Taming The Shrouds

The crunch of dead leaves broke the silence. Kaeden Dross walked across the land, his footsteps were most likely the first human feet to fall upon it. There was a bit of awe in it, but he couldn’t dwell too deeply. This was a land of danger. They called it the Shroudlands. The border of the map. Here, there be monsters.

The few who returned from the Shroudlands spoke of a land hostile to anything close to civilization. Survival depended on moving quickly and returning before the land decided you had overstayed your welcome. It had repelled every attempt at settlement until each nearby country had deemed it a waste of resources. A hole for money and lives to be thrown down. Some had even taken to using it as punishment. Exile to the Shroudlands was just another execution.

“Somewhere out here, there is a place worthy of me,” he muttered to himself. He had brought nothing of the old world with him. None of the Tower’s tomes. Not a pack of supplies. Not even a familiar. He would carve out a niche for himself from raw magic and rawer land. Not for glory, or even revenge. But for the silence. And for the freedom.

He passed by the remains of what might have once been a wagon. Whatever befell its original owners had been lost to time, but given how deeply he was into the Shroudlands, this ill-fated caravan had pushed impressively far. From the splinters and and bent, rusted metal, something had torn it clean apart. The scene was riddled with the markings of fury without hesitation. The grave of a blitzkrieg attack. Kaeden didn’t pause his trek. If the land wanted to intimidate him, it would have to try harder than that.

It had been less than a day since he teleported away from The Mage Tower. His decision had been reckless, he knew that. Teleporting without a firm destination focus meant he could have ended up anywhere. Teleporting in the general direction of the Shroudlands without a firm destination focus was suicide. He didn’t care, full of indignant pride and his blood boiling with a frustration that ran bone deep. Ending up anywhere was exactly where he wanted to be. Anywhere but The Tower.

The cold, silent trek had done a lot to cool his blood, but his resolve was strong. He couldn’t go back. To teleport back to the Tower with his tail tucked between his legs. No, never that. He wasn’t unused to the wilderness. Powerful magics usually required rare ingredients, and rare ingredients were rarely just growing by the path. Still, his life of relative comfort had eroded his ability to weather a completely virgin trek through an alien wilderness. The sky grew the color of a deep bruise before he made it to the nearest rise.

His feet ached as he reached the rise, overlooking the vast wilderness. Forest, plenty of forest. A mountain loomed in the distance, and a river cut a valley that disappeared off into the distance. The view would have been breathtaking had he a mind to stop and appreciate the natural beauty. Instead, his eyes wandered. Searching. Until he found it.

It was jutting out of the ground like a tooth, an eruption of black basalt and obsidian. Something about it looked like a natural outcropping, but something about it also didn’t. It seemed perfect. He set out immediately. If he hurried, he would make it before the sun set too low.

Kaeden turned from the rise, and saw the first living thing he’d encountered. She was huge. Larger than a draft horse. She stood, watching him. A monstrous black wolf, her fur the color of absence. She was still as a statue, her piercing yellow eyes glaring directly into his soul. Kaeden gripped his staff in his hands, the only thing he’d brought with him. The amethyst flower that served as the crest glowed faintly as Kaeden prepared to channel energy into a spell if needed.

“You’ll find I am not your usual course of prey,” he said, lowly. His voice was steady, but he could feel the adrenaline starting to build in his blood. The wind gusted, and the wolf vanished. Not disappeared, just fled swiftly enough that he found it hard to follow before she was out of sight beyond the curve of the ridge.

Kaeden breathed easier, but set off in the other direction. He walked a course toward the basalt rise, but kept looking over his shoulder. He didn’t see her again, but he could see the shifting shadows behind the trees. Kaeden held no delusions that he was alone. She was tracking him. Waiting for her moment to strike.

The trek to the rise was difficult, but not impossible. Kaeden was hot, despite the cool air. Sweat soaked into his burnt orange robes, the silken purple hem fraying already. These were clothes meant for the comfortable halls of the Mage Tower. Not traipsing through the wilderness where every branch was a tearing hazard to his clothing. Kaeden was made painfully aware by every scratch and stumble that he had not prepared for this in the slightest.

The wilderness eventually gave way to rock as the ground tilted upward, and Kaeden began his climb. The open rock was welcome, for he could see anything that would approach from the treeline before it could get too close. The black wolf seemed to eschew this open ground, and Kaeden stopped seeing the lurking shadows in his wake.

His legs burned, his joints ached, and his feet were throbbing with each beat of his racing heart by the time he made it to the summit, but those sensations were dwarfed by the elation of reaching the top and gazing at the land around him. For the first time in a while, Kaeden felt himself smiling. Positively grinning.

“I name you, the Ebon Fang,” he said. The spire was perfect. The only route to the summit seemed to be the way he’d come. Every other slope was riddled with sheer cliffs and slicing obsidian. A natural fortress. He could even see a river cutting across one of the flanks. Water would never be far. He could make this work. Not a campsite, not a hovel. A place of power seized from the chaos of natural order. The Ebon Fang, the jut of black basalt and obsidian that would defend him and mark his claim.

Kaeden drove his staff into the ground, and channeled. His free hand wove magic sigils into the air, and his staff conducted his will deep into the ground. He could see the blue light etching through the dirt. Claiming it. Kaeden’s will was the brush used to place his mark on this untamed land, and he felt something stir beneath the surface, as if in response.

“Come then,” he challenged. “If you take umbrage.”

As if in answer to his challenge, Kaeden turned to the path leading back down the Ebon Fang. She had followed him. She stood, her black fur bristling. Fangs bared. The dying sun cast her in silhouette. A shadow of death poised to erase him from this land that rejected all forms of civility. There would be no running away. Not from either side.

