Kayt couldn't believe that she could actually communicate with this wolf, Nimesh. She'd had a pet cat when she was younger, though never had too much of an attachment to it. The cat always seemed to ignore her in favor of her parents.

That hadn't bothered her; she had plenty of human friends on which to rely. This wolf was completely different from that cat. It couldn't actually speak, but the way it--she--transmitted ideas suggested that she was extremely intelligent.

Kayt found that she, too, could send thoughts back to Nimesh after a few minutes of practice. She had a feeling that, given enough time, she would be able to do so naturally as long as she maintained physical contact with the wolf.

Nimesh seemed to be pleased with her, and seemed to suggest that the two should form a formal pairing. Kayt didn't really know what that would entail, but decided that pairing up with Nimesh would likely be the coolest thing to ever happen to her, so she responded in the affirmative.

Similarly, wolves were prancing all about the humans, trying not to trample anybody. In the end, only a few decided to stick with land-shaper humans. Many held off with the intention of partnering up with a future land-shaper. Since there were already quite a few expert-level humans after 3 days, the wolves' strategy ensured that most would end up with fairly exceptional individuals. After all, which Expert tier profession wouldn't choose land-shaper as their next if doing so enabled one to communicate with Basalith's newly-unveiled servants?

Even as Kayt focused on learning more about Nimesh, more and more kinds of animal mutants erupted out of the nearby residential buildings. Kayt learned from Nimesh that, after being raised in an area underneath The Anima, all the quasi-sentients had been given access to their own apartment buildings and specially-designed rooms. Nimesh seemed proud of the fact that the Creator, the Dragon, had designed the apartments himself.

Kayt didn't have the heart to explain that technically everything in Basalith had been designed by the Dragon. She was, however, surprised when Nimesh explained what being the leader of the Dawn Wolves meant.

---

In the hour required for spineroot to finish integrating into Basalith, exactly 16 different animal species had come down from the various apartment complexes. People estimated that there were, on average, around 2000 of each. However, the squirrel quasi-sentients were much more numerous; while many of the squirrels hadn't actually come out, several land-shapers confirmed that the squirrels placed their numbers at around one million.

This, of course, left everyone wondering where the hell the squirrels had any room to live. The other animals, too; the apartment buildings didn't look like they could fit more than one thousand humans each. Soon, as land-shapers continued to ask questions to the emerging animals, a few things became clear.

The apartment buildings extended deep underground and connected directly to the basement level of The Anima. The animal species all had a unified leadership, with the dominant individual of each species ruling its own species and also communicating with the other dominant individuals.

After the hour elapsed, the giant woody ceiling cracked in half, as though somebody unclasped their hands and then pulled them apart. After a few minutes, the wood was completely gone aside from a large woody wall encircling Basalith where once there was only a dragonleaf hedge. The only people with the ability to see the thin, spiny, nearly-transparent tendrils of the spineroot were the people with the long range combat profession. The profession's very first boon was distance vision, a boon that now caused them all to look on in confusion towards the sky.

"Does anybody see this?" one of the long range combat Advanced called out near Kayt. "It's like little fuzzy worms are scraping at the sky. There's almost a net..."

Due to the many confusing changes, crowds of people were converging on the faction leaders, both of whom had no idea what the heck was going on.

"The Church and Dragon must be trusting us to receive divine inspiration," Maya said, her voice sagely.

Herod nodded. "We need to interpret Their will."

They locked themselves into a random room underneath The Anima while they worked on a cohesive narrative to pull everything together.

---

Returning to the present, early in the morning, day 5

"We're back," Lisa sighed, her expression complex. "Ugh, we've only been gone for 5 days. How is that even possible? It feels like it's been way longer."

Bath chuckled. "You said that last time we were away."

Lisa ignored him, tugging at his arm to start walking back to her room. "Come with me. We're going to get started on all the work we've missed." Thankfully, the assignments were posted online rather than in class, so she could receive all the missing assignments and get started.

"Fine." As they walked, Bath once again recreated his long-range manipulation defensive system around Alens, though with a few modifications. After running Basalith, Bath felt like he had a much greater control than before over his essence. Such improvement made him elated, considering the fact that he'd been trying to improve his long-range manipulation for years without particularly substantial improvements.

Lisa was shocked to see posters everywhere about a new club, the Alens Order of the Church of the Dragon. She hadn't considered what it would be like to return to Alens after everything that happened, in the sense that she'd had an admittedly unreasonable expectation that after founding Basalith, Alens would be exactly how she left it a few days back.

A part of her felt a great deal of pride in her accomplishment with Bath. Another part of her felt like an imposter walking through Alens as though she were just a regular student.

