A Jaded Life Chapter 1250

There was sothing inherently liberating about feeling the wind beneath my wings. A giddy, enthusiastic sensation I just couldn’t shake, making want to whoop in joy, to dive and swerve as I rode the air currents. It was almost intoxicating, reminding just how wonderful magic could be. Levitating with my cloak was fun, but compared to the free flight my wings offered, it was pedestrian.

And that didn’t go into the advantages my wings brought with them when it ca to mobility. The more I used my wings, the better I got at flying. It wasn’t just pushing myself forward magically. I was learning to read and take advantage of thermal air currents, using them to gain lift so I could use more magic to accelerate and nurous other small things that I had to learn.

The biggest reason for my flying exercises was that Luna, Lia and I had stumbled into a barrier regarding the work to resurrect Sigmir. Of the three things we needed to achieve, Mastery over Life, Dominion over Souls and insight into the deep mysteries of the Mind, we had a fairly good idea of one of them but only vague clues regarding the other two.

Naly, we felt that Mastery over Life ant the creation of life ex nihilo. This was the one we felt we had a fairly good grasp on. The idea was that we would either start with sothing entirely unliving and inorganic, or by using the appropriate biological precursors and making life the usual way, just with magic instead of biology. Either way, our current hypothesis was that Mastery over Life was simply needed to create the Body Sigmir would later co to inhabit, which was why Luna was so interested in growing living creatures from scratch.

Insight into the deep mysteries of the Mind was more challenging. The Mind was the sum of our experiences, growing in tandem with the Body as both matured. We had so clues regarding the influence the Soul had on the process, but it was incredibly complicated, with nurous reciprocal interactions. As we didn’t have a comprehensive model of how those interactions functioned, we were left without a real point to start our investigation. We needed to learn more about the Mind in general before we could start with its interaction and the intersection between Body, Mind and Soul.

Lastly, Dominion over Souls. Again, we only had vague clues and ideas. The big thing was that we considered the Soul to be fundantal. The foundation on which any individuality rested, that which caused people with similar experiences to beco greatly different people. In a way, it was both the foundation on which our personalities rested but also the lens through which we interpreted our experiences in the world.

Luckily, we didn’t think we needed to change Sigmir’s soul or create it from nothing. If we tried, we wouldn’t end up with Sigmir after all. We might be able to make soone similar to her, but it wouldn’t be her. Not my beloved.

Instead, we needed to, sohow, draw Sigmir’s soul back from whatever afterlife she was currently in. And that, obviously, was where the difficulty started. Getting the soul back ant we had to find the soul. For that, I had a few ideas. Those ranged from using the Soul Bond Sigmir and I shared to the creation of a cult dedicated to Sigmir, hoping to turn her into a deity and find her through the connection forged by her followers' faith. So of those ideas were comparatively simple and straightforward solutions, while others would require a great deal of ti and effort to accomplish. But, at the end of the day, there was nothing wrong with pursuing multiple of those ideas in tandem. Even if we didn’t use the Cult of Sigmir to draw her soul back into this world, creating a divine base for her would likely be beneficial in the long run.

That pursuit was what had soaring through the air, riding the currents south. After discussing things with my daughters, I stepped through the shadows, returning to the cave that Lia and I had used while observing the giants.

This text was taken from . Help the author by reading the original version there.

From there, I was heading south, towards the large bay near the massive Ice structure we had discovered while on the way here. The plan was to capture a few of the strange, aquatic creatures there for experints, as I needed sothing to hone my Mind Magic, if I wanted to learn how to restore Sigmir’s mind to what it had been before her death.

For that, I planned to slowly peel back the ntal layers of these creatures, hoping that dissecting their minds, while monitoring the activity of their soul during the process, would give so new insights. I might even have to monitor them while they were fighting or hunting, trying to learn how the system and EXP as a concept played into that, whether they had a direct influence on the mind and soul or how that chanism worked. It was a fairly extensive list of things I wanted to find out, which was why I was planning to set up yet another cave down there, allowing to step through the shadows as I travelled back and forth.

Additionally, we were entering the ti fra when so animals began to procreate. Not only the giants, who I knew had so gravid females in their population, but animals in general, especially those with sowhat more extended gestation periods. If we wanted to harvest so suitable for Luna’s experints, this was the ti to do so. As we approached spring, the embryos would have developed further, making them less suitable for our experints. We wanted to grow an embryo from as close to conception as possible, so we could monitor the process and how magic influenced it.

The best-case scenario was to capture multiple gravid females of the sa species, allowing us to compare and contrast the natural process with our magically facilitated one. For that, I needed to keep an eye out for so of the more populous local species, such as deer or elk, which would work, although I’d personally prefer sothing smaller. Voles, shrews or lemmings would work, but all those weren’t in season yet. Perhaps catching a few of them and letting them breed in captivity would be effective. I’d have to wait and see, though there was no reason why we should limit our experints to a single species. If anything, there were good reasons why we shouldn’t; diverse experints were an advantage in this scenario.

As I flew through the dark sky, snow began to fall. Part of was a little annoyed, as visibility started to drop quickly, but another part was delighted. Sure, I was unable to see the world around ; it was snowing that hard, but I could feel everything. All around , there were countless snowflakes. Each was unique, yet at the sa ti, they were all the sa. It was incredibly fascinating, especially as I started to slow my flight, not quite starting to hover but simply gliding through the falling snow.

My obscured vision forced to rely completely on my magic senses, letting the wind beneath my wings guide as my Ice Magic sensed the snow, using it much like sonar or sothing similar. I knew where the snow was falling; thus, I knew where to fly without running into obstacles. Additionally, my Wind Magic, alongside so of my traits, ant I could keep myself oriented, even without sothing external like the horizon or stars as a reference.

High up in the air, completely surrounded by snow and darkness, I realised that the boundary between the two different elents started to fade. Snow was everywhere around , obscuring my sight and muffling all sounds. The more I focused on my magical senses, the greater my sensory resolution of the different snowflakes beca. At first, I sensed them as individual, macroscopic objects, but the more isolated I felt high up in the air, the more I could sense about them. At first, I felt their boundaries, then I started to sense the individual crystals each snowflake was composed of. I was fairly confident that I’d be able to see them with my eyes if I were to take a closer look, but then, I began to sense deeper structures, feeling more and more. As that happened, the sense of my Ice Magic began to overlap with the sense of Darkness, allowing to feel the Ice and the Darkness intermixed with it.

For a mont, I feel so much, so deep into the foundations of the material world, but then, with a sharp, stinging headache, my body reminded that I had limits. And sensing what I thought were individual molecules and the void contained within each of them was beyond my body’s ability to process.

Luckily, I didn’t drop from the sky, bleeding and in pain; I only had to wipe off a fairly serious nosebleed. And make a note to try that again, later. Sowhere safe.