A Jaded Life Chapter 634

Once again, a bunch of trees were consud by the black flas of Nidhogg and power was being siphoned off by the soul prison. Lenore and I kept incredibly close watch, making sure that no portals were opening nearby and the mont the drain from the Soul Prison faded, I pulled the remaining Astral Power to , using it to step into the shadows, dispersing it into the strange realm that connected all the Shadows. There, it beca nothing more than background-static and quickly faded away.

Stepping into that realm for the second ti during the night, the first being when Lenore and I used that realm to teleport across the river to avoid potential defences against aerial intruders, I instantly noticed that sothing had changed. Spreading my senses outward, it took only a mont for recognition to set in.

The all-enveloping darkness, which most would find incredibly oppressive but was only a comforting embrace to , I could recognise it. Or rather, I finally made the connection between this realm I rarely used due to the sensation of being watched I occasionally got here and the realm that I had experienced in the dream I had seen the Nidhogg in. It was the sa darkness and now, with the magic of the Nidhogg fading into the realm, I could vaguely feel its presence.

For a mont, I considered hanging around and trying to commune with it once again, but given that I had just lit up another piece of their precious forest and likely triggered any magical sensors from here to who knows where I wasn’t about to stick around. Sure, we were in the realm of shadows but this realm and the physical shadows outside were connected, so a competent being would likely notice hiding here. And if that happened, I would almost certainly die.

Pushing myself with my will, I quickly traversed the realm of shadows, feeling my Astral Power drain away in the process. While the distance travelled within the shadows didn’t completely correspond to the distance outside, there was so stretching and shrinking involved, it had so correlation. Moving through the shadows used up Astral Power and the further I moved within them, the more I had to use, the increase almost exponential. Stepping from one side of a room to the other was simple, stepping from one side of the continent to the other impossible, at least for .

By the ti my Astral Power dropped to a quarter, I hoped we had travelled far enough and pushed my senses outwards, taking in the foliage around , realising that this particular bit of shadow happened to be cast by the moonlight shining into the canopy of one of those massive trees. With a grin on my face, I pushed outward, stepping into the physical world again and started dropping. I could feel the burden on my Astral Power fade instantly after leaving the Shadows and even while falling, I kept pushing, exchanging places with Lenore.

There was only a brief mont in which I had been in the physical world and hopefully, it wasn’t enough to leave a trace. Lenore, knowing what I needed her to do, never landed on the branch beneath the one casting the Shadow, instead, she spread her wings and started gliding through the canopy, making no disturbance, just another bird making its life in the branches of the great elven forest.

It was difficult to estimate how far we had actually moved, or in which direction, but with the connection between Sigmir and , I would never lose her. Focusing on that connection, I could give Lenore a direction and she started flapping her wings, never straying from the shelter of the canopy.

Within my Hallow, I once again contemplated those flas. There was sothing that made them stick within my mind, a fascination I just couldn’t explain. Sure, I could understand that I wasn’t disgusted by them, as I was by normal fire. If not for the incredible benefits normal fire had, such as having warm als, I would have done away with it a long ti ago, simply to avoid having to look at it. But those black flas, they were so much more, there was nothing fiery about them, they were just a perfect force of devouring, nothing of that wasted heat, wasted light, just pure consumption. What they burned didn’t just get turned into ashes, light and so fus, it was utterly devoured by the shadows that had spawned them.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

However, going from ‘not being disgusted by them’ to ‘being completely fascinated by them’ was a bit of a stretch and I wasn’t quite sure what pulled my mind to them like this. Not only did I want to conjure and watch them, but I also wanted to master them, to make them my own, even if a part of understood that they weren’t mine and could never be. They were the flas of Nidhogg, not the flas of Morgana.

That simple, quite obvious, thought brought my mind to a stop. The flas of Morgana, the idea had such a wonderful ring to it. What would my flas be? The flas of Nidhogg, at least from what I could see, were a representation of Devouring, the Darkness that ate the world, or maybe the Darkness that gnawed at the root of the World Tree, if one took the myths I had read into account.

But what did I want my own flas to be? Sure, there would have to be an aspect of devouring in them, Darkness was one of my primary affinities and Devouring fit flas so wonderfully. But I wasn’t just a being of Darkness, Ice had to be incorporated as well and even Blood might need to be part of my flas.

Raising my hand, in this space that was mine, and mine alone, I conjured so Liquid Moonlight, looking at the gently moving liquid, not allowing any heat to intrude into my construct. Flas that devoured, flas of ice, the answer seed to be quite simple, flas that devoured heat. Perfect cooling, maybe a lingering, empowered version of those Beams of Cold I had used in the past, used and mostly discarded outside of special environnts, simply due to their lack of physical punch. But if I managed to conceptually enhance them to linger on my target and freeze the target on their own accord, maybe by combining cold with the concept of devouring?

For a mont, I considered infusing the Liquid Moonlight with that concept, to form sothing similar to the flas of Nidhogg, but before I could put thought into action, I discarded the idea. Or at least postponed it, forming a potentially unstable, magical effect based on two of the most destructive concepts I knew about, in an attempt to synergise them together to make them even more destructive, while being within my Hallow, a space that was conceptually within Lenore, seed to be incredibly reckless. Sure, I controlled this space but there was no guarantee that I would be able to control my own magic any better than I could outside.

“You know, you could try to add Death into those flas you are considering,” Lenore suggested, obviously both amused and relieved at the thought that I had considered forming sothing like that in my Hallow but also glad that I had seen the folly of the idea instantly.

“Maybe,” I allowed, letting the idea percolate in my mind for a few monts, trying to imagine the result, “But I don’t think so,” I shook my head.

“It would be too spread out, I think. I don’t even want to add Blood Magic into that idea, even if it might have potential. Flas based on the idea of Devouring Heat, sound like sothing that would work, it’s a logical and direct consequence of combining Ice- and Darkness-Magic. But adding Death-Magic into it, that doesn’t quite fit, I think. It’s not that I seek to devour Life, which could work, if I based it on Darkness and Death, or maybe even Flas that Devour the Life in your Blood, to push Blood Magic into it, increasing the power but limiting the breadth of my Flas, It’s not what I want,” I rambled, unable to combine those concepts in a satisfactory manner.

“If you say so,” Lenore could only shrug, obviously unable to fully understand where I was going with this.

“Either way, we are almost back at the river, you might want to focus outward, so we can get back into the shadows. Focus, I’d prefer not to get lost,” she reminded , an amused undertone in her voice.

Realising how long I had been pondering those flas and the question of how my own flas should look, I did what she suggested, focusing on the imdiate problems, not so future troubles.