It didn’t take long for them to find a good campsite, and get themselves settled in. They talked about all kinds of things as the sun went down, touching on many of the events that had occurred over the last couple days.

Shadow couldn’t help but feel amazed at how much easier just… chatting was. She was so used to being the silent observer so much of the time. She was so used to not really being able to talk without her journal and ink ready. Even when it was out, she’d need to spend time writing out her question and then show it to someone. It wasn’t so bad when she was getting talked to directly, but it was terrible when she wanted to make a comment or interject her own opinion when it was Annie and Jonas talking.

The back and forth normally moved so quickly that, by the time she could write out whatever she wanted to say, the conversation had moved on. She was normally stuck with gestures whenever they were on the move or having a talk that didn’t specifically involve her.

Now she wasn’t. She’d already noticed the difference just having her wax tablets, but now that she had her darkness spell she could essentially converse in real-time. She could write words out almost as fast as she could think them.

Shadow hadn’t really noticed it while they were traveling, given how much excitement there had been after she’d gotten down the basics of mana manipulation, but now it was finally sinking in.

“—mighty dangerous. It’s a good thing it hit us first.” Jonas finished.

‘Do you think it would’ve hurt a lot of people if it attacked the village?’ Shadow asked, picking up on what Jonas was insinuating.

She was worried. She didn’t want one of the giant wurms to hurt anybody. Tatzelwurms were not supposed to be around this area, and they were all talking about the fight. One had showed up. What might happen if a second one did?

“Perhaps. It would not be good to be stuck in a village without anything to climb, but there are many people there, and plenty of them experienced hunters. They should be able to bring even something so fierce as the wurm down with time.” Annie answered, but looked troubled. “The question is how much damage it would cause before that point, and I’m not really certain of the answer. Walls aren’t so useful against a creature that can move through the ground like water.”

Shadow didn’t really like that answer. She shrunk in on herself a little bit and went over to cuddle up to Annie, giving a worried look in the direction of the village.

Annie glanced over at her as Shadow snuggled up next to her. Annie took a small breath as a look of realization washed over her features.

“Not that that’s likely to happen! I don’t know much about Tatzelwurms, but my understanding is that they are not supposed to be nearly so large as the specimen we fought. Clearly, this one was a very rare instance. Even if more did show up, they should be much more handleable.” She reassured Shadow, rubbing her back.

“And hopefully, with my research, we can figure out what’s causing this odd behavior. Once we know that, I may be able to come up with some way to stop it from happening any more. Possibly.” Annie said, sounding slightly less sure about that last bit.

“Yeah, and I’m sure a normal-sized one could be put down quick, no trouble. Like Annie said, those villagers might be ignorant hicks, but they do know hunting.” Jonas piped in.

Annie frowned at him.

“Jonas. Please. They might not be educated but they know plenty.” Annie scolded.

“Half of them thought Shadow was a demon. That qualifies as ‘ignorant’ in my books.” Jonas asserted, holding his ground.

‘But that was only for a little bit! They seemed to like me alright by the end. I even made friends! I do wish they could all read though. Then I could talk to everybody! And that would help them know more things too!’ Shadow stated, adding her opinion on the subject.

Annie and Jonas shared a look.

Jonas cleared his throat.

“Yeah, uh… friends and literacy are good.” Jonas mumbled, looking a little put out. Then he frowned, locking eyes with Shadow.

“You will want to start demanding some respect from people though. It’s all well and good to be friendly, but there is such a thing as being too nice for your own good.” He claimed, glancing over at Annie.

“Your mom here could learn a thing or two on that subject as well.” He finished.

Annie gave him a slightly exasperated look, like she’d heard similar things from him in the past.

Shadow nodded and the conversation continued. A conversation she was a full, contributing member of. Even though she was casting magic, and writing words, rather than speaking, she had never felt quite so much… a part of the group. Even as the conversation had its ups and downs, that fact alone made sure her mood was never spoiled for long.

She was having a wonderful time.

