“Good Morning, my dear Jade,” a familiar voice, far too cheerful for comfort and mixed with the same childlike curiosity I regularly heard from Luna, greeted me. A part of me wanted to turn over, wrap a pillow around my head, not that I had one, and ignore the cheery voice, hoping it would go away. However, my experience with Luna told me that someone with this voice, and that excitement, wasn’t about to go away, unless martial, or maybe marital, force was involved. So, I either had to smack the person with that voice until they went away or I had to find Sigmir and start something that would make anyone give us privacy.

  Sadly, neither option was possible, especially as I now realised just who that voice belonged to.

  “That is to be seen,” I groaned, my voice not working quite right, even though I was currently occupying a magical construct provided to me by Lady Hecate, the owner of the voice, and the realm we were presently residing in. Why the magical construct was reflecting my physical, or maybe spiritual, state this accurately, I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling Lady Hecate had a reason for making it so. Or she was simply bored and thought that realism was critical for the immersive experience; either possibility was equally possible.

  “Given that we are in your realm, I don’t see how it can be morning. The place has never changed during all my visits, it’s always the same, seemingly endless expanse of grey. No days or nights, so how can there be a morning, unless you import time and the times of day from somewhere else? Maybe a deal with Chronos?” I snarked, my worn state overriding the filter that would usually prevent me from being quite so direct.

  “Similarly, I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck, maybe repeatedly. To make matters worse, it feels like the truck ran over my insides, or maybe my mind? My spirit? I’ve no idea, I just feel like I want to lie somewhere and ignore the world for a few weeks. Maybe curl up in the Nexus, let its power wash away this awful feeling,” I groaned, already feeling exhausted.

  “Poor dear,” the Grandmother, her voice dry and amused as she usually was, answered my moaning without a shred of sympathy.

  “However, we didn’t pull you here just to amuse ourselves. Instead, we pulled you here because we would like to propose a deal,” the Mother, my counterpart within Hecate, told me, her voice business-like but carrying a slight hint of sympathy.

  “You know, a part of me wants to throw your deal in your face on general principle, just so I can fall back unconscious,” I replied, chuckling despite myself, “But I know better. Tell me about that deal. What do you want?” I asked brusquely, only to realise I was being rude to the one deity who had always been amicable.

  “Apologies, I’m not quite all there,” I admitted immediately, trying to smooth over any potential insult.

  “No, it is quite fascinating,” the Maiden waved my apologies away, and, somehow, I could feel her eyes scan me, studying and dissecting every tiny part of me, even though my eyes were closed once more.

  “True, the changes go deeper than just your behaviour,” the Grandmother agreed, intensifying the sensation of being under a microscope even further.

  “And, amusingly, you have no idea about that, do you?” the Mother asked, her voice sounding far too close to mine when I stumbled across something fascinating. This didn’t necessarily bode well, though I had a feeling this was what the deal Lady Hecate had proposed was all about.

  “Your deal?” I asked, letting out a groan as another part of my exhausted self added to the general discomfort I was feeling. How the hel could my toes be sore? Hopefully, this would be the last part of my body to ache. There wasn’t all that much left of it that didn’t scream at me with messages of discomfort.

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  “Yes, my deal,” the Mother chuckled once more, “The deal is, you tell me, or preferably show me with your Mind Magic, what you experienced when you were meditating in our Shrine within your tower.” the Mother paused for a moment, “In turn, we show you something regarding your Mind Magic that you will find deeply interesting and important. Something you are desperate to learn, even if you don’t know yet.”

  For a moment, my mind raced, weighing the deal, its upsides and downsides. On the face of it, it was an incredible deal; I wasn’t giving away anything material. I would receive something useful in return, something Lady Hecate was confident I would want. Given the deity’s experience and knowledge, I was willing to take that at face value, as she had always played things straight with me. Maybe not always straightforward, but I couldn’t think of an incident in which I felt deceived or cheated. Pranked, maybe, but never cheated.

  “You have a deal,” I accepted after a few moments of consideration, as I couldn’t see any actual downsides. Possibly because I was uncertain what I had experienced in the strange, primal state I had managed to reach, but that was a problem for the future. Maybe Lady Hecate’s reaction would allow me to learn more about that state and what I had experienced, but I wasn’t too hopeful that she’d slip up and accidentally tell me more than she intended. She might deliberately slip up and speak out loud, allowing me to overhear things she would usually be forbidden from telling me, but that was an entirely different topic.

  “Perfect,” all three voices spoke at the same time, all in a tone that I could only describe as overjoyed and a little giddy. “Let’s see it then,” the Mother added, sounding a little impatient.

  Using lessons Lady Hecate had taught me quite a while back, I started pulling the memories, thoughts, impressions, and experiences I had in that primal state into a single mental file, magically turning it into something I could transmit so she could experience it herself. At the same time, I quietly spoke, doing my best to express the experience in words, only to realise that my words were utterly incapable of doing it justice. Speech, regardless of language, was simply too limited; this had been something beyond words. Something, for lack of a better word, transcendent.

  Finally, after my attempts to describe the experience had faded away for a long time, I managed to put together that mental file and reached out with my Mind Magic, sensing Lady Hecate’s mind. Not just before me, contained within her avatar, but everywhere around me. In some ways, it seemed that the entire grey expanse, this entire domain, was nothing but Lady Hecate, and the avatar simply provided something for me to focus on, something I could readily comprehend. Despite this new revelation, I still sent the mental package towards the Avatar, watching as the tri-faced entity easily absorbed the densely packed information.

  For a few moments, all three faces went slack, eyes distant and unmoving. In fact, it was as if the entire world stood still, with nothing moving, as if somebody had pressed pause on reality. Then, just as suddenly as the effect had appeared, it disappeared, the world once again showing its faint movements and Lady Hecate’s avatar returning to its usual, aware state.

  “That was…” the Mother began, before petering off. “That was something,” she repeated, showing just how unusual my experience might have been.

  “You have come far, young one,” the Grandmother added, looking straight at me, a strange glint in her eyes. “You have come far, but much of your path remains to be walked. We will continue to observe, especially if you prove yourself to be this fascinating.”

  While her words were just on the edge of being ominous, the warm undertone made up for that, promising the occasional guiding and helping hand.

  The Maiden, on the other hand, didn’t need words to convey her excitement. Somehow, she managed to make a sound that I’d usually associate with dog whistles, a squee of excitement that was ideally suited for a young child. And yet, despite the noise being auditorily painful, the sheer excitement and glee radiating from the Maiden made up for it. She was, quite literally, shaking with excitement, and, somehow, that was transmitted throughout Lady Hecate’s domain. For a moment, I wondered if different aspects of her were expressed in certain distinct elements of her domain, but then I let the thought drop. Trying to understand how a deity’s domain related to her divine makeup was likely beyond mortal understanding, literally. It was also something I did not wish to ponder right in front of the deity in question, just in case said deity realised what I was doing. It felt a little invasive.

  “You have shown me something deeply intriguing,” the Mother spoke, her voice cutting through the noises of excitement from the Maiden. “In turn, we will teach you the promised lesson. Now, pay close attention.”