“This looks like a good swimming spot.”

“It is. Well, not this exact spot, unless you’re part of the pack. The wolves have been getting a bit protective of their territory.” Hmm, that might be bad. I can see people being concerned about the wolves being so close. As far as I know they haven’t attacked anyone, and the Fog keeps most people away, but…

It would be best if we could give some piece of land to the wolves. A piece of land away from the city. Well, not like we can’t just designate part of the forest to them. I mean, if people haven’t really noticed a giant flying magical lizard, they wouldn’t notice the wolves. At the very least it’s extremely unlikely to cause conflicts there.

On the other hand, some of them are rather clever, and ‘ruling over’ other intelligent beings is morally muddy, at best. They’re still borderline animals, and I have no idea how long uplifting them would take. Especially if the committee decides they should not be uplifted. Ugh, so many ethical questions. If they decided on no uplifting, how would they enforce that.

Or rather, what would I do if they decided to enforce that. The only way they could be sure would be extermination… Now that’s pretty easy to place as ‘evil’ ethically, but then there’s comparisons… I may have a lot of personal power, but would I risk a comfortable modern life if they decided to kill or displace the wolves? Would I risk my life, becoming an enemy of the state…?

I suppose I should find answers by the time the committee comes to any sort of decision. They should’ve gotten most things ready by now, so Thomas should contact me soon.

“-ou okay?”

“Huh, oh, yeah. Just thinking. I… have some important, uh, decisions to make.” I shake my head. “But that’s for later. Let’s land here.”

We do so, then start making our way towards the Den with bouncy ‘low-gravity’ leaps to overcome the obstacles on the forest floor.

“Imagine an arena that does this, and you play sports in it. That’d be so cool! Low gravity handball or something.”

That’d be a -woah, tree!- really good idea actually. “You know, if I could rent a sports hall or something, I think I could set up something like that.”

“You could?”

“Maybe. You know the control core in my apartment? That, but it basically does what we’re doing to every marked object. Would probably want to strengthen the walls since people might jump into them or kick off them, but that’s very much doable. Heck, a simple enchantment can do that.”

“Marked objects?”

“You know the hovering curtain in my apartment? Well, that’s a marked object. But I could mark anything really. As long as it’s within the boundaries, it works. Actually-” I draw a breath as I feel a spike of fear and pain through the pack bond. The feelings must be pretty strong for me to sense it while not next to them, but fades almost instantly.

“Sorry ‘bout that. Uhh, oh yeah. Actually, it could work outside them, too. But that could make it unstable, and I wanted to make it impossible magically affect my apartment from the inside.”

She quiets down for a moment. “Does that mean you wouldn’t need a sports hall? Could you do it here?”

There isn’t anything stopping me, is there? “I guess. There would need to be some obstacles for it to be really cool, but…” Ah, Tåke has noticed I’m here. “...when I get back home I’ll start working on a portable kit for turning a sports field low gravity. Well, simulating low gravity.”

“Can you tell me when it’s finished?”

“Uh, I guess. Why?”

“I really wanna try it! I will talk to my handball team and see if they want to try, too. We could try it for one of our practices!”

“Test subjects, huh. I’d personally want all of you to have learned [Force Magic] or something else in case it fails, but as long as everyone knows the potential risks it’s not that important. I just don’t want to be blamed. I’ll be there to observe anyway, so at worst it simply won’t do anything.”

“What do you need to make it?”

“Hmm, something solid for the ‘circuits’, something that conducts mana well, tools to shape those, and mana.”

“Heeh?”

“In practice that means magical wood, magical silk, my abilities, and [Mana Absorption].”

“Oh, so nothing I can help with.”

“Well, I could lend you a mana absorption and crystallizing array. Like solar panels they scale with area. Well, more like volume but in practicality that means area that just so happens to cover some height.”

“Could you instead teach m-”

Tåke slams into me in a violent hug, and I almost instinctively connect with a mind bond.

“-how to make- What the!”

“Ahaha, you missed me?” Aagh, again with the face-licking. ｢[Stern, annoyed, happy]No! Don’t lick my face! That’s bad!｣ I push her away but the slobber has already been done. And then she gets sad. ｢[Apologetic, happy, annoyed]Cheer up!｣ I put my hands on her shoulders and look into her eyes, then pull her into a hug, scratching her at that one spot a bit behind and above the ear.

