Even if she only had three useless spells, she could at least force enough mana into them that each cast would be enough to defend herself with, if only for a second or two.

Despite how uncomfortable the sensation was, she continued scrounging up bits of her mana, and forcing it from her navel, up to the exit point in her palm, before splitting the stream into the five smaller exit points of her fingers, the pressure mounting with each beat of her heart. She pushed it away with all her strength, yet kept the exit points firmly shut, even when the sensation became just shy of painful.

Like clenching her lips shut while blowing with all her strength.

And then she forced the mana back, and down.

Her fingers suffered from the same issue that her legs had. Most creatures used mana circuits for their magic, which were connected to their physical self to some degree, and thus, the circuits of her fingers felt like moving mana through a pipe that was gnawed on, jagged and full of bumps.

Yet that did little besides interrupt the smoothness of the flow, and she was not focusing on the flow whatsoever.

In fact, she decided to push harder, grabbing trickles and drops of her mana and moving them out of her core to pool at her fingertips. Then she let her core generate more mana, until she was nearly full again, and she repeated the process, over and over and over and over and over and over again until her hand, from the tips of her fingers to her wrist felt like it was about to explode.

The mana no longer felt like the nigh imperceptible caress of a ghost phasing through her limbs. It felt like a physical force, like her blood was trying to force itself into the open air, her flesh an overstuffed balloon begging to pop, despite there being no tangible effect on her hand.

The thought of casting [Sparkburst] with all the mana trapped in her hand tickled at her mind, but the gloriousness of that sight would be entirely lost on someone without eyes. Plus, the dog would probably not appreciate the racket.

She added more, and she felt her circuits strain painfully, so she was forced to relax her mental blockade of the exit points, letting just a bit of mana bleed out of her palm and dissipate into the air.

She felt the Eye’s gifts gather in the back of her mind like an errant thought she had stored to be turned over in her mind at a later date, likely some Level-ups in [Mana Manipulation] or whatnot, so she ignored them, keeping the exercise going, feeling her heart ease with every passing minute.

If all she could do in terms of offense was to throw [Sparkburst], then she would make sure to pour enough mana into the spell to rend flesh from bone.

Not that she was planning on attacking the canine, not unless it suddenly decided to eat her. But when blind and crippled, that added sense of safety was something she dearly craved.

She let a bit more mana slowly drain out of her palm, making sure to keep the amount of mana trapped inside her hand at a constant, not increasing it nor lowering it.

She didn’t know if what she was doing was even a good thing. It might strain her circuits too much. It might give her mana fever. It might be doing next to nothing, or crushing her veins.

The mana might even explode in her hand and make her an amputee, like the horror stories she was told of early mages trying to form magical theory.

But if all that she had left was her magic, she might as well sacrifice a hand to experiment. Worst case scenario, she blew her hand up and died of blood loss.

Not the worst way to go, not by a long shot.

The temptation to release all that mana, concentrated into a [Haste] spell just to see how it would feel like, was immense. And with impulsiveness borne of having recently felt death's hand around her throat, she did exactly that.

And her world exploded.

She might have gotten a plus five in Perception or a plus twenty, she had no idea.

What she did know was that she felt everything. Every individual hair on her body, every fold of skin, every single one of the dozens and dozens of different, faint scents she couldn’t discern the name of, she felt the brush of the humid air on her skin like the caress of a hand, the air moving down her throat and into her lungs as she gasped, the faintest of vibrations in the metal underneath her body, she heard the muted, distorted whispers of conversation from gods knew how far away.

But most importantly, she felt the immaterial little light in her chest that fed her core with mana, she felt said mana saturate itself in the essence of her soul and fill her circuits. She scrounged up as much of it as she could out of her abused core, and simply expelled it from her palm, directionless and meaningless.

And she saw it, not with something as restrictive as her eyes, but with her mind. A colorless energy, more of a tactile sensation, washing over the iron planks to her left as they descended. It felt as if she was reaching forth with a thousand and one half-numbed hands, caressing every inch of the things her mana washed over, the sensation growing fainter and fainter by the millisecond, until it disappeared entirely just two seconds later.