Kaeden slowly shifted his stance, bringing his staff before him. He gritted his teeth, and began to channel.

“Archeron…” he said, his voice still low. He drew the word out slowly, like unsheathing a sword. It shook with its own weight as he felt the magic stir within him. Saying it was like lifting a boulder out of his own belly, such was the mass of power he conjured from inside. His breath was already short from the climb, and this exertion caused his core muscles to shake with effort.

She broke into a run, a sharp snarl barking out to echo across the rise. Her eyes blazed with murderous instinct, her lips peeled back to expose the fangs that promised a bloody end. She was a blur of movement, beelining right toward Kaeden with the full intent to devour him.

“KERAT!” Kaeden cried the word out, a demand with the weight of history. He hurled the word from himself, the very boulder he’d conjured from within, and the earth accepted it greedily. An ancient energy erupted, the air shimmering with an earthy green projection. It flared bright for a moment, blooming outward in hexagon traces into a large translucent shell. The armored shield of an ancient turtle, large enough to form an unyielding wall between Kaeden and his charging adversary.

The black wolf slammed into the magic with a deafening crash. Mana sparked with the weight of her charge fully arrested. Absorbed and dispersed, the magic rippled outward like water, as if kinetic energy had been turned into light. She snarled and lashed out with her teeth, impacting the barrier with the full force of her fury.

Sweating, but grinning, Kaeden held out his staff, pouring more of his energy into the spell.
“This is Archeron Kerat!” he declared, his voice confident and nigh-triumphant.
“The Unbreakable Shell of the Great Turtle! Nature’s greatest shield!”

The black wolf bit and clawed at the barrier, and Kaeden could feel the pressure in his soul to maintain it. Her power was undeniable. Every tooth turned aside, every claw deflected, Kaeden felt the impact like reverberations in his own core. A mere wolf should not be this powerful, but this was no mere wolf. This was a wolf honed to lethal perfection by the Shroudlands. The most dangerous enemy he'd ever faced. Kaeden grit his teeth, his bones vibrating with the aftermath of her attacks, but his face twisted it into a defiant, grinning taunt.

“No weapon of claw or fang is capable of penetrating Archeron's shell,” he continued, his own boasting filling his ears with confidence.
“So gnash all you want!”

Gnash she did. The black wolf attacked again and again, each assault deflected off of the shell barrier. Kaeden was confident that it would hold, he knew well the legend of The Great Turtle. Archeron Kerat, the Shield of Archeron. Tales of the turtle's invulnerable shell, unyielding to even the sharpest teeth, had yielded to no beast. Now, Kaeden felt that same strength before him. The spell could deflect cannonfire, and no beast of war had ever broken through its deployment.

The frantic attacks came from the wolf with a blend of frustration and desperation, but eventually, she relented. She stepped back, giving ground to her opponent in the wake of his impenetrable defense. Kaeden felt his body tremble as the assault stopped, and was forced to dismiss the barrier. He could see the breath of the wolf, heavy and fatigued from giving everything she had to tear the turtle shell down, but he was faring no better.

Archeron Kerat was a living defense, requiring an immense amount of mana to maintain. Kaeden's changes to his own invocation allowed the kinetic energy it absorbed to feed back into the spell to keep it going as long as the impacts kept coming, but devoid of the wolf's frenzy, he would be bleeding his own energy to maintain it with every heartbeat.

Kaeden took stock of himself. He could summon Archeron Kerat again, but that would just wear him down more. He wouldn't want to test his own stamina against the black wolf's. His mana reserves were vast, but while the Great Turtle Shield would withstand her attacks, each assault would wear him down further and further until he was wolf food. He had to switch tactics from merely defense. Thinking upon his arsenal, vast and formidable, his mind raced until it tripped over something. A memory. A spell he'd never once had reason to call upon.

Kaeden started to laugh, staring into the murderous eyes of the black wolf.
“You picked the wrong shape to face me,” he said.

The wolf snarled as if in response. Her hackles raised again, and Kaeden began to channel inside of himself once more. The motes of energy in the air began to draw into himself. Kaeden was loathe to waste them, fatigued from both his journey and his prior spell. The black wolf needed no further invitation. Even she knew he was preparing to unleash something again. She ran forward, a black blur of lethal force gunning right for his throat.

With a surge of will that felt like dragging precious metals from the earth with breath alone, Kaeden spoke again a word of power.
“ASTRAEKA!” he called, sending his power into the ground below him.

Dark blue chains the color of the night sky, glimmering with motes of white like distant stars, erupted from the ground underneath the black wolf. She reared back, not expecting this subterranean attack. With her paws in the air, the chains struck like snakes. Manacles on their end clamped down like jaws over the wolf's front ankles, and latched shut.

The black wolf howled with rage, pulling and dragging against the chains as their tails were drawn into the earth as if dragged by great winches. The chains held firm, until two more erupted behind the wolf. She tried to jump aside, but her rear legs were latched onto just the same. They also retracted, leaving the black wolf bound firmly in place.

She howled in frustration, her eyes wild with desperation. When the deafening sound faded, it was replaced with the low laugh of the man she had failed so far to kill.

“This is Astraeka, the chains that bind the Wolf of Evernight!” Kaeden declared like he was marking his own victory. He remembered well the legends of the Evernight Wolf, a creature born of the blackness between stars who hunted the sun in hopes of devouring it. More than that, the legends of the Moon Maiden who had forged the chains to bind it, ensuring the sun would continue to rise each morning without fear. Kaeden had never had reason to call upon the Astraeka chains, but found himself amused that a spell he'd long left by the wayside had saved him on what was surely the most important day of his life.

