There’s a gate of some sort leading underground, looking like it could lead to some fantasy cave filled with monsters and loot. There is also some huts of slightly varying sizes. They're made of dirt and wood, with white cloth covering the entrances, making the area look as if some stone age tribe has settled here.

Each of the two, four, five, six, seven huts seem to have a ‘family’ of wolves. If you can even call them that - Two of them are inhabited by werewolf-like creatures and three of the others have one or two werewolves.

In addition there are quite a few structures that can generously be called sheds, offering little more than a roof overhead. And the wolves… all of the huts not fully inhabited by the werewolves and some of the sheds have either newborn pups or wolves that must be about to give birth. Two of the werewolves have very distinct bulging stomachs, too.

At some point during my observation Lara has taken on a similar, if more human-like, form and is interacting with one of the pregnant werewolves.

I cautiously approach, only to freeze when one of the werewolves growl at me. This gets the attention of several others, and soon I find myself surrounded by snarling wolves including two werewolves.

A whistle, followed by an oddly loud clap. “He’s mine. No danger.” says Lara.

Some of the wolves don’t seem convinced, but an animalistic snarl from her causes the biggest one to tuck its tail between its legs and scamper off. Most of the others follow, with the werewolves and one wolf turning to Lara.

They get to her before she gets to me. She stops and turn to the werewolves, with both sides sniffing the air before nuzzling each other. Then she squats and nuzzles the wolf, which in turn licks her, earning it a slap. “No facelicking!”

The tail of the wolf droops, but returns to a lazy swishing when she pets it, muttering something I can’t hear. She stands up and give the each of werewolves a pet with a similar effect, before turning to me with a bright smile.

“Sorry about that. They are… wary of unknown people. Especially after all the bitches started popping out puppies left, right, and center.”

I snort at her comment, causing her to roll her eyes.

“Seriously though, don’t go near the puppies without me.” She takes on a more serious expression. “In fact, it would probably be best if I shapeshifted you a bit. Is that okay?”

It is, and the familiar feeling of her shapeshifting washes over me. This time, however, it affects not only my arms and legs, but entire body. It feels like I’m resisting it, somehow, but when I relax, the feeling disappears. Instead I can feel the changes she does to me.

My face narrows and elongates slightly, fur growing on my entire body. My feet tingle for a moment, before the spell recedes. In addition to those I can feel that my entire body changes, but not how. When she’s done she takes a step back, only to bump into one of the werewolves, whose head is at the level of her butt, sniffing it.

She whirls around which an indistinct scream and give it a magnificent slap, throwing the offending werewolf across the ground. She glares at it for a moment with a frankly scary growl, only turning to me when it takes the hint and runs off on all four with a whimper.

“How’s the changes?”

“It smells!” is the first thing that comes to mind. “Err, I mean, that, uhh, there’s just so many smells.”

“Hahah, yeah, I know, don’t worry. In fact, you will likely find that certain smells smell a lot less… bad with these changes. Not that they’d smell good, just… less bad.”

“Oh-okay.” I think I know why the werewolf sniffed her, she does smell pretty… good. Not that I would sniff her. That’d be… not good.

“Aside from giving you a taste, well-” she bobs her head side to side. “Of a wolf’s sense of smell, I shouldn’t have changed anything notable. Well, your appearance obviously, smell, but…”

She leads me through the little village or what you’d call it, greeting some of the inhabitants with a nuzzle and checking up of the pregnant… is it okay to call them bitches? She calls them that, and as she says it’s scientifically correct or whatever, I think, but I think I shouldn’t call them that.

She spends extra time on the two pregnant werewolves, seemingly communicating through only touch. At some point her ears seems to rotate towards something, only for the head to follow a moment later.

“Gods, I swear… can they control it or something?” She mutters, standing up in a hurry before heading off towards whatever got her attention.

Stuck between a pregnant werewolf and another werewolf I glance at both of them for a moment before following her. What happened with going to the secret training spot?

