Exhilaration is quickly followed by something else.

“Ow!” I exclaim as the fire singes the top layer of my skin. Losing control of the mana in my surprise, I shout again as the fire quickly consumes all of it in a single burst, the flame growing to double its length and then winking out just as quickly after.

My finger is red and already starting to blister, so I quickly send my Flesh magic into the area to soothe and heal. I’m a little disappointed that I don’t feel the nagging sense of a notification waiting for me – have I not acquired Fire-Shaping or something similar to that yet? I check just in case I’ve got a message without the sense of it being there, but my fears are confirmed when I see the lack of notification.

As I stare sightlessly at my finger, I hear a scrabble of claws and see Bastet coming running, her ears pinned back and fangs bared. When she sees I’m alone and unharmed, she slows and then pads over to me. Her lips lowering over her teeth, she sniffs at me, a faint hint of disapproval coming over the Bond.

What did you do? I smell fire and burning. I’m a bit shame-faced that she can so quickly detect what I did to myself despite already healing the obvious injury.

“Nothing serious. I’m just trying to learn how to use fire.” Then a thought suddenly occurs to me as I look at her. Didn’t she just gain the ability to breathe fire from her Evolution? “Actually, could you help me with something?” She cocks her head to one side.

Perhaps. What?

“I’d like to watch you breathe fire, see what you’re doing differently from me,” I tell her. “Is that OK?” She casts a dubious look around the cave.

Not in here.

“No, I meant outside.”

Yes. Now? About to answer, I hesitate, my own glance around the cave revealing that I’m in the middle of another project right now.

“Not now. But when I’ve finished working on my armour for the day?”

I’ll be outside, she acknowledges with a wave of agreement over the Bond. Turning, she starts trotting out. Try not to hurt yourself again, she admonishes with a flick of her tail just as she clicks through the entrance way – unlike River and me, she doesn’t have the slightest difficulty due to being a little shorter than the cave mouth itself.

“Mother cat,” I chuckle to myself at her maternal scolding. Honestly, it kind of feels nice. Especially since she doesn’t try to stop me from doing anything, just tells me to be more careful if I hurt myself while doing it. And calls me out if it seems like it’s a bad idea all round.

I wonder what I’ll see when I watch her breathing fire. Maybe I should touch her at the same time, try to see what’s actually happening in her body. Actually, it would also be a good time to find out if I can replenish her mana pool from my own. After all, she’s only got a hundred and fifty units of it. Although I use my mana for a lot more than she does, it could be useful to know if I can send mana to her just as easily as I can draw it from her.

Thinking about it, it would be pretty awesome if we could have something of a communal mana pool – if each of us could draw from the others at need. River, for example, doesn’t have any use for his mana pool at present, nor do Fenrir or Sirocco. The kiinas have their airblade attacks which use a bit of mana each time.

If those without mana-consuming abilities could offer mana to those needing it, that could potentially strengthen the whole group….

But before I can go and explore those ideas, I really need to finish this project. Having armour will make a big difference to my survivability, and I’m so close to being done. Checking the hide, I realise that I’ve spent so long working out how to do fire magic, that the smoking process is pretty much done.

Detaching the hide bag from the cross-piece, I find it’s fairly easy to find the connection between the paranax hide and the nere’s – since I wasn’t trying to make the join seamless, it’s only attached by a few fibres. These are easily severed, the paranax hide dropping to the floor.

The nere hide is heavy, the weight of the tar from the smoke adding to what had already been a hefty burden. Still, with my new Strength attribute, it’s no real challenge. It may slow me down and fatigue me a bit when I’m travelling with it on my body, but I don’t mind that too much – the added protection will be worth it.

Now, two important points to cover: first, can I form it into armour just with magic; second, can I tan a hide from scratch just with magic too?

But neither of those need to be done in here and between a smoky cave and the outdoors, I’ll pick the outdoors. Even if, when I exit the cave, I realise that it’s suddenly got cloudy, the sun which had been present when I went in to smoke my hide now hidden.

Maybe it’ll come out again later, I say to myself hopefully. It would be a pity if I’d lost the best part of the day while stuck inside.

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For now, though, I settle down against the wall with the nere hide on my lap. Then, after shivering a bit, I realise that it’s colder than I’d thought, going to get my jacket from my ‘bed’ inside before continuing.

Topping up the hide with my mana doesn’t take long and only uses a fraction of my mana pool. Sending my mind into the hide, I register the new changes. Interestingly, I can’t affect the new coating of the hide at all. Is it because it’s a derivative from plants rather than flesh? But I was able to affect the potions – though, to be fair, only after the plants had already interacted with the venom.

I have an immediate suspicion that I won’t be able to replicate the effects of smoking with my magic – it’s more of a coating than something that’s affected the nature of the flesh. The brain oils were different, so perhaps I’ll be able to skip some of the tanning process, but I now doubt I’ll be able to tan from scratch to finish solely with magic.

