Chapter 28 - A new normal

  I awoke and for once my elevation didn’t change soon after. I just enjoyed my time lying there, Emma still softly snoring and firmly wrapped around me. Last night had been very interesting. I’m not saying that I enjoyed Emma being in mortal danger, but I certainly did appreciate the hit of Adrenalin. And judging by her reaction, she had found it rather exciting as well. In fact we didn’t screw each other into unconsciousness, like usual, but we actually cuddled after a few rounds. That was new, although by no means unappreciated. Actually, as I was looking at her head, inelegantly drooling on my shoulder, I couldn’t help but think about how much I was beginning to like this girl. We’ve only known each other for a few days, but I could feel something new. Something I’ve never felt for my previous girlfriends. Something …

  Luckily Emma interrupted my thoughts by waking up. She gave me a goofy grin. “Morning, shortstack.” Of course that would be the first thing out of her mouth. The only question was: Why by the gods did I lowkey enjoy her teasing me? This was going nowhere, so I changed the subject. “Speaking of which: How come you were surprised by my height? I thought your people's stature was achieved through shapeshifting as well.”

  She wiped away some drool off her chin before she answered. “Yeah, but we learn Shapeshifting at about eight years of age and no one really goes back to normal after that. It’s painful and all you get is being weaker and more fragile. No, thanks.” Well, that would explain why the few children I’d seen were tall already. The only ones I had seen in the village were about ten or older.

  “So everybody customises their body? You’d expect the general population to be more attractive.” She slapped my face. “You are in a committed relationship, mister!” I waited for the fake indignance to leave her face. “In all honesty, we don’t have as much control as you do. People can just choose less or more bearlike.” Then they should probably get better at shapeshifting.

  Boy, am I glad I didn’t say that out loud. She looked like she wasn’t quite finished, so I asked her: “Is there something else you want to talk about?”

  She blushed “No, no! It’s nothing. It’s nothing, I just wanted to thank you again for yesterday. I really enjoyed myself. Oh, and for saving my life. That one also. Very grateful for that.” I pondered whether or not I should leverage her life-debt for a bit of morning fun, but I decided against it. Not for any moral reasons mind, I just wanted something in my back pocket for when she would decide to be bratty next.

  We stayed in bed a bit longer, just cuddling, but eventually we had to start our day. Also Skadi can be really annoying when she wants me to get a move on. Hard to ignore telepathic nagging.

  The morning was pretty standard, until I went to go for my hunt. George joined me. Carrying a truly massive axe. The two-handed sort, looked like he could cleave a tree in two with one swing. We went outside the gates, with Skadi in tow, but he stopped me from going further. He just held up one hand, while he whistled with two fingers. It was very loud.

  …

  …

  Nothing happened. He whistled again.

  …

  …

  I smelled something. “Are you trying to call a bear?” he nodded with a confused expression on his face. “Wait here, I think I know the problem.” I did remember our first encounter after all.

  I followed the scent trail to a nervous looking brown bear, a few hundred metres away from George. It looked up at me with a complex expression, however there was definitely fear in there.

  “Bow!” I commanded the bear.

  It continued to look at me. After a few moments it started to dip its head slowly. “Good. I will not harm you, as long as you know your place. You may now answer George’s call.” I quickly returned to George’s side. “Call again.” I told him.

  He whistled a third time. This time the bear arrived in less than a minute. It was, of course, the same one I just talked to.

  George was stroking the bear’s face, but the bear kept stealing glances at me.

  “What have you done, James?”

  Fair enough I guess some explanation was required. “I have a certain effect on animals. I found your friend and assured them that I meant them no harm.”

  He eyed me suspiciously, but didn’t say any more about the subject. “Anyway, this is Bruna. She is my companion.”

  “Greetings, Bruna. I am James, and this is Skadi.” After introductions were finished we started the hunt.

  It wasn’t long until I picked out a scent. I’ve smelt it before, but I hadn’t yet seen the originator.

  After trailing the scent for a while, Bruna stopped and sniffed the air. She and George had a quick, presumably telepathic, discussion, after which he said: “There is a Quilltusk near.” He looked at me “Are you sure you want to hunt that?” I grinned and transformed into my werewolf form. The game was on.

  It took another half hour to find the beast. It was built like a boar, but as tall as a brown bear, tusks as long as an elephant’s and instead of fur it had thousands of metallic looking needles sticking out of its skin. Not to forget the thing was brimming with vital energy. I felt like I could taste it in the air. And it was delicious. I could feel my skin quivering in excitement. This thing was going to end up in my stomach in short order.

  Skadi, George and Bruna were settling in to observe, while I prepared to attack. I climbed a nearby tree and walked on a branch above the Quilltusk. Then I dropped. I impaled myself on its quills and it on my claws. I was betting I could pump it full of toxin, before it could use the position to its advantage.

  I was wrong. I didn’t get more than one pump of venom into it, before the quills shot out of its back, taking me with them and nailing me to a nearby tree.

  Fair enough, no quick death then.