She could only revel in the amazing sensation of feeling everything through a surge of mana, even if she had no more left to experiment with what high Perception could do. But as all good things tend to do, [Haste] eventually ended, the sensations abruptly fading and she sighed in wistfulness, deciding to revisit her magical theory while her abused core recovered.

The gestures for casting magic were made by excreting stable lines of mana in the air out of one’s fingertips, and drawing three dimensional magic runes. And once someone knew or figured out how to cast a spell, the Eye recognized it, and simplified the process, turning it into nothing but a thought that formed the spell and manifested it with mana.

After spending most of her money to buy a book about the basics of magical theory, and then spending the rest and going a bit into debt so she could buy the [Illumina] and [Haste] spell books, she thought she understood magic enough to at least try and emulate what others did, and with enough knowledge in cancellation gestures to not blow herself up.

Yet, after watching a street performer for three hours straight, she’d only managed a tiny burst of sparks, even with her natural magical talent.

That had been both a sobering experience and a hard learned lesson.

So she had decided to practise. And it wasn't enough.

Now, she had to work harder or die. Those were the only options she had.

She formed the rune that gave her [Sparkburst], then charged it with just the tiniest hint of mana before using the cancellation runes to dissipate the spell. If she ever got good enough at mana control, she might be able to just manually drag the mana out of the runes, but for now, she used the traditional way, like all regular mages did.

The sound of steps nearing registered far too late in her overfocused mind, and she stiffened, feeling the light vibrations of the dog’s paws hitting the metal just a couple steps above. Yet, it said nothing, did nothing, and thus she continued her exercise, trying not to be too sudden with her movements. Just reaching to it's neck had made it extremely upset, and she had no idea if the beast had [Mana Perception], so she made sure to move her Mana slowly.

The canine silently stood to her right, its calm, even breathing somehow soothing to her battered mind. As pathetic as it sounded, she couldn’t help but latch onto its presence, an unbearable sense of loneliness leaving her starved for something or someone, anyone, to just be there.

At least if the dog betrayed her measly, misplaced trust, it wouldn’t do so with a friendly smile and honeyed lies. Animals and monsters were honest that way.

Eventually, after an hour or two, the beast yawned, and retreated back up the steps, though not as far away from her as before, and with a scrape of its nails against the metal, settled down to sleep once more.

She continued, uncaring of the headache pounding in her temple, the mindless task consuming her thoughts.

At some point she fell asleep from exhaustion without even noticing, another disadvantage of her mind associating darkness with sleep. When she woke up, it was to the strange sounds of low howls and yips, odd hisses and chuffs, half the time sounding like the dog was trying to howl at the lowest volume possible and the other half sounding as if it had something stuck in its throat.

Her mind eventually filtered out the noise, and she fell asleep again. The next time she woke up, it was to a paw tugging at the fabric on her face, and she brought her hand up to pull the fabric off her mouth, noting that the paw retreated the instant her hand moved.

The dog remained as cautious as ever.

With a feeling of utter dread of what was to come, she opened her mouth, her features contorted in disgust.

A sickening ichor of copper poured into her mouth, a thin stream of the vile fluid coating her tongue and tonsils, before quickly petering out into trickle, then a slow drip.

How did this look to any imaginary bystander? A canine of unknown proportions holding a bleeding rodent corpse over an injured human’s open mouth. Were she in a philosophical mood, she might have imagined such a scene painted in a frame, some profound message hidden in its sprawls of paint.

But all she could think about was the imagery of a baby bird being fed by its mother from one of her old childhood books, and a sudden bout of hysterical laughter rushed forth from some dormant corner of her mind. It strained and bubbled in her chest, and she could only barely manage to restrain it thanks to the liquid in her mouth, struggling not to move too much or choke.

Her chest shook in silent laughter for almost the entire duration of her ‘drink’, and as soon as she swallowed and gagged down the horrendous slimy blood, she tugged the fabric back over her mouth, and clamped her hand over her mouth, tears running down her face and pooling in her sockets as she snickered, the pain barely registering.

What was her [Pain Resistance] at now?

A quick peek revealed it to have gone up to level twelve.

Why was that so funny?

Maybe her body was just forcing her to relieve stress, or maybe she was just going insane. Either way, she couldn’t help but find her predicament utterly hilarious.

