Knowing what I wanted to achieve, I just had to create the ritual to do so. Creating a ritual from complete scratch was not something I had done before, but I had successfully changed a few, so I believed to have a chance. And if not, what was the worst that could happen? Other than apocalypse by giant tentacle-monster.

Just looking at the requirements of the ritual, I had a feeling that the ice-shackles I had placed around the wolves would not last, not if they struggled with all their strength, ignoring possible injury to themselves. But there was a simple way around that. I just needed the wolves alive, not whole, so crippling them was a valid option. Their backs were already bound in ice, so letting a needle protrude from the ice, penetrating their spine and severing the spinal cord was quite easy, I even used the Blood-Clot rune to stem the bleeding without regenerating the underlying damage, I didn’t want them to lose valuable blood after all.

Now, I had six quadraplegic wolves as ingredients for my ritual. I wanted to extract as much power from the big, black wolf as I could and hopefully, I could add to that by taking the blood of the normal wolves and purifying it using magic. At the end of the day, the normal wolves had to have at least part of the foundation to reach the first divide. If I could take that from them, it might be enough for Ylva to reach it, even if the ritual lost part of the power extracted from the big, black wolf.

“Ylva, can you spare a bit of blood, filled with your personal magic?” I asked, thinking about the best way to make sure the siphoned off power was right for her. I had realised that a big part of my personal sense of magic was rooted in my senses of smell and taste. I had never quite put the pieces together, but it was my sense of smell that had warned me when we approached the miasma of Tegi, that sweet smell of decay had been more magical than mundane. And the clear, crisp smell of my ice-magic was easily recognizable.

So, using those senses to assess the magic in the blood made sense. Hopefully.

Ylva looked at me a little suspicious, but she trusted Sigmir and Sigmir trusted me. So, my request was granted and I was allowed to make a small cut into her paw and, after warning her that it might hurt a bit, I used my Blood Magic to take a bit of empowered Blood. I knew how much it hurt, so the pained yelp was no surprise to me. But I had what I needed.

Bringing the siphoned off blood to my nose, I took a deep breath, trying to differentiate the different smells into magical and mundane, After closing my eyes to help me focus, I started to get a mental impression, similar to the one I got when diving into the Astral River, allowing me to divide the impressions up into distinct entities.

My tongue snaked out of my mouth, taking in a bit of the blood, letting it sit on my tongue and allowing me to parse the different tastes and give me a better mental image of the magical makeup of the blood and thus Ylva. It was enlightening to say the least, mainly to have the experience for the future. At the end of the day, Ylva’s power was quite simple in structure, a broad aroma of raw, physical strength with a crisp sub-taste of coldness and ice.

The aroma of physicality was easy to spot, thanks to its strength but the taste of ice was less perceivable and it was quite possible that I only noticed it thanks to either my own affinity for the element or a possible bias, as I knew that Ylva had her own affinity for Ice. I would have to experiment with that sort of recognition in the future.

But now, I knew what I wanted to achieve, so I could map out a path to get there.

The first step would be to siphon off all the blood from the weaker wolves, gathering it in a single location before extracting the blood from the big, black wolf, comparing the two blood types and trying to use magic to smooth out possible differences between the blood-types and Ylva’s blood, before letting Ylva drink the mixture and try to help her with the absorption.

To construct the ritual, I went with a shape as classic as simple, a pentagram, with each of the black wolves on the points of the star and the big, black wolf in the center, together with me Each wolf, both the smaller wolves and the big one, got their own altar made out of ice, inscribed with Blood runes, to help with draining them. The runes were similar to those I had seen in Tegi, just without those that cut off the flow before the sacrifice on the altar died. The runes were quite well made and I had a feeling that they would maximise the amount of power drained from the sacrifice.

In the middle of the pentagram were three bowls out of hard ice to take in the blood I drained from the wolves outside and allow me to work with it, hopefully using the second bowl after a magical purification of the blood.

Finally, I made two wards around the area, one a simple ward to avoid detection, the other a bit of an expremiement, it was based on the wards I knew, but I had placed the darkness-rune for magic as the focus, trying to keep magic in, hopefully allowing me to keep the Astral Power I was siphoning off within the volume and not wasting it. Hopefully, that would help against detection.

Finally, after a good dinner and a meditation to make sure that my Astral Power was at its top level, I moved into the pentagram, making small cuts into each of the wolves with my athame, making sure that their blood mingled on the blade. I was planning to use the blade as a ritual focus, so it was appropriate.

With the blade in hand, I stood in the middle, focusing on the blood on the blade and the pentagram around me. I felt a need to chant under my breath, a soft chant, calling for blood, calling to the blood on my blade and calling the blood that still remained in the wolves to follow suit. My chanting started to follow a simple, drumming rhythm, a rhythm that I quickly recognised as the ebb and flow of the Astral River around me. Even my own heart was beating in tune with that ethereal beat, as if the world itself was a living being and the Astral River its blood stream, carrying with it the beat of its heart.

The runes, drawn into the altars on the points of the pentagram started to light up, flashing in tune with my heartbeat and my chanting, followed by the lines making up the pentagram and thin flows of blood started to stream through the air, drained from the wolves and following the lines towards my blade, flowing down the fullers, into the guard before dripping down into the prepared bowl.

With the blood flowing all around me, I take a deep breath, judging the smell of blood and mapping out its makeup, feeling the similarity to Ylva’s blood and feeling the differences, trying to fully understand them before moving on.

When the wolves around me are drained from the last drop of blood and expired on the altars, I turn towards the big, black wolf. It had been silent the whole time, but the whimpers and final sighing breaths of its brethren have pushed it to growl and snarl at me as best as it can. Thanks to Lenore’s special ability, I can understand the snarls as vows of vengeance, calls for bloody retribution and prayers to its ancestor, hoping for salvation. Sadly, there is no salvation for the wolf, its fate is sealed.

After cleaning my blade with magic, making sure that all the drained blood is in the bowl before me, I started with the next part of my ritual. A small cut allowed me to drain some of the big, black wolf’s blood doing with it the same as with Ylva’s blood earlier.

First, a deep smell, for a preliminary mapping of the included elements, there is the physicality that I had seen with Ylva, but there is also another influence, small in volume and one that I could not quite understand. But it was concentrated power, far stronger than anything I had ever seen or tasted before, so the assumption that it was the divine bloodline, still concentrated within the blood of the wolf before me.

Trying to understand the potential of that divine blood, I was focusing on, I felt a strange sensation, normally, the power I was feeling had its own rhythm, thrumming in tune with the ebb and flow of the Astral River but not the power within this blood. It was as if it was beating in rhythm with another beat, slightly off from the power of the world around it. It was intriguing, as if the divine blood was unlinked from the Astral River around us, independent of the world of Mundus as a whole. Sadly, I had no idea what it meant, it was just an observation, but it was a good one, as it allowed me to seperate the divine blood from the rest of the blood.

Draining the blood took long, far longer than it had with the smaller wolves, as I was very careful, making sure that I got all the power into the blood. If I lost any of it, it would be a tremendous waste.

Once I was done, I had two bowls of wolfblood, both brimming with power. Now, for the next step of my ritual.