There were few words I could use to describe the way Sarah and Kyle went about claiming the shrine of Hestia for their god. Few of those I could use were words I actually wanted to use, mostly because a primary emotion within me while watching was envy. I was extremely doubtful that the two clerics knew what they were doing, or rather, what effect their performance caused. The two of them were basically just performing an interpretive song and dance and somehow turning the dance into high-level engineering. Hestia could use them to essentially do what she wanted and the clerics wouldn’t know what was going on until their ritual had run its course and the effects became apparent.

Curse a city, blight some crops, give someone a blessing or turn them into a slave, I could easily imagine any of those effects being channelled through such a ritual, what little I could detect of the magical working was open enough to let basically anything get shoved through from the other side.

And yet, despite the incredible ignorance of those performing the ritual, the magical effects, again, what little i could detect of them, were staggeringly beautiful. Maybe I should have expected it, what I had seen from Hecate had been similarly impressive if in a different way, making me think that impressive magical acts were part and parcel of being a Goddess. Or maybe they simply had spent more than enough time on mortal relations to know what was expected and how to impress people. From what I could gather they had been at this longer than humanity had been wearing clothes, likely a lot longer. Mundus itself had multiple millennia of history involving these Gods, but how long they had existed before Mundus, I didn’t know.

And, really, it didn’t matter, whether it was four thousand years or fifty thousand, the difference in experience between them and me would remain insurmountable for a while. Maybe I could catch up someday, but only if they were stagnating and not pushing their power even further, something I doubted. Thus, unless there was some sort of divine lifespan, I’d just have to live with the fact that they had more experience and, unless there was some sort of cap, more power.

My focus was drawn back to the ritual I was observing when the interpretive dance changed. From something that might be a mix between ballroom dancing and kindergartners playing around, it became something very… different. It shifted in the horizontal, so to say, and while a part of me wanted to look away and have nothing to do with this, there was something fascinating about it. Sure, I had a feeling I’d need to cleanse my eyes and, after sniffing the air for a moment, my nostrils later, but the magical interactions were something else.

Using the magical sight I had inherited from Lenore, I could see a magical build-up, Life Magic coiling around the two clerics as it built and built, rising ever higher and radiating out from both of them. Without thinking about it, my tongue darted out to taste the air, getting both the pungent, and very much mundane, scent of sex but also a complex blend of magical signatures. Life was predominant but there was so much more, some parts were Mind Magic, some elemental, it was a powerful, primal mix that almost made me sway.

Sway and wish that Sigmir was here.

Maybe this part was the reason that they had asked Luna to remain in Hecate’s shrine, though I would have been grateful for a warning in advance. I wasn’t sure what to think or feel, other than longing for Sigmir. The act itself didn’t intrigue me, if anything it looked weird and I wanted to get away but at the same time, the magic around them was too fascinating and I didn’t want to look away.

Thankfully, at least for me, it didn’t last too long. Just about ten minutes after they had started, the magic around them reached a climax, surging towards Sarah’s abdomen, concentrating there for a brief moment only to burst outwards once more, completely saturating the shrine. The power was changed, that much I could tell, but I couldn’t quite nail down how. I could detect faint traces of divine magic, but I had a feeling that the faintess should be attributed to my lacking perception, not the strength of the effect.

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“Impressive effect,” I remarked, studying the power seeping into the walls of the structure. Interestingly, parts of the wall were reshaping themself, forming a mural of some sort. Not the same, impressive statue I had created for Hecate, but a powerful image of a female mother figure watching over her community, the people surrounded by fertile fields, and a few ewes and lambs, all sheltered in her embrace. It was quite the idyllic picture but one that I couldn’t feel more but academic interest in. The vision itself wasn’t one that spoke to me, far too boring and confining. No, I wanted something more, something I could feel a lot easier when in Hecate’s temple.

Some fairly amusing noises from Sarah and Kyle, both of whom looked a lot more flushed than the brief exertion accounted for, caught my attention. It looked like neither of them were willing to look at me or each other, which, given their tangled and naked states, meant they were staring at the wall, panting for breath.

“Do you mind?” Kyle asked me, sounding somewhat strange. It took me a moment to realise that he wanted some privacy to get back into his clothes, not that he had minded stripped and… dancing in front of me. While I had no interest in watching him naked, or Sarah for that matter, I felt fairly amused by the situation, making me take a few extra moments to consider his desperate plea before I turned around, my mind focusing on different aspects of their working.

“So, did you consciously channel that much Life Magic to your womb or is that some sort of automatic effect?” I asked, once both of them were dressed.

“What do you mean?” Now it was Sarah’s turn to ask, and just like Kyle earlier, she sounded so very panicked. Proof she didn’t know, or understand, the effects of the ritual. If I understood things correctly, the two of them had basically taken the moment that would facilitate conception and spread the energy that could make a new human into the temple. Maybe the least offensive form of child sacrifice as it only took the potential of forming new life and nothing that could be considered an independent, living being.

“Well, the ritual you did, it channelled a lot of Life Magic and by the end, it all was concentrated here,” I poked her abdomen, noticing the colour fleeing her face. “Was that on purpose, a part of the ritual or is that something that always happens when people fornicate?”

“I.. I don’t know? What does that mean?” Sarah started babbling, possibly adding two plus two and getting twenty-two. Kyle looked similarly worried, but there was something else about him, some strange emanation that I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, understand.

“The blessing here needed fuel, magical fuel. I doubt the two of you could generate enough independently and you don’t have a full, sanctified congregation to add their power to yours. There might be some reason why Hestia didn’t simply push her power here, or maybe it’s just not possible, I’m not certain, and it doesn’t really matter. The ritual you did raised the power, first using the dance, then using, well, that,” I nodded towards the area the two had… danced in. “Now, I want to understand if the extra power can only be generated if the fornication is part of a ritual or if it is generated independently and the ritual simply used what was there. Got it?” I asked, feeling slightly annoyed. But then, I already had been annoyed earlier at the sheer complexity of divine magic invoked, getting confirmation that they had no idea what was going on only irked me further.

“Did I get pregnant?!” Sarah finally screamed, now both angry and panicked, making me raise an eyebrow. Should I, or should I not, there was a part of me that wanted to mess with her. Simply because she, just like Kyle, were playing with forces they didn’t understand. But no, while messing with her would be amusing, it also would be needlessly cruel, there would be no purpose but amusement.

“No, you did not,” I shook my head, before elaborating, “The way I understand the effect, the entire potential fueled the ritual’s effect, leaving nothing for the normal purpose. I might be wrong, I would have to take a closer look at you, but I do not think that you could get pregant in a ritual like this. There likely are others that would facilitate reproduction, but this did not appear to be such a ritual,” I explained, thinking about the effect and wondering what I could do with it. That much life energy, released without any drawbacks, maybe I could find a way to siphon it off. Something to consider at some point and look into, later.

“Check, please!” she demanded, her agitation not gone. Rolling my eyes, I placed my hand on her abdomen once more, using my Blood Magic to check.

“You are not pregnant,” I shook my head, getting a little annoyed by this all, so I simply turned and moved to Luna into Hecate’s shrine. Hopefully, she didn’t hear anything she shouldn’t have.