"Now, Mother, to summarise your explanation, the problem with placing these Blood Rune enchantments on others is that they essentially run out of control, draining the bearer of Astral Power until they have nothing more to give and at that point, they drain away their vitality to power it a little longer, any glaring mistakes in that?" Lia asked, opening the discussion between Luna, herself and me, trying to come up with a way to empower normal people who wished to travel down the martial path.

"No, that's the long and short of it. When I place such runes on myself, I can control the amount of power they use up and, in turn, how much they amplify my physical capabilities. But even then, I never dared to use permanent runes of that sort on my body, simply because I couldn't be certain it would work. If it didn't, the runes would have crippled or killed me, not something I wanted to risk if I'm honest," I replied, thinking back to the tricks I had picked up on Mundus.

"There might be a solution to a part of the problem," Lia told me, looking quite proud of herself, "You know that part of my vampiric characteristics is that I need a lot less Astral Power for techniques internal to my body, and even when casting normally, I'm more efficient," she began her explanation, getting nods from Luna and me, we had discussed that before, though never in a whole lot of detail. It was the primary reason why she could sustain herself with just a bit of blood from me, her incredibly efficient way of casting spells, though the drawback was that Lia couldn't regenerate Astral Power the usual way.

"I've been studying that effect, trying to understand how it works, especially the part where the Astral Power within me is barely used up, almost acting as a catalyst for a different kind of power. If we could figure that out and make use of it, especially if we manage to eliminate the drawback, or maybe replace it with a different one, it could work to power the enchantment, right?" she asked, making me stare at her for a moment, it was an idea so far out, I hadn't seen it coming.

"Many 'ifs' there, you know," I told her, a grin replacing my briefly gaping mouth. "But even if that would work, how could they control the input? Or would you want them to have it permanently active, if so, I have a feeling it would be a bit of a pain, quite literally in some cases. The Blood Magic enchantments are detrimental to the muscles, they push them beyond their usual capacity by design, allowing the bearer to perform feats usually impossible for them but if they are running the entire time, the muscles would get torn to shreds in short order," I sadly had to throw another wrench in her idea, but Lia got support from an unexpected source.

"There might be a way around that, I'm pretty sure there are ways to limit these enchantments, even if the bearer doesn't know Blood Magic. They might have to accept a minor role within Lady Hecate's church, but there are ways to turn the enchantments on and off," Luna threw in, making me raise an eyebrow at the implications there.

"So we wouldn't need to use Lia's idea to increase efficiency?" I asked, curious if Luna's way would work that well.

"No, I'm fairly certain on somebody without a decent ability with Blood Runes, the drain on their Astral Power would be prohibitive, especially if the runes are on somebody focusing on the martial path. They aren't known for their high investment in Intelligence and Intuition, you know?" she returned my earlier grin, making me nod in agreement. It was true, thanks to my various traits and incredibly high Intelligence, I could use fairly insane amounts of Astral Power, especially once I activated Overflow. Other people would run dry far before I would even notice the drain which might put a few things into perspective.

"But if we combine the work I put into the idea to seal the Astral Power of somebody within them, making it impossible for them to use any external magic but in turn making their magic about as efficient as the one used by a Vampire with the runes and Luna's divine work-around, we would likely get what we are interested in?" Lia asked, her earlier enthusiasm returning with a vengeance.

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"Well, it at least sounds somewhat plausible. We've tried experiments with worse chances of success," I admitted, already considering how the runes might have to be altered to make them more efficient while interfacing with whatever Lia and Luna had in mind.

"Do you want to add some sort of effect to prevent them from attacking you, or maybe from attacking Vampires in general, possibly adding something to keep them from going after Shrines of Lady Hecate?" I asked, knowing that the kind of magic we were talking about would allow for some fairly nasty contingencies, though I wasn't sure how we might tie such contingencies into an active effect. But I was fairly certain it was possible.

The look on Lia's face was a conflicted one. Not terribly surprising, as she shared some of my vigilance, what some might call paranoia, but at the same time, she wanted to trust those she blessed this way. Before she could come to a decision, Luna spoke up and added some wisdom of her own.

"I don't believe it would be necessary. The mechanism you, Lia, had in mind would use your blood to create the runes, at least in part, wouldn't it?" she asked, making me wonder where she got the idea. Maybe Luna had learned more about alchemy than I had managed, which was not a huge surprise given just how confusing I found the subject. Its nature was almost contradictory to the Rune Magic I practised, though somewhat compatible with the direct manipulation of magical forces.

"Well, yeah, there are a few catalysts that should change the way Astral Power moves within the blood and spread it onto the host body, at least if a few of my ideas pan out," Lia agreed and for a few minutes, Luna and Lia continued to discuss the specifics of this mixture of ink and blood, how it might be possible to create it and how it could function. It was largely theoretical, though I was fairly certain Lia had already performed some of the experiments, though obviously not all of them.

Finally, the pair wound down their discussion about Alchemy, dousing the slowly rising flames of envy I felt. Being ignorant about an arcane discipline didn't sit easily with me, even if the discipline was less magical and more in the realm of cooking with pretensions of grandeur.

"What sort of experiments do you think are needed?" I asked, "I mean, once you have that blood-based ink, I'd guess you'd want to test the enchantments on creatures we wouldn't miss too much before moving on to people we wouldn't miss and only once that worked out reasonably well you'd offer the procedure to Jack, Murray and Jonas, right?"

"We might want to ask Silva; she managed to beat a few of the local dogs and wolves into shape; those might work as secondary test subjects after we tried it on something lesser, a few cats or something like that," Luna suggested, getting a thoughtful nod in response. Sadly, we wouldn't be able to use Shattered or Undead; their fundamental nature was too different from that of humans, meaning we needed living beings.

"That has potential. I'll also look over the various Runes I currently know and try to design a suitable enchantment, something to give the wearer Strength, Speed and Regeneration, if at all possible. That way, the bearer gets a boost in power and longevity, though I don't think durability would be easy to accomplish. I'll have to see, especially as I don't think I could add any Runes that aren't Blood Runes into the mix, doing so would likely destabilise the entire thing, leaving the bearer with what amounts to a serious Blood Curse," I let a few of my thoughts flow out, not really caring that I was speaking mostly to myself. Sometimes, doing so helped, especially with a few of the more complex concepts, putting them into spoken words allowed me to simplify my racing thoughts.

At the same time, I realised that these runes and the work I was currently doing might also work for a different purpose if I combined them with Darkness Magic, especially the Curse-concept. Nodding to myself, I conjured up a pair of stone tablets so I could start writing things down. This might give me access to a few new tricks, things I could place upon my enemy and watch as their own magic tore them asunder, somewhat similar to the Curse placed upon Sigmir all the way back when we met. Hopefully not as slow, certainly not targeting EXP and levels, but just as debilitating and deadly, unless the target managed to find a master of the arcane to dispel it.

And the best part of such a curse? All I'd need is a single drop of blood.

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