Over time, I formed a tiny mental link with Spot and slowly strengthened it while keeping the poor dog fed. I was constantly weaving a strengthening bond of magic between us, building an anchor of mana connected to his natural pack instincts. Soon, I could feel his emotions and the things he wanted, such as [FOOD] or [PEE]. Very basic but understandable drives.

I also took the time to flesh out my three bolt holes with shaped stone and grown wood furniture, and I scavenged canned food that I looted from the surrounding houses while I was playing fetch with Spot - I used baseballs and tennis balls that I found in the abandoned houses in the surrounding neighborhoods. I also continued knocking down buildings with Gungnir, to get Spot used to my various attack magics. The damn spear was all too happy to fuck shit up, finding different ways to blow up rusty cars and houses after I had looted them.

I did notice over the next several days that anything metal and plastic outside was somehow decaying at an accelerated rate. It made me a bit leery as that’s a bit unexpected. Plastic is supposed to take millenia to decay naturally and metal doesn’t rust and fall apart as fast as I’ve been seeing it do so far. Some things I definitely made sure to scavenge before time ran out were various cooking items and toiletry things, enough for all three hideouts.

As the week drew to a close, I began getting nervous. I had almost lost track of the time because the last few were fun and relaxing. But I knew that another Ripple would be here soon, and I needed to prepare.

It had been almost a week since the last Ripple came through town, leaving everything untouched except the magical entities of this world. The Ripple seemed to take the mundane and make it magical, twisting or enhancing the existing magic. My guess is that it also breaks down anything that is mundane or devoid of magical energy. That’s probably why I was in such pain last time, the Ripple inundating me with Change while my Flesh Sorceries tried to keep me in one piece. The pain was from resisting the change, I think.

Then again, I could be totally fucked up in my thinking. But I am not the creature to test this out on.

I conjured a diamond out of basic carbon just smaller than the size of my thumbnail and conjured a thin shackle of stone around it, forming an oversized ring. Calling Norn to me, I placed it around his ankle. Before I let him go, I added a bunch of other easily conjured elements to the ankle bracelet. Since the big bird survived the initial waves of a dying god, he would probably survive this one and I could test him and the stone for weird magical energy or unexplained changes. I thought about testing my theories out on Spot, but needed to make our master and familiar bond more permanent.

I went to my river-bottom bolthole and set up gathering and conjuring various materials to keep me busy; I planned on enchanting some awesome weapons and having Spot around to keep me company while the Ripple rewrote the surface. Getting inside last time allowed me to get out of the Ripple-induced agony and I figured that a shielded under-river bolthole would suffice.

Another quick project I completed in my free time was a new take on an old idea. Using my Earth and Nature Sorcery, I grew a kite-shield out of oak and then covered it with a thin layer of platinum. I braced the back of it with iron and took way too long to add a handle to it. It’s tough working out what should work and what is comfortable and then finding the line between the two. With a few added runes, I figured it could be a solid assist against hostile magic.

Pacing around in the cavern was not helping anyone, least of all Spot. Fucking spaz kept thinking we were going for a walk or something, running around barking and hopping.

I kept the canine’s needs in mind, creating a nice area underground for him to be. I conjured a ten by ten foot plot of soft loam and topsoil and sprouted lush green grass on top of it so that he could crap all over it. Of course, he chose the furthest corner of the cavern to do his business in.

By the time I was done satisfying my creative and experimentative itch, I piled small bars of conjured gold, silver, iron and various kinds of stone laid out near the power generator that were calling my name. Further down the cavern, I transformed the bare stone floor into a small but inviting plot of land with several small different kinds of trees growing there: young rowan next to cedar, oak, and maple with a few bramble bushes at the far end.

I had the beginning inklings of an idea for small disposable wands that could serve as foci for different works of magic that I normally wouldn’t be able to do, along with permanent wards based in living wood. A sort of fire and forget kind of weapon, like a grenade but with different effects. There were also control ring enchantments etched in precious metals for stability and flexibility. A large stone table was covered in arcane knick knacks that I made while I idled the time away.

I stared at the wall as boredom mixed with anticipation threatened my already fragile mental health. [Maybe after this Ripple I could knock down even more buildings to create a dense forest soaked in my magic.] I thought. [If I did it right, the land itself would resist my enemies at every turn.] I resisted the urge to let out an evil laugh.

