When I started to channel power into the downed orc’s body, I almost instantly realised my mistake. The first effect my power had was that his teeth started to chatter, reminding me that I had been careless, that my Astral Power was always tinged with Ice and, as I noticed when paying attention to what I was doing, Death-Magic. The amount was small enough to keep the additional damage small and minor, especially as it had occurred to the freshly healed tissues, only causing some pain to the healed orc. Still, it had been a careless mistake and if I wanted to truly heal the orc, I would have to do better.

“Look closely.” Lenore’s mental voice caught my attention and I shifted my focus as directed, curious what she had noticed that I had missed.

Her focus was on the streams of power, especially the interaction between Blood-Magic, Death-Magic and the tissues of the orc. A moment of mental exchange showed me just what she had seen, that just as the Blood-Magic was healing and restoring, the Death-Magic was undoing it. The curious thing was just how that “undoing” occured, that the freshly restored vitality, what I would be able to drain with Blood-Magic, changed for a moment, morphing into two distinct parts that neutralized each other. One part was pure Astral Power, a tiny representation of the Astral River in all its complexity and majesty, the other was one just as familiar. The second part was what I knew as Miasma, the side-product of my Blood Magic.

What I saw, caused me to pause for a moment and gently, carefully, continue to work. I needed more information and the orc was as good a test-subject I would ever get. To eliminate potential complications, I made sure to carefully filter my Astral Power, dumping the Ice-aligned parts, simply channelling them away, reducing my magical efficiency but that was just a necessity. Instead, I let a small trickle of power flow into the orc, carefully making sure that it was the same amount of regenerative Blood-Magic and unaligned Death-Magic, curious just what would happen.

Lenore, who was closely watching, was as fascinated as I was, the effect of our magic on a tiny scale but as an object of study, it was easily enough. The effect of Death-Magic on living tissue and the restoration caused by Blood-Magic, two magics so opposite working on the same area, creating a tiny cycle. Maybe that was why some studied the cyclic nature of magic, instead of following one part to its ultimate conclusion, trying to understand more about the interactions. I was about to use Blood Magic to drain a tiny amount of power, curious how the introduction of free Miasma into the system would change what I was observing when Lenore mentally prodded me, reminding me that we were working under the direct observation of a couple orcs and ostensibly helping someone.

What we had been doing, while possibly painful for the subject, had been on a tiny scale but if we started to escale things, we might accidentally kill the subject, something that the orcs likely wouldn’t like. Didn’t they know that furthering your understanding took constant work and the occasional sacrifice?

Mentally resetting myself, I focused on healing the orc, carefully making sure that no Death-magic, or Ice-Magic for that matter, intruded into my Astral Power, a process taking some concentration but not enough to stop me from working my magic. It just took a little longer and required a bit more Astral Power than I would have liked.

As I was working, I felt annoyance well up within me, not so much at the orc but at myself. My healing ability had stagnated, partially because I hadn’t used it all that much, partially because I had used very little Blood Magic to heal, instead focusing on other magical disciplines. If I had kept in the habit of using Blood Magic to heal and had continued to advance my Blood Magic apace with my other magical skills, I would still be hindered by the Death- and Ice-Magic contained in my AStral Power but not to the same extent was I was now, combining limited familiarity and those additional troubles. Overall, it meant that I was a worse healer than I had been a few months ago.

Overall, the speed and effect of my healing hadn’t declined much but I knew that I had gained a lot of overall power, that crossing the Divides and the additional attribute-points should have improved my ability by an order of magnitude. But it hadn’t. And that annoyed me somewhat.

Lenore obviously felt my annoyance, her mind working closely with mind, and reacted with amusement. To her, it was just obvious that focusing on one part of magic, trying to reach the ultimate conclusion of a magical discipline, would slow down or even hinder the progression on another path. And, intellectually, I could agree and understand, yet it annoyed me that I had lost some capability.

“Are you planning to focus on healing now?” Lenore asked, her voice amused, when we had finished our work on the first orc.

Opening my eyes, I looked at the orc in front of me and could see fearful eyes staring back at me. Without thinking about it for long, I focused on my Ice-Magic, glad to be able to fully use it again, sending a small fluttering of snow into the keyhole of the orc’s manacles, creating a copy of the key within moments and using it to open the lock, all without taking my eyes off my patient.

“No, I don’t think so.” I admitted, once again reminded why I had focused on the parts of my magic I had. They, quite frankly, appealed to me a lot more, the pursuit of knowledge, the study of inanimate substances without the need to deal with annoying people, like the now freed orc who was crawling away from me, as if I was about to attack him, getting helped up by the other orcs.

Once that orc was back on his feet, he gave me a few words of thanks, looking like he wanted to get away from me as fast as possible. I could still see that there was some lingering damage that he would need time and rest, or a different kind of magic from mine to fix it. In addition, the forced march and the night within my magic had left the orc exhausted, even if he tried to hide it.

“Bring him up on the ridge, resting in the rising sun should help him quite a bit.” I told the other orcs. “But set a guard, it would be regrettable if some critter comes out of the forest to gnaw on him.” I added, after a second of consideration. Just because we hadn’t been attacked while walking in the night, there was no reason to assume that a resting orc would be safe.

I was a little surprised when two of the orcs gave me respectful salutes, banging their hands on their chest, before moving next to the healed orc, flaking him as they started to make their way up the slope.

I wasn’t quite sure why my orders had been obeyed the way they had been but I decided to simply accept it, focusing on more important things, namely the healing of the remaining prisoners. None of them looked like they were about to die but all of them had been harmed by spending the night in the magical mist of death and pain. In addition, I was curious if their systems would react the same way the first orc’s system had, if my discovery was a common phenomena or if it was something special to that particular orc.

With that in mind, I knelt next to another orc, sending my magical senses to asses the damage and start another experiment, curious if their bodies would react to Death- and Blood-Magic the same way.

My first action, for that particular orc female, was to make sure that she wouldn’t die at the drop of a head, healing some of the internal damage, fascinated at the way her lung-tissues had been affected, before introducing a small amount of Death-Magic into her system, watching as the vitality of her body was affected, the interplay between Astral Power and misama and the fact that both seemed to be in balance, needed to be in balance. Part of me was curious, wanted to learn how misama was formed but I had a feeling that I would need longer studies to do that, that I would have to study someone for days to find out what processes created the miasma and how the Astral Power from outside was bound to it.

It was a fascinating discovery, the interplay between messy biology and external magic but, far too soon, I decided that I couldn’t experiment more, that it would stand out too much.

And so, with a small amount of reluctance, I finished up the next orc, broke the chains binding her and continued on. Luckily, I had a few more test-subjects to go through.