Leda returns with a ｢{Satisfied, confused}Are you fighting?｣

｢Yes! No- I don’t know! I can’t make him stop.｣

His assault pauses for a moment as she lands and drops her kill, but soon continues. Leda just makes a deep humming sound and disconnects the mind bond to me (but not him?).

I shoot yet another blast of air to stun/distract him, but he barely flinches, having gotten used to my magic and learned to close his nictitating membranes before I can fully form the spell. But I expect that by now, using the time to jump away.

At this time Leda summons her puppet, and sitting atop her main form simply states: “I like this.”

“What do you-” throw some snow into the air, then shoot a snowball from the side. “-mean ‘like this’?”

“Dunno, but it feels good.”

I stagger backwards as the whelp blasts me with air, muttering an annoyed curse at using the same spell enough for him to learn it. Feels good? What does that even mean? Some kinda instinct to make her whelp fight?

“Well, don’t blame me- aah!” He’s not very skilled, but brute force he’s got plenty of. “-for fighting back!”

I’ve been careful not to hurt him so far, but think I’ve found his limits, so since Leda is here to stop us if we go too far, I guess I can go past that.

I spread out my mana and pack together a bunch of clumps of snow and -more importantly- mana spheres. He leaps at me, entering right into my trap, and is almost immediately struck from all directions by harmless(to him) snowballs and spheres of mana.

He pulls his wings close to his body and hunkers down, letting me jump up and over him. From behind I still have to be cautious about his tail, but he’s not very fast to turn around. By the time he snaps at me again I have formed several ‘blunted’ mana spikes, and launch them at him while making sure not to hit anywhere near the head.

Partially because I don’t want to permanently hurt him, but mostly because that’s where I come in, dodging past his maws and jumping onto his probably (hopefully) bruised back with one wing under his neck.

He rears up to throw me off, but I push myself back down with force magic as I throw my other wing around his neck and jab the front of my talons into his flanks. He makes a painful screech and starts thrashing around, but while the extra forces are probably going to give me some bruises, he can’t break free.

Suddenly he calms down and Leda reforms the mind bond. “Aww, Lars won.”

｢{Content, amused, disappointed}Stop fighting. Lars won. Lars eats first.｣

｢{Tired, worried}Eats what?｣ I think a bit ‘louder’ than intended, and Leda gives me the answer in form of a wordless set of thoughts. Ahh, we were fighting to be ‘top dog’, and to the winner goes the spoils, in this case Leda’s kill.

“Uhh, what is that even?”

It has six legs, of all things, though the middle ones seem even shorter than the others, and is pretty fat. It has fairly broad hoof-like feet and its head looks vaguely like a cow, if said cow had met Truck-san. The rest of the body looks mangled too, so it was probably just run over by a truck-sized lizard.

“It’s a pig!”

“Uh, no, that’s not a pig. At least, not any pig I know of. Where did you even find that?”

She shares a mental map, telling me there’s a bunch of them up northwest, closer to the mountain range.

“I see… and since I won I get to choose the best parts of the kill, is it?”

“Yes!”

“All right.” I say, walking over to it and reverting my wings to normal arms. Impressively, it has some magic resistance despite being very much dead, and as I suspect it has a mana core. I form a knife hand and coat it in mana, the jam it into the corpse to grab the core.

Well, I try. The cutting spell is hard enough to do when testing, and while I manage to cut a couple ribs in half, the resistance breaks the spell before my hand gets very much further, so I make a sound of pain as my fingertips can no longer cut the flesh and have no way to bend. Okay, let’s do this the slow way. Aiii fuck that hurts!

A little bit later and I’ve cut out some meat from next to the spine and cooked half of it. The raw meat isn’t exactly good, even among the various kinds Leda has thrust upon me, but even the cooked parts are kinda bad.

On the other hand, the whelp prefers it cooked, but still bloody. So now I’m just farming trust with him by way of barely cooking the meat.

In the meanwhile I tell Leda about my trip, from the record flight to the various places, experiences, and people. When I get to the portal thing in iceland she expresses a desire to go there, and I promise to take her on a trip there when the whelp is smart enough to follow human rules and the both of them have legal protection extending beyond the country.

When the whelp can fly on his own we can do some shorter, more local trips, though. Having him interact with humans and human rules from early on would definitely be best. So essentially, raising a kid, but we can use magic, which is good. Well, so can he, which is terrifying, and also he’s a beast which is already my size and will grow much bigger, which is only somewhat less terrifying.