The black wolf's rage had not diminished. Her eyes burned with fury as the chains held her fast, but she was unable to drag herself closer to Kaeden even as he approached her. His breath came as heavy as his footsteps, his lungs crying out for air as his body shook with expended effort. He took the moment to try and catch his breath, to still his beating heart. Astraeka was not a living defense like the turtle shield, and did not require a constant infusion of mana to maintain itself. It would hold the black wolf until either it had nothing to hold, or its reserves were depleted.

Kaeden was even more confident Astraeka would hold than he was Archeron. They were doing exactly what they'd been made to do: bind a wolf from devouring its prey. Legend invocations were strongest when they were in line with their original story, becoming weaker the further their purpose strayed from their own history. Astraeka was well inside of its element, the spell all too happy to hold an angry wolf fast, just like its legend said.

“It's over,” he said after he'd caught his breath. The black wolf continued to thrash and snap against the limits imposed on it by its chains.
“No wolf could ever overcome Astraeka. Not Evernight, and certainly not you.”

Kaeden looked at the wolf, still struggling in vain to get close enough to sink its teeth into him, and mentally flipped through a list of spells he could use to slay it for good. There was no shortage of weapons he could call on. To cut her throat. To silence her howls permanently and ensure she couldn't be a problem to him again. Perhaps Oriath, the Heart-Piercing Spear. As Kaeden readied himself to call upon the weapon that would still her heart's beating, he paused. Something else glinted behind his eyes. An idea. He felt the tides of his mind surging, its currents arriving somewhere he had not anticipated.

“No,” he said to the black wolf. “I did not come to this land to raze it.”

A low, muttering chant filled the summit as Kaeden began to weave. Not invoke, but create. He was not summoning a legend, but channeling the mana inside of himself. The ritual was slow, and would require all but the last vestiges of his remaining mana. He found himself grateful for Astraeka's strength in holding the black wolf bound, it was easier when she was unable to move too much. His fingers traced the intricate sigils into the air, his mana flaring at his fingertips. The ink with which he would write his will onto the world, and the black wolf herself.

“I will make this land my own,” he said, his voice overlapping with itself as the spell echoed with this incantations.
“I will gift of it, myself. But first, I will gift of you: myself.”

The sun dipped low as Kaeden continued to work. His arms burned with furious focus as he wove his magic. He'd traced burning blue sigils that hung in the air in circles around the black wolf. She'd stopped her thrashing, but her eyes followed him with a predatory intelligence, waiting for him to make the mistake of coming too closely. At least, until they'd rolled back into her skull as the magic seeped into her fur. Her skin. Her blood. Then, her very brain.

She was a predator of instinct and natural fury, but nothing in her storied past could have prepared an animal's mind for the gift Kaeden bestowed upon her, sigil by burning sigil. Every rune a synapse. Every syllable a gift. A gift of intellect.

He could feel her mind, her rage thrumming beneath the magic that settled over her like a spider's web. His web. His silk, fully cocooning her mind so that she may be altered within it. Each additional piece of the spell quieted her mind like a dying storm, until it slept. The black wolf fell still, her body now just a shell, and Kaeden dismissed Astraeka. Her mind had receded so far into the void of becoming that it was beyond the reach of her physical form.

Once satisfied that his creation was well underway, Kaeden stopped weaving blue. There was no stopping it now. Her mind would forever be changed. Not re-written, but expanded upon. The borders of her skull pushed back until there was room for more than instinct. More than primality. A blank canvas for a truly thinking mind to paint itself upon. Then, he began weaving green.

More than just her mind, he changed her body. Slowly. Meticulously. He altered her very skeleton, shaping her into more than just an animal. Shaped her spine so she could walk upright and hold her head high. He watched as his magics seeped into her flesh. Her fur brightened just a shade, a spacial blue shimmer when the light hit it just right. He watched as the inner part of her ears deepened to blue. The pads on what now were her hands and feet, still clawed. Still deadly. Deepened to blue.

She kept her muscles, lithe and powerful. Built for speed and strength alike. The build of a huntress. Sleek. Lethal. And yet, as he looked down over her new body, the magics working to shape her into much more than just an animal, he could not help but notice that he'd created something beautiful. No, he thought. Someone. The gift of personhood had transformed something, into someone.

This, he thought. This was true magic. The kind of magic that deserved to exist, yet the Tower would have him more than reprimanded for even suggesting something like this. They would call him immoral. Reckless. Careless. Creating life was a forbidden alchemy. A cruelty of the highest gravitas. He thought the answer was simple. A mind that rejected magic like this was a mind incapable of vision. A mind that would never know what it was like to be Kaeden Dross.

Kaeden's hands shook as he completed the green sigils, hovering in the air with their blue siblings to continue the magic's work of altering the black wolf. He had created her mind, her body, and her will. An intelligence capable of understanding the world, but also itself. Kaeden couldn't speak on the question of animal souls, but what he did know was that now, the black wolf would have one. A true soul, with the ability to comprehend its own existence. That was the greatest gift he could give. A life, not simply lived.

Kaeden walked away from the black wolf, and his staff dragged in the dirt as his limp arms could hold it aloft just so. His muscles burned, and in the weight of his spell's completion, he was left utterly drained. He used the vestiges of his mana to call forth a burning fire. It burned blue. He sat before it, and let the fatigue take him. He was too tired to even process the hunger in his belly. Sleep claimed him, and he fell into unconsciousness, grateful for the refuge against the pain in his feet that ran bone deep.

While Kaeden faded from the world, the black wolf's mind opened to it. Possibility stretched far beyond the horizon, and her first thoughts were of thinking. It was a strange thing, to think. To hear the voice of herself inside of her own head. Her mind drifted through itself, exploring the new room it had been given to stretch out. That was the closest idea she had to understanding it. The stretching of a new muscle she never before had. It was a while before she could think to even move. She just lay there, even as her eyes unrolled from their sockets, and she could see the night sky above her.

