There was something inherently liberating about feeling the wind beneath my wings. A giddy, enthusiastic sensation I just couldn't shake, making me want to whoop in joy, to dive and swerve as I rode the air currents. It was almost intoxicating, reminding me just how wonderful magic could be. Levitating with my cloak was fun, but compared to the free flight my wings offered, it was pedestrian.

And that didn't go into the advantages my wings brought with them when it came to mobility. The more I used my wings, the better I got at flying. It wasn't just pushing myself forward magically. I was learning to read and take advantage of thermal air currents, using them to gain lift so I could use more magic to accelerate and numerous other small things that I had to learn.

The biggest reason for my flying exercises was that Luna, Lia and I had stumbled into a barrier regarding the work to resurrect Sigmir. Of the three things we needed to achieve, Mastery over Life, Dominion over Souls and insight into the deep mysteries of the Mind, we had a fairly good idea of one of them but only vague clues regarding the other two.

Namely, we felt that Mastery over Life meant the creation of life ex nihilo. This was the one we felt we had a fairly good grasp on. The idea was that we would either start with something entirely unliving and inorganic, or by using the appropriate biological precursors and making life the usual way, just with magic instead of biology. Either way, our current hypothesis was that Mastery over Life was simply needed to create the Body Sigmir would later come to inhabit, which was why Luna was so interested in growing living creatures from scratch.

Insight into the deep mysteries of the Mind was more challenging. The Mind was the sum of our experiences, growing in tandem with the Body as both matured. We had some clues regarding the influence the Soul had on the process, but it was incredibly complicated, with numerous reciprocal interactions. As we didn't have a comprehensive model of how those interactions functioned, we were left without a real point to start our investigation. We needed to learn more about the Mind in general before we could start with its interaction and the intersection between Body, Mind and Soul.

Lastly, Dominion over Souls. Again, we only had vague clues and ideas. The big thing was that we considered the Soul to be fundamental. The foundation on which any individuality rested, that which caused people with similar experiences to become greatly different people. In a way, it was both the foundation on which our personalities rested but also the lens through which we interpreted our experiences in the world.

Luckily, we didn't think we needed to change Sigmir's soul or create it from nothing. If we tried, we wouldn't end up with Sigmir after all. We might be able to make someone similar to her, but it wouldn't be her. Not my beloved.

Instead, we needed to, somehow, draw Sigmir's soul back from whatever afterlife she was currently in. And that, obviously, was where the difficulty started. Getting the soul back meant we had to find the soul. For that, I had a few ideas. Those ranged from using the Soul Bond Sigmir and I shared to the creation of a cult dedicated to Sigmir, hoping to turn her into a deity and find her through the connection forged by her followers' faith. Some of those ideas were comparatively simple and straightforward solutions, while others would require a great deal of time and effort to accomplish. But, at the end of the day, there was nothing wrong with pursuing multiple of those ideas in tandem. Even if we didn't use the Cult of Sigmir to draw her soul back into this world, creating a divine base for her would likely be beneficial in the long run.

That pursuit was what had me soaring through the air, riding the currents south. After discussing things with my daughters, I stepped through the shadows, returning to the cave that Lia and I had used while observing the giants.

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From there, I was heading south, towards the large bay near the massive Ice structure we had discovered while on the way here. The plan was to capture a few of the strange, aquatic creatures there for experiments, as I needed something to hone my Mind Magic, if I wanted to learn how to restore Sigmir's mind to what it had been before her death.

For that, I planned to slowly peel back the mental layers of these creatures, hoping that dissecting their minds, while monitoring the activity of their soul during the process, would give me some new insights. I might even have to monitor them while they were fighting or hunting, trying to learn how the system and EXP as a concept played into that, whether they had a direct influence on the mind and soul or how that mechanism worked. It was a fairly extensive list of things I wanted to find out, which was why I was planning to set up yet another cave down there, allowing me to step through the shadows as I travelled back and forth.

Additionally, we were entering the time frame when some animals began to procreate. Not only the giants, who I knew had some gravid females in their population, but animals in general, especially those with somewhat more extended gestation periods. If we wanted to harvest some suitable for Luna's experiments, this was the time to do so. As we approached spring, the embryos would have developed further, making them less suitable for our experiments. We wanted to grow an embryo from as close to conception as possible, so we could monitor the process and how magic influenced it.

The best-case scenario was to capture multiple gravid females of the same species, allowing us to compare and contrast the natural process with our magically facilitated one. For that, I needed to keep an eye out for some of the more populous local species, such as deer or elk, which would work, although I'd personally prefer something smaller. Voles, shrews or lemmings would work, but all those weren't in season yet. Perhaps catching a few of them and letting them breed in captivity would be effective. I'd have to wait and see, though there was no reason why we should limit our experiments to a single species. If anything, there were good reasons why we shouldn't; diverse experiments were an advantage in this scenario.

As I flew through the dark sky, snow began to fall. Part of me was a little annoyed, as visibility started to drop quickly, but another part was delighted. Sure, I was unable to see the world around me; it was snowing that hard, but I could feel everything. All around me, there were countless snowflakes. Each was unique, yet at the same time, they were all the same. It was incredibly fascinating, especially as I started to slow my flight, not quite starting to hover but simply gliding through the falling snow.

My obscured vision forced me to rely completely on my magic senses, letting the wind beneath my wings guide me as my Ice Magic sensed the snow, using it much like sonar or something similar. I knew where the snow was falling; thus, I knew where to fly without running into obstacles. Additionally, my Wind Magic, alongside some of my traits, meant I could keep myself oriented, even without something external like the horizon or stars as a reference.

High up in the air, completely surrounded by snow and darkness, I realised that the boundary between the two different elements started to fade. Snow was everywhere around me, obscuring my sight and muffling all sounds. The more I focused on my magical senses, the greater my sensory resolution of the different snowflakes became. At first, I sensed them as individual, macroscopic objects, but the more isolated I felt high up in the air, the more I could sense about them. At first, I felt their boundaries, then I started to sense the individual crystals each snowflake was composed of. I was fairly confident that I'd be able to see them with my eyes if I were to take a closer look, but then, I began to sense deeper structures, feeling more and more. As that happened, the sense of my Ice Magic began to overlap with the sense of Darkness, allowing me to feel the Ice and the Darkness intermixed with it.

For a moment, I feel so much, so deep into the foundations of the material world, but then, with a sharp, stinging headache, my body reminded me that I had limits. And sensing what I thought were individual molecules and the void contained within each of them was beyond my body's ability to process.

Luckily, I didn't drop from the sky, bleeding and in pain; I only had to wipe off a fairly serious nosebleed. And make a note to try that again, later. Somewhere safe.

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