[Whew, good thing my Flesh Sorcery can reverse old age, cause I got a lot of shit to do.]

But Spot wouldn’t let me get to it. The energy of a young dog is rather hard to deal with when the outside land, bursting with life, is so close and yet so far away. It was too much effort to perfectly seal the outside world away. I hadn’t yet cracked magical air conjuration or a way to purify air. I didn’t think the trees would do a good enough job on their own.

“Fine! You want epic mind-blowing abilities that no Earthen dog has ever possessed before?!” I finally shouted, tossing a tennis ball up into the air. As I caught the ball, Spot’s full attention was lasered in on it. My outward excitement mirrored his as he vibrated with happiness at the thought of fetching a ball.

“Yeah!” Gungnir joined in. “Give it to him! I need a wreckin buddy!”

I tossed the ball to the overeager dog, who had filled back out over the days of healthy eating and magical healing. He tore it to shreds in a few moments of epic bliss. I reached out and scratched behind his ears, then used my Flesh Sorcery to gently put him to sleep.

Carefully picking up a shard of Chaos that I had specially prepared beforehand with runes of joining and flesh, I gently placed the shard on Spot’s belly between his ribs and as close to his heart as I could get. Taking a moment to center myself and breathe, I turned on the big generator to full power and began channeling the mana through me and into Gungnir. When I was at my comfortable limit for stored power, I opened the channel of power directly into the Chaos crystal, super charging it.

I mentally shared my plan to Gungnir through our link, as my weapon’s senses were superior to mine and could make necessary changes on the fly by interpreting my will. It’s one of the benefits of Sorcery that I've found so far. Magic follows the concept of intent. My magic follows my ideas, my will. It morphs itself to how I envision it working. And if I’m trying to do something impossible, it just doesn’t work.

But, back to Gungnir.

My weapon’s ridiculous stores of mana were at the ready, pulsing just beneath the surface of the crystal just in case the need for power outpaced the generator's output. Making a small cut just under Spot’s sternum, I put the tip of the Chaos shard in the wound and barely punctured Spot just above his spine with Gungnir. The power flowed from Gungnir through Spot’s skeletal system to the Chaos shard and then back, forming a circuit from front to rear as the mana flow snapped into place.

I watched with bated breath as the shard began to dissolve into the wound as the circuit of mana wore against the crystallized Chaos. All of my concentration focused on carefully joining this trusting animal with the raw energy of pure crystalline possibility and manifesting something that wasn’t there before. I focused on giving Spot an instinctive Sorcery over flesh using my own Flesh Sorcery as a framework; a pattern to be followed as it sank into every cell, permeating the very fiber of his being. Intents, thoughts and images, mirrored from my own abilities, flowed from me to Spot, concepts of self healing, regeneration and bone armor coupled with enhanced strength, speed and endurance.

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My dog would serve me best as a bony bruiser, capable of pulling double duty as a sentry and possibly healing when needed. But something was missing. I was thinking too small. As the crystal shard had almost dissolved, I imparted an idea from the fringes of my own Flesh Sorcery, the concept of bloodline stealing. The ability to pull in and absorb the beneficial aspects of blood or flesh that he consumed. I wanted this dog, my dog, to eat other creatures and gain from their loss, to become a powerful familiar that made my enemies run in fear.

“Oh, that’s the right stuff!” Gungnir cackled with excitement. “Big bad wolf gonna make all the goblins run, and don’t even talk about the squirrels. Them fuzzy bitches won’t know what hit them! Yo! Make him able to climb trees, then even cats will know fear!”

The spear suddenly cut off the flow of magic as I felt the last of the Chaos crystal dissolve completely. “All done with this dude, man. Can we do another?” Gungnir pleaded even as I sat back out of breath from the strain.

I think I might have imprinted my less-than-sane side to the spear. Some of its ideas were great, but it really had no concept of brakes.

[No asshole. You need to test what you create, and then go from there.] I reprimanded through our mental link. I had time, it had time, we all had time. But fuck yeah I actually did want to make another. It’s exciting to experiment with my magic like this. Actually, I wanted to improve this concept right now. The main reason for giving Spot Flesh Sorcery was for the foundation it gave. Flesh Sorcery is more than healing, it's manipulating your body to accept a new normal, to invent a new standard. Crystalline muscle fibers for strength and mana storage is not normal for mutts, but it might be for this one, soon.

