I wake up alone in the early morning, slowly pulling the dirty blanket off of me and I sit up from the platform and I take a moment to just to try to wake myself up before I start today's journey.

Yesterday was incredible, I would have never had believed it had happened at all if I didn't vividly remember it and I could feel the content spirits of the wolves in my newly discovered soul space. Riding on the back of a wolf bigger than me standing up and with glowing fiery fur surrounding its entire ethereal body was like a dream come true. Or it would be if I wasn't dehydrated and my throat felt like sandpaper constantly.

“I really need water…” I moaned out loud, looking up at the sky before I got to my knees and started getting all my stuff together before I climbed down the tree trunk and onto the dark forest floor.

‘Now, I suppose it's time to release the wolves.’ I thought to myself with a chuckle as I felt the eagerness of my pack. They really liked coming out and stretch their legs in the forest, even to just give me a ride for a bit. Then with that thought and the thought of releasing the spirits from my soul space growing stronger, I let out the wolves.

Just like the previous day, it was absolutely incredible to see. The spectral wolves jumping from my chest and leaping into existence to surround me. I did notice something that I didn't recall noticing before however, as when they leaped from my soul space I could see that their body started as a blue glowing mass of energy particles, instead of the usual physical form, and their body turned into the physical after a second. ‘I wonder if they can turn back into the energy form to avoid things…’ I wondered, thinking of how useful that ability was shown to be in movies and books.

‘Ah well, no point in testing that now… I need to get going. They seemed to know where we could find water yesterday.’ I thought again, stamping out the unnecessary thought from my mind to concentrate on the here and now again.

My pack surrounded me in the small gaps between the shadowy tree trunks around us, leaves crunching under their paws as they padded around me in a defensive circle with Alpha by my side. Without words, I sent a mental message to my pack and we started getting ready. Alpha, after turning to what he communicated as being the right way, lay down for me to climb onto his back which I proceeded to do, though awkwardly from a severe lack of experience, and the other four wolves started to walk around us as they got ready to run.

Then we were off, Alpha stood up quickly looking as if I wasn't even there and the extra weight was nothing, but from our bond I could feel that he was just putting up a strong front. Alpha was quite a proud wolf afterall, and he couldn't be seen acting weak in front of his pack.

Smiling at Alpha I straightened my back and leaned forwards just a bit to keep my weight distributed a little, feeling out what the best position would be to ride my proud mount and then patting Alpha’s side along with a mental message to let him know I am ready before we continued our journey for a hopefully nearby water source.

We spent at least a few hours riding to the unseen goal my pack was guiding me too. The pack was moving fast, but I could feel that while in their physical form they might be stronger and more endurant than they really had any right to be, they were getting tired. So we took a break that was much needed for everybody, for me to eat and watch out for anything unusual and for the pack to head back into the soul space for a rest from their physical form.

We had stopped in a circle of trees that was a little bit more open than anything I saw for the last few minutes and started pulling off the cumbersome immediate supplies and I started to pull out a bundle of meat out and open it up, looking at the bright red meat with mild disgust at eating raw meat, when a thought struck me. ‘Hey, Alpha, do you think you are able to cook up this meat with your fire stuff a little bit?’ I asked the wolf, cringing a little at myself for my borderline cruel behaviour. I mean, I was asking him to cook either his body or one of the packs for me to eat after all…

Alpha seemed to pick up on my feelings however and was quick to send a comforting feeling to me, emotionally reassuring me that he felt there was nothing wrong about it. “It is the way of life.” he seemed to say to me, “I am proud that my physical body is being used by yourself and not the unworthy scum of the earth.”

I chuckled a bit at Alpha, but I was quickly reminded of my initial question when I could feel a message from Alpha that I couldn't quite understand, then I could feel the fire being released into my veins for the second time ever.

Like when Alpha had healed my wounds, it was an unusual experience but not uncomfortable. An unseen energy flowing through my body like blood, traveling from my chest to my hand, the one holding the meat. This time, the energy was different however. I could feel it was still the same, but at the same time it felt… almost like it had a different intent… shaping it into something distinctly different.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Where the healing energy had felt almost how you would feel like sitting by a campfire with smores, this energy was more… brutal in a way. No, brutal was not the correct word. It felt more… Strong. Deadly. The energy seemed to more embody the aspect of the fires' heat and burning power then its life giving version that healed me before. Not that it hurt me, but it still made that impression all the same.