The chains were gone, but they weren't needed anymore. Just looking at the stars was enough to send her mind reeling back into itself. It spun and spun until it tired itself out. Thinking was somehow exhausting. Was that the human's trick? To exhaust her until she was too helpless to fight back? How could that be, when he could have just killed her? Why do all of this if that was his aim? These questions and a million more played through the wolf's mind, her eyes wandering the stars in search of answers, until sleep claimed her, too.

They both woke with the sun. The warm rays of dawn played across the summit of the spire and coaxed both wolf and man into a gentle waking. Kaeden woke to the pain of his body, while she woke to the chaos of her mind. For her, the previous day had been nothing but instinct. The urge to move. To hunt. To kill. Now, the sound of herself inside of herself. Thought. Possibility. And an endless stream of questions.

Her instincts still whispered to her, but they were far. Like they were carried on the wind, distant and unreliable. The need to fight, to destroy, was drowned beneath her strange awareness. Her thoughts. The questions that still bubbled forth was a cooling stream, robbing her instincts of any heat not diminished by their distance.

She drew in the familiar scents of the air. Her nose was still sharp, and she focused on the smells. That was familiar. Scent ran deeper than her thoughts, and it grounded her. Made the questions slow in her head. The smell of the human was still there: the salt of his sweat, the musk of his skin. It was different now, somehow. Something she couldn't place. Not danger, not food. Just, other.

Her limbs bent differently now, but when she rolled over onto all fours and crouched low, the earth beneath her claws was a familiar enough sensation. Her spine was no longer built for such a low profile, but it was still her body. She could still move as swift as the wind itself. Her gaze flicked back to the human. He smelled the same as before, only now she didn't feel the need to rip him apart. To hunt him as she would a stranger. An intruder.

She remembered. Everything. The smell of him brought it back to play through her head, only now it was flowing through the filter of her new understanding. She remembered the bloodlust like a fountain pouring from her very core, the need to kill the intruder. Now, she simply watched. Waited. His scent didn't drive her to move, and that... That didn't fit.

A memory stirred from behind the line where her thoughts had begun. Of males who'd come before. When they sought her, it wasn't like this. Not exactly. But, there was a similarity. The wandering male wolves who'd tested her willingness to mate. She never had, none before had impressed her. She had always shown her teeth in response, to ward them off. To signal her 'no'.

This male was... similar. She had tried to tear out his throat, and yet, he had not raised a single attack against her. He had defended himself, and then bound her from attacking him. Unusual, but her mind had only one category for a male who did not respond to her teeth with more teeth.

She looked over the human wondering if he fit the closest category she had for his increasingly familiar scent. Not enemy, not food. Mate? The word drifted through her thoughts like a cloud, foreign but somehow familiar. She continued to watch him, trying to force the thought of him into the only molds she had always known: enemy, prey, mate. None of them fit, not exactly. As Kaeden dragged himself to his feet, she was already lost in wonder.

Kaeden's mind raced with the memory of the previous day, and he rose to his feet on legs that protested even the slightest movement. He turned to look at his charge, only to find her in a low crouch. His eyes snapped wide open as he saw the blue of her eyes gazing into him. Hadn't they been yellow before, he thought?

Their gazes met, and the silence that followed was broken only by gusts of wind. Kaeden wondered if his spell had failed, if she was still a slave to the instincts of the Shroudlands. The ones that demanded she kill the outsider. Still, as she stood still as a statue, her muscles taut and ready to explode into movement, he once again reveled in the beauty of his creation.

She was perfect. A fusion of lethal presence and burning intellect. His eyes flicked over her form, taking in the full extent of her transformation. She had been powerful, a predator born of the Shroudlands and all of its abject hostility. But now... now she was something else entirely.

Her body was still sleek, and muscular. The same strength and grace that had made her the embodiment of the Shroudland's malice, was only now upright and humanoid. Her arms were long and powerful, with hands and claw-tipped fingers that still held the promise of violence, but were now capable of so much more. Of grasping. Of creating.

Her torso was lean and defined, the primal replaced with the graceful. A feminine power. There was an unsettling balance of wild and enlightened. Her fur shimmered in the morning light, a deep, tenebrous black with hints of iridescent blue lurking underneath where it caught the sun just right. His spell had graced her with an unexpected beauty.

Her face was still unmistakably wolf: sharp muzzle, pointed ears, and that piercing blue gaze, her eyes the color of deep ice. However, there had been a subtle shift in her features that revealed something almost human. Expressive. She watched Kaeden, unblinking, as if measuring him. Her nose, now a deep blue-black, twitched. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she took in the scents of the world, still as acute as ever.

It was the lack of covering that caught Kaeden's attentions the most. Her body, unadorned by clothing, remained... raw. Unashamed. She was stripped down to her very essence, a perfect union of beast and will. She carried no shame in her nakedness, for she had never known clothes before. But for Kaeden, it felt like a sign of vulnerability.

Perhaps, he thought. It was the opposite. A sign of strength, as she stood without the constraints of human norms. Either way, Kaeden noted further changes he had not intended. Her nipples were blue, her tongue was blue. Even the labia of her vagina was blue.

Kaeden took a step forward, and she exploded into movement again. She didn't snarl, didn't announce her attack, just broke into a blue-black blur gunning right for him. Kaeden didn't have time to react, not with his stiff muscles. She speared right into him and bore him to the ground. The ghost of her instincts would have her clamp her jaws around his neck, but she found herself unwilling to heed them.

