Touch of Fate

[Alright, you've done this before, surely you can do so again.] Mike thought as he considered how to go about correcting Selene's transformation. He tried to recall exactly how he did it last time, but the only thing that came back to him was a vague impression of just throwing mana at the situation to see if it worked.

He would need to approach this in a more methodical manner this time, but first he would need to subdue the angry mass of brown-furred muscle.

Walking forward, he began dealing lethal attacks to any of the milling combatants that got too close. As he approached, he realized what had been bugging him about the situation since he'd arrived.

[Now that I think about it, isn't she bigger than last time?]

The vargulf was now towering over the other vampires. While he remembered her being fairly large, like others of her kind, she now stood nearly three meters in height and appeared to have gained a good amount of muscle as well. In fact, if it wasn't for her obvious bat-like features, he could have easily mistaken her for a bear standing on its hind legs.

[Aberth did say that he would have a larger effect on her than others in the vicinity, but I didn't think it would have a physical effect.]

Dismissing the thought, he channelled his mana and dispatched most of Selene's attackers with a few well-placed fireballs. The survivors turned on him and charged, evidently too blood-crazed to realize that doing so was suicidal, and not just because they were attacking a far superior opponent.

The vargulf took advantage of this distraction by snagging one of the running vampires with a twisted wing-like foreleg. The victim, an elegantly dressed man, struggled to break out of Selene's grip, but could only snarl helplessly as he was dragged up to her mouth.

With a sickening crunch, the vargulf bit down on the vampire's head before wrenching her neck to one side, messily decapitating him. Snarling, she spit out the offending appendage and allowed the rest of her victim's body to collapse bonelessly.

Mike watched the grisly sight while dispatching the other attackers. Soon he was left facing the enraged crazed vargulf alone.

"I don't know if you are still in there, but I've come to help." He told the beast in as reassuring a voice as he could manage. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to help as he quickly found himself dodging backwards to avoid her snapping jaws.

"Come on! You remember me, don't you?" He tried again, hoping to see some sign of intelligence in the vargulf's dark red eyes. "It's me, Mike. I know I'm a little late, but I'm here to save you."

This time he had to slide to the right in response to her full-bodied tackling attempt.

"Alright, I tried doing this the nice way, so don't blame me if this hurts." He grumbled while channeling his mana.

As the vargulf turned to launch another attack, tendrils of muddy water began wrapping themselves around her, binding her movements. At first, she was able to break free of the restraints, but Mike just kept adding more mud until she was trapped in a dark brown sphere nearly four meters in diameter. So large in fact that her head, which he intentionally left outside of the makeshift prison, was nearly scraping against the ceiling.

He used a bit of his focus to solidify the mud, creating a cement-like prison around the vargulf. After spending a few moments watching the angry creature try to break free again, he finally relaxed.

[This is definitely going in my bag of tricks.] He thought to himself before turning his thoughts to the task at hand.

Flying up to the vargulf's head, he carefully laid one hand on the back of her neck, as far away from the angrily snapping teeth as he could manage. Once he'd firmly established a connection, he began channeling Life Magic into the trapped creature.

He felt the wave of mana snag slightly with something in her head, and the vargulf's frantic thrashing quieted down. Based on her reaction, he assumed that he'd managed to remove the condition that was causing her to go berserk. However, the magic continued to flow through her with no other obvious effect.

[What the hell? Why is it so different from last time?]

Mike recalled that the vargulf's body had actively resisted the Healing Magic, which had given him the means of forcing the issue. Now however, it was like he couldn't gain any traction. The mana was there, surging through her body, but he couldn't find any abnormality to fix.

[Does this mean that I can't do it with Life Magic? Do I need to try and make another familiar bond?]

Redoubling his efforts, he tried investing his mana into her tissues directly, searching for a means of returning her to her original form. With that deep of a connection, he could tell that forcing her to change shape was technically possible, but the mana requirements would be incredibly steep. Even then, it would be difficult to control the process. So difficult in fact, that he was convinced it would be beyond his current abilities to achieve.

[This doesn't quite seem like the same method I used the first time. I'm fairly certain the System was involved in correcting the process, making it possible at all. The fact that her race changed according to Appraise was an indicator of that. On the other hand, this method seems to be more direct. In fact, I think this would be a bit like extensive plastic surgery. She would likely regain her sanity and general human shape, but her race would remain the same in the eyes of the System. I wonder if that wouldn't cause some kind of error.]

He considered a few potential long term effects for using this method, before ultimately foregoing it. There were simply too many potential complications. It would be like trying to turn a gorilla into a human by rebuilding it from a cellular level while leaving its DNA unaffected. He didn't know what that would mean for Selene after the transformation, but he assumed that it wouldn't be good.

