I returned to consciousness with a start, fully aware and fully disappointed with my performance in the past few minutes.

If it had even only been a couple of minutes. For all I knew, returning to my phylactery could have taken hours or even days. Ravenrock could be a smoking crater for all I knew.

I willed myself to calm down, grasping onto my last fleeting threads of rationality. For starters, my phylactery had been close — a couple of hours' worth of sailing, somewhat faster if I could focus all my mana on flying. Doing the math, my return should have been fairly swift — ten minutes, at most.

Secondly, despite my failure to predict that Ludis would have protections against Mind, I had managed to wound him. How much, precisely, I could not know, but a Mind Spike, even a shallow one, was a painful thing. If anything, the pain should keep his focus away from decimating my town.

That said, I needed to get back as quickly as I could — I could feel the threads of soul connecting me to my army, and even now they dwindled, one by one. Without eyes on the battlefield, I had no idea how the crusaders were doing in comparison.

I would have to count on Sarah and Shiro to hold the line.

Focusing myself, I observed my current condition. ‘Observed’ was almost a misnomer, as I could neither see nor hear. I could, somewhat, feel at my surroundings through the innate Soul Sense of a disembodied being, but it was a vague thing.

I fumbled around, channeling the little mana I could to enhance my senses until I finally found my ticket away from this situation.

When I created my phylactery, I thought it obvious that I would only be returning to it during dire circumstances — so, of course, I prepared a series of contingencies for a swift return to the fold.

First of all was a new body. The mana constructs I used to house my mind were my own invention and complicated to make even when you could freely wield mana. From my phylactery, making one from scratch would have been a tall order — something that would take me months, most likely.

As it was, I had a number of them prepared and waiting in the musty cave complex that housed my island base, so, without further ado, I began to connect myself to the one closest to me.

While much quicker than making a body from scratch, attaching myself to one was still not an easy task. Mistakes would run the risk of injuring my mind or soul, and with Ludis waiting for me on the mainland, I could not afford either.

It was a stressful few minutes as I carefully inserted my mind into the construct body, but I was finally rewarded when I suddenly opened my eyes.

I sat up straight, stretching my new body for the first time — it was a strange thing, and though this was only my second time doing it, I doubted I would ever get used to it. I hopped from one foot to another, finishing with a twirl, and finally bowed to the non-existent audience.

A frown bloomed over my face as I shook away the silliness. I had no time for levity; Ludis could just as well recover at any point, and I still had a long flight ahead of me.

For that, I had prepared a different contingency.

I left the cavernous room that housed my phylactery, making my way towards the entrance of the complex, where the long-dead but well-preserved corpse of a drake awaited.

Drakes, contrary to the popular belief, were not significantly related to dragons — if anything, all the intelligent races had more in common with the towering creatures.

That did little to stop the drakes from being just as dangerous as the dragons, if only on a smaller scale. They were animals, possessing only a fraction of the enlightened races’ intellect, but the fire they breathed burned all the same and the destruction they caused was second to none. Dragons could be appeased and reasoned with; drakes only wanted to hunt and eat.

They’d been nearly hunted to extinction by both dragons and the peoples of the mainland, but they still popped up from time to time. This one had been the original inhabitant of this island and occasionally came to harass the people living near the coast.

Naturally, I followed it to its layer and ended the threat.

But I knew then that the corpse it left behind would be useful in a pinch and protected it from decay with a simple application of Matter. Now, it would serve as transport across the ocean.

I could fly on my own, of course — I could even go quite fast if I split most of my mana to Force, but if I did that I would only end up getting to Ravenrock already winded and with my will shaky. Not to mention, a creature whose body was made for flying could close the gap much quicker than a human could.

Striking fear in the crusaders by descending upon them atop an undead drake was only an added bonus.

Not only the drake’s body had been preserved — its original mind remained, and the soul had been tethered to the Near-Beyond. The kind of raising I was going to do was much more different from the one used on the wights, and yet simpler at the same time.

The wight mind was good for animating two or four-legged constructs and having them follow orders, and while I did have a variant I used for the birds, they were meant to do little more than fly and observe.

For the drake, I needed as close to his original functionality as possible, so the solution was simple — I’d keep his original mind intact while adding spell formations to force it into obedience. As a consequence, the drake would require its entire soul to sustain the mind, which meant a fairly sizeable drain on my mana to keep it alive — I would not, alas, have an army of angry quasi-dragons at my beck and call any time soon, but it would be a useful addition in the short term.