She found out a weakness of her shadow writing technique, namely the fact that it required contrast. As the sun went down her mom and Uncle Jonas started to have more and more trouble making out her words. Eventually, they’d moved a bedroll so she could write out her words over that, which had helped some, but soon it was just too dark, and they ended the conversation to set up a fire and cook dinner.

It was an unfortunate issue, but not too terrible. Shadow could always make use of a fire or other light source if she needed too. Annie had even offered to use her own magic to help, but Shadow was actually fine letting the conversation end where it had. Being an active participant was actually kind of tiring! It hadn’t helped that they’d been talking about some pretty heavy subjects, even if they were interesting.

She decided to skip eating. She was still decently full, given her way-too-big lunch, and wasn’t particularly in the mood for hunting at the moment. She was happy to laze around camp for once, getting comfy in the warmth the fire provided.

She took the time to practice her mana shaping more. Annie had told her where she was, was just the start, and she would need finer and finer control as the spells got more complicated.

The prospect of more and better spells was certainly motivating. Maybe too motivating. She knew she was close to a breakthrough with the mana slot for her vision, but she honestly just wanted to keep practicing her mana shaping. She was making runes on the ground now, as far out as she could. It wasn’t actually any sort of spell array, but the runes had very precise shapes she could focus on perfecting, which made for good practice.

That was an interesting idea though. Was she capable of casting darkness if the spell array wasn’t right around her wrist? It should be possible, she just needed to be able to shape the mana well enough.

A few minutes of testing later showed she could indeed cast darkness with the spell array hovering in the air a few inches in front of her paw, rather than around her wrist. It was a close thing, even this small distance degrading the preciseness of the array almost to the point of failure, but it had worked!

She looked at her construct with fascination, watching the thick cord of mana linking herself to the array flowing as she powered it. She was just making a big ball of darkness off to the side because she couldn’t really spare the concentration to make anything fancier. Normally, the mana powering the array wasn’t really visible outside of the array itself, what with it pushed right up against her scales, but with it hanging out in the air like this she could see her mana as the spell drew it in.

She started to mess with it. Seeing that visible flow of dark mana made her curious about mana use. The spell activation gave her an instinctual feel for just how much mana she needed to feed into the spell to keep it working while she used it, but it wasn’t like she had to use that much.

The effects of changing how much mana she fed it were interesting.

Less mana surprisingly didn’t lead to immediate failure, instead just causing the effect to be less complete and… harder to control? It was more like it was causing a darkening of the area rather than a spherical lack of any light.

More mana had lead to the runes bleeding that extra mana everywhere, which seemed like a pretty reasonable outcome to her. The dark substance billowed around and pooled. The spell worked just as well as it had before, aside from the increase in the amount of mana she was using. Even this straightforward effect ended up being interesting as well. If she poured in enough extra mana, the spell array wasn’t even visible anymore. The whole thing just blended in with the pool of shapeless mana around it.

It was almost like she wasn’t even casting a spell, as far as her eyes were concerned. It looked like she was just pushing a bunch of mana around. The only thing making it obvious was the big ball of darkness still hanging in the air.

It was all really interesting. She felt a thrill of excitement at the prospect of learning more.

But for now, she stopped her spellcasting. She was pretty tired, despite the fact that she normally wouldn’t feel like sleeping by this point. She took a moment to stretch before she got up, and walked over to her new bedroll and cover. That had been another thing that her humans had grabbed while they were in the village. She had a place to sleep all her own now.

She thought for a moment, and then looked over at Annie. Her mom was already tucked in for the night, and Jonas was taking first watch.

Looking back down at her bedroll, she made her decision, quietly dragging it over next to her mom, doing her best not to wake her up. She paused for a second when Jonas looked over at her, but he just smirked and went back to watching the woods. She continued her dragging.

She might have her own place to sleep, but… she still liked being close. Especially after all that had happened in the last couple days. She got into her nightclothes (which was really just folding up her outfit, but leaving on her underwear. She didn’t have a shift like Annie yet, although her mom had promised to get her one in the next town) and curled up on her bedroll… mostly.

She did lightly press her back up against her mom’s, the contact giving her a warm, safe feeling inside. She was peacefully asleep a few minutes later.