When I catch up to her she’s kneeling in one of the sheds, retrieving something from her magical bag. That bag holds an impressive amount of stuff. What did she say? ‘four times the main room and enough pockets this time’? Not to mention that despite looking… not exactly modern, you don't really notice it.

She pulls out a bottle of water and a folded blanket the same white shared by many of her things, folding it to four layers and laying it under the roof, gently encouraging the female to lie down on it. She then retrieves a dog bowl and fills it with water.

The wolf makes an odd sound, causing the male to nuzzle her and Lara’s frown to grow. “Is… is she giving birth?”

“Yes.” She says with a strained voice.

Oh. I look at her deft movements. “Have you… done this before?”

“I fucking swear!” She exclaims, and I decide not to interrupt her any more. “The first time I did this I was in near panic, and when five other bitches followed it didn't get any better. Seriously, three at the same time.”

I did not ask for this information, well not this much information, but she seems to just be venting steam anyway, so I keep my mouth shut.

“So when I got home I looked it up just in case, and the day after -would you see- I have to do it again. Does my presence trigger it, or can they control, or something? Well it's good practice, I guess. I'm not sure a hospital or anything would handle the wolfkin, much less for free.”

She clearly cares for her ‘pack’, which might just be why she's so emotional right now. “Wouldn't a veterinarian be be better qualified?” I dare to say.

“Actually, that’s a good point.” She says thoughtfully. “They have much broader knowledge and should be used to some travelling and working outside a hospital. Will be easier to convince to help, probably. And/or pay to help.”

The wolves seem restless and somewhat wary of me, but Lara’s cooing seems to calm them somewhat as she pulls out an open, smallish wooden box, padded with the fabric she uses for everything. It looks like those nursery boxes or what you’d call it. Where does she get that fabric from, anyway?

She looks around for a moment, before nodding. “Okay, that’s it. Unless any of the other bitches are whelping we can head out.” She quickly refills the bowl then stands up and backs off.

She does another round to check up on things, letting out a forlorn sigh upon finding a dead puppy. “Not much more to do.” She states, before motioning me to follow her.

“Shouldn’t you like, actually help her?”

She shakes her head. “The first day I was very pretty up and into it, but since I didn’t know what the hell to do I once really helped calm them down and make sure none of them accidentally killed their puppies or anything. Helped untangle a puppy which was almost strangled by the umbilical cord, but otherwise nothing of note.”

She lets out another sigh. “Not all of the puppies lived, and it was pretty stressful. Nice to see the little bundles of joy derp around now, though. Anyway, I checked online for tips for dogs and they basically said to do what I did: Set things up to give them an easy time but don’t intervene unless something goes wrong. The wolves take care of each other, too.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“S‘why I looked it up,” she says with a stiff smile. “But enough about that, let’s go make you a magical kung-fu master.”

“…There’s several things wrong with that statement.”

“I know. First, you won’t become a master this easily.” She makes that expression she does when thinking. “Actually, it might. But it’ll be more like mystical… aikido-taekwondo master?”

I just nod, focusing on keeping up with her. Gradually, the fog thins, and then suddenly she disappears as ground stops. I find myself over the edge, unable to stop in time, only to be caught with her levitation magic. “Thank youuuu-huuh?”

Is she… standing on water? She has a massive shiteating grin, so I assume this was intentional.

“Woops, meant to come down over there,” she says innocently and whistles, pointing at a much less steep drop into the water. She takes me there (not that I have a choice while being held like this) and puts me down as she steps onto dry land. And then it starts raining.

She clicks her tongue and the rain stops. Or rather, it is somehow pushed to the side. “I had hoped it wouldn’t start raining just yet. Well, not like it matters.”

She grabs the breathing mask and swimming goggles, giving them to me. I accept them, but don’t put them on. “Are we going to swim? In this temperature?”

She shrugs. “Hopefully not. The mask is just in case.”

“So, where are we going?”

“Underwater.” She says, to which I respond with a ‘please be serious’ face. Well, I think I do, and it seems to work. “I can hold the water at bay, so to speak, and the place we’re going to is underwater.”

