The energy suffused me, sharpening my awareness of everything within my sphere. It was as though the sun had risen on my little bubble, letting me see everything at once regardless of where I was focusing.

With a thought, I sent a wave of mana through the remaining hallways, melting the debris into floors, walls, and ceilings, and smoothing over the fractured surfaces. It was incredible, and I barely even felt the mana expenditure.

It felt luxuriant, wasteful. It felt like cheating, to be holding what had to amount to years worth of mana at the rate I had been gaining it before, and having more coming along the link to the wolf every moment.

I checked on her again, sleeping peacefully with her cub keeping watch over her, and tried to convey to her my gratitude. Nothing changed, but I hoped she could somehow feel it anyway.

Now, about that rainstorm! Judging by how much water the wolf had tracked in, the limit of my perceptions couldn’t be too far from whatever opening she had entered by, and with this newfound wealth of mana I should be able to reach it!

I started expanding, gratified to find the rate greatly increased. Deciding to test my limits, I started clearing the collapsed areas as I went, which was enough to put a significant dent in my mana until I found a good speed, but even then I never felt a hint of that familiar fatigue I had lived with for so long.

In short order, I encompassed what seemed to be the entire tunnel complex. The branching halls and additional rooms had ceased, and what I was left with was two hallways leading out of my view. One, the wolf’s, was sloped slightly upward. The other departed the opposite side of the complex from where my crystal was, and quickly turned to stairs leading down.

Most intriguing though was a third path, a staircase leading up from the very center of the complex until it abruptly didn’t. I had cleared and repaired the stairs themselves, but where they terminated was just solid stone. No collapse, no ruins, nothing to indicate there had been a room there, just… nothing.

I had also found the stalactite-studded upper spaces of what promised to be a sizable cavern below me, which the trickle of water in my chamber drained into. I was intensely curious about that, but for now my goal remained reaching the outside. I really hoped I could get there before the storm abated.

My new-found peripheral awareness spotted the mother wolf stirring, but she merely lifted her head to confirm her pup was safe before lapsing back into sleep.

She was still resting when I finally felt my sphere push out into open air and a flood of sensation hit me.

Daylight! It was muted and gray through the heavy clouds, but it was unbelievably beautiful nonetheless. The sound of the rain, the movement of it running down the stone face of what I supposed was a cliff or mountainside. I could even smell it somehow, or at least get the impression of the scent of rain. Maybe it was just my memory reminding me what it should smell like.

I still had no idea how my perception really worked. I couldn’t sense anything beyond my sphere still, couldn’t survey what the landscape looked like from the tunnel entrance. I had a rapidly expanding area of rocky mountainside, and the rain-filled air beyond it.

The exit of my tunnel was abrupt, with no doorway to speak of, and years of weathering and limestone buildup had roughened the opening, but I quickly melted all that away. From the opening, I could see a sharp decline which the wolf must have scrabbled up to reach the entrance. I was eager to push my awareness out, to discover more of the landscape, but for the moment I stopped.

I stopped and watched the rain fall.

When I was alive, or more alive at any rate, I loved thunderstorms. Any time I was able, I would take a book and sit on the balcony outside my room and just enjoy it. Sometimes I wouldn’t even read.

I loved it just as much now, and so for the first time since I had found myself alive once again I wasn’t shaping, or expanding, or resting. I stopped everything and just enjoyed being alive.

The storm lasted most of the afternoon before it tapered off. When only a light drizzle remained and the light was fading, the mama wolf stirred again, this time rising and beginning to nose around my hallways. Her pup had fallen asleep at some point, an adorably tiny curl of fur, but he roused once his mother started moving.

The two of them sniffed along the halls and into a few rooms, but didn’t go very far before turning back and heading toward the entrance. I would be sad to see them go, but I didn’t exactly have any food for them and the pup looked distressingly thin. The mother wasn’t in much better shape to be honest. Whatever had driven them to seek refuge here, I hoped it had moved off by now.

One of the storage rooms had been used for what seemed like preserved travel rations, but whatever enchantments the crates had once held had long since dissipated, and what remained wouldn’t do any good to anyone desperate enough to try eating it.

To my surprise, the she-wolf departed alone from the newly widened exit, pausing only long enough to nuzzle her child. I supposed she considered my complex a safer place than the outdoors right now, and privately I was relieved not to be saying goodbye just yet to the only two living things I had seen in this new life.

A much less pleasant surprise came moments later, when she crossed beyond my sight and I felt the mana flow from her abruptly cut off. My connection to her was still there, I could feel it, but I wasn’t receiving anything anymore. I was still sitting on a fortune in mana, relative to what I’d been working with before, but without any way to replenish it if she never came back it might be all I’d have for a while.

This was followed by an even more concerning revelation: My mana was actually dropping now, not increasing. It wasn’t much, not compared with how much I now had. I felt that if I didn’t spend any it would last me a good while, but it was depleting at a noticeable trickle. A bit of panic began to creep in as I considered what might come beyond the mana depletion I had experienced.

Good to know I could still feel panic, I supposed. Or perhaps I could feel it again? Had I been too low on mana to feel emotions properly before? Could that even possibly be how this worked? There were too many frustrating unknowns.

Okay, I needed to think rationally about this. Clearly, my expansion was not without cost. Maintaining my awareness required a certain amount of mana expenditure, and that increased with the area I covered. I had noticed that my rests seemed to be more frequent and take longer as I had expanded, but with how vague and distant my sense of time had been until now, I had written it off as a figment of my mind. Now, I had to reexamine it.

Could I try to claim the pup the same way I did his mother? Probably. It had seemed to require consent from the wolf, though. I might be able to force it with the amount of mana I had at my disposal, but that idea just felt wrong. Beyond that, I was clearly siphoning at least a portion of the wolf’s mana for my own use. Since the link had been forged saving her life, I didn’t really feel too bad about it, but I didn’t know what effect that kind of drain might have over time, especially on a child.

I resolved not to even try unless I was truly desperate.

That meant I needed an alternate source of mana, and soon. I hadn’t had awareness outside for a full day yet, but once I had then I’d be able to start tracking time accurately again and make more informed decisions from there. From what I could tell right now, I might have as long as a week with my current rate of depletion. Plenty of time for my wolf to return if she was going to.

If not… well, I’d just have to see.