He felt the weight of her on top of him, the fusion of beast and beauty holding him down with the weight and strength of her new body. Her teeth stopped an inch from his neck. It would have been easy. Natural. She was still the black wolf of the Shroudlands. Hunter. Killer. But now there was something else. A space in her mind that wouldn't be filled by the bloodlust alone.

She didn't want to kill him, but neither did she want him to escape. She needed something. Something he could only provide while alive. Answers. She paused, breathing in the scent of his neck with every pull of her lungs, and something else bloomed in the new space inside of her skull. Enjoyment? Something about holding him down, her teeth inches from his jugular, breathing in his scent, tickled the predator part of her brain. Wolves rarely played with their food, but now that there was room for it, a sense of pleasure.

Kaeden looked up at her, curiously. He wondered if he should have been so quick to dismiss Astraeka, to unchain the blend of wild cunning he'd sculpted out of the predator that tried to kill him, but he dismissed the thought. Astraeka would have faded when sleep claimed him. It was probably better for her to wake up free, he thought. He watched confusion swim in her eyes, her expression melting as the snarling instinct gave way to something else. Curiosity.

“W-” she spoke, and seemed a little surprised at the sound. She had never used her voice before. Kaeden watched as her mind swam the channels his gift had carved in her mind. The gift of speech. Of communication.
“What?” she said again, the world hanging between them as the blues of their eyes gazed into one another. Searching. Assessing.

“I have made you more than you were, black wolf,” said Kaeden, his voice steady, yet carrying the weight of the magic he had wrought.
“A mind with which to think, and a mouth with which to speak that mind.”

“W-.... Why?” she stammered, her voice a fragile thing. Too fragile for the torrent of questions she had whirling inside of her.

“You were a slave to your instincts, your life carved for you by the endless needs of the Shroudlands. But now...” Kaeden's lips curled into something that almost looked like satisfaction. Like pride.
“I have given you the greatest gift the Shroudlands could never offer: Intellect. Understanding. The ability to learn. To see the world beyond what is in front of your eyes. To envision. Ambition and potential in equal measure.”

“It... hurts...” she said, but the words confused her. This wasn’t pain. Not exactly. It was more like a storm, but inside of her head. Too many words, too many thoughts. The voice of her own mind was deafening, a cacophony she could hardly manage where before there had been silence.

Kaeden’s satisfied smile faltered, dropping in an instant. His gaze softened with concern. Pain wasn’t supposed to be part of this. Enlightenment was supposed to feel freeing, like a breath of clean air filling starving lungs. This wasn’t supposed to be torture.

Without thinking, he reached up and placed a hand gently on top of her head, his fingers brushing through her fur as he channeled a spark of his own magic. His reserves had been replenished in sleep, and now he sought to understand where things had gone wrong. The magic had been carefully wrought, so why was she suffering? He pushed deeper into the flow of magic, seeking any disruption, any trace of imbalance.

Kaeden found the reasons quickly. Blue mana. The magic of thought, of intellect. Of cold, calculating cunning. It was water and ice and strategy and stars. The magic was too cold. She had been an animal, a being of instinct. Primal and raw. Her thoughts flowed through the channels of contemplation too hot for the icy lattice of sentience. He knew the solution.

Red mana. Primal and hot. Passion and fire and freedom and speed. Antithesis to blue, it would boil away the surging questions and reinforce her will with the framework of focus. He channeled the magic inside of himself. His natural mana was blue, but as his free hand reached out to grab the staff, dropped when he'd been tackled, he sent the energy inside of himself into it where it could be changed. He drew it back out, and noted the heat that surged in his blood as red energy returned to him.

This red magic he sent to his fingertips, and into the black wolf. The effect was instantaneous. He could see the storm quiet in her mind, from the resonance of the magics in her head. The red mana canceled out the abundance of blue, residual from the amount needed to awaken mere sentience into actual sapience.

Her eyes slowly closed, the questions in her head slowing. Quieting. The questions were still in her head, but they would wait their turn. The surging river boiled away until it was just a slow, gentle creek. The red mana had done its job. Some questions did not need answers right away. Curiosity was a wonderful thing, but it shouldn't be allowed to seize control of her mentality. Learning took time, and there would be plenty of time now to answer every question. Just not all at once.

For her part, the feeling that she thought most on was the fingertips between her ears. Naturally sensitive, Kaeden's touch was as soothing as his magic was. She didn't understand it, but she felt it. The black wolf had never been pet before. The quieting of her mind, the return to grounding sensation, it was like being placed gently back onto solid ground where before she had been falling.

Kaeden noticed the effect his touch had on her. Of course the black wolf hadn't ever been touched gently. There was nothing shaped like kindness in the Shroudlands. He had stopped pouring mana, but he softly moved his fingers across her scalp, his nails scratching her a little. He treated the moment like holding a snowflake, careful should it melt from too much focus. If she wanted to explore kindness, he would be kind.

He felt something stir inside of him, and his calculating mind unraveled it to look at plainly. He wasn't proud of what he saw, but had to accept the answer. He had taken power and sculpted it into beauty, the magics that had granted her a humanoid form had been meticulously woven. He had gifted her presence, and had made that presence beautiful. Now, because of her pinning him down, his body was all too aware of the fact that a beautiful woman was now on top of him.

The weight of her pressing him into the earth was more than physical. Her scent, rich and wild, filled his senses, overpowering his carefully constructed thoughts. The feel of her fur against his skin, soft yet alive with energy, made his pulse quicken. He had shaped her into something more than an animal. Something better. Now, the very instincts he had tried to tame were turning the tables. Making him the one who couldn't resist biology's pull.

