Tsaimath
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Interlude: A divine Solstice
🕑 Added 2024-12-25 17:00:13 +0000 UTCAN: Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a peaceful Longest Night.
It's somewhat amusing, a part of me wanted to make Hecate's reaction to Jade's new trick a little more excited or impressed but when I wrote it, the result came out as nothing but sarcastic. The most I could make the character express without utterly changing what the character is in my mind was this mild interest, anything more just didn't work. Alas, I hope you enjoy the chapter even if Hecate's thoughts are a bit tepid.
If there was one place she would consider herself to be completely relaxed, it was her library. Sure, the empty lunar void she used to impress the odd mortal who could get a vague understanding of the location’s essence was a nice place, too. Oddly soothing and completely free of distractions, it was perfect for all sorts of magical experimentation thanks to the abundance of Astral Power and the complete lack of anything important or fragile, but neither of those had the comforts she had grown to enjoy. Additionally, being surrounded by the crystallised, or rather recorded, essence of a nigh endless bounty of arcane knowledge, all of it contained within her domain, was utterly pleasant. A warm bath, always sitting at the perfect temperature, only a bath not for her body but for her soul, her very essence.
Sure, there was more to her domain than just arcane magic and the knowledge it could uncover but that was what she had built her power-base on, sharing it with mortals and collecting their own research in turn. Granted, it was a rare pleasure that one of those mortals found anything truly new, something which wasn’t just a small derivative of some already known technique, but after countless millennia, that wasn’t too much of a surprise. Most mortals simply didn’t have the time to get beyond what she considered a basic understanding of the arcane and those fundamental basics had been thoroughly researched over the years and the secrets uncovered.
Still, some mortals had the ability to uncover fascinating facets of the gem that was arcane magic and some of those mortals even had the ability to become more than mortal. To gain the time needed to reach a decent understanding of magic and go from there, rearing off on paths she, herself, couldn’t even conceive, simply because her view of the world was fairly settled, her ideas and a lot of her creativity having run dry aeons ago.
It was the hardest part about immortality, the lack of stimulus. Sure, she could run down an avenue of research that would take a mortal in a few moments but to have fresh ideas was something that didn’t come easy to her. Making things even harder was that some of those new ideas replaced things she had considered fact and simply stopped questioning over time, as they had held true at the time of her research or under the specific conditions she had applied but with a different perspective and in a different direction, those facts suddenly stopped holding true, opening up wholly new avenues to pursue.
Few of her peers would ever admit fallibility, let alone consider that mortals might find different paths to pursue that they couldn’t find but then, there was a reason why she held the position in the Pantheon she had, and it wasn’t because her church granted her an excessive amount of power.
Looking on the latest realm under the authority of the Pantheon, she glimpsed one of her current favourite mortals, the young Firn-elf going by Jade. She was such a curious specimen, and she might become truly interesting if she continued on her path. Maybe even more than interesting, though that would depend on her, whether she could manage to straddle the two divergent paths she was currently on, somehow manage to tie the divine and titanic together in a way few could. Time would tell, though even now, said mortal was doing something interesting, and, amusingly, it was all to make her adopted daughter happy.
For a moment, a bell-like tinkling sound filled the space, a truly divine giggle, all because of a clumsy mortal trying her best to take on a duty she barely understood and had originally been ill-equipped to perform but, with only a bit of prodding, she had tried. And, surprising even the prodding goddess a little more than usual, she had succeeded, not just in keeping the girl, who could have died dozens of times in the mess after their world had changed, alive but in turning said girl’s potential into something truly astounding. It was something worth nourishing even further, to the point that Hecate herself had expended a bit of effort to help the girl’s mind keep up with the rapid maturation forced upon her body by her inflated attributes and levels.
That sort of condition was fairly rare, mostly due to the actual danger the young person had to be placed in for the system to grant levels and attributes. If not for that, if there was a truly safe way to level, people would have used it, but as things were, it was generally considered too big a risk, to say nothing of the inherent dangers of a toddler in an adult's body. Or a toddler capable of blowing up sizable chunks of its surroundings, by virtue of toddlers, and even teenagers for that matter, having some troubles with impulse control. So, having an example with quite a bit of innate potential and somebody on the mortal side actively trying to nourish that potential was quite the fascinating subject for study, which Hecate had done with a fair amount of glee.
And now, that pair had quite a fascinating idea. Sure, celebrations on the night of the Winter Solstice were something common, often involving fires, light, and all that stuff. People were hiding away from the darkness and trying to chase it away as the longest night fell around them. It was a common idea, especially amongst diurnal races who didn’t get along well with the night.
Given that nasty divine curse Jade had been placed under, even if it was ameliorated by the blessing placed by Hecate and a few of the traits Jade had acquired later, that wasn’t the case here. Instead, their celebration focused primarily, almost solely, on magic, with the darkness simply being a part of the endless cycle. Interesting, especially for a largely diurnal group, and even better was the part where Jade was attempting to project the Astral River into reality.
Over the next few days, as Jade was slowly making progress on her project, she was occasionally watched by a curious deity who was quite impressed at the difficult path Jade had chosen to pursue. Illusion would have been the easiest medium to use; simply have people see what Jade could see in the Astral River, but it wouldn’t be the best medium. No, what Jade was trying to accomplish was to use a combination of Darkness and Mind Magic to project the Astral River into reality by subtly manipulating the minds of everyone involved to slip into a shallow delve. It would only work when a singular stream of the Astral River was in primacy, so essentially only during the solstices, using Darkness in the winter and Light in the summer, but otherwise, it was an interesting piece of magic.
Somewhat novel, a way to communalise something usually reserved for individuals and an experience difficult to share as everyone interpreted the Astral River somewhat differently. Not just due to the differences in the way people sensed magic but also due to the difference in affinities and the willpower to withstand the magical currents involved. But this was something that could be shared, as it used the caster’s understanding to underpin the projection, sharing what they knew while the people experiencing it could fill in the blanks while comparing and contrasting what they were shown with what they were experiencing themself. Truly, it was a curious bit of magic.
It was one that Hecate wanted to gain for herself, partially to study it a little more and partially to turn it into something she could bestow on the few people she actively supported. Though ‘few’ was always a matter of perspective, as was the question how widely this particular bit of arcane art would be shared. It was, at its core, an incredibly useful spell to further her own goals, namely, to further the spread and the development of arcane magic, simply by guiding a few more souls towards that particular path.
Maybe she would even gift the spell to a few of the other gods, especially if it worked as well as she was currently hoping. If so, she might have to grant the amusing mortal Jade a few additional benefits, maybe couched as ‘Gifts’ as was the mortal tradition for the festivity usually taking place on the solstice.
But first, she would have to see if Jade was interested in sharing the spell, and if she was, the first boon granted in exchange could be a lesson on the highest level of spell crafting. This was not something Jade could perform just yet, but unless she completely missed her guess, it might be useful for Jade in the future. After all, thanks to a few subtle, and a couple of not-so-subtle, prods by Hecate, Jade was currently developing that curious divinity and she managed to grow it almost in parallel with the Titanic Authority she was so ambitious about. Truly, mortals could be so endlessly fascinating and curious, sometimes even completely by accident. Or maybe it was that ephemeral force nobody had managed to pin down just yet, the one even the Gods had to bow to, sometimes described with a simple four-letter word.
Comments
Tsaimath
I was thinking more along the lines of "Fate" - Or maybe "Plot", who knows :D
David Brims
Luck?
Hauke Sattler
Merry Christmas
