Even if it was easier to move mana around by visualizing the process in its mind, that still didn't help the wolf with figuring out how to properly use the [Echoes of Oblivion] Skill, nor how to move mana the way the human did.

It turned back to its mental image of its soul, ready to give up, but just a bit too stubborn to do so. Minutes, hours passed, its mind empty of thought but the singular desire to feel and understand. And eventually, for just a fraction of a second, a sensation as subtle as the brush of a hair alerted its mind to something below its soul.

The sensation was a faint feeling of drainage. Like the feeling of its lifeblood leaking from an open wound, but painless, not an injury but a natural occurrence.

Its curiosity and hope re-ignited, it tried to visualize that ‘bleed’, that sensation of its mana being sucked away into a place it couldn’t perceive. It pictured its soul dripping a steady stream of mana into someplace down below, some void.

And it worked. The visualization in its mind came to life, the sensation quickly becoming easier and easier to feel the more it focused.

There was a tether connected to its soul, leading down into something, slowly pumping mana into it.

Since visualization had worked so well thus far, it tried to picture a bowl that caught the energy, and the barest awareness of something tickled at its mind. Then it imagined that its soul was feeding into some sort of vessel, a heart, perhaps. Remembering the organ in perfect detail and giving it the same blue coloration of its soul, it imagined that the tether led to such a heart.

And it felt it.

There was something that was tethered to its soul, a small thing, much smaller than the heart the wolf had imagined, but full of mana. And from it, just for a few fingerwidths, extended arteries and veins, before the feeling faded.

This unbeating heart of mana tethered to its soul was small, but with much more capacity than its soul. It experimentally drew from it, and pushed the mana towards the phantom arteries, feeling with wonder how the energy moved along lines within its body that didn’t physically exist, as if painting veins along the way while it travelled.

The wolf had a vascular system but for mana, this entire time. And it hadn’t even realized. It didn’t know whether to be angry or incredulous.

Grabbing hold of the energy in its phantom heart, it pushed it outwards in all directions again, yet unlike when it used its soul, the mana followed it's mana veins, rather than just going straight through its flesh.

It was a very strange sensation to feel something in its body, but knowing that it wasn’t actually there.

From its chest where its mana-heart lay, one large vein went down its spine and out of its tail. On the other side another equally large vein followed its spine upwards until it was about to enter the skull, then diverged down to fade out of its mouth. Four other veins, slightly smaller, moved down through its limbs, fading off to nothing at its paws.

A direct command for the mana to leave through its flesh proved extremely difficult, its veins growing smaller veins to try and lead the mana out of the middle of its spine, an endeavor it quickly gave up on. It got up from its lying position, and activated [Echoes of Oblivion], using the mana in its phantom heart rather than its soul, just to see if anything had changed.

The results were instant.

It yowled as its legs crumpled, barely managing to right its limbs, almost tumbling straight onto the human’s injured legs, who let out an exclamation of surprise at the sudden sound.

With shaking legs, it lowered itself onto its side with a shiver, and grit its jaws shut with a growl as it weathered through the sensation of its mana forcibly making a billion tiny little mana veins across every hair’s width of space in its body.

It was the worst sensation it had ever felt. A sensation of such supreme discomfort it was borderline painful, but somehow worse than any pain, making its legs shaky, its stomach clench, its arteries wriggle under its skin. It felt like an uncountable amount of burrowing worms moving through its flesh after it had deprived itself of its sense of pain, feeling the uneven lines move through its flesh.

It panted, and growled in agitation, tilting its head and biting into the iron plank it was resting on, the pain of its tearing gums helping it ground itself, the shriek of tearing iron a comfort in the storm of unease. It jerked its head around, the metal being shredded and spit out of its bleeding mouth, the wolf having just enough presence of mind to not bite too deep and sever the plank.

It turned its discomfort to anger and its anger into pain and catharsis, drowning out the sensation.

Then murky blackness covered its eyes, its mana finally breaking through its fur after saturating every tiny bit of its body, and the sensation disappeared like it was never even there.

It froze, unlatching its teeth from the metal, and got up, tilting its head down to look at its paws.

A black void, in the rough, wispy shape of a canine foot.

Its tail started wagging, hesitantly at first but quickly growing to a furious whirl of motion, the canine in complete and utter disbelief and elation.

It reared back on its hind legs, lifting its upper body clean off, and purposefully stomped with its full power and body weight down onto the iron.

Nothing.

It chuffed, growled, barked, howled, ran up and down the steps, all in complete and utter silence.

Unable to contain itself in its pure glee, it turned off the Skill, turned its head up, and did something instinctual that it had never done before.

Gathering as much air into its lungs as it could, it howled in celebration with all its might. Then, just because it felt like that wasn’t enough to express its feelings, it moved mana down the phantom veins that went through its lungs and out of its throat, pouring its intent to share triumph into the howl, the joy of victory.

The howl quickly grew to be almost twice as loud, the mana intertwining with the sound waves, carrying its joy to all who would hear.

After a few seconds, it ran out of both mana and air, and panted in joy with its tongue hanging out of its mouth, not letting the human’s surprise and fear sour its mood as it quickly trotted down to kill some rodents in celebration. Then it remembered that its mouth was bleeding and quickly sat down for a nap to fix that.

Thirty minutes later, it got up again, and went to enjoy itself with the squeaking vermin.

It feasted, brought up one for the human, who was strangely enough, almost eager to drink now, then let the skinned corpse sit next to her, just in case she wanted it, and went to sleep.