  I pushed off the tree and freed myself from the needles, in doing so. I landed on the ground just in time to see the Boar charging at me. The quills on its back were still missing, so it probably couldn’t regenerate its weaponry mid-fight. That gave me an Idea. I activated [Berserk Rage], my vision went red and I was beginning to be filled by the comfortably familiar sensation of absolute rage. Not pleasant in itself, yet it still felt nostalgic. I caught the tusks of the Boar, it pushed me back several metres, my feet leaving a trail in the frozen ground, but I caught them. Then I started to push them outward. They started to yield, I could even see the face of the Quilltusk starting to split, but then its eyes started to glow green and suddenly the tusks were much harder to move. Harder, but not impossible. I pushed with all my might, until I finally heard a crack. The top 20 centimetres of the tusks broke off. Which was not good. Instead of disabling the weapon, I just made them better suited for close combat. The Quilltusk immediately used my opening, as I had my arms spread wide after the tusks gave in, to impale me. We would have to do it the really hard way after all.

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  I pushed the tusk deeper into my stomach, to inch myself closer to the Boars face. Once I was in range I unleashed all the tricks at once. I cut my throat to spray the beast with my blood, which I made shine and burn. I shoved my arm down its throat and pumped as much venom as possible into it, I hacked at the skull with my other arm, trying to pierce the damn thing. With [Berserk Rage] still going, I had no problem fucking the Boar up. Every slash made bone splinter, until finally it stopped thrashing and fell to the ground.

  I un-impaled myself and deactivated [Berserk Rage] the Boar was burnt, slashed all over, bleeding profusely and was foaming at the mouth. After some inspection, I had found that I indeed managed to open the skull, which ended the Quilltusks misery.

  I stood up, panting heavily. I turned to the observers and with a smile, said: “Notes?”

  There was a curious mix of emotions on display. Skadi was looking bored, Bruna was looking horrified and George was somewhere between astonishment and frustration.

  “You fucking Idiot! This is how you fight?”

  I was flabbergasted “What? I mean… yes? I easily won, how is this bad?”

  George facepalmed. “You won, because that thing could not kill you. You gave it every opportunity to kill you, but your stupidly powerful healing and your apparently impervious organs, made that impossible. You were impaled twice. I was hesitant before, because Quilltusks can do devastating damage, if a single attack lands. Most hunters avoid them, because one wrong move means weeks, or months of healing, at best.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “Look, kid. I realise there was no one to really teach you this stuff, and that you have some weird unique advantages, which helped you survive this far in the first place, but this can barely be called a fighting style. All you know is how to do as much damage as possible, fuck all else. That works exactly as long as you remain a big fish in a small pond. Fight against a real opponent, someone that you couldn’t just as well ignore for half an hour, and you will be minced meat.” he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We can do this. I realise hand to hand is the wrong way. I will think of some way to teach you properly, have you survive, now that my daughter has started to really like you. If we do this though, we will have to start at the beginning. Unteach a lot of bad habits. I’ll have a new training concept by tomorrow afternoon.” He looked at the carcass “I’m going to go now, Emma told me how apaling it is to watch you ‘eat’. This afternoon is free. See you, James.” Then he shook his head and slowly walked away.

  I was stunned. I had just gotten the most serious, if warranted, critique of myself in my life. Good thing I had a carcass to devourer. Eating makes everyone feel less sad.

  It took me an hour after my meal to hunt for my keep and let Skadi have something to eat too. Then Val appeared, so we went back to training. After about an hour I got frustrated. Nothing had changed! I was still working on these abstract ‘Mana Defences’ Val kept going on about. I had no Idea what she was doing. She was just probing my defences with Illusions, which I had no way of resisting. The frustration kept building until I felt my skin rippling. My anger was manifesting itself again. I enacted the emergency measure I had thought of since Emma told me that she could see [The Flesh obeys] misbehave. I commanded all of the Mana in my body to Halt!

  Suddenly the Illusions faded all together. I looked up in Surprise. I could swear I could see Val smiling, but in the next instance she was looking just as shocked as I was. She had probably just reached a funny part in her book.

  “What did you just do? You dispelled all the Illusions on you.”

  I scratch my head in confusion “I could feel that my skin was doing shenanigans, so I purposefully made all the Mana in me freeze, so that nothing obvious happened” I had only upheld that effect for a second, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to move.

  Val smiled widely “That’s how we can make your defences work! Ugh I was such an Idiot.” She smacked her forehead “You can’t sense attacks, until they land, so I thought you’d have to be proactive in defence, but that’s so limiting.” She was getting a bit manic at this point. “Don’t you get it?” I shook my head. “We do both!” she was waiting for a gasp of realisation that was never going to come.

  “Both?”

  “Yes! Both! Reactive and proactive! Together!” I was still confused.

  “Alright, I’ll explain it.” The disappointment in her voice hurt me deep down. “You just proved that you can defend against mana attacks with internal mana alone. However locking up your whole body can’t be your main way of fending off attacks. So, we make something that leaves you flexible, but that can warn you off incoming attacks. Something like a lattice, or net around your body that is hardened. You can feel whenever something foreign brushes against the lattice, i.e. disrupts your mana in use, and freeze that section of your body in response. It won’t be easy, but with enough training, you could become damn hard to affect. Especially if you can make the responsive hardening reflexive.” I got it now. That did seem like a lot of work. But I was never workshy. One thing I didn’t get though.

