When my mind started cooperating again, there was still darkness around me. But the darkness had changed, it was no longer empty and cold, no, I was surrounded by warmth. With my mind back in action, the rest of my senses returned as well. After my perception of temperature, my senses of proprioception and touch were next, allowing me to identify just what was that warmth I was feeling. Quickly, I was able to identify it was an embrace. With the return of my sense of smell, I was even able to identify just what was embracing me. There were not many beings I could easily identify just by a small sniff of them, but Sigmir was definitely at the top of that list. That combination of leather, sweat and a little something that was just her, a smell that reminded me of pine-trees and fresh snow. With that knowledge, I was instantly calmed. My hearing came back next and I heard the low shuffling of feet on snow.

Now, with my mind getting back to full speed, I must have stiffened in some way, something that made Sigmir realise that I had awoken. There was a low order to Adra, stopping their run for a moment, and after a bit of movement, the darkness around me vanished and I realised that my sense of sight had returned some time ago, I had just been covered by Sigmir’s dark cloak and softly pressed against her chest.

“Thank the Ancestors, you are awake. Are you alright?!” Sigmir exclaimed the moment our eyes met. She looked worried and I could understand it. Just trying to figure out what I had done was giving me a bit of a headache. There was a surreal quality to my memories, reminiscent of a brutal migraine attack, or what I believed some drugs to cause. A floating, sensation, akin to swimming but different.

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m not exactly sure what I did or how I did it, but the shaman is dead.” As I said that, I placed my arms around Sigmir, giving her a soft squeeze to reassure her of my good health.

“I guessed as much. Just before you reappeared, there was some sort of a scream, it reminded me of the noises the Nethersprites around Tegi made.”

That… made sense. I dimly remembered stabbing the shaman in the back - one blade going for the kidneys, the other for his rotten, black heart - and afterwards I kicked him into what seemed to me like some sort of summoning or sealing formation with a Nethersprite in it. So, interpreting the clues, I had fed him to his very own, summoned Nethersprite? For an act that I had committed while my judgement was seriously impaired, I sure liked the style.

“Can you let me down? Not that I don’t like being in your arms, but we should hurry onwards, right?” I asked, hoping that my actions had not screwed up our overall plans. The look on Sigmir’s face was unhappy and I heard soft mutterings from Adra, cursing my recklessness and stubbornness.

Placing my feet down, I wanted to start walking but just as I tried to make the first step, the pesky planet dodged away, trying to make me stumble. Luckily, I was still close to Sigmir, and she simply picked me back up. There had to be a sheepish look on my face, for neither Sigmir nor Adra made fun of me. Well, there were worse ways to travel than in her strong arms and it gave me time to check my notifications.

Jonari High Shaman died You gain 1500 EXP. For assisting with the kill of an opponent, your EXP was reduced. Skill increased You increased your skill: Dual Blade-Mastery [17/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Darkness Magic [38/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Stealth [28/100]

So, I hadn’t truly killed the shaman, but the Nethersprite killed it and I only got partial EXP for it? Well, good enough, I guess. My Darkness Magic however had taken a huge leap, gaining multiple points, thanks to the stunt I had pulled. I had either done something seriously cool, like shadow stepping or used some sort of ephemeral shadow form or I had turned myself invisible to the point that neither Sigmir nor Adra were able to perceive me. And I had done so, without alerting the wards around the house. But I was pretty sure that I had squeezed myself through the cracks under the door, that spoke for some form of ephemeral shadow form, allowing for movement through any shaded spot, or maybe any deep enough shadow. At night, that would be insanely powerful. And thinking of the trick I had pulled to get out, that seemed to be a true shadow-step, moving from one shadow to another, possibly targeted by my knowledge of Sigmir.

Getting carried gave me the chance to ponder what had happened just now. And what I had done. Maybe even more important, how I had done what I did. Just by going by the things I could remember, I would guess it was some sort of shadow form. The how? Well, I had realised that it was easier to use Darkness Magic in the night, or rather, in the dark.

No real surprise there. My current hypothesis was that it was easier to use Ice Magic in the cold environment around here and that it would be harder, say, in the desert. In addition, I believed that there was a sort of balancing factor, after all, it seemed logical that denizens of the frozen north were resistant to cold and ice, considering the fact that they were surrounded by it. In contrast, some sort of desert- or jungle-dweller that had never even heard of the concept of snow and that regarded temperatures below 30° celsius as an arctic blast would most likely take more damage from my Ice Magic while his prefered environment would give me a harder time using it. To me, it sounded like a simple and very logically stringent balance-concept.

So, I had used my Darkness Magic in an incredibly dark, slightly cloudy night outside of any artificial light sources, giving me just about the darkest environment one could find without going underground. Add to that the fact that my class further boosted Darkness Magic during a new moon, giving me even more power to play with and it seemed that my power had far outstripped my control of said power.

Given what I had tried to do, hide myself, it had taken that idea and taken it to eleven, but I had quite literally gotten lost in the darkness I had summoned. I truly did not want to think about the folk wisdom that had validated, getting lost in the dark, getting swallowed by the darkness I had summoned, maybe even something about staring into the abyss. Well, no, the last would most likely apply to the shaman but it could be a hint that there was interplay between used magic and the character of NPCs. Maybe even effects on the players themselves. I had realised that my actions, my behaviour and even my thinking in-game were different from the norm, my personal norm outside the game that is. That my behaviour was abnormal compared to the mystical ‘normal’ humans was no surprise, I was crazy after all. So, was the game making me more crazy or less? Somehow, I doubted that I was the best to contemplate that. But it did not really matter, I was highly functioning and that was all that mattered at the end of the day. Not normal, but able to fit into the mold made by society.

Ok, so the environment had caused stacking strengthening effects, causing me to have the power to make something happen and my lack of control had taken it to levels I was, well, almost unable to control. There was just a bit of my will giving directions to do what I had planned. It was strange and a little creepy but that was what had happened and part of the how.

The how. That was a truly interesting question. When using runes, I was generally easily able to make sense of the magic and what I did with it. It was almost like… math. A scientific notation of complex concepts, allowing for the quick communication of those concepts.

And if runes and rune-mastery represented the science of magic, it made sense to consider the straight ‘magic’ skill the art of it. Less structured, more of a freeform but still mostly following rules. Except when it didn’t.

The more I thought about that idea, the more sense it made. There was an interplay between the straight magic-skills and their runic-mastery equivalent. Thinking back, I had used a combination of runes and straight magic-skill to create that barrier a few days ago. That would mean that there was a possibility to combine runes and the freeform magic to form something greater. I would have to think more about that and the things I could do with it.