~~ CENSORED ~~

While we waited for Tala to recover, we got to work on less pleasurable things.

Azarathian astral forms were… an interesting magical phenomenon, according to Raven. From all accounts, they worked by causing an 'ascendance of the primal self through the destruction of primal urges'. Essentially breaking down the primal part of your spirit until it had nowhere to go but up.

You could recover from it - even partially, which was what Azar's followers were more interested in - allowing your soul to recover, but now far more aware of itself.

The benefits of this were quite numerous, but there were two things stopping me.

Plus sides first. Firstly, it gave you conscious access to your emotions, making you painfully aware of your thought processes, and what exactly made you feel various emotions when confronted by different circumstances.

As a consequence, you were largely immune to mental meddling, becoming aware of any artificial imperatives and perfectly capable of ignoring them.

You also got a kick-ass animal-spirit that could help you shape and focus your magic. Actually, the fact that magic was such a primal part of most practitioners meant that you usually got a pretty hefty boost to your magic as-is.

There were a few other benefits from there, but that's the main bit.

As we moved on to the downsides, Tala woke up and was put to work cleaning out Raven's cunt.

The downsides of that technique were fairly obvious, it took a long time to learn, preferably starting before you had the chance to accumulate emotional baggage, and it involved what amounted to the destruction of your 'id' (to use the Freudian terminology) in order to merge the fractured remains with your 'ego'.

Way too slow and psychologically damaging for the entire period until you managed to pass it, after which you could try to put yourself back together.

When Tala resurfaced, she offered her solution.

Apparently, there were shamanistic magics that worked to empower the 'id' elevating it without the need for the psychological scarring.

However, this was mainly done by assimilating the minds and souls of other animals, and it would add their instincts to yours. At which point, keeping control of your id becomes a desperate struggle not to be overwhelmed by the drives of the animals you have consumed.

"Couldn't you use a creature with no instincts to empower your primal self then?" I asked.

Tala shrugged, "I suppose if you could find one you could, but even insects have their own drives, often far more powerful ones than larger animals if you consider how many insects you would have to sacrifice in order to actually make an impact."

I shook my head, "I might not be able to find one, but I should be able to make one." I explained, " I've been working on some things along those lines."

"Chimeras?" Tala asked with a furrowed brow, "No, while altering the mind of a creature may suppress instincts and make it more docile, it would still have those instincts."

I shook my head, "No… I've been working on creating life from nothing, designing the entire life-form to suit my needs. I could tailor any instincts it may have in order to augment myself on that level as well."

Tala stared at me wide-eyed, "You can create life?"

"Well, not yet," I admit, "I've made a lot of progress on designing new tissues over the last few weeks while I've been working on my augmentative metamorphics, but I haven't put the pieces together and designed an entire life-form yet."

"I suppose you must have caught my lady's eye somehow." Tala said as she looked me over.

Raven rolled her eyes, "Jon's intellect is top of the line and unlike most of those people, he doesn't have an ego larger than The Heart of Darkness."

"That is a problem with those types, isn't it. Faust was like that. Brilliant at Evocation, but couldn't see a single thing wrong about himself." Tala commented.

Raven shrugged, "I hope Psimon doesn't turn out to be as egotistical as him. At least Belial is somewhat trustworthy. Surprisingly intelligent too, considering his simple interests."

"I know," Tala admitted, "I had always thought him a brute, but making contact with this Seed Vault was inspired."

"I'll have to follow through on the other part of the deal, but with Isley growing those plants in my garden, it should be a simple thing." Raven commented.

Rolling my eyes at the sudden shift in conversation, I started kissing her clavicle.

"I've been thinking of putting him in charge of the guards once the action on the borders dries up." She forced out in between squeaks and moans.

~~ CENSORED ~~

Raven grimaced, absently wiping off her hand on the comatose woman before turning to me, "So… what do you want to do now?"

I shrugged, before pausing, "Do you have any humans as subjects? I wanted to make an offer for people testing my genetic modification…"

Raven nodded, "Trigon left behind a lot of cultists, so I've been mopping them up. Quite a few are human, so I'll let you make an offer. They've all earned a place in my punishment camps regardless, so allowing them to earn some favour this way would be nice enough."

I shrugged and nodded, "Actually, I'd like to take a look at some of your alien inhabitants if that's the case. For more examples of naturally occurring traits."

"Not a problem," Raven responded, "By the way, how has your work on replicating the Thinking Cap been going?"

"It's been going pretty well, a lot better than my attempts to crack Mutant telepathy has been going," I mentioned, "apparently the Celestials have been black-boxing their tech."

Raven nodded, "By the way, have you made any progress on that… Sublime thing you had me pull out of Gwen?"

I waggled my hand, "I've made some progress on it, but the counter-plague is too lethal to humans at the moment. That said, ever since I figured out that biotic encapsulation stuff that Moria was doing on Widowmaker's paralytics. I think I can use that as a basis for creating a plague that will heal the host organism but still kill off Sublime consistently."

Raven nodded before pausing, "Actually, if you want a biological form of telepathy… isn't Sublime psychic?"

"Yeah, it's actually streamlined my research a lot… I've been wanting to look at martian physiology for a while to have something to compare things with. It's a shame that Jonn's the only one left."

Raven looked at me strangely, "What do you mean?"