I catch up a bit more with Leda, hearing what she’s been doing, and then take a quick trip home before I head over to the wolves’ den. It’s… well, from the outside it definitely looks like a dungeon, though I’m not sure if the bulletin board just inside the entrance adds to that or not. Aside form some general information, there’s several lists of the wolves and their companions.

One list shows the family units, one has sub-packs, one keeps track of which have given birth and their puppies. Of course, there is also a master list of the various wolves and companions, by name and family unit, with short descriptions of the forms they commonly use. Aside from the fur color, it mostly just lists notable features like fur patterns, injuries/scars, and any accessories, ribbons, collars, or clothes they wear.

The wolves on ‘guard duty’ (lazily resting near the entrance) are somewhat wary of me despite my wolfkin form, and I’m not sure if that’s because I’ve been away for so long or because I just haven’t interacted with them before.

The den seems to attract wolves form all over the place, and if the lists are accurate there are something like fifty permanent residents and over two hundred wolves who have at least passed by.

Ah, so this is what they meant by the ‘Renovation Community Project’; they’re reworking the caves to be less caves and more… Uhh, prettified caves? The tunnels are properly flattened, the light stones have been upgraded and placed on regular intervals, and the main room…

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Lars Eikeli, isn’t it?

As I enter it I trip some sort of detection spell, which magically creates a crystal-like chime and causes a set of bells to jingle. They are upgrading the ‘houses’ in the walls and also smoothing the roof, and I think there is a couple new pillars. All in all it looks really fantasy, but still lacks the murals or other art you’d expect in such a scene.

I’m not entirely sure what to think of being so easy to recognize, but no one calls out to me, at least. And of course, just as I think that a familiar voice calls out. “Hey, Lars!”

It’s Hilde and her companion, peeking out from a floor-level room, so I wave back. “Hi. What’re you working on?”

“We’re examining the pregnant ones.”

I walk up to her and look into the room. “Are you trained for that?”

“Not really… but we got together and made a plan-”

“The one on the board?”

“Yes, and also put together some money, so we got a midwife, a doctor, and a veterinarian to come over and examine them, and they taught us signs to look for so that we can monitor them. When the time comes we should be able to help them at least, and the university hospital says they want to make it a case study and do some research.”

“Oh, I was worried about the wolfkins giving birth, but it looks like others have also thought about it.”

“Yeah, but, uhm, they won’t do it for free unless they can do the research, and first they need to submit that for an ethics review, and that can take some time.”

“Oh. Well, even an unskilled person can make a difference with the right knowledge. That said… at least with humans the biggest effect on survival -both for the mother and child- is a clean, sterile environment. Washing your hands is the basics, but…”

“Actually, we’re working on a clean room. We’ll burn it to kill bacteria and then give it proper walls and floor and such.”

“ So it’ll basically be a little clinic, then. But, err, weren’t you doing something?”

“Ah.” she says and ducks in under the door cloth.

I follow her and look on in silence as she finishes the examination of a wolfkin with a light brown gray coat. When done she nuzzles her and sends her out before shouting “Silvernose, come here!”

I saw that name on the list, and while we wait for silvernose, I ask her to teach me, so that I know, too. We decide to use a mind bond, and we form it just as a pair of wolfkin enters - A male with no distinct patterns, and a female with silver fur at the tip of her snout.

They both wear simple overalls that stop by the knees and reach almost to their chests, over what looks like t-shirts that stop by the elbows. Both pieces look pretty thick and fit pretty snugly to the fur at the ends, but while the shirts look like wool I’m not sure what the overalls are made of.

Their clothes look really good, both in terms of design and craftsmanship, and I want to make a set like that for myself. Robust and utilitarian, too - Just slide the straps off your shoulders and you can take it off quickly and easily, and the overall has a central pocket plus one on each leg. The tailhole design is clever, too.

I inquire into who made them and Hilde freely shares the look, smell, and voices of the makers, adding that the woman in question is using magic for sewing, and is teaching her companion - Silvernose as well.

By using that knowledge as a link I learn a bit more about the woman, Silvernose, and her mate, as well as the way they examine the pregnant wolfkin. It’s primarily superficial, but every month, and every week as term gets closer they should look at -and feel- their belly and external organs. I also accidentally get the little tidbit that she’s practiced on herself.

That’s a perfect little piece to demonstrate how wide open she is with the mind bond, so after she finishes Silvernose’s examination (a full one), I start by telling her a skilled user can access more than what you intentionally share, before sharing the ways to protect oneself. She thanks me, not seeming convinced, so I show her the borrowed memory and how I got it.

Oww, suddenly not so thankful anymore.

“Auaulalala test.” I say, rubbing my cheek. “That seriously hurt, you know? I must say, that’s the first time I’ve actually experienced a ‘so rude’ slap in real life. Would prefer if I didn’t personally experience it, though.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to use magic for that.” She says, somewhat drily.