Then it emerged from my hand, coating it like the fire on Alphas fur covered him. It was hot, I could feel it, but it was like the fire couldn't reach my bare skin, despite the fact that that is where it came from. The flame coated my hand and I inspected it closely, watching it curl and flicker just over the surface of my skin and then I felt a searing heat coming from my palm. Coming from the meat.

It was sizzling. “Gah!” I shouted and promptly dropped the piece of meat onto the pile of meat beside me, watching as the hot fat started dripping down into it. I looked at my hand quickly, watching as the fire burned off the extremely hot liquid off of me. “Right…” I said slowly, watching the fire on my hand heal the burns after a few seconds of Alpha sending the healing flame through me along with the steady stream of the defensive flame that he was sending too.

“Well, looks like I need to set up a spit…” I murmured to myself, realizing my mistake of holding the meat while it cooked. “This break might be longer than I thought…” I moaned to myself as I looked around for two good sticks that could hold up the chunk of meat and predictably not seeing anything immediately useful.

I stood up from my crouching position and cut off the flow of fire to my hand without really thinking too much about it before I started scavenging for some branches that I could use for a spit’s base, returning to my little camp after about three minutes of looking around with the appropriately shaped sticks. I then used my bone knife to give them a point and stabbed them deep into the earth before spearing the chunk of meat I had before and putting it on the wooden spit.

Then I called up Alphas fire with a mental push, bringing the fire to my hand with the bare minimum mental effort. When I did this, I watched and felt the fire rising from my chest and into the air above my right hand which I placed facing the wolf meat from above to avoid the fat falling onto my hand. “Wait…” I paused for a second, my brain catching up to my actions, “How the heck did I just do that?” I wondered, looking at the fire that I had just called to my hand.

“Alpha? Did you do that or was that me?” I asked my wolf friend hesitantly. Alpha responded after a moment, almost surprised at my question, telling me that he “let me use his flame” or something along those lines… It's hard to tell how exactly emotions and mental messages translate to English.

“But how did I do that?!” I was shocked at his response. What I received from Alpha however was what felt like the mental and emotional equivalent to a shrug and a mental prod for me to get eating. I sighed at my circumstance again and I started cooking up the meat for a good lunch while shoving away the mental questions that have started driving me crazy.

It was actually quite easy to cook up the meat with the meat on the spit and the heat of the flame was actually really good for cooking, though I was unsure if that was just the normal way it was or if it was responding to my intent in some way. Its magic flame. Who knows?

I spent the next few minutes cooking up the meat slowly turning the spit around with my left hand while my right hand hovered over the hunk of meat to cook it up as evenly as possible.

The minutes passed quickly though and I was eating the nicely cooked meat before too long, resting my head against the tree and thinking about my experience with the weird flames that Alpha, and now me, seemed to be able to produce at will.

“Magic is real after all, huh?” I said in wonder, looking at the hand I had used to cook the meat I was eating, enjoying the change from how the raw meat tasted. My standards might be at an all time low, but that didn't mean that with every bite of the warm slice of heaven I enjoyed it any less then I would if I was eating the fruit of life itself.

After the best meal I have had in… Well I honestly couldn't think of anything better than this chunk of magic meat ever, and even if I did I wouldnet know how long it's been sense then anyway, it was hard to keep track of the days when I was in that damned cell. Anyway, I sat at the base of the tree for a little longer, drinking in the refreshing feeling of eating something edible for the first time since I had been brought through the portal.

Feeling the richness of the forest air, feeling the softness of the dirt, leaves and small plants under me and all the while listening to the silence of the dark forest around me, only broken by the russell of leaves from high up in the treetops. ‘Huh, that's some weirdly sounding leaves…’ I thought idly, ‘It almost sounds like a little waterfall.’

Then I sat up, waking up from my little rest and kicking my brain into action while listening to the forest around me. “That's not leaves…” I whispered softly, excitement growing, “There is water nearby!” I all but shouted out as I turned to the direction I could hear the flow of water from, looking into the distance and I leaped to my feet and started packing up.

It's about time I found something to drink after all.