A Jaded Life

Chapter 1361

Experimenting on the Revenant turned out to be harder than expected. When I tried to exert direct influence over its reconstituting body, the results were explosive. Any small prod, every small poke, caused a massive backlash, eliminating my magical probes, alongside parts of the creature’s body.

No matter how cautious I was, no matter if I used pure magic, without any physical matter involved at all, or the opposite, simple physical constructs, I couldn’t touch the thing while it was trying to regenerate. When I got close to it, maybe into a range of three or four metres around its centre of mass, it started to lash out. Not physically, that was completely impossible in its broken state, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t lash out with tendrils of emotional energy dense enough to distort the air in their passing. I wasn’t willing to test what would happen if I were to be hit by one, so I kept my distance.

Another problem was that any interaction I had with the creature delayed its regeneration. The best explanation I could think of was that its defensive reactions were draining it of the power it usually needed to continue the process. Or maybe there was some mechanism it had that allowed it to turn its own body into fuel for attacks against me, though if that were to be the case, I would expect it to sacrifice its entire body in a final suicide attack. Such an attack would be rather dangerous, especially if it were to happen unexpectedly or while I was distracted and at close range.

Eventually, after my patience was exhausted by the repeated failure of my favourite tool, I decided to try something entirely different. A quick hop through the shadows carried me to a nearby forest, where I got what might have been the first tool humanity had ever used, a simple stick. The only other contender for the first tool would be a rock, so I took one of those, too, as it might be useful. Another step through the shadows, and I was back in my prison.

The fact that I was reduced to literal sticks and stones made me feel a tad ridiculous and, if I were being honest with myself, it infuriated me on a deep, almost primal level. Magic had become a core part of my identity; the Arcane Path wasn’t just a means to an end, it had become a way of life for me. And here was a creature that could effectively nullify any attempt to understand it by simply existing. It was infuriating and insulting, making me want to reduce it to nothing but dust in the wind. But if I were to do that, I’d be unable to understand what made it tick, and I’d remain ignorant, which I couldn’t accept either.

And so, I was reduced to poking the object of my interest with a stick. How the mighty had fallen.

My first attempt to figure out a bit more about the Revenant and its strange form of regeneration was to use my newly acquired stick and prod one of the arms, trying to dislodge it from its current position. I was curious to see if the lines of power I could faintly see defining the Revenant’s future body would adjust or if they would snap and interrupt the process, or if something completely different would happen.

Given my previous issues, I realised just how foolish I had been. How often had my experiments resulted in unexpected events? I was poking one of those results just now, a result that had come far too close to killing me, so why was I being reckless?

A little annoyed with myself, I decided to proceed with caution and make a mental note to include safety procedures in any future experiments. I would almost certainly fail, but maybe I could train myself to think twice, or maybe three times, about the things that could go wrong and what I could do to keep myself safe.

As was the cast here. My initial thought was the creation of a solid shield of Ice down in the cell, allowing me to hide behind it while having my hand and arm stick out to poke the Revenant with the piece of wood I had acquired. A rather foolish idea that I quickly discarded.

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Why risk my hand and arm at all if I could just be smart about it? It wasn’t as if I had any issues controlling a construct from a distance; my scrying constructs were a perfect example of that. The only reason I had to be anywhere near the Revenant was my senses, as I couldn’t replicate those just yet, but I could create a simulacrum that could do the poking for me.

Meaning, I conjured a roughly humanoid construct from Ice, dropped it down into the Revenant’s cell and had the construct hold the stick. I would have loved to place conjured Ice and crystal between the creature and myself, just to be on the safe side, but both substances weren’t quite as transparent when it came to magic, and my various senses, as they were when it came to visible light. In other words, if I wanted to see, I had to take a risk.

Still, some caution would be advisable, so I kept my head and the rest of my body outside the line of fire, in case anything happened to explode if I were to start poking more forcefully.

Below, my newly created construct started to move somewhat jerkily; the Ice I had used to create it wasn’t the most malleable of substances, even when completely controlled by my magic. Still, it was good enough to grip the stick and start prodding the Revenant, only to fail. The Revenant’s limbs, despite not being attached physically, were locked into place, making it impossible to move them. Even when I applied a lot more force than should be necessary to move a severed arm, nothing happened. Maybe if I had a sturdier stick to poke the thing, I might be successful, but I wasn’t confident about that.

Curious to see what this looked like with my own eyes, instead of observing through the eyes of a scrying construct inserted into the Ice construct’s head, I poked my head out of cover and looked directly while I continued to poke.

My own eyes could recognise the issue immediately. The thin tendrils of power that outlined the Revenant were strong enough to assert some physical force and lock the rest of its body into place, making me wonder if it might be able to move sooner than expected, simply because those tendrils were partially physical. It didn’t need to connect all parts of itself with regenerated flesh; it just needed these tendrils, making me wonder how strong those truly were. To find that out, I pushed harder, though I still wasn’t sure what would break first, the tendrils or the stick I was using.

As it turned out, it was one of those tendrils that broke first, though it might as well have been a defensive reflex. The power contained within lashed out like a wire that snapped under tension, ripping through the stick and breaking it, though my construct was far enough back to escape any damage, to say nothing of my physical body. Only my pokey-stick was now a brokey-stick.

After pulling my head back, I decided to try another test of their durability. Given that the stick had failed, I now had to either try the carrot, which I didn’t have, or go with the sticks-and-stones approach, meaning I had to use the stone I had picked up.

Given how violently the Revenant had reacted to my magic, I kept the construct back and used its hands to gently toss the stone into what would become the Revenant’s groin, simply because that area was the largest empty space the Revenant had left. Using it wasn’t just a way to make myself grin a little at the idea of hitting Joshua there; it also meant I didn’t have to try so hard.

Sadly, the stone simply bounced off. It looked rather funny, a stone bouncing away from seemingly empty air like that, but it didn’t help in letting me understand the mechanisms involved any better. Just that it looked like the Revenant was largely impossible to alter while it was trying to reconstitute itself, especially not if you were the creature’s target.

Maybe I should try to involve one of my daughters. Probably Luna, because Lia’s magical energy might be too close a match for mine, causing trouble due to that. Or I could try to see what happened if I were to manipulate the Revenant’s original limbs, just to see if that had any effect.

Or I might just give up on a bad job and destroy the stupid thing. It wouldn’t be too hard, but I wanted to figure out what made the thing tick, other than spite and hatred.