  “What exactly was I supposed to do beforehand?”

  “Oh, yeah. I was trying to teach you how to remove foreign influence just by trial and error. I hoped that at some point you would get a feeling for foreign influences on your mana, but that is silly in retrospect. Mana is not a sensory organ. You can’t really feel who is commanding it, except when someone is disrupting something you were actively doing. When I saw how you dispelled my spells just now, I realised you didn’t need a sophisticated way of dealing with spells, you needed a sophisticated way of detecting them. Now the rest is just training.”

  Finally! Something I can actually get better at. Goodbye frustrating Bullshit-training!

  We got to work after that. First explaining the whole Idea to Skadi, then trying to form the lattice thing. I managed to cover a hand by the time we had to end.

  It was harder than one would think. Imagine for comparison that you had complete control over the colour of your skin, but only when you actively concentrate on it, otherwise it goes back to standard skin colour. My task was the equivalent of writing a novel on your skin without anything vanishing.

  Once we arrived back at the village we used our free time to train our shapeshifting. Eating that Quilltusk was a great help in my Quest to get a ranged attack. The way it ejected its Quills was by building up pressure behind them and releasing the Quills. That was a lot more doable than doing it all through muscles alone. I got to work designing an upscaled version of that for my blades. I hadn’t gotten it right then and there, but I was making some real progress. Skadi, meanwhile, was hard at work getting her Skills up. She had the goal of getting a humanoid Form. She managed to get her paw looking somewhat like four fingers, but the joint of a thumb was still beyond her. Actually the fingers weren’t quite right either. Didn’t move right. Still, it was an amazing amount of progress, considering she had no help from a class.

  The rest of the day passed relatively quickly the shame of George’s dressing down was more than overcome with my other kinds of progress. I had an early night with Emma and was excited for tomorrow. If George's Ideas of training me were workable, then I might actually be able to establish an actual routine. That would be nice.

  I awoke when Emma shook me. “Wake up, sleepyhead, we’ve gotta talk.” I was fully awake in moments. Then a scene from a nightmare flashed before my eyes.

  “You aren’t pregnant are you?” She burst into laughter. “No, silly! I can’t get pregnant. Dad just wanted me to tell you to meet him at the “usual place” in an hour.”

  I was relieved. “Oh, ok.” Then I became confused “Wait, you can’t get pregnant? Are you sick?”

  Now it was her turn to look confused “No, Why would I … Oooohhhh. Yeah right. You don’t know much about shapeshifters. The first thing every teen girl learns to do is reshape the internals of our fun zone. That A: Prevents Pregnancy and B: means we don’t get periods. Honestly I don’t know how girls make it through a month without learning to shapeshift. Periods suck.” She paused for a bit. “Why? Do you want kids? Actually why was that your first guess?”

  “Never really thought about it to be honest. It came to mind, because I had a nightmare like that.”

  “You dreamt about me being pregnant?”

  “Sort of. It was a few months in the future, you were pregnant and then the village was attacked by weird Shadow-creatures. I couldn’t beat them and then … then … ” I sighed deeply “It didn’t end well for you, well … either of you two. The whole thing still gives me the shivers.”

  Emma had a distant look in her eyes, as she thought about what I said. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment. Kind of nice, me appearing in your dreams already. By the way, how did I look pregnant?”

  I smacked myself in the forehead. “Like two months pregnant. You looked like you had overeaten.”

  In response she put a hand on my chest and began to tap her fingers “If only there were something delicious I could stuff myself with right now.” That little minx! Eh, her father did give me an hour. Might as well use it.

  I arrived at the training grounds.

  “You are half an hour late.” George greeted me.

  “Sorry about that, I got caught up in something.” I will admit to feeling rather cheeky in the moment.

  “What could you have gotten caught up in, at this hour?” I didn’t even get past the ‘R’ in ‘Your daughter’ before I was interrupted

  “Don’t you dare say it! Get here and let’s begin.”

  I did as I was told

  “We are going to start from Ground Zero. Less than that actually. You are going to go through the most basic ass training, until you unlearn all your suicidal habits. You can impale yourself on an enemy, once you’ve proven that you don’t need to.”

  He wasn’t kidding.

  I got to spend two and a half hours learning how to throw a punch. A single punch. From a standing position. One straight punch. Everytime I made a minor mistake, he would berate me. I did my best, but it was hard. I had a lot of instincts for fighting, but those just told me how to inflict the maximum amount of damage, screw the consequences. Nothing to help with actual technique.

  I endured it. I knew George was right. I knew I had to improve. I would die the instant I faced an actually dangerous enemy, if I continued my previous path. So I worked at it. Every day. I finally had a routine. Hunt, Train with George, Train with Val, Train with Skadi, Fun with Emma, rest, repeat.

  I could do that.