He pressed his body low on the ground. The air above his head moved as a body the size of his head flew through the space his upper body had occupied a second ago.

Aaron’s spell sensing abilities had luckily always been one of his strong suits. Traversing the forest would be much harder otherwise. The lush forest made it very easy for predators to hide behind the green.

He started to unhook his warhammer as he turned to the beast that attacked him. It was a rabbit. As Aaron looked closer, he was able to make out bulging veins on it’s face. The eyes had started to cloud over with a light blue hue.

Aaron readied his weapon as he thought of the implications. This rabbit was in the process of turning into a warped beast. Why was it here? He didn’t think that the Constable would let warped animals live this close to the town. Aaron would need to notify the guard once he returned.

By the time Aaron had stepped forward, the rabbit had finished righting itself and turned itself around to face him. It hissed as Aaron narrowed his eyes in concentration.

While he wasn’t as good at casting as he was at sensing, Aaron was still trained by his mother. Like her, he favoured the stone, as he had spent most of his time since his birth surrounded by rocks.

Aaron calmly formed his spell in his mind. While it was growing easier to make the stone do what he pictured, he still had tremendous respect for it. The coldness and longevity that Aaron felt every time he used it were something he could never forget.

The rabbit readied his jump at the same time Aaron finally completed the spell. He connected to the earth and bound the required magic together with the spell to it.

A wall of stone emerged as the rabbit charged. An animal not influenced by the warping might have sensed the spell and evaded the stone plate, but this rabbit was clearly not able to act on anything other than its most feral instincts.

The beast crashed into the blockade and came to a near instantaneous halt. Aaron was above it before it could come to its senses. His raised weapon came down fast.

The sounds of metal crashing against soft skin and it giving way to splatter against the floor was the only thing that Aaron heard at that moment.

He took a deep breath. This was it. This was where he felt the most comfortable. Not under the mountains or among humans but in nature, surviving and growing. He just felt so alive. The adrenaline, the rush he felt whenever he was on the slippery slope between death and growth, it was addicting.

After he calmed down, Aaron finally took stock of the situation and checked the surroundings. Even after he searching for an hour, he couldn’t find another warped beast. He did find animals with magic but their amount of magic was nowhere near enough for them to warp.

Since he expended some of his magic on the spell, he decided to bind the magic of the beast to him before it dissipated. While it would be a bit much to control right now, it still seemed like it would be possible for him.

He still remembered the very first lesson his mother gave him about magic. It was about the dangers of stuffing yourself too full and slowly loosing the things that make you you. He could still picture her glaring at him as she said it. “At first, everything feels a bit stiffer, like the sizes of your clothes being two sizes too small. That’s still tolerable. But after that come the delusions. They start small, like the shadow of a lamp moving just slightly wrong. But they grow. The next thing you know, you feel like someone is watching you. At first it’s only once, but then the amount of times grows until it’s a constant sensation. And you shouldn’t forget about the itch.”

Her eyes seemed to cloud over as she recalled a particularly bad memory. “Back before I knew your father, we had a neighbour that had always been distant. After we hadn’t seen him for nearly a whole season, my parents grew concerned and set out to check on him. I have never seen my mother as frightened as right after she returned. She didn’t say much back then, but for a few weeks, I always heard her mumbling in her sleep about an itch. It didn’t take long for me to understand what had happened to our neighbour but I still wonder what exactly my parents saw when they checked on him.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Anyway, there isn’t much known about the state of a being between that and the full transformation into the twisted beings that we know as warped ones. I want you to be very careful when handling magic. It’s not a toy that is hard to destroy and easy to fix; this can end lives.”

Aaron had no plans of ever finding out what it was like to get turned into such a monster. He was always careful with his magic intake. While he did bind more magic to himself than was comfortable to increase his tolerance quicker, he would never do that while he was out and about in the wilderness.

After Aaron had packed up his things, he started to head further to the prescribed location. He decided to leave the dead rabbit there as he didn’t have much space, and the space he had would be used for the ears of the wolves as proof.

While he wouldn’t be able to bind all the magic of the wolves to himself, as he would need a bit of magic residue for the quest to be verified, he might be able to train his tolerance a bit more.

----------------------------------------

The next two days went by very quickly. Aaron was able to stay out of trouble most of the time. He only had to fight five animals, with most of them fleeing the moment they sensed his spell being formed.

The one that hadn’t fled was some kind of hawk. It had attacked him relentlessly for almost half a day while he made his way through what he presumed was its territory. The only spell it could form seemed to make its hoarse screaming louder. Aaron's ears still rang a bit after nearly a whole day.

He hadn’t seen another warped animal in his time here. Maybe the rabbit had really been alone? He wasn’t sure, but he would still mention it in his quest report.

It was starting to grow dark. Aaron started to search for a place to set up his camp. He quickly found a small burrow under an aging tree.

His magic and stone-shaping spell were used to widen the burrow to allow Aaron to lay down inside it. While the stone would be too cold for most humans to comfortably rest on, it wouldn’t be a problem for Aaron. As a dwarf, Aaron was used to sleeping on cold stone when he was mining. The body of a dwarf was built for it.

After closing the way into the burrow with the exception of airways, Aaron sat down to train a bit more before sleeping.

He closed his eyes and pictured the binding of the air's magic to himself. As he worked, he slowly started to feel a trickle of magic. Aaron steadily increased the intake until he couldn’t take it anymore. He gasped as he returned to himself. He was Aaron, the dwarven adventurer. Aaron checked for the amount of magic bound to him and nearly shouted.

“So much? This is incredible! Did I improve that much in the last few days?”

After his small outburst, Aaron quickly steeled himself and started to work with the magic as he was beginning to feel the effect of having too much magic.

He took half of the magic that was in excess and started practicing his spells. While he worked with his stone spells, it was simple, but as he worked on the spells that connected with his body, it was growing harder. It didn’t seem like he was making much progress on that front while practicing. Still, Aaron was happy with the overall results.

The second half he took to do something he hadn’t had much time to do in the last few weeks. Aaron closed his eyes. After searching around for a few moments, he was able to sense two connections. With his magical senses, it looked to him like two discs that pulled every strand of magic that was too close into themselves. The smaller one was coloured in a very rich yellow. The other disc changed its colours like a flickering flame would.

He began to slowly bind magic to the one in yellow. That was his connection to the ornament hung from his neck. Like every proper dwarf, he would strengthen the connection. While he wasn’t sure if any of the humans understood what the amount of magic bound to the ornament signifies to a dwarf, he wasn’t about to stop.

After Aaron felt like the ornament wouldn’t be able to take more magic right now, he switched his focus to the other connection. That one was a bit trickier as it was the connection to the goddess his family followed.

Aaron always felt that the strengthening of that connection was a bit useless. While he knew that gods and goddesses existed, he didn’t think that any of the prayers his parents sent with their magic would ever be heard. But even then, Aaron decided that he would keep up his family's tradition.

That connection took a lot more magic. He was even able to bind every extra bit of magic to the connection.

As he opened his eyes again, he realized how tired he was. Aaron spent a few more minutes checking the stone before he decided it was good enough. He settled down and was fast asleep.