you fully unveil yourself, unless you retain control over it at all times,” she warned me, making me nod once more. That was sound advice, even if I veiled my aura as a matter of principle. There simply was no need to let everyone and their grandmother get a fair idea of my power or my elemental affinities. To say nothing of it being a distinct beacon that gave away my presence and location to anyone able to listen. 

Feeling out my aura and how it interacted with the small amount of power seeping into the environment around me was rather challenging. Lady Hecate’s domain was filled with incredibly dense power, and mine was much weaker, leaving me floundering for a moment until I rallied and narrowed down my focus. Then, I finally managed to get a grip on my power and drew it back into myself, though I did notice that a trickle of additional Astral Power remained and continued to flow into me. Ice, obviously, so I made a note to investigate that aspect when I left Lady Hecate’s domain and woke up again. 

“Well done,” the Mother complimented when I opened my eyes again. “You know, you are looking much better than the previous night. You need to take better care of yourself,” she gently chided me, causing a blush to spread across my face, but I kept quiet. 

“Now, Magic,” the Maiden enthused, “Anchors and Gates and possibilities. I’ve got a couple of nifty ideas,” she exclaimed, sounding just as young as her name and appearance suggested. Though maybe young, excited and just a little bit insane- the type of girl I would expect in some slightly weird comic about a mad super-scientist, with the Maiden being said scientist. Not necessarily evil, but a little too… enthusiastic about her work. Something I could empathise with quite a bit, as I knew I had been overly enthusiastic about my experiments more than once. 

“Gates?” I asked, realising that this might be a little more involved than just a simple change to the anchors. 

“Sure,” the Maiden nodded, while the other two aspects seemed to take a step back and simply listened. It was quite the optical, or maybe magical, feat for two aspects of a single being to step back without their shared body moving at all. 

“Now, you know that the Shadows can be a little tricky? It’s…” she petered off, maybe uncertain how to express herself in language I knew, or possibly prohibited from sharing information I wasn’t yet aware of. “Well, there’s a lot more to the Shadows than you currently know. Telling you more would be actively helping you, and you know that there are rules about that,” she shrugged, making me sigh in disappointed understanding. I really needed to get a copy of those rules, if only to avoid breaking them in ignorance. 

“Well, I know that the Shadows can be dangerous. On Mundus, I always felt as if there was something in there, watching me. The sensation has occurred on Terra, too, but only a few times, though I think it has increased in frequency over time,” I frowned, before mentally pushing the topic aside, knowing that the deity wouldn’t be able to tell me anything for free. 

“Indeed,” she simply nodded, “So, my idea was to partially bypass the Shadows. Look at this,” she suggested, and a massively complex runic formation appeared in the air before me, drawn in glowing silver lines. For a moment, I simply stared at the formation. Then, at Lady Hecate before my eyes, I went back to the runes, trying to comprehend them. 

It was a lot. As in, the formation was on a level similar to that of the Library Crystal, and trying to understand a fragment of that had taken me two days and multiple headaches. Granted, a big part of that was because the crystal’s runes were unfamiliar, while I could easily read some of the runes within the formation, but not enough to fully understand it. 

“So, a Gate,” I repeated her earlier word, the context allowing me to understand even more, as I now had a good idea what the formation was supposed to do. Well, what it would do, as I had little doubt that Lady Hecate was able to create a runic formation that did what she wanted to do, even if multiple parts were far beyond me. 

“Do those interact with your power directly? Or with divine power, I guess?” I asked, pointing at several areas I didn’t understand at all. Their surroundings gave me the impression that these areas were meant to initiate something, but I wasn’t sure. 

“These are,” Lady Hecate nodded, sounding quite proud. “That way, the people using the Gates don’t need to understand what they are doing. Not that they could understand, far too many idiots out there. Idiots you don’t want to have messing with the fabric of reality.” 

“I bow to your expertise,” I nodded, a grin on my face, before my focus returned to the formation, noticing a few places where the Goddess had used my anchors and built around them. It was an incredible piece of magic, though I had a feeling that Lady Hecate was partially using this as a lesson, bypassing the usual rules by making the lesson necessary for a service I was providing her.