A Jaded Life

Chapter 1315

Sometimes, hindsight was quite the powerful force. If I had fully realised what my promise to Maggie would mean, I might have reconsidered. Probably not; the payoff was quite useful, but it didn’t change the tedious price I had to pay. Building houses and helping Luna to prepare the fields was a fun challenge the first time, trying to figure out how to shape the stone to distribute future loads, how to reinforce it, either with direct magical reinforcement or by altering the internal structure with a bit of Crystal Magic had been interesting, and figuring out the various enchantments necessary was as enjoyable as it was complex.

However, the issue came afterwards. When the challenge wasn’t about figuring out how to recreate amenities that had been burned away in the change for our new world, but when the challenge was to reproduce what I had created the first time. And then do so a few dozen times, then hundreds of times, as everyone and their grandmother wanted to live in one of the newly designed houses. The interest sparked desire, and the desires coalesced into demands, all of which naturally bred tension and resentment. Something I had promised to help with, which effectively meant my promise bound me to continue helping them to build new houses, though I did my best to get around that duty.

Mostly by trying to find people who had the right affinities, or even just an interest and some basic talent. By now, I was quite willing to see if I couldn’t use a bit of Mind and Soul Magic to give someone the right affinities, with their consent, of course. Maybe not with fully informed consent; it was difficult to estimate the side effects of a procedure being done for the first time, but that was a problem for another time.

For now, I was just looking to see if anyone was interested in learning how Luna and I reshaped the world according to our desire. Preferably, how I did, because I wasn’t sure I wanted people to learn the Life Magic of Luna. Life Magic was, as odd as it sounded, just a little too dangerous, mostly because the potential of unexpected and unintended consequences was just a little too large for comfort.

There was a reason why Luna’s experimental space in the Nexus tower was as secure as I could make it, with multiple ways to annihilate anything that tried to escape. Life Magic, at its core, was, unsurprisingly, about living things. And the issue with living things was that they wanted to remain alive. From there, survival of the fittest took over, allowing those living things that Luna had just manipulated to try to adapt to their environment, which meant they would mutate over successive generations. Or even spontaneously, if enough Life Magic was involved.

In a place like Maggie’s community, I could see some aspiring Life Mage accidentally create some horrible plague that wiped everyone out, or it might even do something even worse. The possibilities were pretty much endless, and without a properly prepared containment space to experiment and work out the initial issues, some of them would slip through. There was a reason why I had insisted on staying with Luna while she performed her initial experiments, and that was despite her gaining a certain base-level of ability from the Grandmother.

It wasn’t something I liked talking about, but when it came to unintended damage, Life Magic, and Blood Magic, for that matter, were the most volatile disciplines we had access to. Maybe Soul Magic, too, but that discipline had its own issues, and most initial experiments simply ended in the horrific death of the experimental subject. Bad for the subjects involved, but, well, once they were dead, their soul simply moved on, leaving little to cause further unintended damage. Unless something almost worked, but not quite, that could cause some trouble. Not as much as a runaway super-plague, but still, it could be bad.

Another issue I faced during my continued stay in Maggie’s community was Jess. On one hand, it was quite fascinating to work on her mind, to slowly untangle the knots her memories were twisted into, partially by trauma, partially by Sunna’s mental manipulation and partially by me. It was, quite frankly, a bit of a mess, but it was an interesting one, fascinating to untangle and devilishly difficult. It was a good time, and I learned a lot about memories and the mind.

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But what I could have done without was the odd attachment and fixation Jess had formed. At first, I had thought she might have caught a crush or something. But that didn’t feel quite right. Even if she had snuck into the bed Luna and I shared, she had never touched me in a way I would consider sexual. Intimate, maybe, but never in a way Luna hadn’t touched me before.

That made me think she might want to be adopted as a daughter, as Luna had. The two of us looked different enough, especially with my pale, blue skin, that nobody would think I had given birth to her, even if the skin was something that most would realise had happened after the change. But, again, there was no indication she wanted to be my daughter, at least none that I could see.

Lastly, there was my current theory. She somehow, maybe subconsciously, knew that she was pregnant, as I hadn’t found a good way to tell her about that yet and fixated on me because of that. Since the change, personal protection was quite an important commodity, something historically, and to some degree biologically, was the domain of males. The protector, and all that. It was the biological reason that physical strength and fitness were considered attractive traits. The ability to protect mate and offspring, something that Jess, right now, might instinctively seek.

However, I had aptly demonstrated my power, maybe to the point that her instincts had latched onto that, especially when the power combined with my efforts to help and heal her, giving her the need to be close to me so I would protect her when necessary. Sadly, that need seemed to mostly manifest in two distinct behavioural patterns.

One was the desire to share my bed. No matter how I tucked her in, no matter what mental magic I wove around her mind, she always found her way into my bed and cuddled up to me, within about two hours of going to sleep. I had, out of curiosity, timed it once, staying awake after putting her to sleep, only to witness her shuffle over and crawl into bed with Luna and me.

Amusingly, that situation had allowed me to notice that she wasn’t consciously doing that. She had been completely out of it, her mind in the deepest sleep I had observed thus far, and yet, she had readily shuffled over and crawled over Luna without disturbing her sleep. If it wasn’t a little creepy, I would readily applaud her skill, as she had demonstrated a great deal of coordination and balance. All without being awake at any point, making the whole thing even more interesting and impressive.

The other pattern was just as tedious, but also similarly amusing. She followed me around, somewhat similar to a particularly affectionate Golden Retriever. However, she also demonstrated the mental acuity of a Golden Retriever. Maybe a little less, if I were being honest with myself.

Granted, that behaviour had some advantages, mainly that I could send her around as my personal assistant and that she was naturally adorable. Again, just like a Golden Retriever, with all the eagerness to please and be pleasant.

Sadly, for all the eagerness, she didn’t have any real affinity for magic. I was still trying to teach her a little, but she was a bit of a dunce at it. So I mainly used her to fetch and carry, especially when it came to prospective students.

“Miss Morgana?” Jess’ voice pulled me from my contemplation, making me glance over. She looked rather concerned, making me frown with worry. That was a look I usually saw right before, or sometimes during, our mental therapy sessions, so for her to look like this right now might imply something had gone wrong with the bindings in her mind.

“Yes?” I asked, after disentangling my mind from the magic I had been working on, “What’s wrong?”

“The work you did with me, do you think you could help others, too?” she asked, looking a little furtive. “I’m not the only one struggling with the memories of our time in that cursed city. Some noticed that I look a lot more rested since moving into your room and made rather crude comments, so I set them straight. And they asked me to talk to you in their stead.”

For a moment, I struggled to keep my features composed. It just wouldn’t do to start grinning like a lunatic, possibly with a bit of manical cackling thrown in, at the prospect of numerous traumatised minds. But this was a golden opportunity to delve into others' willing minds and learn as much as possible.

“Certainly,” I nodded, my voice as calm as I could make it, my face a mask of faint concern, “I’ll see what I can do,” I offered, curious what I might learn here.