Lisa wondered if this was how Bath felt like all the time in his permanent masquerade as a wolf in sheep's clothing. 'No wonder he wanted to tell someone,' Lisa thought to herself as they reached her dorm. She couldn't imagine what her life, what his life, would be like now if he hadn't told her about his true identity.

Lisa unlocked the door to her room, then stepped lightly inside, not wanting to disturb her undoubtedly sleeping roommates. Her first objective was to find her favorite sweater and sweats and get comfortable. Bath had made them both casual street clothes, though Lisa was tired of wearing Bath's smooth plant-fabric. She wanted actual cloth fabric, ideally with the scent of clean laundry, not that she'd done any loads recently.

She changed, then returned to find Bath pouring over a newspaper.

"Where'd you find that?"

He looked up. "Lying around; it's just yesterday's school paper." In it, he found an article about the terrorist attack on a building. Apparently, the people Dean knocked unconscious didn't associate Dean himself with the blast. That certainly made things easier.

Also was an informative article on a singular Professor Scranton's ground-breaking discovery of a titanic, ancient, insectoid lifeform.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

---

"Professor," Bath said, an icy grin on his face. While he hadn't been at Alens, Bath had been keeping email contact with Scranton over the past few days. "How's fame treating you?"

He surprised her with his appearance in her room. She hadn't even heard him open the door. "Bath," Professor Scranton gasped. "Where the f--where have you been!?"

"I told you, I've been busy with a lot."

Scranton inhaled deeply, as though trying to control a towering rage. "What could be more important than Bathiosaurus Exorexus!?" she fumed. "I even kept the name you gave it!" She pushed her rolling chair out from the desk and hustled to her feet. "You need to explain how you found that fossil. Seriously, I'm dying. Explain to me how a high school kid managed to casually find a field-changing fossilized specimen in a deep trench off the coast of northern Russia!?"

Bath rubbed his jaw. She did have a point; it was a little incredulous. But then again, Alens was an extremely selective school; was it that unexpected that a student would have such a bizarre summer adventure?

No matter. Lisa had plans for Scranton, the kind that Bath was more than happy to make possible.

"Professor. I've received a message from one of my friends that's entered Basalith."

The professor's eyes went even wider than Bath thought anatomically possible, which was no small feat. "You have a friend that actually made it into Basalith? News sources say there's a line that's twelve miles long to get in."

Bath actually hadn't realized the line was that long since it doubled back on itself so many times. How many thousands of people was that? He hoped that the automatic city expansion would go according to design.

"My friend entered on the first day," Bath explained. "Anyways, I received a message stating that the Church of the Dragon's aspects, the Church and the Dragon, respectively, aren't entities that appeared out of nowhere."

Scranton's expression was frenzied all throughout the conversation such that Bath couldn't tell what she was getting excited about. "Apparently, the Dragon came to Earth several times over the past few hundred millions of years. It was looking for sentient life. Finally, when it returned to Earth this time, it found the life it was searching for."

"Humans," Scranton breathed, her face now fully displaying her shock. Bath was a little taken aback by how easily Scranton was taking his words as truth.

"Yeah...so, anyways, that's why the Dragon is here now. Now for the part where we come into the picture. You know the fossil we found?" Bath put a bit of emphasis on the 'we.' "Apparently, whenever the Dragon returned to Earth, it created a host of bizarre lifeforms with its abilities. One of these was Bathiosaurus Exorexus, the only one of its kind. A mutant.

"And I know where we can find the rest of the fossils. Apparently, a record of all the places the Dragon visited is located in one of the Church of the Dragon's archives."

'We really should have the new factions start an archive,' Bath thought absentmindedly.

'They have archives?' Scranton wondered to herself as she took in everything Bath was telling her. This sounded infinitely too good to be true, but so had Bathiosaurus Exorexus. Scranton was more than willing to once again put her faith in this mysterious Bath McLane kid; even if they didn't find anything, Scranton wouldn't hold it against the new shining star of the paleontology department.

"Do you have coordinates for the locations?" Scranton didn't expect him to, though it couldn't hurt to check.

Bath gave her a wolfish grin in response, causing Scranton to subconsciously step back. "Of course."

---

Bath decided that it was time to give his parents a call and tell them about life. He felt a lot better about calling them now that he was back where he was supposed to be, Alens. He wondered why that was; no matter if he was at Alens or Basalith, he wasn't going to tell his family the truth, not now. Why, then, did his present location matter?

Since the weather outside was nice by human standards, Bath sat down at one of Alens' many park benches. He took out his computer, then gave his mom a video call. Since it was around 6 pm, he expected the whole family to be home.

After a few rings, the call went through. "Mom," Bath said cheerfully.

"Bath!" she enthused, her face alight with joy. She turned away from the camera, the exclaimed, "Everyone get over here! It's Bath!"

Bath chuckled as he heard the immediate and heavy pounding of steps as a certain someone sprinted to reach the computer first.