The very land he had tried to dominate, the Shroudlands itself, seemed to laugh at him now. It whispered through his own creation. Making his human nature betray him. He tried to focus, but her scent, wild and intoxicating, seemed to seep into his thoughts. It clouded his mind, his pulse quickening while his blood raced in ways that made him feel hot.

“I name you, Sylphira,” he whispered, almost reverently. “At least, until you find one that fits better.”

Sylphira's eyes slowly opened. She smiled, or at least Kaeden thought she did. Her lips slid back over her teeth, her blue tongue bright under the morning light. Her fangs were as deadly-looking as ever, but there was a strange softness in her eyes as she looked down at him.
“Sylphira,” she said, testing the word with her voice. Her tongue danced as if tasting it.
“I like that.”

Sylphira exhaled, and it left her like a breath she'd been holding in. The red mana had calmed the cacophony in her head, and now she was left with a warm fuzzy feeling she couldn't quite get a handle on. A name. An identity. The thought of being a person, as opposed to just a sapient mind. Not just thinking, but being. She couldn't understand the weight of it, but the red magics inside of her allowed her to just revel in the soft wonder of that fact. She liked it. The name, but deeper than that. She liked being a person. Like the taste of a food she had never before gotten to sample.

She sat down, heedless of the silt she kicked into Kaeden's mind as her feminine hips met his own. Kaeden was not the kind of person who sought relationships, and warm touch was not something mages were known to have in abundance. Sylphira looked to the sky, exploring the dawn with newfound appreciation for its beauty, paying no attention to Kaeden save for the instinct that still refused to let him escape. Her hands rested on his chest, the weight of her holding him fast. He would not be released until she was done with him. She needn't have bothered.

Kaeden was paralyzed. Not physically, but mentally. Sylphira sitting down on him meant that more of her was now even closer than before. His blood boiled as his body refused to listen to his higher faculties. His mind begged it to calm down, but there was no arguing against his own natural instincts. Her pheromones, his hormones. Kaeden was trapped and forced to contend with his own growing desires, no matter how hard his sensibilities attempted to quash them down. It was like trying to put a geyser eruption back into its spout.

Sylphira titled her head down back to Kaeden. She could sense something was amiss inside of her creator. The tension in his body thrummed like a vine pulled so taut it was ready to snap. She tilted her head, curiously. Was he poising to strike? No, no that wasn't it. There was no violence in his eyes. No aggression in the scent of his blood. What, then? She shifted her weight, watching him. He squirmed as he felt her body grind against him. She blinked. He seemed to grow more tense the more she moved on top of him. Why? She experimented with different movements. She found herself amused by the way he shivered when she bounced her weight. She kept trying to solve the puzzle of him, but no prior experience had given her any clarity as to what he was, and what this moment might carry. She bounced again just to watch him shudder, like a cat playing with a toy.

“Do you... hurt?” she asked plainly, wondering if his body was so soft that he was being crushed under her. It didn't seem like he was in pain, but neither could she parse out his reactions.

"No,” he answered, almost too quickly. “No, that's not. No. You're not hurting me, Sylphira.” His voice came as if he was trying to hold it steady with willpower alone. Solid, but hollow.

“Why? Then. Do you worm like that?” she asked, searching for the right words before she loosed them.

“I am not a worm,” he said, his expression frowning a bit. “I am an archmage,” he declared. She noticed the raised volume of his voice.
“Of the Mage Tower at Rannitharia. And I have come to this land to- stop that!”

He had stopped using words she understood, and so she had bounced again. Slower this time. Dragging her body against his. A sound escaped her, the feeling of her amusement made unquiet. A laugh. A small giggle at his reaction that had filled her with a warm mirth.

“Why?” she asked, the weight of her bouncing hips sending Kaeden's mind into a spiral. Sylphira felt the pulse of Kaeden’s tension beneath her hands, the subtle shifts of his body as he squirmed. She didn’t understand why it made her feel... pleased. But there was something in her that wanted to explore it more. It was like a puzzle she needed to understand, if she was ever going to understand him.

Something hard and defiant rose in Kaeden's chest. Sylphira was toying with him. Her beauty had made his blood react in ways he'd never endured before. Contending with a beautiful woman grinding her hips against his was not a battlefield he had faced before. He was unprepared to make an enemy of femininity herself. He had made her beautiful, but the Shroudlands had twisted that back into a blade against him. He felt the land's mockery in his bones, and a command rose in his mind. End this.

Unfortunately for Kaeden, as he flipped through the spells in his arsenal, he found his own wrath cooled long before it could surface. He would not bring violence to this moment. To Sylphira. No. If he was to win here, he would have to adapt from his normal tactics. If he was to be master of this land, who had dared him to be as primal as it was, he would have himself do so in a way that was not playing by its rules.

Both hands reached up, slowly, deliberately, to cup Sylphira's head. Then he struck. His fingers dug in firmly into the fur between her ears, and he gave a firm pressure to scratch across her skull like giving a massage. He watched her eyes glaze over under his touch, twisting affection's blade back at the Shroudlands. He scratched and scritched between her ears, rubbing her head and even her cheeks with his palm.

Slyphira was helpless against this assault. Against the tingling of stimulated nerve endings and clusters that had never before known another's touch. She reveled in it. Wanted it. Her body went slack under his scratching rubs, her tail a frenzy of approval. It felt wonderful, and she was all too happy to bask in this wonder for as long as he was willing to give it. Kaeden used the slack of her body to wiggle out from under her, and roll away.

Kaeden pushed himself to his feet, and grabbed up his staff. His brow furrowed with indignance. The Shroudlands had twisted primality itself against him, but he would not be ruled by it. He refused to be. If the land wanted him to become like it, it would have to try harder than that. A beautiful woman would not be the unraveling of Kaeden Dross.

