Just like a dryad stepping into her tree. I’ve just been deepening my claim on our home.”Īvilla took a step back into the cabinets that lined the wall behind her, and vanished.

Have you started animating the utensils or something?” “I think you were already there, honeydew,” Cerise told her.

Do you realize how precious an ingredient like that is for me? An unlimited supply of even one essence will make me the most powerful hearth witch in Europe.” She stared at me incredulously for a moment. So we figured I’ll just make you a bottle of the stuff that refills itself automatically, and then you can make us as many wolfen as we want.” I just couldn’t quite make the jump from creating felwolf essence to transforming people safely. “My mana sorcery is good enough for that. I suppose I could serve feasts to make more wolfen now and then, if you can supply me with enough essence. Use it in a sauce over red meat, or as seasoning for a hearty stew. “There’s a bit of an aftertaste, but I can fix that. “Strong, but not unpleasant,” she declared. Then she sniffed it like a wine snob sampling some exotic vintage, and tasted a tiny sip. She carefully measured out a few drops of liquid, and diluted it with a cup of milk. “Oh, so it’s concentrated? That might work, then. “A teaspoon of that stuff is about what you’d get from a felwolf heart with your normal ritual.” The next morning we pooled our efforts to render a sample of felwolf essence into physical form, and then headed down to the kitchen.Īvilla examined the vial full of dark, syrupy liquid dubiously. It was Cerise who finally pointed out that we already had a way to bypass that problem. People already thought I was an evil wizard. If I wanted to duplicate the enchantment that made the wolfen I’d have to start by turning some poor sap into a miniature felwolf, and then spend a few months experimenting on him. My flesh sorcery was good at moving atoms around, but not so great at inventing new forms of innate magic. Thanks to my mana sorcery it was easy enough to figure out what was in the sample, but the important parts were more mystical than biological. So I sent for a couple of wolfen volunteers, and settled in to spend an evening comparing their physiology to the magic in Cerise’s sample. Cerise had helpfully bent her power-stealing abilities to the task of collecting a sample of felwolf magic, which we’d picked up a bit over a week ago while we were testing out our new flight abilities. Originally I’d hoped that my flesh sorcery would be up to the job, provided I could get a decent look at the magic involved. Making more wolfen turned out to be a tricky problem.

Extermination by E. William Brown