A Jaded Life

Chapter 1326

Given that my current task wasn’t particularly time-critical, I decided to experiment a little. Thinking back to the ritual I had used to create the body to house the Grandmother’s consciousness during our family dinner, I decided to use it as a base and start from scratch. My old scrying constructs were incredibly useful, but they had some rather annoying limitations. Now, with the ritual as a base, I wanted to see if I could make something better. If it worked, great; if not, I would only have wasted a bit of time.

Not that I was planning to make use of the entire ritual, that would be a complete and utter overkill. I didn’t need my scrying constructs to eat or act as a living thing would. Trying to shoehorn such capabilities into the constructs would only add limitations to them, without any tangible benefits. Maybe if I were planning to have them spy on people by blending in, but that wasn’t quite what I used them for. Well, not really, but even if people noticed them, how many people would realise that a certain bird wasn’t eating enough to sustain itself? They might not even notice that the constructs all looked the same, unless they paid special attention and could directly compare multiple of my constructs. So, increasing their ability to blend in wasn’t high on my list of priorities.

What I wanted instead was for my constructs to use my Special Abilities, especially those related to perception. Even just the ability to Observe or Identify would be valuable, but if I could make it so my constructs counted as an origin point of Mind over Matter, I would be utterly gleeful. I felt that the ability could be incredibly useful, but I hadn’t been able to make real use of it, mostly because my diverse magical abilities had always felt more appropriate. Why bother trying to use the rather fiddly telekinesis to place some material if I could use my Earth or Crystal Magic to accomplish the same thing, just working on a conceptual level?

Mind over Matter might have the advantage in tactility, but the magical abilities were much more intuitive to use, at least as long as one was working in the appropriate element. Which, for me, was essentially always the case, as I could control them all in some fashion. Still, the ability to control any physical matter within a short distance of myself had to be incredibly powerful, especially as it neatly combined with my senses. I just had to figure out how to best use it, instead of simply relying on my myriad magical abilities.

If I could channel that ability through my constructs, scrying or otherwise, I’d have another tool in my box, giving me another way to alter reality as I saw fit. But to do that, I needed to figure out how to make constructs that were essentially a part of me.

Out of curiosity, I had started to build my new constructs from the ground up, using some of my Blood as their base. The idea was that my blood, and some animal flesh I had harvested and imbued with my Blood and Astral Power, would retain the connection they had to me, remain part of me. After all, nothing defined that my body was just the flesh I was currently composed of. Nothing, but the label the system defined as my race, though there had to be some flexibility there. Hopefully.

So, I started to use some meat, some of my blood smeared across the meat, while I had done my best to fill the various small blood vessels within the meat with as much of my blood as possible, curious what would happen if I did.

The blood was imbued with enough Astral Power and vitality to make Lia drool, briefly making me wonder what my daughter would think of a rare steak prepared like that, but the flesh remained inert. Some spark was needed to restart the various vital processes that separated a living being from a dead one.

Thinking back to classical literature, I decided to try a literal spark and channelled some Lightning Magic into the meat, keeping the current low and weak, as I had no interest in roasting the meat. Not when I wanted to essentially revive it, or at least turn it into something viable to affect with my Blood Magic.

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For a few seconds, the Lightning Magic I was channelling through the meat did little; the current was too weak to even warm it, just as I intended. It quickly became obvious that lightning, at least on its own, wasn’t the answer. For a moment, I considered trying a different element, but the only one I considered really suitable would be Blood, and that only worked on living things. Then I had an idea and decided to try mixing Blood and Lightning, similar to how I had combined elements before to carry curses and such.

Back on Mundus, adding some element of Blood, mostly strength or vitality, into my curses allowed them to spread far more effectively through their target, afflicting them on a deeper level and likely making it harder to remove them, as they weren’t just placed on the person; they were infecting their very essence. Following the logic I had used back then, I started to weave the Blood Magic I wanted to infuse into the meat with the Lightning I wanted to use as a medium.

This time, I managed to achieve something, but whether I would be willing to call it a success was rather questionable. On one level, it had worked; the meat was being infused with my Blood Magic, but, on a different level, I wasn’t getting any closer to my goal. Instead, it looked as if I was about to create a Nethersprite, ready to feast on the power I was fusing into the meat, or maybe one was about to crawl out of the underbrush of reality, lured here by the magic I was using. This was, quite obviously, not the way to go, so I quickly used a blast of devouring Darkness Magic to erase any traces of the magic and the meat I had used.

Sighing, I decided this wasn’t the right way to approach the project, so I started wondering whether I should try another element. Or if I should use my original construct-framework and focus on altering only one part of the framework, maybe only the head, or the connection I used to sense through them. That might be more prudent, and, if I were being honest, trying to make living constructs was more of a vanity project anyway.

It wasn’t as if living constructs were necessary or inherently superior. They also had major disadvantages, especially in terms of the cost of their creation and upkeep. I could make my shadow constructs by the dozens without feeling any strain. Maybe once I started creating them in the hundreds, I would be stressed, but mostly because of the incredible breadth of information they would be channelling back to me. Their creation wouldn’t be the issue, ever.

Additionally, my shadow constructs could morph freely, allowing me to infiltrate them into places, so maybe that should be something I could improve upon even further. Ravens were great, but if I could learn to keep the constructs mobile and easily controllable without issues, having them formless might be a good thing, too. And if that didn’t work, there were other options. Maybe learning how to morph them into a few distinct shapes, spiders, rats or something similar, something small and stealthy, so I could have them infiltrate buildings easier.

Closing my eyes, I started to weave together shadows for a raven’s shell. It was a familiar process, though I hadn’t yet added the parts I used to anchor them, the claws and beak of Ice. If I wanted them to be fully morphable, those couldn’t be included; I’d have to come up with another way to anchor them. Some non-physical, or at least mutable, way to anchor the non-physical shadow-construct within physical reality, a challenge I hadn’t managed thus far. At least not long-term. Short-term shadow constructs didn’t need to be anchored; I could maintain them with my will, but it took magic and focus, making it a problematic issue for my constructs.

But maybe I could make the anchors smaller, or maybe include them in other elements of the construct. After piercing my finger once again, I let a few drops of blood well up and imbued them with Astral Power, mostly blood, wind and shadow. Then, I formed the drops into a small orb and pushed it into the construct’s head, right where the eye would be.

Now, I only needed to tie the newly created eye to my own eye, and, hopefully, I’d be able to look through the raven’s eye as if it were my own, and use my different abilities as if the raven were me.

If it worked.