“Can you do that again?” her voice asked with an almost dreamy quality. He turned and found her already before him, eyes beaming with eager curiosity. She had crawled over on all fours, and was now crouching before him like a eager pet. Her hands rested on the ground in front of her, her legs bent and her thighs splayed wide. She looked up at him with a bright expression, her tail wagging eagerly. She tilted her head toward him, clearly wanting him to continue his earlier affections.

Kaeden heaved a sigh of defeat, and reached forward. He found himself unwilling to deny her the simple request. It was gentler this time, as he rubbed and scratched at the space between her ears until his fingers ached. His blood refused to calm down, no matter how much he begged it to. Just being near her caused his determination to slowly erode. The sounds of her appreciation, he had to admit, were adorable.

Unfortunately for him, her half-lidded smile caused his heart to race. His body betrayed him again, and he felt his robes tighten. She did not miss the tension growing right in front of him, and leaned forward. Kaeden felt her bury her nose into his crotch before he could stop her, and she inhaled his scent deeply before he could push her away.

“You smell... good,” she said. His hands had frozen in their scratching, his entire body stiff like he'd been electrocuted. She did not draw herself away, and Kaeden felt a shiver run down his back as the pressure on his erection spoke to pleasures long neglected in pursuit of arcane power.

“I have been walking and sweating for over a day. There is nothing about me that smells good,” he said, his voice unamused. An audible roll of his eyes.

“It is the smell of an alpha,” she said. Kaeden's heart skipped a beat. Her words stroked along his ego in ways nothing ever had before. The thought of the black wolf of the Shroudlands recognizing his power. His presence. Recognition of his dominance. It almost made him purr. Until her next words, which melted him.
“The smell of a leader.”

Something clicked into place. A realization. The answer to an equation Kaeden had been pondering. He smiled down at Sylphira. Very well, he thought. If this was how the Shroudlands wanted him to conquer, then he would. If it wanted to make him as primal as it was, then he would answer it with primal dominance.

Kaeden opened his robes, revealing his erect cock. He watched her eyes go wide as she beheld raw, human masculinity for the first time. He lay it across her muzzle, and felt the cold of her nose at the base of his cock, right above his balls. He felt her inhale deeply, taking his scent into her. It played notes through her head that rang with a clarity of evolution itself. Sylphira had never seen a wolf's maleness up close. She had never before known a male to be worthy of her. Here, before this turgid display of human dominance, her instincts told her one thing: he was worthy. Her creator. Her god.

The smell of him lit a fire in her core, sending shivers of pleasure down her spine just from his scent alone. Her nose was far too keen to be put off by it. She could pick out every trace individually. The smell of salt. The smell of musk. Of maleness. Kaeden watched her eyes glaze over as her body started to burn with a fire that demanded him to quench it. She moaned underneath his cock, and it twitched in response to her pleasure.

Kaeden reached out to grab Sylphira’s face.

“Open your mouth,” he commanded. She looked at him curiously, but did as she was ordered. Her curiosity was being overridden by the natural instincts made louder. The red mana infusion had brought them to the forefront of her mind, and there was only one conclusion: breeding. The human was a male, and had given her gifts. Had met her teeth and only responded with gentle strength.

Sylphira’s experience with male wolves had all been the same. A gift of meat, a signal of intent. She had smelled them, too. Only then, none of them had impressed her. She gnashed her teeth to get them to go away. Some responded with growls. Some with whines. Sylphira had never allowed a male to mount her.

The human had not offered her meat. He had gifted her with something far grander than sustenance. Personhood. When she’d been close enough to smell his maleness, she could smell arousal. So that’s what he wanted, her instincts told her. He had given her this strange, human gift of intellect, and now he wanted to breed her. There was only one reply to such a grand gift, and she would have turned to hike her tail for him if not for his strange command.

Open her mouth? He wanted to see her teeth? Perhaps he was inspecting her as a prospective mate further, ensuring her teeth were strong and sharp. She opened her maw obediently. Her eyes went wide when he’d slid his cock across her tongue, burying himself in her mouth. Her ears went flat as her mind buzzed with the taste of him. She had no idea that cocks could taste so good. She instinctively started to scrape her teeth along it, wanting to bite down. A lifetime of eating reflexively telling her to chew and swallow.

“No,” Kaeden said, his voice low and warning. His message was clear: no teeth. Warning her against biting him. She understood. Only submissive moves would be allowed. Was this his dominance display, she wondered? To place his maleness in her mouth and tell her not to bite him? A strange display of dominance, but as the taste danced on her tongue, combining with the scent of him already in her head, she found herself robbed of any desire to prove him wrong. All she wanted was to keep tasting him, and her tongue began to roam alongside the under part of his shaft.

Kaeden inhaled sharply. This was not a pleasure he’d ever known. Sylphira’s tongue was long, and wide. Soft, wet, and a balm against the turgid tightness of his cockflesh. He could not stop himself from giving a moan of approval as he felt her tongue coil around his length. He could feel the rasp of her papillae, the little buds that covered her tongue, rubbing against his most sensitive nerves. The sensation was electric. His hand went to the back of her head, holding her hair tightly as he pressed deeper, groaning again as he felt his cockhead press into her throat.

Sylphira choked as he pressed deep, a sound that was not quite a gag, but a low growl. The instinct to bite flared again, but she suppressed it. Instead, she swallowed around him, her throat constricting around his cock that slowly invaded her throat. She wondered if this was some sort of strange attack, but the sound that came from his throat was one of deep, unbridled pleasure. A sound that she decided she liked. A lot.