Using my own Flesh Sorcery as a scaffold or pattern for Spots would also allow me to more easily make changes to his body. Reconnecting myself to Gungnir’s stores of power, I slowly made Spot grow in size and muscular density until he was the size of a big wolf, making sure his bones were a little denser than a normal dogs would be and I also overpowered his bite strength and back leg strength, giving him the ability to leap incredible distances and flat out tackle enemies.

Spot already had the sturdy build of a pitbull with some of the heft of a rottweiler in there, so I worked on his weaknesses. Flesh Sorcery grew more nerves in his shorter nasal cavity cranking up his sniffing sense to be more acute than a bloodhounds, and I messed around for a while with his eyes until he had the kind of vision Norn would envy. I widened his paws for more grip and toughened every part of his body, adding some more bone here and there to give better support and lengthened his teeth by just a bit, making sure that the enamel was much thicker than normal.

If I saw a goblin again, I wanted to be able to say ‘sick’em’ and let Spot deal with the problem while I dealt with whatever else was going on. As I was making sure the final touches on the first transformation of my pooch were good to go, mainly checking for inherent mechanical problems, when it happened.

The fifth Ripple arrived.

I had prepared for this moment in several different ways. There were seven Ripples total and four of them had already happened, which left me with three more that were on their way. My first visitor, who I’m pretty sure was either Hermes or Mercury, had told me that when this some Chaos deity died, the Ripples were waves of pure change and Chaos, which was the only thing that could break the dimensional seal keeping Earth in its own closeted magic-less space. After putting in runes of stability and reinforcement all along the walls of my river-bottom cavern, I had also taken some time to put runes of energy diversion, dispersal and conversion all over the walls to counteract or shield my living space from the Wave that might kill me. Countless ‘bleed-off’ channels networked their way across the cavern feeding powerful conversion vents that I hoped would take care of any other harmful energies.

But that wasn’t all, I had also cleared a small piece of land not far from my hollow tree entrance and placed a couple key items out there in the open for when the Ripples came. I set out the twisted shards of Chaos that I recovered from my last run in with a deity, and used one of them on Spot, leaving me with four. These shards were my best and greatest trump cards as they could maybe do anything if I figured out the best way to use them. Which means that I needed more, if I could just get some.

Also on that plot of bare dirt, I had placed small conjured spheres of granite, onyx, obsidian, gold, silver, platinum, diamond, quartz, and a pile of glass from looted houses. Maybe I could find a material that, when exposed to Chaos, would become the crystal shards that I could use like the ones I had at the beginning of this crazy adventure. And if it worked, then there were two more Ripples coming my way that I could seriously take advantage of.

“ONE ETERNITY ENDS, DUST CLAIMS ITS DUE.”

The message shook my hopefully safe cavern, all of my wards and runes lighting up as they flashed with the incoming wave. I didn’t feel any pain even as I looked up at the overly well-runed ceiling. Spot slept peacefully next to his bowls of soup. I gripped Gungnir tighter every time the silver wires of my protection network brightened, flashing discordantly.

“Just in case you didn’t know, your main priority is to protect myself and Spot.” I told the spear. One hand wiped a bit of sweat from my forehead. “Absorb whatever energy makes its way through the wards.”

“You’re telling me to eat?” Gungnir giggled, bouncing between different shades of black and purple. “I can do that all day! I mean, I already do that all day. Can weapons get fat? Humans can and dogs can, but what about me?”

“The bleeding weak lift their throats, set loose the cull.”

The glowing increased in intensity all around as I knelt next to Spot with Gungnir in spear form pointed up.

My weapon screamed. “Bring it on! Gimme that beautiful delicious power!”

Its jubilations started to get on my nerves, but I was glad for a reliable shield. Spot woke up suddenly and looked at me, concern and curiosity twanging our mental link. “It’s ok buddy, you’re safe,” I reassured him while scratching behind his ears. “And, I gave you epic upgrades too!” Spot looked over, spinning around a few times and then nonchalantly began wolfing down his food.

“Alter, shift, change, adapt, transpose, grow.”

