Having to wait and worry about Sunna's reaction was deeply annoying. A part of me wanted something to happen, just so the waiting and worrying would be over. Despite knowing that this sensation was utterly insane, I couldn’t help it. Sitting there, within the shrine of Lady Hecate, unable to focus on anything for any length of time before the worry returned and interrupted whatever I was working on, started driving me mad.
At first, after returning from the Oculus, I had tried to rest a bit. Cleaning myself, undressing, conjuring up a bed in the shrine, lying down, closing my eyes, just following my usual routine, only to realise that my mind wouldn’t shut up. Every moment with my eyes closed, images of doom and far too bright lights were bubbling up from my subconsciousness, burning away any expectation of sleep. Or even of just resting with my eyes closed, even that would have been a step up over tossing and turning as I did, until I finally gave up and rose. I didn’t even leave the shrine, just sat there, on the bed I had conjured and now turned into an armchair, trying to get comfortable.
And being unable to. No matter what I tried, how I positioned myself or altered the chair I was sitting on, a profound sense of unease and discomfort remained. I had no way of knowing if that sensation had a reason, some sort of premonition or prophecy or something like that, or if it was all in my mind. So, uncertain whether this was a figment of my imagination or caused by an actual, magical process, I started to dig. Or at least trying to.
The uneasy mood I was in wasn’t all that conducive to cerebral pursuits; it made me want to move, to try and flee, to hide myself or get ready for a fight. But that wasn’t what I had in mind. I wanted to investigate my own magic, to see if something external was prodding my mind and causing this sensation or if it was, literally, all in my head.
Closing my eyes once more, I forcibly focused my mind inwards, not towards my soul, as I had earlier, but towards my mind and my magic. Compared to investigating my soul, this didn’t need a calm mind and a feeling of safety and comfort, or the whole endeavour would be doomed from the start. No, this was something I could do in almost any mental state; it even helped with calming and collecting my mental state, at least to some degree.
Then, I was perceiving my magic, the numerous different hues of colour and magnitude, all of it flowing through my very being, some of it moving swiftly and easily, other colours and elements acting a little choppy, as if something was stirring things up. All in all, it looked ordinary, nothing indicating that something was wrong, at least on the magical side.
On the mundane side of my mind, a place where I had spent a lot less time, things were a little different. Here, I didn’t even have the experience to tell what meaning the different mental constructs had, let alone understand if something was out of place. The mundane part of my mind wasn’t something I regularly investigated, simply because I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of changing anything within. And even perceiving the elements of my mind, cataloguing them and categorising them would be an alteration of sorts. Not a major one, but I imagined it a little like the famous thought-experiment of Schr?dinger’s Cat.
As long as I didn’t know, hadn’t perceived my mind, I couldn’t even try to alter or influence it; nothing was categorised or perceived, my mind simply was. But because my mind was the tool I used to classify and perceive the world, any alteration to my mind would also alter the tools I used to do just that, possibly leading to a loop. I just didn’t trust myself to alter my own mind, especially not without some way to prevent or correct any mistakes I might make in the process.
It was the exact reason why I wasn’t willing to work on my own soul, why I had Shattered the guy’s soul in an attempt to learn more.
Regardless, I couldn’t detect anything external to myself that might cause the uncomfortable sensation I was experiencing. That meant it was either due to something external that I couldn’t detect or to something internal. In other words, it could be caused by something along the lines of guilt, or it might be a subtle punishment from Sunna. Either way, there was little I could do about it, if I couldn’t even detect if there was something I needed to do something about, other than accept that this was something I felt right now and, hopefully, it would go away on its own at some point.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
If it didn’t, I would consider other, likely more involved, options.
Eventually, I retreated from my own mind and opened my eyes again. The meditation had allowed me to shed some of the overactive and paranoid feelings, but not all. I was still feeling as if I had ants crawl all over me, driving me to move and do something, though I wasn’t about to leave the shrine and the protection it offered. If this were a ploy of Sunna to drive me from the shrine, I wouldn’t fall for it.
But I needed to be active and do something, or I would likely start scratching myself, just to get rid of that sensation, and end up bloody. Not a pleasant thing to contemplate, even if I could heal myself.
Reaching out, I conjured a sheet of stone, as thin as I could make it, and started decorating it with runes. Around the edges of the sheet, where nobody but the worst psychopaths would write, I placed a thin, almost decorative, line of runes, one flowing into the other. Nothing overly complex, just runes that reinforced and hardened the stone, making it a lot more durable than a sheet of stone barely a millimetre thick had any right to be.
Like this, it wouldn’t shatter unless somebody brought some serious force to bear. Dropping it made a ringing sound, almost like dropped porcelain, only without the breakage. Hitting it with human, and even low-superhuman, force didn’t do much more. Only when I started striking the stone hard enough to break bones in normal humans was the enchantment overwhelmed. Given that stone that thin was liable to break under its own weight, this was a significant accomplishment.
Then, once I was comfortable that the sheet wouldn’t break easily, I started to rewrite the old introduction to magic. I had learned a lot since I wrote that, and these fundamentals were quite important to me. Additionally, I felt that my explanations were now better, more comprehensive, and more comprehensible, so the improvement was worthwhile anyway. And I was stuck, so this bit of creative expression gave me something to do, something I could focus my entire being on. Something that could also count as religious service to Lady Hecate, so if Sunna decided to attack me right now, she would be breaking some serious divine doctrine as I understood it. Attacking somebody performing a religious service to another deity sounded like something the gods would be prissy about.
Otherwise, it would be far too easy to strike down some priest or cleric in the middle of a service, while making it obvious that the attack came from another god. That would likely cost the attacked deity some serious credibility amongst mortals. After all, if the god can’t protect their own clergy, would anyone believe that the god can protect some random worshipper? I certainly wouldn’t, but then, I wouldn’t be comfortable relying on a deity for protection in the first place. Even if I was currently sitting in a shrine, just in case another deity decided to get aggressive.
“Hey, Mom,” Luna’s voice pulled me away from my work, “What’s the plan for the longest night this year? Do you think the locals will want to celebrate with us, or will it be something we do all on our own?”
“Good question,” I admitted, “I don’t think the locals will make the trek here, it’s a bit of a pain, and, honestly, I think they’ll just do something with their communities. It’s not like last year, where they lived here for most of the winter and learned magic.” I shrugged, uncertain if that made sense.
“But if you want, we can check, maybe offer to visit one of their places or something like that. Or we can head north, maybe visit the Nexus Tower. There are a few things I could try in that night, it is magically significant after all,” I explained, already considering what interesting experiments the longest night would support.
“We’ll just have to see, and, luckily, we’ve,” I paused, briefly considering and calculating when the longest night actually was, “We’ve still got a bit of time,” I admitted, realising that it was almost upon us, much to my chagrin. Time had just slipped away from me somewhere, and now, the celebration would be in just three more days. Hopefully, we could come up with something nice and grand for the Blessed City. They could celebrate well. For the last time.