He began to thrust, slow and steady, into her mouth, his grip on her hair tightening with each movement. She could feel his power, his control, and it sent a shiver of submission down her spine. A strange thing, she thought, but not unwelcome. To be claimed by an alpha as powerful as he was, to her, a natural and right result. She wanted him to take his pleasure, even if she was entirely sure that there was no way this was going to make her pregnant. She was content just being used like this, by the male who had made her submit to his power.

"You're a natural," he rasped, his voice strained with pleasure. “How are you already good at this?”

The praise washed over her, and she preened, her tail giving a slow, lazy wag behind her. She had never been praised for anything before. It was a heady feeling, almost as intoxicating as the taste of his cock. She redoubled her efforts, her tongue working feverishly, her throat swallowing around him with each thrust. She could feel him swelling, his movements becoming more erratic, his grip on her hair almost painful. He was close. She could smell it, taste it in the air, a sharp, musky scent that made her mouth water and her own body ache with a need she didn't understand.

With a guttural groan, he buried himself to the hilt in her throat, his cock pulsing as he spilled his seed directly into her belly. Sylphira choked again, but this time it was not in protest. She swallowed eagerly, her tongue washing his twitching cock with her thick saliva, and felt herself unravel again. She swallowed down his essence, and inside of her something bloomed. For the second time, she felt her mind expand, only now she understood what was happening. Her mind was sharpening again, somehow. A strange electricity now coursed through her veins, and even stranger, she understood its meaning. Magic. Another infusion of energy.

Her eyes were wide, seeing stars though the morning still painted the sky blue, and she stared into the vastness of infinity as her tongue continued to work, milking him for every last drop. The taste of him was different now, salty and thick, and it coated her tongue, her throat, filling her senses. Every drop swallowed was more magic coursing through mental channels that were now flowing with arcane sparks.

When he finally pulled away, she was left panting, a thin string of his seed connecting her lips to the tip of his softening cock. She licked the vestiges into her maw with the dexterous tongue that had ensured she had laid claim to everything Kaeden could offer. She looked up at him, her azure eyes wide and pleading, her body humming with a strange new energy. She wanted more. She needed more. She didn't know exactly what she needed, but she knew that only he could give it to her.

Kaeden looked down at her, his chest heaving, his eyes had shut tight during the explosive release of his own orgasm. When he'd finally relaxed enough to open them again, it was his eyes that went wide. Sylphira had changed again. Where before her fur was black with the hint of blue, now electric teal markings covered her form. They started from her wrists and ankles, and made their way up her body until they had mapped all the way up to her eyes.

He didn't need to wonder what these were. He knew instantly. Mana channels. Magic circuits. The ability to channel arcane energies writ upon her very body. Kaeden had these, too, but they were internal. Beneath his skin. His mind exploded into puzzling out how this could be, but the fatigue settling into his body after such a release was slowing his fevered thoughts. He looked down as she leaned forward to run her tongue across the tip of his oversensitive mast, a hope in her eyes that she might coax out one more drop. He shivered under her attention, but pushed her away. He was spent. And then it hit him.

His cum. Of course, he thought. Seed was known to be a volatile conduit for spiritual energy. His cum was probably saturated with it, and she had just swallowed every last mote of the energy his balls could muster. Semen held enough magic energy to jump start the creation of a new soul, and with Sylphira's awakening, his magic had clearly worked far further than he ever intended. Not just a thinking mind, but one capable of manipulating the arcane. He would have been entirely in awe of the magic at work had Sylphira not tried to lean forward again.

“Enough,” he said, his breath still heavy. The revelation of the magical effects of his cum did nothing to soothe his fatigue, and left him even more shaky on his feet. She obeyed, but the look in her eyes was disappointed. Kaeden felt his heart skip, and groaned as he heard himself say,

“More later, I must rest and recover.” Kaeden might have been puzzled as to his newfound affection for Sylphira welling in his chest, but found it hard to look at the disappointed look in her eyes. Part of him would love to do it again, and there was a budding affection for the beautiful girl who had just given him the greatest physical pleasure he'd ever tasted. But for now, there was work to be done.

He could see the disappointment in her eyes give way to confusion. The human continued to pose his own puzzles in Sylphira's mind. He wanted her, but wouldn't continue? Had she not been found to be a worthy mate? That was rejection, and yet. More later, he'd said. He wanted her again, just not now. He was certainly a strange male, and she didn't know how she felt about that. But one thing was clear: it was morning. It was time to hunt.

“Hungry,” she said. Her mind wanted more of his cum, but her body demanded actual sustenance. Her stomach was teased by the thick seed he'd poured down her throat, and her body would require actual nourishment soon.
“Hunt?” she asked, choosing her words carefully, still testing out her newfound voice.

Kaeden had managed to catch his breath, and nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, hunt if you desire. I must remain here... there is work to be done.”

“Do you not hunger?” Sylphira asked, tilting her head.

“I do, but I can sustain myself. It is important that you eat. Your cells have been depleted of a lot of their chemical energy due to the effects of-”

“I can bring you food,” Sylphira said, interrupting Kaeden as his words veered off into things she didn't understand yet. He looked a bit affronted at being cut off, but relented as he nodded.

“If you bring food, I would appreciate it, Sylphira,” he said.

And with that, she was off. She moved just as swiftly as she had the day before, exactly as at home in her new body as she was in her old one. Ever the graceful predator of the Shroudlands. Kaeden was left atop the Ebon Fang. There was a mountain of work to do atop the spire if he was going to lay his claim upon this land. More than that, his mind was abuzz with observations and notes to take, and he did not have so much as a quill or parchment.

Kaeden heaved a breath, tightened his grip on his staff, and began to work.

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Pub: 01 Nov 2025 22:45 UTC

Edit: 01 Nov 2025 22:50 UTC

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