Quietly whistling to herself, Luna made her way through the tower, this massive edifice of her Mother's ambition. In different circumstances, one might have called the thing a phallic representation of her own, masculine insecurities, but, as things were, that just didn't apply. Instead, calling it a raised middle finger towards the sky might be more appropriate, even if Jade had taken care to obscure the tower's sight from the Sun. Or rather, it was the other way around. She didn't want the Sun to shine down on her tower, for a variety of fairly obvious reasons.

Not that those reasons impacted Luna directly. She was, next to Silva, the one who had the least to worry about from the Sun and its radiant Mistress. Sure, divine politics and the rules governing them could be byzantine and confusing, but they provided a surprising amount of protection for those directly chosen by their Gods. At least protection from other Gods, preventing them from striking, or even hindering, them directly. Such acts would invite immediate retaliation, continuing until there were no more chosen left, effectively curtailing the influence the Gods could wield on the world.

It would take some truly egregious crime against nature to make other Gods act regardless of that protection. At the same time, the God who had originally chosen the mortal was unlikely to ever rescind it. Doing so would essentially tell the rest of the Gods that selecting a specific chosen had been a mistake, and few Gods were willing to admit weakness or mistakes. Certainty, especially when it came to their own domain, to which their Chosen automatically belonged, was a fundamental requirement to become a deity. It was simply part and parcel of their being. Admitting fault was not, for all the trouble that inability could bring with it.

As such, Lady Hecate largely shielded Luna's actions, though the deity did occasionally prod Luna to try out a few things, simply because experiments performed by Mortals generally produced different results than those of deities. Sure, deities could do their best to insulate their experiments from the influence their mere presence had on reality, but doing so added different complications. Sometimes, having somebody else do the testing was a lot easier and produced different, yet very interesting, results.

In this case, the experiments Luna had planned for the time her Mother and Sister Lia were away had nothing to do with Lady Hecate. The deity would most likely take a few looks, simply to see if what she was doing was particularly interesting, but otherwise, she would stay in the background, only acting to preserve her chosen. For these experiments, neither was likely, but unexpected events were, by their very nature, unpredictable.

Luna's current project was a continuation of her previous work. She had started with plants, making them grow from seeds or have cuttings sprout rapidly, only fueled by her magic. Due to certain problems with the material generated in this way, she later adopted a slower approach, accelerating growth only by orders of magnitude, while allowing the plants to absorb nutrients from both the air and the soil. That way, the plants weren't magical constructs but actual plants, just infused with her magic.

After that had been accomplished, she had worked together with her Mother to expand her ability to manipulate living things from plants to animals. Initially, those experiments focused on manipulation, or on keeping the animals alive while her Mother worked, but now, she was curious if she could do more.

How much of an animal was needed for her to work on? Healing wounds was something she could do with ease by now, but how far could that stretch? Was it possible to revive dead tissue, as opposed to regrowing it from neighbouring living tissue? How much of a being had to be left to be regrown in such a way, and, depending on results, how would that work with more complex creatures? She already knew that physical damage could, in turn, reflect on Mind and Soul, but would healing the Body also heal the other damaged areas?

Similarly, she was curious about the other direction. If she had an appropriate sample, how much of a sample was needed to grow an animal from, well, seed and egg, like she did with the plants she manipulated? Was it possible to use an appropriate sample, add a large amount of magic and, essentially, create a temporary animal? It would be a purely magical construct, but even a magically constructed animal would have its uses. Would such a being have a mind of its own, or was the method too rapid and would create nothing but an empty shell? Would it have instincts, or even desires of its own, a will to live and procreate as all living things had? There were countless questions Luna wanted to understand. Thankfully, her Mother was just as eager to have answers to them as she was, leading to the creation of a well-furnished and equipped laboratory, waiting to be used.

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Initially, Luna started to fill up some of the laboratory with the necessary resources. Plant-based feedstock was relatively straightforward to produce, even in the sparse and gloomy area around the tower. Luna only needed soil, air and magic to grow plants, though Sun could be useful. Sure, the soil around these parts was horrible, with almost no nutrients, but it worked well enough, at least if one added enough magic. Ultimately, it provided her with sufficient raw materials to work with, at least when it came to simple organisms. Grinding it down was only the first of many steps to turn the raw plants into a goopy, slightly slimy paste. But once the paste was done, it could be used to feed anything from bacteria to herbivores, with only obligate carnivores being too specialised to be sustained by it.

Sadly, while the parts they could create magically were plenty, there was a distinct lack of experimental subjects. They would have to head out and catch a few, maybe mice or something equally simple, but those critters were quite rare as high up in the mountains as they were. Getting a message to her Mother would be difficult, but probably possible and hopefully, they would get something suitable for her.

However, that would take some time to work, and Luna was eager to perform a few tests, though not so eager that she would use her own material or harvest some from Silva. Instead, she looked at the numerous materials she had stored over their journey, all methodically labelled and put away, just in case they could be useful or turned out to be more interesting than expected. Blood was something her Mother collected habitually, simply because it was useful for her Blood Magic, while her sister's vampirism led to a similar, but somewhat different habit. Regardless, they had blood samples from almost every critter they had come across, even if the definition of 'Blood' was occasionally stretched quite far.

After a bit of consideration, Luna decided to use some from the biggest supply they had, excluding those from sapient creatures. She wasn't quite ready to start with trying to grow one of those. There were numerous practical problems with the idea, to say nothing of the ethical troubles.

However, they had stored away almost three dozen litres of deer blood, all sealed in small shells of enchanted Ice, with runes to keep it fresh. Realising just how much of the stuff they had stored was enough to give Luna the confidence to start experimenting, testing to see what she could do with nothing but properly stored blood. Some of it would undoubtedly spoil, but that would only open up other avenues of investigation.

The initial experiments didn't go all that well, reminding her of the troubles she had when starting out with her Life Magic. The biggest problem was that Blood, at the end of the day, was quite rich in nutrients, allowing even small contaminations to spread rapidly, especially when these contaminations were supplied with Life Magic.

Somehow, one of the experimental samples managed to achieve a semblance of life, becoming an incredibly gross, slime-like creature that tried to escape the small container Luna had used for her experiment. Dealing with it required some help from Silva, as Luna's magic was wholly unsuited to fight such a threat. Contain it for a time, sure, but destroy it? Not that easy.

To make matters worse, that was only the first of many, many failures over the next few days. Sure, she also had a few scant successes, some of which were splattered across the walls of her laboratory. Still, even if the vast majority of her experiments had failed, she was moving in the right direction. As her Mother liked to say, the failures had successfully shown her what didn't work.

After looking around the laboratory and the ample amounts of blood and nutrient paste scattered and splattered around the room, Luna let out a sigh, only to freeze when she felt a presence approach and the door open moments later.

"Explain!" the stern voice of her mother commanded, her eyes scanning the thoroughly messy room.

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