That just raises more questions, but she seems to know what she’s doing, and given that she went out of the way to make me a breathing mask ‘just in case’, it should be safe. Or very not safe, but I’d rather not think about that, so I simply put it on.

“Looking dapper as usual, heh.” She says with humor, adding on “I really gotta make a full-face version of that. Or maybe a full helm to ensure it’s airtight. Well, here goes.”

With that she picks me up yet again, and I get to enjoy the sensation of floating and being completely at her whims as she walks across the lake. Huh, it looks like a large circular ‘platform’ of water hardens underneath her. Speaking of her feet, what is she even wearing? I never noticed that until now?

“Hey, what’s that you’re wearing on your feet?”

“The bandage-socks?”

Oh, well that’s what it looks like, a weird mix of socks and wrapped bandages.

“Having stiff shoes can be bad when shapeshifting, and I don’t really want to break more than that one pair. Thanks to magic and shapeshifting I don’t really need shoes.” She continues, unprompted.

“I wear the sock-things because it’s still a bit unpleasant to walk on certain things, like sun-heated asphalt, and while my feet are pretty robust I don’t want to find the limit by stepping on a sharp rock out something. They’re all nice and enchanted, too.”

Suddenly the water falls away from under us, making it look as if a maw is about to swallow us. And then it becomes dark as the water completely envelops us, and we’re underwater. “What the shit, is there a magic trap here or something?”

“It’d be a poor trap if it kept us alive and well, wouldn’t it?” she says as an orb of light forms over our heads. “I’m doing this.”

“You’re… doing this?”

She gives me a flat look. “That’s what I said, yes. Did you leave your brain at the surface?”

“No, I…”

“Don’t worry, I’m kidding. Shouldn’t have scared you like that. Maybe even warned you.”

“Oh.”

Silence reigns for a few short moments as we move in the dark abyss. Occasionally a fish falls into the bubble, returning to the water under us. “Hey, is it just me or is the air getting heavier?”

“Not just you, the pressure should be something like three atmospheres now.”

“Uhm, isn’t that dangerous? Aren’t we diving too fast?”

“Hmm, not really. We’re not actually going that fast, and the dangerous part is rising. There’s a reason it’s called decompression sickness.”

“Oh. Is that another word for diving disease?”

A nod. She points at something unclear in the water below us. Lights? As she takes us closer I can make out the unmistakable shapes of seagrass, oddly growing -and glowing- here at the bottom of the lake.

“Those absorb mana and disrupt spells. No idea if it does the same to ki.”

I admire the odd plants, which seem to be purple but glow a soft light blue until another light draws my attention. This one, which we seem to be heading towards, seems to be a corridor suddenly starting where there should be water. No, it’s actually in the side of a cliff.

We stop right next to the odd transition. “Please go first. I can go there just fine, but in case it has some weird interaction with ki I’d like to keep our air so that I can pull you out and escape if need be.”

I look at her and wait for her to push me into the corridor for a second or two before I realise she has put me down on the ground. Or lakebed, at least. It is in stark contrast to the colorful mosaic of the corridor, but as opposed to the muddy lakebed filler with stones and occasional garbage behind us, there is a set of flat rocks which seem to have been placed here intentionally.

I can only go forward, then. I put my hand at the odd, fully transparent ‘barrier’ halfway expecting to hit it, but it passes right through. As I do, I feel what is unmistakably ki, and while clearly different from my own, there is something different which is also familiar about it. I glance and Lara who nods at me, then step through.

Breathe. Huuh. In. Out. This is different… The air here contains a lot of essence, but not really more than the magical forest. This place, however, has ki, in the air, and I breathe greedily.

I am broken out of my thoughts by a tap to the shoulder. Lara seems to be saying something, but apparently the barrier stops sound. She makes a thumbs up, then turns it to the side, and then down and up again.

I give her a thumbs up and she uses a small object to seemingly absorb the bubble of air. She steps through, keeping the hand with the object outside the barrier until only a bubble the size of an apple remains, which quickly rises towards the surface when she retracts the arm, putting the thing in one of her pockets.