Channelling vast amounts of power was always an intense experience. A faint feeling of omnipotence, stray thoughts intruding on my mind, suggesting just what I might be able to accomplish with that much power, alongside an aching pain in my body and a buzzing in my mind, it was incredible. Yet, at the same time, there were small parts of my mind that reminded me that, despite all that power, I was still mortal. If I lost control, or continued channelling this much power for too long, one part of the trinity, composed of Body, Mind and Soul, would give out under the stress of channelling this power, destroying me utterly. I’d either turn into a Shattered, my Soul torn asunder by the powers I evoked, some sort of spirit as my Body was turned to dust or some mindless abomination as my Mind was utterly fried. I wasn’t sure which would be the worst outcome, but I was certain I’d call all three options bad.
Meaning, I needed to keep control despite the euphoria induced by the power surging through me and into the spirit I had bound, despite the sensation of having the world at my fingertips, allowing me to shape it as if it were playdough. Granted, I knew the sensation was an illusion brought about by an abundance of power flowing through my Body and Soul so I could keep control, but it would be so easy to lose myself, to let go and become something else. So easy and so utterly final and deadly, it was a strange sensation.
The spirit I had bound was similarly fascinating to feel. Usually, it was just there, little more than an extension of my magic as I had apparently bound it tightly into it, but now, with the amount of power running through it and me, it became something more. Now, it turned into a bridge, or maybe a translator, between me and the natural world around me, allowing me to leverage the power I was channelling a lot easier than I would usually be able to. Normally, I would have to use an almost brute-force approach, only able to apply what I knew about the natural world to apply my power efficiently but, thanks to the spirit, I had a fairly good idea where I’d need to push, where I could prod nature to make things happen as I wished.
This understanding quickly bore fruit, as the winds started to pick up just a little, pushing clouds and moving the air as I wanted it to, even using the fire and the heat it exuded to create zones of low and high pressure, drawing in more and more clouds and moisture. It wasn’t a fast process, not in the slightest, nor an easy one, but given that I was manipulating the weather on a massive scale, that wasn’t a surprise. After all, while the focus of my work was channelled into the direction of the wildfire, the effects would spread a lot further. Areas easily a few hundred kilometres away from here would experience some side effects. Likely not a whole lot, slightly different wind patterns and less precipitation, but they would be touched by the changes I wrought.
But none of them would be as affected as the area I focused my ritual on. There, I could already feel the air change as it grew heavy with rain, the wind picking up and driving more and more moisture into the fire, dampening what was happening.
I could feel the clouds thicken and my magic lower their temperature, turning the moisture trapped up there into drops of rain and hail, ready to unleash a torrential flood of ice, water and slush on the fires below. Sure, the water wouldn’t be infused with my magical power, but the sheer amount I was gathering would likely be devastating to any creature of fire trapped within the effect, to say nothing about the numerous wildfires. Soon, I would have enough water to turn the entire area into a swampy mess, and once the fire was gone and the air cleansed of smoke and ash, we could move in and destroy the weakened creatures inside, hopefully netting us a nice chunk of EXP. The sheer danger of these creatures should assure that much, to say nothing of the magical reagents and resources we would hopefully find within the extinguished remains of this mess.
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Just as I was about to push things even further, I felt Lia’s arm wrap around me. Suddenly, I was torn away from the area I had prepared for my ritual, the abrupt change in environment sending a blinding spike of pain through my mind when the natural world I had tuned myself to was replaced with the alien and unforgiving plane of shadows.
“What the hel?” I groaned when we reemerged, my focus utterly shattered and my body sore as the power I had gathered discharged almost randomly and uncontrolled, most of it surging back into the Astral River, some of it into the shadows, some of it into nature or something like that, my mind was too sore to think about anything but the question why Lia had acted as she did.
“Look,” she commanded me, her voice tense, and I followed her eyes, blinking a little as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing because the image didn’t look right to me. I could recognise the hillside I had used for my ritual, but it didn’t look like it had when I picked it. Originally, it had been a simple, somewhat rocky hillside with a good amount of trees growing on it, nothing special. There were, quite literally, hundreds of these small hills in the area, or thousands if one went a little further; there was an abundance of them.
Now, the entire area I had used was covered in the same goop we had seen the goop-men sling and, just like everything covered in said goop, the hillside was on fire. To drive Lia’s point home, another massive wave of burning, sludgey goop crashed into the hillside as I was watching, spreading the mess further and causing a few more fires to flare up.
“Yikes,” I muttered, my voice now quiet due to the sheer devastation I was seeing and the realisation of how close this had been. If Lia hadn’t pulled me out, I would be covered in that goop and most likely on fire, not something I wanted to experience, ever.
“We probably should get going,” Lia reminded me, making me blink in confusion for a moment before realising that she was right. My mind was truly fried if I needed prodding to get out of an area an enemy had just bombarded with the magical equivalent of artillery while also preparing it for the advance of their ground troops.
“Let’s go,” I agreed, trying to walk forward only to stumble and almost land on my face, my body not quite able to respond to my commands just yet. The interrupted ritual seemed to have done more damage to me than I thought, though hopefully it wouldn’t be lasting damage.
As we slowly made our way through the forest, I was once again grateful that I took Lia with me to the ritual. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to walk, let alone escape, my body just wasn’t cooperating, to say nothing of the painful, aching soreness spreading throughout my entire body, as if I had pulled all my muscles at once. Some of them, I didn’t think one could pull in the first place and yet, the magical backlash had managed just that.
To make matters worse, trying to channel Astral Power felt like trying to drag shards of broken glass through my body and mind, the sensation both physically and mentally painful, though the mental pain was a little worse than the physical. Or maybe I was simply more used to physical aches than to this sort of mental, or magical, pain, allowing me to become accustomed to it and thus lessening its perceived severity. I wasn’t sure, though, whether the mental exercise was a good distraction, as, curiously, the non-magical part of my mind was the least affected. Everything else hurt terribly, forcing me to take refuge in my mind while allowing Lia to guide and almost carry me.
“Enough,” she eventually grumbled, wrapping my arms around her neck and pulling my mostly limp body on her back, my legs wrapped around her middle. It was an exceedingly strange sensation, but I couldn’t complain about its efficiency. Now that I wasn’t stumbling along, forcing Lia to spend most of her efforts to make sure I kept going, she was making much better time, her attribute-enhanced strength easily high enough to carry me around. Normally, I would have protested, but given my exhausted and battered state, I didn’t mind too much and let my body drift off into a shallow sleep to escape the aches and pain.