On the positive side, manipulating the flesh is still easy enough, though I do run into a snag when I try to extend the hide – the coating doesn’t extend with it.

Oh well, I say to myself as I try unsuccessfully to find a way to transfer the smoke coating along with the hide. Looks like I’ll only be able to work with what I’ve got here.

Lesson learned: finalise the design of my hide armour before smoking. At least I have a lot of hide here.

I create very rudimentary armour with a minimum of effort. First of all, I split the ‘bag’ back into a single length of almost rectangular hide. Next, I make a hole for my neck, briefly splitting and then rejoining flesh so it’s tucked snuggly against my throat. In an effort to gain a little more protection as well as reduce chafing, I shift the hide which needs to be removed for my neck to have space upwards at an angle so it works as a sort of gorget. It only covers a few centimetres of my neck, but something is better than nothing.

Further splitting the hide in some strategic places, I end up with armour around my upper arms and wrapping around my torso and upper legs. I have to leave some slits in certain places so that I can move easily – there’s a reason why armour tends to be much thinner around joints. It does leave me a little vulnerable when I extend my arms upwards or at certain angles, but hopefully that won’t be my undoing.

At least my sides are pretty well protected: the armour is wrapped in a double layer so that I don’t waste the fabric. Something coming at me from below is still going to cause me issues – I don’t have anything between my legs. What I have done, though, is create a kind of ‘skirt’ that flaps before and behind me ending just below my hips. Hopefully that will be enough to protect my most vulnerable inner thigh arteries from attacks from the front, though.

I jump around a bit, testing my range of movement and making a few minor changes as I feel things shift. Suddenly having an idea, I pour mana into the front and back of my armour, thickening the breast and back plate. When I compare this to the rudimentary protection I tied around myself a few weeks ago, I marvel at how far I’ve come.

Not that it hasn’t taken its time – I really do hope that I can do some tanning with magic otherwise outfitting myself in both clothing and armour is going to take forever. Not to mention replacing my boots: my dress shoes are getting to be practically unusable.

Well, maybe that can be my next task: making boots which cover the rest of my legs as armour in and of themselves.

Actually… I think to myself, hit by a sudden wave of inspiration. I hurry back into the cave and grab a couple of things I’d left behind next to the still-smouldering fire.

Sitting back down on the ground, I start pouring mana into the paranax hide I’d picked up. It’s not particularly armoured, but with how much I’ve been able to affect the nere hide, I have a feeling that I’ll be able to change that.

It’s not tanned either, but it has been smoked along with the nere hide, though my frequent dunks of it into water probably haven’t done it any favours.

It takes a while to fully saturate the paranax hide, but my new ability to drop into Heavy Meditation and significantly increase my mana regeneration makes it possible in not too long a time.

The sun is reaching its zenith overhead when I succeed. I don’t care so much about this hide, so if I mess it up, it’s not the end of the world. With one hand touching the off-cut of nere hide, and the other touching the paranax skin, I do my best to treat the fibres within the paranax hide as in the nere hide.

Feeling that something’s missing, I have a brainwave and take my project over to the tanning basin. Dipping one corner of the nere hide in the solution, the oils of which have risen to the top, I soon feel the difference.

The oily sheen on the top of the water is sucked into the paranax hide like it’s a sponge, my magic guiding it to saturate the fibres. A process that would usually take hours of absorption and then hours of drying is accomplished in less than one.

It’s not that it’s effortless – emptying my mana pool still gives me a headache and makes me feel nauseous and weak. But it’s a lot quicker than doing it the way I did the nere hide before.

In the end, I have a length of thin hide which isn’t as supple as my armour, but will probably become so with a bit of wear. A bit more effort and imagination and I’m soon standing in two new leather boots. Interestingly, it’s a lot easier to shape the paranax hide compared to the nere one. I don’t know if that’s because I did more magically to it, or because it’s a thinner hide to begin with. Or because it’s from a weaker creature – it could be that too.

The soles are very thin, so I send magic to change that, thickening the sole so the stones beneath my feet are now barely detectable. The boots reach just above my knee and, while a bit stiff, are flexible enough that I can move in them fine. I commit a bit more magic to thickening the areas which don’t need to bend, then grin as I grab a spear from my Inventory and start practising with it.

Satisfied with my new creations, I walk towards where Bastet is playing with the cubs – well, juvenile raptorcats now, I suppose. She seems to be teaching them pouncing technique, demonstrating, then letting them leap at her from the bushes. Now I know why Trouble thought it would be a good idea to jump at me the other day.

“Alright, Bastet,” I start, then freeze. She does exactly the same as me, and we both turn in unison to face the forest.

Something’s wrong. A sense of unease ripples through me and I close my eyes to drop into my Core space.

The connections to my Bound who are not present are jangling with alarm. They’re too far away for me to tell what’s happened, though I sense that they are closing the distance between us.

“Something’s happened with the hunt,” I say to Bastet, my voice tight, as soon as I exit my Core space. She sends a grim sense of agreement.