“It’s fine. Augh, I think you stretched my jaw muscle.”

“I said I’m sorry!”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. Aaah-sasa. I think I healed it now, just a bit sore. You can finish here, I have some things to do.”

“But I’m done now.”

“Oh, ok.”

I turn to walk to the lower rooms, and she takes up my side. As we round the corner down the last corridor I see a group of four people in various forms and clothing… styles? States? -standing in front of the one door which sticks out among the lot, being highly magical, made of stone, and decorated with geometric patterns.

We walk up to and stop behind them, and I observe them trying various spells on the door as well as pushing buttons and moving the other decorations on it.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re trying to open this fancy door.” Says one of them, not turning away from the person working the door.

“I’m almost done.” he says.

The other two people are slightly more alert, “Oh hey, Lars Eikeli!”

“Really?”

“Darnit!” The man who was trying to open the door with mechanisms stands up with a frown. “Guys, it didn’t work.”

“Lars, you’re good at this right, maybe you can open the door?”

I make a non-committal “M-hm.”

The group cheers at this, looking forward to see “what kinda treasures is in there” and urge me to try.

“You know, usually I’d find it much more amusing to see you fail at it-” I say, putting a hand at the door, next to a rectangle with an engraving of a filled circle with five thick lines of different lengths expanding upwards.

“You know this entire part was made after the wolves moved in, right? And this door is clearly artificial?”

“Really? But who put it there?”

With a gentle push, the heavy stone door easily swings open. They couldn’t sense the little touch of magic I used to the isolated formation inside, of course.

“I did.”

Aaaand the looks on their faces is priceless. Man, I must have such a shit-eating grin right now.

“I’ll have to apologize for the lack of treasures in here, as I use it mostly as a storage room.”

Hilde, of course, has seen the room before, and knew it was mine (probably why she kept glancing at me), but also look confused, and soon make it clear why.

“How is it so big?”

“Hm? Oh, aside from storage I use it as a lab and for experiments. The magic lock seems to be a great success.”

“But- so big…”

“Or so she said.”

That earns me an embarrassed glare. Well, the room definitely is bigger than it should be. In fact, it should cover half of each of the neighbouring rooms.

“Nah, it’s just spatial magic. It’s stupidly expensive, but when I expanded the mana collection for the caves I funneled the extra mana down here.”

I walk in and glance around to make sure everything is where I left it.

“Oh yeah, speaking of which; don’t come in if you get easily nauseous.”

“Why’s that?” the (attempted) puzzle solver asks as he steps into the room.

His buddy quickly follows and grabs him as he almost falls over, and it’s only by leaning on each other they don’t fall. The other two guys are very careful and handle the transition better, while Hilde hardly seems to notice.

“You’ve experimented with that too, haven’t you?” I say with a (hopefully) approving smile.

“How did you expand the entire room? It must be at least two times bigger!”

“By my own measurements it’s about two point one and some rounding errors, yeah. What do you mean ‘how’?”

“Well, it’s so big that it uses a lot of mana, and when it becomes that big, the spell starts failing.”

“Do you know why it starts failing?”

“I… I think- it’s fine when you cast it manually, but if you enchant something you lose that control, and the stretching of space affects the enchanted item…?”

“You don’t sound very certain, but if that’s the case, what happens if you put the controller outside the field it controls?”

“…ah.” she lets out as it dawns on her. The boys don’t quite seem to follow the conversation, but to their credit only one of them are looking around and touching my stuff (and one is just looking around, but that’s fine).

“But wait, if you do that you need to connect it to the space from the outside, but then you can’t encode the vessel edges in the enchantment…”

I smile at her; she’s almost there, then carefully untie the bag hanging from my belt, making sure to hold onto it, and also keeping an eye on the others so they don’t break anything or touch anything dangerous.

I grab the wire lattice-wrapped crystal inside the bag and pull it out, then levitate up and carefully put it in the roof.

“The walls- boundaries! You’ve enchanted all the walls as boundaries!”

“Ding-ding-ding! Correct! Your reward is that you now know how to do that.”

The others are pretty amazed by the crystal, and become more and more amazed as I explain that I found it in a floating island beyond a portal, then proceed to detail its properties as I experiment with various methods to control its floatiness.

As I work, they ask about other experiments, devices and other stuff, and I for the most part I happily explain, though with a few exceptions for ‘security or personal reasons’. It only takes an hour or two before I have a prototype which actually falls down (if slowly), and three of them leave by the time I have combined that with being able to control its power.