With her tail returned to a relaxed swishing, I take half a step back and turn to Silje, still scratching that spot. “So yeah, this is Tåke, my mist wolf companion turned… mist wolfkin companion?” I use [Mana Inspect] for the first time in a while. “No, just wolfkin. I guess ‘mist’ would be something like race in this case.”

“Hello, Tåke! Uh, can she talk?”

“Tåke, say hi.”

“Hi~i!”

“Oh, she can. How are you doing?”

I clear my throat. “She… doesn’t know many words. And then there’s her intelligence. Leda can hold a conversation as well as -or better than- kids. Tåke… She does not seem to understand abstract concepts, except those native to wolves, like territory and such.”

“Wait, how do you know if she can’t talk?”

“Let’s walk.” I say, walking towards the den. “Aside from [Beast Empathy], I can form a sort of telepathic bond and communicate with thoughts directly. Uh, let me elaborate, I just need to think of how to phrase it.”

I pause for a moment. “Ahh, yeah. Using a mind bond like that, I’ve experienced that humans think in words. Consciously, anyway. As we use words our own definitions-slash-understanding of the words come to mind.”

There’s several wolves who have noticed us by now, some are wary. I take on the wolfkin form. “On the other hand, Tåke thinks almost completely in concepts. And they tend to be concrete and about the current. Sometimes about the recent past or short-term plans, like ‘go hunt’.”

“The wolfman…”

“Huh?”

“You turned into the wolfman. It’s just… It was so sudden and you did it while talking.”

“And?”

“And??? Shapeshifting is hard! I can only give myself scales or turn green, a I have to really concentrate.”

“Ah. Well I have been in the wolfkin form for like a third of the time since the Upheaval. I also have a lot more experience than you with shapeshifting.”

“Hehe. Tom will be so angry. He was so proud he was better than me at shapeshifting.”

“You’ll also get the wolf aspect now, if you try at least.”

She laugh again, genuinely this time. “He’s gonna be so jealous when I get back and can become a werewolf be-”

“Wolfkin.”

“-wolfkin before him.”

…

I stop and look to my side. Huh? Oh, she’s behind me. “Silje?”

“I… don’t… want to… go that way.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll just… go back.”

“Seriously?” I spread my mana over her, not sure what I’m looking for. “Why did you suddenly decide on that?”

“I… don’t know. But I shouldn’t go that way.”

Okay, that’s creeping me out a bit. Whatever is going on, it doesn’t affect me. Or Tåke. Wait, the Fog has strengthened since last time, hasn’t it. “Hey, form a mana link with me?”

It forms as I walk over to her. I immediately sense through her body with my mana, especially around the head. This has to be magic. That or she’s just messing with me. I can’t sense anything wrong with her, or any foreign mana… then again I have no clue what to look for. If it is mana, maybe I can just brute force it?

I take control of some of her mana, using it to form mage armor on her skin and a sort of loose bubble/cloud of mana around her. No immediate effects. “Silje, close your eyes, take a deep breath, then use [Meditate].”

“Ok, good. Now try to take control over the two spells I cast for you.”

She does so, and after a moment, opens her eyes again. “That was… weird. What happened?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I think it is the Fog. Like, capital F fog. The wolves are making it, and it has effects on the mind, I think. Neither me nor Tåke are affected, though she’s one of them and I’m pretty strong in magic. On the other hand, I don’t think they could’ve strengthened it this much in a few days, another human was in the Den itself…”

I scratch the soft, dense fur under my slightly extruding muzzle. “Actually, both she and I have wolf companions and have high affinities with the Wolf aspect. The magic might be targeted, somehow? For now, try to detect the Wolf aspect in Tåke. And/or me.”

As her mana reaches out the two protective spells seem to lose consistency or… something. They do seem to mostly hold together at least. Actually, with the mana link, can’t I basically demonstrate the aspect? Forcing her to sense and possibly learn it?