"Bath! Why don't you ever call!?" Avery unsuccessfully pouted, her pinched expression quickly collapsing into a grin. "We want to all~ about college. Have you met any girls--"

"Of course."

"What!?" Avery gaped.

"...In my classes."

Avery sighed and rolled her eyes, then she looked at Samantha, who dramatically sighed back before smirking and returning to the camera. Brian chose that moment to enter the camera, a gentle smile on his face.

"Hey! How's my boy," he beamed.

"Dad," Bath's smile broadened. "I'm fine. What do you guys want to know about college?"

"Tell me about frats!" Avery asked without giving either parent the chance to speak.

Bath snorted, recalling the frat party he'd sabotaged on Lisa's behalf. "Lisa and I went to a frat party."

"Oo, together?" Avery said, as though she were uncovering a juicy secret. 'Little sisters,' Bath thought, snickering to himself.

"No, as friends," Bath clarified. His parents just gave knowing smiles. Bath narrowed his eyes in response. "Seriously."

"Alright, we know, you two have made your relationship perfectly clear over the past few years," Samantha replied, an eyebrow raised.

"You're all incorrigible," Bath laughed. "How have you all been?"

Brian and Samantha looked at one another, then Avery. "Fine," Brian replied. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Trying to make sense of all this Church of the Dragon insanity."

"It's pretty crazy, right?" Bath said.

"It's pretty incredible if what people are saying is true," Samantha stated. "We've been wondering if maybe we should look into joining the new city, Basalith."

Avery nodded. "It sounds like people who go there get free food, housing, and super powers!"

Samantha gave her daughter a dubious look, then returned her eyes to the camera. "I think that the whole illness curing aspect is most important."

Bath cocked his head. He'd made sure to eliminate any disease from his parents, genetic or otherwise. "Why, are you worried about getting sick?"

Samantha just shrugged.

"You can never be too prepared," Brian stated wisely, nodding his head slightly. "But that isn't a for-sure plan or anything. Just an idea. I'm sure you've heard all about the line to get in."

Bath chuckled. "Over ten miles worth of people."

"How has school been going?" Samantha asked, changing the subject.

"Oh, it's been good. I found a professor to do some research with." Bath decided it wouldn't hurt to let his parents find out about Scranton and the published paper he'd gotten on. Bath still marveled at how Scranton was able to get the paper together so fast and off to the press. The woman certainly knew how to move. "We've actually already published a paper."

His parent's jaws went slack, while Avery just looked up confusedly at her parents' shocked expressions.

"What?" she asked, annoyed over being left out.

"How?" Brian asked. "You've been in school for just a few weeks!"

"I was lucky," Bath grinned. "I found Professor Scranton right before school started and got in on a project she was working on. Usually, with paleontology, it can take a long time to get any findings. However, we really struck gold after just the first week. Accordingly, we were able to get something written up and sent off."

Bath's parents could only marvel at their son's good fortune. "That sounds unbelievable," Samantha stated, her tone completely shocked.

Bath just coughed. "Well, it happened."

"Wait. Are you talking about the Scranton that's been all over the news for discovering the biggest fossil in history?"

Bath looked sheepishly off to the side. "What do you think?"

"What!? Holy shi-Wow. That's amazing. Wow." Brian couldn't believe what Bath was telling them.

"Honey, how on Earth did you find such a hot-shot professor to take you on?" Samantha asked.

"Oh, you know, I have my ways," Bath grinned bashfully, wagging his eyebrows.

"See! He's definitely been meeting up with girls," Avery exclaimed. "He's acting just like--"

Samantha placed a hand on Avery's head. "Honey. I think we've been taking up enough of Bath's time." Samantha gave Bath a knowing look, then smirked. "He's a busy man."

"Don't let all the crazy stuff on the news distract you, son," Brian instructed with a smile as Bath started waving goodbye.

"Alright, alright," Bath promised. "I'll call you guys soon, okay?"

"You better!" Avery squealed. "I miss you bro."

"I know. Love you guys." Bath ended the call.

Then he looked at the area around him. He drew all his essence into himself. He didn't want to feel everything around him. He didn't want it.

He focused on the feel of the park bench under his skin, on the feeling of grass on his flip-flopped feet. He closed his eyes, focused on the song of the wind and cicadas. Then he opened them and fixed his attention on the setting sun and the pink clouds over the horizon.

Finally, he took his face into his hands.

'Why do I feel...' he searched for words, came up empty; wondered why he even wanted words in the first place. Before assuming the form of a human, he'd never wanted them before.

'How would I have described this before?' Bath wondered, unsure why the only image coming to mind was that last blue sky before the asteroid that spelled the end of the Cretaceous. The blue of deep ocean, of open skies and clean air. The innocent blue preceding the dark.