“Let’s see what happens with normal blood.” Lenore said, when I returned with Sigmir.

Sigmir looked slightly worried when she saw the bound lynx, but did not protest my actions.

“Once with line of sight and once without. I just wish we had the time to try how distance plays into the equation. Oh, well, not this morning.” I answered, while making a small cut into one of the lynxes’ paws, not damaging the fur, so we could skin it later. Blood welled up and I seperated it onto four ice-shards, serving as petri-dishes.

I walked a few steps away, turned and cast another curse, this one without blood to help with targetting or anything like that. Again, there was some resistance, very much like before when I did the control-test for the influence of hairs. I had been worried that the weakening of my test-subject might make it easier, or possibly repeated attacks wearing down the resistance. But, no, the resistance was as strong as before.

The blood helped, allowing me to get a stronger impression of the cat’s existence, to cast my spells at and it was easier to curse it.

The next experiment was walking away, getting some distance and breaking line of sight. Normally, I would be hard-pressed to affect the cat, only by using my knowledge of its position, I would be able to attack it. I focused on the blood and managed to get a connection to strike through. The next step was to wait, I knew that blood lost its potency quickly after leaving the body, unless I used Blood Magic to seal the power inside the blood. Would it be the same for its usage as a ritual component?

Ten minutes later, I knew the answer. Using it after five minutes was almost impossible and by ten minutes, I was unable to get a better read than with the hairs I had tried before, only getting a direction. So, the essence was the key for real targeting but getting a rough read was even possible with normal blood?

Now, what would happen if I used blood with the power, or essence, sealed in it?

I walked over to my lab-cat - for once the lab-mice won - and pressed my knife against the wound I had made before, letting some fresh blood well up, before using Blood Magic to draw more. When I did, the cat went insane, trying to break the shackles even as its own bones were breaking. Scowling, I quickly moved away, not wanting to watch the animal suffer. Somehow, it felt just wrong, but it was a necessity. I needed to know if the sealing with Blood Magic made a difference.

My first spell was easily cast, a lot easier compared to the one with normal blood, and I used it to subdue the cats mind, leaving it alive but unconscious. The cat would die but now it would not suffer. About fifteen minutes later, I tried again with empowered blood and it still worked just like before. I experimented with a new spell to cause damage, purely based on blood-runes, fitting as I was experimenting with blood magic. The spell was based on the exsanguinate rune, which I normally used to draw all blood out using a large wound. Now, I was curious what would happen if there was no large wound, but the blood was thoroughly affected by the rune.

The spell worked, I gained a pittance of EXP and knew the cat was dead. When I walked back, there was some blood below the paw I had cut before, a little from seeping from the ears, eyes and nose, but not a lot. Looking closer and using my blood magic to probe the rapidly cooling cadavre, I noticed that most blood vessels simply had burst, in essence causing massive internal bleeding, as if multiple aneurysms had burst at the same time, all over the body. Death was about as close to instant as death can be. I filed the spell away as a highly effective way to kill, if I managed to get it delivered. It might work with a curse, but I doubted that it would be as effective as when used as a pure blood-magic spell, using Blood as a delivery-medium and as a target.

Skill increased You increased your skill: Blood Magic [44/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Blood Rune-Mastery [52/100]

By now, Adra and Rai were awake as well and started breakfast, while I was taught how to skin a cat. I knew there were a lot of ways and now I would learn how to do it right.

It was quite bloody as most of the meat had been soiled when the blood vessels had burst, so Sigmir decided to leave the meat behind. She scolded me for wasting it, but could understand that I had tested something and wanted to end the animals suffering as fast as possible. But we carefully skinned off the fur, making sure that no scraps of meat stuck to it and would rot later, making the fur stink.

Sigmir even kept the teeth and claws, stating that there were quite a few useful ways to use them, even if she only made decorations or buckles out of them.

After we were finished, we returned to the other two, who had waited with breakfast for us, and we ate together, before continuing our way towards the mountains.

Today, it was my turn to learn how to scout and Adra scolded me that I was paying the same amount of attention to the various plants we saw, sometimes even checking if there was something in particularly protected spots I had read about in the herb-lore book, hoping to get lucky. It was not likely, as it was deep winter, but I had to try.

Looking for tracks and scouting was incredibly dull, normally when travelling, I could distract myself by either ruminating about magic or talking to Lenore. Sometimes, I would even daydream about Sigmir. But while I was scouting, I had to be careful at all times, or I would miss something. Lenore was no help, she had decided to take a nap in her Hallow, catching up on the sleep she had missed during the night. I could forcefully use her sight if I needed to see if there was something hidden, but I would wake her and she would be one grumpy bird.

Over the day, we saw a couple tracks, some older wolf-tracks, a few of deer-tracks and a relatively new boar-track which was something to watch out for. In the middle of the afternoon, we left the forested foothills behind us, and started our climb into the mountains. The previously dense forest got sparse, tall fir-trees giving way to smaller, often gnarly, pines. The snow made our footing precarious, forcing us to slow down and move extremely careful. I even went so far, to reach out with my Ice Magic, always prepared to assert my power, just in case it became necessary. We decided that scouting was a great thing, but the biggest danger locally was not posed by attacks, at least not by attacks from other living things. An avalanche could be seen as an attack, you only had to ask the wolves we had fought in the small gorge, a couple of days ago.

A natural avalanche would be much worse than what I had done there and I was the only one who had a chance if we got caught in one. So, our formation tightened up and we stuck close together.

In the late afternoon, Lenore awoke and I asked her to take a look around, what the terrain above us looked like. I knew that there would be a treeline and above it, our journey would be much harder. My plan was to either make a semi-permanent camp below the treeline or move below it each day and make a new camp. I had no desire to make camp above it, unless there was a pressing need or a great spot to do so.

About five minutes after Lenore had taken flight, I felt her approach us at high speed, the fear in her mind standing out like a beacon. I frowned and reached out to her, quickly understanding the situation. Two wind raptors had decided that Lenore was just right as an afternoon snack.

I called everyone to a stop and asked Adra to get ready to shoot. While she readied her bow, I closed my eyes, not to channel magic through Lenore but simply to avoid mentally locking onto anything until the wind raptors were in sight. I knew where they would be, thanks to my contact with Lenore, so I crafted my spell and let it fly a moment after Lenore was in sight.

My estimation for their speed was spot on and just after they were in sight, an icicle speared through the lead bird. Moments later, Adra’s arrow pierced the other, her arrows quite a bit faster than my own icicles.

Both birds gave some EXP and I realised our error. There were a couple of useful materials in the birds and we really should get them. I muttered an oath and we started towards the area they had to have fallen into.