Pain exploded out of my injured shoulder and coursed through my veins like a thousand heated blades, chipping away at the frayed edges of my sanity.

A scream built up within me; one I found I couldn't release as I had no control over my body. So, it built and built, until I thought I would explode.

My vision was darkening around the edges and unconsciousness was grasping at me with thousands of shadowy arms, trying to drag me down into darkness. If it succeeded, I knew the oblivion would be eternal.

Spurred perhaps by the return of my soul, my body realized it was dying and pumped as much of a heady cocktail of adrenaline and endorphins into my bloodstream as it could. It made my faltering heart beat harder and numbed the pain. Enough, at least, to let me think.

Fighting against the pain and disorientation, I capitalized on the fleeting moment of clarity and reached for the Void.

Silence.

The familiar comforting silence of the Void replaced the cacophony of a body struggling desperately to survive and I could finally pant for breath. But not for too long. I was living on borrowed time. The sudden return of my soul had jolted my body out of its stupor and accelerated its demise. I needed to act. Now.

Heal. Heal! HEAL. HEAL!

Reaching out to the mana in the surroundings, I felt an abundance of light mana; in the sunbeams streaming down through the gaps of the canopy above, in the air around me, and in the trees themselves. Grabbing it with my soul, I ripped it away and channelled it into a desperate barrage of healing spells.

The very world seemed to darken in a sphere around me as the light coalesced into tiny glowing runes that gushed into me. My wound wriggled as new flesh formed at a speed visible to the naked eye. Fresh blood joined the stream within my veins. And under the control of my soul, the shards of my shattered shoulder gathered into a framework for new bone to grow on.

HEAL!!

With one last, impassioned Heal, I consumed the very last of my mental power and the Void shattered around me. A dark flood of exhaustion gushed in and I went out like a light.

I woke again an indeterminate amount of time later, roused by the insistent rumblings of my stomach.

I was hungry. And I wasn’t surprised I was.

I’d just healed from a wound that would normally take me months to heal from within the span of a few minutes. Not only that, I’d regenerated nearly half of my blood. My throat was parched and my tongue felt like rubber in my mouth. I desperately needed a drink.

But, on the bright side, I was alive and in somewhat decent shape.

With a grunt of effort, I pushed myself up to a sitting position, wobbling slightly as blood suddenly rushed to my head.

‘Oh good. I can move again.’

It appeared that whatever issue had been preventing me from moving my body when I’d jumped back in from the raptor had resolved itself. Probably just my soul taking time to acclimatize to the sudden change of housing.

*crack*

The sudden ominous sound made me turn my gaze slowly down to where my hand was pressing down on the branch beneath me. A spiderweb of fissures spread out from under it towards its surroundings.

‘That can't be good.’

It wasn’t. As though triggered by it, a dozen cracks centred on me appeared on the branch with the sound of cracking ice. I’d ripped the light mana right out of the wood when I was healing myself and weakened the structure of the branch. My sudden movement had just set the cracking off.

The body of the raptor was right where I’d left it – in front of me, a few feet away. Just outside the range of the embrittled wood. It was unconscious, just as my body had been when it wasn’t occupied by my soul, and it was utterly still. If not for the rhythmic rise and fall of its chest, I would have mistaken it for dead.

A quick check told me that my soul was in no condition to cast magic anytime soon. So, flying was out. I’d just have to get to safety the regular way: by crawling.

So crawl I did, distributing my weight as evenly over the cracked surface of the branch as I could.

It was a harrowing few moments – akin to walking on a tightrope strung several hundred feet above the ground. Just without a safety net and with the rope itself frayed and poised to snap at any given moment.

I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding when I finally made it all the way over to safety. Not a moment too soon, as with a tremendous crack the entire branch snapped off behind me and went crashing down to the ground, trailing a tail of sawdust behind it.

Calming my racing heart, I touched the jagged edge of the crack. My finger came back white with a coating of sawdust. Other than the bark, the rest of the wood looked like a whole nest of termites had gone to town on it.

‘I’m nearly killing myself way too often for my liking.’

This was the third time already, just in this day. I wouldn't survive this forest if I didn’t smarten up soon.

Backing away from the edge, I leaned back against the unmoving body of the raptor. Reaching into the pouch at my waist, which had miraculously remained attached all throughout this ordeal, I rummaged through it until I found a canteen of water. It was a standard bag of holding, with more space inside than its diminutive exterior would suggest.

It took all my self-control to take measured sips of water rather than the huge gulps I wanted to, but I managed to slowly quench my raging thrust without throwing up due to impatience.

Putting the empty canteen back in the pouch, I brought out a few snacks I had lying around in there and chomped my way through them in similarly measured bites, taking the edge off my hunger.

Closing my eyes, I began meditating to let my exhausted soul recover. At the same time, I took stock of my injuries. They’d all healed completely, without even a scar. I even had full range of motion.

But, and there is always a but, the bone of my right shoulder was more brittle than the rest of my skeleton and the flesh above it more tender than the rest. It was because the healing hadn’t accounted for the mana infused into my flesh and bones by long years of medicament use and training. The new tissue had the same intensity as an ordinary non-magically-enhanced Hominum’s.

Until I managed to imbue mana into it again, I would have to be careful with the use of my right arm. Otherwise the force of the stronger muscles surrounding it would snap the weakened bone.

Other than this issue, I was fine. At least, physically.

My soul was a whole different story.

I’d really put it through its paces today. Breaking nearly every taboo Isabella had warned me against in the process.

And with how limited my knowledge about souls was, I wouldn't know how to fix myself if I ended up messing myself up.

‘Take a deep breath, let it out. Calm down. No use panicking. Just take things step by step. What do you know?’

So, what did I know?

I knew that I’d somehow written off the consciousness of the raptor that had been chasing me and replaced it in the driver’s seat, leaving my own body as a vegetative heap.

Then I’d managed to jump back in again.

Each time there had been a period of adjustment where I’d remained unconscious while my soul adapted to its new vessel.

Seeing that the raptor had managed to fly all through the adjustment period without crashing into a tree, the body in that time was probably running on its instincts.

'No. That’s not right.'

At least, not fully. It had carried me on its back without dropping me the whole way; even though having me bleeding and vulnerable on its back and still not attacking me must have gone strongly against its predatory instincts.

My eyes flew open and I sat up straight.

The raptor must have followed a subconscious command from me to catch me and then, since I didn't want to meet its mate, fly away from its nest.

‘Can I control it?’

Once the thought appeared in my mind, it could hardly be removed.

If I could control it, I could fly over the canopy on its back. Getting out of this damned forest would be much, much simpler.

Not only that, it was an apex predator that had nearly killed me. And it was a Beast with much higher defence than my squishy little Hominum body. My survivability would ratchet up if it was on my side.

Standing up a bit shakily, I turned around and studied the gigantic form of the unconscious reptilian bird.

Should I give it a try?