Truly the height of decadence, to be spoon-fed the lifeblood of our lessers without having to lift a single finger! Ohohohoho! She thought in the pompous voice of her mother, imagining herself doing that stupid fake laughter while dramatically fanning herself with that crystal encrusted fan as the sounds of tearing flesh played in the background of her ridiculous imagination.

“T-Thanks.” She forced out between choked snickers, more because of a sense of wanting to delude herself into some kind of twisted sense of normalcy, rather than anything else, struggling not to burst out laughing.

Maybe a chuckle would do her some good, but she felt sick and as if she was about to puke her guts out, so she tried to contain it. This also did not feel like a situation where she should be laughing. At all.

The sound of the dog eating the rodent next to her head suddenly went silent.

“Thuuuaaaankkkkhhhhhhhhhssss.” The canine howled after a moment of silence, the sound transitioning into a creepy hiss towards the end, and her laughter stopped cold.

That-That wasn’t…

Was she hallucinating?

“T-T-Thank you?” She tried again, her voice wavering.

“Thhhhuaaankkhhhhheeuuuuuu.” It howl-hissed in reply after a moment of silence, and she felt herself going rigid, any sense of humor completely vanishing as she felt a shiver of fear run down her spine.

Was that what it was doing for all those hours? Trying to speak? It repeated its bastardized, spine-chilling mockery of the words ‘thank you’ once more and she felt her teeth clatter and gnash together, her jaw trembling.

It just sounded so wrong. Like something she'd hear whispered from the darkness in a horrid nightmare, and her overactive imagination did her no favors. Was this thing even a dog? What the fuck was she stuck with? Just because she saw some vaguely canine outline before she lost her footing back then didn’t mean that it was a dog. Maybe some hyper-intelligent monster? A demon?

Maybe a shapeshifter who took it too far and lost themselves?

After a few seconds of shocked silence, a paw poked her in the side, and she flinched.

“Y-Yes?” She eked out, her mind reeling.

Was the beast so intelligent that it could understand her this entire time? Or was it just mimicking her as a way to mess around, pass its time? Or god forbid, was it trying to learn how to speak? Why?

“Eeee… esssssss?” It hissed out like a snake, as if replying to her thoughts and she tried to grit her teeth, only for them to slide all around each other, her jaw refusing to sit still.

What the fuck was she supposed to do? She’d never even heard of a dog speaking with actual words, not even when some shady merchant was explaining to her mother why the little dog he was offering them was worth six hundred gold crowns with a dozen different ridiculous, unrealistic promises.

Any notion of this thing being a summon or animal of any kind was discarded.

No, she was dealing with an intelligent, merciful beast. But what the hell was she supposed to do with that information? It didn’t seem violent or angry with her, so that let her keep her wits and not outright panic, but she didn’t feel that far off from doing just that.

As stupid as the idea was, she decided to introduce herself, just like she was taught to do as a little nervous child scared of all the tall, well dressed adults in the ballroom.

With an unbearable slowness to the motion, she raised her shaking hand to point at herself.

“I… am E-Emhreeil.”

“Aaaiiiee. Ahhhhhmmm. Emmrrrr...” It growled, the first natural sound so far, then continued after a short pause. “...iiieeeellll.” It finished, the sound more of a whine than anything resembling speech, and she gulped, feeling like someone had dumped a stone to sit low in her stomach. After a few seconds where she mutely gathered her thoughts, a paw poked her again, and she jumped, pressing her lips together.

“Yes?” She squeaked out, and the dog chuffed, before poking her in the side with its paw again.

“W-What?”

“... Uuuuu… aaaa… kuh.” The monster replied, before growling in seeming frustration.

Oh, it's looking for new words to mimic. That realization did absolutely nothing to reduce the churning of discomfort in her gut. The monster repeated its previous noise, struggling with the 't', and tried again.

And again, and again, and again.

All the while, she just tried to wrap her head around what kind of insane situation she’d found herself in.

“Uuuuaaaatt.” It finally said, popping the ‘t’, and then, seemingly satisfied, chuffed and poked her in the side again.

She was never religious, but as she tried to come up with a complicated word to keep it occupied, she started praying to any and all the deities she could remember to just send a rescue team already, and get her out of this bizarre hellscape she’d been dropped into.

-

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