The raising was simple and uneventful, and soon the drake was looking at me with placid eyes, reminiscent of a well broken in horse.

I climbed on top of its back, using threads of Matter to stick myself to its scales without needing something to hold on to, and moments later, we were gone.

As the breeze blew through my hair, I had ample time to consider that, even if I were to get back to Ravenrock in time, I had no real plan to deal with Ludis a second time.

I could try doing the same thing, but it was unlikely I’d be able to bluff myself so close to him as I’d managed the first time. ‘Unlikely’ was overstating it — if I could even get within speaking distance of him, he’d probably start blasting.

I needed a clean solution, but try as I might I could not think of anything. If only the System had left my second attempt at a mana well intact, at least I could have had a new tool in my arsenal, but it seemed determined to try to insert itself wherever it saw a chance.

Did that leave Origin mana completely off the table, though? Realization struck me as I realized that I’d tunnel-visioned on the idea of the mana well even though I could create perfectly usable Origin mana right here. A clap rang out over the ocean as I smacked myself in the face for overlooking such an obvious solution — I could simply use the Origin mana I condensed on literally anything else.

But on what? I wondered. I had focused on the well because it was the only thing I had a kind of blueprint for; if I wanted to try to construct something out of Origin I’d need to figure it out from scratch.

Or maybe I could use it to supplement an existing spell? Much like the overcharged Sleep I had used in Ardenburg, the Mind Spike I used to attack Ludis with was a composite spell made mostly of Mind, with Soul as an addition that worked to empower the original spell. Could I, perhaps, do the same with Origin?

The idea had merit, though I was a bit hesitant to try. My first attempt at crafting something out of Origin had ended with me losing several parts of my body, and I could not afford to waste any time with another potential death. How odd it was that I treated my own demise as merely a waste of time, I mused. I would have to stop myself from getting used to it — planning my tactics to revolve around me dying seemed like a surefire way to earn me a final early grave.

Shaking off the distractions, I prepared myself to experiment with Origin. I would attempt to empower one of the easiest, most basic spells I knew, one that I was innately comfortable with — Soul Sight.

Condensing Origin felt like juggling with a batch of vials of explosive alchemical compounds, and even just handling the end result was like playing with fire. Gingerly pulling another thread of Soul in addition to the unholy amalgam I was using to generate the Origin mana threatened to make it collapse, and I had to split my concentration very carefully to keep both processes running separately.

I wove the frail thread of Origin into the familiar construct of Soul, then finally connected the merged spellwork to my eyes.

The world around me exploded into color.

When I used Soul Sight, I believed that I saw everything that there was to see — but the inclusion of Origin into the spell showed me how wrong I had been. There was magic everywhere — in the air, among the waves, floating in the wind. It was wild, untamed, this ambient magic that pervaded the world; but that was hardly the end of my shock. Looking up at the sky, I could even see titanic constructs, weaving all the Aspects as well as Origin, from horizon to horizon, as far as the eye could see.

I couldn’t even begin to tell what they were meant to do, and a sense of claustrophobia hit me as I realized just how small I was in the grand scheme of things.

I blinked away the sensation, putting an end to the spell at the same time. I’d confirmed the hypothesis that Origin could empower spells, and how! But I couldn’t let myself be distracted by this discovery; I had a battle to prepare for, after all.

As I considered how exactly to approach the upcoming conflict, I wondered if perhaps a boosted Mind Vision would let me see all the way to the shore. I absentmindedly wove my mana into the spell, using the same thread of Origin to boost its power.

My hypothesis had been wrong, but I released a whoop of joy all the same. While I couldn’t see people so many leagues away, the original Spike that had latched onto Ludis remained visible even over all this distance. I could, maybe, find a way to use this to target him with a spell from afar, but at the moment I was content to know exactly where he was — I was not keen on running into an ambush.

I could see he had not yet shaken off the effect of the Mind Spike — I could tell, from the tremor in the thread, that he was quite a significant amount of pain.

Now I just needed to do the same thing, again, but this time with the power of Origin mana behind it, so I began carefully and meticulously preparing the spellwork. Without the need for the element of surprise, I could craft it beforehand and have it at the ready — in all fairness, any other approach would have failed. It was incredibly difficult it was to both condense Origin mana and weave it into something else at the same time.

I was lucky enough to have a few hours yet until my drake arrived on the coast. It was just enough time to finish the Mind Spike, which kept me from fretting with worry over the fate of Ravenrock.

My eyes glowed as I smothered a wave of fury at the thought. I could do little but wait and prepare now, but in a few hours, I would make sure Ludis would pay.