-Acquired Skills:

You have gained the Skill [Logotexnia - Level 1]

-[Mana Manipulation] has Leveled Up. Level 3 → Level 4

-[Echoes of Oblivion] has Leveled Up. Level 2 → Level 3

Although immensely pleased, borderline ecstatic over its progress, the new Skill was what drew most of its attention. [Logotexnia] was a rather odd skill, according to the symbols.

It was basically about controlling the sounds it made using its mana. It could quieten things, make them louder, or even alter them to be entirely different. It could let it pour feelings into the sound, intent. Its range of application was just absurd. As long as the sound originated from the wolf, it could twist it into whatever it wanted, and the ability to use feelings and intent was one that trancended all language barriers. Immediately, its thoughts moved to its ongoing attempt of human speech, and it decided to try using the Skill on that, as soon as possible.

There was little in the way of information explaining how the skill worked beyond some vague notion of ‘willpower’ and 'understanding', but it would make it work, just like [Echoes of Oblivion].

Eventually.

The scent of cooked rat and the sensation of the girl’s mana being expelled, coupled with the sound of her spark spell, confirmed that she was most likely eating the rodent it had left her, so it continued its sleep unperturbed, mentally signing off the racket as nothing to be concerned over.

But maybe it was getting a bit too comfortable with having the human around...

And that thought gained a lot of merit when it woke up to the feeling of something faintly brushing against its leg.

Its eyes snapped open to see a dainty human paw faintly brushing against its foreleg, the fingertips hesitantly brushing over its fur, and it tensed. It had laid down on her left side this time without giving it much thought, as the step above her was mutilated by its jaws a few hours ago.

The human felt the sudden tenseness of its muscles, and momentarily paused, but then continued on regardless, her fingertips faintly brushing over its nails — which it barely remembered to mentally blunt in time — and forelegs as it watched her, unblinking. Eventually, it relaxed, and the human grew a bit more confident in her movements.

Honestly, it felt nice. It was tempted to offer its head for some good pets, but it did not want her fire-spewing hand anywhere close to its vitals. Some instinctual part of itself just didn't like fire. Sure, it had grown used to her, and had even grown to like her quite a bit, as it had never spent such a prolonged period of time around a single particular creature, but it wasn’t forgetting that sneak attack attempt, not any time soon.

Not out of some grudge, just as a reminder that the human could, and maybe would grab an opportunity to hurt it, even if the wolf was helping her. No mana entered her hand however, so it shuffled a bit to the side, thankful for how wide the planks of iron were, extending its legs towards her left flank for better access.

Her fingers gently curled around its paw and rubbed at the soft bits underneath, which felt divine. Its tail started thumping against the iron, just a bit.

“You’re so… small.” The girl breathed out with an odd sense of… awe? Confusion? It couldn’t tell.

An hour went by in what felt like a minute, and it eventually decided to try using its new Skill as the human kneaded its paw.

And much to its surprise, using it was incredibly easy. It had been expecting a complete and utter slog of hard work and practise, but all it had to do to make the Skill change the sounds coming out of its throat, was roughly know how they were made, and mentally order it to change the sound wave to what it wanted it to be. The rattle of metal, that blasted ‘P’ sound it couldn’t ever properly do because of its lack of cheeks, as long as it understood how a sound was made, it could replicate it with relative ease.

The knowledge of how sound waves worked proved utterly invaluable.

Sure, it required mana, and a lot more focus than making human noises the normal way, but as soon as its mental acuity was higher, either through modification or simply dumping points into Intelligence, it was sure that it could just… growl, or some equally simple sound, and twist it a hundred different ways to form whatever sound it wanted, while doing other activities.

And it wouldn’t even have to modify itself.

It wouldn’t say that it was through luck that it got the Skill, more of an accident, really, but the circumstances lining up the way they did, from its knowledge of what sound waves were, allowing it to understand and better use the Skill, to getting said Skill right when it was starting to give up on making some human noises like ‘P’ or a sharp ‘B’...

It felt great. It was used to circumstances lining up in the worst way possible, so this break in the pattern was more than welcome.

It still needed some practise with using the Skill, but after an hour or so of making human sounds with surprising accuracy, it felt like it could make most simple sounds.

So with intense, intense focus, it poked the human on the side, and let out the sound it had practised the most.

“Thankyou.” It howled lowly, the Skill twisting the sound waves into something more intelligible to the human, pouring a bit of extra mana to convey a sense of curiosity through the sound, and the human stilled, the scent of fear entering the wolf’s oversensitive nostrils. She gulped, and resumed her previous activities after another moment of tension.

“Y-Yeah… uhm. No problem. Even if you probably don’t know what ‘thank you’ or ‘no problem’ means.” The human whispered back, a long, complicated series of sounds that it was neither going to attempt to interpret, nor mimic.

It chuffed and poked her again, and the human sighed.

"Uhm... Discombobulate?"

Thankfully, she understood what it was asking for. The wolf considered it for a moment, then decided to try it this time, fairly confident it could make whatever sound the human threw at it, as long as it didn't run out of mana.

As they relaxed side by side, the human petting its legs while it pestered her for words to try out with its new Skill, it felt…

Relaxed, comfortable.

Even the constant, barely perceptible hunger from the [Devourer] Skill faded as they continued, until they both fell asleep.

Their rest didn't last long, however, as the gears below began to spin, and the most horrific, vile poison it had ever smelled suddenly entered its nostrils, making its eyes fly wide open.

-

(If you are reading this story on any website that isn’t RoyalRoad.com, you are reading stolen content from a free site that runs no intrusive or obnoxious advertisements. Just google "RoyalRoad Fleabag" and you'll get to my story on the site it was meant to be hosted on.)