What he really needed to do was figure out how he managed to form a familiar bond with her in the first place. Working off a hunch, he decided to try focusing on the vargulf's soul with Life Magic. He relied on his limited experience in dealing with his inner demon to make the connection work. It took some effort, and a great deal more mana than he would like, but he was able to grasp the condition of Selene's spirit.

As the information trickled into his mind, he began to get a mental picture of an amorphous mass of a silvery material. It pulsed and swayed to some rhythm that he couldn't hear, taking on different shapes. The movement could almost be mistaken for a kind of dancing, if it wasn't for the obvious injury it had sustained.

A gaping hole had formed near its center, jagged edges surrounding the resulting space. Small threads of the silvery material were gradually separating from the wound, floating away and dispersing into minute particles before disappearing entirely.

Mike felt a pang of guilt as he explored the extent of the damage. He wasn't sure what a soul injury would be like, but he could imagine the kind of pain she must have suffered to leave this large of a wound.

[Let's see, according to the description for Life Magic, I should be able to heal this somehow. Do I just inject mana until she's fixed?]

Lacking any better idea, he tried doing just that. At first it didn't seem like he was making any progress, but after a few seconds, he thought he felt the injury shrink a bit. Redoubling his efforts, he infused even more mana in the vargulf's soul.

Although it took more of his reserves than he would have liked, he nevertheless succeeded in repairing the damage, leaving Selene's spirit intact. Once he was certain of the result, he took a moment to relax, releasing a breath he didn't know he was holding.

Not wasting any time, he immediately set about trying to reestablish the familiar bond. While operating mostly by instinct, Mike attempted to simply connect his soul with the vargulf in a manner that felt vaguely similar to the bond he currently had with Audra. Surprisingly, the process proved relatively easy, with a nebulous cord of immaterial soul-stuff affixing to the recently healed portion of Selene's spirit.

A wave of thoughts pulsed forth from the connection, flooding his mind with primal hunger and fear. It was annoying, but he managed to clamp down on the feelings and concentrated on the most delicate part of the whole process. Leveraging his reforged bond, he set about altering the vargulf on a fundamental level.

His captive screeched in agony as the Life Magic seized her and began warping her form. Mike had to concentrate to keep the sheer complexity of the task from overwhelming him, but after several minutes of intense labor, he felt the change take hold.

There was a flash of light as excess mana was released between the two of them. Once his vision had recovered from the sudden brightness, he saw a familiar face.

"Boss?" Selene asked, exhaustion dripping from her voice. "Where...what's going…what's all this?...Why am I trapped in a giant ball?"

Mike shattered her stone bindings and helped guide her to a sitting position on the floor. "It's alright. There's a lot that I have to-"

Responding to a sudden burst of hostility, he managed to barely dodge a crackling line of energy that sliced through the air with lethal intent. Operating entirely off instinct, he summoned a cloud of steam, grabbed hold of Selene, and used a combination of Earth and Air Magic to hurriedly fling the both of them to the other side of the room.

The movement was just in time, as the section of the chamber they were previously standing in became a beehive as deadly energy rained on the location.

Activating his stealth skill, he slid further into the shadows, hoping to avoid detection while he determined the origin of the attack. Thankfully, he didn't have to wait long.

"Ha! You missed! So much for your fabled accuracy." A girl's voice called out from somewhere above them.

An annoyed man's voice answered. "As I said previously, Tier 4s require more than a casual ambush to defeat. They usually have some detection skills that make my task difficult. Based on his responses, his version seems to function off killing intent or something similar."

"Whatever, you are just trying to make excuses." The girl shot back, amusement clear in her voice. "The truth of the matter is that you missed despite waiting until he'd nearly exhausted his mana. What was it? 'He'll be most vulnerable at the cusp of victory.' Right?"

Mike tried to use the sound of their voices to pinpoint their locations, but they echoed strangely in the steam filled chamber. To make matters worse, it seemed his Aerosense couldn't detect them for some reason. Deciding that his low mana reserves, the presence of a greatly weakened Selene, and his complete lack of information meant he was at a serious disadvantage in the current circumstances, he planned on making a getaway at the first opportunity. However, he couldn't risk making any big moves until he knew where the pair were.

While this meant he needed to bide his time, he nevertheless used it to make a few preparations.

"Under normal circumstances, that initial burst would have been enough to render him temporarily immobile. He'd heal quickly, but we would have had a chance to take him down while he was helpless. However, I did not plan for intent based detection skills. They are frankly rare, even among Tier 4s."

The girl snickered. "Excuses. Well, that means it's my turn, right? Let's see how he handles this."

For a moment, there was silence, and then Mike sensed something small descending from above. He could tell that the object was cylindrical in shape, and quite heavy based on the way that it completely resisted the subtle air currents in the room. Despite the oddities, it seemed somewhat familiar to him, triggering a memory deep within him.

It almost felt like a bom…

With less than a second to spare, he threw his mana into the stone around them, pulling it into a shielding wall as the world turned white.