A Jaded Life

With my mind back in my body, I began to take stock of what had changed with me, as I was now becoming cognisant of the fact that the shattering sensation I had experienced was the breaking of the divide. I had overcome the challenge but I had not yet reached my destination, my mountain, but I would. For a moment, I could easily see Sigmir before me, sitting comfortably and inviting me to rest my head in her lap, to make myself comfortable as she welcomed me home but, sadly, no matter how much my heart yearned for her, no matter how deeply etched into my mind her image was, it was just a memory, powerful but ultimately ephemeral.

On the other hand, while my mind was refreshed by memories of my love, my body felt strangely worn and exhausted, reminding me that crossing the divide was not an easy feat. However, compared to crossing the first divide, the second had been less disrupting on my body, mainly because I didn’t get the same sort of adult growth spurt. Sure, I had gained an inch or three, making me just a little taller than average, but it wasn’t as extreme as it could have been. Maybe that was for the best, getting used to my different body had been fairly annoying and somewhat time-consuming.

Other than the slight increase in height, there was no obvious difference with my body and while I felt a little more aware, that may stem from the attention I paid to my body at the moment, not from any actual change.

So, unable to pin down any major changes with ease, I decided to look at the notifications I had gained from the system, curious what those would tell me.

You have crossed the Second Divide.

By crossing the second Divide, your body was strengthened by the Astral River and the draconic Power flowing within you. You gain +10 to all Attributes.

Class Change

By crossing the second Divide, your class has changed. The Dragon has taken to the skies and bellowed a challenge at the world. You are now a Draconic Sorceress of the Frozen Sky, granting you the ability to find your Wings and Breath.

Your new class grants you an attribute bonus of three Intelligence, two Intuition, one Vitality and one Endurance every five levels.

Trait gained

You gained the trait: Aerial Grace

For having 50 Agility at your level, you gained a fitting Trait. The Trait Aerial Grace grants you the natural grace of a flyer while in the air. It also lets you control your landings, so you may land on your feet every time.

Special Ability gained

You gained the Special Ability: Mind over Matter

For having 100 Intelligence at your level, you gained a fitting Special Ability. The Special Ability Mind over Matter allows you to influence all matter within a small radius around yourself, using nothing but your Mind and Magic.

Trait gained

You gained the trait: Mental Alacrity

For having 105 Intelligence at your level, you gained a fitting Trait. The Trait Mental Alacrity increases the speed of all your mental processes by a small amount.

Trait gained

You gained the trait: Arcane Perception

For having 65 Intuition at your level, you gained a fitting Trait. The Trait Arcane Perception improves all your senses, especially those focused on arcane matters.

All in all, the gains from crossing the second Divide were interesting and most certainly useful but not world-changing. Sure, the massively increased Attributes I’d gain every five levels were great, while the traits and the Special Ability I gained for reaching attribute milestones were very welcome but there were no traits I gained specifically for gaining my new class. Maybe I would have to find, or make, those traits on my own. It would make sense, given that the notification told me that I had been ‘granted the ability to find my breath and wings’, implying that I didn’t have it before but had it now.

Given the dream, or maybe calling it a vision would be more appropriate, I experienced while crossing the divide, I could readily assume that the breath was a dragon’s breath, maybe something similar to the flame I had experimented with back on Mundus, while the wings would most likely be the wings of a dragon. That, in turn, made me wonder about an entirely different question, one I hadn’t consciously focused on before.

In the dreams and visions I had experienced during my time on Mundus and since the change, there often was a component of flying, which somewhat linked to my preference for high places, something I had for about as long as I could remember. But, at the same time, there also had been elements of claws and that breath, elements I would usually associate with dragons. If those elements had been new, I might have considered them to be linked with the Dragon-Touched trait I gained on Mundus, but thinking back, those elements had been present in these strange visions since coming to Mundus, maybe even before.

Closing my eyes once more, I tried to remember dreams from my past and youth, trying to find anything that stood out. There was one where I had been jumping and bouncing like some bouncy-ball, trying to reach the sky. I couldn’t have been older than five or six, and yet, the element of flying was present in the dream, if in a somewhat odd fashion. Similarly, I had a vague memory of a dream in which I shot out of some cave or whole, it might have been underwater or something, propelling myself forward with claws and a long, sinuous tail but the dream was otherwise completely vague. Could those dreams, now many, many years in the past, have been some sort of omen for the future? Had there been some sort of fundamental part of me that was a dragon all along, as ridiculous as that sounded, and now, with the system, Mundus and the Astral River coming into my life those traits could take shape?

Letting out a tired huff, I tried to make sense of the idea, only to discard it after some consideration. The past didn’t truly matter, there were no lessons to be learned, nor did I feel as if there was some great mystery to be found there. I might have been a dragon all along, as ludicrous as that sounded, but without magic, I was limited to a human, or elven, shape. Or maybe my Soul was that of a dragon, which would mean far less to me, as backwards as that felt.

My body, after all, had changed quite a bit over my lifetime. Growing up, training, occasionally getting injured, and even things as minor as a haircut could alter one’s body and, maybe more importantly, one’s perception of it. However, could one’s soul truly change? It was difficult to say, there were some parts of one’s soul that I felt could change, especially when it came to magical affinities. But could the fundamental aspects of it be changed? That, I doubted but at the same time, there were numerous fundamental aspects of a body that couldn’t be changed, they were decided at conception and remained unalterable from then on. They might be covered up, like putting in coloured contact lenses but fundamentally, some parts of one’s body were innately defined at a genetic level. Maybe the soul was similar to this idea, some parts of it were changing as the soul matured, whatever that meant for souls, while others remained as they always had been.

Which made me wonder about the mind and its connection to body and soul, but that was a question I had been fighting with ever since I started to consider this whole complex interplay. Mind, Body and Soul, the three fundamental aspects that made a person who they were, but how they interacted with each other, how they could be interacted with and acted on, those questions were mysteries, even if I had magical abilities that could interact with each aspect in some way.

Mind Magic, Blood Magic and Soul Magic, they all worked in fundamentally different ways but there were some similarities between all three of them. Maybe I should try and see if I could find more commonalities between them, hoping that those would allow me to draw conclusions about the interactions of the other three.

Or maybe I should try and focus on understanding the different magic abilities first, before trying to use them to understand the fundamental aspects of a person. Whatever I decided, there was a lot of work to do before I could consider myself a master of this particular aspect of magic. Maybe I should stick with elemental magic, at least for a time, and take a bit of a vacation from these deep topics.

Nodding to myself, opened my eyes and decided to experiment a little with that new special ability I had gained, now that my Mind had gained mastery over Matter.