Part of me wondered what future travellers, either with a capital T or without, using the ancient road would think. After spending some much needed time in the real world, I had returned to Mundus and spend some more time improving our igloo and the surrounding wall, adding spikes, walkways and similar features to the wall, creating a small but quite defensible fortress, complete made out of ice, right next to the road.

Sadly, my efforts would most likely go unobserved, I had refrained from conjuring the Ice ‘dense’ enough, not in a physical but in a magical sense, so it would evaporate back into Astral Power soon enough. Not that either of those words really meant what I wanted them to mean in the context but I was simply lacking the language to describe the effects of my magic in a physical sense. It was a transformation of physically solid magic into magic flowing within the Astral River, calling it another phase was the closest equivalent I could come up with but not quite right.

During my time outside, I had decided to change my approach to magic experimentation, less ‘let’s see what happens if I push the big, red button’ and more a systematic, scientific approach. I was quite certain that there were others out there, using such an approach - the Mage’s Guild was a very likely suspect - and I was quite curious about what they had accomplished. The biggest advantage of such an approach was that without the reckless experimentation, I was a lot less likely to cause myself and thus Sigmir, by proxy, grievous harm.

The next morning, we used the walled-in area for our daily training, so we wouldn’t have to do so later, in the open. Sigmir and I were still rather sore, but neither of us moved as if we should get a walker, which was a plus. Sigmir insisted that she was able to run, but I made my plans to share her burden for the day, running for some time myself. Rai was simply still not past the first Divide and as such, he would slow us down a great deal.

After leaving my impromptu-fortress, I decided that a little mischief was appropriate and added a rune formation to the inside of the gate, creating it out of Hard Ice, so that it would be the last thing to fade back into the Astral River. The rune would, if triggered, activate Shatter-Runes that I inlaid in every bit of the fortress, hopefully causing it to either explode or simply break apart if a careless soul tried to take advantage.

While it was slightly evil, I felt that anyone trying to enter such an obviously magical structure without the care or ability to check for obvious magical traps, deserved to have their ‘prize’ explode in their face. And the trap was rather obvious, for anyone with some magical ability.

Once we were back on our mounts and travelling, I quickly got annoyed by the ceaseless wind. When I mentally moaned to Lenore about it, she cawed in her chuckle-equivalent and appeared on my shoulder, holding onto me with her claws.

“Let’s try it the other way around: I cast magic and you slowly channel Astral Power into me.” Lenore told me before spreading her wings. I felt the wind drag at her, at least for a moment, before it ceased. Not the wind, but the drag and the feeling of wind against me. It was a strange sensation, my sense of balance telling me that we were moving, quite fast at that, but the sensations normally accompanied with that movement were missing.

Taking a deep breath, I noticed a strangely faint but at the same time powerful scent in the still air around me. It was one I had tasted before, when fighting the Wind Raptors, it was the taste of wind-magic - only now it was not directed against me, but used by Lenore to keep the wind away.

Feeling grateful and wanting her to continue, not just to keep the wind out of my face, but so that she could train her new style of wind-magic, I looked at our connection, feeling it out before carefully channelling Astral Power into it. Filtered, of course, I had no desire to get cawed at - or worse, bombed - because I had fed Lenore with the Ice-flavour normally present in my Astral Power.

Sadly, after just a few minutes of blessed magical windshield, Lenore complained about our connection that standing on my shoulder wasn’t comfortable, at least not for a long time while I was sitting on a horse. My shoulder, despite being rather slim for a humanoid’s shoulder, was simply too wide for her claws to comfortably wrap around.

“Mhm, I do have an idea. Please, continue, while I’ll craft your new perch.” I suggested, laughing a little. I was filtering the Ice-flavour out anyway, so I gathered it instead simply letting it flow away, into the wild, using it to slowly craft a perch for Lenore. And not any perch, I had little desire to permanently hold her up, that would get heavy, no I decided to make the perch long enough to place it into the stirrups, alongside my foot. That way, Lenore’s weight would be transmitted directly to my mount, without tiring out my arm.

Supplying Lenore and crafting the perch was slightly challenging because of the multi-tasking involved but after maybe ten minutes, I had a nice perch, made from glittering ice. It was a simple affair, basically a long staff, down to the stirrup, with a crossbar at the top, looking like a capital T. Part of me had considered to add a small mirror or something like that, something shiny, glittering, for Lenore to preen over, but I decided to abstain from poking fun at her while she was doing me a favour.

I held the perch to my shoulder and Lenore happily switched over, all while continuously keeping the wind away from us.

Sigmir, who had been running alongside us, finally looked over what I was doing.

“That’s a strange weapon for mounted combat.” she noted, looking at my new bird’s perch, causing me to blink in surprise.

Weapon?

But then I reconsidered, looking at it from an objective standpoint and realised that yes, if I wanted to fight from a mount, either a summoned spirit-golem like Elding, or from a physical mount, my short blades were completely unsuited. On the other hand, if I sharpened the ends of the crossbar into sharp points, I could essentially play polo, with my opponents being the ball. Grinning at the idea, I simply continued to channel the filtered out Ice-Astral-Power into the perch-cum-whacking-stick.

“It isn’t meant to be one, but I might improve upon the idea to make it one. Right now, it is just a perch for Lenore to sit on.” I answered, looking over to Sigmir who shook her head. laughing all the while, and I noticed her mutter something to herself. While I was no lip-reader, it looked suspiciously like two short words and my guess was that she laughing about Lenore being a lazy bird.

After a while, I felt something shift in the magic I was channelling, the pointed ends for the crossbar had formed a while ago, so the sudden shift made me curious. When I casually inspected my newest creation, I almost fell from my mount.

Icy Whacking Stick Rarity Uncommon Type One-Handed Polearm Base Damage 5 Damage Piercing Base Damage 0 Damage Slashing Base Damage 2 Damage Blunt Strength Modifier Low Special Effect Imbued - Due to the process used for the creation of this weapon, it is strongly in tune with the Ice-Magic of the Traveller Morgana. 25% lower cost when wielded by her Ice-Magic. Special Effect Mounted Weapon - When this weapon is used from the back of a mount, the mount’s speed increased the damage instead of the user’s strength.. This Whacking Stick was created out of Hard Ice by the Traveller Morgana. The material used, makes it lighter than normal but brittle and vulnerable to heat.

Not only had the system apparently decided to take the name I had given to it and made it into a real item, albeit with mediocre stats, but somehow, the process of slowly channelling pure Ice-Astral Power into the item had changed it from the original, normally conjured Ice into Hard Ice. That might mean that, if I just channelled power long enough, an item of mine might make the transformation from Hard Ice into the next, higher tier of Ice, either Eternal Ice or some intermediate level. That was experimentation I could happily pursue, using small samples and a slow increase in power to make sure I wouldn’t blow myself up by accident.