“Change of plans. Or not, keep trying to sense, but I will also try to show you. Here.” I form a football-sized orb of mana, then rapidly attune the mana to Wolf. Then purify the mana, then- Huh, the purified mana seem to have less affinities than both etheric mana and the one in my body. Takes some work to do, and it still has some ‘impurities’. I can’t sense what exactly they are, so I guess it’s affinites I don’t know. Or something else entirely.

“I got it.”

I nod. “Can I shapeshift you to a wolfkin form? You’ll only really grow some fur and become closer to the Wolf affinity.”

After that we get to the Den with no further problems, though I have her keep the protective spells up, just in case. I hurry a few steps ahead, then turn around in a (hopefully) dramatic manner. “Welcome! To the Den, the home of the Greater Eastern Forest Pack, and all the canine cuddles you could ever want.”

I do a quick sweep with my mana. “And they’re no longer in heat, so that’s nice.”

She opens her mouth, then just shuts it. Thanks, that’s not a topic I particularly want to delve into right now. Shouldn’t have said it out loud, really. Oh well.

“I suggest trying to improve your affinity with the aspect of the Wolf. I’m going to claim one of the rooms for me and Tåke, then fix it up a bit to look better. You could come but ehh…”

“No it’s fine, I’ll improve my affinity.”

Right then. I turn and enter the Den proper with Tåke. Thinking about it, making some sort of huts would be better for an uplifted species. At least make the tribes, not cavemen… Well whatever. I find a non-marked room at the end of the same corridor that has Hilde and Trilli’s room.

Let’s see, the immediate changes I wanted to do… Flatten walls, floor and roof. Get a curtain for a ‘door’. Try to use spatial enlarging on the entire room. And it should be scent-marked. I’ll have Tåke do it, but I’m undecided whether or not I should. It seems like the thing to do from the wolves’ perspective, but… No matter what it will be done in a wolf or maybe wolfkin form, then there’s the question of main body versus puppet…

Actually, maybe I can devise some magical means to keep others out. Maybe I could make a subspace/pocket dimension to act as the room? Wait, that’s what the water temple does, isn’t it? I guess I’ll see how that works before I decide on the spatial enchantment. Not that I even know if it does use [Spatial Magic] or something entirely different.

For now let’s just flatten everything. “URRRRF MAJIIIIK!” Pfft, who needs fancy chants anyway. Working more than just a small spot of the room takes a bit longer than my spur-of-the-moment sorta-chant, so I do it quietly. With that being more time than focus intensive, I finalize the latest puppet I’ve been working on, while also giving Tåke enough scratches and rubs to make up for my absence.

There! Floor, roof and two walls done! But more importantly, I summon the giant spider puppet. “Wonderful!” I quote Mr. Anton Hand, getting used to the skittering movement of a spider about the size of the wolves. I went with the more robust, hairy tarantula type spider build, with a dark brown color and symmetric black patterns. Webspinner 2.0, now with 0% main body!*

*Requires nearby main body

It’s big enough to spin solid silk threads/ropes, and I don’t have to take on the drider form, which would be awkward in polite company on account of not being compatible with human legwear. I had left some uneven notches above the ‘door’, and split my focus between making a curtain-thing and flattening the rest of the room.

With all of that done I have a neat little dirt room with some privacy, and sit with Tåke in my lap, exchanging scratches for her cooperation in studying how the hell mana cores work. The results are as follows:

It’s a core. It’s made of mana. It’s essentially the same as the mana crystals I make back home. It seems to make it easier to use lots of mana quickly. …but for smaller spells it’s faster to not use it. I still have no frickin clue how it’s formed.

So progress: Not really. I’ll have to (very carefully) check with Leda, though her intelligence means that’ll be a lot easier. Come to think of it, her puppets have pretty dense mana, so I guess I can check them, too. Conclusion: They somehow form in beasts that use magic. It could be possible to intentionally make one. More testing is needed.

Oh well. I switch from head-scratches to belly tickle-rubs, almost instantly swapping our positions to me looming over her with what I assume is a play-evil grin tickling and rubbing her all over. I quickly relent my assault, having succeeded in my goal of getting free of her. She seems conflicted about me stopping, but there’s more time for playing later. Let’s go check up on Silje, then head to the water temple.