As the first segment of the last part of the Ripple rang out in that weird universal voice, Spot jumped up, leaving Gungnir’s sphere of protection, and sprang across the cavern knocking the bowls everywhere. He landed in a crouch, then began howling at the ceiling as the rest of the emotional levels of the Ripple vibrated reality.

“Uh oh,” Gungnir said. “Didn’t see that coming.”

Spot’s body began to contort and twist, growing quickly, and continuing to grow, magically gaining mass until he was the size of a small car. Every silver and gold lined rune in the cavern brightened until it was as if every wall was covered in alien spotlights. My new dog’s fur all over his body turned either a dark brown and black. Spines of bone sprouted along the ridges on his back and then shrank back in, the same happening to the nails on his feet. Plates of bone armor sprouted along the flat areas of his body and then vanished as they shrank back into his fur. This was happening so fast that my shock kept me frozen.

“Uhm, hello?! Wake up, fleshbag!” Gungnir’s voice breaking the slow motion shock I was experiencing. “Might wanna keep that bond going before the Change breaks that!”

Desperately pulling energy from Gungnir, I focused on the now wavering mental connection that I had been weaving between Spot and I and saw that the threads I’d been braiding for the past couple days were slowly stretching and snapping.

“Oh hell no.” I growled walking over to Spot. “My dog, my Sorcery, my bond. MINE!”

The entire series of fluctuations of the Ripple flew by as I spent it completely focused on repairing the bond between Spot and I, sending pure mana down that link. I desperately bent my entire being towards rebraiding more strings to the entire rope and fixing the snapped fibers. I treated the bond like a muscle and my Flesh Sorcery took over, making the entire bond stronger from the stress. A wave of instinct rushed out of Spot, cresting over my mind like a tidal wave hitting a cliff.

[Run, hunt, food, master, scratches, pee, HUNT, food/prey, change, GROW!] His primitive thoughts rebounded off of me as I forged the mental bond even stronger, re-incorporating his own pack instincts into it and using my Flesh Sorcery as the authority.

I am the alpha. I am the master. I direct the hunt.

Spot grew once more as the last of the Ripple faded away with a final blast, bulging to the size of an armored humvee. The bonds once again strained and bulged as the instinct to challenge the pack leader rose up, which I mercilessly squashed with my mind while at the same time using my Flesh Sorcery to take over his hindbrain, forcing his body to submit to me. As his minor Flesh Sorcery, which was gestated from my own, was based in his instinct center, his body would always obey me.

Spot became a part of me. He could not rebel as my Sorcery ran through every enhanced cell in his body. His huge body flopped down and rolled over, exposing his belly. I felt his normal puppy mind come to the fore as the primal wilding effects of the Ripple flowed through and out of him. My dog was huge, not Clifford huge, but big enough to seriously mess a place up.

Relieved at Spot’s shift back to his more normal, playful personality, I let my senses wash through him, examining the changes in his body as Gungnir sent me a mental thumbs up now that the Ripple was mostly over. Chaos had done a better job than I could have, making and melding everything perfectly in his body, enhancing his size and Sorcery, and even his mind. I could see that he could grasp more complex commands; his brain was larger and sparking fast.

I grinned. [Fuckin’ tight.] An intelligent tank sized attack dog equipped with natural bone armor and ridiculous regeneration. [Can’t wait to test this puppy out.]

After spending some more time verifying all of the changes in Spot’s new body, I turned my attention to my current predicament; Spot was too damn big to get out of my hideouts.

Two solid hours later, I finally completed expanding the entire length of my tunnels and the three entrances so that Spot could comfortably leave. “I definitely don’t think you’re an inside dog anymore, buddy.” I joked as I worked. I double checked my measurements because I needed to be able to put him back in the cavern for the last two Ripples.

“My experiments!” I whooped, purposefully sounding like Dexter the boy genius while I salaciously rubbed my hands together. I really wanted to check on my various materials that I had left out for the Change, but I wasn’t taking any chances. My armor’s mana signature sang as my senses rippled through its structure. And Gungnir was rip-roaring and eager to get out there. He kept spouting songs in my head, and as we emerged from the tunnel to greet the new Earth with Spot leading the way, Gungnir kept screaming, “LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR!”